Hidden Jewel (Heartfire Series) (45 page)

"Why do you have your nose pierced?" Reaching up, Jacob fingered the tiny labret pierced through her right nostril. His eyes were dark pools, his attraction to her evident. Ailill had the distinct impression that the man was attempting to corner her. She wondered where her own well of anger had gone in the past ten minutes, wanting a handhold on the reality of her own situation. She still planned to leave for awhile. Could they not see that? Hiding her unhappy thoughts, she answered in a light tone.

"Because I chose to have it pierced just before I turned thirteen, and I like it very much. Why don't you have any piercings?" Sliding up out of the water, Ailill perched on the edge of the pool, fanning her flushed cheeks with her fingers while she stared down into Jacob's face. "You'd both look good with your ears pierced; and maybe your nipples." Her eyes narrowed in speculation, moving back and forth between the suddenly still men. "Mmm, aye, very sexy." It was quite obvious that she honestly believed that particular idea would be an improvement in the way her eyes darkened, the thought bringing a renewed flush to her already pinkened cheeks.

Brows raised like wings at the thought of that particular sort of pain, Jacob grinned, barely able to contain a shudder. "Kiah wouldn't let us pierce anything; he said it ain't the least bit manly," he answered ruefully, glancing over at his twin. Micah was grinning at the look on Ailill's pretty face. She, clearly, disagreed with their father's notions of manliness.

"Y'all got anything else pierced, besides your ears and nose, or your belly button?" His eyes took on a glazed look when they lowered to study her navel.

"Do you
see
anything else pierced, Jacob?" Ailill answered tartly, raising her arms up, away from her sides, exposing herself fully to his view. Her eyes gleamed, almost daring the man to keep it up. Almost.

"Ah, no," he said, suddenly straight-faced as he glanced again at his twin. "Micah's good with a needle...want him to poke ya?" The corner of his mouth twitched with the need to laugh. His gaze dropped to her plum colored nipples and crawled even lower, imagining, quite vividly, tiny gold and silver hoops in all of the most sensual parts of her body.

"Not especially." Ailill grinned back, eyes sliding back and forth between the two. "Not right now, at any rate. Piercings do take awhile to heal, you know, even for me. And it would be quite difficult to nurse a bairn with nipple rings in the way... when I do have bairns, I mean." She frowned, glanced away. "May I see your wounds?"

"Huh?" Both men looked at her, momentarily confused. She smothered a laugh.

"You've got the healing gene, according to
Seanmhair
, as I said before. Plus, you bathed in here; this is a healing spring. Your wounds are a safer subject, I am thinking. I'd like to examine them is all."

Thrusting his hands up, Jacob smiled knowingly at Micah while Ailill studied his completely healed fingers. "You want us, don't you?" he whispered to the top of her head. "That's why you change the subject, but you can't hide it, from either of us."

Her head rose slowly, blue eyes settling on Jacob's smiling face. "Aye, I do," she answered honestly, her eyes glinting in the light of dozens of torches. "But it doesn't signify. I am one very wee young lass and you are two very well grown men." Her voice lowered, as if she were about to divulge something secret and she leaned forward between the two, her mouth just inches from both dark heads. "I've got but one way in, which you'd be wise to remember if you think you might like having me. Do you take my meaning?"

Staring speculatively, both heads bobbed in unison as her gaze swept from one to the other, the brothers' dark blue eyes showing the surprise each felt at hearing such a temerarious statement from such a tiny young woman.

"Very well then. So long as we understand each other," she said with a catlike grin, eyes flashing with amusement as she pulled Micah's head forward to check his wound. "You are already half healed, Micah," she murmured, tipping his head back up with a knuckle beneath the chin.

He met her gaze and smiled, holding his arm out for her inspection. "Has anyone ever told you that y'all are very precocious for your age, Abby?" he said softly, staring at her face. "Are you sure you're only eighteen?" His eyes sparkled with mirth, a wish to tease her into complacency evident in the calm blue depths.

Ailill giggled. "Positive." Standing slowly, she moved back a pace, dimpling with pleasure. "At least in this lifetime. Then again, you're both awfully young yet yourselves. Twenty, isn't it? And me hardly more than a wean! Shame-shame." Giggling again, she jumped over the dark heads, landing with a great splash in the deep center of the pool. No sooner had her head reemerged than a water fight ensued, the stone walls and ceiling echoing with the sounds of laughter and high spirits until all three collapsed on the wet stone floor, exhausted and overheated from playful exertion.

She was gone the next morning, a short note in flowing script the unusual girl's only goodbye after the fun memories she'd given the brothers in the magical chamber beneath the dun.

Bonnie Lads,

After careful consideration, and tallying the scores of my wee test, I truly have naught to say except... strike three.

Next time, do not attempt to lie to me, nor to change my mind with horseplay. My course is set, unchangeable. My path chosen ere my rebirth. I go to battle with a heavy heart, the gravity of the knowledge that you are not yet ready for the truth weighs heavily upon my spirit. It is for the best that I walk alone. You shall see me again when the troubles of the Hidden world have calmed once again. Our unfortunate talks of yesterday leave me with a single question that I feel I must pose. Call it simple curiosity.

