The House Of Gaian (28 page)

Selena rode beside Liam, tucked in the middle of a company of human and Fae escorts. A few months ago, those same men wouldn’t have considered riding together, would have met each other on the road with uneasiness and suspicion. Now there were murmurs of conversation, the occasional muffled laugh that said plainly enough that, despite the differences in how their peoples lived, there was also common ground.

As they crested the low rise that gave them a clear view of the land beyond the village, she reined in. So did Liam. A sharp whistle from one of the escorts behind them was sufficient warning to those who rode ahead that the company had halted.

“It would be better for my people if we could meet the enemy before they reach the village or the farms and estates around it,” Liam said quietly as he studied the land. “But I doubt the enemy will accommodate my wishes.”

“It isn’t likely,” Selena agreed. “But the land ...” She closed her eyes. Connecting to the land here was as easy as breathing in and breathing out again. Did Liam realize that the people in his home village prospered so well because the magic that flowed out of Old Willowsbrook was so strong and far-reaching? Even here, miles from the Old Place, she could feel the ripples of it in the air, in the ground beneath Mistrunner’s hooves. She would be able to taste it in the water. A celebration of life. The acknowledgment of harvest. The spiral dance that takes and gives back.

“Lady Selena?”

Liam’s voice pulled her back to the here and now. She opened her eyes. “But the land will be our ally—

and our weapon.”

As soon as she said the words, she heard the low rumble of thunder, felt the sliver of cold air on the wind as the dark clouds raced overhead, coming out of the west from the Mother’s Hills, shutting out the sun.

“We’re in for a storm,” Liam said.

Selena watched the clouds for a moment, then shook her head. “A soft rain. A farmer’s rain, soaking in deep to nourish the crops. It will wet down the roads, making it easier to travel without all the dust. But when the storm reaches a place where there is no Mother’s Daughter to greet it and ask it to be gentle, that’s where it will break. Roads will turn to mud and creeks will run too high to cross. The Black Coats will struggle through the storm’s wrath, and that will give us time.”

“Time for what?” Liam asked with a trace of bitterness. “The barons from the neighboring counties have sent messages, promising men to help fight the Inquisitors, but there’s no sign of those men. Other barons have declared themselves neutral, hoping to be spared if either army marches through their land—and hoping their estates will remain intact because, even if they didn’t fight for the winning side, they didn’t support the losing side, either. The Fae from the nearby Clans have sent men, but they’re also guarding the Old Places to keep their Clan territories protected.”

“Do you blame the Fae for that?” Selena asked, curious about this bitterness.

Liam shook his head. “No, I don’t blame them. We’ve gotten more help from them than I ever expected, and they’re more skilled with weapons than the fanners and merchants I can bring to the fight from the villages under my rule.” He sighed. “But we’ve heard nothing from the midland barons, and without their support, we can’t win. And even if they
are
gathering men and marching toward Willowsbrook, they’ll have to fight their way here from either the north or the south, and that delay, and the loss of men, will work in favor of the Black Coats’ army that’s marching toward us.”

“There is an alternate route,” Selena said dryly. “There
are
roads through the Mother’s Hills.”

Liam looked at her. “Forgive me for saying this, but the Fae are afraid to enter the Mother’s Hills, and anyone who has seen the power a witch can wield understands that fear. As for the humans ... If I didn’t have a sister who was a witch, I’d think long and hard about taking my men into those hills. I’d think long and hard about it anyway.”

Selena dismissed the sharp pang beneath her breast. There were men at home who were just as handsome, just as intelligent. She knew as much about the gentry as she knew about the Fae, which wasn

’t much. The courtesy and interest he’d shown her could be nothing more than gentry manners. But the turn of conversation reminded her of the other reason she’d agreed to ride out with him.

She turned Mistrunner to head back the way they’d come. She waited until the escorts had turned and started back down the rise before signaling Mistrunner to follow them.

“I’ve offended you,” Liam said, matching his gelding’s pace to Mistrunner’s.

Selena shook her head. “You merely said what the rest have been thinking. There
is
power among those of us who live in the Mother’s Hills. But if you enter the land of the House of Gaian and do no harm, you will come to no harm.” She smiled mischievously. “At least, not from the House of Gaian. We can make no promises for the wolves that live in the northern part of the hills or the wild pigs that live in the woodlands.”

Liam stared at her for a moment, then smiled. “I suppose you make no promises about rabbits in the kitchen garden, squirrels in the attics, or foxes in the hen house.”

“Of course not. If you want help with
those
things, you must deal with the Fae. The woods and what lives in it is
their
duty in the world.”

“If the witches deal with the land and the Fae deal with the wild creatures of the woods, what’s left for humans? Where do we fit in?”

Selena looked away, studying the land as they rode back to the Old Place. “We have an old story that says the witches and the Fae were in this land long before the first humans traveled over the mountains and the first ships touched the shore. The story doesn’t say why they made such perilous journeys, only that they were looking for a new place, a home where they could put down roots and live in peace. They promised to honor the Great Mother as the witches and the Fae honored Her, promised to give something back for the bounty they received. And while there were few of them, they did live in peace with the Fae and the Small Folk and the House of Gaian. But as more of them came to settle on what they saw as open land, free for the taking, they built fences to keep their animals in and opened the land with plows.

“The Daughters saw the world changing. They did not mind change, for the world is always changing and ever constant. But that was when they walked the boundaries, establishing the Old Places, the places that would belong to the wild things, so that all the Mother’s children would have a home.” She looked at Liam. “Where do your people fit in? Perhaps you were supposed to be the stewards of the tame places, just as the Fae are the stewards of the wild places. Perhaps you aren’t sure of your place because you haven’t yet learned the first lesson—to live kindly with the rest of the Mother’s children.”

