Uncertain Magic

by Laura Kinsale

  He rose up on his elbow, loosened his grip on the knife, and laid it slowly, deliberately aside. Roddy would have spoken, would have wrapped the blanket around her and run to her husband to explain, but Geoffrey’s wariness stopped her. Explanations faded in her throat, impossible to prove, hopelessly weak—provocation and insult even to mention.

  She pulled the cover up to her throat. Faelan’s gaze flicked to the move. His mouth deepened into contempt. He leaned against the muddy doorframe and dropped her boots in front of him.

  “Pardon me. I was under the impression that you were in need of aid, my dear. I see that I was mistaken.”

  Geoffrey said, very quietly, “Will you listen for a moment?”

  “I think not.” Faelan’s lashes lowered. “I’ve listened for seven nights while my wife has made her excuses and left my house. I fear”—he looked up again, his eyes an inhuman blue—“I’m not in the mood for listening any longer.”

  Roddy could not help herself. She said in plaintive explanation, “I fell in the stream.”

  Faelan tilted his head. His smile was chilling. “A pity. I would have thought you’d know the way in the dark by now.”

  Which was true enough—she did know. I was trying to protect you, she wanted to cry, I was trying to keep you safe.

  Geoffrey sat up behind her. She felt the sweaty slip of his bare torso against her skin. He was deeply uneasy—unarmed and uncertain of Faelan’s temper, his eyes never leaving her husband’s right hand.

  “I’ve not dishonored your wife. Surely you know that.”

  Faelan said nothing.

  Geoffrey took a breath and eased to his feet. Perspiration from where her body had been molded to his chest slipped down his rib cage and made dark markings at the waist of his breeches.

  “Is it satisfaction you want?” he asked softly.

  “My friend,” Faelan’s voice was equally soft, heavy with mockery. “Surely we’re more civilized than that. You know I abhor violence in the name of honor.”

  Geoffrey half smiled, and shrugged. “I know you can kill me if we meet.”

  “I could kill you now, if I’d a mind to.”

  Geoffrey’s glance rested on the sword and moved upward. “Do you?”

  For a long moment Faelan stood, his dark figure still, his face carved in ice. Roddy felt Geoffrey’s tension rise until the veins in his forearms stood out under the strain of holding his reaction in check.

  With a vicious curse, Faelan turned abruptly away. He flipped the dirty curtain aside and strode out of the hut.

  Roddy dragged the blanket around her and leaped to her feet, stumbling after him toward the door.

  “Roddy—” Geoffrey’s hand fell on her shoulder. “For God’s sake, let him go.”

  “But—”

  “You aren’t going to catch him in that rig, anyway,” Geoffrey hissed. He grabbed what was left of her limp gown off a hook in the dead hearth and thrust it into her hands. The sound of hooves thudded in the little clearing outside. Geoffrey looked toward the wall, as if he could see Faelan through it. “He’s gone.” Geoffrey ran his hand across the back of his neck. “Lord God Almighty—I thought I was staring eternity in the face. I’ll tell you, Roddy—”

  He stopped short as MacLassar came hobbling on three legs into the cottage, batting the curtain aside with his snout. The piglet went straight to Roddy and sat up on his haunches to beg, waving one bandaged foot in the air.

  Spare me this, Geoffrey thought as Roddy fell to her knees and hugged the animal.

  “Go outside,” she ordered Geoffrey. “I have to dress.”

  He bowed. “Oh, of course, Miss Modesty. I’m only the fellow who nearly got himself murdered for trying to keep your skinny butt warm without a fire.”

  “Don’t try to blame me. This is all your fault. All of it. The stream, the fire, the guns—” Her voice rose as she recognized the connections. “The whole stupid rebellion is your fault!” She dropped the blanket and threw the damp dress over her head, wriggling into it with difficulty. Geoffrey paid no attention to her momentary nudity; he was busy buttoning his own shirt.

  “I realize you’re not very informed on politics,” he snapped, “But I don’t think you can pin the whole rebellion—Ho! I’m not sharing my breakfast with that pig!”

