Show no fear.
That was a thing easier said than done, with him breathing down on her, with that great big body of his looming over her. Surely he could hear her heart pounding. Like any wild thing, she was sure he could smell her fear. Da had once told her that a man was most dangerous when he was in his cups. Now she knew why. There was a wildness in his eyes of blue, a savage light that spoke of a man with one foot on the ground and the other on the edge of darkness.
That stretch of black leather didn’t help. A notch cut upward next to his mouth, casting the mask with a mocking sort of smile. His face lay half in darkness, half in light—and hard as bone.
The words rushed out on a breath, too husky. “Who are you?” She straightened and mustered more spit and venom. “What do you want with me?’
She wondered if he was going to speak at all or just stand there with the red glow of the rushes between them. He was breathing deep enough to suck the air from the room. His gaze seemed to burn away her clothes in scorn. Aye, so she was no beauty. A lifetime of being compared to her golden–haired mother and green–eyed sister had resigned her to that. There were other, more useful talents to thank God for. She was agile upon the cliffs. She could find more bird’s eggs than any other woman on Inishmaan. She was strong, hard–working—these things were beauty too, and far more practical. Still, she hated him for staring at her and making her aware of every flat bony plane, every wiry muscle of her thin body, and every itchy streak of dirt on her unwashed skin. She wanted in her heart nothing more than to tear at this man with all the wit the young men of Inishmaan feared.
“I am Rhys ap Gruffydd.” He tossed the torch to his other hand. Drippings of tallow seared across his wrist, a pain he didn’t acknowledge. “I am the Lord of Graig, of all the land you passed through today. And you, Irish, are quick–witted enough to know why I’ve brought you here.”
“In that you’ll be wrong.” In her mind she repeated his name Rees ap Griffith. “For weeks I crouched in that stinking hold thinking you’ve gone to a lot of trouble for another slave for your fields.”
“There is only one thing a man would want with you, and it’s not for the plow.”
She sucked in what air she could, shocked at the way warmth flooded her body at the inference of his words. But no sooner had her blood risen—a strange and unfamiliar sensation—than coldness washed over her. It couldn’t be that. She knew better than to entertain the thought, even for a mite of a moment, that a man would want her as a man wants a woman.
She said, “I have no ale in me to know the ways of a stranger’s mind. And I know it’s not my looks that caught your fancy.” She thanked the red glow of light that masked her rising color, for his gaze roamed again, snagged on the rents in her surcoat, then lingered for a moment on her hastily braided hair. “I know you couldn’t have captured me for ransom unless you’ll want your ransom in mackerel.”
“Your husband can keep his fish.”
“I’ve no husband.”
“Good.” The features hardened. “One less man to seek vengeance upon me.”
It was no surprise to her that he had enemies. The chieftains of Ireland made a habit of stealing each other’s cattle and torching each other’s settlements and carrying off each other’s women, and then spent the lives of generations fighting each other over the resulting blood–grudges. Warriors were warriors, whatever their blood.
She said, “A man who makes a habit of stealing women shouldn’t balk at facing their menfolk.”
“You’re the first, Irish.” He swung one foot upon the rim of a cask and leaned into it. “Not the blackest of my sins, but the newest.”
“You take pride in that.”
He flinched but did not take the bait. “Forget escape. This homestead is well guarded. Beyond this place are mountains which disguise their passes, forests filled with wolves, and not a single hospitable face for miles—for all the land belongs to me and the loyalty of the people upon it, as well. Were you somehow to make it to the sea, you’d have to bargain with the foulest Welsh pirates for passage back to your island.”
“And here I was thinking you were the foulest of the pirates.”
“I am.” He laughed, a laugh that set the hairs on the back of her neck standing. “Remember that while you conjure ways to escape.”
“I have a father and four strong brothers who’ll seek me to the ends of the earth—”
“Rich enough to hire a ship, no doubt. And they know exactly where you are.”
