Roddy looked down at her husband. His hard mouth was brushed with a faint smile; he looked younger, and infinitely precious. “I’ll let him sleep.”
Fionn reached out and drew her finger through his hair. “I know a story about him,” she said. MacLassar came up, shoving his small snout jealously under Fionn’s hand. She transferred her caress to the piglet. “I’ll tell you someday.”
“I’ll listen now,” Roddy said.
Fionn tilted her head with a sly smile. “Not yet,” she said, and shook her head. “No. You won’t listen yet.”
It was the lightest of reproofs, but Roddy felt her pleasure shrivel into shame. She ducked her head, and touched Faelan’s hair as the other woman had done. It curled through Roddy’s fingers, smooth and cool and contrarily reminiscent of his hot sweetness.
I love you, she thought, with a faint despair.
When she lifted her eyes again, Fionn was gone.
Roddy had a moment’s curiosity, a flutter of doubt about where Fionn lived and her comings and goings in mist and silence. But the importance of it faded and dissolved as Roddy’s hand trailed through Faelan’s hair and across his jaw. She felt his breath on her open palm. It seemed such a human thing, such a warm mortal weakness…it made her throat close and ache with wanting.
His lips brushed her hand. She looked down, saw his eyes still closed; but there was an awareness, a slight lift of the night-black lashes. He was awake. His free hand found her hip and slid upward, drawing her skirt in tow.
A spurt of hunger seized her. He shifted, pulled her down beneath him, and buried his face between her breasts.
She felt his hands cup and weigh her, felt his thumbs make rough circles around her nipples. The low, greedy moan of pleasure in his chest was sound and sensation both, a soft vibration against her breasts.
She spread her legs in wanton welcome, arching up to seek him. The breath that had caressed her so softly the moment before came harsher now, burning the tender skin at the corners of her mouth. “Cailin sidhe,” he whispered. “Cailin sidhe. It’s been too long.”
Above him, far past him, the mists shifted and opened in patches, so that his black hair against the blue sky was like his eyes: bright and dark, the one drawing intensity from the other.
“Someone might come,” she protested, thinking of Fionn.
“Aye.” His thick lashes lowered as he fingered the ribbons on her cloak. “I’ve got searchers all over the mountain.” At the slight stiffening of her body, he looked up. “Ah—you don’t believe that, do you?” He grinned, his teeth flashing white in the moody atmosphere. He bent to her and spoke low in her ear. “You think I’m mad. I think you’re mad. We’re meant for each other, my love.”
Her cape came free, falling back to form a bed in the damp grass. Her sash and dress followed under Faelan’s knowledgeable hands. The cool air touched her skin like a kiss. She moaned, giving herself up to him, to the slide of his body on hers, to the arch and thrust of his possession.
She felt…like the earth itself. Like the earth beneath the wind, caressed and storm-tossed and then swept into the gale. He was rough suddenly, holding her face between his hands, driving deep with his tongue. Then he began to touch her, all over, to map each curve of her with his mouth and his hands.
“Roddy—” he groaned against her breasts. “Don’t leave me again.”
I didn’t, she wanted to cry. I never could.
“I want you.” His fingers went tight at her waist, pulling her beneath him, beneath his hot skin that had somehow gotten free of clothes. “I need you. Ah, God, if I wake up some night and find you’ve been a dream…”
“I’m not a dream,” she mumbled, unable to think beyond that silly phrase under the weight of sensation his hands produced.
His throat rumbled with an aching laugh. “Little love, cailin sidhe—are you not? Sometimes I look at you, and the mist seems easier to touch…”
“No,” she moaned. She traced the powerful curve of muscle down his back. “Touch me.”
His body weighed on her, pressing her down as his teeth scored her shoulder. “Aye,” he whispered fiercely. “I’m no saint. I’ll hold you as I can.” His hand slipped down to move across her inner thigh, guiding his hardness against her. “I know you this way. I know all about you.”
“Faelan…”
“Love me, Roddy,” he groaned as he found her depths and joined with her. “Stay with me. Don’t listen to the rest of them.” He lifted her, drove deep and hard, as if to brand her with his body. His words were a rasp in her ear: “My love. My life. Stay with me.”
