“Catch her, you fools!” she heard Ash shout and then the ground rose up like a blow.
Chapter Thirteen
Watt had either sprained his ankle or broken it.
He’d launched himself through the boughs waiting to be fed into the fire and caught a foot. He landed in a heap of wide-eyed disbelief. With the simple conciseness of the very drunk he’d then announced that he was hurt and proceeded to apologize to Rhiannon explaining that he would not be able to jump over the bonfire and seal their betrothal. Since Rhiannon was sagging unconscious in John Fortnum’s arms, she did not respond.
Phillip’s friends turned their attention to consoling their King. With a huzzah, they hefted Phillip above their heads and took him back to the pavilion where he was duly splinted, saturated with drink, and finally propped on a chair.
Ash witnessed it all with a mixture of anger and helplessness. He had no right to hold, administer to, or even touch Rhiannon. He hovered until Margaret Atherton took charge of Rhiannon, then he found his way back to the tavern where he spent the next several hours. But the thought of Rhiannon being untended and vulnerable during the rest of this night of free-for-all carousing prevented him from drinking and preyed on his imagination until it became an obsession. Someone had shot at her. A knife had nearly pierced her chest. A night like this would present the perfect cover for an attempted murder …
The blasted witch had coiled herself into the tangled mess of his life, and like a knot, she would not come free. Not unless she was cut out, which marriage to that golden-haired oaf would certainly accomplish.
But for tonight … Ash slammed the half-full tankard down on the counter. Damn it to bleeding hell! She was likely sitting on Watt’s good leg, purring in his arms, as he stood here poleaxed by misguided fear.
But what if she wasn’t?
He pushed the tankard away and stepped over several bodies sprawled senseless on the floor, heading through the door. Outside, a few knots of women and men still clustered about the grounds. Few young people were present, however, and Ash remarked it uncomfortably. Where had Fair Badden’s youth gone? He scanned the area for Rhiannon and spied Edith Fraiser sitting with her eyes closed, the hound Stella resting her heavy head on Edith’s lap. The marketplace was much quieter than it had been a few hours earlier and it wasn’t even midnight.
At the end of the square Ash found an old man gazing at the moon and smiling, a look of fond remembrance on his seamed, leathery face. Ash asked him where everyone had gone and why they’d abandoned their revelries so early.
The old man snorted and after shaking his head in a profoundly pitying fashion, explained to Ash that the revelries hadn’t ended, they’d simply been transferred to a more private setting.
Over the course of the last few hours, it would seem, the younger girls had gone into the woods to gather hawthorn blooms to ensure good luck for the coming year. But the shawls they carried on their arms and the back-long glances they’d sent the young men who watched them go were invitation to another sort of hunt, the old man explained with a chuckle and a wink.
The young men hadn’t needed any prodding to follow after, stepping into the forest’s dark embrace to seek another embrace entirely. Not that all the young women were so inclined, the old man hastened to point out, but if a lad were lucky …
Ash left him, his thoughts haunted by images he could barely tolerate.
Were Watt and Rhiannon among their numbers? Ash wondered. Was she straining beneath him right now?
His hands flexed at his sides and his eyes glittered like flawed diamonds, a black carbon core corrupting their brilliance. A peel of raucous male laughter coming from the pavilion drew his attention and he turned in its direction.
Inside, Watt sat on his throne, his lower leg padded thick and stiffly bound to a board. Immediately the tension drained from Ash. Of course Watt wouldn’t be with Rhiannon. He couldn’t even follow her on that leg. Watt’s ever-present coterie of friends was with him. They were arguing over something. When the company saw Ash, several flushed guiltily, except for St. John who grinned like an evil gargoyle, winked at his fellows, and clapped Ash on the back.
Ash was in no mood to play St. John’s cat’s-paw. Or to entertain and charm. He looked around for Rhiannon. She was not there. She must have gone home, though it was odd she’d left without Edith.
“Gads, I’m glad you’re here, Merrick! You of all people must know the song.” St. John laid his arm over Ash’s shoulders. “Popular a few years back. I heard it in the Highlands, matter of fact.”
