Irish Moon (36 page)

The only one he seemed taken with, unguarded
with, was Danny. She wondered if he told the boy goodbye.

And she understood. He’d grown used to a
solitary life after the Knight’s brotherhood’s dismantle. She had
sensed it in him still that night as he kissed her and touched her
as though she were a treasure. He feared what returning meant more
than what not returning might.

If she had months or years to wait, it might
matter not. But, she did not. Niall had vowed that if Ashlon did
not come back, or was drug back biting and hollering, Breanne would
marry Quinlan.

At least he was safe. Somehow, knowing Ashlon
would live and be well gave her comfort despite the disastrous turn
of events.

The letter he wrote had been meant to comfort
her, she could tell. Though it was a brief missive, the scroll of
his writing was shaky and difficult to read. Breanne liked to think
it showed how difficult it had been to write.

He made no declarations of love, no false
promise of hope that she might wait. He’d only thanked her and
wished her absolute happiness in a long well lived life.

The sweetness of it was what had caused the
emotional downpour. It had been too much at the time, having just
received notice that she was in fact betrothed to Quinlan, that the
announcement would be made later that day and binding.

Breanne held the parchment in her lap, her
breathing settling down from the hiccups and sobs finally. She
glanced at Rose and gave her a weak smile.

She would make the best of it. She had to.
Naught else could be realistically done about it. At worst she
could leave in the night and go after the man her heart longed for,
at best she could cast a spell and wish him back.

Breanne almost laughed at the idea. A spell.
If only it were so easy as that. She’d been in study for so long
and in it held on to a romanticized notion of magick offering
solace and control over tragedy and pain.

She knew now that it complicated rather than
bettered things. And what she thought magick was all those years
had proved false. It was not a wish and a chant, it was a
life-force and energy the like of which she still could not fully
fathom.

“Come, let us get you dressed then,” Rose
said, squeezing her hand.

“
I’ve been meaning to ask,
Rose, how the tonics have been to you,” Breanne said and wet a
cloth for her face.

Rose patted her belly and warmed Breanne’s
heart with a beaming smile. “We’ve been right as rain, Bree, thanks
to you.”

Right as rain. Breanne rose, took the letter
to her trunk and placed it inside the pages of her nearly empty
Grimoire. Heremon’s lay beneath it, its aged cover making hers
appear juvenile in comparison. She would not need these things for
some time as she would soon be busy minding a home, trying to forge
a new bond with Quinlan.

Chapter Twenty Two

Breanne’s eyes were puffy but nothing so
severe that a brief compress would not remedy. She busied herself
as Rose prattled on about the babe in her belly and what it would
be like to have a son.

The wedding would begin within the hour and
Breanne laid out the only gown she owned suitable for the occasion.
It was a pale lavender silk, threaded through with silver and gray
and white. The cape that attached at the shoulders was a deep
shimmering gray, as well. Silver baubles in her hair and a plated
silver and amethyst choker would complete the picture she hoped
would make her mother proud, if that were possible after the
morning’s events.

She was nervous. Stomaching all the eyes that
would be on her, all the whispers and conjecture that would buzz
the hall throughout the ceremony, would be more difficult than any
trial she’d yet faced.

The tightly knit clan warranted few secrets’
survival among them. If most didn’t already know the sordid details
of her actions and repercussions, they certainly would find out
while her uncle spoke lifelong binding words of love, honor, and
fidelity.

Breanne’s cheeks burned just thinking of it
and she tried hard to focus on Rose instead.

“Ryan promised me to be home more with this
one’s arrival. Ah, but he said that with all my girls. I don’t know
why it scares them so badly, being fathers. You would think it’d
make them feel more the man rather than like scared little boys.”
Rose pushed Breanne into the vanity stool and began weaving a
coiffure, threading the tinkling baubles in as she spoke.

Babies. No one seemed to mind enough to ask
or speak of the possibility of a baby. She could only hope Ashlon
had not given her one. Forcing Quinlan to raise another man’s child
would be too much to ask her friend, honorable or not.

