Stealing Midnight

by Tracy MacNish

  Those sorts of things were for fanciful girls.

  Beautiful girls.

  Olwyn Gawain was neither.

  And knowing all that, Olwyn couldn’t help but wonder why her father’s words had cut so deeply.

  She could hear Rhys’s screams, like an enraged animal, deep, long bellows that echoed off the stones.

  Olwyn walked away as fast as her feet could carry her. She found that Drystan had laid the man in front of the fire and was covering him with blankets and furs, just as she’d instructed.

  The tall arched windows in the great hall showed the early streaks of dawn lighting the sky, and Lord be praised, it was cloudless. For a woman who rarely felt in fortune’s favor, Olwyn felt it was a good sign that she was not making the biggest mistake of her life.

  She didn’t need to hold the pistol on Drystan. He seemed ready enough for her to leave and take the awakened man with her.

  But she held it to him, just the same, even as she stooped down to check on her charge. He’d closed his eyes again, but he looked far less pale, and when she touched him, he felt warmer.

  Her fingers played over his forehead, brushing his thick, slashing brows, and swept lightly over his closed eyelids. She noticed the tips of his lashes were darker, the fringe of them thick, their covetous length a sweetly boyish curve against his cheek. His lips looked soft, the bottom slightly fuller than the top, and had Olwyn wondering what it would be like to be kissed by such a man.

  Her fingers moved again to his hair, burying into the thick softness of it as if of their own volition.

  Drystan coughed, clearly subduing laughter. Yes, she supposed she made quite a sight, holding a pistol in one hand while stroking the sleeping man with the other.

  Olwyn could not dismiss Drystan to do her bidding, couldn’t risk him unleashing the dogs.

  “To the stables, then,” she directed crisply. “I’ll be needing the horse and wagon.”

  The small stables were about five hundred years newer than the keep, a humble structure that smelled of hay and manure, leather and horses. The early morning sunlight filtered through the high, grimy windows, casting dusty streams of light down into the dimness. In the corner there were a few wagons in various stages of disrepair, too necessary to be sold, as they were used for carting various necessities from the village.

  The dogs were in their pens, and they bumped the gates with their noses, baring their teeth as they barked. They didn’t even seem to register Drystan’s presence, but aimed their aggression at her. “Quiet! Lie down!” she commanded, but if she could hear her own shrill fear, surely they could smell it.

  The big black one smiled as he growled, a hungry sound that made her flesh crawl. She wondered if he remembered what she tasted like, for ever since the attack he went wild when he saw her, bumping the gate of his pen as if he hungered for more of her blood.

  Olwyn dug into the bin of scraps her father kept for the dogs, and pulled out two old soup bones. She threw them into the pens, as far against the wall as she could get them.

  The dogs launched themselves hungrily on their quarry, and as their teeth ground against the bones, Olwyn imagined the long sharp teeth sinking into her arms.

  No time for fear.

  Olwyn grabbed her tack and rushed to the horse’s pen, while Drystan readied the wagon. The mare, Nixie, nickered and nuzzled her arm as Olwyn buckled her straps. She was old and far too placid to prance with excitement, but still she tossed her head and swished her tail in anticipation.

  Leading her out, Drystan hitched Nixie to the smallest wagon they owned; the bigger ones, she reasoned, would be heavier and more likely to tire Nixie. While the wagon was secured, Olwyn quickly packed up a few horse blankets and a feed bag, and had Drystan lift the fullest sack of grain into the wagon. She also took two oiled tarps and a coiled length of rope, and threw them on top.

  With that completed, she and Drystan drove it back to the keep, and though she kept her pistol at the ready, he made no efforts to stop her. He was far too compliant, following each of her instructions without demur, and once or twice she thought she spied a smug grin on his face.

  And she wondered if he had a plan. He most certainly was up to something.

  “Stop here, Drystan,” she instructed. Olwyn nibbled at her lip for a second. “Get the man, put him in the back. Layer a few wrapped hot bricks beside him.”

  And instead of readying herself, she waited, holding the pistol.

