Uncertain Magic (25 page)

"Sit down," she said. "Of course you'd never hurt me. 'Tis you who're hurt." She lifted his bleeding hand and reached for one of the towels that hung beside the dressing table, wrapping the cloth firmly around his wounded palm. With the other towel, she brushed broken glass from the needlepoint bench-cushion, pushing the wicked shards onto the floor as if they were so much insignificant dust.

She looked up into his eyes and splayed her hand on his chest, exerting just the slightest pressure to urge him onto the bench. For a moment, she thought he would resist. His face was tight and strange. Beneath her palm, his chest rose, making her vividly aware of the leashed power under her hand.

He held her gaze an infinite moment, a battle of wills that Roddy was afraid to lose. She summoned concentration, put all the force of her mind and heart behind her talent. It was a look that would have penetrated fathoms deep in any mind but his.

He stared down at her, a long uncertainty. Then, with a sudden rush, the air went out of him. The taut, wild look faded from his face. His thick eyelashes fell. When they rose again, it was as if he saw her anew, as if they were both different people from the ones they had been an instant before.

The corner of his mouth tilted upward. He murmured, "
Cailin sidhe
. Is this the Evil Eye?"

Roddy relaxed. The panic was gone, then, the black spell broken. In the flood of relief at finding reason in his eyes again, she adopted a cheerful, deliberate normality.

Better to ignore it all for now, to pretend it hadn't happened. "Quite possibly." She leaned forward and gave his chin a kiss. "Sit down and tell me about your cows while I dress your hand."

In silence, she searched for handkerchiefs and pins to secure a makeshift bandage. She had no desire to call Jane. Morning would be soon enough to explain the mirror. Roddy filled the basin with water from her pitcher and dipped a bit of linen into the clear liquid.

Faelan held up his hand when she had finished her dressing. He inspected the broad, red patch soaking through the lace with a grim smile. "Not very effective, I fear. Bits of fairy moss and moonbeams might have done better work,
cailin sidhe
."

She smiled briefly, relieved that his humor held, along with the fragile pretense that nothing was hideously wrong. She hesitated a moment, and then said, "I went to Islington to find you because there's a problem with Geoffrey's guns."

"Ah," he said carelessly. He left the bench and sat down on the bed, beginning to unbutton his coat. "Those slipshod French. Have they forgotten to include the powder and ball?"

Faelan was obviously not a stany-eyed Irish patriot. Roddy frowned at him. "It doesn't worry you at all, to have illegal arms smuggled through Iveragh?"

He looked sideways back toward her. "Just what is this problem?"

"They can't be moved for a month. Geoffrey wants you to postpone your work."

"A month be damned! I gave him until the twentieth of October. That was yesterday."

"The army is camped in the district. Geoffrey's men can't get through on the road."

"Christ!" Faelan threw his head back and moaned. "Spare us the Irish army. Buffoons blocking clowns on the road out of Iveragh. For God's sake—must Geoffrey's fine strapping rebels have a highway paved with gold? There're other ways across the mountains."

"The local lieutenant has taken ill. Geoffrey says no one else knows the country."

Faelan pried at the heel of one boot with the toe of the other. "I do."

She looked sharply at him. He bent over and yanked the boot free.

"Faelan—"

He sat up. "Are you packed?"

"We can't go yet."

"The devil we can't. We leave tomorrow."

"But Geoffrey said—"

"Damn what Geoffrey
said
. If he came after me, it's because he needs me to clean up his mess."

Roddy opened her mouth to protest, and closed it. She stared at him as he worked on the second boot. That hope
had
been in Geoffrey's mind. Underneath all the panic.

Faelan tossed the second boot after the first. "What did you think—that he ran back here just to save my hide? 'Don't start any work.' What the deuce difference would work make? I was hardly going to bring in King George to start draining the bog."

He pulled off his coat. Roddy stood watching him, chewing on her lower lip. His sprigged white waistcoat followed the coat onto a chair. As he began to unbutton his shirt she said, "I think you should stay away from there."

He looked up from loosening his cuff.

"I'm afraid for you," she whispered. She rubbed her flannel gown between her thumb and forefinger. "I know why you did it. The bargain you made, to let Geoffrey use Iveragh."

