The Falcon's Bride (25 page)

“Please,” she said, “the horse is waiting. Forget the gold. Let us just go away before something prevents it. I have a dreadful feeling about this, my lord. They hang thieves.”

“We will need the gold, Thea. I am not stealing anything from this lot. It is mine. They do not even know it exists. Now come, and make no sound.”

All was still as they made their way below. The viscount was designated to stand guard, but Thea would not be persuaded to stay with him while James and Ros went into the crypt chamber. She was terrified. Not for herself, but for the outcome of the entire escapade. Nigel had been insufferable since her return. His cold hard stares and veiled innuendoes directed toward Drumcondra were more than she could bear. She was not skilled at deception. She had never needed to employ such a tactic before. It did not sit
well with her, and she feared Nigel would see right through her thinly veiled protests that his suspicions were unfounded.

The countess’s opinions on the other hand were far from veiled. She made her displeasure known with every toxic breath she drew, until the house literally rang with her displeasure; and yet she still pressed for the union. How that could be when the woman so obviously despised Thea was becoming clearer with every passing hour. She was desperate to settle her son well before he plunged the Cosgroves deeper into scandal.

Two candlebranches lit their way. The viscount carried one; James carried the other. When they reached the end of a narrow stairwell in the very bowels of the castle, Drumcondra motioned the viscount to stay behind, for it was the ideal spot to monitor anyone descending to the lower regions in time to give fair warning. Still, Thea refused to leave Ros’s side, and she stood her ground watching him feel the cold stone walls slimed with mildew at the far end of the corridor. When what appeared to be a solid wall began to move, she gasped in spite of herself.

So long in disuse, the mechanism made a bone-chilling rasping sound that echoed, rumbling through the lower regions as the wall moved inward. Drumcondra muttered a string of oaths under his breath as he stepped inside the crypt room.

“We must do this quickly,” he said. “That will have been heard above if any of the servants are about. It is the one thing I did not anticipate.”

James held the candlebranch high overhead. “It’s empty,” he said. “Someone must have found your treasure after all, my lord.”

Ros made no reply. He went to the far wall, which was constructed of large stone blocks. Where the wall met the
ceiling, a border of stone carvings in the shape of lion heads and leaves decorated all four walls of the empty room. Rusted iron rings hung at intervals in the lions’ mouths. Drumcondra pulled one, and another groaning, rasping racket echoed through the silence as one of the stone blocks in the wall creaked open revealing a coffin, also hewn of stone.

Thea covered her mouth with both her hands to keep herself from crying out, as Drumcondra pulled the ring again and the casket, resting upon a slab of stone, slowly emerged from the wall.

James set the candlebranch down and helped Ros slide the lid of the coffin to the side. Thea turned away as the skeleton of Cormac Drumcondra came into view, surrounded by bulging sacks tied shut with sinew.

Ros murmured something Thea took to be prayer over the body in a foreign tongue, made a strange sign over the skeleton, and reached for the saddlebags James was carrying. Together, the two men began to fill them, while Thea stared wide-eyed. She didn’t want to look at the remains of Cormac Drumcondra, but she couldn’t help herself. Judging from the bones, he, too, had been a giant of a man. His grave clothes had been reduced to no more than spiderwebs, and when the skeleton was grazed in removing the sacks, some of the bones fell away. The hollow clacking sound they made, and the awful stench of mildew and dust permeating the air in the confines of the small, close cubicle, threatened to make Thea retch.

They had nearly finished when the sinew gave on one of the sacks James was gathering and the sack hit the floor. Some of the coins spilled out at his feet. Others rolled off into the shadows. James gathered what he could find and had just gotten to his feet when a sound that nearly stopped Thea’s heart ripped through the quiet. Her father’s
voice was echoing along the corridor outside, and it brought them all up short, just as another tug on the ring in Drumcondra’s hand engaged the chain that returned the coffin to the wall.

“I heard a noise and came to investigate,” the viscount was saying, the words funneling down the hall riding a nervous laugh. “I’m certainly glad to see you, Cosgrove. It seems I’ve overreached myself and lost my way.”

