Relief stole across Fallon's animated features. "You won't regret it. I promise you, I'll prove I'm right about—"
"Stop. You can take me home with you. I'll even let you call me Ciaran for the time being. I'll call myself Ciaran. Why the blazes not? I don't have any other name." His eyes narrowed. "But if you bludgeon me with this ridiculous story of yours for one more minute, I swear I'll take my chances with this Redmayne you hate so much."
"Fine! I won't say another word until you're settled. Now, we just need to get you down from the cliffs. I left my horse a ways down the hill. I'll just whistle and—" Her brow wrinkled. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. "Oh, no. When I left Misthaven, I wasn't thinking clearly—"
"What a surprise." Ciaran muttered.
"I rode Cuchulain."
"C—who?"
"My horse. He has a somewhat uncertain temper."
"You mean he's wild? A man killer?"
"He has an unfortunate habit of breaking people's bones whenever he gets the chance of it. He's gentle as a lamb with me, but loathes everyone else. When I left Misthaven, I didn't come here intending to call you back. Even if I had, I wouldn't have thought to bring another mount for you. I suppose I always assumed you'd come, uh, fully armed and... and clothed, and—"
"Don't tell me. Delivered from the mists of fairyland astride a mount of thunderbolts or some such?"
Red stained her cheeks, and she looked almost sheepish. He didn't want to think her beautiful. "I've never summoned back a legend before," she admitted. "Next time I'll be better prepared."
She whistled, and a massive stallion trotted out of the darkness, white coat shimmering against the night. A devil-horse, many would have called it, towering strength, raw muscle, eyes wild as be-damned. Beautiful and dangerous as the jagged cliffs below. Anyone who had allowed a woman near it must have lost his senses. But then, he'd almost forgotten the type of family he was dealing with.
"Be careful," she warned. "He's terrified of strangers. I found him wandering, lost, badly hurt, half maddened with pain. My brother Hugh wanted to put him down, but there was something—a wildness inside him, as if he were lost, desperate. He was so beautiful, I just couldn't let him be killed."
Her explanation trailed off as the beast's nostrils flared, liquid dark eyes fixing on Ciaran, doubtless contemplating the best way to trample him into dust. Ciaran marveled that anyone had ever been able to mount the animal, let alone this young woman with her delicate body and small hands. But then, the horse looked as if he had an unbalanced mind. Perhaps he and the woman were kindred spirits.
Ciaran frowned, wondering if he had had much experience with horses. Was he a decent rider? Did he know what it felt like to meld his body with a beast bred to fly like the wind?
Driven by an impulse he didn't understand, Ciaran reached out a hand, holding it toward the amazingly beautiful horse.
"Don't touch him!" Fallon cried. "He'll bite off your fingers if—"
But instead of baring his equine teeth, Cuchulain sank his velvety muzzle into the cup of Ciaran's palm. Hot breath blew out as the animal snuffled against him, accustoming himself to Ciaran's scent.
Ever so slowly, the tremors of unease shaking the stallion smoothed out, like the calming of some inner storm. A soft whicker greeted him. Almost as if the animal had been waiting for him.
Ciaran leaned against one glossy shoulder, letting the warmth of the animal seep into his battered body.
"How did you do that?" Fallon marveled. "It took the head groom nearly six months before he could even open the stall door without Cuchulain snatching a bite out of him. Even I couldn't touch him for weeks after I brought him home."
"I don't know how, or why." Ciaran stroked the horse, gliding his hand into the secret, soft cove between silky mane and arched neck. Strange, but he knew only that this animal, so wary, so wounded in its proud soul, had offered him a precious fragment, a tiny piece of the puzzle that was his identity. There was something in him the stallion trusted.
"Climb on, and I'll try to mount behind you,” Ciaran said.
"It's too dangerous. Cuchulain doesn't... I mean it's a miracle, his even allowing you to touch him. The cliff path is treacherous. If he shies, we could both fall over the edge."
He could hardly risk an accident that might result in hurling a feeble-brained girl over a cliff.
"You're right. I'll walk." But how far away was the girl's home? What were the odds his battered body could make the trek?