She tilted her chin. Her family was the richest upon their little Aran Island, but rich in cattle and cheese, not by this man’s measure. And truth be known, many a soul had disappeared off the shores of the island, stolen away by the caprices of the surf. Her people accepted such events as God’s will and rarely searched beyond the ledges of rock which jut out into the sea. “You don’t know my family.”
“I found out all I needed to know about them before I sought you out.”
She feigned surprise in the arch of her brows. “Should I be flattered, Reese ap Griffith,” she said, stuttering still over the name, “that you sought me out in particular—me, Aileen the Red?”
“You’ve a reputation.”
She stifled her own tremor of fear. “And I thought the tales of my foolishness with Sean the fisher’s son never left his lips.”
“A reputation as a healer.”
“It’s no secret that I’m a healer.” She shrugged one shoulder, still numb from where she’d slept upon it. “Learned it at my Da’s knee.” She blinked at him, hoping she appeared to be glowing with a growing surprise, wondering all the while if she had the talent to fake her emotions like the bawdy itinerant acting troupes who occasionally wandered to the mainland fairs despite the priest’s grumbling. “You’re not telling me …” She shook her head in mocking disbelief. “You’re not telling me you stole me and dragged me clear across the world because you’ve need of a healer?”
“I did.”
She clasped her hands together. “Is it plague, then?”
“No plague.”
“A pestilence of some sort? Among the cattle—”
“No.”
“A wasting sickness?”
“No.”
She eyed his mask but closed her lips on the query. If he wanted her to fix him, she’d make him ask her himself.
“Well, what is it, then? Aren’t there any healers upon your own soil?”
“We’ve run through the witches of Wales.” The rushes crackled beneath his feet as he thumped his foot off the cask. Two long strides and he’d crossed the room to thrust the butt of the torch in a sconce by the door. “I fancy an Irish one. With a witch’s healing hands.”
Outside the hut, a dog howled. The rush light snapped and sparked. She stepped back and her foot sank into the softness of a sack of grain. Once, she’d been collecting periwinkles along the slates of rock which jagged into the Atlantic, and a gale had rushed in on the wind so suddenly that she’d had no time to smell it. One moment, she’d been prying a shell from the underside of a rock with the tip of her knife, and the next the sea engulfed her hands in icy sprays of froth, and the surf roared in and pounded against the stone at her feet. A fog fell all around her so she knew not which way the island stood, but only that she was lost in this roaring world of spray.
Witches.
An expression, she told herself. It’s just a turn of phrase, meaning nothing.
But all of a sudden she was fourteen again, standing in a Galway inn and staring at the blood on her trembling hands.
Da … Da …
It’s over Aileen, a stoírín. And no harm done. We’re away from the crowds now.
Still, she couldn’t stop staring at the blood on her fingers that day—the blood of the young boy who had been kicked by an Englishman’s horse. It had all happened in a matter of moments. She’d seen the boy get knocked to the ground, and she’d run to his side. Da had been busy, and she’d thought to help. It had se
emed the most natural thing in the world to hold the limp boy to her chest, rock him, and run her fingers over the wound on his head… . She’d rocked him and stroked the wound. Da will heal him, she’d said as the screaming mother raced across the road. He will heal him, she’d promised.
And then the boy came to life in her arms.
“Your fame has traveled far, Irish.”
She jerked out of the memory. “So that’s what forced you to seek me out.” Though it sucked the strength from her bones, she met his gaze. “Tales of my ‘witchery’?”
“Deny it.”
She coaxed a laugh, a brittle, metallic sound. Tales had spread since that afternoon, wild tales of miraculous healing powers, ugly tales of sorcery and devilry, but no one suspected the truth. No one knew where her true power lay, but for those in her own family.
A bad bit of luck, Aileen my girl, to be discovering your faery–gift in a place thick with outsiders.
It was my hands, Da. I felt something.
You’ve the gift of the healing hands. For the sake of your life, no one must ever know.