“That was foolhardy,” Nigel’s agitated voice boomed. “This castle is very old, and strange noises are quite common. I heard it, too. You should not be abroad alone here at this hour. Wait where you are. There is a door beyond. I must be certain it is barred.”

James thrust the saddlebag at Ros and sprang toward the door, but Drumcondra seized his arm. “I promised your father a tribute,” he whispered. “I will leave it inside Si An Bhru; go as quickly as you can to retrieve it else others find it first. I am in your debt, Barrington.”

James didn’t answer. He darted out of the crypt, taking the candlebranch with him, and Thea went into her husband’s arms holding her breath as they waited in the darkness. The last thing she saw before the light was snuffed out was the gleam of cold steel as Drumcondra drew a dirk from his boot.

“It’s nothing, Father,” James’s voice echoed along the corridor. “There’s a door back there but it’s bolted shut top and bottom. It must have been the wind we heard. It’s blowing a gale out there . . .
Oh
! I say, Cosgrove! I didn’t see you there. We heard a noise, but it must have been the wind.”

“The service door is locked, you say?”

“Top and bottom, yes.”

“Hmmm. Well, come on, then. You do not belong in this part of the castle. It is falling to ruin from disuse down here. You could do yourselves a mischief.”

Thea slumped in Drumcondra’s arms and he soothed her gently. She scarcely breathed as their receding footfalls grew more distant, for fear of making a noise that would turn the men back again. They waited what seemed an eternity before Ros let her go and hefted the saddlebags.

“Come,” he murmured. “Stay close beside me. The distance to the door is very short. We are soon away.”

Thea had no intention of becoming separated from Ros in that pitch black chamber. Clinging to his cloak with pinching fingers, she crowded against him as he inched his way along the wall, feeling for the entrance to the narrow corridor that led to freedom. They soon reached it, and he wrapped the bolts in the edge of his cloak before throwing them open. Muffled thus, they made no sound, and he quickly ushered her out into the windswept darkness only to pull up short.

“What is it?” Thea whispered.

“Where are the young saplings that used to stand here?” he said. “I couldn’t have been mistaken. James was supposed to tether the horse among them.”

“They are before you,” Thea murmured, resisting the urge to laugh. “Oh, my lord,” she said through a giggle that leaked out in spite of her resolve. “In a hundred and twenty years, your saplings have become
trees
. See there . . . ? The horse is waiting among them. All is well.”

Drumcondra cleared his voice and grunted. He did not wear embarrassment well, and that prompted another chorus of giggles, which Thea wisely suppressed. That she could even laugh in such a situation was a blessing, and she tried to hold the merriment of the moment at least in her heart as he secured the saddlebags on the stallion’s back along with the small parcel of Thea’s belongings James had secured there earlier. Mounting, he pulled her up alongside him.

It worked to their advantage that the saplings had grown into a forest. It allowed them to travel without leaving telltale hoofprints in the snow. All at once the sound of tether bells tinkling rose above the wail of the wind; then came a triumphant warning screech before the falcon swooped down and alighted upon Drumcondra’s broad shoulder. Thea ducked her hooded head against his hard muscled chest as it landed, but she didn’t fear it any longer. Its presence had become a comfort.

Drumcondra produced a morsel evidently saved from his evening meal from beneath the folds of his caped cloak and offered it. Thea’s breath caught in her throat watching the great bird tilt its head at the one-word command—“
Easy
”—and take the token without touching Drumcondra’s fingers. He had neglected nothing in the scheme of their escape, not even the bird. Would she ever understand this enigmatic Gypsy warlord she had married by secret rite?

The copse merged with another, even older pine forest farther east that passed just north of Newgrange. Until then, their tracks had remained concealed inside the edge of the wood; when Drumcondra rode out of the eerie green darkness that had sheltered them and into the open, Thea stiffened in his arms.

“Is it wise to leave the forest?” she asked. “Our tracks will be harder to follow there.”

“It cannot be helped,” Drumcondra said. “We have your father’s blessing, Thea, and I promised him a tribute to replace what he was expecting from the Cosgroves. I told your brother I would leave it inside Si An Bhru, and I must do so.”