No. There was another way. A pulse of something like excitement worked through him, a need to test this strange fragile bond with the magnificent creature before him. It would be dangerous. All the more so because his own balance was so uncertain. But a part of him craved that risk, answered to it as if it were the strains of a battle drum.
Ciaran caught hold of the animal's reins, paused a moment, eyeing stirrup and saddle. Head still throbbing, he grasped the horse's mane and dragged himself up onto its back.
He heard Fallon's cry of protest through a haze of motion and sound, the stallion's hooves striking stone as it sidestepped, a nervous whinny, Ciaran's own body scrabbling for purchase on the animal's back.
His stomach churned, his head swam as he fought for equilibrium, the stallion sidestepping, tossing its majestic head. Blast, I'm a fool, Ciaran thought scathingly. Had he thought he'd swing astride the stallion and discover he was the world's best horseman? More likely the animal would rear up and tear down the narrow path at a dead run. But after a moment, Cuchulain calmed again. He pawed the ground once, angling his head to gaze at Ciaran with questioning dark eyes.
What the hell did he do now? How did one guide the animal? He had to see if it would take the cliff road safely. He grasped the reins, tightened his knees. With a toss of his head, the stallion started to trot down the path. Every jarring movement thrust spikes into Ciaran’s brain.
"Stop! Wait—" The devil! He could end up at the bottom of the mountain, leaving the girl behind. How did you make the infernal beast stop?
"Pull back on the reins, gently!" He heard Fallon call. He braced himself, did as she directed. Miracle of miracles, the beast stopped. Ciaran didn't. The momentum flung him over the stallion's head.
So much for the idea that he was a great horseman.
The girl was beside him in an instant, helping him to his feet. "I told you not to try to ride him! He—"
"My own... clumsiness... fell off." Ciaran pressed a fist to his pounding head and struggled to catch his breath.
When he was able to straighten up, he looked into Fallon Delaney's face and managed a half-smile. "I suppose this dashes your theory that I'm a legendary hero. It seems that riding a horse would be the first requirement of a Ciaran of the Mist. I don't know the first thing about it."
"Of course you don't. It was stupid of me not to think of it, warn you, before you tried. Ciaran was no knight on a charger. He's something older, more primitive, from a time when the first legends were stirring in the most secret, most magical places in men's souls. Ciaran of the Mist would never have ridden astride. Warriors of his time rode in chariots driven by charioteers. They were incredible runners, and he was the swiftest of them all. Able to outrun an entire herd of red deer, so agile he could race through the forest and not break the tiniest twig."
The knowledge was oddly unsettling. "Fallon, I'm not this hero of yours. I may not be able to ride, but I can understand your language. Other things are strange, unfamiliar, but your clothes, the way you're dressed, is not."
She hesitated for an instant, and he thought he'd at last found a chink in her delusions, made her glimpse reality. But the light in her eyes flared again, more determined than ever. "You've come back other times, Ciaran. There's no way to understand the magic. You would have—"
"Never mind!" Ciaran dragged himself back to his feet. "Mercy. Please. I'm sorry I even brought the subject up. My head won't tolerate any more singing of his praises without bursting. As for the horse, he'l
l carry us down safe enough."
"H-How can you be so certain?"
"He told me." Ciaran's first stab at a joke—his head might not be whole, but it seemed his sense of humor was intact. But the woman wasn't laughing. She merely stared at him, big-eyed, believing.
Why should I be surprised? Ciaran thought wryly. It was a small leap indeed to believe a horse could talk if you were already downright certain that a nine-hundred-year-old hero could pop back from the land of the fairies and land in your lap. Without a horse, unfortunately. Or clothes. Damned inconsiderate of him.
"Since you can talk to Cuchulain, perhaps you'd like to take the reins?" she asked earnestly.
He glanced at the cliff road, stretching down, perilous, unfamiliar, with little room for error. He didn't have the slightest idea where they were going, or how to make the horse go where he wanted it to. Yet the idea of handing control over to this madwoman made sweat break out across his brow.
Still, what choice did he have but to trust her? She'd gotten herself up the infernal slope in one piece.
