The O'Madden: A Novella (The Celtic Legends Series) (3 page)

Breathless, she felt something coming over her—something she couldn’t stop—so she dug her fingers into his back as she cried out, falling away beneath the blinding white stars as he stiffened atop her and filled her with warmth.

Sometime later, as slowly as a drifting feather, she floated back to the coolness of the clearing. The tallow candle in the turnip gourd sifted blue-gray smoke. She became conscious that he was still warm and firm inside her. She didn’t know a man could do that after he’d already filled her with his seed.

It is done
.

But maybe it wasn’t, because h
e lifted his face from the pillow of her hair and gazed at her through half-lidded eyes.

“Aren’t you a strange one,
” he said. “So full of secrets.”

“
I’m thinking that there are not many secrets between us anymore.”

“There is at least one less.”
He traced the curve of her cheek. “What kind of peculiar place do you come from that a man hasn’t lured such a beauty as you into the grass before now?”

She started.
Glenna had told her men took their pleasure and paid little mind to the pain it inflicts upon the woman. Glenna had told her that a man wouldn’t even notice the loss of her maidenhead— he’d roll over and snore when the thing was done.

He said gently,
“You should have told me, lass. I mistook your innocence for eagerness.” The finger continued down her jaw and over her neck. “You’ve a look as cool as ice, but you have a body as hot as fire. I couldn’t tell by looking at you that I was the first man you’ve lain with. Had I known, I would have been gentler.”

“You’re . . . you’re not supposed to notice such things.”

“
Only a fumbling young man or a drunk wouldn’t.”

“You’re supposed to grunt and have the thing done with, with no care
at all for the woman.”

He pulled back a fraction.
“Someone has been filling your mind with foolishness. Is that what happened here tonight?”

“No.”

The word slipped out before she could catch it. Well, there would be no hiding it, not while she lay under him with his body still locked in hers, warm and wet. She’d enjoyed the mating, obviously. She’d certainly waited for it long enough.

She
murmured, “Clearly, I chose well tonight.”

A corner of his lips twitched, but curiosity lingered in those eyes.
“I’ll take the compliment. But I still don’t know why.”

The reasons whirled
up a rush of quiet anguish. How she’d love to spill the secrets of her heart in the darkness. She had so few people to talk to about such things. She’d spent a lifetime guarding her troubles, searching for answers alone, with no one but Glenna to guide her. And tonight she felt like the Maeve of her dreams, the woman who had choices.

But of all people who walked the earth, this man was the last one she could tell.

He pressed two fingers to her mouth as she started to speak. “I see there’s a whole web of reasons, lass, I see them spinning in your pretty eyes.”

She wondered why he would ask
only to stop her.

“
No half-truths,” he said. “Not now. Not after this. I’d rather leave it at silence than doubt what you say.”

She tried to read the strange flicker of emotions passing across his face
. It was almost as if he knew that her reasons would change things. She waited for him to say something more, breathless. An owl hooted from the woods. She waited as night creatures crackled through leaves.

Finally, he said,
“I know this much. You’re no Caer of the legend, doomed to change into a swan the morning after Samhain. You’re too hot-blooded for that.” He lowered his lips to hers. “Reason can wait until daylight.”

He touched her again, but differently this time. He anointed her with every brush of his fingers. He christened he
r with every teasing hot-lipped kiss. With wonder she ran her fingers under his tunic, on the bare tough flesh of his abdomen, through the light, crisp hair of his chest. A world opened to her and she learned greedily, eagerly, like the Caer of the legend he’d spoken about, forced to live a lifetime in an evening before the break of dawn turned her into a swan.

Sheened with the breath of moonlight
, Maeve threw away all sense. She opened her heart and her body to this gentle stranger.

But time did pass
. The moon slipped across the open sky, then sank behind the lace of the bare trees. Night dew settled on the grass like fairy’s breath then crystallized into a veil of frost. When Maeve finally blinked her eyes open, the first fingers of dawn had already curled up over the eastern horizon.