“Father would not hold you to that in these circumstances,” Thea said. “The settlement he means to make on me, whatever you choose to offer against it . . . these things can all be settled later. I beg you, do not stop. I have
a feeling . . . I have had since we returned. Please, my lord. Keep the pace. Do not go back to Newgrange!”

As though in contradiction, the bird took flight and, screeching, soared off on a sudden updraft straight for the passage tomb looming before them, tinted blue beneath the stars. It almost looked to Thea as if the bird entered in through the gaping mouth of the cairn, past the three concentric circles that marked the entrance. It was wide enough to ride the horse right inside, though Drumcondra ducked his head low as they did. With no light to see by, he urged the horse straight ahead, where the narrow corridor emptied into the main chamber, depending upon the horse’s instincts to find the way.

The bird was nowhere in sight when they entered. The horse complained when he passed too near the large stone basin on the right, and Drumcondra eased Thea down. “I left the tinderbox inside the basin,” he said. “The candle is as we left it, on the floor beside it. Light it, while I untie the saddlebag.”

Thea groped the basin for the tinderbox, a sigh of relief escaping when her fingers tightened around it. Kneeling, she swept her hands over the cold floor, blind in the pitch blackness for the candle, but her hands closed upon fur instead. They had taken all the fur rugs with them. Had some creature sought shelter in the tomb and fallen asleep there? Cold chills paralyzed her. Her heart leapt in her breast and she screamed at the top of her voice, praying her cries would chase it, but it didn’t move. Drumcondra was beside her in seconds. Snatching the tinderbox from her, he worked the flammable bits into a spark that showed him the candle and lit it. Raising Thea to her feet, he took her in his arms, staring down toward what her hands had unearthed. It wasn’t an animal after all. He stooped and snatched up something far more threatening. It was her chinchilla fur pelerine.

James didn’t wait for morning to make the trip to Newgrange. There would be too much chaos then, when Thea and Drumcondra were discovered missing. He set out at once. Plying old Beadle the stabler with a vulgar bribe to buy his silence, he had the man saddle him the Andalusian stallion, took up a lantern, and rode out.

It wasn’t the lure of gold that put him on his course. He was half hoping he would find
them
there. He wasn’t given over to the idea of letting them go off on their own. It was all passing strange, and he meant to get to the bottom of it before consigning his sister to the warrior’s keeping. Besides, how could he help restore Falcon’s Lair if he had no idea where Drumcondra was, or if he’d even made the purchase?

He rode in the same direction, following their tracks through the woods. The wind had died to a murmur sighing through the pines. There was no sign of life. Not even the woodland creatures spoke. It was as if the world stood still and he was a trespasser in it, reminding him of another time, another place, when Falcon’s Lair loomed before him in ruins. The night wasn’t particularly cold, now that the wind had died, but he shuddered remembering. It all seemed so unreal, and yet he was living proof that it had actually happened. Somehow, he had traveled through time.

He hadn’t shared that aspect of the situation with his father. That the viscount was so easily swayed in Drumcondra’s favor was no surprise. The old man was a romantic, by God. Nathaniel Barrington was a product of the times. He knew his duty, and he honored it. His lady wife, their mother, wanted for nothing while he strayed with his mistress. James couldn’t fault him. It was all very civilized. It had been an arranged marriage. His long-suffering
mother was mad for Nathaniel, but his father’s tastes were of a more elegant nature. Nathaniel and Nigel Cosgrove were about as dissimilar as night was from day: There was no honor, no duty in the man; it was inevitable that they clash. Ros Drumcondra, on the other hand, exuded a magnetism that was larger than life. He followed a Gypsy code that was unbending—like nothing either Barrington had ever seen. It transcended time. Oddly, the warrior did not seem to belong to past or present.

James shook those opinions free as he neared the entrance to Newgrange. So lost in thought, he’d nearly passed it by. The Gypsy horse’s hoofprints were clearly visible going in, but there were none exiting the passage tomb. His spirits lifted. They were still here. He hadn’t missed them as he’d feared. Climbing down before the entrance, he tethered the horse to a clump of bracken, took the lantern and entered the tomb. It only took a moment. Drumcondra had left the saddlebag in the large stone basin. He called out, but his voice reverberated through the empty tomb, sounding back in his ears, and then silence.