The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2)

by Lisa Ann Verge

  She said, “I’ll ask you to forgive my behavior today.” Calm logic, aye, that’s a thing he would understand. She had enough brothers to know something of the way a man’s mind worked. “I should have leashed my tongue in the presence of a guest.”

  He stood still as stone in half–shadow, the bladder gripped in his hand, the laces of his boots trailing upon the floor, those blue eyes burning holes into her back as she made her way around the fire to the bench.

  He said in a low, dangerous voice, “You sound like a pickpocket who is very sorry she was caught.”

  Her hair slid over her face as she slipped the tray upon the table. “I am what I was when you stole me away—a simple peasant girl.”

  “The woman who offered her body to me on New Year’s Day was not a woman to flinch at shadows.”

  “Aberygaun is no shadow. In my world, such a place is as sacred as a church.”

  “You are not in your world anymore.” His voice rumbled low, in a way she’d long become familiar with. “You are in mine.”

  “Our worlds are not so different.”

  “Oh, they are, Irish. I don’t understand yours, and you cannot enter mine.” He stepped toward her, curled his hand around her waist and dragged her against his chest. “Only in this bedroom do they meet—”

  “There’s a bit of arrogance.” She elbowed out of his grip, then skittered away to sit on the far end of the bench. She seized the spindle to have something to occupy her nervous hands. “You don’t have a world of your own, separate from all others.”

  “My world isn’t peopled with little mischievous creatures that live in flowers, or dragons who breathe fire.”

  “Your own people would disagree with you.” She tugged up threads of wool with shaking hands. “Haven’t I heard stories about Arthur’s Grave and Aberygaun and that lake up in the heights whose name I can’t wrap my tongue around. Marged has told me—”

  “Is Marged the goddess of this world of yours?”

  She didn’t answer right away. His overtunic sailed through the air and crumpled in a ball near her feet.

  She pinched the wool into a strand of thread between her fingers, wishing she could mold this man’s mind as easily. “Every home I’ve entered in this kingdom has a bowl of milk set by the fire for the faeries, and a tale or two about the woods nearby or a sacred yew tree or a curve of river. This Wales of yours is peopled by the Y Tylwyth Teg. Your disbelief won’t make it otherwise.”

  He slapped the bladder back on the table. “I’m tired of this argument. You’ve grown no wiser these past hours.”

  Oh, no, Rhys, there’s where you are wrong. In these past hours I’ve grown as wise as Solomon.

  “It’s a poor man who believes only the evidence of his senses.” She crushed the spindle into her lap. “If you were deaf, would you insist there was no such thing as music?”

  “I would feel the vibrations of the harp–strings.” He snapped open a buckle of his chain–mail tunic. “That’s a deaf man’s music.”

  “What of this stuff around us?” She whirled the spindle in the air as his chain–mail shirt clanked to the floor. “This stuff that fills our lungs with each breath? Can you see it? Can you smell it?” She rolled her fingers into her palm. “Can you hold it in your hand?”

  “The wind blows it against my skin. I can feel it when it’s hot, when it’s cold.”

  “And what of a thought? A dream,” she added, pressing her temple. “Can you see, smell, or touch that?”

  “I’ve had lessons in philosophy, Aileen, more than you.” He yanked the collar of his shirt wide. “My castle was once a dream, but now it is real—more real than any of your faery–creatures.”

  “What of my thoughts,” she retorted. “You can’t see them. Does that mean they don’t exist?”

  “The workings of a woman’s mind are one of the world’s greatest mysteries.”

  Didn’t he have an answer for everything, standing there and peeling off his clothes until only the loosest shirt and the sweep of his braies remained for decency’s sake? Well, in spite of the fox’s cunning, many a woman wears its skin.

  “What about God, Rhys?” She jabbed the spindle in the cloud of wool. “Can you feel Him?”

  The devil’s own grin spread across his lips as he toed the heel of his boot to nudge the leather off his foot. “Best you don’t ask me questions you don’t want the answers to.”

  “All of Christendom believes in him and have never seen him, heard him, or felt him, and God thinks the better of them for it.” She swept behind the bench, to put distance between herself and that dangerous smile. “Are they all ignorant peasants, too?”

