Teresa Medeiros - [FairyTale 02] (3 page)

A child!
Somehow it galled her more that he’d called her a child again than that he’d agreed she was fat. How could she have ever thought she loved this arrogant lad? Why, she loathed him!

She drew herself up to her full four feet three inches. “I suppose just because you live in a grand castle and ride a pretty pony, you fancy yourself a man full grown.”

“I’ve still got some growing to do. As do you.” He wrapped one of her flaxen braids around his hand, drawing her nearer so he could lean down and whisper, “But my father believes me man enough to escort a most esteemed guest to our castle on this very night.”

Gwendolyn jerked the braid out of his hand and tossed it over her shoulder, terrified he was going to tweak her nose or pat her on the head as if she were some drooling puppy. “And just who would that guest be?”

He straightened and folded his arms over his chest, looking smug. “Oh, that’s one secret I could never trust to a mere slip of a girl.”

Horrid boy. Wretched boy. “Then I’d best be on my way, hadn’t I, so you can attend to your
manly
duties.”

She started up the hill, absurdly pleased that he actually looked taken aback by her desertion. “If you’d like, I can give you a hint,” he called after her.

She refused to flatter him with a reply. She simply stopped and waited in stony silence.

“He’s a true hero!” Bernard exclaimed. “A prince among men.”

Since Gwendolyn had thought the same thing about him only a few minutes ago, she was none too impressed. She started walking again.

“If that lad troubles you again, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”

Gwendolyn squeezed her eyes shut against a rush of longing. Only a short while ago, she would have given her eyeteeth for the privilege of claiming him as her
champion. Now, gathering the tatters of her pride around her, she turned stiffly to face him and asked, “Is that a request or a command?”

As he rested his hands on his lean hips, she realized she’d once again made the mistake of defying him. “Consider it a command, lass. After all, someday I’ll be your laird and master as well as his.”

Gwendolyn tilted her nose in the air. “ That’s where you’re wrong, Bernard MacCullough. For no man shall ever be my laird and master!”

She wheeled around and went marching toward the village, missing the smile that played around Bernard’s mouth as he whispered, “I wouldn’t be so sure of that, lass, if I were you.”

1761

T
HE
DRAGON
OF
WEYRCRAIG prowled the crumbling parapets of his lair, fighting the urge to throw back his head and unleash a savage roar. He’d been a prisoner of the daylight for too long. Only when the shadows of night cloaked Weyrcraig could he cast aside his chains and roam unfettered through the castle’s maze of passages.

The darkness was his dominion now, the only kingdom left to him.

As he gazed upon the sea, the salt hanging thick in the air stung his eyes. But the chill bite of the wind failed to penetrate the armor of his skin. Since coming to this place, he’d grown numb to all but the harshest of provocations. A whispered endearment, a tender caress, the silky heat of a woman’s breath against his skin had all become as distant and bittersweet to him as the memory of a dream.

A storm was breaking over the far horizon. The rising wind whipped the North Sea into a boiling froth,
sending the towering waves crashing against the cliffs below. Lightning strung its web from cloud to cloud, shedding little light, but leaving the inky darkness even more impenetrable in its wake.

The approaching storm reflected his wildness back at him like the shards of a broken mirror. The distant rumble of thunder could have been the ghostly roar of cannons or the growl trapped in his throat. He searched his soul, but could find no trace of humanity. As a child, he had feared the beast that slept beneath his bed, only to come to this place and discover he was that beast.

He was what they had made of him.

He bared his teeth in an expression few would have mistaken for a smile as he envisioned them cowering in their beds, trembling to imagine his wrath. They believed him to be a monster, without conscience or mercy. He had made it clear to them that his demands were law, his will as irresistible as the siren song of the wind wailing through the lonely glens and rugged mountain passes.

The cowardly ease of their surrender should have brought him some satisfaction, but it only whetted his hunger, a hunger that gnawed a burning hole in his belly and threatened to devour him from the inside out. Whenever he was caught in its grip, he longed to hurl their meager offerings back in their faces and scorch them to ashes with the searing flame of his breath.

They were supposed to be cursed, but he was the one who felt the fires of damnation licking at his soul.

He was the one doomed to wander this shattered ruin of his dreams without even a mate to ease his loneliness.

As he searched the churning clouds, his gut clenched with a fresh hunger, keener and more piercing than any that had come before. He might never be able to satisfy his insatiable appetites. But on this night, he would no longer deny himself some tasty morsel to take the edge off his longing. On this night, he would seek to satisfy the primal desire that lurked in the belly of every beast—even man.

