The Forest Lord (27 page)

Yes. Trust him. He is an utter stranger, yet you have known him all your life.

Let it begin. Let it be tonight.

"There is too much at stake," she said, silencing the cries of her body. "I need time, Hartley. You must give me time to decide."

"Ah." He laughed. "You mortals, who have so little of it, value time no more than
you
do the earth that gives you life."

"Mortals?"
A shiver coursed down her back. "What do you mean?"

She realized how seldom she'd caught him off guard when she saw the look on his face.

"It is merely an expression, from a poem I read once… a long time ago."

She relaxed. "You read poetry as well? We don't really know each other, do we?" She sighed. "But it doesn't matter. Not if we are honest in what we want from each other."

"No. It doesn't matter at all."

"Then, until I am sure," she said—
until I find the courage
—"we must not be seen together. Do you agree?"

He made a leg, the sort of courtly bow that was going out of fashion in
London. "I am, as always, your servant."

His mockery had become so familiar that it had lost its power. "Shall we shake hands on it, then?" She offered her hand.

He took it gravely. It was the perfect ending for this most peculiar seduction. She expected him to take her in his arms and kiss her once more for good measure, to remind her of what she might lose. He did not. But there was in his lightest touch such potency, in his look such fire and promise, that a kiss would have seemed redundant.

If she remained in his presence another moment all her prudence would go for naught. "Good night," she said hastily. She started for the house, looking back only to find him vanished into the night.

She stopped by Donal's room and spent the better part of an hour simply gazing at him. When she went down to her own room, Aunt Claudia was standing in the hall in her dressing gown, the candle in her hand casting sinister shadows on her face.
Eden hurried past without a word.

Her bed was very lonely indeed.

He had been so close to victory that he could still taste
Eden's desire on his lips.

Hartley ran for the forest, his body demanding a substitute for the activity it had been denied. His legs carried him more swiftly than any human's; once he was beyond the park and the pasture behind Hartsmere he let his animal nature take control. A simple thought, and he was a great stag, the Horned One of the ancients, his antlers so heavy and broad that they rivaled the branches of small trees.

The magnificent red deer of this land rutted only in the autumn. Hartley recognized no such boundaries. So he endured the frustration of wanting and not having, pursuing only to find the pursued slipping through his fingers.

Yes, he had made her surrender her pride and her aristocratic principles. She had admitted that she wanted him. She had all but promised that soon she would be his lover.

But not his love.
"
I have had enough of what men and women call love. It has been burned out of my soul. Can you understand that, Hartley
?"

Of course.
He
had not loved, could not love. Who better to understand? She became truly his equal, dispensing with any risk of guilt.

How very convenient that emotion need not enter into their liaison.

Hartley gave himself to the night, charging up the fell as if it were a hillock. Rabbits and hares dashed from his path, and a badger put its head out of its sett to observe the commotion. A fox watched him with laughter in its wise and curious eyes.

His subjects, all.
They had come to his calling with the spring, repopulating the barren land. The birds and beasts had no mixed loyalties or fears of losing rank and privilege.

Hartley's great lungs strained, giving him the strength to reach the top of the fell without once pausing in his gallop. At the peak, clothed in sedge, moss, and lichen amid the bare, jutting rock, he flung back his head and roared. The echo crashed down into the neighboring dale.

No other creature dared
answer,
not even the shepherd's dogs. He pawed the stone hard enough to strike sparks. He tossed his head, challenging the stars themselves.

It was all so much posturing, and he knew it.

With a sigh he shed his animal shape and sat on a boulder.
After a time the fox and a few rabbits crept up to him, settling at his feet.
Faint rustlings told him where the wood mice and short-tailed voles hid among the rocks, too frightened to come out in spite of the truce Hartley's presence invoked.

He sent a gentle thought toward the nearest tiny life. The mouse scurried up the rock, whiskers twitching anxiously, and settled in his palm.

"You see?" he said, stroking its delicate chest. "You are safe.
As long as you remain well away from mortal men.
As I should have done."

The mouse sat up on Hartley's hand and sniffed the air.

"It was only a kiss," Hartley said. "Among humans, as among my kind, such are given and taken carelessly enough."

Then why did he feel so powerless when
Eden kissed him? Why had he been so easily set on the defensive, letting her control the conversation and its conclusion?

The kiss should have been merely a physical thing, a means to an end. Instead, it had strengthened his desire for her, driven him to distraction, and had proven nothing but that he had mastered neither her nor himself.

If he followed the path of those thoughts, he would begin to imagine a life that included
Eden as well as Donal. Such a life as could only be lived in the mortal realm, for the time was long past when men were permitted to enter Tir-na-nog.

He did not want that life. He could not make
Eden want
it,
no matter how well he intrigued and seduced her. In her eyes he was either a man far beneath her rank, or he was not a man at all. They were moving inevitably toward a joining that could not last.

Hartley turned his hand and set the mouse down on the boulder. It remained, gazing up at him as if in concern. Even the smallest of nature's creatures recognized his confusion.

So much for the august dignity of the Forest Lord.
Hartley laughed and rested his head in his hands.

