Uncertain Magic (24 page)

"You're up late, little girl," he said softly, and eased the fallen book from her hands as he sat on the edge of the bed.

Roddy just looked at him. She felt her insides all knotted up and hurting, and knew nothing would come out of her mouth but a sob if she tried to speak.

He tilted his head. "You've been crying."

It wasn't true; she hadn't been, but at his words the tears welled up and made his face go to a blur of shadow and candlelight.

"Roddy," he said, and moved to take her in his arms.

"Don't touch me," she cried. "And don't lie.
Please
don't lie to me anymore!"

He sat still, watching her. She realized she was probing wildly with her talent, but there was nothing there to guide her.

After a moment, he said, "Tell me what's happened."

"You know. She must have told you!" •

He frowned. "I've just returned. I've spoken to no one."

Liar
! her mind cried.
I hate you
! But she drew in a great, shuddering breath and spoke. "Geoffrey came. About the guns. I needed to find you, and I—I asked Minshall. He… told me about Pelham Cottage. So I went there. I went there, and I found…" She bit her lip, and said in a whisper, "Ellen Webster."

He turned his head at the name. Just a little. Just enough for Roddy to be certain that it meant something.

"Ellen Webster," he repeated softly. His lashes lowered, and he stared into the shadows, frowning faintly. "Dark-haired? And beautiful?"

"Very beautiful," Roddy said. Her voice was harsh and crisp, but it broke a little on the last syllable.

"Yes. I remember her."

"Remember her! Oh, God—" Roddy couldn't contain a sob. "Faelan—"

He glanced at her sideways. For a moment she read nothing in his face. Then his eyes focused on empty space with the arrested intent of a man hearing distant music. Like a shadow the change came, the darkness she was growing to know too well. His lips curved upward a little, into the grim smile of one of Lady Iveragh's dream-demons. When he looked at her again, his eyes were the blue of flames dancing deep in the hottest fire.

"Miss Webster. She was at this… Pelham House." He stood up, a sudden, violent move that belied the controlled tautness in his voice. He moved from the bedside to the dressing table and stood, staring at himself in the mirror. "I suppose you found that I've had a lover's correspondence with her, and she was expecting me to carry her away."

No regret. No remorse. "Do you think nothing of it?" Roddy cried. "To lie to me? To her? To ruin that poor girl, for your own…" Her lips twisted in disgust. "Did you enjoy her, Faelan? Have you told her the truth yet—that there'll be no elopement and no wedding and no money? Or do you plan—"

"Roddy," he said. "I warned you of this."

She had opened her mouth to add more bitter words. At that, she closed it.

Yes. He had warned her. And she had not believed him.

She hid her face in her hands and moaned. It was as if something had died. Something had: all her faith, all her hopes. She had gambled and lost. The Faelan whom she loved did not exist. There was only this silent man who offered no justification or reason for what he had done, who only said, "I warned you."

She moved suddenly, sliding off the bed without looking at him. Her bare feet hit cold wood, but she did not wait to find her slippers.

He caught her before she reached the door. His fingers dug cruelly into her arms, but the instant she jerked to a stop, his grip loosened. He held her, lightly but firmly, his chest not quite touching her back. "Little girl," he said, in a ragged voice. "Don't leave me now."

She stood rigid, refusing to answer. Refusing even to acknowledge that he held her fast.

"I need you," he whispered.

If he had tried to kiss her, tried to use the power that he had to make her body melt and burn, she could have resisted. She could have imagined him with Ellen Webster—a picture guaranteed to act like ice water on the fire. But he did not.

He only held her, with a faint, faint trembling in his fingers, and waited for her answer.

It's all an act
, her reason warned her.

And:
He needs me
, her heart replied.

Against all evidence, all sane judgment and common sense… the barely perceptible tremor in a man's strong hands.

She did not give in to him. But neither did she pull away.

An eternity later, his touch slowly relaxed. She stood still as his palms slid upward, skimming her arms, outlining her shoulders, and then smoothing her hair. It was not a lover's touch—it was more like a child's: searching, memorizing, asking reassurance.
I need you
, that light, tentative contact said.
I need you
,

"They say I murdered my father," he said. It was hardly a whisper.

Her knees felt they would buckle beneath her.

"Did you?"

His hands stopped their restless motion. "Roddy—" She waited. She could not even hear him breathing. When she turned, he was staring into nothing.

"Did you?" she repeated.

"I don't remember." He looked at her. "Roddy, I don't remember."

"I've never heard of Pelham House," Faelan said to the shadows on the far side of the room. "I've never written to Ellen Webster. But she was there. I don't doubt she was there. Waiting for me." His lips curved in the feral imitation of a smile. "You have a choice, you see. Your choice of a husband. A villain or a madman."

Roddy kept silence. The bitterness was on him, as she had felt it once before on a high Yorkshire cliff above the sea. He turned away and walked to the window, yanked open the velvet curtains, and threw the sash wide.

"A full moon," he sneered as the cold air poured inward. "Shall I howl?"

