“He is.”
“Oh God,” Casey said, as his knees buckled and he sat gracelessly on the damp ground.
Jamie was beside him in an instant, placing a small flask in Casey’s hands and saying in a harsh voice, “Take a drink. Only one, though, you’ve got to drive. I am doing everything in my power to ensure your safety but in return you have to keep a clear head and not do anything foolish. Pat’s safe for now.”
“Where is he?” Casey asked hoarsely, the aftertaste of the whiskey like hot blood on his tongue.
“He’s home with Sylvie. I managed to get him a pardon for crimes he never committed, but nevertheless it constituted a get out of jail free card,” Jamie said.
Casey nodded, knowing it was the best that could be managed under the situation. Had he thought it would have gotten him released, he too might have been tempted to confess to any number of crimes he had not committed.
“This little committee, ye say they’ve thirty or forty. Do ye mind me askin’ how many ye’ve got on yer own team?”
The pause that ensued was painfully long. Casey took another swallow off the flask before Jamie could stop him. “Christ man,” Casey whispered grimly, “don’t tell me yer alone.”
Jamie eyed him benignly.
“Would ye say somethin’?” Casey finished a little desperately.
“You said not to tell you,” Jamie said in an annoyingly composed voice.
“Jaysus, Mary, Joseph an’ the little green men, would ye give a man another drink?” Casey said in an explosion of breath.
“No,” Jamie replied sternly, capping the whiskey firmly and sticking it in his own pocket. “Now up on your feet, you’ve got to get going,” he helped Casey to his feet with more force than the dazed Casey thought was strictly necessary. He then held him by the elbows until Casey’s knees stopped wobbling.
“Why are ye doin’ this?” Casey asked, taking the bag and slinging it over his shoulder.
“Doing what?” Jamie asked, face suddenly a cool mask.
“All this,” Casey gestured with one large hand, “savin’ my skin, arrangin’ cars an’ boats an’ hideaways when ye know,” Casey tried to catch Jamie’s eyes, “that a man in yer particular position can afford no mistakes. Is it for her?” he asked, though the question stuck in his craw like an indigestible lump.
Jamie’s gaze shifted only slightly but it was enough to tell Casey what he wanted to know.
“You’d best go, you’ve a long day ahead of you,” Jamie said, once again in perfect and enviable control of his expression and tone.
“Aye, thank ye man for all ye’ve done,” Casey said awkwardly.
“Think nothing of it,” Jamie quipped lightly as the morning’s dull light gilded his hair a dark gold, painting an airy crown about his head.
“She once said ye were like a prince in a fairytale, a dream in the darkness.”
“Did she? Well it’s not the most unflattering comment I’ve been handed,” Jamie said, and Casey saw he’d unnerved the man, even if only slightly.
He continued on as if Jamie hadn’t spoken. “Yer always runnin’ about savin’ everybody else, but ye can’t save yer ownself, can ye? Do ye always do what’s right even when the cost is so high, man?”
Jamie sighed and Casey saw he was considering one of his pretty obfuscations that he was so used to dealing out to the world, but then he smiled wearily, his mask dropping for the first time that morning.
“It’s a character flaw; one rather gets into the habit of playing Prince Valiant after awhile even when one finds the role tiresome. Now you’d best go, time’s a-wasting.”
Casey started for the road, then turned, walked back, and put his hand out. “Thank ye,” he looked directly into Jamie’s eyes, “for everything.”
“You won her fair and square Casey; you don’t owe me thanks for that. She chose you.”
Casey nodded. “Aye, she chose me, but only after you let her go. I think I’ve some small idea what that cost ye.”
“Do you?” Jamie asked lightly, but his smile was more strained than it had been only a moment before.
“I do,” Casey said, “an’ I am thankful to ye for it.”
“Then take better care of yourself, would you? In case,” Jamie spoke softly but there was a steely thread ribboning under his words, “I’m not there to pick up the pieces next time.”
