At one point, she glanced up from her reading. He sat bent over his book, long fingers plowed into his dark, unruly hair, the sweep of downcast lashes against his cheek. Girl’s lashes. Thick. Black. He chewed the end of his thumb as he read. Shifted in his chair. His shoulders moved on a deep breath.
No tension in the set of his jaw. No silence fraught with bitterness. No shadows from the past dimming the beauty of those finely hewn features. It eased her apprehension. She could make herself believe all was as it should have been. This was where she was supposed to be. Who she was supposed to be with. That her life had not veered disastrously off course.
“Unless I have broccoli sprouting out my ears, you need to stop staring and get back to work,” Brendan griped, never lifting his eyes from the page he was reading. “The answer won’t jump up and bite you.”
Elisabeth pursed her lips against a giggle. Considerate? Brendan? Hardly. Yet, there was something genuine about all his acerbic sarcasm that no amount of sugary sweetness could rival. It made her want to prove herself. Gain his grudging approval.
Either that or she’d simply lost her mind.
She dropped her gaze back to the book.
All this reading, no doubt.
Brendan stared with sinking heart at the roped-off ruin. A blackened chimney speared the gray sky, birds flitting in and out. Weeds sprang tall and scraggly amid enormous piles of debris. Broken tiles, heavy charred beams, the cracked and melted arms of a chandelier. Water stood in oily black pools. He dragged in a breath laden with a sour stench of soot and mildew.
Ducking beneath the rope, he kicked through the rubble. Plucked up the charred crackling remains of a book, its pages glued and soggy. Tossed it aside. Dug free a mud-caked shard from what might once have been a bowl or pitcher. A dim metallic shine reflecting off a bent and pitted candlestick.
Hours cooped inside, analyzing obscure essays by scholarly theorists with Elisabeth’s tantalizing presence a few frustrating feet away, had finally driven him to clear his head with a long stroll. A few more seconds of breathing in that perfume of hers and he’d have completed last night’s seduction on the library table. To hell with his noble intentions or Helena’s furniture.
How he’d ended up here, he couldn’t say. He’d never realized where his walk had led him until he looked up to see the charred lot. And then he’d been unable to simply pass by without pausing as if it meant nothing.
“You there! Can’t you read? Sign says no trespassing!” A somber, official-looking character eyed him from the pavement.
“Just poking about.”
The constable’s scowl deepened. “No trespassing means no poking.”
Brendan allowed himself to be shepherded away from the ruin. “Must have been quite a fire.”
“Went up like a torch, it did. Lit the sky from the Liffey to Mountjoy Square. I was workin’ that night, and seen it meself.” Pride rang in his voice. “You know the family what lived here?”
“A long time ago.”
“Word is they’re accursed. Old earl murdered by his own son. New earl in queer street, with the creditors on his tail. I’d not be one of them for any amount of blunt.”
Was it true? Were the Douglases cursed? He drew a breath, seeing once more Aidan’s face among the dead, the king’s warning carried on an acrid thread of wind , Sabrina’s weeping as she fought to save the man she loved, and the imagined vision he carried with him always—Father’s execution at the hands of the Amhas-draoi. The final moments when the truth of his son’s betrayal was made clear. When love twisted in his chest with the same killing force as the blade that felled him and he died damning Brendan’s name.
Would Aidan, like Father, go to his grave believing Brendan had betrayed them all?
He hurled the candlestick back into the blackened ruins, where it landed with a ping and a flash of gold before sinking out of sight forever.
Then, swinging away, he strode back down Henry Street and away from the charred hulk that had once been Kilronan House.
“Madame Arana said you’ve been out here for hours.”
Brendan’s voice behind her slid along Elisabeth’s nerves like a spark to a fuse. The flush of awareness simmering just below her skin. Her stomach tightening with pleasure.
She looked up from the book in her lap, relieved to put aside the brain-snarling confusion of the thesis she’d been reading. Something about time travel and the effects of past and future on the present. It might as well be ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs for all the sense it made. But she was trying. That should count for something.
