Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series Book 2)

by Cindy Brandner

  Come over the hills to your darlin’

  You choose the rose love

  And I’ll make the vow

  And I’ll be your true love forever.

  Red is the rose that in your garden grows

  Fair is the lily of the valley

  Clear is the water that flows from the Boyne

  And my love is fairer than any...’

  Beneath the words the fiddle played lightly with heartstrings, Robin knowing well enough to let Casey’s voice do its job.

  She knew heads were turning her way, but couldn’t see clearly through the tears that clouded her vision. Damn the man, he always knew how to get round her. She knew, though, despite the fact that he was very aware the song would soften her up, he also meant every word he sang, for such was the nature of his emotion. He stood, beginning the second verse, voice stronger, filled with longing, eyes burning a corridor direct between them.

  ‘Twas down by Killarney’s green woods that we strayed

  The moon and the stars they were shining

  The moon shone its rays on her locks of raven hair

  And she swore she’d be my love forever...’

  He began to move toward her, people melting away before the force of his voice and emotion. She could feel, as a physical entity, the pull of his need through the heat and smoke that wavered between them. She dashed away her tears with an impatient hand. Damn him for doing this in front of an entire roomful of strangers. His body could call her own without words and she knew the chemistry between them was palpable in the air, that people could see it, feel it. It was like being naked and on view for them all, and her body flushed beyond its already elevated temperature. The fine hair on her skin rose as though it too sensed his approach. She met his eyes for one moment and shook her head before fleeing the reach of that gaze and the penetration of his voice.

  ‘It’s all for the love of my bonnie Irish lass

  That my heart is breaking forever...’

  Behind her, she could hear the end of the song, Casey’s throat washing the words with heartache and unassailable grief. Fucking bastard, she thought furiously, emotional blackmailer with his silver-tongued Hibernian charm. Well she wasn’t so much fool as he was betting on! Yet the thought of him standing there in that crush of people, still singing, heart on display for all who cared to look, wrenched her as little else could have done.

  ‘Clear is the water that flows from the Boyne

  And my love is fairer than any

  My love is fairer than any...’

  The last words slid in her ear like liquid gold, pure and designed to rend down the hardest of hearts. She moved faster, elbowing a few oblivious drunks out of the way. She heard the fiddle start as she trod on someone’s stout boot and made it out the door. Casey had left Robin on his own, and was likely hard on her heels. She started to run, determined to get to the car and take swift leave before Casey found her and convinced her to do otherwise.

  However, when she reached the grass verge where she’d parked the Citroen, it was to find it firmly clinched between two Cortinas. She glared at the cars, fore and aft, as if the sheer force of her frustration would cause them to move. It didn’t, so she kicked the front tire of the aft one, adding a few filthy epithets for good measure.

  “Ye can curse at it ‘til yer blue in the face, darlin’, an’ it’ll not be encouraged to move. Yer stuck here for the present time, so ye’ll have to talk to me, like it or no.”

  “Go away,” she muttered tersely, seeing the approach of his reflection in the car window, skin prickling happily at the sound of his voice.

  He sighed deeply, a thoroughly taxed and Irish sigh. “How long do ye plan to keep runnin’ away from me? I think I can manage a few more minutes of this but not much past that.”

  “Me?” she swung about, filled with indignation, determined not to give him the satisfaction of seeing how badly he’d gotten to her in the pub. “You’re the one who’s not bloody well seen fit to come home for the last week.”

  “After ye told me ye’d gut me like a pig on the telephone, did I so much as darken the door again, I thought it wisest to give ye yer space.” He snorted. “Or are ye sayin’ one thing an’ meanin’ another, like always?”

  “You bastard,” she stamped a foot in frustration, “How dare you try to make this my fault!”

  He advanced, glowering darkly, she retreated only to find her back up hard against the Cortina. “Oh I see how it is then, ye order me out of our home, tell me ye’d rather consort with a snake than have me ever touch ye again and,” he put a hand on either side of her, “then ye have the locks changed just to be certain I’ve gotten the point, but it’s my fault I can’t find my way into the house? I’ve half a mind to turn ye over my knee and give ye a tannin’ for what ye’ve put me through.” His mouth was so close to her ear that it stirred the curls she’d tucked behind it. Contrary to his words, he didn’t sound the least bit angry.

