Laura Kinsale

by Uncertain Magic

  His mouth and his weight pressed the air from her lungs. She shifted, struggling, but he slid his bare palm down her shoulder and trapped her beneath him. “Don’t fight me,” he said, his breath harsh against her skin. “You’ll never win.”

  She met his eyes and saw the inevitable. He meant to take her now in cold anger, with nothing of affection or laughter between them. As he had destroyed her music box, he wanted now to destroy the pleasure he had given her, to shatter those precious memories with something else.

  Her lips parted in dismay. She did not want him, not like this, and yet her body responded, arching upward when he circled her nipple and caressed it with his thumb. He made her feel him, every inch of him, pushed her legs apart and lowered himself between them, pressing her bare buttocks into the silken rug. A sound escaped her, a small moan, half protest, half desire, as he forced her hips to move against his in seductive rhythm.

  He lifted his head at the sound. His palm slid over her breast, coaxing another panting whimper, while his smile and his eyes taunted her for her weakness. “You’re mine after all, aren’t you? I can hold you with this.”

  Roddy could have wept for the derision in his words, but instead she only proved them by tilting her head back and offering herself for more.

  He moved aside suddenly, taking the cloak with him, so that it slipped from her leg and her naked thigh shone pale against the black cloth. His gloved hand brushed down her skin, a dark shadow on silver. Before she could gather her wits, he lifted himself and knelt over her, his hands sliding beneath her hips. His tongue traced the path that his fingers had discovered, and Roddy lost the last thread of reality.

  He squeezed her buttocks and pressed her upward under his mouth, while her body seemed to turn to water, to flow and burn and writhe. Her breath was gone, and all her strength; she could not help the way her throat contracted, making little gasping whimpers. His tongue reached inside her, and her hands clawed at his shoulders. A cry began in her chest, that familiar long moan that expanded into sound like the blossoming explosion in her body.

  She hated her weakness, and wanted more. She wanted him: in her, around her, rising with her as she strained and ached for the thing he had set to spark. He lifted her, his tongue penetrating deep, and like a flash of powder the spark erupted. Her body convulsed. She cried out and reached for him in blindness and need.

  “Open your eyes.” He caught her hand at the wrist with a wrench that made her obey on the instant. “Look at me,” he said fiercely. “Do you pretend I’m your precious Geoffrey when I touch you? Look at me, cailin sidhe, and call me by name.” His mouth hardened in bitter irony. “There’s power in a name, little girl, and I’ve given you mine.”

  She gulped air and stared up at him as he loomed over her. Like a cornered animal, she knew that she was lost if she looked away now. He would take that as proof, as fuel for his fury: that she thought of another when she writhed with passion in her husband’s arms.

  With his demonically beautiful face so close above hers, she half feared for her life if she faltered.

  Colleen, he had called her. She knew that simple Irish word. But the other, she remembered, meant something else entirely.

  Dark and light. Magic. Sidhe.

  “Faelan,” she whispered, holding his gaze with desperate steadiness. She raised a trembling hand and touched his cheek. “Faelan. ’Tis you I want. None other.”

  His fingers loosened on her wrist. A change came in his darkened face, a slow focus, as if her words had been spoken in some half-known foreign language.

  She watched her spell work, watched the anger waver in his eyes, and found her small magic a two-edged sword. For another phrase swelled into her throat, something with a power of its own to make her tongue move. “I love you,” she said, and could have killed herself for that mistake.

  She turned her face away, as if that might somehow blunt the words. They were folly, those words. Spoken to a man who might not even exist, who might be nothing but an actor’s well-played part.

  “You love me, do you?” He caught her cheek and turned her. The savagery had faded from his hard features, but his eyes were still as light and cold as winter frost. “Little girl,” he mocked. “You love this—” He moved his hand between her thighs, and Roddy drew in her breath. “You love the devil’s touch, cailin sidhe. Not the devil.”

  She could not say that he was wrong. She could not even think when he stroked her like that.