She did not answer. She could not, for the cry of pleasure and need in her throat. He took her up and held her, spun her like the whirlwind amid the rocks and the sky and the mist. His hands locked with hers. In a wide sweep against the silky-wet ground, he forced her arms over her head and pinned them, bending to suckle and tease her exposed breasts.
The move brought him into her with a throbbing power, an urgency that sent her exploding toward fulfillment. Each time she rose to meet him he made a sound, a sob of passion between his teeth. She felt the wet grass on her hands, and smelled the hot scent of exertion that shone in his skin.
It seemed she was expanding, that her senses and her talent swelled to encompass everything. As they swept together to the climax, it even seemed she was with him in shared ecstasy: that his hunger was hers; that the fire between them coalesced in one flame—dancing and joyous and wild, and bright beyond any imagining.
They lay together afterward. Awake. It was a strange interlude, while the mists began at last to thin and lift, and the red shafts of evening turned the ring of stone to a glowing rose. It should have been cold, but it was warm. It should have seemed wrong, to lie naked and entwined in the open, but it seemed very right instead. Her cape lay in waves beneath them, and Faelan’s breath skimmed her neck and lifted a stray hair.
Eventually, in the same lazy, satisfied mood, they sat up and began to dress. It was a slow process, teasing and touching and helping one another. MacLassar accepted an oatcake with dignity from Faelan’s hand.
Dressed, they left the ring hand in hand like a pair of May lovers. There seemed no need for words or questions; just that contact of their hands, and the times when Faelan slid his arm around her waist and pulled her to him for a kiss. Roddy found the path as she had been sure she could. Below, the whole coastline spread before them in a shimmering roll of green hills and silver bays. It surprised her, how far she had come in the fog.
It was dusk when they heard voices calling. The subdued urgency in them caught her attention, and Roddy focused her gift, stretching to overcome the distance.
It was Martha, and the older O’Sullivan, calling Roddy’s name with weary regularity. Faelan raised his arm and shouted, waving. The movement caught O’Sullivan’s eye, and Roddy felt the strong and heady jolt of relief that swept him.
“Oh, mum!” Martha was sobbing when they finally reached the lower path. She grabbed Roddy in a hearty and unservile embrace. “Oh, mum, we thought you was gone for sure! They been telling me such stories—about them soldiers and what happened to ’em, and cliffs and wolves and all such, mum! Oh, but I knew his Lor’ship ’ud find you; I just knew so! I said so to Mr. O’Sullivan, over and over, and him thinking that one night on the mountain be enough to murder a grown strong man, and you lost for two, and then His Lordship come up missin’ the third! Oh, but I knew that if any could save you, ’twould be His Lordship—” In her fit of thankfulness, she let go of Roddy and hugged Faelan, too. “Oh, sir, I’ll do my best for you all my days, for bringin’ Her Ladyship home safe. I’ll do anythin’!”
Roddy was barely listening to the maid’s protests of eternal loyalty. She was looking at Faelan, and hearing Martha’s “two nights” echo in her head.
“Martha,” she demanded sharply. “Don’t exaggerate. You can’t possibly have been searching for me for two days.”
“Oh, mum, we have indeed. Every m
inute of it, and I’m about dead on me feet, m’lady.”
“But, Martha—I’ve not been gone but an afternoon.”
“Oh—m’lady…She hasn’t gone and knocked her head, Your Lordship—”
“Of course I haven’t,” Roddy snapped, driven to agitation. “I tell you all, I left the house just after tea. I spent all morning helping you churn, Martha—you can’t think I’ve been gone so long.”
Martha gave her a wide-eyed stare. In the face of Roddy’s obvious emotion, the maid didn’t dare contradict her mistress, but in her mind she decided that Roddy had indeed hit her head and needed immediate attention. Mr. O’Sullivan glanced worriedly at Faelan, and Roddy knew he thought the same.
