Revelin was on his feet in an instant. One look was enough. He dropped the flap with a curse. There was only one conclusion to be drawn, and it was something he had not considered. “The daft lass has run away!”
Ualter’s ears pricked forward at his master’s muttering, but he did not abandon tracking her scent. He paced back and forth a few times, sneezed to rid his nostrils of mud and grass, and then his whole body went stiff as the girl’s scent wafted up from a shallow footprint in the boggy ground. The hair on his back rose, his huge body began to tremble and he whimpered to be set loose.
With relief Revelin recognized the cause of the dog’s excitement. “Why do you linger? ’Tis your fault she got away.” He motioned with a hand and commanded, “Go!” and the dog galloped off to the forest with a yelp.
Revelin hurried after him, cursing roundly as his boots made squishy noises with every step.
Meghan paid no attention to the distant barking as she sat in the tree that she had climbed. The pattern of leaf and shadow was comforting because it was familiar, the only familiar thing left in her world. She had come to the forest to be alone to think about what she should do next, but she had found no answers. Instead, she saw a world of loneliness stretching out before her, and it frightened her.
Una was gone. Her home was destroyed. There was no one else on earth who cared whether she lived or died.
She closed her eyes. Those were selfish thoughts, thoughts unworthy of the grieving she felt. She wished Una alive again not only because she was lonely; even if Una could not be with her, she would still wish her alive.
“Meg-han! Meg-han!”
The sound of her name was a shock. Never in all their years together had Una shouted her name, for fear that the cries would attract unwelcome visitors. As the sound of barking neared, Meghan looked down through the foliage to see Ualter break from the underbrush into the open ground beneath her tree. Moments later, his master appeared. She drew back behind the tree trunk, afraid that he would look up and see her.
After a moment the barks ceased and the footfalls died. Her curiosity pricked by the silence, she leaned out until she could see. Revelin had paused beneath the huge elm, a hand on each hip, his dog obediently at his side.
“Meghan?” he called more softly this time. “Meghan, lass, where are you?”
The sound of her name was vaguely disturbing, and Meghan clutched the tree trunk as though his voice had the power to lure her down to the ground against her will.
“Meghan?” Revelin questioned again. The rustle of leaves was his only answer. “Ualter, fetch!” he ordered.
Ualter sprang up, circled the base of the elm, then jumped up against the trunk and barked twice.
Revelin looked up with eyes narrowed against the greenness, but he could detect nothing but the sway of leafy branches in the wind.
In hiding once more, Meghan listened to the crunch of twigs beneath his boots as he walked about. When they began to die away, dismay swamped her suddenly, for she knew she did not want to be alone.
Mischief gleamed in her eyes as she pried loose a section of bark from the tree and then hurled it at him. The chip struck a lower branch and dropped to the ground a few feet behind him. She saw him start and whirl about at the sound. Suppressing a giggle, she pulled lose a second strip. Her second throw found its mark in the center of his chest. His yelp of surprise set free the amusement she had been repressing.
Startled, Revelin glanced up as the sound of impish laughter issued from the treetop. “You
are
up there! Come down this instant!”
Meghan quickly crouched down again, her laughter smothered by her hand.
“Meghan? Come down!”
The command made her shiver, and yet she felt compelled to answer, “No!”
Revelin’s jaw dropped. “Are you afraid of me?”
“No.”
“Then you’ll climb down?”
“No!”
Revelin did not stop to think about what he was doing; he was too irritated by her refusal to obey him. She must have only half the wits he credited her with if she felt it necessary to hide in trees. The prospect of retrieving her from a different tree every morning was not encouraging.
Meghan waited in trembling anticipation. The excitement pulsing in her throat was laced about a knot of fear. Why, oh why had she not simply let him leave? What on earth had she hoped to achieve by encouraging him?
The tree trembled and swayed with his climbing and then
it stopped. After several long moments she opened her eyes.
He sat in a fork of the tree, his head even with her bare feet as she crouched above him. His back was pressed against the trunk, his long legs stretched out, his booted feet crossed at the ankles; and when her gaze came back to his face she saw that he was smiling.
From her tense posture, Revelin recognized that she was terrified. She was crouched in a tight ball with her arms wrapped about her legs and her chin resting on her knees. Her hair had fallen forward like a protective curtain and the curled ends drifted in the breeze. He casually lifted a strand caught on the bark and rubbed it between his fingers. “You are feeling better, I see.”
Meghan could think of nothing to say; her gaze remained on him, waiting, watching, afraid.
“Why did you come here?” he asked in his kindest voice. He did not look up, thinking that perhaps she would feel safer if she did not have to respond to his stare.
Meghan shook her head. “’Tis only that I—I…”
Revelin combed his fingers through more locks of her hair, enjoying the cool silkiness. “Tell me, Meghan.”
She shrugged, a frown drawing delicate lines on her brow. How could she explain what Una had called foolish notions?
“Being atop the world makes you feel powerful and special,” Revelin supplied.
Meghan looked at him in surprise. “Ye feel it, too?”
Revelin nodded. Strangely, he did. The pleasure of bouncing on a supple branch was a long-forgotten pastime of his childhood.
“How do ye know my name?” she questioned.
“Your mother told me.”
“Una was not me mother,” Meghan answered.
“Who were your parents?”
Meghan’s gaze slipped away from him. Una had called her a changeling, a child of the fairies left in place of a kidnapped human babe.
A by-blow, Revelin decided. Perhaps an O’Neill clansman’s bastard, for Una had told him that Meghan belonged to that Ulster Clan. “Why did you run away?”
A moment passed while Meghan searched for words to fit her feelings. She was accustomed to explaining what her actions were, not the reasons behind them. Unconsciously her left hand stole upward. “Because I’m ugly. It frightens folk.”
