Eochaidh - Legend of the Horsemen (Book One) (14 page)

“You!” Lord John yelled, his voice echoing throughout the
stables. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”

Jepson turned and shook his head. “I’m doing my job,” he
said. “I have better things to do than lie in a bed and be treated like an
invalid.”

“You are an invalid,” Lord John insisted. “And I don’t want
you keeling over in my stables. You might trip someone.”

But Jepson didn’t laugh. His face serious, he stepped closer
to Lord John and lowered his voice. “There is danger in the air,” he said.
“Danger and death.”

“Tell me,” Lord John replied.

“I do not know the details, but the signs speak of death,”
he said. “We must prepare and it must be today.”

“How can we protect ourselves?” Lord John asked.

“There are amulets and wards,” Jepson replied. “I have sent
for the p
uri daj, the grandmother of the Gypsies. She can help us with those…”

“But?” Lord John prompted.

“But the enemy we fight is not a mere witch or
warlock. She is Morganna,” Jepson said. “And because magic gets stronger as it
ages, she is more powerful here than she was in Camelot.
 
This war will not be won with charms and
talismans.”

Striding away from Jepson, Lord John walked to the
front of the stables and stared out over his land.
 
What was he supposed to do?
 
He had been a soldier, an officer, and those
were the rules of war he understood. But this…how could he protect his family
from someone with the powers of darkness on her side?

“I have never retreated in my life,” he said aloud,
shaking his head in confusion.

“Perhaps this is not a retreat, but it is a strategic
move to higher ground,” Jepson suggested.

Lord John turned around. “I cannot live if one of my
loved ones dies,” he said. “I cannot concentrate on the fight if I am afraid
for their lives.”

“We could send them back to England,” Jepson
suggested. “We could have the carriage readied today and have them on the road
at first light.”

“She won’t do it,” Lord John said.

“She has to do it,” Jepson said. “Don’t give her a
choice.
 
You cannot have either of them
here if you are going to fight Morganna.
 
Make her understand that by being here, she makes you more vulnerable.”

Lord John paced between Jepson and the open stable
doors; finally he stopped and stared at Jepson, an idea forming in his mind.
“What if I tell her we are all going?” he asked. “What if I tell her I have
decided it’s too dangerous for all of us and we are leaving in the
morning?
 
What if I don’t tell her that
I’m not going until she is packed into the carriage?”

“She will be very angry with you,” Jepson said.

“Yes,” Lord John agreed with a sad smile. “But I won’t
be there to deal with it.”

“And if you die?” Jepson asked.

Lord John dropped his head and was silent for a
moment. Finally he met his friend’s eyes. “You must take care of them for me,”
he said. “If they are in your care, I will not worry.”

“No, I have to be here with you,” Jepson argued.

“No, I have the right to ask and you must agree,” Lord
John ordered. “You will be leaving with my family at first light.”

Jepson turned away and nodded. “I will begin
preparations.”

Lord John walked up to his old friend and placed his
hand on his shoulder. “I know you are angry with me. And I understand it. You
want to fight. But I am giving you charge over the most precious things in my
life. I trust you.
 
I know you would lay
down your life for them and if I can’t be there for them, I need you to be.”

Jepson lifted his hand and placed it over Lord John’s.
“I will protect them,” he promised.

“Thank you,” Lord John replied, stepping back and
turning away so Jepson didn’t see the emotion in his face. “Please remind them
how much I loved them.”

He began to walk out of the stables and stopped. “I
have a strongbox that I will send out here to be placed in the secret
compartment of the carriage. It will have all of the important papers
Evie
will need to reestablish herself in London as well as
enough money to keep them both comfortable. I will also include a copy of my
last will and testament.”

“I will see that it is well guarded,” Jepson replied.
“And Miss Meaghan’s equipment?”

Lord John smiled softly. “Bring it too,” he said. “You
never know when she’ll need it.”

With the household in
an uproar over the move to England, it was fairly easy for Meaghan to slip out
the kitchen door and dash through the gardens toward the stables.
 
Dressed in a clean shirt and breeches, she
had a little bounce in her step.
 
She was
excited to actually see the Eochaidh, but she had to be honest with
herself.
 
She was also anxious to see
Tristan.

Placing her hand on
her stomach, she could remember the way she felt when his hands had glided over
her skin. It had taken her breath away.
 
She had never felt anything like that before and she wanted to feel it
again. Her head filled with thoughts of Tristan, she wasn’t paying attention
when she walked boldly into the stables.

“May I ask what you
think you are doing, Miss Meaghan?” Jepson’s voice echoed in the otherwise
empty stables.

