“You offered me salves and simple words.” He stilled the urge to pull one of those tight curls toward him and wind it around his finger, to trap her here, to make her do his bidding. “Not a witch’s sorcery.”
“If I were a witch,” she said between clenched teeth, “I’d change you into a beetle. Then a woman could at least have a chance to crack that shell of pride.”
“Call it healing if it pleases you.”
“I gave you a chance to take my healing,” she retorted, “and you scorned it. May the devil take you by the heels and shake you.”
“No curse you heap upon my head can do any more harm.” He tugged his shirt free from the rope–belt and pulled it off his body. Maddening, she was. She laid too much faith in a man’s respect for women. “I don’t care about your soul, Irish, whether it belongs to God or the Devil. I want your witchery now that I’ve seen the truth with my own eyes.”
“Men see what they want to see, rarely what is. I did no more than bind men’s wounds, and give them a chance at living.” In her pacing, the linens slid off her shoulder and tumbled to the floor. “You know nothing of healing which is why you and your kind are so quick to call it sorcery. Well, it’s more natural than spearing other men upon your javelins like rabbits on a spit! Spearing your own brothers.”
The muscles of his neck tightened. He tossed his shirt into a corner. This pup had a bite—and small sharp teeth. I destroy, woman, yes, I destroy. Everything his hand touched crumbled into dust. Everything but one, and that was still but a half–built dream of stone and mortar.
“What kind of place is this,” she argued, ducking her head to pick up the fallen linens, “for brother to set upon brother?”
“It’s Wales.” He spread his arms to the richness of the room around him, dark beyond the meager glow of the center hearth. “By our custom, every man’s son—bastard or legitimate—has a claim to his equal share of the holdings. But my father did it the English way and gave it all to me.” He tugged on the edge of the mask. The laces cut into his neck, his forehead, under his arm—a familiar tightness. “When this curse came upon me, my brothers challenged my hold. For all know that a king must be whole to rule. Heal me, woman, and you’ll stop the bloodshed.”
She absently folded the linens as she narrowed her eyes in speculation. “Now you’re asking?”
His nostrils flared. You won’t make me beg for it.
In the silence, she slapped the pile of linens back over her shoulder. “Still too proud to say the words?”
A flash of a memory came to him, of a time in Llywelyn’s court at Aberffraw, on a feast–day when the mead flowed freely—a time before the affliction. Prince Llywelyn had given him a new sword with a jeweled hilt, and the Prince had beckoned him to the seat of honor at his right hand in the feasting–hall. His brothers had urged Rhys up, laughing in their drunkenness. They’d hefted him bodily over the trestle–table. Llywelyn had offered his own tankard of mead, smiled upon Rhys and called him son. Then Rhys had caught the eye of Elyned from across the room, as if to say, Look at how high I’ve risen, my betrothed. How golden her hair had looked that evening, shimmering down over her back, and her lips had parted in promise—
“Yes,” he said, shooting up off the bench. Damn this woman, damn her gray eyes to hell. “Yes, I’m asking you for a healing.”
A breeze sifted in through the smoke–hole, the wind of Craig Gwaun, whirling down from the icy peak and making a cold hell of his exile. It was an exile as unjust as that of the Emlyn ap Dafydd of Welsh lore, who dared to pluck a single flower from the land of the faeries and thus was barred with all his kith and kindred from the magical land forever.
The proud tilt of Aileen’s chin eased. “Very well, then. I’ll heal you, Rhys ap Gruffydd.”
***
She must have drunk too much of the mead Marged had slipped her. She’d emptied the bladder, she remembered, on a stomach that hadn’t seen food since a bite of bread at the break of day. Aileen could think of no other reason why she’d just stood before her bare–chested captor and agreed to give him a healing.
