"Nah... this one is for you, Ailill," Jacob said in answer. "Because I'm sorry for hurtin' you and I want to make up for it. Do you like it?" A shadow passed quickly over his chiseled features, eyes dark with regret for every pain he had inflicted upon her in the past day.
She laughed, a throaty sound, husky with intense feeling, and gazed up into Jacob's expressive face. "O' course I do! But I would like it all the more if the two of you would join me in these fine healing waters instead of sitting there as spectators at a caber toss." Grinning in amusement, she added, "you're like to bore holes through me, the way you're staring, and then I would sink."
She chuckled softly and, with a swift kick, Ailill glided backward through the dark water, coming to rest on the opposite side of the pool, away from where the twins were quickly removing their own clothes. Turnabout isfair play and, perched on the built in stone bench beneath the surface, Ailill observed them both with the same degree of fascination as they had shown toward her moments before, eying the gracefully curving musculature of each in turn with open admiration, liking the way both looked wearing nothing but a kilt; and then nothing at all.
"You have got beautiful bodies," she remarked casually, watching rippling bumps of gooseflesh rise over deeply tanned arms as the heated water swirled up about the narrow waists of the two men. "Perfectly sculpted." The r that rolled off her tongue was more pronounced than usual, drawing each man's attention to the high color of her overheated cheeks. She smiled, rather lasciviously. "Did you work at it, or is it natural?" Au Naturale, and ye ken it, lass.
Studying her curiously, Micah shrugged. "Both, I guess," he answered, before he ducked, disappearing momentarily into the dark abyss. Jacob followed, popping up beside his twin, directly before her eyes, in a moment, water streaming from the long raven hair, dripping onto her chest as her head tipped far back to see them both more clearly.
"We ain't slackers, darlin'," Jacob drawled, leering down into her upturned face. "We both work hard at anything we do." Taking a step toward her, he found his way blocked, a tiny foot pressed flat against the hard plane of his thigh. Grinning mischievously, Ailill blocked Micah in a similar manner.
Her gaze roved boldly over Jacob, then Micah, eyes sparkling with good humor. "Can ye not be near me without wanting something from me?"
"Not easily, no," Jacob answered truthfully, making her laugh. "Y'all are just too damn sexy, darlin'," he added with a grin.
"Aye? And you," she replied, poking a slender finger at his chest, "are one hell of a flirt. Flattery will get you nowhere, have you never learned that?"
"Well, you pretty little thing, flattery's gotten me all the way a lot of times before," he drawled, grabbing her foot up out of the water and kissing it. "Mmm, never noticed that before." His thumb ran along a wide metal band around her big toe as he sat beside her on the bench. He studied it curiously, purposely not letting go of her foot.
"You are not very observant then. Micah noticed them the first day." Her gaze flicked up to Micah's still face. He was watching his twin intently, as if he were waiting for the man to make a move on her. Nudging his leg with the ball of her foot, Ailill smiled at him, wishing he would come closer. It showed in her eyes, but Micah made no move to oblige.
"You had shoes on the first day, Abby," Jacob said easily. "I remember everything from that day." He eyed his twin with suspicion, making Ailill roll her eyes in exasperation.
"I'm not talking about the first day yousaw me. Micah saw me on the mountain trail, the morning I arrived."
Moving closer, at last, Micah leaned down. "The day I fell in love with you," he said softly into her ear. Meeting his eye, Ailill smiled.
Grunting in response, Jacob muttered, "y'all were in love with her a hell of a lot sooner than that, Micah. Like, mmm, I dunno. Years before."
"At least I can wait for the right girl," Micah snapped back, shooting his twin a dirty look. "And she is definitely the right girl for me." He looked away sulkily and sat down beside Ailill.
Ignoring Micah's sudden change of mood, Jacob looked down at Ailill curiously. "Why do you wear rings on your toes?"
"Because I like to. Why else?" She stared at him, eyes narrowed. "It isn't all that unusual, Jacob."
"Why do you have your nose pierced?" Reaching up, Jacob fingered the tiny labret pierced through her right nostril. His eyes were dark pools, his attraction to her evident. Ailill had the distinct impression that the man was attempting to corner her. She wondered where her own well of anger had gone in the past ten minutes, wanting a handhold on the reality of her own situation. She still planned to leave for awhile. Could they not see that? Hiding her unhappy thoughts, she answered in a light tone.
