A chill shot through him. He pulled away to look her in the eye. “Better to find the village priest and have done with it, lass.”
“I’m no loose-skirted milkmaid to sneak off to a friar to be wed.”
“Have you forgotten that you’re already betrothed?”
“To the Sire de Clunel?” Her hand fluttered in the air again, sweeping away all the complications of the contract her father had already signed. “Papa will take one look at the great Clunel manor house and he’ll have no more to do with him. Besides . . ..” She drifted down upon him, “Papa will do whatever pleases me, Conor, he loves me so.”
His heart went dark. She was so sure of herself, so sure of her father’s love, once again.
He lay back and closed his eyes. You gave me three months in that last life before I destroyed everything. Will you give me no more than three days in this? He saw it in his head, the whole terrible life replayed, his own history repeating itself. He’d thought he would never want more time, but now he wanted to stop it—just for this moment—for just this moment.
Yet the water dripping in the corner quickened, tip-tapping away.
“Very well, lass.” He dragged his arms down her back. “I’ll send a message to your father tomorrow.”
Then he kissed her hard, to wash the lie off his tongue.
Chapter Nineteen
Deirdre rushed through the garden. Grass slapped her bare ankles. She paused near an opening in the rock-pile fence, then whirled to gaze at the sodden little manor house, with its lolling roof of thatch and skewed shutters. With the faintest of chimes, she launched a silver bell into the crushed grass of her path.
“Come, Conor,” she whispered, “a race amid the forests of Champagne may shake the brooding out of you.”
She plunged into the shadows of the woods. Her cloak billowed behind her. The mist eddied as she skimmed along the familiar path, avoiding the moss-edged pools of rainwater scattered in the hollows. She launched another chime over her shoulder and then darted deeper into the wood. She felt like a child racing through Ireland with Jean-Jacques. Raindrops trickled off the leaves and cascaded to the litter, pattering around her like a thousand tiny footfalls, urging her faster, faster, urging her away from the thorny bushes that plucked and tugged upon the hem of her cloak like children’s fingers. She imagined that the Little People raced alongside her, but when she turned there was nothing behind her but the flutter of a leaf to the ground.
She thrust her forearm over her eyes and smiled at her own foolishness. She was acting fey, but she couldn’t stop herself any more than she could stop the wind from blowing. Madness lived in her now, a delirious joy which destroyed all reason.
She blinked her eyes open. Though nothing moved amid the thick trunks, though a single bird sang fearlessly in the boughs above her, an uncertain prickle of foreknowledge tickled the nape of her neck. Conor had deemed her unusual power a gift. She had determined to stop fearing what she could not change. So she sucked in a deep breath and opened her heart to the hazy image.
The vision wavered, flirting, and then suddenly crystallized. Conor wore his blue surcoat, the one she had mended that first afternoon in the garden. In her mind’s eye, she saw him crouch to retrieve the first silver bell from where it glittered amid the grass. He swallowed it in his grip and pressed his white-knuckled fist against his heart.
Her vision wavered then drowned in gray mist. When the blindness cleared she found herself standing with her arms outstretched toward the manor house.
Conor, mo rún, do you think you can hide your grief from me?
At first, she’d thought it was her betrothal to Sir Guichard which troubled him. Conor, having no kin, might not understand the bond of love which held her and her father’s hearts together. That bond was more powerful than any piece of parchment, but each time she broached the subject he swiftly spoke of other matters.
She’d been determined to cure him of his gloom. Two days ago she’d spotted a group of jongleurs on the road leaving the Fair of Troyes. Despite the grumbling of the servants, she called out to the minstrels and invited them into the manor house to play for their supper. After a repast of stale bread and a soup clogged with more leeks and onions than ham, the jongleurs cleared the room and did handsprings, juggled flaming sticks in the air, performed sleight-of-hand, then sang to the music of a pear-shaped lute. She, who’d only heard such music wafting over the roof of her house in Troyes, turned bright and excited eyes onto Conor . . . only to find him as straight-backed and impassive as ever.
