The Falcon's Bride (37 page)

“You should have spoken this then, instead of running off.”

She shook her head in contradiction. “No, my lord,” she said, “you were in a blind passion. I quite deserved your wrath. But I was selfish still, and would have done it all over again to keep you safe.”

“When were you going to tell me you are with child?” he asked.

“When I was certain,” she told him.

Drumcondra snorted. Thea couldn’t decide if it signaled acceptance or rejection of her explanation.

“What I do not understand,” she went on quickly, “is why the falcon led me back to my time in that moment.”

“Isor metes out his own brand of justice,” Drumcondra said, moving against her with a soft groan. His growing arousal rubbed her thigh. She leaned into the hot bulk of it throbbing against her, titillated by the sound of his rumbling voice alone. It was just as it had been the starry night he carried her thus to flaunt her before Cian Cosgrove. All that seemed to have happened in another lifetime. She almost laughed. It had!

“Where is Isor now do you think?” she murmured.

Ros shrugged. “Wherever he has led Nigel Cosgrove,” he said. “He will return once that justice is done. I do not question my familiar. He has never failed me in the past, nor will he in the future, wherever that is. He will always be here at my side in time of need. I owe much to that bird. As you do, also.”

Thea thought on it. Yes, she did owe much to the bird she had once so vehemently feared and hated. Her mind reeled back to the battlements, when the creature had swooped down and taken Nigel’s eye, to the night it
helped her save Drumcondra from the fire, to the very hour it crashed through the window in the chamber where Cian Cosgrove held her captive and lured him away for her escape. She sighed, and sighed again, remembering more and more instances. So many times it had attended her. So many times she had misunderstood its motives, yet it had stood by her all the same.

It was nearly noon. The mist had dissipated, and the day was bright with the promise of sun behind the dense cloud cover. Drumcondra scanned the sky, but it was vacant of birds. Then he whistled and, from behind, Isor dropped down from above and landed upon his broad shoulder in a flutter of flapping wings. Ros snaked a tidbit from a pouch beneath his mantle, and offered it. Gobbling the scrap of juicy meat, the falcon clucked in appreciation, and settled down as they approached the passage tomb.

They had almost reached the menhirs when the falcon suddenly took flight again, heading toward Newgrange and into a sudden rain shower. Drumcondra turned his mount and followed.

“Where will it lead us, my lord?” Thea asked. “You would not be happy in my time.”

Drumcondra gave it thought. “No more than you would be in mine,” he finally said.

“And . . . your mother?”

Drumcondra shook his head. “No,” he said. “I have realized the dead cannot be brought back to life. Only God can do such magic. History cannot be changed, else the whole of Nature be unbalanced. Were we to return to my time, it would either be before she died, to live again those days—that sorrow—or after, and pray that somehow I did not die when Cosgrove ran me through.”

“And if we return to that caravan?”

“I do not know,” he said, his voice somber and deep.
“Are you willing to take such a chance . . . in a foreign land, for that is what must be. In that time when our kind are hunted like animals, driven from their home and made to wander to the four corners of the earth in search of freedom? Are you willing to bear my children in such a world, give over a gentlewoman’s privileges and live the life of the Gypsy Traveler at my side?”

Thea looked him in the eyes. They had taken shelter from the rain among the trees on the south side of the lane nearby Newgrange, and the falcon, with them still, had perched in the uppermost branches of an ancient oak, its tether bells tinkling.

“Yes, my lord,” she murmured.

Ros crushed her close and took her lips in a fiery kiss that rocked her soul. All things impassioned under heaven lived in that heart-stopping kiss, and when their mouths parted, hers still reached for his begging more. There, at the edge of that damp, fragrant forest, dodging raindrops, he brought her to the brink of climax with a single kiss. She was on fire for him.

“Good!” he said, pointing. “Look!”

Thea craned her neck westward, and saw wagons appear through a curtain of fine sheeting rain. Splashes of teal, red and yellow defied the drear with blazing color, rumbling along the muddy lane. Thea gave a squeal of delight, and threw her arms around her husband’s neck.

Whistling for his bird, Drumcondra extended his arm, and the falcon swooped down to perch upon his leather gauntlet. Together, all three rode out to meet their destiny.

Epilogue

Nigel Cosgrove trudged eastward through the snow. How had it come there? A moment ago there was naught but soggy grass and mist ghosting over the land. When had it snowed? Reloading his pistol, he put the Andalusian out of its misery, loaded his pistol again and plodded on toward Newgrange. That must be where they’d gone. The cowards must have fled before he had a chance to catch his breath.

The passage tomb was all but hidden under a mound of snow when he reached it. Nonplussed, he strode on, remembering the keep on the outskirts of Drogheda he’d followed Thea toward until she literally vanished before him. He must be having lapses. People didn’t just vanish.

It took a good deal longer to reach those hills afoot than it had on horseback, of course, but reach it he did to blunder upon what seemed like two ragtag armies warring. The hills were strewn with the dead and dying, the snow crimson with their blood. In the background, the keep was
afire, its whole west wing engulfed in flames belching thick black red-rimmed smoke into the air.

Nigel crept closer, unarmed but for his paltry blade and dueling pistol he’d reloaded with his last pistol ball, which he was saving for the falcon. These men, however, were fighting with swords—some mounted, some on foot. They hadn’t noticed him yet, which was a miracle, since it was open country. But for a scant low row of snow-covered bracken shrubs hemming the hillock where he crouched, there was nowhere to hide.

Nigel searched the hills in all directions for Thea and the Gypsy, Drummond. There was no sign of Thea, but there was Drummond mounted upon the magnificent white stallion in the center of the foray. Stepping out from behind the shrub, Nigel leveled his pistol; but he didn’t get a chance to fire. Another warrior, who seemed oddly familiar, wearing a similar eye patch to his own, ran Drummond through on his left side. Nigel watched the Gypsy stiffen and fall, but he never hit the ground. Nigel blinked, and man and horse were gone! As if the ground had opened up and swallowed them. He shook his head, and blinked to clear his vision. He must be seeing things again.

On his feet now, his sanguinary stare riveted to the warrior with the eye patch, Nigel had attracted the attention of both warring factions, which were converging upon him from different directions. The stench of char and blood and death rose in his nostrils. There was nowhere to run. In all the chaos playing out around him, all he saw flashing before his wide-flung eye as the warriors closed in upon him, was the lifeless body of the half-naked light-skirt lying where he’d dumped her in the Covent Garden gutter, the hilt of his dirk protruding from her chest. . . .