Uncertain Magic (36 page)

Faelan turned away and started back for the house as the gathering broke up into little knots of men who hurried off in pregnant silence. Roddy called softly to him. When he turned, she nodded toward the cottier and his two sons, who were lingering under the pretense of adjusting their leggings.

Faelan appeared to recognize the situation in an instant. "Send Martha," was all he said before walking on. "Meet me in the study."

Roddy nodded, glad that in this, at least, he had realized the delicacy of human psychology. The cottier and his sons were in a difficult position. They wanted to investigate Faelan's offer, but to be the first to do so openly would place them firmly in his camp, where they were not at all certain that they wanted to be.

With MacLassar at her heels, she hurried into the house where the maid Martha had begun a furious attack on the impossible job of sweeping out decades of accumulated rubble. "Those men—" Roddy almost shoved Martha out the terrace door. "Ask them in for tea, and then bring them to the study. Hurry!"

Martha gave her mistress a look which was as expressive as the astonishment in her mind before she gathered her skirts and rushed after the cottier family, who had begun to walk away.

Roddy pulled her shawl around her and headed for the "study," which was in fact only a room in the old servants' quarters which still had a dry roof. In the two days since Martha had arrived with their baggage, she and Roddy had been able to clear and arrange a makeshift desk out of two overturned cookpots and an old stall partition. It was so cold in the room that Roddy could see her breath frost when she pushed open the door. She found Faelan on his knees making up the fire.

"They'll be here in a moment, my lord," she said, crossing to the window. With the corner of her shawl, she wiped at the accumulated dust on the broken pane, trying to add more light to the dismal scene. She heard Faelan come up behind her and turned, brushing at her hands.

He caught one wrist and raised it, kissing a smudgy palm with a hard, brief pressure. His fingers were warm against her icy skin, but she felt the tension in them, saw the taut look about his eyes that had been there the night of the fairy ball. It was important to him, this meeting with three rough country peasants. It was life or death to the dreams he cherished.

Martha ushered the trio into the room with an air that would have been casual in London, but which seemed quite regal in this dingy place.

"Mister Donald O'Sullivan. Mister Evan and Mister Fe… Fac…" Martha bit her unruly tongue and took a breath.

"Fachtnan," said the tallest of the two sons, with a shy, sideways grin on his freckled face. "Ye make it pretty, miss, however ye speak it."

Martha curtsied quickly, blushing to the roots of her hair with pleasure at the small personal attention. She looked with shining eyes at Fachtnan.
Oh, la
, she thought,
he likes me
, and hurried to pump the ancient bellows and set the teapot on the hob. Roddy had planned to send the maid off and make the tea herself, but she hadn't the heart to cut Martha's little romance so short.

There were no chairs. Roddy hoped Faelan knew better than to lean against the unstable desk. He stood next to it, looking very much as he always did, which was enough to put the cottiers in a misery of tongue-tied unease. The rough surroundings only made him more elegant and mysterious and intimidating than ever, while at Roddy they dared not look at all.

The cottiers stood unhappily, not knowing what to do and expecting Faelan to speak. They had no notion of taking the initiative. The father had begun trying to remember an old tale he'd heard of a man who'd sold himself to the devil, uneasily comparing the details of the story to this scene. Roddy suddenly thought that the five-shilling offer was a mistake, that it was so low as to be suspicious. Here in this remote valley among ruins long dead, it was all too easy to believe in ancient tales. She kept her own eyes carefully away from the men and sought desperately for some way to undermine their fears. To make Faelan and herself human.

Martha began setting china cups out on the table for the tea, and the clatter seemed very loud in the silence. Red-haired Fachtnan cleared his throat nervously.

"Tea, gentlemen?" Faelan said finally.

In a fright that he would break the cup and humiliate them all, Fachtnan said, "No, thankee, m'lord. No, thankee. We don't take tea."

The others nodded agreement.

Roddy was still watching Faelan, afraid he would lean on the table and precipitate his own humiliation. She saw him shift his weight and reach out his hand, and stepped forward in quick reaction. Her foot encountered something soft. The next instant a loud squeal cut the tension in the air.

MacLassar shot out from beneath her skirts, snuffling and crying piteously. He ran between the elder O'Sullivan's legs, found no comfort there, and darted toward Martha's skirt. The maid—no country-bred girl—shrieked, "A
rat
," and with a move that was completely unpremeditated threw herself headlong into Fachtnan's strong arms.

She nearly knocked him down. He staggered back, clutching her as much for balance as for giving support, but by the time he had recovered, a flash of very masculine appreciation coursed through him as his hands fitted around Martha's sturdy torso. He slid his palms upward in the guise of steadying her and his thumbs curved under her heaving breasts. "There now, miss. 'Tis no but a wee pig, do you see?"

"I believe it belongs to the countess," Faelan said calmly, reaching down to where MacLassar cowered with deep-throated, sorrowful grunting underneath one of the cookpots.

