His escape was hard. Blood pouring from his wound, his body torn and battered, he could not keep on his feet. He lurched and staggered across the courtyard and away from the castle. He never even thought of his horse. He was not thinking at all. He walked for hours, days it seemed. His life flowed behind him in a pathway of blood. And still his mind filled with thoughts of her, always of her, stealing his soul as she had stolen his life.
“Bitch,” he said.
Then he had met the banshee, pledged his faith, and begun to formulate a plan on how he would win her back.
“You will pay now, lover,” Flynn said. “You will pay for every excruciating moment I have suffered at your hands. And your new lover, well, he will have to pay, as well.”
Flynn downed the cup of tea. He rose and took another long look at his property. The James flowed past and, through the trees on its bank, Flynn saw the tip of the island he would soon own. Not that it mattered. Not that anything in this time, this place, really mattered at all.
“But I will enjoy it in the meantime,” he said. “Now, I think I will pay a visit to Trinity and get back what belongs to me.”
Chapter 30
Adelina’s faery magic appeared to work. Arleigh did not mention Flynn’s name. In fact, she seemed to have no recollection of anything that had transpired between her and Flynn at all. She thought she had been unconscious and did not know why. Ryder told her she had hit her head when Flynn pushed her to the floor. He did not have the heart to tell her any of it. In fact, he worried what would happen if she found out.
They talked for most of the morning, locked in each other’s arms. Ryder did not want to let her go, but hunger eventually forced them to leave the room. Arleigh put on her chemise and started for the door.
“Why do you have the door barricaded?” she asked.
He made up some story of keeping Flynn’s men out of the house. He blathered on for a long time, embellishing his story, until he forgot what question she had asked him. When the foot-tapping begin, he knew he had talked for too long. He moved the trunks, and when she entered the keeping room, she stumbled against the cache of weapons, bruising her leg. She looked at him doubtfully, and he shrugged.
“You were worried about Flynn’s men coming to the cottage, and yet you put weapons at their disposal? Did you not think you might need them for yourself?”
Okay, thinking on his feet had never been his strongest suit. He had always left that to his sisters. Usually he invented stories easily, but he had already used most of his imagination on the first one. He had run out of ideas and could think of nothing to say to her. He glanced at the three girls sitting at the table, but they lowered their heads and seemed intensely interested in the hunk of bread they were sharing for breakfast.
Arleigh walked around the table, dropping a kiss on the top of each dark head. She did not seem at all surprised to find them there.
“You put them out here because of me,” she said.
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “But you obviously thought I might be dangerous.”
“Honey, a lot has happened in the last day or so. You’ve been unconscious. It’s better not to dredge it all up.”
“I want you to dredge it all up, Ryder. After I’m dressed, I want to hear every word. And I want the truth, not one of your tales. Girls, ‘tis happy I am to have you home.”
She gave them a bright smile then headed toward the staircase. When he dodged in front of her, the smile vanished. She pushed at him. He simply stared at her, because once again he could think of nothing to say. His brain appeared to be on vacation.
“Why can’t I go upstairs?” Arleigh asked. “You’ve ne’er been at a loss for words before. What is up there I can’t see?”
Ryder’s breath exploded from his lungs. He prepared for everything to be ruined. “There’s nothing up there, honey, nothing at all. Your clothes, your personal things. They’re gone.”
“Gone? Where would they go?”
“You took them when you left the island,” Ryder said. And then because he didn’t know what else to say, because he could not possibly lie to the woman he loved more than anything, he said the words he knew would hurt. He knew they would hurt, because they practically killed him thinking about them. “You took them when you went to Flynn.”
She ran her hands across her face then tugged her hair back. He watched her face, and he knew that the memories had poured back into her mind. Horror spread across her face and the contentment and happiness he had seen earlier dissolved from her eyes.
He waited for her to cry. Her body trembled, her mouth quivered, and he finally saw that what he thought was grief had spiraled into anger. She paced around the keeping room, her bare feet stomping across the floorboards. She moved around the room like a coming storm, and he braced for the onslaught. Finally she came back to him and shoved him so hard he lost his balance and fell against the hearth. His body, numb from the beating she had given him the day before, barely felt the impact. Fiana herded her sisters up the stairs.
“How could you touch me after what I’ve done? I’m disgusting. The way I acted, the things I’ve done. I let him… His hands were all o’er me. I remember being in his bed. How can you even look at me?”
He grabbed her face between his hands. “Please, Arleigh, forget about the time with Flynn. It wasn’t real.”
“It was real. I was in his bed.”
“Honey, you were in my bed, too.”
“But why? Was it my choice, yours? Was it the curse I can’t seem to escape? Ryder, you don’t know how it affects me. I am mortal, but still the faery magic brings things into me I cannot resist. I am not myself at all when surrounded by magic. How will we ever know how much came from my heart or how much of the passion was fey?”
“You’re not doing much for my ego here, honey. I’d like to think you wanted to be with me.”
“But did you want to be with me? I can control men, you know. That part of the Leanan sidhe is always inside of me, and sometimes it surfaces when I’m not aware it has. I may not have the power to kill, but I do have the power to make men love me.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he said, laughing. “I was smitten with you the moment I saw you.”
