A Rose in Splendor (27 page)

She paused, astonished by her flood of memory. “I remember it all. I had been listening to Brigid tell the tale of Deirdre and Noisiu. I often boasted that I, too, would marry a man who bore the colors of the raven’s wing, snow, and blood. When I found you, black-haired, white with pain, and red with blood, I thought ’twas a fairies’ trick to repay me for my bragging.”

Killian’s heart began to pound in slow heavy strokes, but nothing of his agitation sounded in his voice. “What else?”

Deirdre pressed a hand to her brow. “Let me think. The English had come to escort us to Cork. They demanded to search the house. Mother of mercy, why has no one told me, helped me remember? I came to the priest hole and helped
you hide. I even made myself into a step stool to aid your climb into the air shaft.”

Killian reached out and grasped her by the arm. “Do you mock me, lass?”

His grip hurt her but Deirdre was too elated to care. “Mock you! I tell you, I remember. I cried when Da told me that I could not see you again. I begged him, told him I should be with you, that you belonged to me, that…I loved you.”

Killian released her and moved back out of the moonlight into the shadows. “I thought I dreamed those moments in the priest hole.” Yet even as he said it, he knew that he lied. He had always held on to the foolish hope that the lady of his dreams did in truth tread the earth and that he would one day find her. That was the real reason he had come to Nantes to see Lord Fitzgerald, a reason he could not even admit to himself until now.

Deirdre looked at him with joy in her eyes. “What you say you felt for me all those years ago, I have felt since you came here, but I could not understand the cause. From the moment I first saw you, you were familiar to me. Now I know why.”

Killian did not answer.

“Tell me about your dream. Is it only a memory of that day?”

Killian stiffened. Dare he finish his tale and risk her ridicule? “As a child you say you believed in fairies. I never did. But in the priest hole of Liscarrol a fairy woman came to me.” He hesitated. “She bore the mark.”

“What mark?” Deirdre asked, her heart trebling its pace.

“She had a red rose on her right shoulder,” Killian answered in challenge.

Without a word, Deirdre slipped his coat from her shoulders and stepped into the slat of moonlight. With trembling fingers, she lowered the strap of her shift. “The mark of the fairies,” she whispered.

Killian grasped her shoulder, turning her so that the mark could be clearly seen. “’Twas you!”

“Aye,” she answered shakily. “’Tis I you love.”

Killian stepped back from her. It was not possible. And yet, he knew that it was. The possibility had become reality, but with every heartbeat he knew a dread so great that his skin shrank against his bones. He had been raised in preparation for the priesthood, and he understood the temptation of unholiness and that it was imperative to shy from that which smacked of magic. The lady before him spoke the words of his dream which he had confided to no one. He did not fear any mortal, but he would be mad not to be in awe of the power of the
Daoine sidhe
.

“I knew that you were special,” Deirdre said, unaware of the transformation in MacShane. She raised a hand to her lips to still the joyous laughter that trembled there. “But for Darragh and Conall we might never have met. A clumsier pair of matchmakers would be difficult to find. Yet, they have succeeded beyond their expectations, have they not?”

She reached out to him but MacShane did not move toward her. “Am I too forward, captain?” she teased. “’Tis happiness that makes me bold.”

“I will not wed you, lass.”

Deirdre wet her lips. “I am making a fool of myself, talking and talking. ’Tis your prerogative to do the courting, I know, but I am not some vain mademoiselle who needs the wooing.”

“I will never wed,” Killian added flatly.

“But you love me.”

“Do I?”

Deirdre regarded him steadily and felt within herself a certainty that nothing, not even his protests, would shake. He was a challenge, she had understood that from the first. Yet there was a recklessness awakening in her that had been dormant too long to be denied its resurgence of life. She was not afraid. “Aye, you’ve loved me without knowing ’twas I.”

