Lady of Conquest (41 page)

Without another word, Gelina flopped over like a sack of meal. She stared into the fire, her lower lip protruding. Sean watched her for a long time until weariness closed his own eyes. He awoke only once during the night, sitting bolt upright as an agonized whimper cut through his troubled dreams. He looked over at Gelina to find her eyes closed and her chest rising and falling evenly. Shaking his head, he threw himself down, seeking again the black solace of sleep.

Gelina awoke without drowsiness, yawning, or stretching. She simply opened her eyes. The dim sunlight of morning blanketed her face in its meager warmth. There was little difference between sleeping and waking. Even with her eyes open, Nimbus’s tiny body swung back and forth between her brows until the furious blue eyes blocked it out. The dreams were worse than the nightmares. Conn stood behind her, encircling her with his powerful arms, his head thrown back in laughter and love shining in his eyes.

She had the dim sensation that she had been weeping. The rope constricted her hands as she lifted them to check for tearstains. She prayed her face was clean. No one must see her cry.

Sean gathered their belongings and helped her mount the roan. Shadows of darkness lay beneath his eyes, and she knew his rest had done little to renew him.

The second day passed in bitter imitation of the first. Darkness was fast approaching when Sean slowed his mount to a walk. The dim sun faded in the west, leaving a faint moon in its wake. Gelina nodded at the rocking pace, her chin almost to her chest as she fought the seductive sleep of exhaustion. The lulling motion ceased, and her head flew up to find Sean sitting motionless on his horse, his gaze locked on the valley below. He seemed to have forgotten she was behind him and did not protest when she nudged her mare to his side.

The hill sloped away into a treeless plain unrolling to the foot of shadowy peaks blacker than the night sky. Gelina suppressed a shiver as a gust of wind whipped the loose tendrils of hair away from her face. Desolation as powerful and silent as the wretched face of the land swept her pounding heart clean, leaving only dread in its place.

A nervous laugh escaped her. “With the moon shining on the rocks, that cottage looks as if it’s sitting in the middle of a lake.”

Sean didn’t turn around. “It is.”

Gelina squinted at the dark blot on the land, hearing in the vast silence the whisper of waves licking the stony shore. A thin film of sweat coated her palms. The tiny island looked as if it had risen from the depths of the lake a century ago. The moon shone on a thatched roof, round and solid in its center.

“ ‘Twill be a good place to pass the night, I suppose,” she whispered.

In answer, Sean kicked his roan into a canter. Gelina’s legs flopped as her mount followed, her knees shaking too hard to grip the horse’s sweaty coat. The basin of the windswept plain cupped them in the impersonal fingers of the sky. Sean jerked his mount to a halt and flung himself to his feet; his fingers unknotted two bulging knapsacks with uncharacteristic violence. He pulled Gelina from the mare, his mouth set in a hard line. She stared at the splintered nightmare of wood and rope that stretched from the shore to the island.

Sean stepped onto the bridge, oblivious to its tortured swaying. He turned back to find Gelina rooted to the rocks, a hint of a plea buried deep in her eyes.

“I cannot swim, you know,” she said softly.

He fixed his eyes on the island and tugged on the rope until she was forced to follow or splash into the lake. She flinched as chill water rushed over her boots, hardly feeling the dubious comfort of the creaking wood beneath them. She clutched the frayed rope. By the time Sean pulled her to the shore of the island, her eyes were squeezed shut. She resisted the urge to fall on her knees and kiss the mud.

Sean dumped the knapsacks on the ground and untied her hands without a word. She rubbed her chafed wrists.

He busied himself with coiling the rope around his hands. “You’ll find lentils behind the hut and dried meat and grain in the sacks. There are torches and blankets and everything you should need inside. I shouldn’t have to tell you where to find the water.”

He started for the bridge. Gelina clutched his arm. “You’re going to leave me here? Just like this? In the middle of the night?”