  “Some must stick their fingers into the nail–holes before they believe.”

  “You’ve done just that, yet you stand before me talking nonsense. I’m talking about the faery.” She swept his linen tunic up off the ground and crumpled it into her midriff. “The one who told you about me last Midsummer’s Eve.”

  That put a stop to his mockery. She could tell from the way he reared up from untying his boots and then granted her the masked side of his profile.

  “Marged,” he said, with an edge to his voice, “has been tapping into the ale.”

  “Why did you keep that story hushed?” She shook out his linen shirt and hung it on a hook by the bed. “That’s a tale for generations.”

  “He was nothing but an Irish traveler.” He kicked off the boot. “Fleet–footed and full of foolishness.”

  “He disappeared into the air.” The boot skidded to a stop by her feet. “He left not a single sign of his passing.”

  “The jongleurs of Llywelyn’s court make a living from disappearing behind a puff of smoke. Ask Tudur Aled, if you can face his mockery.”

  “You thought that little man was a trickster, then?”

  “A wily Irish one.”

  “Then why did you travel across an ocean on his advice?”

  “Dafydd’s idea.” He nudged the metal pile of his chain mail shirt and retrieved the bladder of mead. “Dafydd has no more sense than you, and less excuse.”

  “Oh, such a hard man you are, Rhys, with an answer for everything. So blame my kidnapping on Dafydd. But in the end, it was you who insisted I stay here.” It would be many a year before she forgot that moment on Arthur’s Grave when he’d taken her hands in his and demanded a magic she was too afraid to show. “It was you who insisted I had magic in my hands.”

  “I saw what you could do.” One shoulder rolled in a massive shrug. “There is real evidence of your skill.”

  “What kind of evidence? Light coming from my fingers? The singing of hosts of angels?”

  “With my own eyes I’ve seen you bring men wounded unto death back to the living.”

  Frustration made her bold. “Then you do believe in magic.”

  He didn’t respond. She found herself standing before that looming hulk of a man with her feet spread and her fists planted on her hips, staring into that stony face and wondering what it would take to make it crack, what it would take for her to see the pith of the man, to get him to kiss her.

  “Maybe,” he said, his voice dropping, “I have other reasons for keeping you here.”

  No, she could not melt, not now, and she couldn’t bear the arrow–points of his lies. “Don’t be telling me pretty things like I’m some wellborn chit.”

  “You need some of that.”

  “I know what my reflection shows.” Her voice broke. She hated herself for it. “I went to you, in the end, not the other way around, so don’t you be twisting that truth.” Her tunic pressed against her chest as her breath came too fast, too hard. “By the love of God, Rhys, is it so hard to admit that you believe in magic?”

  He didn’t answer. She closed her eyes. Stubborn, wretched man. If the Lord himself descended upon this room in all his radiant glory, no doubt Rhys would call him nothing more than a trick of the light. It was beyond her comprehension what the Sídh thought she could do to stop a man
from building his only dream.

  “I am human,” he said suddenly. “That’s where I’m damned.” He approached and trailed his fingers down her arm, then raised her hand, palm up, between them. “Damned to look for miracles in the hands of an Irishwoman, and fool enough to hope.”

  Hope.

  The word chimed between them. She saw, in the tight crimp of the skin around his eyes, the price he paid to say them. Rhys didn’t want to hope. Aye, she understood that. Hope was a teasing sort of flame.

  “You want me to believe in faeries, Aileen?” His voice rustled like bed linens in the morning. “There’s a way to make me believe in anything you want.”

  “Tell me what to do.”

  He whirled a lock of her hair around his finger. A familiar warmth suffused her limbs. That veil descended upon them, that misty sort of magic she felt whenever they drew this close, that small world of their own they disappeared into every night only to emerge in the cold bright light of morning to pretend it never existed. The air trembled between them. Her gaze fell to his mouth, to those lips always twisted in cynicism, and she found herself rising to the balls of her toes, wanting to kiss them soft, wanting to kiss him and be kissed by him with a fierceness that gripped her deep.

  “Prove to me that strange little visitor spoke words of wisdom.” He slid his fingers down her throat. “Heal me. Then we’ll talk of magic.”