  She was drowning in his proximity, breathing in the heat that came off him in waves. Half fury, half lust, with a pinch of whiskey added in for good measure.

  “Why’d you sing to me in there, then?” she asked, clenching her hands tightly in an effort not to touch him.

  “Well,” he said, lips brushing the sensitive rim of her ear, “I’ve heard as women are notoriously weak-willed concernin’ musicians,” he moved, effectively pinning her against the car, where she could have no doubt of his intention.

  “Have you?” she said, then uttered a small yelp as he playfully bit her neck. The bastard knew every weak point on her body and was not above using his knowledge to sure advantage.

  “Come into the grass with me, Jewel,” he murmured in her ear, hands pulling her away from the car and toward the open field that skirted the car park on its south end.

  “Are you drunk?” she hissed, casting a glance about her.

  “Aye, drunk with need,” he replied, pulling her with more determination now.

  “Casey Riordan, you madman, we can’t just be committing acts of passion in a public field.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Why ever not? There’s not a soul about, an’ no one’s likely to emerge from there,” he nodded toward the pub, “for a good while.”

  “Because I—we—it’s not respectable,” she finished, flustered by the feel of his thumb on the sensitive skin behind her ear. Aware that while walking her backwards into the field he’d managed to undo a fair few of her buttons.

  “Respectable? Do ye hear yerself, woman? Take it back,” he said, giving her a mock stern look, “or I’ll bite ye some place ye don’t enjoy.” And proceeded to bite her somewhere she did enjoy. “Ach, woman, where’s a haystack when ye need one?” They were some distance into the field now, but the noise and light from the pub were still clearly discernible. He looked about with an aggrieved air, as if indeed a haystack was very little to require of the universe.

  “Then where,” she said gasping with laughter as he bit her again in a particularly vulnerable spot, “do you propose to commit this act?”

  Casey smiled wickedly and hooked a neat leg around the back of her ankles, tipping her over one arm. “Did ye not hear the song in there, Jewel, about love lyin’ in the long grass? This grass looks as though it’s not been mowed in a good while.”

  “Casey Riordan, you’re not actually proposing to—mmphm—right here in this field, are you?”

  “If by mmphm yer inferrin’—do I mean to make love to my wife here amongst the buttercups an’ the piss-a-beds, then I’d have to say yes. As for proposin’,” he angled himself over her as he laid her gently down, the fragrance of dusty grass rising about them, “I don’t think I have. Ye must think I’ve terrible manners,” he said and having disposed of the buttons on her dress, proceeded, with a neat flick of thumb and forefinger, to vanquish the clasp on her bra.

  His teeth grazed her collarbone and she forgot that only a week before she’d vowed he would never touch her again. Forget all the v
ulnerabilities he was so well versed in, the man himself was her greatest weakness. From the minute she’d seen him tonight in the pub she’d been lost. And he knew it. Her body rose to the slightest touch, the smell of him raising the hairs on her skin. She’d tried to explain it away as simple chemistry but it was more, so much more than that, and she knew it.

  Tongue and teeth were at her breasts now and she was beyond herself, crying softly, scrabbling at his clothing, desperate to tear away any barriers between their respective skins.

  “I need you now, Jewel,” he said, voice hoarse, “I don’t think I can be slow about it.”

  “Then don’t be,” she said, reaching up to pull him down to her.

  She could smell the music’s sweat upon him, ale and tobacco, felt the pound of the drum inside of her and met it quickly, instinctively, with a rhythm that matched and melded to his. She grasped him tight, meeting his need with her own. She could feel the hurt and anger of the last weeks in his touch and in her response.

  “Say my name,” he whispered in her ear, “I need to hear ye say it.”

  She could feel the force of desire like a huge wave, the drowning inevitable, and cried his name on the crest of it, and again through the smaller aftershocks as she felt him tremble and shudder between her legs. He slowly lowered himself until their two foreheads rested together and she could feel the pulse of their blood beat in time.