Killian moved toward her. “When you kiss me, I feel a need here.” He took her hand in his and drew it down to his groin. Deirdre tried to pull away but he pressed her hand against the turgid heat of his manhood. “Do not fret,
lass. ’Tis what happens to a man when there’s a woman about he lusts after. That’s what I feel for you.”

Deirdre jerked her hand away, and he freed her with a mocking chuckle.

“You want to be loved,” he continued cruelly. “I would love you, lass, if you’d let me. I would love your body and make you feel what you do not yet know is possible.”

Ignoring her struggles, he caught her about the waist and leaned down until his lips were nearly against hers. “I would make you moan with joy. I can nearly hear you already. Is that a sigh of fear? I think not. You sigh for fear that I will not kiss you. You beg me to kiss you now, but in the morning…ah, in the morning.”

He drew back from her. He had been deliberately cruel. She frightened him, offering herself as though she did not care what happened. He was weak, felt the pull between them, the temptation. To take what she offered would be so easy.

Deirdre felt hot tears on her cheeks. “Why? Why do you spurn my love?”

“Lass, you do not know the emotion. Not yet. But you are ready. And if I were a little more ruthless or depraved I would enjoy showing you the way of it.”

His words struck at her like hard sharp stones until she felt battered. But anger was welling in her, too. He had cut up her newborn dreams before she had fully realized them, and the hurt made her brave. “Then show me!”

“No.”

“Are you a coward as well as a bully?” she hurled at him. “My brothers say you do not care for women. Perhaps ’tis true that you are unnatural. Perhaps you nurture disgusting depraved thoughts. You will not touch me, whom you say you have loved unknowingly for many years. And yet you spoke of tender passion for a child of seven. What are you? What are you?” she echoed as tears clogged her throat and squeezed off her voice.

He said nothing, but in his eyes there was a hunger that fed on the silver-white moonlight so fierce and naked that Deirdre knew the instant she had won

“Please,” she begged softly, not knowing why she was so desperate. “Please love me!”

In his strength, he did not snatch what he desired from her. His hands moved slowly toward her, giving her every opportunity to escape. Even when he touched her face, cradling it, his caress entreated rather than demanded her acceptance, and she never knew whether he drew her or she leaned toward him, her face lifted and her lips parted, to receive his kiss.

As his mouth lingered on hers, she felt a sudden dizziness, a rush of warmth that enveloped her from head to toe, and she knew that her dream beside the Loire had not lied to her about the power of this man’s kiss. But that was not enough. She wanted it all, wanted to know if the promised glory of loving him was as real.

She did not shy from the hands that loosened the ribbons of her shift, nor did she balk when he slipped it from her shoulders along with his coat. She welcomed the touch of the night air that cooled her feverish skin, for when he turned his eyes on her she thought she would ignite like kindling. She knew that he saw her well enough, could judge her size, her contours, her foolishly naked body.

“You are beautiful,” he said simply, and no other words could have sounded more happily in her ears. “Though you will hate me and yourself for the weakness soon enough, come and let me show you how it is done,
macushla
.”

She took his hand and knelt down beside him and then she was in his arms, his wonderful strong warm embrace that eclipsed the last of her doubts and fears and offered kisses sweet as midsummer honey and headier than spring wine.

She did not know the exact moment when he laid her down, but suddenly she was on her back, his velvet coat her bed as he bent to her.

His hands caressed her and pleasure ran like water over her skin. Abandoned to a will of its own, her body answered her inexplicable need with desire that surged in wave after wave out to her belly and hips from the
throbbing center of herself until she trembled like a purring kitten.

Her hands were clutched to his back but she yearned to return to him a measure of her joy. Shyly, her hands stroked down over his shoulders to his waist and back, slow deliberate strokes that firmly pressed the satiny smooth skin, the curious hard welts, and the taut muscles.

In answer, she felt the same curling pleasure ripple through him, from his spine down to his hips, and he moaned in the same inarticulate need.

