The Falcon's Bride (20 page)

Favoring his injured leg, he sank down beside her and took her in his arms. Gathering her against him, he moaned. How perfectly her body molded to his despite the difference in their height, how easily their limbs entwined, as if their bodies had been designed as two pieces of a whole that had just come together.

He moaned again. “I have wanted to hold you thus since I first set eyes upon you,” he said, his voice husky with desire. “I have dreamed of it . . . longed for it . . . to hold your naked
willing
flesh in these arms. To have you open yourself to me like the petals of the flower you are, so fragrant and fine.”

“My lord, you take my breath away.”

“You might call me Ros now, I think,” he said, with a chuckle. His laughter dissolved. “But you are trembling,” he murmured. “You do not still fear me.”

“N-no, my lord—Ros. It is just that . . . I do not know what to do.”

He laughed again. Raising her hand to his lips, he kissed her moist palm then lowered it to his arousal. “Look what you have done already,” he said. “It is on fire for you. Whatever else you need to know, I will teach you. Hold me, Thea. Quench my thirst for you.”

Thea slipped her arms around him. Every pore in her skin responded to the fever in her blood. Every warm puff of breath against the curve of her ear, her arched throat, sent rivers of liquid fire flowing through her belly and thighs, moistening her swollen sex. His chest hair felt like silk against her breasts. When his fingers found her nipple, she was undone. She shuddered with pleasure against him, and he spread her thighs and eased himself between.

“Your leg, my lord!” she whispered.

“Shhh, Thea,” he said. “If you speak, the sound of that sweet voice alone will relieve me and end this enchantment too soon.” He found her sex, and stroked her there—lightly at first, then faster, deeper until she feared she would ignite the way kindling ignited when he worked them with his tinderbox. “One brief moment of pain,” he murmured. “Just this once. It cannot be helped. You are so . . . delicate, so . . . narrow . . .” He hesitated.

That wouldn’t do. Thea seized his wrist. Her whole body throbbing like a pulse beat, she drove his probing fingers deeply in and groaned. There was pain, bittersweet ecstasy that lifted her out of herself, and she scarcely felt the pressure lessen as he withdrew his hand and filled her with his anxious erection.

“Thea . . .” He gasped as he entered her. Groaning, he took her deeper—took her mouth, rocking her in his arms, gifting her with the unexpected power of gentle strength that threatened her consciousness. “You have bewitched me,” he groaned.

Clinging to him, she met his thrusts again and again, her body arched against his hard muscled torso. All that remained of the pain was a dull prickling of sensation soon dissolved in the heat of another sensation, one that
enveloped, overwhelmed her. It seemed to lift her out of her body, all but stopping her heart like it had done before, only this time—oh,
this
time—as he moved inside her, it was as if her bones were melting. Her very soul seemed in danger of igniting as the fiery flow raced through her body. At last, she breathed, her heart thudding in her breast, echoing in her ears, and she murmured his name as the warm rush of his seed filled her.

It was a breathless moment for them both before he lifted his weight from her and eased himself to the side, his breath coming short, his skin running with sweat.

“Your leg,” she moaned.

He folded her in his arms and wrapped one of the fur rugs around her. “Shhh,” he murmured. “You are mine. Nothing else matters.”

Thea clung to him beneath the furs. How well he had loved her. How gently he had taken her—and with such a size! Even at the end, when they had clung to each other in mindless oblivion, he had been conscious of her comfort. What would be if he ever let that pent up passion loose? Could she bear it? One day, she would know the full power of that passion. For now, it was enough that she had brought this mighty warrior to his knees. Who was the love slave now?

Exhausted, she slept, but her dreams were fitful and oppressing, threaded through with nagging doubts that his leg was not as sound as he pretended, that the fire in his skin that had become suspiciously dry again was not only due to passion, but to fever.

She had nearly pushed the thoughts aside when the sound of motion bled into her vision. Rats? No, it was a human sound. It came again, and this time there was shouting. Her eyes flew open to the sight of James looming
over her Gypsy husband, the dagger that had sealed their marriage vows indenting Ros’s throat.

“Get up out of there, Drumcondra!” James demanded, “or I’ll run you through right where you lay! What have you done to my sister?”