As I am quite certain you've not laid eyes upon my love in this lifetime, how is it that you are so certain of what He looks like? "That perfect, beautiful Scottish giant, Tiernan MacDuff". He'd be pleased to know you say so, as you are the very same.

                                                                          
My love to You,

                                                                                  
Ailill

Blood of an Innocent

“
He was here. I kent it when I awoke, Mother; I felt the soft brush of his lips here." Fingers fluttering over the finely etched line of a high Viking cheekbone, Ailill eyed her mother with a glinting glare. "You would lie to me, as if I didn't know a thing at all; as if I lacked the wherewithal to understand aught, of anything. Now, why don't you just tell me what he came here for, if only to set my mind at ease, since I only just returned yesterday morn and fell straight to sleep with my boots still on. Did he at least reunite with the lads? They are his brothers, after all."

Bright blue eyes settled on Ailill's face in the half-light of predawn, a dour expression hardening the already taut lines of Annie's face, making her look older, closer to her true age. It was a trick of the lighting, Ailill knew, though she still blinked in surprise. Annie hadn't aged a day in her looks in a great many years.

"I will not tell you anything, Ailill. Not yet. There is much to do first."

Scowling, her lower lip clamped hard between straight, pearly white teeth, Ailill made a derisory sound in the back of her throat, her displeasure evident. "I wish only to have seen him with my own two eyes," she muttered under her breath, feeling the sting of tears even as she swallowed down a persistent lump that had taken up residence in her throat since she had broached the subject of Tiernan MacDuff's secret visit. Too secret. She was certain that if the twins had met with the man, she'd have heard by now, even if they did live in the cabin in Wilderdeep, far enough that neither knew she was back as yet. She glanced about with sad eyes. 

"This could be me, you know." Arm raised over the still form on the bed, the body covered by a woolen blanket, Ailill gesticulated angrily at her mother, clutching the tiny swaddled form of a newly orphaned infant to her breast. Her voice was hoarsened with tears held back far too long. The trials of the last many hours finally caught up with her, evident in the audible catch in her husky voice. The sound of bitter failure clear as a pindrop in the still silence of the room.

"I am supposed to carry on the new line, Mam, give birth to the next generation of the Gentry, but you know what?" Annie eyed her daughter with a closed expression. "This poor wee lass was a full two years younger than me, than what I shall be for all eternity, and look what has become of Herself! Our own
kindred
, and what has that done for her? You couldn't stop the bleeding, even with all your knowledge, and neither could I. The two of us have failed our Kingdom, let the Lost Princess die as not but a pauper! This poor wee bairn has no one.
No one!
She is all alone in a harsh, cruel world without the benefit of anyone to love her. Sweet Brigit, she hasn't even a name to call her own! No man has stepped forward to claim his involvement. She has no kin to raise her, no family to give her all that she deserves to be brought up with. She doesn't even have someone to speak on her behalf, so that she may be fostered and loved, as I was. This could as easily have been any one o' the women in the village. It could have been Janie Forrester; it could have been me. And so I ask myself, what is to become of this bairn, who has nothing in this world to live for? What shall we do to make it all right for her, this bitty wee princess who is hangin' on by a thread, born to a woman who honored all, including the Great Mother Goddess Anu, by carrying her for as long as she was able? What shall we do?"

Tears fell unbidden, the heartbreak of losing a helpless patient completely overwhelming the sensitive young woman when combined with the reality of another heartbreak so deeply harbored, that she, herself, had wished for death, more than once, to take the pain away. He hadn't wanted to see her, or so she surmised, since he had certainly not made the effort. A second time, a second secret visit. The pain in her heart was excruciating as she attempted to quell the tears that washed over her flushed cheeks, onto the soft buckskin blanket, the only thing left to the newly born girl by her dead mother, a mere teenager, who had drifted into town less than a year before, a shocking secret buried too well. Eight months. Long enough to meet a man who, in Ailill's exhausted mind, had ultimately led to her demise out of pure selfish lust, out of a sick, twisted need to prove his own power.

"Dinna fash, Ailill, all will work out fine," Annie said softly, her tone gentle. She felt badly, as well, for the loss of one of their own; but she was a realist. The girl had been unhealthy to begin with; there were signs on the body that clearly showed that she had endured quite a bit of abuse in her life, though not recently; the scars were at least a few years old, the mark on her chest an obvious symbol of enslavement. Undernourished, weakened by the pregnancy, absolutely alone. It was more of a surprise that the baby had survived this long into the gestation period, being nearly six weeks early, by what the poor girl had said when the midwife had arrived on her doorstep and spirited her away to Hidden Jewel. Annie did not believe that she was even that far along, her belly being no bigger than Janie's, who had only just begun to show, though the young woman had been quite adamant as to the date she had gotten pregnant, Mid- February, just after Kiah Black and the two boys had moved into the cabin on the edge of town.