  “Save your affection for those children you want so much,” he recommended, moving away abruptly. “I have my talents, but you’re a fool to think the way I make you feel has aught to do with love.”

  She had said the same thing to herself, over and over, but the self-scorn in his voice gave the words a sudden new meaning. He sat up, yanking at the lacing on the cloak, and tossed it across her as he turned away.

  She pulled the scratchy softness up over her shoulder. Its smell made her think of the winter pastures at home again, and when her hand came away a tiny clod of earth fell from the folds. She turned on her elbow, frowning, and picked up the fragment. It dissolved into dust between her fingers.

  Faelan was staring into the fire. Roddy lifted her hand and sniffed at the lingering traces of soil. “Faelan—” she asked softly, “where have you been?”

  He gave a short, harsh laugh. “Breaking ground in a damned frozen field,” he said without turning. “Would you believe that?”

  As if to emphasize the absurdity of his claim, the far-off voice of the watch cried four past midnight. Faelan slanted a look toward her, with a faint lift of dry humor at the corner of his mouth. “The field was in Bedfordshire.”

  Roddy blinked. It had taken them nigh on a full day’s driving to reach London from Bedford on the trip from York. “Why?” she breathed.

  “Because,” he said, with that self-mocking sneer, “I felt the need to break something. Soil comes much cheaper than music boxes, my dear.” He paused, and then looked back at the fire. “I’ll buy you another.”

  Roddy blinked, and realized suddenly that she had just gotten the best apology over the destruction of his gift she was likely to get. After a moment, she asked carefully, “You have a friend in Bedfordshire?”

  “Several.”

  “But that’s who you were visiting so long—a friend in Bedfordshire?”

  He massaged the back of his neck. “If you’d call opening five acres with a plow and a pickax visiting.” He threw her a challenging look. “And where did you think I’d gone?”

  “To Mrs. Northfield.”

  For a long moment, he just looked at Roddy, and then he said, “You’re remarkably acute, little girl.”

  She glanced down and shrugged.

  “Who told you of Liza Northfield?”

  “No one. I guessed.”

  She found her chin jerked up by a firm hand. “You guessed! And gave me permission to keep her? For God’s sake, you stupid, brainless chit—was that what you were about?”

  She pulled away from him. “Don’t call me that.”

  Her escape was halted by his hard grip on her bare shoulders. “Tell me the truth. How did you find out?”

  “You sent her a note.” She hadn’t meant for him to hear the accusation in her voice, but it came out clearly.

  “It’s customary,” he said in a cold tone, “when terminating an arrangement.” He shoved her away. “But you wouldn’t know that, would you? I doubt you’ve sent one to Cashel.”

  At that, Roddy lost her last shred of patience. He had led her on and left her alone and made love to her and frightened her to death, and now he had ruined what gladness she might have felt over Liza’s dismissal with a shaft that was worthy of a sullen schoolboy.

  Roddy scrambled up, clutching the cloak to her breasts. “Perhaps I’m a brainless chit,” she cried, “but you’re a—a—” Words failed her in her fury. “A muttonhead!” she spat, for want of a better epithet. “I’m not half so childish as you and your vile temper
and your absurd jealousy and your damnable pride! Geoffrey is my friend. He’s not my lover. Have you forgotten that I was a virgin on our wedding night? Have you forgotten that? My God, I never even knew how to kiss before you happened along! I was a virgin, a nice, proper, innocent, stupid little virgin who was just naive enough to think she’d fallen in love with her own husband! And if you have a heart any bigger than a—than a—” She struggled for a suitably vile comparison. “—a piece of pea gravel, then by God you’d better say so right now, because I’m going back home tomorrow!”

  She shut her mouth then, because her lower lip was quivering alarmingly, and stood glaring down at him with her hair tumbling free and the cloak dragging folds on the floor at her feet.

  After a long moment of silence, he drew one knee up and leaned on it. “No,” he said softly, “you’re not.”

  Roddy stiffened. The words were even, unemotional, but there was a new gleam in his eyes as he surveyed her. “You’re laughing at me,” she wailed.