Chapter Fifteen

“James, no!” Thea screamed, seizing his arm. “He has done naught that I did not want him to do. We are wed.”

James hesitated. The sharp point of the dirk had pierced Drumcondra’s skin, and a trickle of blood ran down his neck, though he made no sound. Thea’s eyes oscillated between her brother’s indignation and the muscles ticking along her husband’s broad jaw. Her fingers tightened on James’s wrist, and tears swam before her eyes. He had never been able to resist her tears. She prayed it was still so now.

“Please, James,” she sobbed. “I love him.” It was the first time she’d admitted it, much less spoken it. The words drew Drumcondra’s eyes despite the blade still indenting his skin, but she dared not look then for fear she’d see in them that what he felt for her was something more akin to lust. Of that much she was certain. They had never spoken of love.

“How can he be your husband?” James snapped at her. “Who has wed you—what vicar, what priest? There are
none here in this heathen nest of Gypsies to be had, and not a soul abroad for miles around.” He snatched her shift off the floor and tossed it at her. “Dress yourself,” he charged. “I mean to know what is going on here. You have a good deal of explaining to do. Get up, I say!”

“Do as he says,” Drumcondra said. Then, to James, he added, “We are wed by Romany law. If you will put that blade down, I will explain.”

“He is telling the truth, James,” Thea pleaded, on her feet now, wrapped in the fur rug. “Put that blade down!”

“Stay out of this, Thea, and put on that garment. I will not stand here conversing with you like . . . like
that
.”

“Avert your eyes if you would have me dress,” she snapped.

James turned back to Drumcondra while Thea struggled into her shift in great haste. She had never seen such a look of rage in her brother’s eyes in all her life. His mouth was white, his violet eyes glazed over like a drunkard’s, and his cheeks were blotched crimson. He was livid.

“The old Gypsy woman told me a preposterous tale,” James said. “I suppose you are going to tell me something equally ridiculous?”

“James,
please
,” Thea pleaded. “Put that down!”

He cast her a sidelong glance. In that split second Drumcondra seized his wrist, flipped him over onto the floor, leapt from the bed and fell upon him. Snatching the blade, he held it at Thea’s startled brother’s throat.

“Now you will listen, I think,” the warrior said.

“Oh, my God, Ros, no! I beg you, don’t hurt him!” Thea shrilled.

“I am the one who is bleeding,” he said. “It is not my intent to harm him, but neither will I sit still and let him run me through in my conjugal bed with my own blade. Now, sir, will you let me fetch my leggings and converse with
you in a civilized manner, or are we to wage a war you cannot win?”

“James,
please
.”

“If this hulking lout will get off me and make himself presentable, I will listen to what the two of you have to say. But be warned, it had best be good. As it stands now, ‘my lord,’ you are called out, and I expect satisfaction.”

“Your servant, sir,” Drumcondra growled, staggering to his feet. He snatched his leggings and tugged them on. Thea turned away, her hand shading her eyes as James got up from the floor and tugged his frock coat and waistcoat into place. Then, ordering the cloak Jeta had provided to replace his stolen greatcoat, which had twisted around sideways, and slapping the dust from his buckskins, he faced them.

“Very well, then,” he said, addressing them both. “What is the meaning of this?”

“Whatever my mother told you was doubtless true,” Drumcondra said.

“That was your
mother
who led us here?” James blurted.

Drumcondra nodded. “When did she speak with you? Is she here?” He was in the process of tugging his boots on, and he froze in place, his gaze hopeful.

“She is not,” said James. “She led me a merry chase, then brought me right back here and disappeared—but that damned bird was waiting to attack me. It won’t come after me again, by God!”

Thea gasped. It wasn’t until that moment that she noticed the deep gash just above her brother’s eye, crusted over with dried blood.

“You haven’t harmed it?” she cried. “Oh, God, James, tell me you haven’t harmed that bird!”

James stared at her, incredulous. “It nearly gouged my eye out—just as it did Nigel’s,” he said, thumping his brow
and giving her a scathing look. “What? Was I supposed to stand still and let it have it?”

“Oh, James!” she said.

“What? I haven’t killed it, I just drove it off with stones from the rubble out there, and it flew off as surly as ever.”