She’d leaned into him as much as she dared under the sight of the servants. “Conor, it won’t break you to bend a bit.”
“I would have you alone in this house,” he had murmured, in a pitch only she could hear, “and you go and fill it with people.”
It was a demanding lover she had welcomed into her bed that night. Long after the loving was done, he’d held her as if she would dissolve into the air and leave him nothing but an armful of smoke.
It was in the cool blue of the following morning when wisdom descended upon her. Her heart ached for whatever torment he’d suffered, but it was folly to try to force the truth from him. Whatever tortured him lay deep in the past, that much she knew, for he withdrew from her whenever she asked about his wanderings. He would tell her eventually. An apple wouldn’t fall until it was ripe.
She’d work until the grey threaded through her hair if she must, just to see a smile crack his features.
So she pushed away from the tree and swept down the path, scattering the bells behind her. Today, she’d planned a different sort of diversion. She veered off the beaten path and headed toward the sound of a stream. There, on a bank, atop a grassy knoll buttered by the first rays of dawn, she settled her basket.
Sometime later, she heard the faint tinkling of the gathered bells. She plunged a needle into the froth of the shift he’d torn their second night of loving, and then she set it aside. “You’re as slow as a woman ten moons gone with child, Conor.”
He strode through the shadows. By some trick of the dappled sunlight, golden vines edged his cloak, and brassy bands circled his neck and arms, but then he stepped into the clearing and the illusion melted away.
He tossed the bells on her lap. “You’re lucky I caught sight of you as you entered the forest this morning.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it.” She wondered if he would always wake as if he’d slept upon a bed of nails. “I told Octavius to let you know where I was.”
“You saw that thief?”
“He was sitting outside the back door of the manor house mending his boot.” She wiped away the bells and dragged the basket upon her lap.
“He told me nothing. He scurries to his hole when I look for him.”
“Sit down, Conor.” She unfolded the cloth, and the fragrant steam of fresh-made bread wafted up from the basket. “Maybe some barley cakes and a little honey will sweeten that disposition of yours.”
“And how did you get those?”
“I made them with my own hands, thank you very much.” She rifled through the cloth for a knife, and then peeled the cloth off a pot of honey. “I thought you’d like a taste of Ireland on such a fine day.”
He lowered his big body to the pool of her cloak and took the barley cake spread with honey. She spread another for herself, thinking she’d wait until his belly was full before she broached another subject. She gripped the flagon of wine she’d brought, and didn’t it taste like the hazel-mead Ma used to make? Even the barley cake tasted as if it were spread with good Irish heather honey. She’d long grown accustomed to such odd illusions in Conor’s presence, in these enchanted woods.
When she finished her barley cake, she licked her fingers free of honey until Conor seized her wrist and tugged her toward him to suck her thumb deep into his mouth.
Excitement shuddered through her.
He kept a grip on her hand even after he’d sucked her thumb clean. “You brought me out here
for more than a taste of bread and honey, lass.”
“You found me out, mo rún.”
She lay braced against the width of his chest, his breath hot with promise. Liquid heat softened her bones, a feeling now deliciously intense, exquisitely familiar. She almost yielded. The tips of her breasts brushed his chest, and then flattened against the resistance. Her lips parted to accommodate his mouth, and his hand curled into her hair. Then she remembered the times he’d forced her to wait while he’d lingered over every stretch of her skin, when he’d feather-stroked and teased and made love so languid that she wanted to scream from the tight ache. So she forced herself to pull back. She slipped down to her hip and let the cool morning light pour between them.
She said, “We’ve a score to settle, we two.”
With shaking hands she fumbled through the basket until she pulled out a square of painted wood.
He scowled at the chessboard.
“For wagers,” she added, searching for the pieces bundled in cloth. “The last time, I set the wager without a word to you. This time we’ll do the same: Let the winner decide the price of losing.”
He traced the edge of the board with his thumb. “It’s a dangerous weapon you put in my hands.”