  He raised his eyebrows in perfect innocence.

  “Damn you,” Roddy shouted. “It isn’t funny.” She pulled the cloak around her shoulders and started for the door, too angry to avoid the obvious trap. His arm swept out as she passed, his fingers tangling in the cloak and catching one bare ankle. Roddy stumbled and stopped. “Kindly unhand me,” she said, in her best haughty tone, which was somewhat strained by the necessity to make little hops on her free foot to keep her balance.

  He tugged lightly on her ankle. “Come here. Your muttonheaded husband wants his cape back.”

  “Cretin,” she said scathingly. “Numbskull. Lackbrain. Clodpole. Let go of my foot.”

  He did not. He only looked at her with that quiver around the corners of his mouth.

  “Bastard,” she hissed, which took care of the quiver. His blue eyes narrowed.

  “Goose,” he said, and gave a hard pull which brought her toppling down in a tangle of cloak and legs. Before her shriek had died away, he had pinned her beneath him on the floor. “Greenhorn,” he said, very close to her face. “Has no one ever told you not to call a spade a spade when he’s got hold of your foot?”

  She pressed her lips together in frustration, but Faelan ignored her wriggling attempts to escape. Instead he cradled her face between his hands and ran his thumbs over her cheekbones. “Roddy,” he said. “Listen to me. Listen to me now, for I’ll only say this once, my love.” He waited, watching her until she had stilled, and then bent to brush her mouth with his lips. “You weren’t a virgin on our wedding night,” he said softly.

  She froze. “What?”

  Instead of accusation, there was apology in his voice. “Not that I could tell.” He kissed her again, his mouth moving gently on her parted lips. “Forgive me, little love,” he whispered. “I’m a bastard indeed, for doubting you.”

  Roddy stared up at him and drew in a savage breath. “You…are…impossible!” she said between her teeth.

  “No,” he murmured, exploring the corner of her mouth and cheek with light kisses.

  She tried to push him away. “Get off me.”

  He said, “No,” again, this time to her temple and her hair.

  She threw her head back. “I shall go stark, staring mad,” she groaned.

  “Then we’ll be a pair.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, thinking in despair that if he changed again so swiftly she would be fit for Bedlam. “We’ll be a pair.”

  He pulled the cloak around her and took her with him as he rolled onto his back. With his hands on her shoulders, he held her above him. “Make love to me,” he commanded, and then arched his head back and moved against her hips. “Please.”

  Roddy closed her eyes. That one word was magic. Please. It made her want to hold him and hug him and melt into wax. It did not even matter that he still wore his boots and his traveling clothes while the dark warmth beckoned and flamed through her limbs. She worked just enough buttons to reach him, and shivered to his groan of pleasure as she sank down on his waiting hardness.

  The way his exposed throat tightened and his eyes slid closed in response sent a surge of excitement through her. She leaned over, spreading her fingers across his chest, gathering fine linen into her fists. She feathered kisses down the line of his jaw, running her tongue over the faint, scratchy stubble and then the soft skin beneath his ear. He turned his head, giving her access, and raised his bare hand to cup her breast. When he ran his thumb over the sensitive tip, her whole body tautened around him.

  “Ah…God—Roddy.” His voice was hoarse. He gripped her waist, holding her down as he rose within her. Roddy welcomed him, reveling in the way her slightest flexing sent pleasure or agony or something like both chasing across his fire-lit features. Between her thighs, the soft doeskin breeches radiated his heat as if it were his own skin she touched. She held his face between her hands and kissed him the way that he did her: hard and deep and fierce, as if she could reach his hot center and drink the fire.

  He moved strongly beneath her. His hands slid down and grasped her buttocks. He tore his mouth away and drove upward, breathing hard, pulling her down again and again to meet him. When Roddy spread her legs to accept him more fully, he groaned her name, twice and then three times, as if he were dying and she could save him.

  She arched her back and leaned over, basking in her power to bring him to this. Her mouth curved into a wicked smile.

  “Not Roddy,” she whispered. “Cailin sidhe.”