  When he was finished, she directed him into a small windowless room that had once been a butler’s lodging. It had a small bed and a chamber pot.

  “What are you going to do to me?” Drystan asked, eyeing her suspiciously.

  Olwyn didn’t hide her smile. “You’ll see.”

  She locked him in there for the time being, and spared a glance at the timepiece in the great room as she ran through it. Up to her rooms she ran, and with the excitement of a woman who had longed to escape for years, she gathered up her belongings.

  A few sacks of clothing were already packed; she put those by the door, along with another bag she kept ready to go. It contained her pouch of stolen money, both her bottles of whiskey, the book of poetry that had been her brother’s favorite, and her pouch of incense.

  She stripped her bed of the bed linens and blankets, rolled them into a bundle. She took tinder and flint, candles and a lantern, her thick, warm boots, and an extra pair of shoes.

  It took two trips to carry it all down and pack it into the wagon, and then Olwyn made a quick stop in her father’s room, stealing an old, ratty cloak, a long, threadbare nightshirt, and two pairs of thick woolen stockings. Rhys didn’t have much in the way of clothing; it was all she could find. But naked as the unconscious man currently was, these clothes would be better than nothing.

  A trip to the kitchens yielded a loaf of bara brith she’d baked the day before, a wheel of cheese, some dried figs, and two sacks of nuts. She took the jar of honey and the tea, a rasher of bacon and a jug of water. Once she had everything loaded into the sides of the wagon, Olwyn covered her provisions with the tarps.

  “Are you awake?” she whispered in English. “Can you talk?”

  He slit his eyes for the briefest second, and she swore she saw fear in those blue depths.

  Did looking upon her spark horror in him? Was she truly so hideous?

  The keep didn’t have a looking glass, and Olwyn hadn’t seen her own reflection in anything more than a distorted glimmer in a bucket of water.

  The villagers reviled her, but she’d hoped it was because they feared her a witch, not because she was truly deformed.

  Well, be that as it may, she told herself. It mattered not. This beautiful man with the face of a prince and the form of a warrior was not in the wagon now because she hoped for his love. Doing the right thing would be its own reward.

  Sparing a final pat on the bundled man who lay on a pallet between all the rations and supplies, she said, “Well, whatever may come, it’ll be better than your fate in the dungeon.”

  Olwyn left him there once more, and went inside to deal with Drystan.

  After making her preparations, she opened the door and found him on the cot. He had his back against the wall, his legs outstretched and casually crossed at the ankles. A smirk twisted his lips, and his watery eyes had an unusual sparkle in them.

  “What are you up to, Drystan?”

  “Not a thing, girl. Not a thing, and why should you be asking when it’s you holding a pistol at my head and me doing your bidding?”

  Olwyn didn’t answer him, but instead handed over a bottle of Drystan’s beloved whiskey with a cup overturned on its neck. “Drink up.”

  Drystan looked askance at her offering, trying for suspicion despite his own longing. He licked his lips like a man who’d just crossed the desert. “It’s not payday.”

  “This’ll work better than tying you with ropes, Drystan, and will surely be more enjoyable for you. Go on. Drink up, and come tomorrow when you’
re sober enough to pick open the lock, you’ll find a note on the kitchen table. Take it down to the dungeon and my father will read it for you. It tells the location of the key to my father’s cell.”

  Drystan ran his tongue out again over lips that were already shining with saliva. “Well, if you’re forcing me, I’ve no choice at all.”

  He reached out and took the bottle, filled the cup, and began to drink.

  With Drystan’s drunken songs echoing through the keep, Olwyn left her home behind. Hoping she hadn’t forgotten anything vital, Olwyn jumped onto the driver’s board, lifted the reins, and gave Nixie’s back a hearty slap.

  The wagon lurched into motion. She urged the horse to a quick clip.

  Olwyn’s heart raced, her blood sang, and her spirits soared. She did not think of the risks involved. Those worries were for another day, another time, and she thought recklessly, another woman.