Brendan stood haloed by a late afternoon sun, gold threading his dark hair, the rest of him left in shadow. All but his eyes which, as always, burned polished amber. He leaned down to slide the book from her hands, reading the title.
“Ouch. If you’re trying to bore yourself to sleep, you couldn’t have chosen better.”
She snatched it back. “I’m not bored in the least. It’s been highly informative. Did you know the Unseelie—those are Fey demons, by the way.”
Amusement danced in his eyes “Yes, I think I may have heard of them once or twice.”
She shot him a dirty look. “But did you know if one of the Dark Court possesses the body of a human host, they can gain permanent entry into our world?”
His expression hardened. “Yes, though I didn’t know you did.” He glanced at the pile of books beside her. “Have I created a monster?”
“Actually, all that searching intrigued me. I was hoping you might explain a few things. There’s a chapter in one of these”—she rummaged through her stack until she found the one she searched for, flipping pages as she spoke—“that sounds like it’s talking of Arthur and the curse, but then it doesn’t, and I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
He eyed her curiously. “Who are you, and what have you done with Elisabeth Fitzgerald?”
She slammed the book closed. “I knew you’d tease.”
“I’m sorry, Lissa. I’m just a little stunned. You’ve never liked nor wanted anything to do with the Other. You seemed almost fearful. Why the sudden interest?”
She dropped her gaze to the book as she grappled with the question he’d posed. Difficult to explain, if she even could. After all, there had been no defining revelation. It had been a slow creeping awareness that between dread and wonder was a margin almost indefinable. Perhaps that narrowest of gaps had finally closed. Or perhaps she merely grew tired of being kept in the dark about events that impacted her in an intimate and life-altering way.
“It seems only sensible to try and understand what I’m getting myself into by marrying you.”
He sank onto the seat beside her, and for the first time she noted the dust speckling his boots, the sour whiskey and smoky smell of him as well as the tired smudges beneath his eyes, the grim angle of his jaw. Her heart skipped annoyingly as he raked his hair out of his face. “Is that what this is about, Lissa? This marriage? You and I? I can say the words, I can put the ring on your finger, but it doesn’t make us any more than we were before.”
“Which is?”
“Which is two people trapped by circumstance. I may not even—” He broke off, massaging his damaged hand as if it pained him. “I just wouldn’t expend a lot of effort in making this into anything more than a face-saving marriage of last resort.”
He looked away, his hand lying upon his thigh, the fingers crooked, the joints swollen. She’d asked about it. Just as she’d sought to discover why he’d run, how he’d lived, what dark memories hugged the edges of his sun-bright eyes. Yet, now as always he pushed her away. Parried her questions like the ablest of fencers.
“I may be Duinedon but I’m not a fool, Brendan. And I’m tired of being treated like one.”
His hand flexed and curled in agitation. “Never a fool, Lissa.”
He’d said that to her once before, though she knew it was foolish of her to want more than he could give. To conjure a real marriage out of a few words spoken
by a priest.
“None of this is to cause you pain, but to keep you from harm. I do it to protect you,” he said.
“I’m not made of spun glass, Brendan. You should have noticed by now that I don’t shatter easily. In this case what I don’t know just might kill me.”
He flexed his hand, scars standing white on his skin, but remained stubbornly silent.
“Forget I spoke,” she said, annoyance and disappointment warring within her. “Forget this whole marriage. It was a stupid idea anyway. You go your way. I’ll go mine and—”
She stood to leave, but he grabbed her hand. “Now you’re angry.”
She wrestled to free herself. “I’m not.”
A smile twitched a corner of his mouth. “You’re lying.”
“And you’re maddening. If you didn’t want to marry me, why did you agree to it?”
“Your silver tongue and your winning ways?” he wheedled.