Faelan raised an eyebrow. "My Lord Cashel seems to have developed a bad habit of running on at the mouth." He watched her a moment, his gaze drifting down to where her fingers worked at the gown. He reached out suddenly and drew her toward him, pulling her between his knees. "Do you hate me for it?"

"I suppose… you had no choice."

He rocked her gently side to side. "Are you packed?"

"Yes."

He grinned and caught her chin, drawing her down to his mouth. His shoulders were broad and warm beneath her hands. He kissed her lips, then her throat and breasts, his fingers cupping their weight through the gown. With a low growl, he pulled her close, burying his face against her. "Between French muskets and you, I know who had the best end of the bargain."

She arched a little as his hands slid down and his thumbs followed the curves and hollows of her body to the joining of her legs. "Faelan," she said, "I want to talk about this."

"We're going." He didn't look up from his provocative exploration. "Tomorrow."

"Can't we even wait—" She drew in a quick breath, and forgot her train of thought as he found the tender, sweet warmth between her thighs. "Faelan…"

She leaned on him. While his hands pleasured her below, his tongue circled and flicked over her nipple, a rough, tingling delight through the flannel gown. His legs closed against her and he lay slowly back, dragging her inexorably with him until she had to sprawl with her full weight on him and the hard evidence of his intentions pressed into her belly. She lay there, feeling each breath that he took lift her, as lightly and easily as a leaf.

He could be a killer. There was that much power in the hands that ran over her hips and loins, in the shoulders and smooth torso beneath her. He smiled at her as she looked down at him, no madness in his face, nothing in those eyes but the depths of the sky and a faintly wolfish, male anticipation. It was as if that moment by the mirror had never been.

She found herself glad—too glad—to forget it. She focused instead on the other question he had made her forget so easily. "Why do we have to go so soon?"

His thick lashes lowered in indulgence. "I want to be there on November Eve."

"Why?"

The hesitation was slight, just a flick of his gaze to some unfocused point behind her ear and then back again. His smile turned into a wicked grin. "You'll see." He wrapped his arms around her and rolled her onto her back, propping himself on his elbow as he leaned across her. Golden hair fell in a cascade from his bandaged hand. "
Cailin sidhe
," he said, playing with a strand. "You'll see."

Before dawn he was up, like a child on fair day. Roddy woke to the mutter and mental groans from the powder closet of a valet rung out of bed and put to work shaving before he had the sleep out of his eyes. She buried her face in her pillow, thinking that Faelan might not have trusted the man with a razor if he'd known just how violent the poor fellow felt about his rude awakening.

Jane bustled into the room, in just as foul a mood as the valet. She stopped short of shaking Roddy out of bed in order that everyone might suffer together, but the maid didn't hesitate to rattle the tea tray or slam the wardrobe door a shade too loudly. She walked around to Roddy's side of the bed, and suddenly her early-morning grumbling blossomed into shock.

"Gracious Lud! What's this—"

Roddy sat up, coming full awake with an unpleasant jolt. She glanced at the glittering shards that covered the floor and the bloodstains in the washbowl and on the discarded linen. "Oh—yes!" She struggled to gain command of herself, searching frantically for an explanation. Finally she faked a yawn as she flopped back down into the bedclothes. "'Twas an accident, Jane." She affected a bored drawl. "I couldn't get one of those ridiculous hairpins out of my hair, and I was so furious I just—threw my brush. I never thought it would come
near
the mirror."

Jane rushed to the bedside. "La—you didn't hurt yourself, m'lady? I'll ne'er forgive m'self if you've taken a cut and it goes inflamed. Lawks, what would I say to your dear mother? You might have called, m'lady, by all that's holy, you might have—"

"Oh, I'm not even scratched!" Roddy exclaimed quickly, seeing Jane descending upon her purposefully. "'Twas His Lordship who—"

Before the sentence was even completed, Roddy realized her mistake. Jane—no admirer of His Lordship—recoiled in immediate suspicion. She glanced again at the mirror, and back at Roddy.
Drunk
, Jane thought in quick disgust.
Drunk and breakin' things again
.