“You see? Why would you suddenly appear and be enthralled with me?”
“I don’t think I’m in your thrall, Arleigh. That implies a lack of free will. I’ve made my own decisions here. What we did this morning was very real. I know it.”
“But,” she whispered, “yesterday. Yesterday when we, God, I don’t even know what to call it. ’Twas practically mating.”
“Not how I envisioned our first time together,” Ryder said, “but, whatever happened with Flynn, you lost your virginity to me, Arleigh.”
“I called you by another man’s name,” she whispered.
“That wasn’t you. Flynn controlled you. He willed you to say his name, but somewhere outside of the enchantment, outside of the magic, were your feelings for me. I know I stole them. I had no right to do that, and I’m sorry, but I didn’t know what else to do. We did make love, Arleigh. After the anger and after the lust, there was love. All the passion you showed was for me. Honey, tell me it was for me.”
“I can’t,” she whispered, “because I don’t know.”
She tried to pull away, but he grabbed her arm. She trembled.
“You said you loved me,” Ryder said. “Was that the truth?”
“’Tis not o’er,” she said. “It will ne’er be o’er.”
“Answer me, damn it! Was it the truth?”
“Aye, ’tis the truth,” she said miserably, “but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter at all! I know how the spell works, Ryder. ’Tis what I used to be. The Leanan sidhe. The Ganconor. We are one in the same. He will not give up. He will not lose. He can’t.”
He ran his hands down her arms.
“You’re with me now,” he said. “You’re safe.”
&
nbsp; “You can’t keep me safe,” Arleigh said, “and you can’t keep me here. I can see the magic woven around this room. I know what Adelina has done. She’s keeping the Ganconor’s power out, but if I walk out the door, I belong to him. What I feel for you will be forgotten. There will be nothing but Cameron. Only him. You will cease to exist for me.”
“I’m not going to let that happen.”
“He will eventually call me, and I’ll go, and when he is tired of toying with me, there will be nothing left. I will die. That’s the way ’tis been for thousands upon thousands of years, and nothing will stop it.”
“I’ll stop it.”
She looked at him sadly. “How will you do that?”
He shook his head and pulled her to him. “I don’t know. We’ll wait it out and see what happens.”
She pushed his arms away. “Have you been listening to me? There is no waiting it out. Time has no meaning for Cameron Flynn. He will stand outside our door till we starve to death, till we become ill, till we die. Or he will send men for me, Ryder. Real human men who are perfectly capable of walking into this cottage and running you through with any weapon they happen to be carrying. And believe me, there will be weapons. You will die.”
“So you’re saying waiting is not an option?”
He wanted to laugh. Jesus, he wanted to laugh so badly. But something in her face told him, if he dared to laugh, she would grab one of Stephen’s weapons and run him through herself. Her Irish temper had risen up again, and he was the cause. Finally, he had excelled at something in 1639.
She paced around the keeping room, and he tried to keep out of her way. She almost knocked him over several times. He finally found it easier to get out of her way, so he went and sat at the table.
“Fiana has a plan,” he said.
She pulled up short and turned to him with a scowl. If she had been a dog, she would have been growling.
“You’re placing our future in the hands of a thirteen-year-old girl? Well, I feel so much better about everything. Thank you for sharing that with me. So, Fiana is going to find some way to vanquish a Ganconor, keep her sisters safe, remove the curse that haunts me every day of my life, and figure out some way for you to inherit everything all nice and tidy and legal? Tell me how she’s going to do all that, Ryder.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. She didn’t say.”
“Precisely. And yet because she tells you everything will be solved, you believe her.”
“I trust her,” Ryder said. “Besides, she’s a very powerful witch.”
“She’s a little girl with a very active imagination and a small amount of talent. I know the three of them can read people’s thoughts and can sense things. That does make them special, but I watch them, Ryder. I know what they do when they think I’m not looking. They have their spells, and their charms, and their little magic boxes.”
“Which they know how to use,” Ryder said.
“Which they think they know how to use. But in reality, they are three little girls with nothing to do all day long because their father loved and spoiled them. They live in some kind of fantasy in which their family legend is built upon witchcraft. It keeps them occupied and happy.”
“But it’s all true,” he said. “They’re very talented. Look, I’m here right? Living proof they can—“
He shut up because she gave him that look again. He couldn’t believe he had almost told her. He didn’t think she would ever look at him again if she found out he was not Stephen’s brother, that everything he had told her had been built on a lie. She waited for him to continue, but when he didn’t, she dismissed his words as babbling and continued her tirade.
“I’m sorry for everything that has happened to them, but things will change here very soon. Fiana certainly can do nothing to stop any of it. Even my power will not stop it.”
“Yeah, this so-called power of yours is real valuable. You’re a real dynamo when it comes to stopping an apocalypse. If anything, you’re the cause. Thanks for that, by the way. The girls and I hardly needed a loose cannon like you running around the island. This sex curse is very fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable, but hardly what we need, even if you could control it.”
“Meaning?”