“I do deny it.” She prayed her knees of butter would hold. “Oh, I’ve heard the whispers about me, sure. Was it young Ternoc who told you stories? He always did have a bit of gall in his belly for that day I sent him sprawling into the sea. Or did you find a mainlander to give you an earful in an alehouse on a Sunday?”
He lifted the bladder to his lips. His eyes glittered over the neck, and she knew she’d drawn blood.
“What kind of man are you to listen to idle gossip—faith, even let it send you clear across the world? Is there no more sense amid the learned folk than there is amid the drunkards of Connemara?”
“Sense enough,” he said, “to know you’d deny it.”
“Are you carrying a branch of the ash tree to guard against my sorcery, then? Have you nailed a horseshoe over that door?”
The bladder of ale slapped against his thigh.
“And what would you want from a witch, as you would have me be?” She looked at the buttery leather of his boots, the fine weave of his tunic, the metal studs upon his leather belt, the woolen hose encasing the thighs of a man used to climbing mountains. “You’ve no need of riches. Is it power over your enemies, then?”
He glared at her over his shoulder with a warning, a warning she was in no mind to notice, a warning she couldn’t heed, for words were her only weapons—and after all that time neglected in the hold, a sort of recklessness had seized her.
“Nay, I think not.” She waved her hand up and down the length of him. “A fine warrior like you wouldn’t call a woman to defeat his enemies. Too much arrogance for that. Too much pride in your skill with that bloody sword of yours. You’d sooner see yourself dead on the field of battle.”
“There are ways to know the truth.”
“Aye, and there’s no doubt I’ll tell you anything you want to hear when I’ve twenty stones weighing down on my chest.”
He’d retreated into the shadows beyond the circle of light. Now she stepped toward him. She would mock him, aye, she’d mock him until his pride wouldn’t allow him to keep her here—until his pride made him deny he’d ever thought such a foolish thing as witchery. Whatever tools she could use, she would use.
For it was her life she fought for in this tiny hut in this strange land. He was an outsider. Outsiders wouldn’t understand. Outsiders would accuse her of devilry, kill her, burn her. She’d seen enough burnings in her youth at the annual feis, old women put to the torch for the sake of a neighbor’s milk not churning into butter.
“If it’s not riches or power, then what is it?” She tapped her finger against her cheek, and then ran it down her face from eye to jaw. “Ah, I know. I should have thought of it sooner. Men who own the world often crave the one thing they cannot take by force—the love of a woman.”
The bladder slammed against the planks of the door. He footed a sack of rye out of his path with an animalistic grunt, and then crossed the room in a few short strides. She waited for the thwack of his hand against her face. She waited for stars to explode in her head. She closed her eyes and turned her face away and waited—waited—but felt nothing but the heat of his breath upon her face.
He pinched her chin in his fingers and forced her to face him. She winced open an eye and dared to stare up at the dragon. He looked like a man restrained by the last frayed thread of his tether. Murder burned in those eyes, as sharp a blue as the open summer sky—a summer sky without the warmth of the sun.
Then, as she stared, his features shifted. The blood–lust seeped from his eyes. The tight muscles around his lips eased. That sculpted mouth twisted up in a bitter smile that held no humor.
This was a far better mask, she found herself thinking, than the leather one that covered half his face.
“Sharp little teeth you have, lapdog.” He tugged her chin. “And I went to Inishmaan thinking you’d have no teeth at all.”
She felt like a lapdog now, as defenseless as if she had a wolf’s teeth grazing her throat. His presence was more than the heat of his body, it was a sense of danger, so thinly reined, that she struggled for breath, struggled to think, while the tendons in the backs of her knees softened like tallow in the hot summer sun.
“You should have been old, gray–haired, and full of warts—that’s what I expected when I landed on your island. There’s no changing that now.” He released her chin and stepped back. “A thousand pieces of silver. That’ll be your reward for doing my bidding.”