The giant moaned in his sleep and shifted. In the pale blue light,
she gazed upon him. For all the crookedness of his nose and the nicks that scarred his face, in sleep he looked as tousled and careless as a boy. She slipped out from under the edge of his cloak.

Never before had she so hated the song of the lark.

His voice rumbled from beneath the cloak. “Don’t wander far, lass.”

She looked down into the blue brightness of one eye
that he’d squinted open. She forced a smile onto her lips. “I won’t.”

She w
aited until he closed his eyes. She waited until he turned his head into the crook of his arm. Still she waited, staring down at those broad shoulders, the thickness of one thigh hiked up outside his cloak, memorizing the color of his hair, the slope of his back, the smell of him, and the hundred thousand impressions of an unforgettable night.

Then s
he swiveled one heel on the grass. She headed through the fencing of trees as hot tears blinded her. When she’d walked far enough away, she yanked her skirts into her fists and began to run.

At least, she
thought, her eyes burning, the poor fatherless child he’d just put in her womb will have been conceived in joy.

Garrick kneed his mount
out of the forest and into the rolling lands of Birr. The tavern-keeper in the last town had told him that the castle stood just beyond these woods. Garrick paused to peer through the mist still clinging to the valley. All he saw were some bow-backed cattle lowing on the slope above.

No
hint of a castle.

He frowned
. The castle had probably disappeared into thin air, just like that woman from All Hallows’ Eve. He clenched the reins, breathing in the clean air, trying to accustom himself to the silence. He’d scented the magic in this place the minute he’d arrived from the stinking, narrow streets of Wexford to seek his fortune. Amid these mists, how easily a man could be lured into enchantment by a dark-haired beauty on a pagan evening.

For two days he’d searched for her and no one had ever seen her nor knew her name. She’d sailed off to places unknown like the ships he used to watch in Wexford harbor when he was a boy, leaving him on the docks like some sailor’s forgotten wife.
The pilgrim with whom Garrick had broken the fast had dubbed him bewitched. He said that Garrick would have no rest until he rid himself of the memory of her. As if he could forget night-black hair like Assyrian silk, skin the smoothness of country cream, and eyes as gray as mist. As if he could forget her husky, uncertain laughter or the heat of her body moving beneath him under the stars.

H
e
would
find her. If he had to seek the doors of the Otherworld, he’d find her, as surely as he would eventually find the Castle of Birr.

Then he would claim both as his own.

He kicked his mount up the hill on a trail no wider than a cow-path. The flaxen waves of a harvested wheat field came into view, then, in the distance, the blades of a mill. As he reached the height of the hillock, he saw another building. It was a tumbled-down square donjon of stone, planted by a river.

Passing
a few sheep nibbling at the stubble of a field, Garrick spied a young boy sleeping with his hood pulled over his eyes. He called out to him in Irish. The boy started and then, seeing horse and rider, he stumbled to his feet. The stripling’s clothes hung off his bones as he hurried closer.

“That castle, up ahead,” Garrick
asked. “Is it the castle of Birr?”

“Yes,
milord. And the village, too.”

And a
damn sorry sight, it was. The wooden roof was caved in and the stones of the walls looked as green as pond scum. Surely ten years or more had passed since a man had put his back to fixing the surrounding wall. Just outside that barrier, a clutch of huts sagged under dirty thatch.

Garri
ck resisted the urge to laugh. What a fine trick his great English lord of a father had played. In his father’s mind, a son who was nothing but a by-blow from a summer night’s dalliance with an Irish laundress deserved no better than a sorry place like this. But Garrick knew that being lord of the meanest castle was better than digging another man’s turnips. It sure as hell was better than sweating under the casks and bales and boxes on the docks of Wexford, or having his back striped by the snapping end of a cat-o-nine-tails on a merchant ship. What his fool of an aristocratic father would never understand was that this was the finest pot of gold a bastard of Wexford could ever have received.

Garrick waved the boy toward the castle.
“Go tell your people that the new lord of Birr has arrived.”

