Lady of Conquest (44 page)

His hands caught her shoulders; he shook her until her hair streamed around her face in a tangled cascade.

“Stop it, damn you! Can’t you understand? I don’t believe you anymore. I know you for the black-hearted little bitch you are.”

Pride and truth fought a battle to the death in Gelina’s soul, but she couldn’t halt the words or the tears. “I never thought you would hurt me like this. I thought you regretted—”

Conn caught her to him and held her as if he would crush the breath from her shaking body. “Oh, I do regret. I regret every word of love we spoke, every tender gesture that passed between us.”

He rocked back and forth, his words a litany of pain and loss. “Twice you’ve deceived me. Twice you’ve torn my heart in two. I sat out there all day on that forsaken, windswept plain, trying to find the courage in my heart not to come back to you. Knowing that if I returned, I would be destroyed. That my violence and my desire to drive you to your knees would kill the last vestiges of everything I believed in when I created the Fianna.”

He drew away from her. His thumb gently traced the curve of her cheek. “But I came back, didn’t I? Even the threat of my own destruction couldn’t stop me from holding you one last time.”

Gelina stared into his eyes, hardly daring to breathe. She buried her face in his shoulder, throwing herself on the mercy of the high king of Erin. Conn groaned. His lips brushed her soft curls.

“Your tenderness wounds me more than violence, sire,” she whispered.

Conn reached down and drew her face upward. “Then you have put in my hands the weapon to maim your very soul.”

His lips captured hers with heartrending gentleness. His tongue explored the warmth of her mouth as if for the first time.

Never, even in their happiest days, had his touch been so agonizingly gentle, so hurtfully patient. She closed her eyes and turned her face to the pillow with a whispered plea.

His mouth and hands took her until she quaked and shivered beneath the slow, lingering agony of his touch. Her body arched away from the mattress. A low moan was torn from deep within her throat as a dark and fearful pleasure spread through every tingling nerve of her body in shimmering waves of velvet heat.

His mouth slanted across hers, moist and burning and desperate. His knee spread her legs farther. She felt the heat of him poised above her. His hands cupped her face, his fingers spreading wide to tangle in her gossamer web of hair.

“Look at me, Gelina,” he commanded hoarsely. “I want to see the truth in your eyes.”

She reluctantly opened her eyes, praying to some unknown god that he would see the truth within them. He entered her inch by inch, the pressure of his broad hands splayed on her face forcing her to keep her eyes open even when she would have begged to close them. A choked sob escaped her. As she stared into the depths of his sapphire eyes, something dark and terrible and wonderful passed between them until Conn was forced to close his eyes or surrender forever to the strength of it. His lips brushed hers. He moved within her, teasing and taking, each stroke driving him deeper until her lips parted in a soundless gasp beneath his.

A shudder traveled the length of Conn’s body, shaking Gelina to the core with its unexpected violence. She sank her teeth into his shoulder to stop herself from crying out the words that welled in her throat, unable to tell if the tears that wet her face fell from her eyes or his.

* * *

Somewhere in her dreams, he drew her to her knees but she could not remember when. Her hands could only cling to his shoulders, helpless with want. Her hungry mouth could only trace the curve of his beard. His heavy-lidded eyes stared into her soul as he tangled his hand in her hair. He had won as Gelina had always known he would.

Somewhere in her dreams, she opened her eyes to find him kneeling beside the bed, garbed in his leather vest and breeches, his sword strapped at his waist. He wrapped the tattered blanket around her and lifted her in his arms, his lips buried in the softness of her hair. He carried her to the warmth of the hearth, cradling her on his lap like a child. She burrowed into his tunic, pushing it aside and nuzzling her face to the soft fur of his chest with a contented sigh. He brought one upturned wrist to his lips and tenderly kissed the bruises that marred the creamy flesh.

“No more, my love,” he whispered.

Her eyelashes brushed his chest like tiny feathers as she closed her eyes in search of a sleep that was dreamless.