But the words were said. Truth be told, he could have forced her to stay in this war–torn, lifeless land until she’d agreed to give him what he wanted. There was no shame, Da had once told her, in yielding to someone more powerful. She’d have to be satisfied that she’d exacted a price, making him bend a stiff neck to ask for something she would have freely given under other, kinder circumstances. She’d seen that he’d swallowed a mouthful of bile to force those words out.
“I’ll heal you,” she repeated, flipping the linens off her shoulder and onto the bench. “But I’ll have two promises from you as well.”
“The devil never keeps his promises.”
“You would know that better than I.”
“I already offered you gold.”
“I’ll be happy to take your gold when the healing is done.”
His footfall scraped in the rushes as he moved away from the bench and started a restless pacing.
“The first promise is this: You will cease accusing me of witchcraft.” She sought out his gaze in the shadows, keeping her eyes off the bare skin of his chest. “Your people know I’m a healer. I sense they accept that as it is.”
“My brother’s work.” His voice was filled with mockery. “Dafydd is a master at twisting the world to his will.”
“Then it’s to him I owe my thanks. Still, one word from you could shift their thinking. I would not have their minds warped with foolish talk. It’s fortunate that you’ve only spoken to me of such things in Irish, else your people would have me burned to bones by now. But Marged is a talker, and if she overhears—”
“Your secret,” he growled, “is safe.”
“It’s not a ‘secret,’ it’s truth. If I were a witch, I’d have made myself into a hare or a cat or a wolf and escaped from this place long before now—and probably taken all the milk of your cows just for spite.” A spray of drizzle sifted down from the smoke–hole to prickle her skin. “I’m not a witch, nor am I an angel, Rhys ap Gruffydd. I know not God’s ways. There are some afflictions that cannot be cured.”
He stopped his pacing. Red light glazed his stony face and gleamed on the black leather mask.
She said, “Don’t be looking at me like that.”
“How easy for you to say it’s God’s will.”
“And it might be, or maybe not. I won’t know until I set to you.”
“Too easy to lie.”
“Not all people are as treacherous as you or your brothers. In my world, there is nothing more sacred than a man’s—or a woman’s—word.”
“We have a saying in Welsh. An oath made under duress is no oath at all.”
“I don’t see you setting fire to a pyre under my feet.”
“But I could. And you know it.”
She felt the hot steady stare of those blue eyes. She remembered that moment on the windswept hill of Arthur’s grave when he’d seized her hands and tugged her so close she could smell the spice of honey–mead on his breath. She’d felt the power of him and something else … a wide–open yearning she’d later attributed to his lust to be cured, nothing more.
Faith, what kind of woman was she to stand here with her heart pounding in her chest, letting him try to frighten her?
She said, “I’ll do what I can to cure that face of yours. That is my promise to you.”
“And what is this second promise?”
“I want to be back in Inishmaan before Christmas.”
He shook his head once, hard. “You’ll stay until the work is done.”
“I told you—”
“Five years in the making, and you expect to cure this within two months?”
She cast her lashes down. She wasn’t giving herself away, nay. Truth be told, she’d never spent more than a couple of weeks on even the worst of cases, nor more than a month on the weakest of the wounded. If it could be cured, she’d do it quickly enough, and she’d
only decided upon Christmas to allow for ample time for arrangements to be made to board another merchant ship to Ireland.
“This gives you your choice of vengeance.” He faced her square. “You can fail to cure it and blame it on God’s will. Or you can cure it then disappear into the mists, while I remain here watching it return, inch by inch.”
“Your brothers’ betrayals have curdled your blood.”
She knew better than to prod a man with his own weaknesses, but this one set her senses so awry she couldn’t help herself. Yet, no sooner had his fury flared than it ebbed, as if he were sucking it back within himself.
“If my brothers’ weapons were as sharp as your tongue,” he said, as he curled his fingers around a bladder sagging upon a table. “I wager not a single one of my men would have left those woods alive.”
“So you agree?”
“No.”
