Laura Kinsale

by Uncertain Magic

  “No. I came to tell you—he doesn’t know you’re here, and he isn’t going to find out.”

  “What?” The annoyance changed to exasperation. He caught her arm and shook her. “Roddy, believe me, this is no game. I’ve got to have his help—”

  “No!” She steadied herself against him in the dark. “I saw you this morning. You were there, when Willis accused Faelan. He can’t take that risk, helping you. You have to stay away from him.”

  His hand tightened around her upper arm. “But you haven’t told him I’m here? Roddy, you must. Aye, there’s some risk, but I know Faelan. He won’t think anything of that.”

  “Of course he won’t,” Roddy snapped. “That’s why I want you away from here.”

  “But, Roddy—”

  She shoved at him, angry and desperate. It was not so much that Geoffrey cared nothing for his friend’s welfare; it was rather that he had an unshakable faith in Faelan’s ability to handle any scrape. As if Faelan were somehow above human weakness, unable to make a mistake that might kill him.

  “Geoffrey,” she said between her teeth. “If you go near my husband, I will turn you in myself.”

  It was the only leverage she could think of. He took the threat in the light of a childish tantrum, but Roddy didn’t allow him to open his mouth and say so.

  “I swear to God, I will,” she hissed. “If you think I won’t see you hang for your stupid rebellion before I’ll let you endanger Faelan, you mistake me at your peril.”

  It was bluff, pure bluff, for she could never have done it, but the words and her tone of voice finally sank in. For all her life, Geoffrey had thought of her as “poppet,” as a child, a female: soft and submissive and not very bright. She suddenly dropped into a new category: a woman, who would grasp at any weapon to protect her man.

  He might not respect her methods, but he developed a sudden and healthy respect for her resolution.

  “All right,” he said slowly. “I won’t mistake you.”

  Chapter 20

  Six hundred fifty-three pikes, twenty-two pistols, and five guns were not enough.

  Nothing would have been enough, except the full shipment of Geoffrey’s smuggled muskets.

  Rain swept the great house in showers, throwing drops with a spattering sound against those windows that had panes, and puddling on the stone floor beneath those that didn’t. The fireplace in the dining room leaked. There was a shiny dark spot on the marble hearth where a warm fire should have been.

  But the smoke that drifted in with the drizzle was not the comforting, clinging smell of peat. The damp breeze carried a heavy, peculiar odor: the pungent scent of burning grain.

  Faelan sat before the empty hearth. His face was a mask. He gave no sign of hearing the intermittent pop of pistol fire that heralded the systematic slaughter of his imported Frisian cattle.

  Five days had passed since the army had come. At first the soldiers had only taken excess: poultry and potatoes and livestock enough to feed themselves royally. But as each day passed without the guns, Roberts had unleashed his men a little more, until by now they were angry, and impatient for results. They had taken all they could consume and more—far more—and the free-quarters had become free destruction.

  Faelan’s imported stores bore the brunt of their fury. Still gathered and awaiting distribution according to his careful plans, the cattle and seed wheat and commodities he’d brought for exchange in a moneyless economy were too easy to reach. It was more entertaining and far less trouble to burn sacks of grain piled high in a thatch-roofed barn that to search out the small huts in the mountains and seize a few year-old potatoes. And the soldiers did not stop with stores. The plows were broken up, the half-finished pier burned to the waterline. Even the lime and saltpeter Faelan had bought for the fields was carted away and dumped into the sea.

  The oaths of loyalty had been futile. As long as the guns were withheld, Roberts said, he’d accept no false professions of good faith.

  Roddy sat at the table with Earnest and smelled the smoke and listened to the guns and watched her husband stare at nothing until she could bear it no longer. “I’m going to take a walk,” she announced.

  Earnest roused instantly from his gloomy reflections. “I’ll go with you.”

  The last thing she wanted was Earnest’s company, with his eternal pressuring at her to leave Ireland with him. Beyond that, she had her other reason to be alone: Geoffrey, who had proved himself every bit as troublesome as she’d feared.

