A last spark of strength made her quicken her step. She could hear the stream ahead of her, and hoped that the path crossed at a shallow ford. As she was fuzzily contemplating the necessity of wetting her shoes, she put one foot into empty space.
She flung her arms backward. Her nightmares of falling took on shape and reality; for one infinite moment she hung in the air, her heart lurching wildly, and then water met her cry and choked it.
She came up coughing, tangled in her dress and slimy strings of vegetation. Splashing and stumbling in the knee-deep water, she cast about until she hit a bank, dragged herself up, and sat down on it, with her feet still in the stream and her arms clutched around her streaming shoulders.
She leaned forward, buried her face in her lap, and began to cry.
They were a child’s furious tears, pointless and heartfelt, compounded of cold and fear and hopelessness. They swallowed everything, focusing all her mind on herself and her misery. For minutes she sat there—for hours…days…weeks. She was alone: the last person on earth, lost and doomed to wander the dark forever.
The touch on her shoulder made her jump and shriek. Her talent came into focus with a jolt, but she was already back in the water again before she recognized Geoffrey.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said in the dark. “I won’t hurt you; I want to help—”
Relief poured through her like hot oil over ice. “Geoffrey—oh, Geoffrey, thank God—” She stopped suddenly, catching his shock of recognition as he heard her voice. “Of course it’s me!” Exasperation followed on the heels of salvation as she realized he was disappointed—that he’d taken her for some unknown damsel in distress. Her cheeks warmed at his mental image of just what kind of rescue he’d hoped to offer.
But he was human and familiar, and Roddy waded toward him. “Give me your hand,” she ordered. She could barely see him in the dark, just a vague light blob where his hair might be, and another one that moved. She took that for his hand, and grabbed at it. After a moment’s searching, their fingers locked. He pulled her up with a grunt.
“Lord, girl, you’re sopping wet.” He felt up her arm, and then lifted a dripping lock of hair and dropped it. “What the devil are you doing here? Did you run away from the fire?”
A quick memory of the flaming mansion accompanied the words, and Roddy suddenly realized that Geoffrey had been far closer than he should have. “You went down there, didn’t you?” she hissed. “For God’s sake, Geoffrey, they’ll hang you yet, and Faelan, too.”
He was instantly guilty, not for going to view the fire, but for why he was so late coming back. Roddy sucked in her breath and bit her lip to keep from shouting at him that consorting with stray cottiers’ daughters did not count as offering comfort and consolation to the oppressed peasantry. Instead, she clenched her teeth and began to shiver. A shaky sob escaped her.
“Come on.” He took her arm and pushed her ahead of him into the gloom. “Don’t cry. Poppet, poppet, don’t cry. It was only a house, and half ruined at that.”
“It’s not the h-house. It’s Faelan—”
He steered her around a bend in the path. “Faelan’s all right. Didn’t you know that? I saw him giving Roberts the devil of dressing-down—”
She stopped, and stumbled around as he bumped into her. “Just how close were you?”
“Up on the hill,” he said, a blatant lie. Roddy caught a memory of the rioting soldiers from no farther away than the smokehouse.
There was no way she could castigate him for the exaggeration. “You shouldn’t have been there at all,” she snapped.
“Well, it’s my hide, poppet.”
“And Faelan’s!”
“Faelan had best hold his tongue with a British officer, in that case—that’s more liable to get him arrested than helping me out of my spot.”
“No, it isn’t.” She turned and plowed ahead, only missing a tree because Geoffrey pulled her back just as the slightly blacker shape loomed up out of the darkness. “Roberts wants evidence before he makes any arrests. He’s afraid of embarrassing himself.”
The shivering began again, uncontrollable. Roddy tripped as she pulled her dripping gown up from where it was trailing off her shoulders.
“You’ll catch your death from this,” Geoffrey muttered. “Faelan’ll have me out for pistols at dawn if you get sick.”
“W-will he?” The sentiment behind that comment made her suddenly teary. “Do you think he really c-cares about me?”
