Hellfire, Captain Lionel Redmayne had never been tempted to turn tail and run from any field of battle, but now, confronted with one totally oblivious weeping woman, he was coward enough to turn on his heel, ready to beat an ignominious retreat. If only a stick beneath his boot hadn't turned traitor and snapped with a deafening sound.
Rhiannon scrambled about, her green eyes sparking with fear, no doubt thinking that his assassins had returned. He expected her to recoil in horror, to scrub the tears from her face, shamed as if they were a thief's brand. He expected loathing, outrage, any ploy so she might gather the tattered remnants of her dignity about her. But she only looked into his face, tears welling over thick crescents of eyelash, trickling down cheeks a trifle too pink.
Redmayne would rather have faced a horde of screaming Sikhs, brandishing scimitars. He was stunned to hear himself stammering, making excuses. "I was merely stretching my legs."
"You don't fool me, Lion. You were worried about me."
No one had ever accused him of such a motive. He was struck dumb.
"But as you can see, I'm quite safe." Her gaze shifted to the direction the fox had vanished. Her voice sank to barely a whisper. "Do you think Duchess will be?"
Drat the woman! She was looking at him as if he could reassure her. He didn't have a blasted crystal ball. It was a fox, by all the saints. A fox. One she had tended as if it were her own wee babe. He took shelter in gruff levity.
"From what I overheard, you prepared her for her first season as well as any mother could have. Warned her about rogue suitors, advised her as to what a lady needs in a suitable husband. The lack of white muslin gowns and dancing slippers might be lamentable, but she seemed like a most resourceful young lady, and considerable beauty can make a gentleman overlook such a lack of accoutrements."
Her cheeks darkened, and he winced. He might not know the first thing about mopping up feminine tears, but he'd hardly wanted to make things more uncomfortable—for her or for himself.
Why hadn't he pretended he'd heard nothing? Or merely walked away? Why had he stepped on that damned stick? Why had he followed her up this accursed trail? Hell, why had he ever set foot in Ireland where he had run afoul of the woman in the first place? At the moment, he wished himself in Jericho.
But suddenly she managed the most heroic little smile he'd ever witnessed. "I suppose you are right, Lion. I've done all a mama can do. But"—her lip trembled—"sometimes it is so hard to let them go, you know?"
You know? She was looking at him as if she expected him to understand. Hell, he'd never let anything go, reluctantly or otherwise. He'd slammed the door in the face of anyone who dared attempt to get to know him. He'd shoved away anything he might get attached to as if it were poison. He'd made certain there was nothing anyone could take away from him. But he just hadn't realized that also meant that he had nothing precious.
Precious as a wounded fox or an almost blind dog, a one-eyed cat, or a gypsy cart. Or a woman's tears dampening his breast as he held her.
Lunacy. This was insane! He'd followed Rhiannon in order to continue his campaign of mock seduction. He'd intended to take shameless advantage of her. To discover any weakness and use it against her. This could have been a perfect opportunity for a ruthless bastard to press his advantage. Perhaps he wasn't quite as ruthless as he'd thought. But no one else need ever know.
Feeling chagrined, he closed the space between them. Grabbing her hand, he drew her to her feet, wanting to be quit of this clearing, and the emotions he'd witnessed here. "Your skirt is damp from the ground, and I haven't seen you eat a bite of food, despite the fact that you've been cooking all day," he scolded, leading her back toward the campsite.
"I haven't been hungry. I've been too unsettled by our kiss." How could such brutal honesty be spoken so gently?
Redmayne said nothing; his mouth was grim as he retraced his steps. When they passed the shadow of the gypsy cart, she pulled away from him.
"If you wish, I can serve up a feast to you in a few moments."
"What I wish is that you will sit down. The table would be a good place to do it."
"Lion..."
"Sit, Miss Fitzgerald, or I will make you." He called her 'miss' in a conscious effort to put some distance between them. It didn't work worth a damn.