"Because I chose to have it pierced just before I turned thirteen, and I like it very much. Why don't you have any piercings?" Sliding up out of the water, Ailill perched on the edge of the pool, fanning her flushed cheeks with her fingers while she stared down into Jacob's face. "You'd both look good with your ears pierced; and maybe your nipples." Her eyes narrowed in speculation, moving back and forth between the suddenly still men. "Mmm, aye, very sexy." It was quite obvious that she honestly believed that particular idea would be an improvement in the way her eyes darkened, the thought bringing a renewed flush to her already pinkened cheeks.
Brows raised like wings at the thought of that particular sort of pain, Jacob grinned, barely able to contain a shudder. "Kiah wouldn't let us pierce anything; he said it ain't the least bit manly," he answered ruefully, glancing over at his twin. Micah was grinning at the look on Ailill's pretty face. She, clearly, disagreed with their father's notions of manliness.
"Y'all got anything else pierced, besides your ears and nose, or your belly button?" His eyes took on a glazed look when they lowered to study her navel.
"Do you see anything else pierced, Jacob?" Ailill answered tartly, raising her arms up, away from her sides, exposing herself fully to his view. Her eyes gleamed, almost daring the man to keep it up. Almost.
"Ah, no," he said, suddenly straight-faced as he glanced again at his twin. "Micah's good with a needle...want him to poke ya?" The corner of his mouth twitched with the need to laugh. His gaze dropped to her plum colored nipples and crawled even lower, imagining, quite vividly, tiny gold and silver hoops in all of the most sensual parts of her body.
"Not especially." Ailill grinned back, eyes sliding back and forth between the two. "Not right now, at any rate. Piercings do take awhile to heal, you know, even for me. And it would be quite difficult to nurse a bairn with nipple rings in the way... when I do have bairns, I mean." She frowned, glanced away. "May I see your wounds?"
"Huh?" Both men looked at her, momentarily confused. She smothered a laugh.
"You've got the healing gene, according to Seanmhair, as I said before. Plus, you bathed in here; this is a healing spring. Your wounds are a safer subject, I am thinking. I'd like to examine them is all."
Thrusting his hands up, Jacob smiled knowingly at Micah while Ailill studied his completely healed fingers. "You want us, don't you?" he whispered to the top of her head. "That's why you change the subject, but you can't hide it, from either of us."
Her head rose slowly, blue eyes settling on Jacob's smiling face. "Aye, I do," she answered honestly, her eyes glinting in the light of dozens of torches. "But it doesn't signify. I am one very wee young lass and you are two very well grown men." Her voice lowered, as if she were about to divulge something secret and she leaned forward between the two, her mouth just inches from both dark heads. "I've got but one way in, which you'd be wise to remember if you think you might like having me. Do you take my meaning?"
Staring speculatively, both heads bobbed in unison as her gaze swept from one to the other, the brothers' dark blue eyes showing the surprise each felt at hearing such a temerarious statement from such a tiny young woman.
"Very well then. So long as we understand each other," she said with a catlike grin, eyes flashing with amusement as she pulled Micah's h
ead forward to check his wound. "You are already half healed, Micah," she murmured, tipping his head back up with a knuckle beneath the chin.
He met her gaze and smiled, holding his arm out for her inspection. "Has anyone ever told you that y'all are very precocious for your age, Abby?" he said softly, staring at her face. "Are you sure you're only eighteen?" His eyes sparkled with mirth, a wish to tease her into complacency evident in the calm blue depths.
Ailill giggled. "Positive." Standing slowly, she moved back a pace, dimpling with pleasure. "At least in this lifetime. Then again, you're both awfully young yet yourselves. Twenty, isn't it? And me hardly more than a wean! Shame-shame." Giggling again, she jumped over the dark heads, landing with a great splash in the deep center of the pool. No sooner had her head reemerged than a water fight ensued, the stone walls and ceiling echoing with the sounds of laughter and high spirits until all three collapsed on the wet stone floor, exhausted and overheated from playful exertion.
She was gone the next morning, a short note in flowing script the unusual girl's only goodbye after the fun memories she'd given the brothers in the magical chamber beneath the dun.
