The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) (34 page)

***

The fire crackled too hot. She felt it against her ankles, through the wool of her tunic and the calfskin of her shoes. She should turn and take care of it, pull some wood from the blaze, tamp it down so the unguent she was making for that poor boy in the river valley with the burn along his thigh wouldn’t bubble over and be worth nothing. But for the life of her she couldn’t seem to move from her spot. She was afraid if she turned and faced the man standing stiff in the shadows that she would see a grin on his face or hear him laugh, and then it’d be hard not to curse him to the bowels of hell.

She gripped the cool edge of the mortar and ran her fingers over the chips on the inside. Outside the hut, his horse neighed, attended by the curious bystanders whose murmuring drifted through the doorway. What difference did it make if she told him the truth now? He didn’t believe the evidence of his own eyes. He searched for other reasons, for herbs, unguents, treachery, or even witchery to explain it, so he wouldn’t have to believe the unbelievable—so he wouldn’t have to
believe.

A man like that didn’t have to believe, not anymore. With the affliction ebbing, she now saw far too clearly what he had been before it had overtaken him. He was the kind of man who could steal any woman’s breath away, with those clear blue eyes and finely sculpted cheekbones, that straight nose, and those black brows. It was a wonder he didn’t have a passel of bastards roaming these hills. Well, maybe not bastards, considering the treachery of his brothers. No, as soon as the rest of the affliction faded, he’d get himself a fine young wife, a beauty, as rich as he, with plenty of land for their herds of cattle. He’d get another castle, on another place less sacred than the old. He’d regain his seat in the mead–hall of the Prince of Wales again. He stood confused and angry with her now, yes, but soon enough he’d realize the consequences of what had happened.

Then he’d visit this peasant–hut no longer.

“My father told me,” she said, needing to fill the silence of the room with something other than the sound of her own breathing, “that one of my ancestors was a woman of high standing. A Druid priestess, in Ulster. This was at a time long, long ago, when the church was just coming to Ireland and the veils between the worlds shifted easily.”

She released the pestle and rubbed her hands together, balling the bits of columbine which clung to her fingers. “She loved a man of the Otherworld—a man of
Tír na nÓg
—and on one Samhain when the veils thinned she lay with him by the light of the fires.”

She remembered when Da had told her the story while they sat on the ledges fishing for bream, not long after she’d discovered her own faery–gift. It had all seemed so logical then. After all, the
Sídh
had danced around them whilst they pulled fish from the sea. But that was upon Inishmaan, where nothing was quite what it seemed and no one thought to question the way of the world. Now she felt as if she were telling a nursery tale rather than revealing the roots of her own family.

“They created a link of flesh and spirit, of faery and human, which kept the worlds together even as they were drifting apart. And so all of us born of that woman have faery–blood racing in our veins.” She heard his footsteps brushing across the paving stones and she rushed on to be done with this. “Every child’s gift is different.” She flexed her hands in front of her. “Mine is the gift of the healing hands.”

“That’s a strange tale for a father to tell a daughter to explain a God–given gift.” He stood beside her, his breath brushing her ear. “You’re no faery, Aileen the Red. I can see you.” He moved close enough for their bodies to brush. “I can
feel
you.”

She closed her eyes to breathe in the smell of leather and man. Her mind screamed,
Pull away
, but her body paid the voice no heed.

“You don’t believe me,” she whispered.

His lips came perilously close to the nape of her neck. “I know that you are woman, flesh and blood, through and through.”

“Where does it say that I cannot be a bit of both?”

He kissed the bend between her neck and her shoulder. Aileen let her eyes drift closed, then let her head rest back against his chest. She turned and rubbed her cheek against the weave of his tunic and wished for the thousandth time that she could be nothing but a woman, flesh and blood, without the responsibility of her gift, and the price she must pay—to always be doubted by this man, the only man she would ever love.

He said, “Look at me.”