Thea collapsed, sinking down upon the edge of the bed, her head in her hands.

“Will one of you please tell me what is going on here?” her brother bleated.

“James, I tried to tell you when I came to your cell, I did, but you weren’t ready to listen. Are you ready now?”

“You mean to tell me that what you told me about traveling back to 1695 is true?”

“Did Jeta not tell you the same?” Thea asked. James stared, and she went on quickly. “When she took you out of the dungeons into the courtyard, did you not see the moat filled with water?”

“I did, but—”

“Is it filled now?”

“Well, no, but—”

“How do you account for that, James? There is so much more that you didn’t see, but that alone should prove what I told you.”

“Assuming that what you say is true, where are we now? You’ve lost me, Thea. Once, I let you convince me that you had seen Drumcondra’s ghost. Now you’re telling me the man is
real
? I thought you addled when you put that to me in the dungeon, but this? This is impossible.”

“Was it a ghost that just bested you, whatever your name is?” Drumcondra put in.

Thea gave a lurch. “Forgive me,” she said. “My brother, my lord—James Wadsworth Barrington.”

Drumcondra grunted, his scowl as black as soot. “Drumcondra’s ghost at your service,” he said drolly. “I like this
no better than you do, Barrington, except that it has given me the woman I mean to spend the rest of my life with. Do not harm the falcon. It knows where the time corridors are; I do not. Destroy it, and if my mother is alive, she may not be able to join us.”

James sank down on the edge of the bed. “What year is this here now, then?” he asked, clearly in a state of hopeless confusion. He looked so lost. Poor stodgy, well-adjusted, level-headed, logical James. Of all people to become embroiled in such an illogical state of affairs. Thea would have laughed if the situation weren’t so grave.

“I believe it is 1811, James,” she said. “You are inside Falcon’s Lair, Lord Drumcondra’s stronghold at Drogheda, five miles east of Newgrange, as it exists
today
—in ruins. You were held captive in this same keep only hours ago, as that was in 1695—moat and all.”

“But . . . how could you marry
him?
” he asked, waving a wild arm in Drumcondra’s direction. “You hardly know him, and if all that you say is true, he isn’t even human. He doesn’t even exist in our world, Thea!”

“He does now,” she sallied. “And I know him well enough to be absolutely certain that I do not want to live without him in
any
circumstances. James, like yourself I do not pretend to understand any of this, only that a woman knows when she has met her soul mate. Whether that happens in the blink of an eye or over time doesn’t matter. Whether you believe that or you do not doesn’t really matter either. It is no less bizarre than our society’s so-called ‘civilized’ marriage arrangements and the infidelities that result from them. You hardly need look beyond our family for example.”

“So, now what do we do?” asked James. “You’ve married a seventeenth-century Black Irish Gypsy warlord, while your real intended—scarcely five miles off, mind—is making
arrangements for your wedding to
him
from his sickbed!”

Thea turned away. How was it that her brother could always manage to make something perfectly simple seem so totally illogical?

“He cannot go about here now like
that
,” James said. He waved a wild hand in Drumcondra’s direction, earning him a withering glance from the warrior, whose posture had expanded listening to the exchange. It was clear Ros didn’t appreciate being the subject of discussion as if he weren’t even there. “Look at him, Thea,” James went on hotly. “That hair—those togs. Are you mad?”

“Hair can be cut,” Thea argued, earning herself a scathing dose of Drumcondra’s green-eyed indignation. “Or at least ordered,” she amended, and he relaxed his posture guardedly. “And togs are the least of our worries. You can lend him some of yours until suitable clothes can be bought.”

“Mine?” James blurted, vaulting off the bed. “Look at us! How are mine to fit—
that?
” He raked his hair back roughly, wincing as his hand grazed the falcon’s handiwork on his brow. “His speech will suffice, I suppose, but you have attics to let if you think you can pass him off as one of us. Where can he stay? Certainly not here. The whole place has gone to wrack and ruin. One good windstorm and the rest will come down—sure as check. I’m surprised that flue hasn’t caved in and set another fire, what with the chimney so long in disuse. Besides, who knows who owns this land now? You haven’t thought this through, Thea.”