Bonnie Lads,
After careful consideration, and tallying the scores of my wee test, I truly have naught to say except... strike three.
Next time, do not attempt to lie to me, nor to change my mind with horseplay. My course is set, unchangeable. My path chosen ere my rebirth. I go to battle with a heavy heart, the gravity of the knowledge that you are not yet ready for the truth weighs heavily upon my spirit. It is for the best that I walk alone. You shall see me again when the troubles of the Hidden world have calmed once again. Our unfortunate talks of yesterday leave me with a single question that I feel I must pose. Call it simple curiosity.
As I am quite certain you've not laid eyes upon my love in this lifetime, how is it that you are so certain of what He looks like? "That perfect, beautiful Scottish giant, Tiernan MacDuff". He'd be pleased to know you say so, as you are the very same.
My love to You,
Ailill
Blood of an Innocent
“He was here. I kent it when I awoke, Mother; I felt the soft brush of his lips here." Fingers fluttering over the finely etched line of a high Viking cheekbone, Ailill eyed her mother with a glinting glare. "You would lie to me, as if I didn't know a thing at all; as if I lacked the wherewithal to understand aught, of anything. Now, why don't you just tell me what he came here for, if only to set my mind at ease, since I only just returned yesterday morn and fell straight to sleep with my boots still on. Did he at least reunite with the lads? They are his brothers, after all."
Bright blue eyes settled on Ailill's face in the half-light of predawn, a dour expression hardening the already taut lines of Annie's face, making her look older, closer to her true age. It was a trick of the lighting, Ailill knew, though she still blinked in surprise. Annie hadn't aged a day in her looks in a great many years.
"I will not tell you anything, Ailill. Not yet. There is much to do first."
Scowling, her lower lip clamped hard between straight, pearly white teeth, Ailill made a derisory sound in the back of her throat, her displeasure evident. "I wish only to have seen him with my own two eyes," she muttered under her breath, feeling the sting of tears even as she swallowed down a persistent lump that had taken up residence in her throat since she had broached the subject of Tiernan MacDuff's secret visit. Too secret. She was certain that if the twins had met with the man, she'd have heard by now, even if they did live in the cabin in Wilderdeep, far enough that neither knew she was back as yet. She glanced about with sad eyes.
"This could be me, you know." Arm raised over the still form on the bed, the body covered by a woolen blanket, Ailill gesticulated angrily at her mother, clutching the tiny swaddled form of a newly orphaned infant to her breast. Her voice was hoarsened with tears held back far too long. The trials of the last many hours finally caught up with her, evident in the audible catch in her husky voice. The sound of bitter failure clear as a pindrop in the still silence of the room.
"I am supposed to carry on the new line, Mam, give birth to the next generation of the Gentry, but you know what?" Annie eyed her daughter with a closed expression. "This poor wee lass was a full two years younger than me, than what I shall be for all eternity, and look what has become of Herself! Our own kindred, and what has that done for her? You couldn't stop the bleeding, even with all your knowledge, and neither could I. The two of us have failed our Kingdom, let the Lost Princess die as not but a pauper! This poor wee bairn has no one. No one! She is all alone in a harsh, cruel world without the benefit of anyone to love her. Sweet Brigit, she hasn't even a name to call her own! No man has stepped forward to claim his involvement. She has no kin to raise her, no family to give her all that she deserves to be brought up with. She doesn't even have someone to speak on her behalf, so that she may be fostered and loved, as I was. This could as easily have been any one o' the women in the village. It could have been Janie Forrester; it could have been me. And so I ask myself, what is to become of this bairn, who has nothing in this world to live for? What shall we do to make it all right for her, this bitty wee princess who is hangin' on by a thread, born to a woman who honored all, including the Great Mother Goddess Anu, by carrying her for as long as she was able? What shall we do?"
Tears fell unbidden, the heartbreak of losing a helpless patient completely overwhelming the sensitive young woman when combined with the reality of another heartbreak so deeply harbored, that she, herself, had wished for death, more than once, to take the pain away. He hadn't wanted to see her, or so she surmised, since he had certainly not made the effort. A second time, a second secret visit. The pain in her heart was excruciating as she attempted to quell the tears that washed over her flushed cheeks, onto the soft buckskin blanket, the only thing left to the newly born girl by her dead mother, a mere teenager, who had drifted into town less than a year before, a shocking secret buried too well. Eight months. Long enough to meet a man who, in Ailill's exhausted mind, had ultimately led to her demise out of pure selfish lust, out of a sick, twisted need to prove his own power.
