Seacliff

Chapter eighteen: Present happiness

"Good morning," she whispered and kissed the tip of his nose.

Sorley opened his eyes. Queenie continued to bark in the background.

"I must go see to the dogs," Saoirse said, but he held her tighter. "Sorley..."

His eyes closed as he kissed her. His hand travelled down her back, squeezing her buttock before hooking her leg over his hip. Saoirse gasped. The reluctant gentle giant had become bold overnight.

"Sorley..."

Saoirse sighed as he pushed her on her back and hovered above her.

"Oh..."

He trailed kisses down her neck, to her breasts and her stomach. She arched her back into his mouth when it arrived between her thighs and he paused, considering. She almost begged him to do it again, but she didn't have to.

He rejoiced in her pleasure, devoured it even, and when their bodies merged as one, when his heat became her own and overfilled her senses, then the world fell apart around them, shattered into pieces, time lost its meaning and –

I love you.

Catching her breath, Saoirse blinked into reality and turned to the man heaving beside her. "What?"

"My Saoirse..." He huffed and reached up to stroke her hair. "Tá mé i ngrá leat."

"Sorley..."

His brow furrowed. "What is it, my Saoirse?"

"You just... do you know what you just said?"

His bewilderment deepened. She repeated the phrase in Irish and his eyes brightened with understanding.

"My Saoirse..."

His fingers traced a prickled pattern across the length of her arm to her wrist and lifted her right hand to his face. The Claddagh ring there still showed that she was looking for love, but he worked it off her finger, flipped it round and put it back on. This now meant that she had found love. It made her tremble.

"How... Oh, Sorley... you remember? W-what do you remember? I – How did you... know? And... you... you speak Irish, I don't – "

He stopped her stream of questions with a passionate kiss that nearly set her ablaze again.

"I love you," Sorley said. "I do. I do not know the answers to any of your other questions, my Saoirse, but I do know that I love you. And I feel like I have for a very long time. I... I just want – "

His eyes twitched with the pained grimace that overtook his countenance. Another lost memory flashing to the forefront?

"Sorley? Sorley, are you all right?"

He whimpered like a wounded animal, his whole body clenched in a coil. His breathing quickened and his veins swelled along his reddened skin. It frightened her.

"Sorley!"

He snarled and howled, his bloodshot eyes bulging in their sockets. Saoirse scrambled out of bed, overrun with worry and terror. He lunged for her, his fingers crooked like claws. Saoirse screamed. Unable to hold himself upright, he collapsed on the carpet at her feet and seemed to pass out there.

Saoirse crouched to check his pulse. Fast, yet steadying from erratic into regular, and gradually slowing as a minute, then two, then three elapsed. Sweat trickled down his temples. She dragged the duvet off the bed to drape it over his body and shoved a pillow under his head.

Dressed in old trousers of her husband's and a yellowed cotton shirt, Saoirse left the room and locked the door behind her. Tending to the animals helped put her at ease while it kept her out of the house. Once she had to go back in, the fear resurfaced.

She wasn't afraid of Sorley. She was afraid of what he couldn't remember. Many a soldier had returned broken from the war and couldn't quite piece themselves back together. In their minds, they were still in the trenches, so it often happened that they mistook their families for the enemy.

Had Sorley been to war? Had he lost his memories in a fight rather than an accident? Was he still fighting his demons in those dark crevices of his brain that he couldn't reach? She glanced at the Claddagh ring on her right hand, now showing her heart had been 'captured'.

Sniffling with restrained tears, Saoirse cleared her throat and picked up the telephone. She asked for the residence of Sir Alexander Mortimer in Edinburgh and was connected to one of the housemaids.

"Yes, hello, I'd like to talk to Dr James Mortimer, please. Me? Oh, um... Sister Quinn. Saoirse Quinn, of Seacliff Lodge. Yes, please. Yes, I'll wait. Thank you."