“Aye, Rhys, I’ll make a believer out of you yet.”
Epilogue
The day had begun like any other summer morning here in the lands of Graig.
At the first sound of cock’s crow, I poked my head out of one of the windows of the new castle. Below, mist curled up from the river. It was a fine, cool morning and so I set myself to get the first pail of water straight from the river so I could put some oats to boil. That way there’ll be nothing but good in the house all day.
But first I bustled into the master’s chamber and took the little one from where he slept between the master and the mistress. I hefted him on my hip for the journey. I take him in the mornings, you see, to give the mistress a bit of rest, though truly she doesn’t get much of a respite. For I know the moment I leave the room my lord is upon her. Though they seem to sleep like the dead whenever I come in, I hear their laughter as I close the door. Well, I suppose my lord must work as hard as he can to try to get another babe from her. The mistress doesn’t take too quickly to child, you know—not from lack of interest from the master, I tell you—she’s just that way, as some women are. The shameless truth of the matter is that I think neither she nor he complain about the labor a bit. They enjoy it as shamelessly as pagans, and the one child she has borne is so healthy that it’s unworldly.
He squirmed on my hip that morning, all bright unearthly green eyes like his grandmother on his mother’s side—and all full of mischief as was his way.
And so we set off through the grand castle gates with the sentinels standing so stiff on either side, and I sang a little Irish song I remembered from when I used to sing it to his father, God bless him. It was promising to be the finest day, with the cuckoos singing down upon us, and I saw a white lamb skitter across our path as swift as can be, and then I knew it was to be a lucky day, too.
So when I got to the river’s edge I set William down beside me and gave him the ring of keys the master entrusted me with. What a bothersome thing, always jingling and jangling and banging on my hip, but I’ll not be one to give back such an honor, not while I still draw breath. Still I wonder why we needed so many rooms in the new castle.
No sooner had I turned around and dipped my bucket in the water when I heard a voice behind me.
“A bright morning to you, mistress.”
I nearly fell headfirst into the river with the shock of it all. I turned around to yell at the man, but the words stopped in my throat. No man of Graig, this, with his tattered and odd–looking clothes, leaning upon a gnarled knot of a stick and grinning his yellow smile at me, looking as if he’d topple over with the faintest of pushes but for the black, dancing mischief of his eyes.
“I wondered,” he continued, as if he hadn’t snuck up behind me from the very grass, “if you mind sharing a drop of that water in your pail. I’m mighty parched, you see, having traveled far this day.”
Well, what was I to say? He was an old man, and so weak, and my heart went out to him. It was common enough for visitors to pass this way, now that we lived here in the valley near the river and a bit of a road, and no longer in that smoky old mead–hall on the crag that only a single horse could climb. Common enough for Irish to come, too, with the mistress’s relatives always making their way here and staying a while, wild bunch that they are. So I handed him the pail and let him drink his fill of it. As I watched, I wondered if my mind was slipping, for there was something familiar about the man, something I couldn’t place.
I asked, “Where’d you come from, traveler?”
With the pail to his lips he pointed vaguely to the eastern hills, to the peak upon which Lake Dyffryn lay, the lake where that young boy went last year claiming he’d seen a faery–bride, and then came down months later as happy as could be, trailing behind him the whitest cow you’ve ever seen. A cow that bore two calves every season and the richest milk you ever set into your mouth.
“A blessing on you, mistress,” the traveler said as he handed the pail back, though why he was blessing me for water when a river of it flowed free behind me and no one would have stopped him for kneeling over and drinking his fill of it. Then he set his eye on the little one rattling the keys and asked his name. After I told him, he grinned and began jabbering at William in Irish.
Now, it was no wonder the man took to the boy. The boy had a light of his own that drew all people to smiling at him. But it was William that caught my eye, for he laughed as if he understood every word the man was saying, when he had not yet reached the age where he could even mutter his mother’s name. Then I thought—this must be one of the mistress’s relatives, that’s why the boy and the man took so well together. I rattled my brain trying to loosen the man’s name from it. It just wouldn’t come to me … strange. It’s true, my mind isn’t what it used to be, years ago, but I’m not near as daft as some of the new castle–servants would make me out to be.
Then I spied two of the kitchen girls striding out of the castle with their own pails. Wanting the first for myself I turned to refill mine, watching man and boy out of the corner of my eye. Thinking, how small the man. When he hunkered down like that he looked no bigger than William himself. And what was that sparkling around him, just a curl of mist gleaming in the first breakthrough of the sun?
