The Falcon's Bride (19 page)

Drumcondra turned away and went to the window. It overlooked the destroyed wing silhouetted against the clear night sky.

“You are standing in the proof of what I say, Lord
Drumcondra,” Thea said, soft of voice, almost afraid to disturb him.

He spun to face her. “I must go back!” he said. “If what you say is true, I can prevent this!”

Thea shook her head. “If you go back, you will die in that chamber where you held me captive. I saw your death. Your mother showed it to me.”

“How?”

“In a bucket of water.”

Drumcondra’s scalp drew back. “If she showed it to you thus, it is true. The bucket is a Gypsy mystery—one of many. We Gypsies have knowledge beyond the comprehension of ordinary men. You should have told me this before.”

“She advised against it.”

“And now she is likely dead.”

“I pray not, my lord,” Thea said around a tremor. “It was she who lured me here in the first place. It would pain me never to see her again.”

“How do you mean?”

“The very night I arrived at Cashel Cos—your castle . . . You see, that
was
a lie. I did reside there briefly, but I couldn’t tell you then. You thought it was Cian I was to wed. At any rate, she came to the castle and told me things that led me to that passage tomb on the solstice. I think she did so, because she meant for me to save you from a horrible, horrible death, my lord.”

“And so she sacrificed herself and died instead,” he murmured. “I must go back. You must show me the way.”

“Me?” she cried. “I cannot, my lord. I do not know it, and even if I did I would not. I saw your death! You burned alive in that chamber, a woman at your side. I believe it was
I
in that holocaust with you! You must stay here, in my time with me.”

“And do what, go where? I cannot stay here. Where shall I go? What shall I do? What shall I wear? I cannot go abroad as I am. The coin in my pouch is doubtless obsolete. Where do I obtain your coin of the realm, eh? It is impossible. I must go back—now, before it’s too late.”

“It is already too late, my lord,” Thea moaned. “The midnight hour has come and gone. You cannot turn back time. If it were only possible . . .” She couldn’t finish the thought. Besides, she didn’t mean it. She would gladly brave that holocaust if the alternative meant never seeing him again.

Drumcondra kicked at the broken pottery beside the door, at a tarnished coffer amongst the debris, and spun to face her. Thea had never seen so tragic a look of devastation in anyone’s face. She longed to go to him, to throw her arms around him, but she could not. She stood her ground.

“The bird brought us here?” he asked.

She nodded. “It travels the time corridor freely, my lord,” she said. “Even
it
knows you must stay here now. These are truly strange happenings, to be sure, but to a purpose. I must believe that.
You
must believe that.”

“A purpose, eh? What purpose to save me from a slaughter that destroys all of my people—wipes them from the face of the earth?”

“I do not know, my lord,” she said. “Only that there is one. Your mother knew it.” She gestured toward the battlements. “That bird knows it, and while I do not pretend to understand it, I know it, too. Your destiny lies . . . elsewhere.”

“You say that Isor travels the corridor freely,” he said. “How do you know this?”

“At first I did not know it. It was your mother who explained. That bird, I do believe, harbors the same hatred for the Cosgroves as you do. When he gouged out Cian Cos-grove’s
eye, it was not the only time he blinded one of them.” Drumcondra’s nonplussed expression stopped her momentarily. He had scooped up some of the pottery shards he’d been kicking at from the dust-covered floor, and was fingering them as she spoke. “That bird took my betrothed’s eye in just the same manner before I came to you.”

“Why?”

“He was protecting me, I think,” she said, reflecting upon the incident. “Nigel had taken me up on the battlements to chastise me for insisting your mother be admitted in view of the storm. We were arguing, and he took hold of me. We were struggling, and the bird swooped down, batted me out of the way with those enormous wings, and gouged Nigel’s eye out. If Nigel hadn’t taken to his bed, I would never have come to you. He had forbidden me to visit the passage tomb. I coerced my brother into taking me.”

“This Nigel. He did not . . . harm you?”

“No, my lord, but if that bird hadn’t intervened . . . Your mother could persuade you if she were here. I have no experience with the supernatural. I do not pretend to understand any of this, but I do not think we dare tamper with it.”

