The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) (31 page)

Her mother pushed her hair off her shoulder. “You know, lass, it’s the strangest thing, but I don’t remember the end of the story at all.”

***

Aileen tore down the path, the wind blowing her hair wild and her mind spinning. Ignoring her mother’s call, she set off for the wild part of the island where only the barest of grass poked from the stone. When she got there she had no place left to go, no place but down to a ribbon of shore washed with surf strong enough to scour rock from the cliff.

There she paced, rubbing her arms against the wind, watching the glitter of Galway Bay and the boats bobbing upon it, seeing only Rhys’s face as he sat upon his steed and pointed down the hill toward the skeleton of his castle, the child of his dreams.

She had told him it was sacrilege. He’d scoffed at her warnings. Would it have made any difference if she told him that by tearing down his dream, he could once again be whole—as handsome and unmarred as he’d been before the wretched thing had climbed from his shoulder to his face? He’d scoff. He’d call it the talk of superstition and paganism. He wouldn’t believe, not Rhys the unbeliever. He wouldn’t heed her, the woman who had cheated him out of a healing.

She buried her head in her knees. She sensed the
Sídh
around her, trilling their soft music, agitated, uneasy. She knew the pain of their cousins in Wales. She’d stood upon that tortured ground and heard the screams. She’d felt the vibrations in every stretch of skin and bone. She had tried to save them, not even knowing that with the healing of one would come the healing of the other.

You belong there.

No. She shook her head between her knees as the words drifted to her on Otherworldly music. What was she to do? Go and live among the Welsh, make her living as a healer, always under the shadow of Rhys’s castle, seeing him only from afar on feast–days, remembering the nights they spent in his bed? Away from her family, away from the only people who truly knew who and what she was, and made no bones about it?

She lifted her head and peered out to the western horizon, to the faintest stretch of masts and flutter of sail at the bay’s inner end. Dafydd’s ship was still there, awaiting repairs.

I can’t go back.

She didn’t have the strength to do this.

The
Sídh
eased their swarming. They settled down around her like thistledown riding off a breeze. Aileen took a shaky breath and whispered for forgiveness, over and over. A heavy languor swept through her. She lay down upon the rock, curling her knees tight into her chest. She was so tired, so very, very, tired. She was weary to the marrow of her bones.

The sea breeze turned oddly gentle. She listened to it rustle through the scrubby grass, and then heard hollow music rising from the secret caverns that riddled this end of the island. The suck and ebb of the sea. The hush of sand sifting through stone. Ma wouldn’t miss her for hours, she thought. In the few days she’d been back, she’d noticed that there were hands enough to do the work. She wasn’t needed. What difference would it make if she lay here for a while and bathed in the uncertain sunshine? Perhaps here she could finally sleep a dreamless sleep.

Strange, she thought, as she drifted into slumber. She heard no cawing or screeching, nothing but the rumble of the waves. . . . The breeze rushed so gently over her it was as if birds brushed the tips of their wings over her skin, as if invisible hands trailed her hair off her face.

Strange . . .

Chapter Nineteen

W
ith every slap of his horse’s hooves in the mud, Rhys cursed the north tower. What had possessed him to start construction on the marshy puddle of the northern edge of the island, instead of the solid rock of the southern end? And why was it that he’d never noticed how soft the ground was when he’d first walked the site? The earth caved deeper with every load of stone.

He dug his heels into his mount. The horse lunged up the path that led to the homestead. Three months of work for a tower that teetered over the river. Now it threatened to topple all its well–hewn stones and hard–made mortar into the current before midsummer. True, his brothers’ raiding had kept him on horseback night and day, away from supervising the building. But he shouldn’t have to be there watching the unloading of every stone. He would ship that master–mason back to Ireland and search for another if it wouldn’t take so damn long to find a replacement.

Wouldn’t Aileen have had a mouthful to say about this?

He leaned low over the saddle and set his horse to racing across the yard, trying to close his mind against the memories. He pounded over the wooden bridge and startled a clutch of dusty men milling around the stables. His gaze drifted over them, recognized a few of the armed men he’d sent to Ireland to guard her. So they were back, he thought. He swung his leg off the horse and forced himself not to look for a wild head of red hair amid the crowd.

Dafydd strode out of the mead–hall. His thin purple mantle slapped back to reveal the yellow silk lining as he strode straight to Rhys’s side. “You look like the hounds have been at you, brother.” Dafydd’s eyes gleamed bright and hard. “I heard that you’ve been having some trouble.”

“The same trouble we have every year. I grant you one night of rest.” Rhys brushed by his brother and headed toward the mead–hall. He didn’t want to hear her name spoken. “You’ll be taking the evening patrol to the north tomorrow.”

“And thank you for welcoming me back.” Dafydd fell into step beside him. “Don’t you want to know that we fought gales every step of the way to Ireland? We were forced to port in Galway for nearly a week before the ship was mended enough to put back to sea.”

Rhys frowned. He remembered how battered Aileen had looked when he’d taken her out of the hold that morning on Aberffraw. “You can regale me with every lurch of the ship over dinner.”

“Aren’t you going to ask about her?”

“No.”