“Lord, poppet—do you think he don’t? He turns ten shades of purple if another man lays a hand on you. Including—particularly—me.”
Roddy sniffed and shook. “That’s just his way. He’s j-jealous—”
“Jealous!” Geoffrey laughed with honest amusement. “Lord, we’ve shared more—”
He cut that sentence short, but Roddy could have guessed the end even without the flash of memory that accompanied it.
“Well,” he finished lamely, “he’s a changed man since he married, I can tell you that. Here we are. Take your shoes off and leave ’em outside. You can wear some of my stockings. Get that wet dress off. There’s an extra blanket—that should do until morning.”
“Morning!” Roddy set her feet outside the dim white bulk of the cottage. “I c-can’t stay here till morning. I have to get home.”
“If home is that stable you told me about, then it’s nothing but a pile of cinders,” Geoffrey said ruthlessly. He held back the musty cloth and pushed her inside. “Damn—wait a moment, while I find the tinderbox.”
She hugged herself, trying to control the shivers. The shaking seemed to go to her head and muddle it. “Geoffrey…I h-have to get back. No-no-nobody knows wh-where I am.”
Light sputtered and flared, then steadied as Geoffrey lit a candle. Roddy squinted at his face, underlit by the small flame.
“You can’t walk another step,” he said. “Here. Let me reach your buttons.”
He turned her around, with no more thought of her feminine wiles than Earnest or MacLassar would have entertained. Roddy clutched the blanket to her breasts as he pushed the sodden dress down off her shoulders. She tried to gather wit enough to protest, but nothing come out beyond a vague, sulky mumble. Her eyes would not focus, and Geoffrey’s voice drifted in and out of her ears.
“There. Slide it off—oh, for Christ’s sake, do you think I’ve a fancy for drowned rats? Get the blanket around you, then—here—here—stand up…are you fainting? Ah, hell…Roddy…”
She didn’t faint so much as fall asleep on her feet. Her dreams were vivid, and mixed with reality: lying down on a musty pallet on the floor, an incoherent argument with Geoffrey over starting a fire—it seemed fatally important to her that he not start one and vitally important to him that he did—and when Roddy could not remember her own reasoning she just burst into shivering sobs and accusations and buried her face in the blanket. Then she dreamed of a huge, hot blaze, that burned in her face and made sweat trickle down her throat, but when she woke sometime in the night there was no fire, though something warm held her pinned, and that warmth drifted into a dream of Faelan with his arms around her, and she snuggled down in safe content.
She woke again, with a start, to the taste of wet wool in her mouth and the cool half-light of dawn. She sat up. The blanket and her damp hair slid back off her shoulders, leaving her breasts bared to the humid atmosphere. In the moment of waking, there was something wrong, and something right. She focused her talent on the right, which was a touch of MacLassar’s presence somewhere nearby—and then her blurred eyes found the wrong.
She blinked. The figure silhouetted against the light from the door took on hard outline, familiar features; arrested power in the broad shoulders and molded thighs. Faelan stood with the ragged curtain held back in one hand and her damp shoes in the other. A sheathed sword hung at his side and the dull pearl of a bone-handled pistol gleamed in the shadow beneath his coat.
She felt a movement against her back. Geoffrey groaned
and tightened the bare arm that circled her waist, dreaming of a thousand soft, willing bodies that had lain in his loving embrace. She looked down in horror at his hand sprawled across her—male and possessive against her white nakedness—and then up into her husband’s eyes.
For an instant she saw uncertainty, a look that took in the scene and would not accept: Faelan’s mouth vulnerable with a greeting that had died upon his lips, and his eyes showing a kind of blankness, a shock; the first brush of recognition with some staggering loss.
“Faelan—”
Her voice was hoarse. It broke to a whisper, and Geoffrey stirred again. The name penetrated his half-sleep. He came awake with a physical jerk, gripping her and letting go, his hand clutching for his stiletto in instinctive defense. The bolt of surprise sent reason to his brain faster than understanding had come to Roddy. He saw Faelan and made the connection in an instant: no threat of redcoats pouring over him in frenzy, but one person—and a scene that suddenly balanced on a knife-edge of violence.