Phillip looked away, his face turning dusky red.
“We know the front part but can’t figure out quite how the bloody thing ends,” St. John went on. “Here. Tell us.”
Ash narrowed his eyes on the group. One of them tittered and hid his lips behind his palm. Another’s eyes went wide as he struggled to contain his amusement, and suddenly Ash knew the song they’d been singing. It had been popular some years back, soon after the incident that had inspired it. Ash’s mouth went dry.
“It’s a thing called ‘The Ride of the Demon Brood.’ ” St. John smiled.
Ash struggled for composure. He’d disparaged these men for being naive and unaware. God, how the fates must be laughing at him. He’d assumed that here, in this tiny outpost in nowhere, here at least he would escape his notoriety. With empty eyes he gazed at St. John’s puckish countenance. He wouldn’t give him the pleasure of seeing how well he’d scored, how sharp the knife, how raw the wound. He was far better at hiding pain than this man could imagine.
And as far as the embarrassment St. John obviously hoped to provoke in Ash if St. John thought some antique ballad could bring shame to a name that had no understanding of the concept … the idea wrung a laugh from Ash’s throat, startling St. John.
“Why, certainly,” he declared hoarsely. “What lines were you having trouble with?”
The other men had sobered and were regarding Ash warily.
“No one recalls?” Ash asked lightly. How to tell them. Part of him wanted to explain, to insist they believe him if he claimed the ballad a lie, a piece of propaganda, a hideous hyperbole of the truth. But what difference? His past had taught him that people wanted to believe the worst. So be it.
“Then let us recap. The story goes like this: In order to save her brothers’ lives, a Scottish lassie must prevent the ragged remnants of her clan from hanging the worthless youngest son of the Demon Earl.
“The lad is accused of raping a novitiate and the clan’s call for his blood is well justified. But the poor girl’s brothers languish in London awaiting trial for their part in the uprising of forty-five.” Ash grinned savagely.
Raine hadn’t raped that girl. Ash had never asked but he didn’t need to, he knew his brother. He looked around at the rapacious faces. They hung on every word, unhappily transfixed by the sad, sordid tale.
“I swear I have told this story so often I have managed to encapsulate the entire tale in a fifth the time it takes to sing the damned thing!”
His sweeping gaze caught and held each man present. They squirmed uncomfortably.
“Let’s see, where was I? Oh, yes. Our pitiful heroine. Eight? Ten years old? And all this drama to contend with. The thing of it is, the thing that breaks the heart, is this: That very night while her father is away pleading for his sons’ lives the girl’s mother has died in childbirth.
“Now, if her clansmen kill the English Demon Earl’s cub she can kiss adieu to any hope that King George will be merciful and free her brothers. Is it any wonder she makes such an effort to halt the boy’s lynching even though he is her enemy?”
In his mind’s eye he could still see that raggedy girl-child, her thin white arms wrapped tightly about Raine’s throat, her gold hair streaming down her nightgown, her bare feet sunk in the ice- and mud-rutted road. He wanted to tell them that she’d been the only spot of mercy in a night black with vengeance and retribution. That he’d ached even then for that child
. That he’d regretted what had happened.
But they wouldn’t understand the choices he’d made, they’d all made, all the actors on that cold, winter stage. They wouldn’t believe him and he wouldn’t allow anyone to dine on his grief.
He continued. “Well, the lass prevents the bloody deed by flinging her arms around the bound boy, shielding him with her own wee body—and I say the tale would have been a sight more interesting if the girl had been sixteen rather than ten but then Highlanders are an odd breed. Anyway, while thus, the Demon Earl himself rides up, a hundred redcoats with him. At his side are his devilish eldest son and, behind, watching, the little black-haired witch who is his daughter.”
“Aye, that’s the spot we’d gotten to,” a slurred voice called from the shadows.
“Is it?” Ash queried, fighting the revulsion threatening to overwhelm him. He would not succumb. Not in front of St. John and some of these others.
