Marged’s urgency infected the hall. As she barked orders, each guilty–looking servant dropped their duties and raced to her bidding. Then Marged seized the end of the garland and glared up at her. “I told you there’d be no decorating the hall. What gave you cause to defy me, Aileen? Have I ever given you a reason not to believe my words?”
Aileen frowned at the housekeeper. Yes, Marged had waved away her idea of decorating the hall, said it wasn’t done here, that Rhys didn’t like it, but that was no excuse for not celebrating. She said, “Will you let the gloominess of that wretched lord of yours ruin the season for the rest of us?” Aileen’s will faltered as she looked upon a wild–eyed, nervous Marged. “Marged, if ever I knew a house that needed the spirit of a holiday—”
“We have our own Christmas in the kitchens. We have these past three years.” Marged yanked on the garland. “Help us undo this before we feel the bite of his fury.”
“You’re acting as if the walls will come down upon our ears if the lord of Graig so much as crushes nettles beneath his feet—”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“Put the blame upon me, then.” Aileen followed a darting Marged, seizing the holly out of her hands. “Leave this place as it is and I’ll take the blast of his ire.”
“It’s not his anger I fear. The holly, the holly,” she cried out to another servant, jabbing her finger at a pile amid the rushes. “I’ll tell you why in good time, if you insist upon it, but for now get out of my way.”
Marged shoved by her and then halted as a shower of pine nettles skittered across the paving stones. A cold draft sifted over Aileen’s ankles as afternoon light poured into the room. She raised her head and glimpsed Rhys’s silhouette against the light. Three long steps into the mead–hall and he ground to a halt.
He reached up and fingered the ivy that had been knocked off its perch around the door and now trailed over his shoulder. He stared fixed at the waxy leaf.
Good, she thought, he’s here. Now I can shame him for allowing such inhospitality in his own mead–hall. She seized her skirts and stepped over the pile of spruce which had slipped out of Marged’s hand. Words bubbled in her throat as she raised her eye to face him … and then she choked on her own spittle.
She’d seen him angry before, aye, with his fists tight and the veins throbbing on his temples, the muscles of his arm as tight as rope. That she could fight, as one fought the advance of fire with more fire. But the man who stood staring at a strand of ivy in the midst of his own mead–hall was reddened not with rage. His nostrils flared against the smell of pine. He flushed red all the way to the tips of his ears.
She told herself that her mind was playing tricks upon her. Surely it was not shame she saw stiffening those proud features. He flexed his fingers over his chain mail gauntlets and she found herself thinking of the legendary Irish warrior Cú Chulainn, who in the heat of battle strapped himself to a tree trunk, determined to die upright and avoid the shame of being slain with his face in the mud.
Dafydd followed Rhys in. His footsteps scraped to a halt as the door slammed closed behind him. The bang echoed through the room and left in its wake a stinging silence. A garland whooshed off a peg, and the weight of the end snagged the rest down to scrape against the floor. A bird descended amid the thatched roof and crackled its way through the braided hay.
Rhys’s gaze swept the room and then rested on her.
Wasn’t it strange that she couldn’t move a limb as he strode toward her, winding the ivy around his hand and elbow as it trailed behind him? It was as if she stood beside her frozen self, watching this muscle–bound warrior set upon her. She’d seen eyes like this once before—on a mainlander who’d nearly killed his own son as he’d raged with the brain–fever. As Rhys’s breath fell upon her face, she knew the truth.
She’d made a mistake.
A terrible, terrible mistake.
The vein on his temple throbbed. The pupils of his eyes contracted to pinpricks. She wondered at her own frozen calm as the moments passed. The hearth–fire popped behind her as a breeze sluiced across the smoke–hole and sucked up the flames. A hound lying in a corner scraped his claws upon the paving stones as he changed positions in his sleep.
Da had told her always to remain still at the sight of an angry bull.