Roddy had forgotten that the earlier incident of the music box and decanter would certainly be common knowledge in the servants' quarters. She felt herself blushing for her lie, and Jane noticed the flush with growing fury. Ever since the maid had been told that the trip to Ireland was imminent, she'd been gathering spite against the earl. Stories of Iveragh, begun by the dowager countess and embellished by Tilly, had grown to frightening proportions.
Live in a ruin
, Jane fumed.
Happen the roof II cave in on me. Happen't' place'll be haunted
. She darted a venomous glance toward the closed door of the dressing room.
Happen that black devil'll murder us all in our beds
.

"Jane," Roddy said sharply. She sat up and frowned at her maid. "Bring my dressing gown. And call the charwoman to clean this up."

"Yes, m'lady." Jane dropped a quick curtsy and obeyed. Roddy stayed abed until the mess was cleared and a new mirrored dressing table brought in from a guest room. Jane fussed about, taking things out of drawers and rearranging them, and then helped Roddy into her dressing gown and followed her to the vanity, beginning to brush Roddy's hair without a word.

After a few silent moments, Roddy said quietly, "I know you don't want to go to Ireland."

Jane's hand didn't pause in its even stroke. She was long accustomed to Roddy's uncanny understanding. "No, m'lady," she said, and shut her lips tight.

This was her stoic act, but Roddy had no patience with it this morning. "Then you shan't go," she said.

That time Jane's hand did falter, but Roddy countered the maid's relieved misunderstanding immediately. "I'll go without you. You may return to my mother."

Instantly, Jane reversed her stance. "I'll do no such thing, m'lady! Why, I'd ne'er go back and tell your sweet mother that I left you to that—" She stopped her tongue in time, but Roddy knew the rest well enough. Jane began brushing again, refusing to meet her mistress' eyes in the mirror.

"I shan't tolerate disrespect for my husband," Roddy said softly, and nearly stopped there, for Jane was already crushed by such unfamiliar harshness as an open reprimand. But Roddy had made up her mind. She said as gently as she could, "You can't go with a glad heart, Jane, and therefore, you shall not go at all."

"M'lady—"

"No." She finally met Jane's eyes in the glass, and felt the shock and quick recoil in the maid's mind.

Jane bowed her head and began to brush vigorously. There were tears pricking her eyes, but her lips were pressed together desperately tight.

"I'll send a letter to my mother," Roddy said, addressing Jane's greatest fear. "You may be sure there'll be nothing but praise in it."

"And who will take proper care of you, m'lady?" Jane asked stiffly.

"I shall take Martha."

"Martha…" For a moment, Jane could not place the name. Then her bosom swelled. "The
chambermaid
? Oh, m'lady, I couldn't—"

A sound at the dressing-room door forestalled further argument. Faelan strode into the bedchamber. He stopped behind Roddy and gathered up a thick fall of her loosened hair. He said nothing about the new dressing table. He did not even look at it. With a smile that held no hint of the night before, he lifted the curling strands to his lips. "Laggard. You aren't dressed."

Jane withdrew, silently. She was suddenly quite glad to be given a reason not to go to Iveragh. His Lordship in the shadowy candlelight looked like Satan underlit by hell.

Roddy found it was easy to respond to him, to pretend to go on just as they had. Far easier than acknowledging the darkness that underlay her airy words. "As it isn't even dawn yet, my lord, you're fortunate to find me awake at all."

"Your time of day,
cailin sidhe
. I'll go down to the garden and bring you back a cup of fairy wine."

Roddy made a face. "Strong tea would be more the thing."

She looked at him in the mirror. His teeth flashed white in a lecherous grin. He bent over and crossed his arm beneath her throat, forcing her chin up for a deep and lingering kiss. For just a moment, his forearm pressed too hard into her windpipe, and then the kiss broke and she could breathe again. "Good morning, little girl," he murmured, resting his forehead on his encircling arm, trapping her with him into a small, close world. She could feel the cool dampness of his cheek against hers and smell the lingering tang of shaving soap. His arms were heavy and warm on her shoulders.

I love you
, she thought, with a sudden fierceness.
You are not mad. You cannot be
.

He turned his head and took a deep breath in the mass of her hair. His arm tightened for just a moment, and then he straightened and stood back. "We leave at half past nine," he said, starting for the door.