“Aye, I’ll try,” Casey said turning and walking toward the rising day. He hesitated on the edge of the circle of trees and looked back, but Jamie was gone, disappearing into the mist like the prince of a long forgotten fairytale.
Nevertheless, Casey whispered the last words he’d not said, “Aye man, I do know, for I love her too.”
INISHMORE, NORTHERNMOST OF THE ARAN ISLANDS, was by nightfall shrouded in the thick pea soup of Atlantic fog. But the little fishing boat knew every rock and crevice of her coastline and put to without incident in a sheltered cove.
Casey stood blind on the rocky shore, feeling a steep fall of rock above him and the icy breath of the Atlantic directly behind him. Between the devil and the deep blue sea, he thought, shouldering his bag purposefully, he’d take the devil every time. He began the treacherous climb up the rocky slope that he could only just make out in the heavy darkness.
Twenty minutes later he stood upon the barren sweeping plateau that was Inishmore. Two hours out of Galway Bay was a land beyond the point of memory, a land of stone and silence. Of wind and rock and the cry of birds caught forever between sky and sea.
Casey shivered. Even blinded by dark the island felt indescribably ancient, a land where the stone gods still ruled from their violent perch. The man on the boat had said to go directly up the cliff and he couldn’t miss the cottage. Certain enough, ahead of him was a tiny flickering light, disappearing in and out of his wind-whipped vision. He walked quickly over the low rock walls that fragmented the land again and again into tiny plots, across a landscape as tree shorn as the moon, towards a dubious and fragile sanctuary.
He came round the back of the blasted stone walls, glowing dimly with whitewash, and in the salt-lashed air he tasted the faint tang of peat smoke. Someone had left a fire burning and he hugged his arms tight in the anticipation of the warmth and his first decent sleep in months.
The door was open, its black latch freshly oiled. He pushed it and went in. Low ceilinged and thick-walled, the cottage was snug, holding off the wind and rain. The roof was thatched with reeds set in wire, done in the traditional manner, but replaced recently. Small, thick-paned windows distorted his reflection and threw it back at him. There were two rooms, the larger one for both cooking and company, and the smaller for sleeping. A double bed, piled high with thick quilts took up most of the space in the smaller. He slid his bag off his shoulder and sat down on the bed with relief, feeling the incredible luxury of a thick mattress beneath him. He was suddenly overwhelmed with exhaustion and decided to worry about food in the morning. There’d been a good load of coal in the corner, he’d bank up the fire and it would keep the place snug until dawn.
He went back into the other room, knelt down on the floor, and smoored the fire securely, leaving enough space for the air to feed the flames. It threw a terrific heat and he considered just laying down beside it and passing out when a sudden gust of air pulled a ribbon of flame from the slumbering coals.
He turned quickly, hand automatically reaching for the nearest weapon even as he sprang upright. His right arm was raised, iron poker in hand, ready, poised to strike and then just as swiftly dropped as he saw who stood, framed by night, in the doorway.
“Jewel,” he said hoarsely, in disbelief, in welcome, in uncertainty.
The door stayed open but she didn’t move, her face beaded with rain, her hair wild with wind and water. A single glance told him she’d been out wandering the crumbling limestone cliffs with her usual disregard for safety and he wanted to shake her for it, even as he fought the urge to crawl across the floor on his knees to her.
�
�I—I didn’t expect you for a few more days,” she said, a vicious gust of wind blowing her hair about her face in a cloud of wet curls and pushing fretfully at her clothes.
Casey walked over, reached around her, and shut the door. “I didn’t know ye were goin’ to be here at all,” he said quietly. Of its own accord, his hand reached out automatically to help her with her wet things, and then hesitated. Would she welcome his touch? He didn’t, at present, think he could bear it if she flinched.
“It’s alright,” she said in a low voice, “you can touch me, I won’t break.”
“I might,” Casey replied, feeling lightheaded and giddy suddenly, as if he were made of something clear and translucent that would shatter with the slightest breath or touch.
“You’d better sit down,” she said, tone brisk as she stepped away from him and retrieved a rough wooden chair.