Meaghan jumped in
surprise. Jepson, only a few feet away from her, was securing a strongbox to an
interior panel of the coach.
 
She
couldn’t believe she allowed her mind to wander like that.
 
She smiled at Jepson and shrugged. “Oh,
nothing, I just thought I’d take a little ride,” she replied with a slight
shrug. “After all, we are leaving in the morning and I wanted to say goodbye to
my horse and the estate.”

Jepson straightened
from his task and faced her, his hands on his hips.
 
“Why certainly Miss Meaghan,” he said, his
voice laced with sarcasm. “It’s a perfect day for riding alone on the estate. Why
with the angry mob from the village on the one side and a crazed, power hungry
sorceress on the other side, one wonders why you didn’t bring a picnic lunch
along with you.”

Huffing slightly, she dropped all guise of pretense
and folded her arms over her chest. “I have to go Jepson, it’s important,” she
said. “And I won’t let you stop me.”

Eyes narrowed, he shook his head. “I might have been
injured yesterday, but that will not stop me from tying you up and sending
someone for your father,” he replied. “It is far too dangerous for you to go on
some joy ride.”

“I am going to meet with the Eochaidh.”

Jepson shook his head sharply. “You are what?”

“I’m going to meet with the Eochaidh in the Old
Woods,” she repeated pointedly. “I’m going to ask them to help us against
Morganna.
 
I am going to save my father’s
life. And you cannot stop me.”

Rocking back on his heels, Jepson considered her
statement for a moment. “And how do you plan to meet them?” he asked.

“You know the fae have always been drawn to me, and I
to them,” she began.

Jepson nodded.

“I have met someone who knows their patterns; where
they graze and water and where they camp for the night. He has promised to
guide me to them.”

“He?” Jepson asked, his eyebrows
raised
.

Meaghan sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yes, he,” she
said. “The same
he
who risked his
life for me last night and led the mob away from my hiding place.
 
The same
he
who saved my life this morning when I almost tumbled off a ravine.”

Jepson’s eyebrows
raised
even
higher.
“What?!?”

“I didn’t mean to bring that up,” Meaghan said in a
soft voice, her eyes glancing away.

“You already left the house this morning with no one
protecting you?”

“Yes, and you see, nothing happened,” she argued.

“Except that you nearly tumbled off a ravine and fell
to your death,” he exclaimed.

“But I didn’t,” she argued. “And that’s what matters.”

Swearing loudly in Romany, his native tongue, Jepson
strode away from her in frustration and then strode back.
 
Meaghan could tell that he was trying his
best not to yell at her.

He took a deep breath and, with his voice dangerously
calm, he began to slowly speak to her. “What matters is your safety,” he said.
“It matters to your father and it matters to me. What matters is that we get
you out of harm’s way, not throw you into the midst of it. What matters is that
you live a long, happy life and have many babies. That is what matters.”

Shaking her head sadly, tears filling her eyes, she
took a moment to keep the emotion from her voice and finally spoke. “No, what
matters is that I know I did all I could to save my father’s life,” she said
softly. “I will never be able to do those things you say if I know I walked
away from that chance. You can force me to go back to the house, but you also
condemn me to a life of guilt and pain.”

Running a hand through his thick black hair, he glared
at her for a moment. “Fine,” he spat. “I will go with you.
 
I will give you the chance to find the
Eochaidh, but it will be on my terms.”

“You can go to the edge of the Old Woods with me,” she
argued. “And you can guard the entrance, but you cannot come in with me.
 
The fae do not like the power Gypsies have
over them.
 
They will not come to me if
you are near.”

Inhaling sharply, he nodded his head. “You stand here
while I strap the last of the luggage to the carriage. All we await are the
portmanteaus for you and your mother.”

“Daisy will be sorting through things for a while
yet,” Meaghan said with a smile, remembering Daisy, dressed in the rose gown,
going through Meaghan’s things and deciding what she needed to bring. “We will
probably be back before she’s done.”

“And your mother?” Jepson asked.

“Mother is trying to pack for both
herself
and Father,” she replied. “And Father keeps getting in the way.
 
So, it will be a while for her too.”

Then she stopped and looked at Jepson, her mouth
dropping open. “You didn’t say Father’s luggage. You only were waiting for
Mother’s and my own,” she said, her eyes widening in realization. “Father isn’t
planning on coming, is he?”

“I cannot answer that question, Miss Meaghan,” Jepson
said.

Tightening her lips, she nodded. “Then it is even more
imperative that I meet with the Eochaidh,” she said determinedly. “I will not
let my father die.”

 
“Are you
daft?
 
Have you completely lost your
ever-loving mind?” Rufus exploded. “How much time have you given up, all for a
pretty face?”