A few of them shuffled, miserably wishing to be elsewhere but held captive by his recital of the old tragedy.
“Go on,” St. John urged and then added, “if you’ve the guts.”
“Allow me to satisfy your … thirst for knowledge. I will recite,” Ash said, shifting a leg forward, placing one hand on his hip, and spreading the other across his chest. His heart pumped dully beneath his palm.
The theatrical stance, the melodramatic timbre of Ash’s voice mocked the listeners, openly chastising their prurient fascination; and they resented it. They’d counted him a friend and none looked more aggrieved at his defection than Phillip. Ash began to recite:
With rapier drawn, the eldest son
Dragged his brother up before him.
And brandishing his blade, death he gave
To the men who barred his way.
Blood bloomed thick on the hoary ground
As Scotsmen were mowed down.
Like a sickle cuts through wheat,
They died as one, the clan complete.
When all about had silent grown
The laird’s young orphaned daughter moaned.
And the Demon Earl kneed his stallion near
And bending low, lent his ear.
“Why saved you my worthless son from death?”
He queried low, beneath his breath.
“To save my brothers,” she replied.
“Whom George would kill if your son were to die.”
The Demon Earl then laughed,
A sound so wicked, the redcoats gasped.
“John of McClairen’s head now sits on a pike,
Set above Temple Bar last night.”
The words clogged his throat, damning and true yet a truth without honesty. The ballad did not tell how sickened he’d been by his act, how savagely the clan had beaten Raine, the number of soldiers who died in the confrontation.
“Do you want the rest?” he asked, praying they would say no. “Some versions tag on a rather tiresome denouement.”
“Is the song about you?” Phillip whispered. “Is it true?”
“True?” Ash asked. Would they believe him if he said no? He wouldn’t risk being doubly hurt by his recitation. “Dear me, no. I can attest to the fact that my father is no demon. All too human, just lately evincing signs of gout—”
“Did it happen that way?” John Fortnum’s honest, homely face was etched with sadness.
“Yes.” His anger died on seeing the shocked misery of the listeners, leaving behind only self-disgust. They’d not known what they were doing. He had. He’d punished them for his own past.
“Rhiannon will be so hurt,” John murmured. “She thinks you’re such a nice gentleman.”
She was worth any ten of them. And they didn’t know it. They had no idea they harbored a refugee. Good, obedient Rhiannon Russell. Willing to trade her freedom for sanctuary. Yet beneath that dutiful exterior lay a core of tempered metal, forged by war and its aftermath. But never tested. Hidden here, instead. Like a Spanish blade that is packed in wool and tucked away in an attic chest. He turned, suddenly exhausted, and started to leave.
“Best she didn’t stay to hear this,” Phillip said mournfully. “Best thing she went off to collect flowers.”
Rhiannon was alone in the woods? Ash wheeled around. He strode back to Phillip’s chair, grabbing him by his shirt and hefting him half out of his seat. “What did you say?”
“Lemme go,” Phillip cried. “Don’t mind tellin’ you you’re disappointin’ to me. First I find out you’re some sort of a demon-spawned murderer and now you’re being flat-out offensive.” He batted ineffectually at Ash’s hands.
Ash shook him. “Didn’t she go home?”
“Course, not! She’s Queen of the May. Went to pluck posies in the forest—”
With an inarticulate sound, Ash dropped Phillip back in his seat. Rhiannon was alone in the woods after someone had flung a knife at her but a few days earlier. Without another word, he left.
Chapter Fourteen
It was too nice a night to go home, and there was no one to go home with, but most important Rhiannon didn’t know which way home was. The basket hanging from her arm banged against her hip as she walked. Only weak moonlight illuminated the forest floor, and a rising, drifting mist obscured any familiar landmarks.
Rhiannon hesitated and drew to a halt. Perhaps she should have stayed in the square and found someone to help her take Edith home. But she was Queen of the May, Virgin Queen of the May, and the Virgin Queen of the May always, always, spent Beltaine night gathering hawthorn flowers for her May Day coronet.