  “Lord I’ve missed ye, woman,” he said softly.

  “Me too,” she whispered back against his mouth, their breath mingling, whiskey and water, strawberries and smoke. Skins slick with the humid night, hearts still thrumming hard in an echo of the drum’s feral beat. In moments like this, she could feel her heart break piece by tiny piece and fall away into his keeping yet again.

  As their blood calmed the outside world began to make itself felt. Snatches of song drifted from the direction of the pub, the grass sharp and prickling beneath her, the prod of a most unfortunately positioned rock. She released Casey reluctantly, feeling a keen sense of loss as his body left the shelter of her own.

  He rolled to the side, collapsing on his back into the grass with a happy sigh.

  “I needed ye so bad, Jewel, I thought every person in the pub must see it written on the air between us.”

  She winced. “I think they did, there was nothing subtle about what happened in there.”

  “Aye, we charge the atmosphere up now an’ again, don’t we? Sometimes I think I’m not goin’ to make it through without gettin’ burned up beyond recognition.”

  “I know,” she agreed ruefully. “I think I can stay mad at you, stay strong and then I see you, touch you, and I’m lost.”

  He pulled her over so she was half on his chest and brushed her hair gently back behind one ear. “It’s not such a bad way to be is it, darlin’? There’s a reason we’re so powerfully connected, it’s not just coincidence.”

  “I’ve given up trying to define it.”

  “You an’ I have always understood that there are things beyond words, can ye just accept that what we are to one another is one of those things? There are times I want to tell ye all that’s in my heart for you, but I know how naked an’ small it’d sound if I said it. An’ so I don’t, an’ maybe that’s wrong. But when I touch ye an’ it’s like bein’ inside a livin’ flame, I think ye must know all the words caught inside me.”

  “I do know, Casey,” she said softly, “it’s the same for me, after all.”

  “It’s hard for me to believe it at times, that ye could feel as I do. An’ yet here ye are, in my arms, proof of it.”

  She laid her head against his chest, tired but happy. The heavy weight in her own chest had ceased for the first time in weeks. Tonight had solved little, she knew, but for now being here, hearing him breathe and the steady thump of his heart beneath her ear, was enough.

  “Will ye have me, Pamela?” he asked, voice still husky with sated desire.

  She traced the whorls of his chest hair in a series of lazy eights. “I’d say it’s a little late for that question.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” he said, cupping her face in his palms. “I mean—will ye have me?”

  “Are you asking me to marry you again?”

  “Woman,” he brushed the pads of his thumbs across the ridge of bone beneath her eyes, “we’ve done most things arse-backwards, including you doin’ the proposin’ an’ me the acceptin’. Sometimes I wish we’d had more time, that I’d romanced ye proper an’ married ye in a church before God an’ several witnesses. That I’d come to ye on bended knee an’ asked ye to marry me. But as ye cannot step in the same river twice, I’ll do as I can an’ ask ye now. Will ye marry me?”

  “You bloody man,” she whispered through a throat thick with tears.

  He quirked an eyebrow at her. “A simple ‘yes’ would be preferred.”

  “You know I can’t survive without you,” she said, half-resentful of the truth contained in the simple statement.

  He looked directly in her eyes, his own dark and shadowed. “That’s not an answer, woman, an’ ye know it.”

  She closed her eyes and smelled their desire amongst the buttercups and dandelions. Her emotions felt as frail as the dry grass that sighed and bent against the will of the fitful breeze. She would not be able to bend his will, though, she knew it as surely as she knew she couldn’t stand another day of this separation.

  “Don’t ever frighten me like that again,” she said, teeth gritted, eyes still closed.

  “I wish I could promise ye that I won’t, but we’d both know it for a lie. Will ye just believe me when I say I didn’t mean to hurt ye, nor frighten ye?”

  “I’ll believe you,” she said, “but I’m a realist, Casey, I knew what coming back to this country would mean.”