“If that’s the case, maybe the Inquisitors did us a favor,” Liam said. “Their obsession to eliminate anything and anyone who would prevent men from ruling with impunity forced the rest of us to work together again. The Fae are remembering their place in the world and humans are remembering that there are others with whom we have to share the world.” He paused. “What has the House of Gaian learned?”

“That we, too, need to be more present in the world,” Selena replied. Getting to the subject she wanted to discuss with him wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. Well, she wasn’t that good at being subtle, so why try? “I wanted to talk to you about your sister.”

Alarm flashed over Liam’s face before he regarded her warily. “What has Brooke done?”

Anger sizzled under her skin, coated with disappointment. Maybe he was more cold-hearted than he seemed. “Brooke isn’t your only sister.”

“That’s true,” Liam agreed, “but she’s the only one who would wheedle to have a third party intervene for her. If Breanna has a problem with me, she just marches up to wherever I am and yells at me.”

Selena tried to muffle a laugh and ended up snorting, which made Mistrunner stop and turn his head to look back at her.

“Oh, go on,” Selena said. After giving a snort of his own to let her know what he thought about these odd sounds she was making, he moved on.

“So what does Breanna want to discuss with me that requires a third party?” Liam asked.

“Well... she didn’t actually
ask
me to intervene—”

“Ah.”

“—but there are things a sister can’t really discuss with a brother.”

“There’s a subject Breanna won’t discuss with me? The Mother truly is merciful.”

The urge to stick her tongue out at him was almost overwhelming. She settled for turning prim. “Why don

’t you like Falco?”

Liam frowned, obviously confused at the turn of conversation, which wasn’t a turn at all as far as she was concerned. “I do like Falco.”

“But you don’t approve of him as your sister’s lover.”

“Lover?” Liam sputtered. “He’s not— They’re not—” He fumed for a minute. “It’s not that I object, it’s just— They barely know each other. There’s no need to rush into being ... intimate.”

Jackass
, Selena thought, amused at the way he was blushing—and thinking it rather sweet that he
would
blush.

“Liam, a few days from now, we’ll be meeting a vicious enemy on a battlefield. There is no way to tell who will walk away from that battlefield and who will travel on to the Summerland. Today may be all the time there is. Falco cares about Breanna, and she cares about him. Would you deny them the comfort and pleasure they can have from each other?”

“I’m not denying her anything. She’d be the first to tell me it was none of my business, which isn’t true, but she’d tell me that. If she wanted to take him as a lover, she would have done so.”

“Where? From what I’ve been told, there are so many of her kin living in the Old Place, there’s barely room there to pee in private let alone spend time with a man.”

“If a man wants a woman, he can usually find a private place,” Liam said darkly.

“Oh, I’m sure he can find a dark corner someplace if he wants to use a woman for a few minutes of sex

—”

“
What
?” Liam’s yelp made half the escorts riding ahead of them twist in their saddles, their hands reaching for weapons. He shook his head and waved at them to indicate there was no danger.

“—but a man who wants to make love with a woman he cares about needs more than a corner of an empty stall in the barn,” Selena continued.

“I. Do. Not. Want. To. Discuss. This.”

“No, you just want to be pigheaded and uncaring.”

“Uncaring?
Uncaring
? What do you want me to do? Throw out all the Fae and other guests staying in my house and tell Breanna she can have her choice of the guest rooms for a romp between the sheets?”

Selena felt a tingle in her fingertips, the sizzle of temper. Remembering that the man riding beside her also sizzled when his temper rose and still hadn’t learned to completely control his gift from the Mother, she put all her desire to smack him into one word. “Jackass.”

His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. He reminded her so much of a hooked trout tossed up on the bank that she found his expression much more satisfying than calling him a jackass.

“Very well, Baron Liam. You win. Your sister should remain chaste because spending time with a man she cares about would inconvenience the people who supposedly love her. Although, I suppose if there was a woman
you
wanted in your bed for the next few days,
you‘d
find a way of having the privacy to have sex with her. If you deny Breanna what you’d take for yourself, that just makes you—”

His face was such an alarming shade of red, she forgot what she was going to call him.

You gave his toes a good stomp that time, didn’t you
? The thought made her fiercely curious to know what woman he yearned for at night but didn’t think he could approach.

“I’ll think about it,” Liam said through gritted teeth. “I-I’ll think about it.”

He dug his heels into his gelding’s sides. The horse leaped forward, galloped past the startled escorts.

Half the escorts galloped after him. The rest stayed with her, looking anxiously over their shoulders until Varden rode up beside her.

“Lady? Is something wrong?”

She looked at Varden. Liam was right about that. The Fae
were
afraid of her. She smiled at him, wanting to put him more at ease. “No, Lord Varden, there’s nothing wrong. Baron Liam is just... acting like a man.”

Varden frowned. “Is that a bad thing?”

Her smile warmed with real humor. “It depends on one’s point of view. Come along. I rode through the Old Place so fast the other day, I didn’t get a good look at it.”
And it will give Liam time to find his
balance again before he has to deal with having me in his house as one of his guests.

Liam paced his study, ignoring the blend of humor and alarm on Donovan’s face as the other man stretched his legs out and slouched in a chair.

Finally, Liam whirled around to face his friend. “Did you have sex with Gwenn before you married her?”