“I have heard of such as this,” he said absently. “Since I could stand without my knees buckling, I was told the tales of Si An Bhru—that it was a passageway between the living and the dead, a sacred mystery. That is why we made it our home . . . our hiding place. The superstitious folk hereabouts gave it a wide berth. We were safe there. Everyone thought we were camped in the hills. I thought the stories were like so many other Gypsy tales, the legends of our heritage. I did not credit them as truth.”

“Would it comfort you to know that your people’s remains were found there . . . that many of them reached
the tomb after the devastation, and evidently lived and died there? Their bones were found inside when the tomb was opened up in 1699 and renovated.
Your
bones were not among them, my lord. Our history tells us that you simply . . . disappeared and were never heard of again.”

Drumcondra froze, stock-still, his green gaze riveted to her.

“Dare you tamper with that, my lord?” she asked, blinking back tears.

“You are a brave woman,” he said. “You must have been . . . terrified.”

“I am not brave,” she sobbed, dissolving into tears. “I am still terrified. For us both.”

He reached her in two ragged strides and took her in his arms. His taut muscles rippled against her. His chest, as hard as steel, flexed beneath her face, and his hands soothed her through the homespun cloak. He still held a fragment of the broken jar he had been fingering. He tossed it down and it shattered to dust.

“What was that?” she asked.

“That was what has convinced me,” he said, burying his massive hand in her hair. “Not three hours ago, Drina threw that jar at me in this very chamber. It was filled with some strong-smelling women’s balm that splashed all over me. I stink of it. I can still smell it on my jerkin.”

Thea inhaled and gasped. “Patchouli!” she said. “An Asian scent. Very costly, very much in demand, my lord.”

He raised her face until their gazes met. “I much prefer the smell of gillyflower and rose,” he murmured.

All at once, he clouded. “Do you love him, this Nigel Cosgrove?” he said.

“No, my lord,” she replied. “It is an arranged betrothal.”

“They still do that in the year 1811, eh?”

“They do.”

“You will not marry him,” he said flatly.

“My lord?”

“You will not marry him,” he repeated. “Our lives are linked—yours and mine. That has not changed, fair lady. I have brought you to life, and now that life is mine.”

“My lord—”

His warm mouth swallowed the rest. His hand buried in her hair cupped her head. His fingers laced through her dark curls, caressed its silkiness, feeling its texture. He deepened the kiss and she sagged in his arms, lost in the power of a palpable passion.

His need was evident. His bruising hardness forced against her, riddling her with icy-hot waves of paralyzing fire coursing through her very core. As anxious as that forceful manhood was, she did not fear it anymore. There was a new gentleness in him then that totally disarmed her. He seemed transfixed in a way that contradicted his otherwise flamboyant image. And, oh, what his kiss was doing to her equilibrium!

Warm, skilled fingers roamed her body through the thin silk shift beneath her cloak. As if they had a will of their own, they knew just where to touch, just what to tantalize. Her breath erupted in a moan as his hand came to rest upon her belly. Her sex leapt as the hand prowled lower, hovering over the mound between her thighs through the clinging silk.

Her arms tightened around him, drawing him closer, charging the corded muscles in that dynamic body to flex and shudder against her. Where had her resolve gone? What was she thinking? His earthy scent had hypnotized her. The sultry baritone rumble bubbling up from deep inside him thrilled her from head to toe, those shuddering groans resonating in her throat until she feared she’d faint from sheer ecstasy. He was right. She was his. How could
she ever love another after living in the arms of Ros Drumcondra?

As though he’d read her thoughts, he drew his lips away and glanced toward the bed behind them. It was stripped bare to the mattress ticking. Thea’s eyes followed. There was no denying the meaning in those tarnished green eyes, in the rapid breath puffing from his flared nostrils, in the visible pounding of his heart through the leather tunic stretched taut over his hard muscled chest. Reluctantly, he slid his hands down her trembling arms and put her from him.

“The place has been looted—picked clean,” he said, striding toward the door. “What little remains is not worth stealing. Stay. Warm yourself by the fire. I shan’t be long.”

“W-where are you going?”

“To find us some decent bedding if I can,” he said, stepping into the hallway.

He wasn’t gone long. His arms loaded with fur rugs and a richly woven tapestry Thea assumed had once hung on the wall, he strode to the bed and began spreading his finds.