The cool nose of the fox nudged at his fingers. Absently he reached out to stroke the pointed muzzle, but his hand found skin instead.

Tod sneezed and sank into a crouch beside the boulder, nimble fingers dangling over his knees. "You are sad, my lord?"

Hartley rose to his full height and frowned at the hob. "You have been gone long enough."

Tod ducked his head. "Tod had far to search."

"And Tod no doubt found other diversions. Have you completed the task?"

"Aye, my lord."
He shook his head, tumbling unruly red hair into his eyes.

"Speak," Hartley commanded. "What did you learn?"

Tod made
himself
very small and peered up at Hartley from under his brows. He began to speak in a rush, scuttling a little farther away from his lord with every sentence.

When Tod had finished, Hartley stood at the center of a storm, lashing rain and wind that matched the violence of his anger. All the other beasts had fled. Only Tod remained at a safe distance at the edge of the wood, huddled against the stinging drops.

This is what it is to be a Fane child among men
. Hartley closed his eyes as if he could drive away the images that crowded his mind. Donal constantly mistreated.
Donal starved and beaten.
Donal mocked because he was
different,
and driven away at last because he was feared.

"Shall Tod go back?" Tod said in a small voice. "Shall Tod punish these wicked mortals?"

"No." Hartley calmed his own racing heart, and with it the winds and rain. The downpour became a drizzle and then a mist, shrouding the felltop. "There is no changing the nature of man."

Tod didn't answer. Hartley thought of what he had heard, what he knew of Donal, how
Eden feared for her son. She would never forgive herself if she knew how Donal had suffered because of her ignorance of his existence.

Donal would go on suffering if
Eden bound him to the mortal world. She wished to protect him by any means necessary, unaware that the greatest danger came from her own kind. She must believe that the marquess would accept the boy. He could offer her honorable
marriage,
and her son a stepfather, in a way completely suitable to her society and station.

And utterly unsuitable for a Fane child.

But that situation would not arise. It was only a matter of time before Hartley got Eden with a child free of Fane gifts and took Donal away—and then let Eden do whatever she wished with her fine human lord.

No
. Lightning cracked above Hartley's head. No mortal should have her again. No man should possess what had been his. Rushborough was unworthy of the Forest Lord's bride.

Unworthy of the woman Hartley had hated and sought to manipulate, whose son he intended to steal.

He shook his head wildly, shouting into the thunder. The Fane seldom went mad as men understood the word, but
she
drove him near to it. She and the emotions she aroused in him, however fiercely he fought to reject them.

The storm snarled and blustered until an hour before sunrise. The sun's first rays poured over Hartley like balm, easing the untidy remnants of his anger. He could not have raised the smallest cloud even had he wished.

But his mind was clear. There was always the chance, however remote, that something might go wrong with his plans to take Donal to Tir-na-nog.
Eden must be made to understand why Donal was meant for better things than man's cruel world could offer.

"Tod," he called, summoning the hob from his hiding place. "I have another task for you."

For once
Eden was not with the boy
. Nor, for that matter, was she with Hartley Shaw. Both were circumstances to be thankful for, and Claudia would not question the generosity of
Providence.

For the first few days after Miss Waterson's departure from Hartsmere,
Eden had kept Donal constantly by her side with an almost fanatical dedication. Then, conveniently enough, a number of crises had developed among the farmers and villagers in the dale, and
Eden had been sufficiently distracted to agree to leave Donal at the house while she dealt with them.

Since the party, the people of Hartsmere seemed unable to do without their mistress.
Nancy had become Donal's surrogate governess, while
Eden steadfastly avoided discussing a replacement for the unlamented Miss Waterson. She hardly spoke to Claudia at all.

In Miss Waterson's absence, it would be somewhat more difficult to keep Donal out of Lord Rushborough's sight when he came to call this afternoon. His first visit following that disastrous encounter at the tenant's party must go smoothly, for it would set the tone for all future meetings.

Claudia walked through the garden, vaguely disturbed by its overripe lustiness. The days had been unseasonably warm since February, an extraordinary contrast from the bitter winter that had ended so abruptly. Nothing seemed quite right at Hartsmere—but then, it never had. She ought to be used to this constant state of misgiving and fear.

She wondered if
Eden would be back from the village in sufficient time to make ready for Lord Rushborough's arrival. She showed little inclination to prepare herself with the care she'd always taken in
London when she'd received callers. Her priorities in general had suffered. Nevertheless, she had not outright rejected Francis's courtship, and as long as she did not, Claudia would press for his suit and encourage him by any means possible.

He was a gentleman indeed to overlook the offenses given him by that devil Hartley Shaw.

Aware of an all-too-common prickling at the back of her neck, Claudia looked for the groom. He seemed to be everywhere at once, as irksome as flies about a honeypot. She knew little more about him now than when he had first arrived; no one at Hartsmere was able to tell her anything of his background or family. For all her threats, she had still not found a way to expel him from Hartsmere. And
Eden refused to cooperate.

Driven by the need to confront what most troubled her, Claudia turned and walked toward the stables. She was not surprised to find Donal with Shaw;
Nancy was away, and Mrs. Byrne was a very lax and unreliable keeper.