“You’re all being ridiculous,” she exclaimed. “I know what I’ve done, and where I’ve been. I went up the hill, and while I was there I met a lady. Fionn is her name. I talked to her awhile, and then Faelan came. That’s all. And if you’re all trying to play some sort of silly joke, you needn’t bother!” Her voice began to rise. “I won’t fall for it, and I don’t think it’s at all funny!”
“’Tis no joke, m’lady,” O’Sullivan protested anxiously. “We’re after spending three nights out combing these hills—”
“Stop it!” she cried. “This is nonsense. You know I haven’t been gone for three days. You know it!”
“Roddy—” Faelan’s arm came around her shoulders. “Little girl, I—”
“Don’t!” She shoved him away. “I don’t know what you’re all trying to do”—she took a deep, gasping breath as her words rose to a shrill—“but stop it! Just stop it!”
“Little one, little one—” Faelan pulled her to him again, this time binding her arms when she began to struggle. He held her back against him. “Don’t panic.” His voice was soft near her ear, but his arms were like iron. “Breathe slowly. Your heart’s working like a cornered rabbit’s.”
“But it isn’t true,” she wailed. “It isn’t—”
“Hush.” He bent to her, held his cheek against hers as he rocked her like a child. “Shhh—hush. Listen to me. Listen to me. It won’t help to fight it.”
She took a sobbing breath and stared bleakly at Martha and O’Sullivan. “But they can’t…” She trailed off, knowing that Martha and O’Sullivan weren’t lying or joking. If she concentrated she could pick out memories, clear, recent visions of days and nights spent searching. It was that, more than their words, that sent the panic boiling through her.
But Faelan still held her, stroking her arms and her face. “Better now,” he murmured. “Just relax a moment—”
“But you were there—” she cried, remembering suddenly. “Faelan, you just found me this afternoon, and they’re saying you’ve been gone a whole night!”
“I know,” he said. He held her hard for an instant, and there was an infinite weariness in his voice. “I know, Roddy.”
“So they must be wrong.” She bit her trembling lip. “Tell them they’re wrong.”
“I can’t,” he said.
Her voice was very small as she asked, “Why not?”
“Because—” He let out a harsh breath, and his hold on her loosened. He turned her around and drew her into his chest, splaying his fingers through her hair. “It’s scary, I know. Losing time. It’s terrifying. I know, Roddy. Believe me. I know how it feels.”
She was silent for a long time. Then at last she put her arms around him and held on. “Oh, God. What do I do?”
Faelan laid his cheek against her hair and rocked her. “’Tis best not to think on it too much, little girl.”
Chapter 18
Down on her hands and knees in the muddy soil, Roddy worked at a stubborn gorse root. She had hacked at it with a spade until it was crushed and splintered, but all of her twistings and whimperings were not enough to yank the slippery root from the center of her beginning garden.
She sat back on her knees finally, looking jealously across the sweep of land that spread below her to the sea. Under the lowering spring clouds, beyond the pasture where Faelan’s bay racing stallion grazed in peaceful retirement, she could count no fewer than five pairs of men and ponies engaged in opening ground with the new castiron plows that Faelan had imported.
He had refused to give Roddy’s project any priority. The precious plows were at work where he sent them: furrowing fields for potatoes and corn, for turnips or oats or wheat. It was the four-course plan, that Roddy could have recited in her sleep from all the nights he’d spent talking about it, how a field would grow wheat one year, and turnips the next, then oats, with clover undersown to be grazed by the cattle in the fourth year. The turnips would feed the cattle, and the rich manure went back to the soil to increase the cereal yields when the wheat came round again.
In all that, between the draining of the bogs and enclosing of the fields and plowing and planting and weeding, there was no time to spare for one small plot of flowers. So Roddy struggled on her own.
She grasped the root for one last mighty tug, standing up on her knees and putting the whole weight of her body into the battle. But despite grunting and huffing that would have done MacLassar proud, her fingers weakened and lost their purchase, and she fell back to the ground with a frustrated moan. The sound changed to a bitter cry as a splinter drove into her palm.