  Right now, she was seizing her freedom, an emancipation from her father’s madness and a life that would never improve.

  She wondered if her mother had felt that way, the night she left them all behind.

  And creeping into her happiness and hopes was the question that her heart never stopped asking, and would never be answered: why had Talfryn abandoned her?

  Sadness threatened to steal her optimism. There are, Olwyn reasoned, always ways to justify doing the right thing for oneself, to ignore the needs of others, and to find a way to make putting oneself first seem like the only rational thing to do.

  But there was always a price to that, Olwyn knew.

  Olwyn turned back and looked down on the tarp-covered wagon. She spoke aloud to the man who slumbered beneath it. “Whatever happens, know that I did my best.”

  She faced front and urged the horse to pick up its pace. And refusing to let Talfryn’s abandonment ruin her excited anticipation for the future, Olwyn consulted her maps, looked to the horizon, drove the wagon south, and thought about freedom.

  Chapter Three

  Warwick, England

  Mira Kimball watched discreetly out her parlor window, impatiently tapping her foot. She tried to focus on something besides her boredom, even toyed with the idea of painting a picture of the landscape.

  The sky shone smooth and silver with clouds, the sun a watery gold smear behind tangled, bare trees. Warwick was lovely, stark and beautiful in the way only England can be on a cold winter’s morning.

  She envisioned Padraig Mullen finding her seated prettily before an easel, painting the countryside. Would he then report of her talent to his brother, Aidan? If he did, would Aidan be cheered that his betrothed possessed an artistic bent?

  When she saw the team of horses and the shiny black carriage bearing the Mullen crest coming up their long drive, her heart picked up its pace and her boredom could be put temporarily aside.

  She rushed from the parlor and found her father in his study, pouring over the latest issue of The Herald, the paper he owned and highly prized. Mira did not trouble herself to politely interrupt, but burst out, “Papa, he is here.”

  Andrew Kimball, the Earl of Falconbergh, set down the smudged copy and leaned back in his chair, regarding his daughter over the rims of his spectacles. “Who?”

  Mira blew out her breath in annoyance, and whirled from the room. Her father, indulgent and doting though he was, did not spare a single moment for her flirtations. It seemed to Mira that he did not realize that she was betrothed to the most lucrative fish in London’s sparsely populated male sea. Other than a few widowers with a few of their own brats, court was littered with impoverished men of good title, and its fair share of unappealing, and dare she say ugly, men of lower birth.

  Mira Kimball had set her sights on the Mullen twins, for they were rakishly handsome, incredibly wealthy, and one would be duke.

  And after a few glasses of champagne, coupled with just a bit of added insurance, she’d succeeded in securing Aidan Mullen as her own. The cost of her virginity had been a paltry price to pay, and he was now honor-bound to do the proper thing.

  It had been perfect. Mira had wept tears of remorse, and Aidan had proposed.

  As Mira had planned, she would get exactly what she wanted—a handsome husband whose marital bed would not be burdensome, along with the wealth that she was accustomed to and deserved.

  She rushed to the anteroom outside the ballroom, where the accoutrements of a lady’s beauty were laid out. Standing in front of the oversized, gilt-framed looking glass, Mira dusted her nose with powder, pressed a few drops of scented oil behind her ears, and patted her perfect coiffure. Mira, satisfied with her appearance, turned and walked sedately toward the foyer where her betrothed’s brother was most likely being greeted by their butler.

  Her hands trembled with anticipation, and so to cover, she folded them demurely across the narrow column of her high-waisted gown. She’d worn one of her finest morning dresses, made of the palest, shimmery pink silk; it flattered her skin and was so fine and delicate, it begged to be touched. And her décolletage, daringly low and dangerously sheer, begged the same as well.

  Mira paused in the corridor that led to the massive, two-storied grand foyer. She could see him, Padraig Mullen, her betrothed’s twin.

  He was as tall as Aidan, as muscled, and their faces both bore the hint of a Celtic fable, testimony to their Irish heritage. While Padraig was dark of hair and green of eyes like his father, Aidan bore the look of his mother, golden as an Adonis, with blatant sensuality and eyes the color of sapphires.