Then it happened—fast enough for her to realize that he’d made this transformation many, many times before, yet slowly enough for her to see the effort it cost him. His pupils dilated. The muscle of his cheek stopped spasming. He sucked in air through thinning nostrils. A grimace stretched his lips, a stiff emotionless smile so well–proportioned that only someone standing as close as she would notice it did not reach his eyes.
Even while wearing his leather mask, he was now putting on another.
“Such a conscientious Christian you are, Irish.” He bruised the ivy in his hand. “Don’t you know satyrs grow nervous in a holy place?”
Words gathered and lodged in her throat. She stared at him as she once had looked upon the masked actors in a Christmas mummery, knowing each man merely played a part, yet swept up in the fantasy nonetheless.
“Tell one of my men to cut you some rivets,” he said. “The ones in these walls are rotted.” He thrust the coil of ivy into her arms. “It’s been too long a year since this hall has seen Christmas.”
Tugging off his gauntlets, he stepped around her and headed back to his room, nodding at the men staring by the fire, their knives poised over rough blocks of wood. The door swept closed behind him.
Marged’s sob broke the silence. Dafydd muttered something and placed a hand on her shoulder. The ivy in Aileen’s arms unwound and tumbled to the ground. The older woman tore away from Dafydd’s grip. “I told you we didn’t celebrate. Why didn’t you listen to me? Why?”
Aileen shook her head, having no excuse other than ignorance.
“Only three years have passed—three.” A strand of fine salt–and–pepper hair–slipped out of Marged’s linen headdress. “Do you think a man could forget after so short a time? Can a man ever forget?”
Dafydd’s voice rose in warning. “Marged—”
“Three years ago this Christmastide,” Marged interrupted, “we were dancing in Prince Llywelyn’s court, at the feast of Lord Rhys’s wedding.”
The word wedding rang in Aileen’s head like the clapper of a bell.
“A wedding,” Marged said, shaking Dafydd off, “is an event of great joy for most. But blood had been shed to bring the Lady Elyned to the church steps, and we celebrated with gritted teeth, all of us, with the mead–hall decked for Christmas like I’ve never seen.”
Wedding.
“And when the time came for all the great lords of Wales to carry Rhys to the bedding, do you know what they found?”
Her mind screamed no no no no.
“They found his wife, Lady Elyned, lying on the blessed marriage bed. Lying there as pale as snow.” Marged’s breath hitched. “The woman had slit her own wrists rather than marry the leper–lord of Graig.”
Chapter Nine
It had been a moment of triumph.
Rhys remembered the shouts of his drunken men grunting under the burden of his weight as they buoyed him to the bedchamber. Their swords scraped along the stone walls of the narrow hall, their chain–mail hauberks rang, the pine torches crackled and snapped.
Elyned waited for him in the room at the end of the hall. This woman had been promised to him seven years ago, when she was still a girl in the first bloom of womanhood and he a young man rising in Llywelyn’s court. Since then her father had dared to deny her to him on the grounds that as a man diseased he was no longer fit to rule. But that same father now stood by the door at the end of the hall, his hands trembling as if they itched for the feel of a sword–hilt. Rhys tipped a golden goblet up to his betrayer, raining wine upon the heads of his men.
An old Welsh proverb rang in his head.
The best revenge, contempt.
; Nonetheless, he considered thanking the man. If this foster–father of his hadn’t betrayed him, Rhys would not have returned from the pilgrimage to claim what had been promised. Because Rhys had returned, he’d found his lands under siege by his black–hearted brothers, his position in Llywelyn’s court usurped, his world ripped asunder. By blood and by battle he’d proven his worth to them all, all the drunken hypocrites now shouting bawdy jokes as they reeled behind the crowd. Woe be to the man who dared to defy the Lord of Graig again.
He lurched as the men set him down. Wine darkened his tunic. He laughed and tossed the empty goblet away. It spun through the rushes and clanged against the wall. The screams of women rose from behind the iron–studded door. The men chortled at such maidenly fear. But in that moment his senses came to him. He’d known Elyned for years, had watched her grow from a girl to womanhood as he trained as a warrior in her father’s house. He’d noticed how she’d mumbled through the wedding ceremony. She’d sat by him at the feast like a stunned doe. She deserved finer treatment than this. Despite the bloody beginning of this marriage, she was still to be his wife.