He rose up on his elbow, loosened his grip on the knife, and laid it slowly, deliberately aside. Roddy would have spoken, would have wrapped the blanket around her and run to her husband to explain, but Geoffrey’s wariness stopped her. Explanations faded in her throat, impossible to prove, hopelessly weak—provocation and insult even to mention.
She pulled the cover up to her throat. Faelan’s gaze flicked to the move. His mouth deepened into contempt. He leaned against the muddy doorframe and dropped her boots in front of him.
“Pardon me. I was under the impression that you were in need of aid, my dear. I see that I was mistaken.”
Geoffrey said, very quietly, “Will you listen for a moment?”
“I think not.” Faelan’s lashes lowered. “I’ve listened for seven nights while my wife has made her excuses and left my house. I fear”—he looked up again, his eyes an inhuman blue—“I’m not in the mood for listening any longer.”
Roddy could not help herself. She said in plaintive explanation, “I fell in the stream.”
Faelan tilted his head. His smile was chilling. “A pity. I would have thought you’d know the way in the dark by now.”
Which was true enough—she did know. I was trying to protect you, she wanted to cry, I was trying to keep you safe.
Geoffrey sat up behind her. She felt the sweaty slip of his bare torso against her skin. He was deeply uneasy—unarmed and uncertain of Faelan’s temper, his eyes never leaving her husband’s right hand.
“I’ve not dishonored your wife. Surely you know that.”
Faelan said nothing.
Geoffrey took a breath and eased to his feet. Perspiration from where her body had been molded to his chest slipped down his rib cage and made dark markings at the waist of his breeches.
“Is it satisfaction you want?” he asked softly.
“My friend,” Faelan’s voice was equally soft, heavy with mockery. “Surely we’re more civilized than that. You know I abhor violence in the name of honor.”
Geoffrey half smiled, and shrugged. “I know you can kill me if we meet.”
“I could kill you now, if I’d a mind to.”
Geoffrey’s glance rested on the sword and moved upward. “Do you?”
For a long moment Faelan stood, his dark figure still, his face carved in ice. Roddy felt Geoffrey’s tension rise until the veins in his forearms stood out under the strain of holding his reaction in check.
With a vicious curse, Faelan turned abruptly away. He flipped the dirty curtain aside and strode out of the hut.
Roddy dragged the blanket around her and leaped to her feet, stumbling after him toward the door.
“Roddy—” Geoffrey’s hand fell on her shoulder. “For God’s sake, let him go.”
“But—”
“You aren’t going to catch him in that rig, anyway,” Geoffrey hissed. He grabbed what was left of her limp gown off a hook in the dead hearth and thrust it into her hands. The sound of hooves thudded in the little clearing outside. Geoffrey looked toward the wall, as if he could see Faelan through it. “He’s gone.” Geoffrey ran his hand across the back of his neck. “Lord God Almighty—I thought I was staring eternity in the face. I’ll tell you, Roddy—”
He stopped short as MacLassar came hobbling on three legs into the cottage, batting the curtain aside with his snout. The piglet went straight to Roddy and sat up on his haunches to beg, waving one bandaged foot in the air.
Spare me this, Geoffrey thought as Roddy fell to her knees and hugged the animal.
“Go outside,” she ordered Geoffrey. “I have to dress.”
He bowed. “Oh, of course, Miss Modesty. I’m only the fellow who nearly got himself murdered for trying to keep your skinny butt warm without a fire.”
“Don’t try to blame me. This is all your fault. All of it. The stream, the fire, the guns—” Her voice rose as she recognized the connections. “The whole stupid rebellion is your fault!” She dropped the blanket and threw the damp dress over her head, wriggling into it with difficulty. Geoffrey paid no attention to her momentary nudity; he was busy buttoning his own shirt.
“I realize you’re not very informed on politics,” he snapped, “But I don’t think you can pin the whole rebellion—Ho! I’m not sharing my breakfast with that pig!”