  “Too late,” Roddy said with vindictive satisfaction as MacLassar made short work of a loaf of hard bread. She lifted his foot and inspected the bandage, made of a ripped cravat and tied with careful skill.

  Faelan did this, she thought, and suddenly her eyes went blurry and her throat closed. The memory of his face in that first moment of betrayal rose up in numbing clarity.

  “I have to find him,” she mumbled, scrambling to her feet. “I have to explain.”

  Geoffrey caught her by both arms before she reached the door. “Poppet. Maybe you’d best let him cool—”

  She tore free. “He won’t hurt me. He wouldn’t.”

  “Wouldn’t he?” Geoffrey gripped her again. “Roddy, you don’t know him.”

  “I do!” She refused to acknowledge what was in Geoffrey’s mind. “You’re as bad as Earnest. Those are all lies—those things everyone says.”

  Geoffrey’s fingers dug into her flesh as he jerked her closer. “You saw him, just now. Do you think he wouldn’t have spitted us both if it pleased him?”

  “He was hurt,” Roddy cried. “We hurt him.”

  “He was in a murdering rage, my girl. If you don’t recognize the symptoms, I do. I’ve seen him shoot a poor bastard between the eyes with far less cause.” Chap barely out of leading strings—too witless to back down from issuing a challenge over his trollop of a fiancée. Geoffrey’s mind skipped back to the incident, and then to the girl. Pretty little jade. Wouldn’t mind tasting her wares again.

  Roddy shook out of his hold. “I won’t listen to this,” she shouted. She thrust her feet into her stiff shoes and swept MacLassar off the floor, ignoring his squeal of pain as she bumped his injured foot. With a snarl of disgust for men and their duels and their jealousy and their hypocritical morality, she stumped out the makeshift door.

  “Your laddie.” Senach’s lined face seemed at one with the gray ruin, with the blackened, collapsed timbers and the slow smoke that curled toward the leaden sky. “Ye will not be findin’ him here.”

  Roddy did not ask how he knew whom she sought. She shifted uneasily in her damp shoes, favoring a blistered heel, and said, “Have you seen him?”

  “I be seein’ him now.” Senach looked into the heart of the dead fire. “Oh, och, aye, I see him.”

  She took a breath, willing herself not to turn and run. She hated speaking to Senach; hated being so close to him that her gift was useless and her heart thumped with fear of her own exposure. “Where is he?” she whispered, and then despised herself for asking.

  As if she believed in his senile ravings.

  “Never mind,” she said, louder. There was no one at the burned-out mansion; not Martha nor Armand nor any of the little staff of servants who might know where Faelan had really gone. She started to turn away.

  “Ye will not be findin’ him,” Senach said. “Not that way.”

  “Well—” Roddy stopped, covering her apprehension with churlishness. “What way, then, for heaven’s sake?”

  He chuckled. “Aye, ’tis nettled ye be. And ’tis a far piece to walk. There’s better than that walkin’. There’s bide a while, and listen, and ask what needs askin’.”

  “I have no patience for riddles,” she snapped. “If you know where to find him, tell me.”

  “No patience. That I know.” He shrugged, shook his head. “You’re fearin’ yet. Still fearin’ your laddie.”

  A wash of guilt made her lips tremble. “What do you mean, fearing? I’m not afraid. I want to explain. I need to find him, and explain.”

  Senach tilted his head and smiled, in that blank, chilling way he had of laughing at her deepest terrors. “He won’t credit it. Just words only. No, he won�
�t credit that.”

  Roddy pressed her hands together. “You don’t even know what I’m talking about!”

  “Oh, aye—I do. You be speakin’ of another man. Coming between friends. Wonderful friends, and ye come between ’em, and thinkin’ there’ll be blood on it.”

  She realized she was breathing unnaturally hard. She took a step backward. “That’s not true.”

  “And how do ye know the truth?” Senach’s whispery old voice took on a sharper note. “Ye with the gift, ye who be turnin’ away and away from it, ye who could know if it pleased you.”

  “I told you,” she cried. “I told you I can’t! Not with Faelan.”

  “Cannot ye?” He looked her full in the face with his opaque eyes.

  Roddy squeezed her lashes shut against him.