She looked as if she wanted to break ranks and start bustling about, serving up the meal she thought he wanted, but she did as he'd ordered, sinking down into the chair with a bone-deep weariness that was all too easy to see. Her fingers curled around a rose-painted teacup, translucent as a ray of sunshine. The only problem was that a chip of china as large as the nail of his little finger was missing from the rim.
Doubtless she had nothing else, and with that irrepressible hospitality of hers would sooner swallow china shards herself than set such a cup out for a visitor to her camp.
Grimacing, Redmayne ladled out a heavenly-smelling stew, balanced breads still warm from baking on the rims of the bowls, and set them on the table, then went in search of the accoutrements to brew tea. Going to the cupboard inside the caravan to retrieve a charming creamware pot with a spout in the shape of a sea monster, he happened to glimpse several other cups with not so much as the tiniest flaw in their rims.
He took one back to the table. "Rhiannon, there are half a dozen of these in the cupboard," he said, reaching for her broken cup. "There's no need for you to—"
She all but snatched the chipped cup to her breast. "I prefer to use this one."
He would never know why he didn't just acquiesce. After all, why should it matter to him if the woman drank her tea out of a broken cup—or out of her Sunday bonnet if she wanted to? But her hands were still slightly unsteady. The fine tremor would put the fragile pink of her lips in imminent danger from the jagged glass edges, a risk that irritated him beyond all reason.
"I regret I must insist. I prefer my dinner partners not to drink from cups that could slice them at any moment. Blood on table linens can be so unsightly."
"You'll just have to risk it this time, Captain. I'm not surrendering." She ran one fingertip tenderly along the unbroken part of the rim. She raised her soft green eyes to meet his gaze. "This cup was my mother's. At least Papa always said it was. Whenever I was sick or tired or sad, he would take this cup down from its special place in the sideboard and let me drink from it—lemonade, cambric tea, fresh milk, or juice from the orangery. It always made me feel better."
"But it's broken." Who in his right mind would hand something so jagged and sharp to a child?
"It's broken because it was loved so much." A shadow crossed Rhiannon's face. "Often the most precious things of all are flawed. That's part of what makes them so rare, so unique. Look at it, Lion. Even broken, it's beautiful, don't you think?" She held it up so that the light filtering down through the branches of the trees shone on the delicate surface of the cup.
He wanted to scoff, to tell her she was being ridiculous. The cup was broken. Broken. But the sunshine illuminated the delicate surface, the painted roses alight with an almost unearthly glow. The way he'd once imagined the Holy Grail must have glowed when Galahad found it at last. He could remember his own father's voice, low and awe-filled, as he read the ancient tale, Mama stitching by the fireside, and Jenny, his sister, her face glowing, seeing far more clearly than any of the rest of them, despite the fact that her eyesight was failing, slipping away a little more every day.
God above, he hadn't thought of that night for so many years, it seemed as if the memory should belong to another man. One buried in the churchyard with the rest of his family an eternity ago.
He knew he should stand up, stride away from Rhiannon's vulnerable eyes and from the wisdom and the pain, the grief and the piercing sweetness of remembering. But he sat as if chained there—by what? His own weakness? Or the strange power of Rhiannon's tale? "It was your mother's. The cup." Redmayne heard himself saying. Why? To fill the silence? Or was there some secret part of him that was envious—for he
had nothing that had belonged to his family. Even the few memories he'd once hoarded so carefully were faded and tattered and cast aside.
"Papa said she brought it with her from the land of the fairies when she fell in love with him."
Fairies again! Hadn't he heard enough nonsense about them since he'd been exiled to this infernal place? For an instant, Redmayne almost spoke his thoughts aloud. The people of this island were so certain the place was infested with them, it was a wonder any man could take a step outside his own door without treading on half a dozen of these fairy folk. But something stopped him. The vulnerability in every line of Rhiannon's face? The soft lilt of her voice? Or the way she looked at him, so trusting, so open.
"Every morning, Papa said, they spent an hour together, sipping tea. Mama would tell him tales about Tir naN Og, and the two of them would weave dreams about the future. Mama dreamed me then."