The boy clutched his hood
and set off on a run. His bare feet flew as he sped across the field to the first thatched hut. Garrick kicked his horse to follow at a more leisurely pace. The fine woolen clothes he’d had made in Wexford were not as loose and comfortable as the well-beaten linen shirt and braies he preferred wearing. These fine clothes hung on him as awkwardly as his new title but he straightened his shoulders under them nonetheless.

Women scurried out of the huts, spindles and pots still in hand, to watch as he passed. What a bony, sunken-faced tribe, he thought, dirty in threadbare clothes no dockworker would
dare to be seen in. A young girl scratched in the dirt, a bowl of wheat and a crushing-stone lying beside her. Her mother snatched her hand and yanked her to her feet as Garrick nudged his horse up a shallow rise, through the rock-pile fence, and toward the square tower of the castle of Birr. The villagers followed him at a distance like nervous hunting hounds.

The boy held out a dirty hand.
“I’ll take your horse for you, my lord.”

The boy he’d
sent to spread the word spoke in uncertain English. For all his thinness, he looked strong, and he was as fleet-footed as the red deer Garrick had spotted in the woods through which he’d passed.

Through
his
woods, Garrick corrected.

The boy shuffled, uncertain
in the silence. “The old master used me as a stable boy when it pleased him, my lord. I know the way of tending horses.”

Better than me, no doubt.

Garrick dismounted and tossed the reins to the boy. He quelled the urge to rub his backside. The crowd stood behind him. He sensed the weight of their stares. So he planted his hands on his hips and tried to look lordly while he stared up at the old square tower.

The tower had three stories
, though what the third floor looked like with that collapsed roof was another question altogether. It appeared to be good, thick rock beneath all the ivy and lichen. Garrick’s gaze followed as the boy led his horse behind the castle, where he caught a glimpse of a number of outbuildings—stables, henhouses, and some sort of storage.

Then the door
of the donjon squealed open on querulous female voices. Two women burst out. The younger, twisting her hands in her apron, lifted her head to greet him and stumbled to a halt.

She
stuttered,
“You.”

Garrick stood for a moment,
struggling to take in the tumble of all that dark hair, the startled gray eyes, the luminescent skin. His first coherent thought was that she was as beautiful in the bright of day as she had been in the shimmer of the moonlight. She stared back at him, her expression a mirror of his shock.

No fairy, this.
A fairy didn’t wear a ragged old apron, or walk about with flour staining her brow. A fairy’s cheeks didn’t flush dark with surprise. She was human, flesh and blood, and standing before him. After all that searching, fate had brought them together again.

He barked a laugh
. Until now, he’d had nothing but a turnip-gourd, rumpled clothes and memories as proof that he’d lain with her that night. To prove to himself that this wasn’t another trick of the countryside, he took a step toward her. The panic in her eyes made him pause.

“
Sir.” She dipped her head and dropped a quick curtsey. “They told me that you’re the new lord of Birr but there must be a mistake.”

“No mistake.
” He could almost feel her pressed against him, his hands full with those hips, his face buried in that hair. “I
am
the new lord of Birr, and I’ve come to take possession.”

Her shoulders
tensed. She bunched her apron in her hands. The news had struck her hard, but he could not read her downcast face.

When she spoke, h
er voice came out high-pitched, strained. “I am Maeve, the keeper of this house.”

“It’s about time
I learned your real name.”

“We di
d not expect the new lord of Birr quite so soon.”

“
The day is full of surprises.”

“I’ve
kept this house in your absence.” She kept clenching and unclenching her apron, her brow furrowed. “On behalf of the people of Birr, I welcome you . . . my lord.”

She
had secrets, this one. He’d suspected so on All Hallows’ Eve, when she’d left him lying alone on that hill feeling as daft as if he’d been stripped of his senses. Now every nerve of her sang with unease. He was of half a mind to destroy her pretense by publicly kissing her until she trembled with something other than anxiety. Yes, that’s what he would do. But before he could step toward her, he noticed the way her gaze darted between him and the silent crowd at his back. He sensed that if he reached for her now, she would fight and claw and scratch him like a trapped cat.