He shook off her grasp. “I’ll return before your supplies run out to bring you more.”

“And when will that be, Sean? A week? A month? A year?”

He strode onto the bridge and started across the lake.

Her voice rose in panic. “What if marauders or bandits find me?”

“Then the gods had best help them.”

Gelina stood with hands on hips, her whole body shaking in anger. “And what is to stop me from just walking right out of here and returning to plunge a sword in your precious king’s heart?”

She heard the crunch of rocks as Sean stepped off the bridge to the shore. He turned and stared across the lake into her eyes. His sword flashed three times in quick succession and Gelina watched forlornly as the bridge sank into the fathomless lake with hardly a bubble to mark its passage. Sean mounted his horse and gathered the rope leading to the mare.

“What if he changes his mind, Sean?” she cried. “What if he doesn’t let you return? What if he decides to let me rot here at the end of the world? But oh, no! He’s too cruel to let me die. He’ll send you back, won’t he? He’ll send you back until you’re old and gray and I am begging for death. The heartless son-of-a—”

Sean urged his horse into a canter. Gelina’s curses rent the velvet curtain of the night as he galloped out of the valley and over the hills until the bitter words died in his ears.

Gelina attacked the hut, tearing out ragged handfuls of muddy wicker. Hot tears coursed down her face like blood. She screamed until she couldn’t recognize her voice as her own. She sank to the ground in a heap, her curses fading to sobs.

With a soft hiccup, she sat in the mud hugging her knees, her back pressed to the hut. Sparse stars, scattered across the vast sky, winked mockingly at her. Silence closed in around her, broken only by the chirp of a cricket on the shore and the gentle lapping of the waves against the rocks.

Gelina wrapped a scrap of linen around her hand and scraped the smoldering turf from the iron lid. The aroma of fresh baked bread filled the hut as she dumped the coarse, yellow loaf from the pot to the table. She tore off a hunk and wandered out of the shadowy hut. She turned her face to the sun, her eyes drawn to the purple peaks that ringed the plains. Her dripping breeches and vest hung across a rope stretched from hut to shed, leaving her garbed in a shapeless linen dress she had found crammed into the knapsack. She tucked the ragged hem under her knees on the bench and wondered, as always, if she were losing her mind when the sun felt warm on her face and the bread crumbled in her mouth in grainy goodness.

The days since Sean had left faded one into another, as seamless as her emotions. She could have been alone on the crannog for a week or a month or a year. Her days were spent fishing, digging peat, and sitting in the sun or the afternoon rain. Her nights were spent staring into the flames that danced on the open hearth and sleeping a dreamless sleep on the creaky bed.

She sighed, hating the fall sun for the healing rays it spread across her soul. She finished the bread and licked her fingers, waiting for the waning of day, when the last rays of the sun would strike the distant slopes until they flamed into the sapphire blue of Conn’s eyes.

The black clouds billowed toward Tara, as dark and menacing as the scowl drawn over Conn’s features. Sean and Mer-Nod watched from the window as Conn drove Silent Thunder across the meadow and back again. He jerked the horse around with a savage rear that nearly unseated him.

Mer-Nod turned away from the window with a muttered curse. Sean drew the shutters closed as the first raindrops spattered on the sill.

Mer-Nod pulled a scroll from a pigeonhole under the table and tucked the end of a quill between his lips. “I cannot say what is the worse torment—losing Nimbus and Gelina or keeping Conn in this terrible rage.”

Sean nodded. “We have more reason to grieve for the king we knew than for those who are truly gone.”

“He stormed in here last night and commanded me to erase her name from all records of history. He threatened to destroy my personal poetry if I didn’t hide it where his eyes could never chance seeing it.”

Sean shook his head, the burden of dread settling visibly on his shoulders. “It’ll be time for me to return there in a few days.”

“He has never asked you about her?”

“Never.”

“How many times have you been?”

“Three.”

“In what spirits did you find her?”