  The hiding place she’d chosen for him, the remote cottage that had been MacLassar’s first home, had stood vacant for months. Long ago, Roddy had convinced Faelan to move the woman and her child to a better holding, where the widow had since become mildly famous as being favored by the sidhe because of the occasional small gifts that would appear in the night on the woman’s new hearth. These Roddy attributed to Faelan, for she could find no other donor through her talent.

  The sidhe luck must have rubbed off on Geoffrey, too. It was certainly no natural aptitude for concealment that had kept him undiscovered. He would not stay put; he took a ramble every morning and evening through the hills, and Roddy could not convince him that he couldn’t build a smokeless fire. Someone had taught him the trick once, and he was certain that he had the way of it. As far as Roddy could tell, only the unfamiliar spread of smoke from the soldiers’ fire kept Geoffrey’s from instant detection.

  “I’d rather go alone,” she said to Earnest. “I shall be back before supper.”

  “Roddy—it’s not safe.” He automatically turned to Faelan for support. “You won’t let her go wandering about alone.”

  Faelan looked sideways at her, a glance that puzzled Roddy, that seemed cynical and questioning at once. “I’ll go with you, if you like.”

  Roddy wet her lips. His unexpected focus on her made her uncomfortable, burningly aware that she was hiding something from him. For days, it seemed that he had looked through her without even seeing her. All night, every night, he sat in this cold, spare room waiting for more arms and watching the countryside burn. It had been easy to pretend, easy to go to bed in the stable and then sneak out after dark to carry what food she could conceal to Geoffrey. It was as if her husband did not know whether she was there or gone. But now…

  She picked up her cape of bright green baize and threw it across her shoulders with a deliberately casual move. “That’s isn’t necessary at all. I’d really rather go alone.”

  Faelan rose. Roddy bowed her head, hiding the guilt she was certain shone clear in her eyes. She felt his light touch, and refused to look up as he traced her cheekbone and temple. Need struck her—a longing that made her throat close and her chest ache. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and cry for what the army was making of his dreams—of their dreams…for the future here had become hers, too. She wanted to confess her fears for Geoffrey, her hopeless inability to think of a way to get him safely out of the country. She wanted to lie again with her husband on a blanket in the clean, sweet straw, too tired from honest work to make love, but not too tired to be close, to feel his arms around her and his skin warm against her back.

  But her secret stood between them, and she was afraid to meet his eyes.

  “I’d like to go,” he said softly.

  “I don’t want you.” It was breathless, quickly spoken and ill considered. She stepped back away to avoid his touch.

  From a safer distance, she dared to look up. If her words had hurt him, she could not tell it in his face. Only Earnest’s irritated confusion reached her, his bafflement and concern at what he saw of their marriage.

  “Very well.” Faelan turned away to the window. His voice held a brittle precision. “Then go alone.”

  “No!” Earnest’s chair made a scrape as he leaped to his feet. “I forbid it.”

  Faelan looked back. Roddy saw it then, like a mirror breaking. The mask of control cracked and shattered; Faelan’s face went to violence and his body moved with savage gr
ace—one moment Earnest was standing and the next he was sprawled back on the table. The blow took Roddy, too, made her stomach wrench and her knees stagger, and Faelan’s snarled words came to her through Earnest’s haze.

  “You forbid it!” He jerked Earnest up by his coat. “You meddling bastard, you think I can’t protect what’s mine? You think there’s a damned thing you could do better?” He let go, and Earnest stumbled, clutching the table behind. “You don’t forbid anything here, my friend,” Faelan sneered. “You don’t open your mouth if I don’t like what you have to say, because I own everything you can see, and that includes your precious little sister, and if I choose to sit on my backside while they burn the place down around our ears, then you can go or you can stay, but you’ll damned well keep your mouth shut!”

  Earnest found his feet. Roddy felt him gather himself, and thought for an instant that he would return the blow. He was almost of a size with Faelan, and no mean pugilist—it was surprise that had taken him down, not superior skill. But Earnest preferred finer weapons to his fists.