“I calculated his time as man factoring in the moments
it took for the change to process,” Duncan inserted. “And I would say he has
aged approximately three months.
 
That
is, if the spell meant days as in a twenty-four hour period. If a day only
meant daylight hours, I would have to factor in the hours between sunrise and
sunset and divide by a divisor of sixty minutes and then calculate the hours in
a day in relationship to the months of the year…”

“Stop! Enough already, scholar,” Garrett cried, “You
are making my head spin.”

“I just wanted to be precise,” Duncan replied.

“Why don’t you just strike your hoof on the ground a
number of times, like any other good horsey?” Rufus laughed, demonstrating by
lifting his front leg and pawing his large hooved foot into the soft dirt.

“Enough,” Tristan interrupted. “We need to decide what
to do before she comes back. I say I bring her here and let her see all of us.”

“Oh, yes, let’s do that,” Garrett said sardonically.
“And then, perhaps, she can bring Morganna and we can all sit down with a nice
cup of tea.”

“She is not in league with Morganna,” Tristan argued.

“And you know that because?” Garrett asked. “Perhaps
because she has skin like, how did you put it, honeyed silk?”

Andrew chuckled. “Excellent jest, Sir Garrett.”

“It was not a jest, youngster,” Garrett replied. “I’ve
known many a man who has lost his way due to the machinations of a conspiring
woman.”

“Aye, and you now judge all womankind against that one
experience,” Rufus added. “The
lass does
not seem to
hold us harm. And the fae are drawn to her, so she is not in league with
Morganna.”

Tristan started to speak, but Rufus nudged him with
his large head. “Let me finish, lad,” he said. “She is not in league with
Morganna, though she could be tricked into revealing our whereabouts if we were
to trust her.”

“I trust her,” Tristan argued.

“You want to bed her,” Garrett said.

“If I were a man,” Tristan said, his nostrils flaring
as he rose on his hind legs.

“If you were a man, we wouldn’t be having this
argument,” Garrett replied calmly. “And I’d commend you for your taste, for she
is a comely lass.”

“She is of the Herdin line,” Duncan inserted. “And if
we help her, we are only helping ourselves. From what I can see, her father is
the last of their line and when he dies, so do our chances of ever returning to
Camelot and undoing the wrong that has been done.”

“If he dies, I say we turn to men and spend our last
days drinking good ale and keeping the company of hospitable women,” Garrett
said.

“How easy it is for those words to fall from your
mouth, Sir Garrett,” Rufus said solemnly. “But you forget I’ve a wife and bairn
at home. Lost to me forever unless this curse is taken from us. I do not share
your easy acceptance of our fate.”

“It is not an easy choice, but a logical one,” Garrett
argued. “We’ve been horses for more than a thousand years.
 
Have seen more than mortal man should see.
Have witnessed the failings and weaknesses of those who tried the help us, why
should this man, this final Herdin be any different?”

“Perhaps the failings have not been in the men called
to aid us, perhaps the failings have been our own,” Duncan suggested. “My
instructors, although men of science, spoke highly of faith. We must have faith
first, and then, only then, do the miracles happen.”

“I have faith in myself,” Garrett said, “and in you,
my companions, but no other.”

“What would it hurt, Garrett, this last time, to have
faith in something else?” Duncan asked. “Like a hypothesis. It will hurt
nothing if I am wrong.”

Garrett lowered his massive black head toward the
ground, his ebony mane hanging to one side, nearly touching the ground. The
others in the circle waited. Finally, he lifted his head and nodded. “I will
try your experiment, Duncan,” he said. “But my faith is placed in the powers
that be, not in a woman.”

“What does that mean?” Andrew asked. “Is Tristan going
to bring her here to meet us?”

“I vote no,” Garrett said. “We do not yet know if she
would trade her father’s life for ours.”

“I vote yes,” Tristan said. “She seeks our help, not
our demise.”

“I’m sorry,
laddie
, but I
vote no also,” Rufus said. “I do not doubt the lass’ intentions, but Morganna
may be using her.”

“I vote yes,” Andrew inserted. “I’d like to meet her,
Tristan. She’s so pretty.”

All eyes went to Duncan as he weighed the matter over
in his mind. “I’m sorry Tristan, when I weigh the risks with the benefits, at
this point I vote no,” he said. “Although, if you can determine her plan and,
if it is sound and worthy, my vote would indeed change.”

Nodding slowly, Tristan stepped back, out of the
circle. “I will abide by your wishes,” he said. “I’ll meet Meaghan and see if I
can determine why she wants to meet with us and if we can help her.”

“If she can help us,” Garrett corrected.

Tristan sighed. “Aye, if she can help us.”