He sat and watched as she removed her coat, hung it on a peg behind the door beside his own and then, stepping back outside the door, filled the kettle from a pump in the front yard. She brought the kettle in and hung it on the cast-iron hook that was mortared over the fire.
“You need to eat,” she said firmly, and began taking things down from the tiny cupboards— cup, plate, scones, cream, jam, sugar, milk, whisking back and forth from the table in a flurry of wet hair and damp clothing.
“How’s the laddie?” he asked, swallowing over the hard lump that was forming up high in his throat.
“He’s fine, he’s with Jamie for now.”
Casey nodded, the awkwardness between the two of them so palpable that it seemed an entity of its own in the room.
“I’ve got stew in the cold cupboard out back,” she said, making once more for the door.
“Don’t,” he shook his head, “the scones will do, I only need a bite, I’m damn near too tired to chew.”
“I’m sorry.” She stood nervously by the door, looking like she wanted no more than to flee back into the night. “I should have thought. Do you just want to get to bed then?”
Casey smiled wryly. “Aye, I’d like nothin’ better, but I don’t want to go alone, an’ I think yer not ready even to lie beside me, much less anything else.”
She looked down, away from him, her hands nervously twisting a tea towel between them.
“Darlin’ can ye not even look at me? I’ve spent months imaginin’ this moment an’ now I can’t even get ye to look me in the eye.”
She glanced up quickly and he caught a quicksilver glitter of tears before she dashed them away with her hand.
“Ye cut yer hair off,” he said softly.
“I had to. We used Jamie’s secretary as a decoy and her hair only comes to her shoulders, so mine had to go.”
“It looks well on ye,” he said, for it did. Released from its weight it curled untamed up around her face, lending the glass bones and green eyes a wild beauty. He noticed other things, though he didn’t mention them. She was too thin; her skin lay tight against her frame and she seemed older, not so much the girl he’d lost his mind over in another time and place, but the woman their life together and apart had made of her. ‘These things—you did,’ a little voice said accusingly in his head and yet still his body, every bone and cell and pulse of it, longed to touch her, to tumble her soft into the bed and tell her anything, any lie, no matter the cost, that would make her able to meet his eyes with faith again.
Small things impressed themselves upon his consciousness, the beginning rumble of the water boiling in the kettle, the lick and hiss of flames, the rosy bronze light that flickered and roiled about the room. The flecked Wedgwood blue of the cupboards, the pearled knobs of her wrist bones with the tiny blue veins shadowing them, the arcing line of her lashes held over the disillusion she did not want him to see. It seemed to him in the silence that he could smell the soul of her, the salt of all the tears, hot and dammed, that she held back for the both of them.
“I’m drownin’ here, darlin’,” he said, voice trembling, “an’ I need ye to throw me a rope.”
There was a long silence, terrible in its weight, that spread itself between them like a cloud of fine and cloying sand. Casey didn’t even dare to breathe for fear he’d choke on it.
One step, and then another, her hand extended, red-gold in the shifting light and then the words of salvation.
“Let me take you home, Casey.”
In the bed they had to relearn each other, gestures once familiar now made awkward by the anger and pain that insinuated itself between them even here, where words had no dominion. Limbs tangled and parted, breath came hard with frustration, bone met bone and found resistance.
Casey, poised at the brink of renewing their physical bond, stopped, resting his forehead against her own, feeling the tension under her skin as though the two of them were connected by fine and invisible wire.
“Let me in darlin’, let me in so that I may go with ye.”
Under him she took a small breath, a sound of struggle, of air drawn through tears.
“I’m trying,” she said and he heard, with relief, the sound of anger in her voice.
“Be angry at me, rage if ye need to, but take me with ye,” he said, and moved against her in question and felt her body rise in demand.
Her hands held his shoulders, nails digging into the soft skin. “For God’s sake, Casey, just do it.”