  He answered, a shuddering moan that turned into a cry as his fingers dug into her skin and his body stiffened and burst into hers. His harsh sound of ecstasy filled the room, mocking the French tables and gilded chairs: a wild primitive music in the civilized hall.

  Roddy rested on his chest, feeling the dampness of sweat through his linen shirt. The sound of his heart and his ragged breath were all she could hear as she lay against him. Without raising her head, she reached up and traced his jaw, following the firm curve of it blind, down to his chin and up across his lips.

  He kissed her fingers, his breath warm and heavy on her skin. She smiled ruefully into the darkness.

  Fit for Bedlam.

  Or wherever else he might care to lead her.

  Chapter 9

  From somewhere, Minshall had found flowers. Red anemones, purple-veined tulips, and white narcissi, forced in some nurseryman’s succession houses, lay scattered over papers on a polished table in the blue withdrawing room. Roddy placed another tulip in the tall Florentine vase she was filling, and watched with resignation as the flower drooped awkwardly and then fell out of the vase, taking two anemones along.

  She wasn’t very good at flowers.

  Unfortunately, though Minshall had brought her the floral offering with a gloomy face, underneath his surface expression had been every expectation of pleasure and praise. Roddy hadn’t had the heart to suggest that any maid in the house could do a better job of arranging. She picked up a spray of narcissus and gave it a dubious frown.

  “Lovely,” came Faelan’s low voice from the open doorway.

  Roddy half turned, and smiled at him over her shoulder. “You’re too gallant, sir,” she said. She glanced back at the sagging cluster in the half-filled vase. “Or you have a good imagination.”

  His boots made no noise on the carpet as he came toward her. He caught her shoulders and pulled her back against his chest, twisting her chin up for a hard, lingering kiss. “I have an excellent imagination, cailin sidhe,” he murmured, sliding his hands down from her waist to her hips. “My memory isn’t wanting, either.”

  The forgotten narcissus dangled and fell from fingers that grew too weak to hold its weight. Roddy leaned against him, feeling his shape all down her spine and along her thighs. It was as well, she thought hazily, that she knew all the servants were busy at distant tasks. When he touched her like this, all sense of shame and decency vanished.

  It was then, while he caressed her bare shoulder with his lips and molded her body to his, th
at she felt the intrusion.

  The mental touch was peculiar. Unfamiliar. She tensed, and in another moment Faelan had realized her resistance. His head came up in question just as the unmistakable sounds of arrival filled the courtyard outside.

  His blue eyes narrowed beneath their thick brush of lashes. He bent and kissed her earlobe. “Later,” he whispered. “Later.”

  He was standing behind her with one hand on her arm—the always-possessive touch—when the front doors thundered open. The sound of a feminine voice echoed through the hallway and into the drawing room.

  Faelan let go of Roddy.

  “Faelan, my love!” the woman cried, sweeping into the room with a footman in her wake. “You can’t guess where I’ve been these two months! And who is this child? Ah, I do despise this miserable house.” She let the servant take her rich cloak without a break in her flow of words. “The drafts, I declare, nothing could be worse. With the exception of Iveragh, of course. Nothing could be worse than Iveragh. I have been to the Lakes, my dearest boy. Who did you say this young person was?” Her vivid blue eyes rested for a split second on Roddy and then passed over. “Ah, Keswick—you would adore it! I have bought a house, the most precious cottage; you must pack and return with me on the instant. Your Uncle Adam insists. Of course, I knew he would; he dotes on you, Faelan dear…”

  The stream of words flowed on without a pause. Roddy stood, nonplussed, staring at this slender, olive-skinned matron with shadowed eyes as blue as Faelan’s. Her movements were quick and jerky as she pulled off her gloves and moved about the room, examining each table and chair, picking up figurines and turning them over in her hands as she talked without ceasing. The words obscured her thoughts from Roddy, obscured even her identity. In her restless circuit of the room she came to where Faelan stood and raised her hand to be kissed. There was a momentary pause in her monologue, and he bowed over her fingers.