"Dreamed of having children, you mean? It was a logical enough assumption, I would think, after marriage."
"No. Mama knew that I would be born, a girl child. She knew everything about me. What my favorite doll would be, that I would know about healing herbs. That was why I was to be named Rhiannon—the goddess of healing, who either eased the wounded ones or, after death, guided them to paradise, leading them by the hand."
The words were piercing, uncomfortable, the name far too fitting for this woman who sat across from him. Absurd, though, to think that anyone, even a mother, could sense so much about a child before it was even born.
"Mama knew how much Papa would love me and I would love him. It comforted her, Papa said, though he didn't understand why. Only later did he realize that she knew they hadn't much time to be together. Before long, she would have to return to the fairy kingdom and leave us behind."
She was waiting for him to say something. Redmayne could sense it. But he was at a total loss. No wonder your father lost your home. The man was obviously mad—would hardly be appropriate. "Uh, I suppose she had some pressing fairy business to attend to. Whatever the blazes that might be," Redmayne began. Then he grimaced, something in Rhiannon's face demanding truth instead of wry humor. "Rhiannon, you don't really believe—"
"Sometimes I do. When I'm alone too long or the night is too dark, I want to believe. It's so much prettier than any of the other tales I could come up with as to why my mother left me behind."
Redmayne didn't expect her words to echo in his own most secret places, the sick clutching of betrayal, abandonment, searching every window, every face in every crowd, desperate to see someone familiar, someone who could scoop you into his arms, tell you it had all been a terrible mistake. Someone to answer the question why....
She lowered the cup, strained the tea into it, careful, so careful not to fill it too close to the broken rim. But instead of sipping it herself, she held it out to him across the little table.
"What are you doing?" He eyed the bit of china as if it might explode. "The cup is yours. You need whatever you think the thing possesses."
"Whatever?" She smiled just a little, her lashes dipping over the sea green of her eyes. "Magic, you mean? Fairy magic? Something you don't believe in."
His throat felt raw, his nerves chafed. He forced a laugh. "I'm afraid I'd be drummed out of the army, my dear. I assure you I'll survive without drinking from your magic cup."
"Survive, yes. That is what you're best at, isn't it?" Why did she sound so sad? She peered down into the teacup, the jagged place reflected back at her, broken edges he knew she wanted to mend—in a bit of china or in a man. "Then why am I so certain that you need this right now, Lion? Even more than I do?"
She put the cup back into its saucer as tenderly as a mother might lay a cherished babe in its cradle.
"Rhiannon, the tale isn't true. You know that."
"It doesn't matter whether it's true or not. It's the believing that's important."
She turned and started to walk away. He should have let her go. He wanted her to go, didn't he? Until he could shore up the places inside him she'd managed to chip away at? But he caught her by the arm, drew her back. She turned toward him, and something thudded in his chest.
Dangerous. She was far too dangerous. The knowledge thrummed in his head. Panic tightened in his gut. Didn't she know he had to escape?
"You want to know what I believe in, Rhiannon?" he growled. "No sip from some enchanted cup. I need this."
He meant the kiss to shake her to her core, frighten her enough so she'd back away from him. The taste of her—sweet compassion—had been perilous enough by the streambed. But now it was far more potent.
He could discern the faint taste of grief over the fox she'd set free. He could taste every sip of lemonade she'd comforted herself with as a child, deserted by her mother, blinded by fairy tales she must've suspected were not true.
He'd decimated the resistance of as many women as he had opposing forces. Once he'd chosen the best course, no force on earth could turn him back from it. But as his mouth melded with Rhiannon's, it wasn't persuasion, it wasn't even passion that drove him. Some emotion jagged-edged from disuse as the cup she'd tried to get him to drink from came drifting to the surface. His fingers threaded through the cinnamon silk of her hair, his thumbs against the babelike softness of her cheeks. His lips gentled, and for a moment, just a moment, he knew that emotion for what it was: tenderness.