  But as to which of the twins would be duke, the secret had been guarded all their lives by their parents, who had wanted them raised without rivalry.

  That may have been true in their youth, but Mira suspected the secret was maintained to keep greedy young women slightly at bay.

  And the thought made her so self-satisfied, she wanted to squeal and clap her hands, for she’d managed to snag herself one of them, and was the envy of every girl at court.

  Padraig caught sight of Mira, turned in her direction, showed a fine leg, and swept into a formal bow. “My lady, ’tis good to see you.”

  Sweet soft laughter tinkled down the hall. Mira laughed as she entered the foyer, and held out her tiny hand. He bowed over it, pressed a kiss upon her glove, and breathed in her feminine scent. Straightening, he took in her petite blond beauty, as softly fragile and adorable as a kitten. While he could clearly appreciate her charms, he still couldn’t quite understand why his brother had proposed to her. They were an odd match, he thought, and she was not the sort of woman he’d have thought his brother would have wanted to marry.

  “You’ve gotten even prettier since we saw you last,” Padraig said.

  Mira tapped him on the chest with her folded fan. “Such gammon, my lord. I look exactly as I always do.”

  “If you were this beautiful six months ago, how did Aidan let you leave London?” he asked, saying the right things, but not thinking them. In truth, he’d been glad to see her go.

  “Winter in London is dreadful. All that wet soot and those dirty puddles.” Mira pursed her rosebud lips and lightly shuddered. “At home here in Warwick, I love it when the gardens slumber beneath a blanket of snow, and I am tucked up beside a warm fire with my sewing. ’Tis a fact that I don’t require much to make me happy. I’m quite satisfied with simplicity, really.”

  If Mira thought the great stately mansion in Warwick simple, Padraig would not disabuse her of that notion. True, she was spoilt and indulged, but that was only part and parcel to the rearing of a proper lady. For that he could forgive her.

  Padraig wondered how his brother thought he could marry a girl such as Mira. She was like a little porcelain doll, with her flaxen hair and her fine, fair skin. Her lips were always pink and pouting, and her wide cornflower eyes, so innocent and adoring, were the very picture of ladylike perfection.

  He couldn’t imagine bedding her; she looked breakable. And, he couldn’t help but think, she looked highly proper as well. Too proper, most li
kely, to enjoy the earthy, sensual delights he hoped to find in his marriage bed.

  Padraig steered his thoughts in a more gentlemanly direction. It wasn’t appropriate to be envisioning the woman his brother would wed in such a way, and Aidan certainly wouldn’t appreciate it. His brother had such an overreaching sense of honor where women were concerned. Come to that, his brother had an overreaching sense of honor, period. Aidan was a man who always did the right thing.

  “Have you heard from my brother?” Padraig asked.

  “Yes, I received a letter sent the day before he was set to leave Ireland,” she answered sweetly, and her eyes sparkled. “Have you?”

  “Aye, a letter reached me as well, written the same day. He mentioned that he looked forward to us all reuniting in Chester.”

  “I miss him so,” Mira sighed.

  If that were true, Padraig thought, perhaps she could have worn a less revealing gown. The bodice, so sheer and clingy, was not the sort of thing he thought a proper lady ought to be wearing, especially in front of her fiancé’s brother. He could scarcely stop looking down.

  “Last I saw you, you mentioned you had a special project you were working on,” Padraig said, hoping for a distraction from her nipples. “I’m sure Aidan won’t mind if you showed me.”

  “Never mind my silly project. I must see to your refreshment.” Mira gestured to the parlor but Padraig shrugged off her offer.

  “I’ve no needs. Why don’t you show me what has so absorbed you. I’m intrigued.”

  “Very well, if you insist,” Mira answered, and she lowered her eyes modestly, as if uncomfortable having such attention lavished on her and her project. “It really isn’t much. Certainly nothing in comparison to the ships your company builds. Isn’t it true that you’re one of the largest shipbuilders in the world?”