It was then I remembered where I’d seen that man before. Disappearing into a puff of smoke in the old mead–hall, oh, so many years ago. Octavius by name, and the man who’d started so much mischief that ended in so much joy.
As sure as I stand here today I stood up and dropped my pail, splattering all the good morning water onto the ground. There was William, still staring off at the spot where Octavius had been, still laughing and gesturing though nothing was there but a wisp of mist and a strange sort of flattening of the grass. When I asked the kitchen girls if they’d seen the traveler, they looked upon me as if I’d finally lost the last of my senses and said they’d seen no one. Surely if anyone had been here he couldn’t have run away so quickly with the land cleared through the whole of the valley.
I paid them no mind. I took my pail and filled it again with water. I hefted a gurgling William upon my hip to head back to the castle, with a tingle at the back of my neck.
That’s when I set to thinking, and the more I thought, the more I was after knowing it was true. I’m old, aye, I’ve seen more changes than a woman should in this place—from good to bad and then to good again—but I wouldn’t let anyone tell me that I’d lost the last of my mind.
For it was that day I realized the truth, and not a man, a woman or a child could convince me otherwise.
Since the coming of the mistress, God bless her, the faeries run free again on the hills of Wales.
A personal note from Lisa …
Thanks so much for reading THE FAERY BRIDE! Reviews and ratings help other readers find the books they’ll love—and they also serve as a happy reminder of why I do what I do. So if you have a moment, I would be forever grateful if you left a rating or an honest review at your favorite review website. Even just a few words are appreciated. Many, many thanks.
Don’t miss Lisa Ann Verge’s other sexy, adventurous, historical romances, including the other novels in the Celtic Legends Series!
TWICE UPON A TIME Amazon USA or Amazon International
THE FAERY BRIDE Amazon USA or Amazon International
THE O’MADDEN: A NOVELLA Amazon USA or Amazon International
THE CELTIC LEGENDS SERIES: Boxed Set Amazon USA or Amazon International
HEAVEN IN HIS ARMS Amazon USA or International
Also available––the Novels of Lisa Verge Higgins
THE PROPER CARE AND MAINTENANCE OF FRIENDSHIP Amazon USA or Amazon International
ONE GOOD FRIEND DESERVES ANOTHER Amazon USA or Amazon International
FRIENDSHIP MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER Amazon USA or Amazon International
RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS Amazon USA or Amazon International
SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY Amazon USA or Amazon Internatio
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Enjoy a preview of TWICE UPON A TIME, Deirdre and Conaire’s story, available now.
TWICE UPON A TIME
Prologue
France, 1223 A.D.
It was a time for dying.
Conor stood apart from the others as the ocean roared against the cliff. Cold seeped into his tunic and drained the heat from his blood. A cluster of villagers huddled in the lee of a church, watching a priest brace himself at the head of a grave The old cleric muttered wind–stolen words to the wooden cross and then, ceding the battle to the coming storm, made the final sign of the cross. The villagers mimicked the motion and then rustled like a flock of ravens as they turned away.
Conor watched them disperse. Go, then, go while you can. Go to your hot stew and your loaves of thyme bread. There’s never time to mourn the dead while the business of the living continues.
His footsteps crunched across the ground. The grave diggers paused, their shovels dribbling sod. Conor pitched to one knee and clutched a handful of soil. He crumbled it between his fingers and sifted it into the pit.
Sleep easy, my old friend. May the sun shine warmly on your face.
The church bell clanged from the bell tower and echoed through the fog.
If you find her where you’re going, tell her to wait for me at the doors of Tír na nÓg one more time again.
The villagers’ gazes weighed upon his bent head. It was long past time for their suspicion and fear, he supposed. He should have known better than to linger in this tiny hamlet until all his seafaring friends lay scattered in the ground beneath him, their flesh eaten, their bones dust. But she had taught him too well. A healer could not leave a single man suffering. So he had stayed to ease the pain of the passing of the last of his companions.
Yet still he lived, still he lived—if one could call such an existence life. No warm hearth glowed for him in the village at the base of the cliff. No soft–voiced woman peered out a crack in the door, or strained her ears for his footfall. No grandchildren sprawled on the hearth to plead for stories. And now there was no longer anyone with whom to swap tales while the rain seeped through the thatched roof. No one with whom to reminisce about voyages to Venice and Rome, to Assyria and Egypt. No one with whom to share a simple meal or a simple memory.
It was a good time to die.