“Every sword has two edges. Are you willing to risk the weapon turned upon yourself?”
He seized the bundle of pieces and let them fall on the board, and then set to the game with intensity. As the morning progressed, the first rays of dawn intensified into the bright white light of day, dissipated the last whorls of morning mist and deepened the shadows of the surrounding woods. Birds, roused from slumber, chirped raucously and flittered from bough to bough.
Conor played with a cleverness he’d not shown that one other time. She played to win, but when he finally seized her beleaguered king, she welcomed the end of the game with a trill of anticipation.
She let the cloth of her tunic fall over her shoulder as she leaned toward him with a growing smile. “You’ll want a prize now, no doubt.”
She let her eyes drift closed, but when his kiss didn’t come, she blinked her eyes opened. A long piece of dried grass stuck out of his mouth. He chewed it to the other side. A strange expression spread over his face, an expression unlike one she’d ever seen before.
She settled back on her hip with a frown. “Are you going to state your wager or just sit there and gnash away like a cow?”
“Bilberries.”
He spoke around the stem of the straw, so at first she was sure she’d misheard him. “Did you say bilberries?”
“Aye.” He pulled the straw out of his mouth and waved it toward her basket. “I won’t last until dinner on a bit of bread and a spoonful of honey. Somewhere in these woods there must be bilberries ripe and ready to eat.”
He planted the straw back between his teeth. Deirdre raised her hands to her hips, anticipation uncurling into indignation. “Can’t you think of a worthier wager than sending me into the thistles?”
“Is the daughter of a burgher of Troyes too proud for a bit of honest labor?”
Words failed her. She had brought him out to the banks of this stream for lover’s games, and here he was wasting his wagers. Well, she’d show him what was what. Crumpled linen spilled to the ground as she swept up the basket and marched toward the trees. She’d get him his wretched berries, may he choke on the whole lot of them. She plunged into the thicket and wove a path beneath low-slung branches, knowing without turning around that Conor was forced to bob and weave to make his way after her. In Ireland she used to find the bilberries in the bogs, but she did not know these woods well, and thus did not know a place where a bilberry bush thrived. Instinctively she headed through the thickets toward the stonier grounds and poorer soils.
She came upon one near the edge of a meadow, a ways farther upstream. Without a word she set to picking the small blue-black berries from the shrub, and tossing them in the basket nestled in the crook of her arm.
He laid his hand on her shoulder when the basket was a quarter full. “It’s a fair fine gatherer you are, lass. There’s plenty and more for the two of us to share—”
“This isn’t nearly enough. I’ve heard that man makes love on the fullness of his stomach. I won’t have you fainting away for lack of sustenance.”
He pulled her up against his chest. She glared up at him, at the firm line of his lips, at his eyes gleaming with wickedness. She spread her hands on his chest, her fingertips running blue with the juice of the berries.
He said, “You’re in a fit, but I wager I can kiss it out of you—”
“I can’t be bought like a laundress on fair day.” She pushed out of his embrace, leaving sticky blue handprints on his tunic. “You had your chance to taste my kisses.” She thrust the basket at him. “You chose bilberries.”
She set back through the woods, retracing the path to the grassy knoll. He wasn’t quite laughing behind her, but she sensed a shift in his mood. If he were so lucky as to win the next game, she suspected they’d finally get what they’d both been yearning for since the first rays of dawn.
Then Conor curled his hand around her arm and pulled her into the shadows as a low chanting sounded through the woods. On the other side of the stream, a procession emerged. A clergyman in white robes led the way with several black-robed monks in his wake. A clump of peasants followed a respectful distance behind. Deirdre made the sign of the cross as she heard the familiar, rhythmic cadence of Latin. A ceremony commenced as clergyman—a Dominican friar, by the looks of his robes—flicked droplets of holy water into the stream.
Conor’s fingers tightened on her arm. “What’s he doing?”
“If you’d gone to Mass the other day, you’d have heard that he was coming here for God’s blessing on the fields and the like.”