"Faelan—"

He gripped the curtains with an inhuman laugh. "Faelan! God, how fitting. Wolves do howl, don't they? Wolves and lunatics." He stood there, breathing harshly. Then he clasped his hands hard around his head and slid slowly to his knees, his fine, strong fingers white against the black of his hair. "Lunatics," he whispered. "Oh, God…" He leaned on the sill. "I don't remember. Roddy—I swear it, I swear—I don't remember."

"It doesn't matter," she said: a stupid thing, because she knew nothing else to say. She only stood there, with the wind blowing her gown in soft billows around her.

He came to his feet in a sudden, lithe move and began a restless circuit of the room. His slanted look back toward her held watchfulness: the mingled distrust and hope of a half-wild animal, lost and hunted and longing for shelter. "It matters," he said in a voice that was cracked. Driven. "After my father…" He paused, and then took a shuddering breath and spoke with unnatural calm. "After my rather was killed, they sent me to England. My mother told Adam it was Iveragh. She said that place would drive anyone mad." He gave a hollow chuckle. "Dear Mama. She's afraid of me. She hates being in the same house with me. I suppose she thinks I'll push her over the stair rail some night in a frenzy." The moonlight caught the blue glitter in his eyes. "I've thought of it, by God—watching them drain Iveragh dry. Like a pair of vampires."

There was savagery in his voice, and a kind of challenge. See what I am, he seemed to be saying. I hate. I want to hurt the ones who've destroyed what I love.

"So they sent me to school," he said—not to Roddy, but to the bed, the chairs, to anything that was not alive. "And things began to… happen. Animals. Beneath my window, in the morning—they'd find…" He stopped in front of the dressing table, looking at something dark and far away. After a long moment, he said roughly, "Mostly cats and hares." He spread his fingers wide. "They'd pull us out of bed and line us up, all in our nightshirts and barefoot—and God, it was so cold. I was always last, I had to stand there while they went down the row… and they would come to me… they knew it… the way they looked at me…" He stared at his image in the mirror. "The others were all white. All clean. And they made me the last; they went down the whole row every time, even when I was standing there… all spotted with it—on my shirt and my hands… and they held up the animal, and they asked me…"

His voice trailed into silence. The night wind blew in the window, lifting the curtains and ruffling his hair.

"I always told them no," he said suddenly. "I didn't do that." His mouth grew taut and dangerous, and with a move so swift that Roddy had no time to interpret it, he swung his fist in a backhanded arc and slammed it into his reflection.

The glass exploded in the silent room. Roddy jumped back, her eyes squeezed shut, and opened them an instant later to see him close his bleeding palm around the shards in his hand. "I didn't do that," he repeated in a strangled whisper. "I couldn't have."

Roddy moved. There was a panic in him, in the way he tightened his fingers until she was sure the glass must be driving jagged edges deep into his hand. He stood motionless, but she sensed a breaking point, a violence that threatened to erupt in far more than the destruction of a mirror. With the same instinct that had aided her in calming a stricken mare, she went to him and touched his shoulder, slid her hand through his hair, and drew him into her arms. He was stiff a moment, resisting, and then an instant later he leaned against her. The shards fell tinkling to the floor. He turned his face into her body with a rough, clinging move, as if to hide what she might see.

She waited, smoothing his hair down over the high, stiff fold of his neckcloth.

"I should have told you," he said. His voice was peculiar and thick against the gown. "I tried to. But I just… wanted to go home. You were the only way left. When you looked at me—those eyes of yours—" He shifted, moving away from her, but not far enough to break her touch. "You're so damned wild and lovely," he said. "I just couldn't let go. When I saw you with Cashel—" The name choked in his throat. "—that bloody whoremongering hero—my friend, the only one who's stood at my back, knowing what I am…" His hand tightened around her hips. "I wanted to murder him for touching you. I wanted to put a bullet through his damned noble brain, and then—God—you came to me and said you didn't want me… and, Roddy… I was afraid of what I might do. I didn't sleep; I went off, as far as I could, and I never let myself sleep until I was sure that Cashel must be out of the country."

He pushed her away and slid his fingers around her wrist, turning her palm upward and staring down at the bright smear of his blood on her skin. "I've loved three things I can remember. Iveragh and Geoff. You. If ever I hurt any one of them—" He closed his eyes, and with a gentle, terrible certainty, whispered, "In the name of God—I'll kill myself."

She gazed up at him, and realized something in that moment: how Geoffrey's loyalty to Faelan was an ideal of the mind, of reason and philosophy, while Faelan counted his honor in more primitive terms. In lifeblood and love. No elevated sentiments. Just a quiet, deadly promise:
If I fail you
…

Madness. It had a horrible, improbable logic. It explained a score of things. But the shock of his admission blunted feeling or response. Once before, she had felt this way—long ago when a favorite dog had died. Dry. Emotionless. Unable to accept the reality when she had seen the beloved brown eyes close forever. Instead of the weeping hysteria it seemed she ought to feel, she found that a brisk, numb practicality directed her movements and her words.