He forced her chin up to face him. The air squeezed out of her lungs, for by the golden light streaming through the doorway he was Rhys ap Gruffydd, Lord of Graig, all but whole again, as vital and handsome a man as ever walked the earth. One part of her heart ached for the man she’d known before, the–masked man with the distorted face, the tormented soul who had opened up under the touch of her hands. That man needed her.

This man needed her no longer.

“Well,” she stammered, under the intensity of his scrutiny, “it looks like I’ve finally fulfilled my side of the bargain.”

Had he spoken, she wasn’t sure she would have heard his words, for a roaring began in her ears, the rush of blood and excitement through her body. Flesh and blood she was, indeed. In the space of a heartbeat all the memories of those winter nights returned, a blur of sensation of flesh against flesh, the rustle of linens and the hush of indrawn breath, the endless yearning for his lips against her open mouth.

Then his mouth captured her jaw and made a mockery of memory. Sensation swept away all rational thought. His sun–warmed hair sifted between her fingers, his arm banded around her back. He tugged the linen from her head so her hair sprang around them. His skin tasted of honey–mead. Too long, too long it had been since those cold winter nights in his bed. Now, he hefted her hips upon the table and leaned her back, sending mortars and pestles clattering to the floor. She felt a spot of sunlight trail over her face, down her neck, to rest on the bare, freckled skin of her bosom where Rhys tugged the ties open.

She braced herself as his lips worked magic. With tears pricking her eyes she told herself that she would forgive herself later for being so weak in his presence. No woman of sane mind could look into those blue eyes and find a way to make her tongue say,
no, no, not like this, not without love between us.

It was too late, for his fingers trailed under her skirts and urged open her thighs to seek where she ached. He stroked her in a mockery of the lovemaking to come, until finally, finally, as she hung her arms around his shoulders, he tugged up his tunic and fumbled with his
braies
and made his cock kiss her womb.

His breath came harsh by her ear. It’s nothing more than rutting, she told herself. His fingers curled into her hair, and she told herself that this was just a lord finding his pleasure in the arms of a willing maiden. To hope for more was to hope for the impossible—it was to wish for the moon—and now Aileen the Red knew better than to reach farther than arm’s length.

She held the thought tight as sensation coiled in her abdomen and the world whirled around her and all thought shattered and she knew only his powerful thrust, the surge of his seed deep into her womb, the blinding joy of sated need.

The world came back to her too swiftly. She felt the singe of the sunlight on the top of her head and the poke of an overturned bowl in the small of her back. A bird rustled in the thatch above. The door to her hut hung ajar. She heard the bondswomen gossiping at the end of the path, the children still racing around, out of sight only by the grace of God.

What a foolish thing they’d done. She was a respectable healer, a woman unmarried, it wasn’t fit that she be caught writhing with a lord on her own table. She pushed gently to move away, but his arms tightened around her. He lifted his head and her heart lurched at the faint smile on his lips—an easy smile, so breathtakingly beautiful.

He said, “Don’t worry about them. They will all know soon enough that you’re my mistress again.”

“Will they now?”

Another bowl overturned and clattered to the floor as she extricated herself from Rhys’s embrace. A shadow passed across that face. He wanted everything back the way it was. It was so easy for a man, easier for a lord.

She brushed her skirts over her legs and wiped the backs of them, where they’d grown damp from contact with the washed herbs. She set to her hair which snarled every which way and made a mockery of her efforts. Giving up on vanity, she rounded the cauldron, avoiding his gaze as she seized the spoon and stirred the bubbling mixture.

“And who says,” she murmured through lips still throbbing with the need to be kissed, “that I’ll consent to be your mistress again?”

He ran his hand over the space she’d vacated. “You haven’t retied the laces of your tunic, Irish.”

Her face flamed as she realized the sleeves still hung over her shoulders. By leaning over the cauldron she’d given him a view clear down to breasts still tight with sensation. Well, what of it, after the passion of moments ago? She was not so much of a hypocrite that she’d deny she’d enjoyed the moment.

“Is this the way of all men,” she asked, tossing the spoon aside and setting her fingers to the laces, “to think that just because a woman got her pleasure from him, she’ll make it a habit of going to his bed?”