A sharp stab of something akin to terror pierced his chest. He would have pulled away from her, except that her fingers had found his own face, stroking it with such ineffable wonder that he was stunned, unnerved, intoxicated.
No one had touched him this way since he'd lost the shadowy otherworld that was now as unreal to him as Rhiannon's fairyland. Images too hazy to be called memory—firelight, his father's deep voice spinning the tales of King Arthur. The loving stroke of the hand that had tended so many suffering patients smoothing across Lionel's own hair.
It was unthinkable to allow himself to be drawn closer to the cliff edge of remembering by such fragile, soft hands, but for some reason beyond his comprehension he followed Rhiannon's lead.
Fire ignited low in Redmayne's belly—a poisonous mixture beyond lust, beyond manipulation, beyond the logic and order that had become his whole reason for being. He kissed her, stumbling into her disorderly world where vines of sensation tangled around even the most resolute, where riotous blossoms tumbled and flourished, where sunlight kissed faces turned up to the sky, where anything imperfect—from a chipped cup to a half-blind dog to a wounded soldier—was drawn into a warm, loving circle, a cherishing place that was half madness, half miracle.
Bloody hell, how he wanted to dismiss what he was feeling, shove it aside. But Redmayne had schooled himself to be as ruthlessly honest with himself as he was logical. She felt so damned good in his arms as he drew her tighter against him, felt the lush pillows of her breasts flatten against his chest. Her waist, narrow and feminine, her hips flaring ever so gently with a womanly curve he wanted to explore slowly, carefully, with a thoroughness that would leave her gasping.
Need. It pounded in his loins with the fierce call of battle drums, irresistible, stirring his blood with heat, with eagerness, demanding that he storm barricades of feminine petticoats and skirts as he'd stormed barriers of stone walls and cannon fire.
His hand slipped up to cup her breast through the fabric, his mind charging forward, imagining peeling away the layers of cloth as if it were the skin of some luscious fruit that he could feast upon.
She whimpered, arching into his hand, and Redmayne couldn't keep himself from unfastening four of the buttons that held her bodice together. Skin—sleek and tender, delicate and blushed with rose—his knuckles brushed it, savored it. His mouth trailed kisses across it, but it was too sweet, too perfect, too tempting. It was almost as if he could taste everything Rhiannon was—things that terrified Captain Lionel Redmayne far more than violent death, sabres, cannons, and hopeless charges into the teeth of the enemy.
He drew aw
ay to catch his breath, regain his moorings. Try to recall the reasons why he'd thought it was such a brilliant idea to pretend to seduce this innocent woman.
He might have succeeded in remembering, in rallying his troops if she hadn't caught her lower lip between her teeth and put her trembling fingers on the buttons at his throat. His pulse tripped as he felt the first button tug free.
"Rhiannon." He growled her name, his whole body rigid.
"It—it's all right. I... understand," she said in a voice as unsteady as the beat of his heart. "What you want, I mean."
"You don't have the damnedest idea."
"I've been thinking about it all day. And you see, I... well, I want it, too."
"It? What the devil?"
"To make love with you." The confession was so soft, so fragile, so impossible that for a heartbeat Redmayne couldn't draw breath into his lungs.
"Have you lost your mind?" he demanded, but she was unfastening the next button and the next, concentrating on them as if the fate of the world were tangled amid the awkwardly stitched holes.
"No. I'm merely being honest."
It was damned disconcerting when the enemy one was laying siege to suddenly began tearing down its own blasted walls. "I think, er, you should take the romantic advice you gave that fox of yours—about not accepting the first male who stumbles across your path."
"Lion."
Blast, why was it that every time she spoke his name it gave him such a jolt? Why had he ever told it to her? He should have told her to call him William or Frederick or James.
"I accepted a long time ago that, living as I do, wandering on the road, there would never be a man I could love—a husband, children, things that I once took for granted I'd have someday."
"Madam, I am far from husband material, if that is what you're thinking."
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