It was like boxing at shadows. She reasoned, argued, bullied, and yet he remained unfazed. She might as well be speaking to a wall for all the good that came of it. “Do you know how much I despise you right now?”
“I can guess, but I’ll ignore it. You’re overwrought.”
She marched back toward the house, but he kept pace with her, not allowing her to escape. “If I was overwrought—which I most certainly am not—I’d have every right to be.”
He lowered his head in sheepish submission. “If I apologize, will you forgive me?”
She refused to look at him, refused to be cajoled by his little boy charm. “Why should I?”
“No reason at all except it might make you feel better.”
“It would take a lot more than that to make me feel better.”
She spun around, coming up hard against his chest. When had he stepped so close? When had she forgotten how to breathe? She had but to lift her chin to touch her lips to his. To kiss the dimple at the corner of his mouth. Reach a hand to caress the stubble upon his cheek.
“How about this for starters?” he said, his voice dropping to a mischievous purr.
He did what she could not. Lowered his head to brush a kiss upon her lips. He touched her nowhere else, yet even that slight contact ignited a flame low in her belly. His breath came warm and soft and the flame roared higher, racing outward until every particle in her body simmered.
“You said you didn’t want to marry me,” she murmured.
His gaze traveled over her face as if he memorized her, sending the heat within her soaring before he stepped away, his practiced scoundrel’s smile offering a promise of more if she dared. “One’s got nothing to do with the other.”
fourteen
“It worked like a charm.” Elisabeth laughed. “By the end of the argument, Cook was fully on the side of Mrs. Landry, our housekeeper. And they were both dead set against me. Neither one answered me in anything but monosyllables for a month, but at least they didn’t kill each other or quit altogether, which would have been far worse.”
Elisabeth kept company with Madame Arana, who sat stitching away at her needlepoint amid the group gathered in the drawing room for the evening. All but for Helena, who’d disappeared after supper and had yet to return.
The ladies’ conversation veered wildly from the price of wax candles and the proper wages for a housemaid who doubled in the kitchen to whether Helena’s grandmother had ever tried the spa at Lucan for her digestion.
Elisabeth’s eyes sparkled as she talked of accounts and economizing and how to stay on top of idle servants. She waxed poetic on sheep and wool profits, the use of turnips for winter fodder, crop rotation, and the school she’d begun at Dun Eyre for the education of the tenants’ children.
It all sounded so damned domestic. Complete and utter drudgery. But she laughed, gesturing as she spoke, her hair escaping its pins to curl in ringlets against her neck. Her face aglow. Alive and excited and full of ideas. Her enthusiasm infectious.
“If you think Tom Newcomb will ever hear of you planting his fields in anything but potatoes, you’re mad,” Brendan interrupted.
She squared round, keenness still shining in her gaze. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you speak of home like that.”
He shrugged. “Like what?”
“Like you belong there.” She cocked her head in a questioning pose, brows low as if she studied a bug beneath a magnifying glass. She must have found what she looked for. She smiled proudly. “Actually, Tom’s talking round the others to try Mr. Adams’s proposal. We hope to have them all on board by the next planting season.”
Brendan sat back, rubbing his chin, watching her in conversation. At one point he caught Rogan’s eye upon him, the harper giving him a wink and a grin as if he knew where Brendan’s lascivious thoughts were leading him. Right off a cliff edge.
Brendan’s watch said twelve before Madame Arana rose from her seat, exclaiming at the hour, Rogan lingering only long enough to tap out his pipe, take a final glass of whiskey, and wish the pair of them a cheery good night.
And then they were alone.
The night folded in on them, the candlelight softer, voices muffled, even the fire burned low and sultry in the grate. And yet, neither one made a move to leave. To pull themselves free of the clumsy awkwardness of this new awareness.
“I had no idea you took such interest in estate matters,” he finally ventured when the silence stretched too thin.
Elisabeth played with her empty wineglass, eyes downcast. “I assist Mr. Adams in his office. We discuss his plans and read over the latest articles on husbandry together.” She looked up, a challenge in her gaze. “He listens to what I have to say. Respects my opinions.”
