[Celtic Legends 01.0] Twice Upon a Time
Page 31
“Listen to you, believing only what you can see,” the Irishman said. “I’d curse you for your ignorance, but for all that leather upon your face there’s no hiding that you’ve been cursed already.”
Didn’t that set my blood to freeze! For no one dared to make mention of it, though all men knew of the curse upon my master. One look at that masked face set my heart to choking me. I thought my lord was to take the creature in his two warrior’s hands and strangle the life out of him. If it weren’t for the Welsh blood rushing thick in his veins he might have done the same. Instead he spoke quiet like the wind in the trees before a storm—like to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck—and banished the creature into the night.
Before the words were full out of my master’s mouth I made to hurry out and stop such discourtesy—to take the Irishman aside and give him food and shelter in our kitchens, humble though they may be. It was no fit night for man or hound.
But the Irishman stood his ground by the warmth of the hearth and smiled, he did. It was the smile that stopped me—as did the look in his bright black eyes. My heart dropped to my stomach. It was Midsummer’s Night, after all, and Christian though I am, I’ll not mock the old ways. This creature had come from the air itself.
The Irishman said that he knew a healer unlike any other who lived on an island off the west coast of Ireland. A woman who had healed every ailment she’d touched. A woman with a touch of faery blood who could cure my master’s curse with a pass of her hands. A miracle worker, like to be a saint.
I felt the heat of my lord’s anger, for hadn’t he made a hundred thousand pilgrimages and seen every charlatan and witch from Myddfai to Paris, all to rid himself of this curse?
On the Aran Isles, the Irishman continued, as thick as mud to my master’s silent rage. By the name of Aileen Ruadh. Aileen the Red.
Then what happened I never could be sure, for it happened so quickly I wondered if my old eyes had deceived me, or if he had just moved so quickly that I hadn’t noticed the closing of the door. For one moment, the Irishman was there, standing as whole as you or me before the red glow of the hearth fire, and the next moment there was a sparkling around him, and suddenly there was naught but a wisp of smoke and an echo of laughter that chilled my skin from my scalp to my toes.
After a moment, my master threw open the door and sent the wind howling through the house, spewing bright red embers across the paving stones. Then he was back and glaring up at the smoke-hole while the wind tossed his black hair wild.
I saw a light come into his eyes. I’d seen that light before, long, long ago, before the curse, when the master was young and handsome and still full of blind ambition. It was like before he set off with Llywelyn, the Prince of Wales, to burn the English off Welsh soil for the last blessed time.
And a shiver went through my soul for the likes of Aileen the Red.
~ excerpt from THE FAERY BRIDE, Book Two in the Celtic Legends Series, copyright 2013 by Lisa Ann Verge ~
Buy THE FAERY BRIDE Amazon USA or Amazon International
Lisa Ann Verge
Lisa Ann Verge is the critically acclaimed RITA-nominated author of eighteen 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.
And visit Lisa at:
Lisa's Website
Facebook
Pinterest
Goodreads
Twitter
SEND ME MY FREE BOOK!
Dedication
to the memory of my grandmother
and always,
to Tom.
Publishing History
Print edition published by Zebra Books, 1994
Copyright 1994, 2013 Lisa Ann Verge
Digital Edition published by Bay Street Press LLC, 2013
Cover design by Kim Killion
Digital formatting by Lisa Ann Verge
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.
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.
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.