So he turned to the crowd and raised his hands to fend them off but it was too late. In the darkness of the narrow hall the latecomers surged. They shoved Rhys and his men against the door until the hinges squealed and the door burst open to the heat and blazing golden light of the wedding chamber.
Rhys spread his arms to try to contain the crowd, but they tumbled in nonetheless, reeling around the edges of the portal, eager to get a glance at the canopied wedding bed and at the beauty lying naked upon it. One by one they stumbled amid the rushes and froze, laughter choking in their throats.
He swiveled. The rushes crackled beneath his heel. A blur of blue silk charged him—he felt fingernails slice the flesh of his good cheek. Someone gripped the maidservant and tore her off. His mother–in–law rose up from the side of the bed and rained curses upon his head.
Then he looked upon the waxen figure lying upon the marriage bed.
His mind groped for reason. Someone had soaked the bedclothes with pig’s blood to mock the imminent loss of his wife’s virginity. He’d witnessed worse jests in his years at Llywelyn’s court. A sick jest, he thought.
The gasps of the crowd faded so that he could hear above the sobs of Elyned’s mother the stream of blood gurgling its way along the gullies of the floor. The gazes of the crowd behind him shifted, one by one, to stab into the nape of his neck like a hundred tiny daggers dripping with poisons—horror, angry blame, a craving for vengeance—and that most potent poison of all, gleeful, contemptuous pity.
There lay his proud victory bleeding on the wedding bed.
“Marged is getting you supper. Best we do this before she arrives.”
The voice cut through him. It brought him back to his room, the fire, his own gauntlets gleaming on the floor by his feet. He curled his fingers around the bedpost. The shadowy shapes of his memories faded until the figure he saw splayed bloody upon the mattress became a simple tangle of linens and furs. The scent of burning pine haunted the room.
Only one person was foolish enough to invade his privacy at such a time. Only one woman would dare.
Get out.
His mind screamed the words. To think he’d invited this woman to invade the deepest heart of his exile, to stir up things he’d spent three years trying to forget, to cut him to bloody bits with the mirrors of her silver eyes.
He swallowed his bile and said, “Did you tire of garland–making, Irish?”
“Oh, the servants are clattering and clanging, setting up the trestle–tables for supper, all beside themselves.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her perch a hip upon the bench. “I gave up trying. There’s no joy in decorating alone.”
He glanced up to the smoke–hole and saw that the afternoon light had died. The makings of a fire lay scattered across the paving stones, where he’d kicked them in the blind heat of his retreat. Two tallow candles flickered low by the floor, where the servant had abandoned them. He wondered how long he’d been standing blind in the darkness, paralyzed by memory.
She murmured, “I thought we might try something different tonight.”
Her voice sounded oddly thin. He turned to find her sitting upon the bench stirring a bowl of some unguent.
Through the fog in his mind he realized she’d come for another healing session, just like any other night. She’d come to slop more useless lard upon his face with quick strokes in the darkness, as if nothing had happened out there in the mead–hall, as if the days didn’t revolve around the few minutes they spent together in this room, standing close enough to touch, close enough to hear the pounding of her heart.
“Something different.” He stretched his lips in what was a mockery of a smile. “You’ll be using your healing hands, perhaps?”
“Are you going to douse the candles and take off that mask, or shall you stand there and glower at me all night?”
The beast within lurched at its tether. Every instinct screamed to send her away, but his fingers found their way to the ties of his tunic nonetheless. Yes, he’d sit in this bedroom with a woman while the scent of pine swirled around them. Yes, he’d suffer this healer’s trembling, frightened touch. What choice did he have? To refuse her healing was to show weakness. To refuse was to admit that the smell of Christmas had unnerved him. To refuse was to prove that even a monster could be human and could feel pain.
No one would ever make him feel pain again.