  “Cannot ye?” Senach repeated.

  The silence stretched. Roddy bit her lip. She was shaking as hard as she had the night before.

  “Och, ye shame me, girl.”

  She heard him move, and when she opened her eyes, he was moving slowly across the empty forecourt. She watched him go with a relief that only made her shivering the greater, and a moment later turned away down the drive, running as fast as her aching feet would carry her.

  She had no idea where to go. Her small store of energy ebbed, and she came to a stumbling halt at the place where the road branched. To the south was Derrynane and the O’Connells’ home—miles away over Coomakista Pass. To the north was the army camp.

  She sat down, defeated. MacLassar came hobbling up, dragging his dirty little bandage gamely. She had forgotten him. The sight made her feel guilty and sorry and angry at once—that he had to follow her in this aimless wandering about the empty countryside. The sun hung at zenith, a bright opalescence in the overcast sky. Wherever Faelan had gone, by now he had to be far beyond where she could reach on foot. The small fields and stony hedges lay before her in a patchwork; the mountains rose into the drowsing low clouds behind. She laid her head across her arms and closed her eyes, tired and hungry and unable to think.

  She had no idea how much later it was when the touch of soldiers roused her gift. She lifted her head, stiff from sitting oddly, and searched the area suspiciously. After a moment, she saw them, a red splash against the green across the little valley.

  She sprang up. For an instant she had no strength to take a step, and then she gave a despairing cry and began to run again—down the hill toward the path to Geoffrey’s hiding place.

  Chapter 22

  “Dearest Papa,” Roddy wrote, and then stared at the paper.

  Dearest Papa, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—

  She made the pen move again. “I am writing with the utmost urgency. Two days ago, Earnest was arrested—”

  Earnest, my brother…Oh, God, Papa, I’m so afraid.

  “—along with Lord Geoffrey. They have been taken to Dublin to be charged with treason—”

  Papa, Papa, have you heard what they do to traitors? They’re hanged, Papa, and then their heads are—She closed her eyes and fought sickness. Outside the prison—on the palings—Oh, Papa, I can’t bear it—

  “You must come instantly. I have—”

  She looked up. There were voices and footsteps outside Maurice O’Connell’s study. Roddy felt her throat go dry as the lock turned and the door swung open.

  Faelan paused on the threshold.

  Seeing him was like a hard blow. She had expected to feel hate, disgust—but instead her heart reeled under the need to cling to him, to cry out her fear and desperation. As if he were deliverance, instead of treachery.

  He shut the door. The others outside drifted away. They felt sorry for Roddy; they were horrified at this event. They thought she would be glad that Faelan had come at last.

  But they did not guess what he had done.

  She sat staring at him, unable to speak or move. She was glad that her gift was useless now; glad that she did not have to see into the mind that could conceive such vengeance. Better that he should have murdered her and Geoffrey at the cottage, in the heat of anger, than coolly plan this atrocity. It was no action of the moment. It could not be. At one sweep, the arrests removed all that threatened or vexed her husband. The soldiers had withdrawn from Iveragh, Geoffrey was in bonds, and Earnest—who had wanted only to keep her safe and who had made the mistake of trying to intimidate with reckless threats—Earnest, too, was brought down and obliterated.

  Only Faelan was left, unpunished by law or decency.

  He crossed the room, and reached as if to embrace her. He was so good at it, so perfect in deception, his face a mask of exhaustion and worry. His hand came within an inch of her shoulder.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  A viper’s hiss could not have frozen him so fast. He stiffened, and an instant later drew back.

  “Forgive me,” he said. “I’m not yet aware of the new rules of our relationship.”

  “Forgive you.” Roddy turned away. Tears blurred the fragile lines and swirls of veneer on the writing desk. She put her fist to her mouth and whispered, “I will never forgive you.”

  The silence drank in her harsh words. She heard him move. A chair creaked, far away across the room.

  “It seems I’ve been misguided about the way of things,” he said lightly. Tautly. “I’ve been thinking that I was the injured party.”

  She turned on him. “Injured party!” Her mouth curved in vicious humor. “Oh, God, I wish you were injured. I wish you were dead! I’d kill you this moment if I knew a way.”