“Too late,” Roddy said with vindictive satisfaction as MacLassar made short work of a loaf of hard bread. She lifted his foot and inspected the bandage, made of a ripped cravat and tied with careful skill.
Faelan did this, she thought, and suddenly her eyes went blurry and her throat closed. The memory of his face in that first moment of betrayal rose up in numbing clarity.
“I have to find him,” she mumbled, scrambling to her feet. “I have to explain.”
Geoffrey caught her by both arms before she reached the door. “Poppet. Maybe you’d best let him cool—”
She tore free. “He won’t hurt me. He wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t he?” Geoffrey gripped her again. “Roddy, you don’t know him.”
“I do!” She refused to acknowledge what was in Geoffrey’s mind. “You’re as bad as Earnest. Those are all lies—those things everyone says.”
Geoffrey’s fingers dug into her flesh as he jerked her closer. “You saw him, just now. Do you think he wouldn’t have spitted us both if it pleased him?”
“He was hurt,” Roddy cried. “We hurt him.”
“He was in a murdering rage, my girl. If you don’t recognize the symptoms, I do. I’ve seen him shoot a poor bastard between the eyes with far less cause.” Chap barely out of leading strings—too witless to back down from issuing a challenge over his trollop of a fiancée. Geoffrey’s mind skipped back to the incident, and then to the girl. Pretty little jade. Wouldn’t mind tasting her wares again.
Roddy shook out of his hold. “I won’t listen to this,” she shouted. She thrust her feet into her stiff shoes and swept MacLassar off the floor, ignoring his squeal of pain as she bumped his injured foot. With a snarl of disgust for men and their duels and their jealousy and their hypocritical morality, she stumped out the makeshift door.
“Your laddie.” Senach’s lined face seemed at one with the gray ruin, with the blackened, collapsed timbers and the slow smoke that curled toward the leaden sky. “Ye will not be findin’ him here.”
Roddy did not ask how he knew whom she sought. She shifted uneasily in her damp shoes, favoring a blistered heel, and said, “Have you seen him?”
“I be seein’ him now.” Senach looked into the heart of the dead fire. “Oh, och, aye, I see him.”
She took a breath, willing herself not to turn and run. She hated speaking to Senach; hated being so close to him that her gift was useless and her heart thumped with fear of her own exposure. “Where is he?” she whispered, and then despised herself for asking.
As if she believed in his senile ravings.
“Never mind,” she said, louder. There was no one at the burned-out mansion; not Martha nor Arma
nd nor any of the little staff of servants who might know where Faelan had really gone. She started to turn away.
“Ye will not be findin’ him,” Senach said. “Not that way.”
“Well—” Roddy stopped, covering her apprehension with churlishness. “What way, then, for heaven’s sake?”
He chuckled. “Aye, ’tis nettled ye be. And ’tis a far piece to walk. There’s better than that walkin’. There’s bide a while, and listen, and ask what needs askin’.”
“I have no patience for riddles,” she snapped. “If you know where to find him, tell me.”
“No patience. That I know.” He shrugged, shook his head. “You’re fearin’ yet. Still fearin’ your laddie.”
A wash of guilt made her lips tremble. “What do you mean, fearing? I’m not afraid. I want to explain. I need to find him, and explain.”
Senach tilted his head and smiled, in that blank, chilling way he had of laughing at her deepest terrors. “He won’t credit it. Just words only. No, he won’t credit that.”
Roddy pressed her hands together. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about!”
“Oh, aye—I do. You be speakin’ of another man. Coming between friends. Wonderful friends, and ye come between ’em, and thinkin’ there’ll be blood on it.”
She realized she was breathing unnaturally hard. She took a step backward. “That’s not true.”
“And how do ye know the truth?” Senach’s whispery old voice took on a sharper note. “Ye with the gift, ye who be turnin’ away and away from it, ye who could know if it pleased you.”
“I told you,” she cried. “I told you I can’t! Not with Faelan.”
“Cannot ye?” He looked her full in the face with his opaque eyes.
Roddy squeezed her lashes shut against him.
“Cannot ye?” Senach repeated.