Conor heaved his broad–shouldered frame to its full height, not bothering to stoop and waddle as he had for so many years. Let the wind scour the ash from his hair. Let the sea mist cleanse his face and hands to uncover his unlined skin. Men saw what they expected to see. If today they finally saw him as he was, there was nothing he could do to disguise the truth. That was the way of the world.
His fog–soaked cloak snapped behind him as he turned his back to the grave and strode toward the view of the sea. The milky vapor engulfed him in an odd, welcoming warmth. He paused at the tip of the cliff and squinted toward the white–capped sea carving the shores of Marseille. Above, rain–burdened clouds jostled in the sky. Soon, he thought, the twilight between light and dark would come. Soon, the mist would be neither rain nor seawater, nor river nor well water. It would be the time between the times, as the Druids had once taught him, when the walls between the worlds grew thin.
He would choose a sea–death today. He would row his fishing boat into the tempest and challenge the water’s fury. He closed his eyes, imagining the course of his coming death. The sting of liquid salt gorging his lungs. The flex and stretch of his muscles as he struggled against the inevitable suck into the ocean’s womb. The last white–hot flash of agony before the blood stopped pulsating in his temples and an unearthly warmth and darkness cradled him in silence.
Then he would see the light. He would approach it, drawn irresistibly to the glow of love and warmth and joy, like the welcoming arms of some primordial mother. He would hear the birds singing and the outline of a tree would emerge—a silver tree bathed in golden light. He would hear the bells, tinkling like fairy music. And he would know that this was Tír na nÓg, the beloved Otherworld.
He would race toward that music, race toward her, thinking this time it would be different, because hope was a tenacious plant which grew back no matter how many times it was cut. But just when he glimpsed the edge of her robes, just when he saw the tips of her fingers, outstretched for him, just when he detected the fragile scent of rainwater and honeysuckle that had always clung to her hair—that door would slam shut.
Then he would awaken, buried in the chill earth with dirt clogging his nostrils and a winding sheet stifling his movements. Still smelling her, still sensing her presence, clinging to the feeble threads of the memory until the screams of his earthly body stripped him of the last fiber and left him with a different agony. Cold. Hunger. Pain.
Wretched life.
Conor swathed his cape around his body and spun away from the cliff. He plodded through the cemetery, past the half–full grave. He no longer mourned the dead. His old friend had slipped through the door to a land of warmth and peace and pleasure. Now Conor mourned for himself, for the hell the gods had forced upon him—the loneliness, the deceit, the fear in the eyes of men. It would always be like this. He would fool himself that he could be like other men, but then another lifetime would pass, the lies would begin, his disguise grow thinner, his friends die one by one. He would try once again to leap the precipice that kept him from where he belonged, only to find himself earthbound again, forced to leave for another place, another existence, like dozens of lives before, all the same.
All but one.
A bolt of lightning cracked open the sky. Rain pelted his shoulders and sluiced down the riverbed of his face. He had relived that single life until the fabric of the memory frayed like a storm–chewed fishing net. He wished he could forget. But the memories seized him in moments of distraction. Such was the fate of a man whose heart lay in the grave.
He would never lose himself like that again, no matter where the road took him in the years ahead. For now he understood: He would have been better off if he had never known her. He would have been better off if he had never given away the full of his soul.
But it had been his first life, and he had been too young and too ignorant to guard his heart.
He had loved before he knew he was immortal.
And thus forever alone.
excerpt from TWICE UPON A TIME, book one in the Celtic Legends Series, copyright 2013 by Lisa Ann Verge
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LISA ANN VERGE
Lisa Ann Verge is the critically acclaimed RITA–nominated author of sixteen novels that have been published worldwide and translated into as many languages—quite a switch for this former chemist. She started her career writing emotionally intense romance about hot men and adventurous women, and now she also writes life–affirming women’s fiction under the name Lisa Verge Higgins. A finalist for Romantic Times’ book awards five times over, Lisa has won the Golden Leaf and the Bean Pot, and twice she has cracked Barnes & Noble’s General Fiction Forum’s top twenty books of the year. She currently lives in New Jersey with her husband and their three daughters, who never fail to make life interesting.
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The Faery Bride
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments, or persons, living or dead, is
entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews, may be reproduced in any form by any means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission from the author.
The scanning, uploading, and distributing of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
Publishing History
First edition published by Kensington Publishing
Copyright 1996, 2013 by Lisa Ann Verge
Cover design by The Killion Group
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty–One
Chapter Twenty–Two
Epilogue
The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) Page 28