  “I was a coward to let ye take me home,” he said, “I knew it—even as I was grateful I knew I shouldn’t let ye do it.”

  “We’d no choice,” she said, making an attempt to pull together the sundered halves of her dress. Casey stilled her hands. “Not yet, Jewel, I’d see ye so for another minute.” He ran the fingertips of one hand across her collarbone. “You are so beautiful, it’s a wonder to me, do ye know that?”

  She nodded, not trusting her throat to actual speech.

  He sighed, taking a moment to re-collect the threads of their conversation. “It may be that Boston was the wrong place for me, or it may be that I made it wrong. Still, there were places to go other than Ireland.”

  She shook her head, “No, there weren’t, Casey, and you know it. You were dying in Boston.”

  “I don’t half understand it, I need you as much as I need this country, an’ yet I can’t seem to make the two things work together. Ye scare the hell out of me with yer work, an’ yet I understand why ye feel the need to do it regardless. I know the force of such a belief myself. Still,” he smiled wearily, “it doesn’t make the worry any easier to bear, does it?”

  “No,” she agreed, “it doesn’t. Half the time you walk out the door, I’m afraid I’ll never see you come back through it.”

  “Ye still haven’t answered my question.”

  “Casey,” she put her hands to his face, feeling the rasp of his whiskers and the tension that lay beneath his skin. “I’ve been married to you from the minute I first saw you, it just took me a few months to realize it. We don’t need another ceremony to confirm it. I’ll always be married to you. When I said for better or for worse I meant it.”

  “Aye, well, I didn’t mean for it to be so much of the worse,” he replied, sounding quite tired suddenly.

  They were quiet for a moment letting the night wash over them to the strains of Robin’s fiddle, which was frolicking through the final lines of I’m a Rover. Above them, a light summer wind set the leaves to whispering, a soft, soughing noise that seemed made of equal parts yearning and regret.

  “It’s not been,” she said quietly, “the worse I mean. I wouldn’t change it—anything—not if it meant somethi
ng less between the two of us.”

  In answer, he brought the palm of her hand to his face, then folded the fingers under his own, holding her knuckles tightly to his lips. She could feel the disquiet of emotion, the words dammed in his throat.

  “Lord, woman,” he breathed out at last, “ye do break my heart.”

  The pub was rocking on its foundations now to the tune of A Nation Once Again. Even at the distance, they could hear the pounding of fists as they hit the bar or any other handy surface at the end of each line.

  “There’ll be fightin’ soon,” Casey sighed, “Bobbie knows that one doesn’t mix well with the drink.”

  “He’ll get what he wants from it, though,” she said quietly.

  “An’ what would that be, darlin’? A bunch of wet-behind-the-ears fools who won’t remember that they joined up the ‘Ra come mornin’. Some black eyes and split lips to puzzle over is all it will amount to.”

  “Has it been this way every night?”

  He nodded. “Aye, he’s been stirrin’ the pot, don’t know what he’s after. I’ve seen money an’ information passin’ about, but I don’t ask an’ he don’t tell.”

  From the pub they could hear Robin’s hoarse shout of ‘sing with me, people, sing.’ The people, with eight hundred years of rage and grief stirred in their chests, did so. She wanted to shut the voices out, knew the fire that fuelled their words burned too hotly in her own husband. Knew that the man who plays with fire, or even lingers too long near it, always gets burned. The woman, too. Love, no matter how consuming or fulfilling, could not change that fact. And so she turned her mind to things she did have some control over.

  “You’re too thin,” she said, running her hands down his ribs. “Have you been eating at all?”

  “Lawrence is a worse cook than you, if ye can believe it,” he said with the air of a man whose digestive tract has become adjusted, if not entirely reconciled, to its martyrdom.

  He ducked as she aimed a cuff at his left ear. She settled for giving him a narrowed eye as she did up the last buttons on the hopelessly crushed dress, which now sported several telltale grass-stains.

  “What about the fight we had, the things we said, the secret you believe I’m keeping.” The words almost choked her, saying them went against every instinct she had, but she knew, nevertheless, that they must be said.