He moved his head, caught her face between his two hands, and held her eyes in the frail, flickering light with the force of his own, her ribcage heaving with frustration beneath him. “Ye promised me once,” he said roughly, “that ye’d always take me with ye. I’m holdin’ye to it, just let me feel ye, Jewel, let me breathe one breath with ye. I want to feel all of ye—heart, mind, soul. It’ll not be right any other way.”
“You bastard,” she said furiously, “why does it have to be all or nothing?”
“A starvin’ man can’t settle for half a loaf, it’ll only take the edge off the ache in his belly. Ye said ye’d bring me home, darlin’, don’t leave me standin’ outside a locked door.”
Her eyes met his, shimmering with tears, and he saw there in the cut-glass depths, not anger but fear, and further down emotion so boundless that he understood again that love held no earthly parameters.
“Then come home,” she said, as much in challenge as invitation.
And home he went with heart, mind, soul, and body and in rediscovering her, found himself as well. Broken down in the strong places, mortared in the weak, made whole in the fires of love.
“YOU’RE TERRIBLY THIN,” SHE SAID QUIETLY, one hand gliding down his ribcage with careful fingers.
“Aye well,” he yawned extravagantly, “my dietary requirements were not high on the list of the British army’s priorities.”
He lay full length on his stomach, quilts thrown back to his waist, the grooves of his back a faint, quivering silver. One large hand rested gently on the side of her face, his thumb trailing soft as a moth’s wing along her jaw.
“I could stay here forever,” he said, eyes heavy-lidded, with only the soft glow of borrowed firelight reflected in his irises, to let her know he watched her.
“We’ve time,” she said, “and I intend to feed you at every opportunity, make love to you after breakfast, lunch and dinner and watch you sleep the rest of the time, and somewhere in there give you a good hot bath.”
“An’ will ye peel my grapes before I eat them as well? I’ll be after thinkin’ I’m one of them sultans, be purely debauched by week’s end.”
“You look as though you could use a little debauchery,” she said lightly, but her face was taut with worry.
“Yer lookin’ a little frayed around the edges yerself,” he said softly, “an’ even at that ye still take the breath from me, just to look at ye so.”
“I was so afraid,” she whispered quietly, “that they would kill you.”
“Well they didn’t,” he said, then added dryly, “though it wasn’t through lack of tryin’.”
“
There were terrible rumors floating through the neighborhood, things the men who’d been released were saying. About the torture—” she let go a shaky breath and with it the flood of tears he’d sensed in her.
He gathered her close, offering the comfort of his body, warm and sound against the darkness of her fear, his tongue making soft, soothing noises, his hands stroking her body as she shook uncontrollably in his arms.
She subsided slowly, her grief and anger bleeding down to snuffles and hiccoughs. “Y—you can t—tell me what happened,” she said, “it might help to t—talk about it.”
“Hush darlin’, it’ll keep for another day,” he said gently, “tonight I just want to hold ye, an’ sleep knowin’ yer there in the dark.” He rested his cheek in her hair, smelling salt and wind and water trapped within its silken skeins. His wild Irish girl.
“I was so lonely,” she said, voice the slightest bit bleary with exhaustion, “I’d wake in the middle of the night and there was no one to tell my dreams to, no one to chase my nightmares away.”
He stroked her hair back from her face and kissed her softly on the forehead. “Sleep now, darlin’, an’ I’ll keep watch over yer dreams. I’ll chase yer demons away. When ye are lost an’ afraid in the dark, take my hand an’ I will lead ye home.”
He watched her then as she fell slowly toward sleep, face flushed, eyelashes still glittering with tears, felt her breath come deeper and slower, as if she breathed in tune with some far greater force that lay beyond the night and the sea and the stars. Then felt himself begin his own slow, heavy tumble toward deep and anonymous sleep. And wished for a moment, before the darkness, vast and silent, claimed him, that he knew how to chase his own demons away.
Chapter Fifty-eight
The Morning After
IN THE MORNING THE COTTAGE was shrouded in a thick gauze of fog. Casey, walking out for a load of coal, couldn’t see beyond the doorstep and had to feel his way along the whitewashed stone to the coal shed and creep back in the same manner.
Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2) Page 67