Of course, the Queen of the May also always went into the woods knowing that the King of the May would be in hot pursuit. Traditionally the Queen then spent the night fending off the King’s advances so that the next day when she was crowned with those pure, white hawthorn blooms the knowledge that she was just as pure kept her from blushing. And that was important.
Wasn’t it?
Not that Phillip had ever pursued too hotly or pushed too heavily. He was a gentleman, after all.
But then again, in past years when they had been king and queen, they had not been betrothed. Tonight Phillip might have pressed his suit and she, bedeviled by unfamiliar urges, might have been receptive. But then he’d gone and broken his ankle.
She gazed glumly down. Unfortunately, just because the King could not fulfill his role, did not mean she was exonerated of her obligations. And, by the Virgin, hadn’t she done a ripping good job of it? Over a hundred damn flowers filled her basket.
Realizing her profanity, Rhiannon frowned. She was a good, decent young lady. She had been ever since she’d come to Fair Badden. But lately she didn’t feel very “good.”
She didn’t understand what was happening to her. She seemed to always be edgy and irritable. The constant need to be “good” had begun to chaff—even with Edith Fraiser. Only with Ash Merrick did she feel truly at ease.
Perhaps it was because she owed him nothing, no debt of gratitude, no unspoken vow of obedience. Not that she didn’t love her life here, and Edith Fraiser, and all her friends, but sometimes it was hard to discern between love and obligation. She was more … natural in Ash’s company.
And more likely to do abominably stupid things.
With a groan, Rhiannon closed her eyes. She would never have believed herself capable of such outrageous behavior. Ash Merrick had always treated her with gentlemanly courtesy—even in his kiss. In return she’d had him hunted, tied, and brought before her like some criminal. Then she’d proceeded to fall over in a drunken stupor. How he must loathe her.
She hastened forward as though she could outdistance her memory, humiliation burning her cheeks. She’d gone some distance when off to her side came the muted sounds of dalliance, pleading and private as a novena.
The sound stopped her as effectively as a stone wall. She strained her ears, listening, swaying slightly on her feet, as the effects of Edith’s clover wine had not yet fully left her. She couldn’t see a thing. Darkness and mist co
mbined to hide the figures making those earnest sounds.
She didn’t dare venture farther and risk stumbling onto a tryst. What if it were Margaret Atherton and—
She wheeled around, her head spinning, and began retracing her steps. She’d almost reached an ancient, spreading hawthorn when a muted giggle reached her ears. Once more, she stumbled to a stop.
More lovers? she wondered in despair. The soft provocative laughter moved off but because of the fog, she was unable to tell in what direction. With a sound of frustration she sank to the ground beside the tree’s great trunk.
Stupid Beltaine customs.
She would just have to stay here, until the mist lifted or the moon grew stronger or some friendly woodland sprite took pity on her and led her out of this fantastical world of blue shadows and earthbound clouds, ghostly luminescence and heady night-born fragrances.
She leaned her head back against the tree trunk and closed her eyes, letting the magic of the place bewitch her, creating fantasies she had no right entertaining, things she’d fought against but now, here, she found impossible to resist. She forgave herself.
It was Beltaine night, after all, and she was alone and she did not want to be the Virgin Queen of the Virgin May. She wanted Ash Merrick.
The moments grew one into another. The moon rose with benign leisure as images of a dark, angular face and a hard lean body filled Rhiannon’s thoughts. He was like Oberon, she thought, king of the sylvan spirits. Aye, Ash Merrick would make a fit sovereign of dark enchantment. He’d come silently, materializing from the shadows, a spirit of pure desire conjured into flesh—
“Rhiannon.”
She opened her eyes, gazing at him without surprise. “Oberon,” she whispered. Dark forest prince, black light-devouring hair, and eyes gilded like steel.
He’d been on one knee beside her but now he slowly straightened. The mist swirled in agitation as he rose, slipping from his shoulders like a fairy’s cloak and leaving a dusting of moon-silvered moisture on his pale skin.
The Passionate One Page 11