Pity stirred in Revelin as he said in all honesty, “You do not frighten me, Meghan.” He reached out and gently caressed her bare foot. She was female, after all, and deserving of a little flattery. As long as he kept his emotions under control, they both were safe.
Meghan gazed thoughtfully at the hand resting on her foot. It was broad and tan, the fingers long and blunt tipped. But it was his warmth that made her uncomfortable. It communicated itself through her skin, making her vividly aware of how cold she was in every other part of her body. Shyly she asked, “Do ye not fear me?” It was spoken with the candor of a child.
Revelin mastered his smile. “I find you beautiful,” he replied, and wondered why it made his voice unsteady to say so.
Meghan gazed at him, aware again of the pleasure that gazing upon him gave her. “Nae, ’tis ye who are beautiful.”
Revelin looked up from his play.
She was silhouetted against the shifting pattern of green leaves, her hair a black silky halo shot through with rose and gold from the dawn’s light. The light breeze molded her
leine
to her body, outlining perfectly the generous fullnesses and slender hollows of her young body. A jolt of pure delight tightened the muscles of his lower belly. She was born to give pleasure, he thought fleetingly. The response took him by surprise, and he quickly lifted his hand and looked away before the betraying passion could light his eyes.
Meghan’s smile dissolved. Humiliation shriveled her momentary happiness into a tight knot of shame. He had looked her full in the face and had not been able to stop himself from
retreating at the sight. She should have expected nothing more. She had momentarily forgotten that she was bad luck.
With her free hand she clutched the bark of the trunk until it bit deeply into her palm. “I’ll be going me own way. ’Tis not for ye to be worrying about me.”
In looking away Revelin had missed her reaction. He glanced back now in surprise. “Go your own way? Faith! You can’t seriously be considering living”—he waved his arm about—“here?”
Meghan hung her head in silence, and the realization that she meant to do exactly that nonplused him. Conversing with her was like stumbling down a London alley after dark—he never knew what to expect next.
She was only a simple soul, he reminded himself. He should not fault her for balking at the idea of going anywhere with strangers. What could he say to persuade her otherwise? A moment’s thought came to his rescue. “I pledged to your aunt that I would see you kept safe. Would you have me break that promise?”
Meghan considered his words as she watched the passage of an ant along a strip of bark. “I cannot ask ye to break an oath,” she said slowly, “but I’ll have a pledge from ye, meself. I’ll not have ye gawking at me ever again.”
Revelin’s brows shot up, and then he remembered that she believed herself to be ugly. He schooled his features as best he could. “Aye, ’tis a great concern to me, also,” he answered, mimicking her thick accent. “I’ll be doing meself a favor not to be so easily distracted by a bonny lass the likes of Meghan O’Neill.”
Meghan furrowed her brow in confusion. She did not know what to make of his teasing. Una had never spoken to her in cross-purposes that made her want to smile. “Ye’re a fey man,” she said simply.
Thinking that he would do better to leave well enough alone, Revelin turned and began climbing down.
Meghan followed reluctantly. When he leaped from the lowest branch, she would have followed had he not immediately turned and raised his arms to her.
“Jump and I’ll catch you!”
Meghan stood on the branch for a moment, wondering if she should trust him, and then jumped.
Revelin caught her by the hips, but her
leine
slipped over her body like a loose skin and she slid past his grasp, the momentum overbalancing the pair and sending them onto the mossy floor of the forest.
His body cushioned Meghan’s fall as she landed atop his chest. With a toss of her head to bring the hair forward over her face, she looked down at the man beneath her with misgiving tugging at her lips. There was a strange light in his eyes, halfway between pain and pleasure.
“Well, lass, get up,” he growled in mock indignation.
Revelin grasped her by the waist to heave her off, but his hands stilled as they encountered the bare satiny warmth of her skin. Her tunic had slid up past her waist, and along either side of his waist her long slim legs were bared to his inspection.
As she shifted her weight slightly he realized that the moist heat of her bare loins was pressed against his belly. She moved again, unconsciously increasing the intimate contact, and his hands curled tighter on her waist. It took the full force of his will not to arch under her weight and press himself against her.
Unaware of the cause of his distress but strangely excited by their contact, Meghan reluctantly began to rise. As she did, Revelin was treated to a vision so tantalizing that he groaned aloud.
“Ye’re hurt!” Meghan exclaimed anxiously as she knelt beside him.
Not trusting what his next sight of her might be, Revelin waved her away. “No. I’m not hurt. You go back to camp. I’ll be along…in a minute.”
John was noisily sucking the juice from a handful of berries he had found growing at the base of a boulder when he spied Meghan returning from the forest.
“Well now. The day offers all manner of juicy delights,” he said with a smug smile. He met Robin’s gaze and deliberately licked the last of the rich red juice from his hand before nodding in Meghan’s direction. “Methinks Butler’s been at a sweeter fruit than I. He’s had her to himself for two days. Will he share, do you think?”
Robin glanced back over his shoulder and saw Revelin emerge from the forest a few paces behind Meghan. John needed little excuse to square off against Butler, since it was Revelin’s fault that they had tarried a full week.
“With Rev’s puppy prancing about, I’d think twice about pressing the matter, were I you.”
John’s dark eyes registered for the first time Ualter pacing docilely at the girl’s side. “There’s ways of dealing with that!” he pronounced and rose suddenly to his feet. He reached down and rubbed his groin. “Once she’s had a taste, she’ll come begging for it.”
Robin’s mild blue eyes were full of mirth as John strode across the clearing. Despite his lewd talk, Reade did not approach the girl. Doubtless he was afraid of Ualter!
“You’ve left little, I see,” Revelin said when he reached Robin. He had ignored Meghan when she paused just outside the circle of tents, walking past her without comment.