Breanne ignored the warm quiver in her belly
at the image of holding Ashlon’s baby. His dark curls, her brown
eyes, a boy. A reminder of her one magickal night to last a
lifetime. And Quinlan’s, a voice reminded her.

Better to forget the possibility, to bury it
along with all these feelings until the dust of so many changes
settled.

“Ah, there, but you look gorgeous, Breanne.
Rhiannon will be seething with her jealousy all the more when you
walk into that room.”

Breanne smiled up at her friend. The dull
ache in her lifted a smidge under the breeze of Rose’s
effervescence.

“It will be nice, don’t you think, to have an
evening wedding,” Rose said, plucking at tendrils just so.

“Aye, different and romantic, as well, though
I’d have chosen a daylight hour were it up to me.”

“I’m surprised it wasn’t put off until
daylight tomorrow what with the final rushing that had to take
place. It’s naught but chaos below. The ladies don’t know their
fingers from their toes getting it all finally together.”

A knock sounded on Breanne’s door. Danny
poked his head through at their unison call to enter.

“It’s time,” Danny said in a low voice. He
didn’t look up to them and left as though the world were on his
shoulders.

“What is the source of his long face, do you
think?” Rose said.

“I couldn’t guess,” she said. But it was not
true. She had a few estimations, one of which included Ashlon
leaving Tir Conaill. Another might very well be hearing the sordid
affair the clan’s collective tongue likely wagged about all morning
long.

Breanne suppressed the emotions threatening
to gag her. She composed herself as well as she could and glanced
at the mirror to verify she looked suitably aloof and reserved.

Rose took her hand, tucked at another scant
curl in her coiffure and together they walked the long length of
corridor leading to the main hall. Chatter bubbled up to them and
turned Breanne’s stomach. She didn’t want to face them, but knew
she had no other choice. She swallowed against the lump in her
throat and took two steadying breaths.

Rose paused a moment with her, patted her
hand. “It will be as easy or difficult as you make it, Bree. So,
let us chin up and show them nothing but beauty.”

Breanne nodded and watched as Rose walked
down the stairs and away from her.

The first step was the hardest and when she
reached the bottom, the half an hour that followed blurred past
with the sheer effort of maintaining her serene smile.

* * * *

The black’s hard breaths came out in puffs of
steam in the dusk air. The moon was rising. The temperature was
dropping and clouds menaced the horizon.

Ashlon hunched low over the stallion’s
withers and gave him his full head. What had taken him eight hours
at least, he was fighting to make four. It wasn’t going to
happen.

The images of the Bloodstone’s theft skipped
and replayed in his head as his mind sifted for more clues. Breanne
would know. Breanne would see what he could not. He had to return
to her. And not simply to help him yet again, but because he knew
down to his soul that her life was in jeopardy.

The black grunted and heaved up the low hill,
whose crest Ashlon prayed would reveal the towers of O’Donnell
keep. He didn’t know how much more he could ask of the stallion if
not.

As the grassy hill gave way to cloudy sky, a
square-ish and undeniably stone formation reached their view.
Ashlon cried out in triumph and patted the black’s neck. “Not long
now, my friend. We’ve nearly won the race.”

He had no doubt his attacker had returned
here long before, although he couldn’t name why. He credited the
Knighthood’s constant guarding ceremonies warding evil for the bill
of trust he now paid. The Pope’s forced confessions of a floating
head worshipped by the Templar Knights were in part true. The
bloodstone was no head, and had not been worshipped. It had been
studied, revered, and protected from the earliest times of their
brotherhood’s formation.

The Bloodstone was not proof of heretical
practice, of devil worship as the Pope and throne wished to prove.
It was a resource that only a few could utilize due to its complex
nature and giftedness.

The signs had been there and he’d chosen to
ignore them. Breanne might be one of those few. And the fiend that
was clearly not of this world, might be, as well.

His only hope was that nothing catastrophic
had transpired in the time it took him to rejoin the fiend. If
something had happened to Breanne due to his hardheadedness, he
could not forgive himself.