She floated in a dark world of flesh and sensate pleasure as ancient and mysterious as time. Her breasts undulated like waves under the play of his hands, rising and falling in a sea of tactile delight. And yet, she sensed that there was more.

When he lifted himself from her she whimpered at the loss and opened her eyes to call him back. But then she saw why he had moved. Very slowly he opened his breeches, shoved them down his thighs and stepped out of them. He stood over her naked and still.

In the moonlight his body was like marble, smooth, firm, and pale. His black hair was darker than night, and then her eyes lowered in wonder to that part of a man she had never seen before. It amazed, delighted, and shocked her all at once. Her gaze flew back up to his face, and she knew that he was looking at her, waiting for her reaction.

Drawn by a need greater than her shyness, she sat up and reached out, her fingers brushing the fine dark hair of one leg. She felt a shudder ripple over his flesh and knew that he was as vulnerable as she. Coming to her knees, she ran her hand up the bulging muscle of his calf and across to the top of his thigh. Spreading her fingers, her thumb brushed the tip of him

He groaned as if in pain. All at once, he was on his knees beside her, pushing her back onto his coat. He covered her cool skin with the heat of his own, enveloping her from mouth to feet. His kiss soldered them together, obliterating the separateness of their natures.

His hands continued to caress her as he gently prodded her knees with one of his, crooning words she did not fully
understand but that made her pliant, vulnerable, and trusting in his gentleness.

The moment of union surprised her. She had not known what to expect, had not even in her dream understood this stretching of oneself to fit the design of other.

“Deirdre…love!” he whispered harshly, then dragged his mouth back to hers, and she knew then that this was right. This was what she was born for, to love this man…in this manner…forever.

Afterward they lay side by side facing each other, their lips barely touching, her leg pulled up across his waist and he still within her.

“I love you,” she whispered, the words a breath expelled into his mouth.

“You do not know me,” he answered.

“I have loved you since I first saw you at Liscarrol,” she answered and was astonished to find the words true. She thought briefly of the dream that had brought them together, of the magic of a world older than that of Christianity, and wondered if they were blessed or cursed by this loving.

“Cursed,” he answered, and she did not ask him why he spoke that word.

Killian reached out to trace her face with his fingertips, memorizing each curve and hollow. He had never expected to find his dreams made flesh. He had been a man haunted, night after night, by the dream of a lass with a sweet mouth and eyes that held a promise for him alone, and a fiery brave spirit to match the yearning of his own.

Deirdre Fitzgerald was not what his dream had portended. She was frighteningly young and innocent, not a fighter but the cosseted daughter of a nobleman. Aye, she set his blood aflame and then drowned that ardor with the satin-cool touch of her body; but was this moment only the consummation of the passion he had carried like a hair shirt these last years? Or was it more? Had he found love?

Perhaps what she believed was true, that magic had brought them together. That was reason enough to be wary of the emotions snaking through him. Any man with sense avoided trafficking in magic. Magic was a double-edged
sword, exacting a price for its glory. He was between worlds, cut off from his past and his future uncertain. How could he be certain that any feeling within him could be trusted? He had longed for something of his own, but Deirdre Fitzgerald was not any man’s for the taking. She was a lord’s daughter.

Deirdre felt him pulling away from her, his thoughts retreating even as he continued to stroke her. “What is wrong?”

“This,” Killian answered.

“Why? Perhaps we have been wicked this night, but I love you. I will make a pretty confession before we marry, but I cannot say in truth that I regret a moment of this sinning.” Deirdre rubbed her cheek against his shoulder as the thought made her smile. “If Da will not agree to the marriage I shall tell him that I shall bear him a bastard grandson in nine months’ time. You do not know how stubborn I can be. He will give in.”

“Aye,
acushla
,
I believe you could make the seas obey you, but your father would be right to forbid the marriage.” He bent and kissed her quickly. “I can offer you nothing. I resigned my commission in the brigade before I came here. I cannot house you or clothe you or feed you. What I own I carry on my back. I am no proper suitor for a lady.”