She closed her eyes and fought for patience. She resisted the urge to sink upon the bench, to ease the ache throbbing in her lower back, to give her weakening legs a rest. She never should have come in here to poke the bear. She should have curled up on a pallet against the wall of the mead–hall and saved this confrontation for the morrow, when she would have more strength.
“You’ll stay,” he said, “until spring.”
The months between now and spring stretched out before her like a hundred thousand years. She thought of Ma and the stored bales of wool to be spun and woven, with no one to help but a dreamy–eyed Cairenn. She thought of the long nights her family would lie awake wondering what had become of her.
Then she looked upon Rhys and knew there would be no bargaining.
“Done, then.” She gathered the linens then hefted up the bowl of water and headed toward the door. “We’ll begin tomorrow.”
“Oh, no, lass.” He seized her arm so hard that the cold water sloshed upon her hip. “We start now.”
Chapter Six
The edge of the bench bit into the back of her knees. “It’s not that easy. I’ve salves to brew and herbs to dry—”
“You didn’t need those things this afternoon. You don’t need them now.”
“What is it that you expect then? A wave of my fingers with a shower of sparks? Incantations naked by the full of the moon?”
“Whatever it takes.”
She flushed and shoved the bowl of water back on the bench. She’d spent the day tending to his men. Her whole body ached. Her knees were bruised from kneeling by pallets. And faith, why didn’t he put on a wretched shirt like any decent man would?
“We’ll start by talking.” She plopped down on the opposite side of the bowl of water, as far away from him as she could get. “I’ve no hope of curing that problem of yours unless I know something about it.”
He swung his arm through the air in dismissal. “There’s nothing to know that’ll be any help to you.”
“Are you to fight me every step of the way? Or are you to help me rid you of whatever it is that plagues you so much you’ll kidnap a woman from her home and keep her prisoner until she does your bidding?”
She made a fuss of scrubbing a spot of water on her hip, but she felt the heat of his anger anyway, and the action only drew her attention to how the ragged bit of linen ended on her knees. By God, what a mess she was. Her scalp itched, mud caked her knees, blood and earth streaked her undertunic, which did nothing to soften the angles of her body. And why should she care that she sat here all but naked before him? She was no beauty to inspire lust.
“It started five years ago last spring.” He jabbed the middle of his shoulder, atop the cap of black leather. “It started on my shoulder and every month it spreads more.”
“What were you doing five years ago last spring?”
“Enjoying myself in the court of the Prince of Wales.” He choked the neck of the full bladder with his hands. “We’d finished a round of fighting against the traitors of southern Wales, and we’d won.”
The Prince of Wales, then. No petty baron, this Lord of Graig, she thought, remembering the silks and linens Marged had held out to her yesterday morning. “Were you wounded? Or did you—”
“I’ve searched for a reason every day for five long years.” He swung the bladder in a gesture of distaste. “Could it have been those foul cockles we ate on the march north, or the light of the full moon falling upon us when we slept in the open, or the leper I passed by without giving alms in Aberffraw?”
“How’s a woman to tend to you when you do nothing but spit and roar?”
“It was none of those things. Food was plentiful and the mead flowed thick. The childless Prince of Wales called me son. I’d begun to build my castle. And the first person to notice the thing growing upon my shoulder was a woman warming my bed.”
Her cheeks flamed at the image. “If it were another part of your body that had the trouble I’d know the source of it, then.”
“There are no troubles there.”
“I’ve no doubt you know how to wield your sword indiscriminately enough to sire a passel of bastards.”
“After what you saw today, you think I spill my seed so easily into fertile ground?”
She hated how her skin betrayed her. It was no business of hers what he did in his bed. “Is there any pain to the affliction? Does it itch, or burn?”
“No. It’s as if there’s nothing there at all.”
This was going nowhere. She dunked a linen into the bowl. “I’ll look at the thing and wash it, and tomorrow I’ll have something for it. Now take off that mask, sit down, and stop prowling around the room.”