  He fingered his swelling lip. “Of course.” He looked down at his hand that came away marked with blood. “I can see that you have the situation completely under control.”

  Faelan made a sound, incoherent, and swung away.

  “Admit it.” Earnest followed up his parry with attack. “Admit it, man! You’re hanging by a thin thread.”

  A gust of wind brought rain spatters and the acrid smell of smoke in through an unglazed window. Faelan stood in front of the opening, ignoring the rain.

  “What happens when it snaps?” Earnest asked with quiet menace. “I know about you, Iveragh. I’ve made it my business to find out. You may be a madman or you may just be an immoral beast, but either way you don’t own my sister. You don’t control anything. You’ll be lucky if you don’t hang for what I’ve heard of you—”

  Roddy caught a vision of the dowager countess in Earnest’s mind, a face crumpled in hysterical tears. He can’t help himself, she’d cried to Earnest. I know he never meant to do it! He was just a boy—How could a boy of ten mean to kill his own—

  “—Starting here, Iveragh,” Earnest went on in that low, relentless voice. “Starting right here. You think I’ll leave my sister with a man who pushed his father off a cliff?”

  Faelan laughed. It was a terrible sound; inhuman. “I think you have the story wrong. My father died here. In this house.” He half turned. “My mother didn’t tell you that?” The smile on his face was a devil’s insolence. “Ah, but she’s always so anxious to protect me. To make sure no one knows the truth. The place burned. Senach found him after the fire, with his skull smashed on the floor of his own study.”

  Roddy stared at the dark puddle on the hearth. I don’t want to know this, she thought, I don’t want to hear.

  But Earnest’s wave of horror and disgust twisted her insides and kept her rooted to the floor. “His skull smashed. God, God…” Her brother’s voice trailed off.

  Faelan reached with one hand for the half-finished window frame. It was an unconscious move—Roddy thought it was—but she felt her brother’s jolt of wariness as the motion dislodged a pike which had been leaning against the new wood. The weapon clattered to the floor.

  Faelan stood, staring down at it.

  “Little girl,” he said in a tight voice. “I think you and your brother had best get out of here. Before we’re all sorry.”

  “Aye. I’ll get her out.” Earnest gripped Roddy’s arm and began to propel her toward the door. He stopped at the entry, his fingers digging into Roddy’s arm as she fought to break his hold. “Any way I have to do it, Iveragh. I promise you. Any way on God’s earth I have to do it.”

  Never before in her life had Roddy been physically restrained. And certainly not by one of her brothers—by her favorite brother, her best friend, who appeared now to have gone mad along with everyone else.

  She sat in the dusty humidity of the abandoned harness room and fumed. The blow to Earnest’s head had definitely injured more than his lip. He’d locked her in. Locked her in, for God’s sake, as if she were a troublesome child, or an animal, while he went to Derrynane to arrange passage with the O’Connells.

  He’d picked his spot well, though that was luck more than forethought. He’d pushed her inside in an unthinking rage, driven by the release of pent-up frustration, the need to do something after seven days of futile arguing. Then he’d shot the bolt home and left her banging at the heavy door and screaming at him to come to his senses.

  But he hadn’t. He was too wrapped up in this battle with Faelan, in which she had become a symbol, a pawn—a princess to be rescued from the dragon. He’d forgotten that Faelan had urged her to leave; glossed over any evidence that Faelan was not a heartless monster. Earnest saw, as well as Roddy, that while the soldiers were occupied with destroying everything Faelan had brought, they left untouched the cottiers’ meager stores. But Earnest did not want to think of that—he was tired of gray; he was sick of fighting mist. He wanted black and white.

  And there was no one blacker in his mind just now than the Devil Earl.

  Roddy stayed all afternoon in her musty prison. No one responded to her pounding and cries. No one came near or heard her—no one but MacLassar, who sat himself down outside the door and waited patiently for her to emerge and feed him.

