The Forest Lord (51 page)

He caressed her as if he were no longer convinced of his right to touch her. Yet already she sensed that he grew stronger. His manhood pulsed against her abdomen, seeking its true home. She understood that she must become something other than human this night, a creature of the elements, the pure force of life that beat in every mortal breast. Nothing must taint what she gave him. All fears, all despair must be forgotten for these few, fragile moments.

Take me, Hartley. I withhold nothing. Take my body and my strength and my love. Be whole again. Save yourself and Donal and you will save me. Let us light a bonfire of our own, and burn the veil between worlds to ashes.

But she did not speak. She proceeded, instead, to show him. She arched her back, curving her body into his, and seized his lower lip between her teeth.

His mouth fitted itself to hers in fierce demand. His palm cupped her breast, rolling her nipple to a hard peak. Arrows of desire that were almost pain shot into her womb and below.

She felt gloriously, wonderfully, tumultuously alive.

Hartley pulled her down and suckled her as if he drank some sweet and mystical nectar. She abandoned herself and moaned, lashing her hair across his face.

He slid his hand between her thighs. She wanted him so much that she nearly exploded before he'd done more than brush her with his fingertips. He drove her to the edge, but she could not make the leap alone. He must come with her, else the magic was void.

The magic was succeeding. Hartley felt his blood surge with renewed vigor as his fingers stroked inside her. He tasted her wetness on his own skin, and her body's elixir charged him with energy.

Death, such as the Fane knew it, stood by the bed like a jealous paramour. He had known
She
followed all the way from Hartsmere in hopes of claiming him. If not for Donal, he thought, he would gladly die here, in
Eden's arms.

But
Eden drove Death screaming back to
Her
dark and dismal abode. His golden mortal gazed down at him, the cascade of her hair sweeping over his waistcoat and loosened neckcloth. There was exultation in her eyes—the sweet madness that came of reaching for perfect union.

The same madness gripped Hartley. He sensed the inhuman tides within his body carrying a potency even Fane seldom knew. On this night, with this woman, he was a god in the old way, and
Eden was his priestess. On such a night he knew he could give her a child of her own.

She tore the buttons from his waistcoat and shirt and spread her palms against his chest. He took her supple waist between his hands. Her thighs pressed tight to his hips, and she rocked up to position herself for his entry.

They remained so for minutes, or perhaps hours, their gazes locked. Hartley could see all the way to her generous and very human soul. That magnificent spirit had no room for hatred, even now. Even for him.

He slipped into a shadow world between mortal and Fane, his body neither one nor the other, an ethereal construct filled with very real memories. He remembered Tir-na-nog, and his ageless mother, and the Fane he had known who had abandoned the earth. He remembered Hartsmere: the common people with their unexpected complexity, the horses in the stable and the sheep on the fell, Mrs. Byrne and her uncommonly wise advice.

He remembered Donal in
Eden's arms.
Eden
in his, as she was now.

He closed his eyes. Her hand traced across his cheek in a gesture almost like farewell, and then she came down upon him. She rode him like an Amazon astride her stallion, wild and wanton. Her hot body gripped his, tightened and released, driving him to ecstasies even Tir-na-nog could not match. And when she shuddered with release, flinging back her head on a silent cry, he was with her. His essence poured into her like molten flame. And into him poured everything she was: all the love she possessed in such abundance—love for her tenants, for Donal…

And for him.

In the small, private park beyond the window, a bird sang to herald the dawn. With the song came renewal and hope. Hartley sat up, pulling
Eden against his chest, and buried his face in her hair.

It was over.
Eden's breathing steadied and slowed, and her arms dropped to her sides. She had given of herself freely and asked for nothing in return but that he
help
her save their son.

But this had been their last moment of peace together.
Eden's selfless love still reverberated through his body, sustaining him, restoring the powers he had lost. Yet in the very midst of his potency, he suffered from
a wetness
in his eyes and the weight of bitter despair.

For he understood, at last, that love was more important to Eden—to all her kind—than life itself. This—this blinding comprehension—was what Fane sought when they mated with men, or stole them away to the Faerie realm, or took mortal children. It was this dazzling flame that drew immortals to seek the one gift nature had denied them.

He wished with all his inhuman soul that understanding was enough. But it was not. He couldn't give
Eden the one thing she valued most.

That last day at Caldwick, he had made a decision to remain with her on this earth. But love, such as men knew it, had been no part of that choice. The magic of mortal love was more powerful than any Fane enchantment. Neither Fane nor man could live in two worlds at once. To surrender to love was to reject all that was Fane and embrace all that was mortal, irrevocably, for himself and his son. There would be no turning back.

And so he recognized himself for what he was: a coward. Fane were masters of illusion; they believed themselves superior to every mud-crawling human ever born. They pretended amusement at the mortal passions they imitated, yet they feared those very passions. They had fled the earth rather than face the dominance of men or make any truce with humanity. No mortal could enter Tir-na-nog to taint its purity unless he carried the blood of the Fane.

Self-sacrifice was a quality unknown among Hartley's people, like humility.
Like true love.
He was no better than the rest.

Eden
deserved so much more than the mockery of human emotion he could give her.

He gently lifted
Eden from his hips. Their physical parting seemed to tear something inside him. She rolled away and slipped from the bed, her face closed to him as if the last minutes had never happened.