"Dinna fash, Ailill, all will work out fine," Annie said softly, her tone gentle. She felt badly, as well, for the loss of one of their own; but she was a realist. The girl had been unhealthy to begin with; there were signs on the body that clearly showed that she had endured quite a bit of abuse in her life, though not recently; the scars were at least a few years old, the mark on her chest an obvious symbol of enslavement. Undernourished, weakened by the pregnancy, absolutely alone. It was more of a surprise that the baby had survived this long into the gestation period, being nearly six weeks early, by what the poor girl had said when the midwife had arrived on her doorstep and spirited her away to Hidden Jewel. Annie did not believe that she was even that far along, her belly being no bigger than Janie's, who had only just begun to show, though the young woman had been quite adamant as to the date she had gotten pregnant, Mid- February, just after Kiah Black and the two boys had moved into the cabin on the edge of town.
Ailill had lost patients in the recent past, a great many of them just before leaving Scotland, when the devastating wave of what had come to be known as the Desolate Sickness had somehow crossed over the boundaries of the mortal world and the one in which she had been raised. It was that which made the girl feel truly devastated, for, in her heart, she had believed that her love had succumbed to that same ravaging illness despite her best efforts to save him. But he was not dead; was, in fact, completely healed, and wished for her to know that he still loved her. That he still wanted her. Her heart had swelled with pleasure at hearing that from her mother's own mouth. Then the laboring lass, who had called herself Angel, of all things, had begun to bleed heavily before the babe had even worked it's way into the world. Unwilling to see another child die uselessly, Ailill had tried everything that she could think to try, every potion, every chant, her own healing gift, before resorti
ng, in the end, to an emergency Cesarian, done as quickly as possible to save the life of the baby who's heartbeat rang strong and true through the fetoscope, though the mother was already gone. And she had. The babe was breathing on it's own beneath the soft covering, the young midwife's blood encrusted arms wrapped possessively around the bitty sleeping bundle. Ailill, only, knew the secret of the child's birth, the words whispered just before the dying woman succumbed, nearly taking her unborn babe with her.
Standing up, Annie stepped over and gently took the child from her hands. "Don't cry, Daughter of mine, you will see your love again soon," she stated with quiet certainty. "The Queen is, even now, working things to your advantage, though you'll have to make a few concessions, I would say, as you are still betrothed to the two brothers no matter what. Speaking of which, I believe that they are to be stuck with the sad job of burying yon poor lass there, since James is away with Fallon and I cannot just up and leave right now to give her a proper burial. Come on, get up. You need to bathe the blood of innocent death from your body; and you should burn the clothes in offering. They are ruined anyway. In the meantime, I'll clean up the bairn and make up some milk bottles for her before I send for the boys."
"Do ye take a few samples o' their lifeblood," Ailill reminded in a husky aside. "To help in determining the truth o' my suspicions, as well as the bairn's paternity."
"Yes, I planned to Abby-honey. Although we both know she's a Morna without the extra effort."
Leveling a hard look on her mother, thinking that she'd become too well hardened over the years, Ailill bit hard on her lip, quelling the snappy retort that wanted to spring forth. "It is worth the effort, Mother, if only for Duffy's sake," she whispered instead.
Moving slowly, almost painfully, Ailill stood to leave the room, too exhausted to think with any clarity, to even take much notice of the fact that 'the boys' were already there, both staring into the birthing room from the hallway with wide, troubled eyes at the sight of so much blood. It looked as if she had showered in it, the deep red spatters covered her from fiery head to leather clad toe; a slick, dark pool had spilled over the end of the bed, onto the polished oak floor. Instead of leaving the room immediately, though, she turned back and uttered a string of words in a strange language. The spilled blood of the innocent woman disappeared in an instant, the floor sparkling as if it had never been soiled, though the deep crimson proof was still heavily upon her person. Without a word of explanation, Ailill met the eyes of each man briefly before turning away with a visible shudder.
Hidden Jewel (Heartfire Series) Page 30