Her hand touched the cold emptiness of the bed beside her. Gelina sat up, Conn’s name a whisper on her lips. A fire crackled on the hearth in cheerful mockery of the empty hut. She jumped out of bed without sparing a glance for the torn dress on the floor. Her shaking hands jerked her breeches and tunic from a peg on the wall. She pulled them over her nakedness and ran to the door, too afraid of the answering silence to cry out.

The gray sky spit snow in whirling flurries. She ran behind the hut and around the crannog, her gaze searching the horizon for any sign of a man or a horse. The misty mountain peaks held their secrets.

A desolation as cold and biting as the wind swept through her. With a muted groan she threw up her arms in utter hopelessness.

“Oh, Nimbus,” she whispered.

She sat cross-legged on the ground, not bothering to wipe away the snowflakes that caught in her eyelashes. She watched the falling snow slip into the murky lake without a trace.

Sean came with the sunshine two days later to find her in the same position, a cap pulled over her unruly curls and a thin knapsack at her side. He dismounted with a soothing word to the mare tethered to his horse and swam to the crannog as smoothly as a fish.

Gelina stood as he climbed to the shore. He knew by meeting her steady gaze that no explanations were necessary but the awkward silence forced him to say, “I’m to take you to the coast. To a ship.”

She nodded. She didn’t protest when he guided her arms around his neck with terse instructions and slipped into the cold water. She clung to his shoulders, her eyes clenched shut.

The mare nickered softly as they rose dripping from the lake. Gelina mounted and held out her wrists without a word.

Sean stared at the bruises, then looked away toward the mountains. “He made me swear not to tell him where you were. I broke my oath.”

She nodded again. He slipped the rope around her waist and knotted it without meeting her eyes. He mounted.

“You did what you had to do,” she said softly as Sean kicked his roan into a gallop.

Gelina locked her hands in the mare’s coarse mane. The tightness of despair choked her in the face of the brilliant sunshine. As they flew across the grass, she loosed a tiny corner of hopelessness, feeling it float across the plains like a tangible thing. The wind whipped her hair from underneath the cap. She closed her eyes and for a brief instant felt the pulsating muscles of Silent Thunder between her thighs.

Her eyes flew open to blot out the dream. She must not feel a gentle hand on her hair, a kiss as soft as a whisper at the nape of her neck. Despair wrapped itself around her like a shroud.

Sean slowed his mount to a walk as they entered a sun-dappled forest.

“Watch for the low branches,” he called back.

Gelina’s horse reared, snorting wildly as the tree above Sean’s head spit out its occupant on the unsuspecting soldier. Gelina struggled to steady the mare as Sean tumbled to the ground, rolling through the crackling underbrush with his attacker. The mare pranced in a circle, facing Gelina away from them.

She heard the clash of steel. She was jerked off the mare on her behind as Sean’s horse trotted over to a patch of grass and began to feed. She twisted to find Sean lying among the leaves with her brother astride him. Rodney pressed a dagger to Sean’s throat. His triumphant laughter rang out.

“Rodney, don’t hurt him,” she commanded, seeing Sean’s furious glare travel between the two of them.

“If I had my way, I would leave him here in the woods like we left his other comrades, with perhaps an arm or a leg chopped off.” Rodney giggled. Sean’s eyes widened. “But this warrior works for us now. He will bear my message to the illustrious Ard-Righ.”

“What message?” Sean hissed. “That the two of you planned Nimbus’s murder? He’s probably discovered that already.”

“Ah, but that is a lie.” Rodney gestured grandly to Gelina, who sat up, her hands clenched into fists. “My sister knew nothing of the jester’s death. She was innocent, condemned without a trial by the man she thought she loved.”

Sean saw the truth in Gelina’s averted eyes. The sun shone through the trees, burnishing her bowed head to copper fire. He closed his eyes for an instant, forgetting the cold steel at his throat as remorse flooded him.