“You’re out of the loop, Arleigh. Useless. A liability. I’m here now. I came to help.”
“Oh, aye, you’ve been a big help. Have you not noticed things have gone from bad to worse since you’ve come?”
“Seems to me your problems with Flynn started when you killed him, Arleigh. Twice. When was that now? About four hundred years ago? How can you blame this on me?”
“I’m not blaming you, but you can’t stop it.”
She was starting to piss him off again. It amazed him how fast she could that. “Don’t underestimate me. People in my life have always made that a bad habit, and it’s not a wise thing to do.”
“You can barely dress yourself! I don’t know where you came from, but whatever talents you possess are paltry and insignificant here. You will lose this island, and you will lose me.”
“Have I ever had you? You change your mind about me as often as you change your apron. And after listening to your opinion of me, it doesn’t seem like such a big loss.”
He stalked across the room and grabbed the basket.
“Where are you going?” Arleigh asked.
“One of us has to get food. We have children to feed. Since you’re confined to this cottage, I’ve been volunteered.”
She tried to grab the basket from his hands. “I won’t be a hostage in my own house.”
“Do you think I want to go outside and fight chickens for breakfast? Do you think I want to go into that slaughterhouse you call a butchery? It makes me sick looking inside. Do you think I want to dig my food from the dirt like some kind of bushman? It wouldn’t hurt you to have a refrigerator around here, you know. And a bathroom. A freaking bathroom would be very handy to have.”
She stared at him like he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had. He was sure on his way to losing everything else, so what difference did it make? He grabbed her arm and shook her.
“Do you want to go back to Flynn? Do you want to be his love slave, or whatever the hell you call it? Maybe Flynn isn’t such a bad bargain after dealing with me.” She shook her head furiously. “Last night was great. And this morning, this morning went beyond great, but there’s more to a relationship than good sex. I’m in love with you, Arleigh.”
“I know,” she whispered.
“I’d sell my soul to keep you. I’d sign it over right now. I hate being a possessive bastard, but you have to belong to me. Only me. The choice is yours. It’s your right. But think about it, because once you leave this cottage, the choice is gone, and it will be too late.”
“I don’t want to be with Flynn,” she whispered.
“Are you sure? Because here’s the deal, and I mean every word of it. There are images in my head right now that make me want to physically hurt someone. If any of it happens again, with or without your consent, I will never touch you again. It’s your choice. Go for it if that’s what you want.”
“Why would you think I want that?”
She sulked, her beautiful mouth turned down in a frown, but he didn’t care.
“Because it’s obvious you have doubts about me. I don’t do things halfway. I don’t want you unless I get all of you. Got it?”
She nodded, and he left the cottage to find them something to eat. What he really wanted was a hot shower. A grocery store would be nice, too. Working so hard for everything tired him out. He had never worked this hard for a woman in his life.
* * * *
If he ever got out of this 1639 hellhole, Ryder vowed he would never eat chicken again. He also decided he would never eat another egg unless cooked by someone else. Filthy and smelly, dark and dreary, the chicken house was an absolute horror, with flapping and squawking, pecking and clucking. Chickens were the most disgusting animals on earth. He didn’t care if the g
rocers on Trinity Island were giving away cordon bleu, he would pass.
He had even gotten a tad leery about the meat. He was used to small packets of precut meat in tidy Styrofoam containers, and he’d never get used to hacking his own. The butchery was a horror, filled with hunks of meat he didn’t recognize. These carcasses had ribs and bones attached, were loaded with globs of fat and covered with flies. Did flies even live this close to winter? Why die when there were so many succulent and tasty tidbits on which to dine? It was ghastly. After stripping off a slab of bacon with a knife that looked like it had been used more than once by Jack the Ripper, Ryder thought vegetarians might have the right idea.
Of course when he went to the garden and had to forage for whatever he could find, he changed his mind. He pulled things out of the ground that were covered with dirt clods and had twisting, gnarled roots that only the hardiest of creatures would be able to eat. The bodies of squirming, sluglike creatures covered the roots then crawled over his hands, making him shiver with revulsion.
To top off his fantastic morning, it started to rain. He slogged through the mud and mire. At home, in his reasonably sane and perfect world, he had enjoyed rainy days, a good excuse to hide in his study and think and reflect. Here in the nightmare world of 1639, the rain seemed only good for one thing—making his life more miserable than it already was. As darkness filled the clouds overhead, his mood followed. By the time he opened the cottage door, he had wrapped himself in his own cloud of thunder. He carried all of his hard-won groceries into the cottage and dropped his basket onto the table.
“I don’t want to see it again until it’s on a plate. I’ve had enough disgust for one day.”
He shook himself like a wet dog. Sullen, she poked through the grocery basket and was displeased as usual. Her frown increased.
“You should have brought in a chunk of meat, as well,” she said. “Then I could have started supper.”
Ryder sighed and stopped in the midmotion of stripping off a dead man’s clothes. “How did my brother put up with you for so long? He must have been a better man than I am. You’re a royal pain in the ass.” He retied his shirt.
Carlton, Amber - Trinity Magic (Siren Publishing Romance) Page 32