“I found a cupboard they overlooked,” he said. “Either that or others have left these over time. They do not look familiar. There isn’t a spoon or a trencher left in the place.”

“After nearly a hundred and twenty years, my lord, you are fortunate to find the walls still standing.”

He strode to her side, and cupped her head in his hand. “You are mine,” he said simply. “You shall know no other.”

“What are you saying, my lord?” She had to know his intentions. She might be the love slave of a Black Irish Gypsy warlord, but there were still proprieties to be met. They had come into her time now.

“Your kind puts great store in the ritualistic religious
sanctification of marriage,” he said. “We Gypsies do not. We have our own marriage rituals that are not so strict, but just as binding. The ceremonies are centuries old. This . . . situation calls for sanctification, don’t you think? I would have you for my wife, Thea, before I take you in that bed, because I know your sensibilities demand it—and because I wish to prove to you that I am no barbarian. Will you marry me the Romany way, my lady?”

Thea’s heart was bursting. This was not at all what she’d expected. The man was full of surprises. There was only one answer she could give and still be true to herself, because her need of him was greater than her sense of propriety. She nodded her assent. She would not give him her virtue otherwise. Though the thought of marriage to such an enigmatic warrior was daunting, the prospect of living without him now would not be brooked.

He pulled her into a smothering embrace that left her weak and trembling, in need of his strong arms for support. So, it had come to this. Truth be told, she’d known it would from the very first. She had always been of the opinion that some things were ordained in heaven. This was one of them. Thea had found her soul mate. To deny him would be to fly in the face of the Divine Providence that had brought them together through time and space and soul-wrenching calamity.

“There are several rituals,” he murmured against her hair. “In some Gypsy cultures, it is enough for a man and woman to simply declare their wish to be joined in marriage to each other for the oath to be binding. But I suspect that you would require something . . . more. There is another ritual that should suffice. Come, sit.” He led her to the bed and snatched up his saddlebag from the floor. Rummaging inside, he produced a chunk of bread and a flagon of mead. Kneeling down beside her, he tore two
small pieces from the loaf, drew his dagger from his boot, and pricked his finger with it. Thea gasped as he squeezed a drop of blood onto one of the morsels. Cleaning the blade on his leggings, he handed it to her. “Do as I have done,” he said.

Thea pricked her finger with the blade and let a drop of her blood drip onto her piece of the bread.

Drumcondra took back his dirk, and handed her his bread, taking hers in exchange. “Eat,” he said, “and we are one for all time.”

Thea took the bloodstained bread into her mouth, and watched wide-eyed as he did the same with hers. “For all time,” she murmured, meeting his shuttered gaze.

“There should be music and dancing,” he remarked, “platters heaped with food and goblets overflowing with ale and wine, but all that will have to wait.” He raised her to her feet. “What we have just done is as binding as any bishop’s blessing. I am part of you, and you are part of me now. It will be thus forever. Nothing can change it—not even death.”

“I . . . do not want to change it,” Thea murmured.

Drumcondra stripped her of her cloak and, in one motion, raised her shift up over her head. Thea stood naked, her charms exposed to his gaze. Those gold-flecked green eyes devoured her in a slow familiar appraisal, from her windblown crown of ebony curls to the delicate shape of her dainty feet. They lingered on the curve of her rounded hips and narrow waist, on the soft swell of her breasts, grown turgid with desire, the tawny nipples hard in anticipation of his touch. His look alone was a seduction.

He scooped her up in his arms and laid her on the bed among the furs he’d piled there. Across the way, the fire in the hearth had finally mellowed into a smokeless issue of radiant warmth. The glow gleamed on Drumcondra’s bronzed
skin as he stripped off his tunic and leggings. Naked but for the ragged bandage clinging to his thigh, he stood over her, aroused. Thea’s trembling breath hovered in her throat. She had never seen a fully naked man before. Her gaze slid over his body in awestruck amazement. It lingered upon the broad span of his lightly furred chest, upon the narrow line of dark hair striping his flat middle, pointing like an arrow to the rigid curve of his sex. It followed the corded contours of his well-turned thighs, and roamed back over the whole. Her breath caught again, and his sex responded to the sound.