Gelina’s head flew up. “Then you killed him,” she accused her brother.

Rodney shook his head sadly. “He was a fool, Princess, in every sense of the word. He loved you, you know. The words of farewell he so gallantly spoke before he died were from the heart. He was too heart-broken to live and too cowardly to die so I took pity on him. Had he any breath left in that stunted body of his, I’m sure he would have thanked me before he died.”

Gelina shook her head, speechless with horror.

Rodney stood. “To your feet,” he commanded Sean, pressing the sharp tip of the dagger to his back. “I need your clothes. Now that I and my sweet sister are reunited, we shall continue our journey to the ship Conn so thoughtfully provided.”

Sean disrobed, cursing under his breath. Rodney hooked Sean’s sword to his belt. Gelina sat unmoving as Rodney cut the bond around her waist.

Sean stood shivering in his loincloth. “You don’t have to go with him, Gelina,” he said softly.

“I’ve nowhere else to go,” she said as she swung herself on the mare’s back with both hands. Sean had to turn away from the bitterness in her eyes.

Rodney mounted behind her. “Take this message to your king. He will never be a good ruler until he learns who to mistrust”—he placed a possessive hand on Gelina’s shoulder—“and who to trust.”

With a battle cry that echoed through the forest, he kicked the horse into a gallop, leaving Sean to stare after them.

“I know the question, Gelina,” he whispered. “I know the question we didn’t ask.”

He mounted his horse and thundered back toward Tara.

Gelina jerked on the reins, halting the horse so abruptly that Rodney slid into her. Ignoring his cry of bewilderment, she dismounted and stalked in the direction they were traveling.

“Lina! Where are you going?” Rodney threw his leg over the horse, entangling himself in the rope that hung useless from its back.

She yelled over her shoulder without slowing her determined pace, “I am going to the ship without you. I am leaving this cursed land forever.”

Freeing himself from the rope with a muttered curse, he ran after her. “But, Princess, I fixed everything for us. We can be together now.”

He stopped in his tracks as she turned and doubled back to him, fists clenched. As soon as he was within her reach, she punched him soundly in the nose. That blow was followed by a swift uppercut that sent him sprawling in the dirt.

He sat rubbing his chin. “You’re angry.”

She pointed a shaking finger at him, her face contorted with rage. “You ruined everything. You murdered my best friend. You almost got me killed.”

He climbed to his feet, brushing off his breeches. “I knew Conn would let you go eventually. I would have come after you sooner, but it was too dangerous. He always sent Sean in the dead of night. I had no way to follow him until today.”

“Risky? Risky for whom? You had no guarantee that Conn wouldn’t command Sean to break my neck. Or come and do the job himself.” She rubbed her wrists without realizing she was doing it.

He shrugged. “It was a chance I had to take.” He backed up and put a rowan tree between them as she advanced again.

“You took a chance on my life?”

“I had to show you what kind of man Conn really was. I did it all for you.”

“Spare me any more of your favors, brother,” she bit off acidly. “I could have lived my whole life happily without learning what you showed me.”

“It would have been a lie. Don’t you see that?” He risked stepping out from behind the tree.

“You murdered Nimbus in cold blood. I don’t care how dejected he was over my marriage to Conn, he never would have killed himself and left me to take the blame. That’s the difference between the two of you.” Her voice gained momentum. “I should have married him. He trusted me and he never used me. Those are two traits I’ve yet to find in any other man. He was my friend!”

Rodney glanced back at the tree, pondering its shelter as her voice rose to a shriek. She threw up her hands in exasperation and walked away.

He crossed his arms. “You cannot board that ship without an escort from the Fianna. As ironic as it may be, I am that escort.”

Gelina turned, recognizing the truth of what he said as he stood smirking in the forest green uniform of one of Conn’s soldiers.

Her voice was low and determined. “I shall go with you. But when we disembark from that ship, wherever it may be, you are on your own. I am no longer your sister.”