“Dafydd was telling me,” she said, her voice still unnaturally high, “that there was a bit of a chase this afternoon not far from the scaffolding of your castle.”
He tossed his tunic across the bed. “My brothers are well–versed in the game of cat–and–mouse.”
“He told me you have a wounded man.”
“Bruised pride and addled senses, no more.” He jerked on the last buckle of his hauberk. “Owen fell off his horse. He claimed the beast had been spooked by something in the woods near the river. We left him at home babbling to his wife about the Blessings of the Mother—the faeries.”
“I’ll see him this evening, then.”
“You’ll stay. Winter is here. The herds are huddled near the homesteads.” Chain mail clinked to the floor. “My brothers and the wolves circle close.”
“And if the man dies of brain fever before I can—”
“The women of Graig tended well enough to their men before you came.” He wrestled his way out of his padded gambeson. “They don’t need you to see to every scratch, bump, and bruise inflicted by a bush of gorse.”
“Aren’t you the prickly one this night.”
He tossed the padded garment onto his bed and ignored her words. He swept up the candles, blew them out and set them upon the table near the portal, then slammed the door.
“Let’s see your new trick.”
It was blacker in the room than the caves of Moel Cefn he and his brothers used to explore in their happier youth. He knew every move she made nonetheless. There was vibrancy to her presence, as if she gave off a dark light of her own. He heard the rustle of her skirts. He felt the warmth of her as he settled on the bench.
He untied the laces above his ear, on his neck, and then reached into his shirt to undo those beneath his arm. He yanked the leather out of his sagging collar and tossed it to the ground, then spread his knees wide, to welcome her to stand between them.
Come, Irish. Come close this night.
His cock hardened long before she stood in front of him. He closed his eyes as he scented the cloud of her perfume, an aroma of spruce and cold winter air that brought memories of nights in abandoned huts with milkmaids and servant–girls back when any woman would have had him gladly. Wool brushed his thighs, razing the thin veneer of his control.
She whispered, “You’ll have to take your shirt off.”
All his blood headed south as he tugged his shirt out of his belt. “I might like this healing.”
“Stop yo
ur talking,” she said, her voice trembling.
He complied and then she laid her hands upon his shoulders. She stroked with a long, languorous touch. Tonight she used the open palm of her hand and not the swift efficient pads of her fingertips. She leaned her body into each stroke. She tilted her head so a tress of her hair slipped out of whatever kept it up. It brushed his cheek as she swayed.
His palms itched to be filled with more than the roundness of his own knees. All he had to do was shift forward, seize this woman by the hips, and pull her down against the ache between his legs. He burned to feel her pressed against him. The temptation tormented him. All he had to do was open his mouth, lean forward, press his face against her tunic and take that nipple between his lips. All he had to do was seize what stood before him.
He closed his eyes. How long could a man take this, night after night? He knew the answer to that, fool that he was. If he showed her the beast raging beneath the man, she’d startle like a sparrow and flap her wings in a desperate attempt at freedom.
He flexed his palms over his knees, remembering a story his Latin tutor had told him once. Something about an ancient Greek forced to stand neck–deep in cool spring water, but never be able to take a drink. A man forced to gaze upon a cluster of gleaming grapes always just out of reach.
His eyes flew open as she trailed a hand far below the last ridge of the affliction, as she trailed it over his own flat nipple. She rested that hand against the hollow in the center of his chest. Oddly, he felt his own heart move beneath her hand. It was a strange sensation, a loosening, an unfurling, a step off a precipice into thin air.
His will snapped. He closed his thighs and trapped her legs between his. He seized her before she could struggle away. Off–balance, she gasped and canted forward, bracing her hands on his shoulders. He buried his head between her breasts.
I was once a man who dreamt of being a beast, Aileen… . Now I am a beast who dreams of being a man.
The sparrow was captured. Her chest heaved against his face. Her nipple beaded against his cheek. Blood rushed in his ears. With one turn of his head he could have that nipple in his mouth.
The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) Page 12