"Can you find Donal now?" she asked.

"Yes." Despising himself, he rose from the bed and buttoned his pantaloons. "And when I do,
Eden, he must come with me to Tir-na-nog."

She did not react by so much of a twitch of her lips. "I am his mother."

"And you cannot protect him, even from your own kin. You cannot teach Donal to spend his life rejecting his true nature. He does not belong among men." He hardened his voice. "Accept the truth,
Eden. Donal is more Fane than mortal."

"I will
not
. Unlike you, he can love."

He let the blow slide past him. "Then do not let this world destroy that gift. When he was in
Eire, the mortals who kept him treated him with great cruelty. They beat him, Eden, and mocked him, and drove him away out of fear. Is that the life you wish for him?"

Her face grew white as bone. "He was…" She pressed her hands to her mouth. "Why did you not tell me?"

"And make you suffer as well?"

She looked so ill that he prepared to catch her if she fell. Tears streamed over her cheeks.

"He is five years old," she whispered.

"And in Tir-na-nog he will grow and live for many years. He will never want, I promise you. And I will not leave him." He swallowed. "You will not be alone. We have created a new child, Eden.
One that will belong in your world.
I have… made sure of that."

She touched her abdomen and stared at him, hollow-eyed. He knew he had killed any love she still had for him. Such was the mercy of the Fane. Yet it was her love that had finally unlocked his seed and made him fertile again.

She would not be alone.

"
Eden," he said, the words cutting him like broken glass. "It is for the best—"

Whatever reply she might have made was lost in a whirring hum and a blast of air. A small figure tumbled into the center of the room and hung suspended several feet above the ground, darting this way and that.

"My lord!
My lord, alive!"
Tod flew in circles about Hartley's head and nearly crashed into Eden, who gazed at him in astonishment.

Hartley reached up and caught the little Fane by his ragged collar. "What are you doing here?" he demanded. "What possessed you leave the forest? You cannot venture from Hartsmere. You should be—"

"Not dead, my lord!" Tod squirmed in his grip like an otter. "Tod has a talisman against mortal magic!" He reached inside his russet shirt and pulled forth a silver charm on a chain. "This protects Tod, let him find you."

Hartley glanced at
Eden. "You had better dress. We may have to leave very quickly."

With amazing self possession, she retrieved her gown and pulled it on. "One of your fellow Faeries, I presume?"

"Tod, the hob," he said, more proud of her than he had any right to be. He released Tod. "Where did you get such a charm? You cannot return to Tir-na-nog without me—"

"The Irishwoman gave it. She sent Tod!"

Mrs. Byrne had given the hob a talisman powerful enough to protect him in the mortal world? But Mrs. Byrne had shown no such talents. She was human. Hartley had not even taken his leave of her when he departed Hartsmere, let alone told her of Tod, or what he himself was.

But she knew. Somehow, she knew enough to command Tod and send him after Hartley. Mrs. Byrne would have many questions to answer when they returned to Hartsmere.
If he ever had the chance to ask them.

"Tod has a message," the hob said, abruptly serious. "The Irishwoman sent Tod to tell my lord that the Angry One did not go away from Hartsmere. She returned, with my lord's son." He grimaced, baring his teeth. "The Angry One thinks my lord is dead. My lord must come at once."

Hartley froze. "Claudia went back to Hartsmere?"

He and Eden spoke at almost the same instant. They stared at each other with grim determination.

"She is not going to send for me,"
Eden said. "First she separated me from Donal, and then she tried to kill you." She squeezed her eyes shut.
"Oh, God.
She could not harm him."

"She will not. Tod, return with all speed to Hartsmere and do what you can to protect the boy. I will be right behind you."

The hob winked out of existence.
Eden fumbled with the laces on her gown, and Hartley stepped up to help.
Eden trembled so badly that he was obliged to use magic to complete the task.

He could wield it now because of
Eden.

"We cannot… It is days to Hartsmere," she whispered. "Donal.
Oh, Donal."

He turned her about and brushed her tears away with his thumbs. "You think like a mortal, Eden. There is an enchantment I could not use when I was weak, but now I am strong enough for both of us."

She opened her eyes and gazed at him with hope and devastating trust. "Take me to Donal."

He tilted her head and kissed her brow. "Hold tight to me," he said. In one motion, he swept her up in his arms and plunged toward the open window.

They never reached the ground
.
Eden had no chance to scream. In the blink of an eye she found herself grasping empty air, and then her legs were wrapped around something warm and broad and strangely familiar.

She rode on the back of a stag, and the stag was flying.

She clutched at the thick mane mantling the beast's withers. The stag blew out a breath as if in encouragement and stretched out its body in an airborne gallop.

His
body.
She knew who carried her home.

The world passed by in a blur of color and formless shapes, one dissolving into another. She understood that they did not travel through space but somehow skipped over the miles like a stone upon a lake. The "time without a time" enfolded her in its enchantment, as it had done when she rode Hartley in Lady Saville's guest chamber. Fear was left behind amid the teeming
London streets.

All that mattered was Donal, and reaching him in time. She had no sooner accustomed herself to the weightless sensation of Faerie flight than she felt the jarring impact of Hartley's hooves striking solid ground. The void resolved itself into a landscape she had grown to know well, and a great stone pile that brooded over a deep and silent lake. Snow mantled the land as it had when she had left.