"No. I, uh, he'd rather have you steer him."
Obedient as a child, Fallon Delaney mounted her hell-born stallion and looked down at Ciaran expectantly. It was one thing clambering up on the animal's back with no obstructions in the way, but Fallon Delaney's lithe legs looped around some impossible looking contraption, then both draped over one of the horse's sides.
She eased one slipper out of the stirrup, offering it to him. He wished to hell he could talk to the blasted horse. He'd ask it to kneel down, so he could climb on without dragging the girl off.
Tangled up in the folds of the blue velvet cloak, Ciaran attempted to grasp the saddle again, one arm on either side of Fallon's body. Straining, he heaved himself upward.
The cloak was dragged back, the chill wind burning his bare skin. His chest collided with the tender column of her arm, his momentum skidding that contact lower, to the flat plane of his stomach. He heard her gasp of dismay, but there was no escaping it. Flinging his leg over Cuchulain's broad barrel, Ciaran slid into place, the front of his bare body thudding into Fallon's back. His arms caught hold, hard about her slender waist, trying to anchor himself upright.
Cuchulain, objecting to such clumsiness, danced sideways, and Ciaran had no choice except to fall ignominiously on the ground, or to cup his body tight around Fallon's. His legs crushed hard against the horse's coat, the V formed by his thighs cradling the roundness of Fallon Delaney's bottom.
Whoever had beaten him hadn't bludgeoned the life out of him yet, because he felt the bulge in his groin stir at the contact with soft female flesh.
She was aware of it, too and tried to put some space between them. Did she feel the same shock of unexpected pleasure he did? No, there was an innocence about her, a newness. She had only recently turned from girl to woman. And he was the lowest kind of scum for feeling any sexual stirring at all in these circumstances.
He sobered as an unwelcome thought stole through him. He had no idea what he'd been like with women before he'd lost his memory. For all he knew, he was the sort of blackguard who preyed upon innocents like Mary Fallon Delaney.
"Hold the horse still," Ciaran growled, trying to keep balanced on the beast while at the same time grabbing handfuls of the cloak to stuff between his body and the woman before him.
But Cuchulain's patience was at an end. The monster-horse struck out down the path at a teeth-jarring pace, and all Ciaran could do was clutch Fallon's waist with all his strength.
There was no more time to worry about modesty as moonlight filtered across the treacherous path. He couldn't distract Fallon by writhing around, trying to preserve her sensibilities. They wouldn't do her a damn bit of good if she was crushed on the stones below.
"We'll have to be careful. If Redmayne or anyone were to..." She scooted a fraction farther away from him, the next jar nudging them back together. "If anyone were to see you here, like this, it might be dangerous."
"Dangerous? It would be awkward as be-damned. Unless, of course, whoever we met also happened to be waiting to cast hawthorn blossoms across a legend's path."
But he braced himself, alert, trying to focus his gaze enough to pierce the billows of mist that swirled up from Cuchulain's massive hooves. It was a grim prospect, the possibility that they might run afoul of someone, especially since the most likely person to be in the area would be his attacker. Worse still, Ciaran wouldn't recognize any enemy even if they were face-to-face.
For a brief while, he was distracted enough by the prospect not to think of the brush of those feminine curves against his body. Even Fallon seemed locked in fierce concentration. But the blessed perilousness of the path couldn't last forever. After a while, animal, woman and man settled into an even pace. The countryside swept out, deserted, quiet, as if there weren't another soul on earth.
Muscles that had been locked in a life-or-death grip loosened ever so slightly.
Ciaran's head still pounded like blue blazes, his body aching as if he'd taken the devil of a beating. That was a torture he could endure. But as the path widened into a sea of shadow-veiled Irish green, it seemed fate had another variety of torment in store.
Hair the color of flame teased his jaw and spilled down the sensitive skin of his arm. The scent of her—wild and windblown, heathery and fey and feminine—filled his senses.
Whatever it was she wore was gauzy thin. He could feel every dip and hollow, every delicate bump of her spine against his skin. She was in his arms, so intimately they might have been lovers—a mere wisp of muslin between them.