The thought
took the edge off his lust.

“
Come into the castle, my lord.” She flattened her palms, but her knuckles still went white. “You must be tired after your long journey.”

“
It wasn’t the journey that wore me out.”

“
The cold must have done it, then.”  She turned and walked toward the donjon. “You’ll have to take your ease in the hall. We practice economies here whenever we can. We use very little wood. There are no other rooms heated.”

She swung the door open and left him to catch it as she strode inside
. Garrick dipped his head beneath the arch of the door. The great hall was littered with reeds and hung with worn, faded tapestries. A pitiful spark of a fire crackled in the huge fireplace, where a gaggle of women fluttered to their seats as if they’d raced across the room at the sound of his arrival. The hall, furnished with only a rickety-looking trestle table and a few hearth chairs, echoed with hushed voices and the clatter of spindles.

“Had you sent word ahead,” Maeve said, “we would have had y
our chamber prepared properly.”

“I have no doubt you can prepare it for me.”

She startled, but regained her composure quickly
. “Preparing bedchambers is not something I’m accustomed to doing.”

“Practice will take care of that.”

“In that, you know better than me, my lord.”  Her voice tightened. “I’ll find someone else to do it, but it might take some time. Most of the servants are out threshing the grain or tending to the slaughter. We didn’t expect the lord of Birr for at least a month.”  She finally met his eye, and the look she gave him was steady and assessing. “It’s strange that you’re here so soon.”

“You’ve been misinformed. My arrival was delayed only two days. I paused to search for a woman I met on All Hallows’ Eve—”

“Sorcha,
” Maeve interrupted, her color rising as she tugged a spindle from a woman’s hand. “Don’t be standing there staring with your mouth open.”

“She just disapp
eared with the coming of day,” Garrick continued, “without a word of reason.”

“Disappeared, did she?” Maeve speared the spindle into a basket of wool
. “Now there’s a trick I’d like to learn.”

“
It worked for the two days I spent looking for her.”

“Talk like that
, my lord, and my people will think you’re bewitched by a fairy.”

“She was no fairy, t
hough she was as beautiful as one.”

“Surely it’s no concern of mine,
” she stuttered, “such things as that.”

“Maybe
it is. She could have come from these parts.”

“I know little about the fires, and want to know even less.”

“I’d say she was about your age. And she had hair as dark as soot. About as long as yours, as well.”

“What would you know of the color of her hair in the dark of night?” Maeve turned
away sharply, and then barked at two girls gaping at them. “Sorcha, go to the kitchens and fetch some ale and bread for our lord. Surely he expects a better welcome. And Mona, have done with that sewing now.”

“
And her eyes,” he mused, rubbing his chin. “I’m not sure I remember the color of her eyes.”

“
Evelyn, Fianna— what’s our new lord going to think, with work to be done, and you two as idle as doves in the cote?”

“
Ah, yes.”  He reached out and captured her chin, turning her face toward his so he could meet that turbulent gaze. “Now I remember. They were the color of—”

“
You’ll forgive me my boldness,” Maeve interrupted, “for saying that a man who frolics about those fires on a spirit-night gets no more than he deserves.”

“Oh, I got much more than I
deserved.”

“Then
you shouldn’t be asking for anything more.”

He felt the anger in her like a crackling in the air
. Oh, yes, he would have to be patient. Very, very patient.

“
You’ll want to see your lands.” She pulled away from his touch and strode toward the servant’s back entrance. “There’s not much to them. But by the time I’m done showing them to you, your food will be here to keep that chattering tongue of yours busy.”

The girls clust
ered by the servant’s door skittered back as they passed, smiling into their hands. He’d teased her, yes, but what of it? By sunset, he would soften her anger into a different kind of passion.

He followed her at his own leisurely pace, winking at the girls who fluttered about like so many butterflies as they cleared up the woman’s debris by the he
arth. He caught the door Maeve shoved open before it closed in his face, then he followed her out into the mud of the field.