  He had been sitting and looking a little aside, out the window at the budding branch that whipped and scraped the glass behind her in the rising wind. At that he lifted his eyes. “Little girl,” he said, “I think you know the way all too well.”

  She took a breath that became a sob. “Oh, no. I’m not like you, Faelan; I don’t have that kind of strength. To turn on what I’ve loved and destroyed it—”

  “But we aren’t talking of what you’ve loved, are we? We’re talking of me, of what’s between us—” He stood up, strode to the desk, and took her chin in his hands. “You’ve destroyed that…” His fingers pressed painfully into her skin. “Or was there nothing to destroy? Was it all my hope—my fantasy—that we could make a life here? That there might be some affection in it. Some trust and loyalty.” He let go of her suddenly. “At least a pretense of it.” He shook his head and grimaced. “I’ve known better than to ask for love. The word comes too easily off your sweet lips, cailin sidhe. A fairy gift, all artifice and no substance. All shining surface, like a castle in the distance, and I’ve tried—God, when I think of how I’ve tried to reach it, like some besotted schoolboy—”

  “Of course I don’t love you,” she shouted. She stumbled out of the chair and backed away. “I hate you. I hate you. You’re a murderer—a beast—Why should I love you, when you’d as soon poison me as look at me, if I should get in the way of what you want? I’m afraid. Afraid of you. Afraid and sick at what you’ve done.”

  She found her words become chillingly real as she raved. When she spoke of hate and love, he was still human, still under control, but when she spoke of fear she saw the change, the cold rage that took him and drove the natural color from his face.

  “Afraid of me,” he repeated in a voice of sudden, icy calm. “It’s late for that, my lady.”

  She stared at him, holding herself upright and trembling.

  He glanced at the desk. “And what’s this, then? A letter to Papa? A cry for rescue?” He swept up the paper and began to read in a loud sneer: “‘Dearest Papa, I am writing with the utmost—’”

  The words stopped as if garroted.

  For longer, much longer than it took to read the few remaining words, he looked down at the letter. She could not see his face. The paper moved, crackled in his hand. He dropped the sheet as if it burned him.

  “You trapped them,” she cried. “As if they were nothing but animals!” She drew a choking breath. “If it had only bee
n Geoffrey I might not have guessed, but you sent Earnest into it! You told him where Geoffrey was and you told him to go there, and then you sent the soldiers after him with that trumped-up charge that when he’d tried to arrange passage, it was for himself and Geoffrey, instead of me.”

  Faelan grabbed her by both arms. “How do you know that?”

  She would not tell him. She did not even want to remember those horrible moments when she’d watched them lead Earnest and Geoffrey past in irons—when Earnest had seen her and shouted in his mind for her to stay back, not to interfere—to stay free and get help.

  Not from Faelan, Earnest had warned as he stared at her with his silent orders. Never trust Faelan, whose doing this was.

  She glared up at her husband with furious hate. “It makes no difference how I know. It’s the truth. I know it’s the truth.” She put both hands against his chest and shoved.

  Faelan tightened his grip and shook her. “I told your damned brother to take you to hell with him,” he snarled. “And I told him where to find you.”

  “Then you intended to include me too?” She twisted away, her arms throbbing where he’d held her. “Well—that part didn’t work. I’m a coward—we have that much in common, you and I. I stood by the roadside and watched, and they thought I was a cottier woman.” Her voice took on volume. “Do you understand that, Faelan?” She was almost screaming. “I stood there and watched them take away my brother and my friend—”

  “Your friend!” he roared.

  She took a step back, her heart thumping. Faelan narrowed his eyes. “You aren’t a coward,” he said softly. “Not while you stand there and say that to my face.”

  Roddy drew her shoulders back. “You’re a fool, Faelan.”

  A wave of cynical disgust crossed his face. “Aye, I am that.” He reached into his pocket and took out a small package. “O’Connell gave me this. It came with his last shipment.”

  He tossed the packet onto the desk. Roddy watched it bounce and slide on the polished wood with the force of his careless throw. When she looked up again, he was at the door. Without a word he slammed it behind him.