He’d done what he had to do. He’d given her freedom. He’d sent her back where she belonged. For the first time in all these years, he’d done something right. He wanted to shut it out, even the memory of it, every last thing that evoked her name, her scent, her voice. He wanted to close the door upon the pleasure that he’d never deserved. To think upon Aileen was to think upon a magic he could never understand, a love he could never accept, a joy that he’d destroyed with his own hands. That part of his life was over, the rest stretched before him like a dry and dusty road.

“We’ve done some work on the castle in your absence.” Rhys pushed open the door to the mead–hall. “But next year I’m sending to England for a new master–mason. This one isn’t worth the—”

He stopped in his tracks and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and then blinked them to clear the illusion from his sight.

He would redden Marged’s hide for bringing up a new bondswoman with hair that unruly shade of red. She must be sent off immediately. Even as all these thoughts flew through his mind, he knew only one woman stood as stiff as that, only one could look straight back at him, only one could cause his heart to stop in his chest for one, two, three beats until it throbbed finally on a spear of pain.

He’d forgotten how tall she was. He’d forgotten the jut of her jaw, the angular shape of her shoulders and elbows, the way her woolen tunic fell from her chest to her feet with only the sag of her belt to break the drape of cloth. He curled his fingers into his palms, stanching the itch to cross the mead hall and thrust them into that hair.

Dafydd took a step closer behind him. “She came of her own free will. She has something she wants to say to you, and if you’re any kind of man, brother, you’ll listen.”

Figures moved around the mead–hall, slipped through the shadows, their footsteps furtive on the paving stones. Horns of mead clattered upon the table. Weapons jingled. Wool and linen rustled until the door eased shut for the last time and left them in silence. Rhys stood frozen to the ground as if she’d cast some witch’s spell upon him. She drifted toward the hearth. Moments passed and her lips opened, then closed tight, again, then opened only to close anew. His gaze fell to her abdomen.

He said, “You are with child.”

She stood so straight and thin, but he reasoned that it was still early. A woman could easily hide her pregnancy at three or four months along. A strange sort of wonder thawed his shock.
A babe.
A son, perhaps. Illegitimate, yes, something he’d vowed he’d never have, lest a bastard turn on his half–brothers as his half–brothers had done to him, but he had no other sons. And he’d never tried to stop it, not with this woman. He’d told her on the last day they spoke that any child of hers would be his heir.

She absently ran a hand over her belly and shook her head once. “It was no child that brought me here.”

The elation barely born in him withered and died. Far be it for the powers that be to grant him a gift as fine as a child of his own.

He said, “I gave you your freedom.”

“You gave me something that had always been mine. You were the only one who had ever tried to take it away.”

“So you’ve come all the way back to scold me for kidnapping you.”

“My scolding falls upon your ears as it would fall upon stones.” A strand of her hair slipped out of the netting and breezed across her cheek. “I’ve come to ask leave to stay here in your kingdom.”

He pulled the ties of his cloak and caught it before it slithered to the floor.

“I was of little use at Inishmaan,” she continued, her gaze fixed on the rushes at her feet. “My father is a fine doctor, and hale and hearty enough to see to the needs of the islanders, even some of the mainlanders when he’s called upon. There’s no need for two healers, and seeing there’s no chance that a woman of my age will find a husband, I felt myself nothing but a burden to my family.”

“They turned you out.”

“They did no such thing.” Those gray eyes flashed. “They wanted me to stay.” Her voice caught. “But I am not needed as I am needed here. A woman must look to her future.”

He
needed her here. Already the blood pumped hard through his body, the memories rose too fierce to ignore.

“There’s not a doctor for twenty leagues from here,” she said. “And the closest midwife must travel such hills that by the time she reaches a bondswoman in labor the child is already born—or both mother and child are dead.” Those lashes fell to hide her eyes. “I would be no burden to your estate. All I ask of you is a hut among those of the freemen at the base of the cliff, and mayhap a bit of land to make a garden by.”

He waited for more, some sign of coquettishness, of weakening, anything to give him leave to cross this hearth and press her over the trestle table as he’d once taken her in the kitchens, knowing even as he waited that he couldn’t possibly resurrect what he’d already murdered.

“You think you can just live here,” he said, “as if you never shared my bed.”

Those eyes of gray turned silver–bright. “I’m not the first peasant to take to her lord’s bed. No doubt I won’t be the last.”

The shaft of the knife sank deep.

“You don’t have to worry, my lord. I won’t flatter myself by strutting among the bondswomen as if I’d caught the tail feathers of a peacock, if that’s what worries you.”

“You’ve not learned to hold your tongue.”

“I know my presence can’t be pricking your conscience, for you’ve told me you haven’t one.” She waved toward the north, toward some distant place outside these walls. “If you don’t want to see me each time you ride out, you’ve enough land to set me aside. Get me a hut beyond Arthur’s grave or in some isolated place in the woods. Do you think it matters to me where I live, so long as I live by my own hands?”

“And if I say no?”

“Dafydd has promised me safe passage elsewhere.” Rhys turned and glared at Dafydd, who stood there glaring back, like the conscience Rhys wasn’t supposed to have.

So Aileen was to have a hut at the base of the cliff and he was to spend his life seeing her as she made the rounds, mending wounds, delivering babies, and laughing with young bondsmen. She was strong and healthy enough. She’d marry in the passing of time. She wouldn’t be the first woman who went to the altar not as pure as the day she was born. He would see the pity in her eyes as she straightened from her labors, ripe in pregnancy, children at her skirts, to watch him ride by.