  Through the high, barred window, she could see that the rain-swept sky had cleared as it usually did in the evening. Her throat was swelled and scratchy, her voice broken from futile shouting. Sweet, golden rays of late sun illuminated the room for a few minutes, and then the empty corners went to shadow and the night-gloom closed in. She strained her talent until her head ached, listening for Earnest, or Martha, or anyone.

  As she sat there on a rotting tack-trunk she began to feel…something. Not a single mind, but the swell of consciousness that heralded a crowd. There was anger in it, and eager violence: a cheerful aggression—uniquely male, and beneath that a physical, almost sexual, pleasure in the lockstep rhythm of the march.

  Roberts’ infantry.

  Roddy stood up. The soldiers’ mood frightened her. They had not come near the mansion in force since that first day—it had only been Roberts and a small contingent who’d arrived each day to collect what arms had been brought in the night before. Yesterday it had been only five pikes. Today it would be two.

  If she closed her eyes, she could imagine the scene. It had become a ritual—Faelan standing cold and silent with his cottiers as Roberts poured out a tirade against the evils of resistance to His Majesty’s troops, carefully geared to humiliate and abuse as far as possible without crossing the fine line of direct accusation. Roberts was good at it; more than once, Roddy had seen Faelan go taut and heard the faint, faint tremor of rage in his voice as he repeated his own ritual speech: “The arms have been surrendered. The barony is loyal. There are no more weapons in this neighborhood to my knowledge.”

  Then Roberts would drip with scorn for liars, make veiled references to Faelan’s reputation and more open ones to his connection with Geoffrey—and announce what his men would be turned loose upon the next day.

  They were running out of targets. Faelan’s imports had been decimated. There were only the scattered cottiers, and the great house itself.

  She had the thought at the same moment that shouts erupted from the direction of the house. The words were lost with distance, the thoughts obscured by the multitude, but she recognized her husband’s voice—hoarse with the same wild fury that had possessed him when he’d turned on Earnest.

  In answer, a sharp ragging pop cut the twilight.

  That sound hit her the way Faelan’s fist had smashed her brother’s jaw: fear like a blow, an impact that sent her mind to black terror and her limbs to wax. For an instant it paralyzed her, and then she grabbed the first thing that came to hand—a long piece of metal, some underpinning of an ancient carriage that she’d barely been able to lift when she’d pushed it off the trunk to ma
ke room for herself—and swung it at the heavy door.

  The crash of iron on wood sent pain to her teeth, but she hefted the metal club and struck again. The wood split at the hinges. She focused her attack at the point of weakness, sobbing with effort, swinging over and over until the lower bolts gave with a squealing groan, freeing the bottom half of the door from its hinge.

  She forced her way through, clenching her teeth against the rough scrape of broken wood across one arm where her cape fell free and her sleeve ripped. MacLassar peeked out of the stall where he’d retreated, and rushed to tangle with her skirt as she scrambled to her feet.

  She ran, throwing her cape aside when it hindered her. The shouting had become a roar, and through the lowering night she could see flames arching upward, blazing brands aimed at the upper windows of the house. One disappeared through an opening, faded to nothing for a moment, and then flared, filling the window with a rising red glow. Another found its mark, and by the time Roddy reached the crowd of weaving, shouting silhouettes in the forecourt, the upper story was ablaze.

  She did not care. She searched the chaos frantically, screaming Faelan’s name above the noise of the fire and the soldiers. Her talent was useless; without the strength of shielding she’d learned in London, she would have been writhing on the ground under the emotion generated by the mob.

  Someone ran past her and shoved her roughly aside, heading for the stables. MacLassar squealed as she stumbled over him. She grabbed him up as she found her balance and threw him over her shoulder, plunging forward, crying desperate curses and shoving back viciously when anyone pushed her. Dark figures were running out of the house, carrying furniture and silver plate. Bayonets flashed scarlet sparks in the glow of the fire, still slung, but treacherous enough on the back of some gyrating soldier occupied with mayhem.

  She heard Faelan before she saw him. His voice—strong and whole, bellowing her name over the tumult—made her stumble around toward the source in sick relief.