He handed the piglet across the table.

Roddy grabbed her charge hastily and slung him into his favorite position with his small forefeet dangling over her shoulder and his snout pressed lovingly behind her ear. She dared one glance up into Faelan's face. Fearing the worst, she took a moment to interpret the strange twist and hardening of his jaw.

Donald O'Sullivan coughed in a strained way. The air in the room had changed; Roddy felt the cottiers' eyes on the Devil Earl and his countess as they faced one another across the table. The vision formed in her head in all its absurdity—the dingy room, the china cups; herself staring apprehensively up at her husband with a piglet slung over her shoulder and Faelan with a belly laugh trapped behind the fierce set of his mouth.

Roddy bit her lip. MacLassar grunted and snuffled in her ear. Her body began to shake. "Oh, my," she gasped. "I'm so s-sorry!"

Martha giggled. Donald O'Sullivan began to chuckle. "Ah, well," he said. "An' we was after thinkin' m'lord and m'lady too fine and fearsome to traffic with the likes of pigs and poor dairymen."

Roddy met his eyes while the laughter still lit her own, and was pleased and astonished to find that at that moment he'd rather look at her than not. Everyone in the room was smiling at her—directly at her—and she felt as giddy and self-conscious as Martha had under Fachtnan's appreciative gaze.

A half hour later, the O'Sullivans had departed with the promise of twoscore cows in exchange for a pound sterling at the end of a year. They could sell their butter for cash to Faelan. Fachtnan and Evan were to begin work on the mansion house, and spread the word that the wage of fifteen pence a day was no dream, but real enough for any cottier who would come to work and lease Faelan's cattle.

Martha had seen them out with all the pomp that was possible under the circumstances. When they had gone, Roddy set MacLassar on the floor.

"You see," she said as the piglet snuffled and snorted in mild complaint. "He's good for something."

Faelan moved around the table. Success and humor lit his blue eyes with something that made her breath catch in her throat. "Little girl." He came close and drew her into his arms. "I know what won them."

"What?" She stood with a smile that changed to a giggle as he squeezed her.

" 'Twas you, of course. Magical
sidhe. "
He tilted her chin up to plant a deep kiss on her quivering lips. " 'Twas you," he whispered at the edge of her mouth. "Because you're so beautiful when you laugh."

Roddy hugged MacLassar, sniffing the scent of the lavender water she'd bathed him in and smiling to herself at the memory of Faelan's way of expressing gratitude. With Martha occupied by her new beau and Senach off wherever Senach spent his time, there had been a few hours of privacy that day in the empty stall where they'd made their bed.

It suited her better, she thought, to take a roll in the hay like a stablehand than play the gently bred Countess of Iveragh. It had been cold, but Faelan could always warm her; his words and his touch and the sky-fire of his eyes. A bed or barn, it made no difference when she was aware of nothing but his body hard and hot against hers.

That afternoon seemed long ago now, the last time in over a month that Faelan had been awake and hers alone. Winter was blowing in, and there was only work and more work in the sharp demand of the damp west wind.

Their cottiers had grown accustomed to the earl hammering beside them like a common laborer and the countess sweeping and hauling trash and bringing the workers tea and oatcakes with her pig and her maid in tow. That kind of acquaintance bred a measure of trust—at least they had stopped equating Faelan with the devil, by the simple logic that the devil would never have to work as hard as Faelan did to get a roof over his head.

Of Roddy they were less certain. Only the O'Sullivans spoke freely to her, and even with them the doubts would creep in if she happened to meet their eyes. It seemed that her difference was stronger here, and somehow more apparent. On those occasions, Roddy would smile at them and they would remember her laughing, and it set their minds at rest.

She wished it were so simple for herself. She knew now how it felt, that uneasy sense of facing a power beyond common humanity—knew it for reality, instead of through her gift. Every time her talent faded and slipped away and she looked up from whatever she was doing to find Senach's blind gaze upon her, her heart pounded and her legs trembled with the need to flee.

Public nakedness could not have been worse. She knew those empty eyes saw through her, pinned her and judged her: the petty fears and selfish needs, the times she'd used her gift to cheat—just a little, just a quick answer to spare her from a scolding, a remark made to sting and unsettle. And worse, far worse—the place in her heart that feared and adored and hungered for her husband, the place that cared not what he was, but only that he held her.

She could lose him. If he guessed her talent; if Senach told him and made him believe—

Roddy huddled in her cloak. The wind traced her exposed skin with cool, wet fingers, like Senach's lifeless, probing touch. She sat, clutching MacLassar and his comforting small mind, where warmth and food were all that mattered and both were provided in plenty. But even as she drowsed there with him, she felt the connection slip away. She had climbed the hill to escape Senach. When she opened her eyes he was there.

"God bless," he said, and smiled at her. He was standing on the path below her, leaning on a staff. Farther down, the men still worked, and the sound of their voices blew away with the wind.