“Yes, if she takes as much pleasure as you.”

“I won’t deny it.”

“You can’t. I know your body, Irish. I remember it well.”

“That was before,” she argued, tugging the laces tight, “and that makes all the difference.”

The smile on his face withered. Sweeping her hair off her shoulders, she picked up the spoon again and stirred with vigor. Damned fool of a man. Did he really think she could return to the homestead and lay with him every night whilst she watched his life open up again to the world? Did he think she could give up this freedom she’d bargained for—this house of her own, this calling, this life she’d determined to forge for herself—just for the uncertain pleasure of having him in her bed for a short time?

Nay.
She swallowed a lump that rose to her throat.
Nay.
Before, she’d considered her time in Wales as a time outside her life, a short period of unrestricted freedom in which she could take risks which wouldn’t reverberate beyond these shores. But now, she had determined to make this country her home. Anything she did here would have consequences far beyond the moment. If she lay with Rhys every night, she’d be known as the mistress of the Lord of Graig—perhaps for the rest of her life though the affair might not last through the year. But if she stayed here, chaste, in her own home, she’d be the healer of Graig. A person in her own right, with her life firmly in her own hands. Her heart as whole as she could keep it.

She couldn’t give that up. Not for a man who wanted her only to ease his passion. Not for a man who didn’t love her.

“You prefer,” he said darkly, “this flea–ridden hut to lying on smooth linens by my side?”

“I prefer my own bed and my own life to an uncertain one with you.”

“I’ve taken care of you well enough.”

“I don’t like to be taken care of in the way you’re thinking, for all the temporary pleasure it’ll give me.”

“You were crying out none of this while you were flat on that table.”

“A woman’s flesh is weak and I’m no exception.” She clattered the spoon on the table and crouched down into the heat to readjust the fire. “You come storming into my house, swaggering and as handsome as ever, and start nibbling at me—well, what’s a poor peasant to do, will you tell me that? What we did on that table was a moment of madness, and mind you, I’ll muster every bit of strength I can to prevent it from happening again.”

She thrust a poker into the flames until the fire died a bit, then hustled around the hearth to pick up the debris fallen during that moment of madness. She kept her chin high and her will strong, and felt the waves of anger emanating from him.

“Women always want sweet words.” He reached for her, but she swiveled out of his way. “I don’t have the tongue for it.”

“Keep your words.” She struggled with an armload of mortars and pestles. “It’s not words I want.”

“Don’t ask for more than I can give you.”

His words shot through her heart, piercing the single bud of hope she hadn’t even known existed. Of course she had considered becoming his mistress again, maybe even something more. But that was the road to false hope. She knew what would happen next. He would tear down the rest of the castle to rid himself of the affliction, and then he’d be the same man he was five years ago—handsome and full of new ambition, triumphantly returning to the world he’d left behind, and able to attract the richest of heiresses with the finest of bloodlines. That would be the end of Aileen the Red.

There was some strange mockery in the fact that she had healed him only to lose him forever.

She thrust the bowls upon the table. “It is precisely because I know you can’t give me what I want that I don’t bother to ask for it. You’ve told me yourself we are of different worlds. I agree with you now. In my world, faery–blood is a thing honored and cherished. In yours it’s nonsense. You value knowing the names of your ancestors back twelve generations instead. There can be no future for us. Now, if you don’t mind”—she clanked one bowl off another—”I have a salve to make for a boy in the river valley who burned himself yesterday on the kiln stones.”

He didn’t wait to hear her last words. He stormed out of the hut so abruptly that a gasp went up among the people lingering around his horse. She heard the jingle of harness as he hefted himself upon the beast’s back. She heard the pounding of hooves fading in the distance. Despite herself, she drifted to the door and leaned against the jamb to watch the dust of his passing settle. A great sadness weighed down upon her.

She waited for tears to come, for sobs to tear her apart, but the ache throbbed too deeply for tears.

Out of the dust emerged the figure of another rider. Dafydd, by the look of him, glancing over his shoulder as his brother passed him by.