She whirled the cloth in what was left of the cloudy mixture in the bowl, waiting for her to take a seat across from her. When moments passed and she heard no leather fall to the floor, she glanced up.
The mask still hugged his shoulder and head, but that wasn’t what snagged her attention. She’d seen a dozen shirtless warriors this day; she’d stripped the shirts off them herself, yet with him she couldn’t help staring. In the light of the fire, she saw how his abdomen and a chest were so sculpted that it put all the Irish strongmen of the autumn feis to shame. Of course he looked like this. He was a warrior. When she’d first come in, she’d stubbed her toe upon the chain–mail hauberk piled at her feet. She knew the weight of that armor. He needed broad shoulders to keep from collapsing under it. Still, there was something beyond human in the way he was made. She wondered if, because of the imperfections of his face, he’d tried all the harder to perfect his body.
Any woman would feel an inner throb at the sight of such a fine specimen of a man, she told herself. It was lust, pure and simple. She was still a woman and prone to a woman’s weakness. So she made herself raise her gaze to his face. He stared at her with unreadable eyes, though she sensed his mind going round and round with thoughts, churning until she thought she could smell the effort, like the charring of the wood on a windmill whipped too fast in a storm.
When she spoke, her throat was dry. “Is that mask sewn onto you then?”
“Would that it were.”
“Then remove it. I’ve seen your men turned inside out this day, nothing will—”
“I know what you’ve seen.”
“Shall you stand before me like a quivering boy for fear of my touch?”
“Your touch, yes.” A strange expression bloomed across his face. “All you need is your touch.” He seized the bowl of water off the bench and walked away with it.
She startled. “What are you doing?”
“The devil’s work is best done in the dark.”
He tossed the contents onto the flames and doused the room in darkness. Red embers hissed a spray of steam. Aileen stumbled up and edged away, dragging her knee against the bench as a guide. No windows aired this chamber. No light winnowed through the smoke–hole above. But for the embers of the fire, a single strip of amber light splashed across the reeds, emanating from the mead–hall through a crack under the door. Even that was too much for him. His footsteps whispered
across the floor and then his silhouette blocked out that strip of light. He shoved something in the crack and plunged the room into complete darkness.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as he moved about. The bench creaked when he gripped it. She probed the darkness in his direction, hoping to see something as her eyes adjusted, a shape, a form, the limning of an arm by the light of stars … but she saw nothing, nothing but the memory of faint hairs on his bare chest.
Dear Lord, could he hear her breathing? Every sound seemed so loud, and she could feel him in the room, a dark mass of warmth. There was no losing him, nay, she’d know his every position with her eyes closed. She could smell him. The smell of man–sweat and warm iron, so pulsing and full of hot–blooded life.
Something thwacked to the floor near her feet.
“The mask,” he said, “is off.”
She hated the quaver in her voice. “I’ve never known a more vain man, Rhys ap Gruffydd.”
“Get on with it.”
“How am I supposed to know how to cure the thing,” she asked, “if I can’t see it?”
“Healing hands,” he murmured in the darkness. “Healing hands.”
It should be that simple. She should just reach across the space that separated them, pass her fingers across his cheek a few times, and have it be over and done with. Aye, it should be that easy, but still, she hesitated, even as she shuffled down the length of the bench and sat close enough to feel the heat of his body against her knees.
For goodness sake, what was happening to her? She’d healed many a man she didn’t like—all the warriors who came to her father’s house gutted with sword wounds and bragging how they’d got them. Aye, she’d touched them and eased their pain whilst holding her distaste at bay, and she hadn’t been the least bit troubled by it in the morning. Why now, in the darkness with this growling beast, did she just flex her fingers in her lap?
Maybe it was because she’d never healed a healthy man. The people who came to her were in pain or wounded, or in the throes of child birth. Now she sat across from a man pulsing with health, a man whose flesh did not scream out in agony, a man who wanted her touch and was clear–headed enough to feel it.
The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) Page 7