“Yet Shaw wanted to replace him.”
She flushed. “Gordon didn’t understand. He saw Dun Eyre as a stepping-stone to better things. I see it as the only thing. I didn’t understand that before. It took almost losing it to make me see how much I love Dun Eyre.” Sadness colored her once-animated face. “Gordon was suitable in so many ways, I should have been a ninny to have refused his suit.”
“Did you love him?”
“You asked me that once before. Do you remember?”
The music room at Dun Eyre. “I do. Has the answer changed?”
She took a deep breath as if she had to think about it while he unconsciously held his. “I loved the idea of him. I wanted a husband. Children. A life with someone I could rely on. I thought Gordon could give me those things.”
Brendan crossed to take her hands. His fingers lacing with hers as he drew her up. She smiled, a spray of freckles across her nose, her mouth soft and full and berry red.
A beautiful woman. A quiet night.
So far nothing out of the ordinary.
A thousand times he’d done this and a thousand times he’d walked away.
“You never talk about Belfoyle,” she commented.
“As if I belong there?” he teased, wary of this conversation’s path. Home was a topic off-limits and had been since he’d left. If he didn’t think about it, it didn’t hurt.
She gave a toss of her head. “Ever. Or not as I thought you would after being away for so long.”
“I’m a second son, remember?” he answered caustically. “Pride of ownership belongs to Aidan now.”
Again there was the sense she was searching for something within him. If she wasn’t careful, she’d find more than she bargained for. “It’s not ownership I’m speaking of, but loving a place. Carrying Belfoyle and all that makes it special inside you.”
“What are you trying to do, Elisabeth? Wring a confession from me? Have me tell you that I wept for my family every day I was gone? That every night I closed my eyes and saw the towers of Belfoyle?” He grabbed her by the arms, a slow burn beginning behind his eyes. “Life boiled down to survival. Food. Shelter. Safety. There was no freedom for regrets or tears or maudlin wretchedness.”
She braved his anger. “And now?”
“You’ve seen what I face,” he
argued, his grip tightening. “My life is not my own until Máelodor is dead and the stone is secure.”
Anger became arousal. He wanted to punish her and devour her at the same time. His lips found hers in a kiss born solely of the need to shut her up. Stop her mental assault. The slow degradation of all his defenses. He didn’t want to imagine or hope or dream. He didn’t want to see Elisabeth as anything other than a hindrance. “Even if we marry tomorrow, I can’t promise you the future you want.”
Then he tasted the sweet heat of her luscious mouth. The wine-tart tang of her on his tongue. He palmed the perfect firmness of a generous breast. Inhaled the comforting scents of lemon and lavender. And he could no longer deny his body’s craving.
“Perhaps not,” she murmured, threading her hands into his hair, “but you can offer me the hope of a future. That will have to be enough.”
The swooping plunge of her stomach, the roar of blood in her ears, every muscle jumping with excitement. Elisabeth could have been riding neck-or-nothing over the rocky heath and cliff-top meadows of home. The sensations were exactly the same, including the feeling of careening out of control toward a dangerous jump.
Brendan had guided her up the stairs to her bedchamber, the darkness wrapping round them, drawing them close as conspirators. He closed the door behind them, just the snick of the latch raising gooseflesh on her body, spreading heat low across her belly.
He pulled her hair loose of its pins. She was so used to the constant fight to confine its wildness, the heavy curling weight of it against her back felt both unfamiliar and oddly sensual. As if he were seeing a secret part of her. Peeking beneath the tamed sensible woman she’d become to the hoyden tomboy she’d been when he knew her.
He ran his tongue over her bottom lip, nipping and sucking until she opened to him, her tongue darting out in naive exploration. He dipped within, teasing and tasting. Carrying her along on a river of rising need, yet spinning out every touch and every kiss in an infinite dance of discovery.
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