If the spawn of demon life that took the
Bloodstone lay…. Ashlon stopped himself from carrying down that
road. He would get the stone back and see the villain’s blood drawn
in the process, that he swore before God himself.

A lather of sweat gathered on the black’s
coat and brought Ashlon back to reality. He slowed the steed to a
canter and then a trot. No sense in blaring up to the doors and
raising alarm or leaving the horse dead tired.

He needed to keep stealthy, find Breanne and
not draw undue attention. In fact any attention would be undue
since he had absconded with a horse and might very well be summoned
to answer for it wedding feast or no.

The stable boy took the black’s reins and
gaped at the sight of both. “You’ve raced back for naught and
missed both nuptials, Sir Sinclair.”

Ashlon did his best to look disappointed.
“Both, you say?” He tried to swallow against his hard
breathing.

“Aye sir, the Lady Ula and the O’Donnell’s
with the last minute addition of the Lady--.”

“Brian Patrick O’Toole,” a booming voice
called from the rear. “Get your lazing arse back here this minute
afore I come up there and--.”

“Coming,” Brian called in return and scurried
away, black in hand.

Ashlon was glad for the boy’s distraction and
his mild curiosity at what he’d spoken of gave way to immediate
need to locate and find privacy with Breanne.

He did his best to appear unassuming while he
walked through the kitchen entrance. The staff there looked busier
than a honey hive and only one member caught sight of him. The wide
mouthed look of recognition made him nervous and he flashed the
girl his best charming smile, the one practiced for many a young
welcoming widow over the years.

It worked well enough to raise a pretty blush
to her cheeks and force her gaze back to her work. The priest’s
voice held melodiously and clear above the noisy kitchen and drew
Ashlon out. He stood in shadow, his pulse pounding, his heart aware
she was near.

* * * *

When Father O’Donnell announced the newly wed
couple to the onlookers, Breanne realized with a start that it was
over. Her mother had tears in her eyes and Niall’s shone wet, too.
She’d never seen either look so happy or so obviously in love as
her new stepfather bent down and kissed his bride.

Breanne joined in the applause and riotous
cheer that followed as Niall and Ula sprinted like kids back down
the aisle, Niall nearly knocking over several guests. In an eager
swarm, the lines of waiting spread and gathered into circles while
the servants reassembled the banquet’s tables.

Her mother was wedded. Shortly, she, too,
would be and Niall had made clear that he would announce her
betrothal this very eve to ensure neither she nor Quinlan lost
spine or procrastinated it off.

Quinlan had stood at her side, silent but
strong through the service. He had not yet met her eyes but then
she’d equally avoided his. Her belly still rotted with guilt and
loss, but her face showed no such torture.

Might she have been wrong in thinking her
mother to be the only one to accomplish a peaceful visage? Perhaps
she’d learned more’n she’d credited from her mother, similar or
no.

It made her wonder what Ula kept hidden
beneath. But, not today. Today her mother shined like a star in the
sky. She looked vibrant and younger than her years.

A peal of laughter carried above the din and
brought her head to the left. Quinlan’s notably followed and
stopped as well upon the vision of Rhiannon gushing at the side of
Timothy O’Doherty. Their wedding had taken place as a quick opening
for the main event of her parents’ ceremony and now Rhiannon seemed
desirous of a piece of the crowd’s focus and well wishing.

Her mother would never say so, but Breanne
thought the spontaneous request for Rhiannon and Timothy to marry
as well today a bit contrived and without good taste. Ula had been
gracious however and postponed her vows just long enough to allow
Father Connelly to wed the youngsters.

Breanne hooked her arm through Quinlan’s and
laced her fingers through his. “She does not know what she’s lost,
Quin.”

He looked down at her, pain and anger
brightening the blue of his eyes. “And you do?”

She might have deserved that and so she only
lifted her chin higher. “Aye. I always have.” She bored her gaze
into his, trying to stare her sentiment home.

Quinlan lowered his glance and smiled a
little. “Might we should play a bit of her game, then?”