Did he know anything about women—the feel of them, the textures of mouth and breast and thigh? Was there a woman, even now, somewhere waiting for him?
No. The feel of her, the scent of her was unfamiliar, something longed for, yet unreachable as the moon. There was a hollow place, whispering of a longing unfulfilled.
Yet he was man enough to feel the ache, the urge to try to fill it.
Grinding his teeth, he yanked his thoughts away from such dangerous ground. What kind of a monster was he? He didn't know anything about Mary Fallon Delaney except that she was delusional. Unforgivably vulnerable, especially where this Ciaran of the Mist fantasy was concerned. He had real problems of his own, monumental problems to deal with: he must fight his way from the shadow land his wound had left him in.
Unable to bear the faint rubbing of their bodies against each other for another moment, Ciaran grabbed a handful of the cloak, trying yet again to slide the velvet between his body and Fallon's.
Cuchulain stumbled, and Ciaran all but fell off, but he persevered with the fold of cloak. Maybe it would be a good thing for him to crash headfirst into a few rocks. Drive some sense back into him. At least it would shatter these thoughts, these feelings, these echoes in a body that didn't even seem his own.
He concentrated on his pain, embracing it, feeding its fire, the jarring of the horse grinding hot spirals deeper into his joints, intensifying the aching, until it drove back the astonishing sensations Mary Fallon Delaney had stirred in him. He gave himself up to the red burning gratefully.
It didn't bode well for the future, Ciaran thought just before the haze engulfed him. All he could remember was the past hour. And already he had something he needed to forget.
Chapter 3
He was holding her. Tight. The warmth from his body seeped into hers, the rhythm of his heartbeat echoing in her own veins, the moist whisper of his breath tickling the back of her neck. With every strike of Cuchulain's hooves upon the turf, Ciaran melded closer to her, until she could feel the uncertainty in him, the bewilderment, the anger, the pain.
God in heaven, what was she going to do with him?
It had sounded so simple when Mama spun the tale in the garden, playing games with the bright, ripe cherries. Take the enchanted brooch, summon Ciaran, hand him his quest the same way Hugh handed his steward orders to build a new fence.
It should have been as fated and
lovely and magical as Arthur pulling the sword from the stone, recognizing his unique destiny in a blaze of glory. Arthur hadn't made any trouble. He'd merely sharpened up his new trophy and embraced his fate. All that the sorcerer Merlin had had to do was nod with approval as the once and future king trotted obligingly off to marry Guinevere, befriend Lancelot and send Galahad on the Grail quest.
Could her crusade have been so simple? No. Ciaran MacCailte, Son of the Mist, had the innate stubbornness of all the Irish race. Doubtless, he would have taken one look at the sword in the stone and refused to give it so much as a tug. He was already determined to be uncooperative. What would Ciaran say when she told him the reason she'd drawn him out of the mist: to save a castle that was already half-ruined, lead the glen folk to preserve a hope few had the courage to believe in anymore?
How could this man lead anyone when he didn't even believe in himself?
And what if he is someone else? a voice inside her whispered. What if he's not Ciaran of the Mist at all? No. That was unthinkable. Who else could he possibly be? Anybody, the voice mocked her. The world is full of people wandering about. Isn't it possible one lone man could end up at the Castle of the Dancing Mist? After all, hadn't Redmayne?
Fallon suppressed a shudder, remembering the captain's eyes, so piercing, leaving secrets nowhere to hide.
The Englishman had come to the castle searching for something, someone—perhaps the man whose arms were now around her. But why was he naked? Why did he carry the ancient dagger unless...
No. He was Ciaran. She was certain of it.
And now she was taking him to Misthaven House. Fallon chewed at her lower lip. Ever since Mama had died, Misthaven had seemed to be hushed, waiting for her return. Servants haunted the rooms like ghosts, careful not to be seen as they polished and swept. Hugh barricaded himself in his study, only striding off with a preoccupied frown on his face, riding crop in hand, when it was time to survey the lands and the countless business interests that were his only passion.
Her Magic Touch (Celtic Rogues Book 3) Page 5