Her hands were too muddy and her fingernails too worn to extract the sharp sliver, but in her sullen mood she refused to be reasonable and made herself angrier yet by working at the tender place until it bled. Occupied with that annoyance, she paid no attention to the touch of familiarity in her mind until sudden recognition burst upon her. She twisted around, and stood up with a glad cry.
“Earnest!” She waved her arm and squealed in excitement at the pair of horses that cantered up the raw slash of reddish soil where the drive had been cleaned and reopened. MacLassar had been lazing on the steps of the great house, soaking up the weak April warmth. At the sound of her voice, he tripped down the stairs and trotted to the edge of the paved forecourt, too fastidious to join Roddy in the muck.
She was aware of Earnest’s shock at her bedraggled figure, but she waited only long enough for him to swing off his horse before she threw herself into his arms. “Oh, Earnest,” she cried into his muffling coat. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I’ve missed you—I’ve missed you all! You haven’t answered my letters forever!”
He laughed and held her off. “Here, now, I can’t have you muddying my best cape. I’m a veritable Tulip of Fashion in these parts.” He shook his blond head at her. “Good God, Roddy, the last time I saw you looking like this, you’d just fallen off that crazy black filly of yours into a drainage ditch.”
“I’ve been working in my garden.” She looked toward Faelan, who stood back a few feet with the horses, and held out her hand. “And see what you’ve done, my lord. I’ve a splinter.”
He tossed the reins to the small barefoot boy who came running up belatedly. “It’s my fault, is it?” He took her hand and spread her palm, ordering the stableboy over his shoulder to bring a bucket of water.
Roddy looked past her husband to Earnest, her gift full open with curiosity and eagerness, but instead of the pleasure she’d expected, her brother’s thoughts mirrored his questioning frown. Finding her covered with mud in the weedy wilderness in front of the great anomaly of a house, with one barefoot servant and a pig running loose in the forecourt…to the overprotective brother of an heiress, it made a strange and suspicious picture.
But Roddy could see no way to counter Earnest’s negative impressions without bringing them into the open in front of Faelan. That, at least, she was sure Earnest had not done. He met her eyes with a direct and silent question.
She smiled brightly, to reassure him. “Tell me everything,” she ordered. “How is Papa? I haven’t even heard what colt he’s training for the Derby. And has Mark decided on his regiment yet? The last letter I had from him was so short that it was obviously written at gunpoint—Mama’s, I imagine…”
She went on in that gay vein until she had covered the entire family and reassured herself by Earnest’s lack of agitation that they were all well and happy. The bucket of water arrived, and Faelan made her kneel in the grass to wash the soil from her injured hand.
“It’s you I want to hear about,” Earnest said when she ran out of questions. “Roddy—we had no notion of how isolated you are here. His Lordship told me you’ve posted letters once a week, but we’ve received nothing at home since the first of the year—and the news…that the whole country’s up in arms, that the French are on the doorstep, that martial law’s been declared—”
“Martial law.” Roddy tensed, catching the frightening depth of importance of those words from Earnest’s mind. “What’s that?”
Faelan gently pried open the fist she’d made and continued to examine her hand. “Little girl. You are an uneducated heathen, aren’t you? ’Tis when soldiers keep the peace.”
“Aye. And make the law,” Earnest exclaimed. “I ask you again, Iveragh—how soon will you bring her back to England?”
“Ouch!” Roddy pulled her hand away as Faelan found the tender spot. She frowned at Earnest, searching out the roots of the worry in his mind. “Go back—is there so much danger here?”
“Danger!” Earnest flung out his arm. “The damned country’s in revolt! I landed at Cork to see five companies of light infantry and a detachment of dragoons march through. Their ultimatum expires tomorrow—after that, they free-quarter on the countryside until all rebel arms are surrendered.”
“Rebel arms…” In her dismay, she allowed Faelan to take her hand again without protest. She looked at him, thinking of Geoffrey’s guns, but he did not meet the panicked question in her eyes.
“Hold still,” he said, probing at the splinter.
Roddy bit her tongue, glad of the pain. It gave her an excuse for the way she felt her face go pale. In revolt…
So Geoffrey’s wild schemes had come to fruition. His United Irishmen were rising, and the guns were in rebel hands.