“I don’t know your bidding. And my family needs no money.”
The words tumbled out, a reflexive spurt of defiance. Then she thought of all the things such an enormous sum could buy: a willow–harp for her brother Niall, to replace the battered one he played every night; fine clothes and a position in a good Irish house for her sister Cairenn who dreamed always of leaving their windswept home; enough cattle and grazing ground to keep the family in meat and milk for a lifetime. A new bull to replace the aging one.
Then she shook herself. What more does a woman need but enough food to keep her belly full and a warm summer day a few times a year? Was a thousand pieces of silver the price of her soul?
“Think on it, Irish. A thousand pieces of silver will go far in bringing you back to your island.”
“I make no deals with the devil.”
“That,” he murmured, swinging open the door, “would be very disappointing.”
Chapter Three
Rhys rolled his fingers around the javelin and then hefted it just above his shoulder. On the straightway to the target stood spears buried in the ground, angled wildly. He bent his knees, gauged the force and direction of the wind, and then peered down the shaved wood to the enemy.
With a grunt, he heaved the javelin. He watched the spear whistle through the air. It sank into the ground and splattered the target with clods of earth.
“Try throwing a few paces closer, brother.”
A horse’s harness jangled and Rhys realized that Dafydd had joined him. Rhys crouched on his haunches and rubbed his palms full of grit, stanching his annoyance at the uninvited company. His fool older brother was growing more patient with the years: Now it took a full day before Dafydd’s curiosity overcame his common sense.
Rhys said, “One learns nothing from an easy target.”
“What are you learning here?” Dafydd slid off the horse and yanked his blue silk tunic down from the beast’s bare back. “We’d never fight the English on so much open land. Better to find a way for a javelin to twist past a tree, or—”
“Show me that trick,” Rhys said, tossing a javelin to his brother, “and you sit by the fire this night.”
Dafydd closed his hand over the spear. Wind tugged at the tails of his well–trimmed mustache as a light of challenge brightened his hazel eyes. But then he scanned the bare hill with its circle of lichen–covered stones. “You would choose to do this here,” Dafydd said. “It’s a wonder King Arthur doesn’t ri
se from this grave and fight you for disturbing his slumber.”
“This is a mound of earth, nothing more. If I care to practice upon it and old King Arthur disapproves I urge him to come and give me a good sparring.” Rhys’s gaze fell upon the sword he’d abandoned on a nearby rock, along with all his clothing but for his braies which now sagged from the rope belt around his hips. “Practice with me, one–on–one. Your sword hasn’t seen a dent—”
“Go back to your spears.” Dafydd sank the point of the spear into the earth and grimaced at the grit on his fingers. “I’ve no stomach to strip down to my skin and practice swordplay on the grave of a legend.”
“Get yourself a Christian bedmate, Dafydd. You’ve been spending too much time between the legs of that milkmaid.”
“Easy, brother, else the devil will rise to challenge you.”
“If he had the courage to face me, I’d welcome him.”
“What about a witch?”
Rhys tossed his brother a glare. Dafydd’s eyebrows—well–oiled this day—only arched a little more.
Rhys set off across the field with Dafydd falling into step beside him. He clenched his jaw. Dafydd was his second in command, his older brother, and he owed the man too much to let his own hot temper fly. But why now did he choose to interrupt? Dafydd knew better than to come between Rhys and his nightmares.
“This one has lost its point.” Dafydd frowned at the bare end of a javelin he’d yanked out of the ground. “I must speak to that blacksmith about the fitting. That’s not the first time—”
“Out with it.”
“Out with what? The arrow is already gone, buried somewhere beneath the dirt.”
“I would have been back to the homestead for dinner, but you ride out here to confront me only hours before.” Rhys clattered a spear on his shoulder and strode still farther to collect more. “Have more cattle been stolen from the southern border? Or have they attacked from the English side this time, hoping to draw me into conflict with the Marcher Lords?”
The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) Page 3