“She looked well enough.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

Sean threw open the shutters, oblivious to the rain that slanted across his face. “She refuses to talk to me. All that time alone and she won’t even exchange a cross or reproachful word with me when I come.”

“Her rage is locked inside,” Mer-Nod said.

“That may be true but I don’t turn my back on her, lest it surface again. I have no desire to be another Nimbus.” He leaned against the window frame and watched Conn pound across the meadow, as driven as the sheets of rain that pursued him.

Sean awoke with a start, believing the frightful apparition at the foot of his bed one of the gods come to claim him. Relief eluded him when he realized it was Conn, his hair tousled as if raked by a thousand agonized fingers. Sean sat up, desperate to pretend the next words would not come.

“Where is she?” Conn asked hoarsely.

“But Conn ... I cannot—”

Conn cut off his stammered words with a terse command. “Tell me where she is.”

“The oath, Conn. I swore.”

“Break the oath.”

Sean stared at him, aghast. “Sire, you cannot ask me . . .” He swallowed as the icy tip of a sword was pressed to his throat.

“Break it,” Conn repeated.

Conn’s burning gaze followed him as he sank back into the pillow, a choked protest dying on his lips.

Gelina ladled the steaming broth into the bowl and moved the kettle away from the iron grate. She sat cross-legged on the open hearth, relishing the warmth that kept the night outside at bay. The rain had stopped. As night fell across the crannog, mist rose from the lake in swirling tapers to permeate everything in the hut with a bone-chilling dampness. After a moment’s thought she pulled the wet dress over her head and sat clothed only in her shift, her long legs pressed to the warm, flat stones.

The earthenware bowl was hot beneath her fingers. She had to alternately blow and lick her fingers to keep from burning them. A splash drew her eyes to the shuttered window.

She poked a spoonful of broth into her mouth, knowing it was not the first time an errant fish had flopped from the swollen lake to the muddy shore. Perhaps if the night had been clear, she would have gone outside and tossed the poor, gasping creature into the water. But she had no desire to open the shutters and peer into the night. She was too afraid the wildness strangled by the enveloping mist might find an answering agony in her heart.

The bowl fell to the floor as the door flew open with a mighty crash that shook handfuls of wicker from the walls. Conn stood in the doorway, mist swirling around him, water pouring from his mane of dark hair to his boots in a muddy cascade. His gaze moved from her disheveled curls to the thin cotton shift. His breathing was audible, Gelina tugged the shift down over her thighs; her fingers closed around the warm iron of the poker nestled in the fire.

“I banished you to this hell to punish you, and how do I find you? Languishing on the hearth, licking your fingers like a satisfied cat.” Conn slammed the door.

Gelina jumped to her feet with a mocking curtsy, not bothering to hide the poker clenched in her fist. “Do forgive me, sire. Wasting away gracefully was never my strong suit. Perhaps it would have pleased you if I had succumbed to the call of the lake in a ladylike fit of despair. My bloated body could have floated up to greet you in the course of your swim.”

Conn stared at a body that was anything but bloated. The months at the crannog had softened Gelina’s girlish angles. The reddish glow of the fire behind her threw her gentle curves into aching relief. The shift molded to her body like a second, shimmering skin. Her hair curled past her shoulders, gleaming in the firelight like spun gold. He took a step toward her without realizing it.

Gelina raised the poker; her eyes blazed. “If you touch me, I shall kill you. I swear it.”

Conn stopped, recognizing a new determination in her low, flat tone. He clasped his hands behind his back with a small smile. “You always were a stupid child. I suppose you came by it honestly, though. Your whole family was cursed with a lack of natural intelligence, probably caused by all that inbreeding on Deirdre’s side of the family.”

He ducked. The poker came sailing past his ear as he had anticipated. His lips curved in satisfaction as he straightened. A clay bowl shattered off his temple. Gelina shrieked as he lunged across the hut with a growl. A broom and a copper kettle followed the bowl in quick succession.