On this night, the Dragon would hunt.

Gwendolyn Wilder did not believe in dragons.

So when a desperate pounding sounded on the door of the manor, followed by a frantic shout of “ The Dragon’s on the rampage, he is—he’s goin’ to murder us all in our beds!” she simply groaned, rolled onto her stomach, and dragged the pillow over her head. She’d almost rather have been murdered in her bed than snatched from her dreams by the ravings of a blithering idiot.

She plugged her ears with her fingers, but could still hear Izzy stomping across the hall below, muttering a litany of curses invoking various parts of God’s anatomy, some less holy than others. A nasty thud was followed by a whimper that made Gwendolyn wince. Izzy had undoubtedly kicked the hapless hound who had dared to trip her.

Gwendolyn rolled to a sitting position on the heather-stuffed tick, dismayed to find herself alone. She would rather have awoken with her youngest sister’s elbow jabbing her in the ear than learn that Kitty was on the prowl.

She threw back the sheet, scattering a stack of Royal Society pamphlets across the timber floor. The sheet was pocked with scorch marks from all the hours she’d spent reading by candlelight beneath its shelter. Izzy had always sworn that someday Gwendolyn would burn them all to death in their beds.

Gwendolyn eyed the bed on the other side of the loft, and was not the least bit surprised to find it empty. Even the Dragon would have been hard-pressed to murder Nessa in her bed, since she was most frequently to be found in someone else’s. Nor was Nessa always fastidious enough to require a bed. There were several strapping lads in the village who whispered that for a certain bonny Wilder lass, any haystack or mossy riverbank would do. As she threw a shawl over her nightdress, Gwendolyn could only pray that her older sister wouldn’t meet a dire fate at the beefy hands of some jealous wife.

Gwendolyn reached the splintery railing of what had been a minstrel’s gallery in the manor’s finer days just in time to see Izzy hurl open the main door. Ham, the tinker’s apprentice, stood framed in the doorway, his eyes gleaming with fear.

“The devil take ye, lad!” Izzy roared. “How dare ye
come poundin’ on the door o’ decent Christian folk at this hour!”

Although visibly shaken by the sight of the stout maidservant with hair wrapped in rags, Ham stood his ground. “If ye don’t wake yer mistress, ye auld cow, the devil’s goin’ to take us all. He’ll most likely burn the village to the ground if we don’t give him what he wants.”

“And just what would that be this time?” Izzy demanded. “Yer scrawny gizzard on a platter? “

Ham scratched his head. “No one knows for sure. That’s why I’ve been sent to fetch yer mistress.”

Gwendolyn rolled her eyes. She never thought she’d have cause to rue her love of reading. But with Reverend Throckmorton away, she was the only one who could decipher the Dragon’s writing.

She might have crept back to bed and left Ham to Izzy’s mercy had her papa not chosen that moment to drift into the hall. He floated out of the darkness of his chamber like a ghost of the handsome, vibrant man she remembered from her childhood, his ivory nightshirt hanging on his wasted frame and his fine white hair bristling around his head like the spores of a dandelion. Gwendolyn started down the stairs without thought, her heart clenching in her chest. She wasn’t sure which was more painful—his helplessness or her own.

“Gwennie?” he called plaintively.

“I’m right here, Papa,” she assured him, catching him by the elbow before he could stumble over the dog as Izzy had done. The dog gave her a grateful look.

“I heard such a turrible commotion,” her father said, turning his rheumy gray eyes on her. “Is it the English? Has Cumberland returned? “

“No, Papa,” Gwendolyn replied, gently smoothing a grizzled lock of his hair. Alastair Wilder sometimes forgot his own name, but he’d never forgotten the ruthless English lord who had robbed him of his sanity nearly fifteen years ago.

“Cumberland’s not coming back,” Gwendolyn promised him. “Not tonight and not ever.”

“Are yer sisters safely abed? ‘Twouldn’t do to have their virtue stolen by those wretched redcoats.”

“Aye, Papa, they’re safely abed.” It was easier to lie than to explain that since so many of the clan’s young men had fled the village to seek their fortunes elsewhere, Glynnis would probably welcome a regiment of lusty English soldiers with open arms while Nessa welcomed them with open legs. It pained her to think of her sweet Kitty straying down that path. “ You needn’t fear Cumberland or his redcoats,” Gwendolyn assured him. “ ‘Tis nothing but that silly Dragon again, making mischief at our expense.”

A feverish tinge brightened his cheeks, and he wagged a finger at her. “Ye must tell them to do whatever he says. If they don’t, ‘twill surely be the ruin of us all.”