They watched in silence as the simple ceremony was completed and the clergymen filed away. The peasants came forward then. In the spot where the friar had stood they lay their gifts—a bag of grain, a tureen of milk, a haunch of some sort wrapped in cloth.
Conor spoke in a low, grim voice. “Leaving gifts to appease an angry god?”
“You sound like the nobility of the convent, mocking the ways of the common people. They’re giving the full of their hands, and the full of their hearts, and who’s to say it’s not for the good?”
He gave her a queer look.
“Now come.” She plunged anew into the thicket. “You owe me another game.”
It was a quiet man who sat across from her when they returned to the grassy knoll. He played with less intensity, yet she still found herself scurrying across the board, usually chased by one or more of his men. This was not how she’d imagined spending the afternoon, bent in two over a chessboard and snagging her tunic upon bilberry shrubs. She grew impatient over the pace of the game, and especially over Conor’s brooding silence—a silence she had hoped to break, at least for a little while.
Finally, he snatched her king and rolled it in the palm of his hand.
She squinted at him. “On Lughnasa, you played with all the skill of a child. Are you making a fool of me, Conor?”
“Nay.” He placed the king thoughtfully upon the wool cloak. “I think from the beginning you’ve been making a fool of me.”
Deirdre frowned at him. Such a mood he was in. There’d be no sweet lovemaking upon the grass today. She jerked to her feet and waved her hand toward the stream. “Will you have me catching fish now? I can do that, too, you know, better than I can find bilberries.”
She didn't wait for him to answer. Bunching her skirts in one hand, she searched the edge of the clearing for a pointed branch. And there it was, a perfect fishing spear, as straight as a hunter’s arrow, and as sharp as if she’d spent a morning honing the point.
She swept it up. “The Little People are sharing in your mischief today.”
She trudged to the bank of the stream. Dropping the spear at her side, she swept up the length of her skirts and jerked them into a knot at her hip
. Surely he’d stop her now, with the sight of her bare legs. But the silence behind her stretched, so she sullenly retrieved the spear and plunged into the water. The clear, swift current crept up her calves, as she nimbly stepped from stone to stone into the middle of the creek.
She stilled and bent her knees in the slightest of crouches, the spear upraised. The scattered bits of her reflection wavered, and then rocked upon the rippling water as she focused on the pebbled riverbed. She thought of Jean-Jacques and the old days, when they would stand in the brackish water of the creek which fed the sea, feeling the salt dry tight upon their legs, searching for the telltale ripple of the water, while the linings of their bellies rasped hollow and hungry. Her heart cried out for Jean-Jacques now—how she wished he were here, in his proud manhood, so she could ask him about the strange ways of men.
She pushed those thoughts away. She could not fish with tears blurring her eyesight. So she concentrated on her task. The sun beat upon her hair. A fly buzzed close to her ear, retreated, then circled again. A drop of perspiration ran from her temple to her cheek.
As she plunged the spear into the stream, her reflection shattered. She jerked the weapon up amid the spray. A fish arched its last upon the wooden point.
She tossed it, spear and all, upon the bank. She splattered to shore, not meeting his eyes. She jerked free the knotted length of her skirts, and let the cloth fall over her damp legs. “So now you know I can spot a bush of bilberries from ten paces, and I can spear a fish. I can even milk a cow and do a bit of spinning. Life was not easy for two bastard children living with a tainted woman on the edge of a village. But I’m not complaining. I would willingly return to that life, if just for one moment I could be as happy now as I was then.”
His shadow fell over her. She raised her face to throw her gaze at him like a spear—but her boldness fled as she saw his expression. Those eyes of gray, which always seemed as hard as stone, now glowed as soft and welcoming as the smoke of a hearth fire. And what was this? She raised her hand to trace his mouth, almost not daring to believe what she saw. Was that a smile hovering at the corners of his lips? The smile she hadn’t expected to see on his face for half a lifetime?
[Celtic Legends 01.0] Twice Upon a Time Page 26