  She moved by instinct. Hadn’t she thrown all caution to the winds New Year’s Day at the hut? She found the ties of his mask and pulled them free whilst his pupils widened, whilst his gaze set upon her with new intensity. No salves this night. No more hiding behind pretense. Perhaps that was what had prevented her healing from flowing all these months. Perhaps she had to trust this man who trusted no one, had to show him the true face of trust, as she was doing now, baring her gift to him in the haze of firelight.

  The tingling began in her palms as she peeled off the leather and let it cave onto his shoulder. He slid a hand around her waist and drew her up against him. She bit down on the moan that rose to her throat at the feel of his body hard against hers. She’d wondered during all those years tending women in childbed how a woman could let herself suffer through such agony over and over again, why she would let a man near her after tasting death in the midst of life. Now she knew why. Now she knew the heat–madness that boiled a woman’s senses, the yawning ache of an empty womb, the fire that only a man’s touch could quench—only this man’s touch.

  But she mustn’t think about that, not now. Without hesitation she laid the palm of her hand on his ravaged cheek and, while waiting for the healing current to course through her, she pressed her lips against the throbbing of his throat. She must think of the healing. She must show this man the faery–gift that she’d loved and hated, the faery–gift that had set her apart from others and brought her both reverence and fear.

  Let me heal him. Let me heal him.

  She closed her eyes. She heard the murmurs of the men in the mead–hall drifting in through the door. She felt the faintest heat rising up from the center hearth. She summoned all her will as he bent his strong neck and tasted the skin of her forehead.

  Please …

  Then she let her palm slip off his cheek and trail down his chest. Her fingers scraped through the whorls of hair and tugged the open edges of his shirt. She kissed the hollow of his chest and pressed her forehead against him to hide the tears surging in her eyes. She wondered why the faeries had brought her to this godforsaken place, and then had stolen from her the one gift that could save the man.

  Caught up in that other sort of magic, he swept both arms around her and hefted her up against his chest. She hid her face in his shoulder to hide her failure. Let him believe this was part of the healing, she thought.

  Don’t let him know that my magic has failed.

  He carried her to the bed. She sank into the softness of fur and linen and his weight sank atop her. She closed her eyes as the frantic tugging began, of tunics and tangled laces and garters. A breath of cold air kissed her breasts, her naked belly, and rolled over the powerful stretch of his back as he nudged her legs apart.

  She buried her hands in his hair as he kissed his way across her breast. His fingers played her body as skillfully as a bard the quivering strings of a harp. A yearning swelled inside her. She wanted to give. She wanted to grant him something to believe in, someone to believe in. She wanted to peel that mask off his face. Not the one stitched of leather, but the one stitched with threads of anger and bitterness that he wore even now, in the sweet heat of their intimacy. She longed to see him smile. She ached for the breath of his kiss.

  She clutched his head to the nook of her throat and squeezed back tears as she realized the worst had happened. Her healing had turned in upon itself.

  She’d fallen in love with her captor.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The wench didn’t know how to be a mistress.

  Rhys watched her stride around the trestle table in the mead–hall. She hiked empty flagons of ale in the crook of her arm and replaced them with full ones while keeping a sharp eye on the platters of trout and nodding silent directions to the maidservants. She wore that colorless tunic again. She had scorned the silks he’d purchased from that peddler who’d found his way through the hills. Instead she wore the shapeless dull brown wool that gaped every time she leaned over to serve a man, that damned muddy wool which dulled the blaze of her hair.

  Not that he could keep his eyes off her. They’d spent the evenings of Lent matching wits over a game of chess, arguing over the existence of faeries, and making good use of his bed. He’d spent the winter drinking ale in this mead–hall and watching her glide around the room as sylphlike as any creature of a pagan’s imagination. Were she dressed in an oat–sack he’d still be staring at her. Now he sat amid men who chattered like hens while he imagined how he’d take her when he finally got her alone, lusting for the feel of her hot–blooded in his bed.

  He curled his hand over his knife and took a bite of the pale flesh of the fish. It tasted like sand. Everything tasted like sand but for her skin, her hair.

  Her breasts.

  Now where was she going? She was heading out the door toward the kitchens. By God, weren’t there enough maidservants here to fetch ale? He glared at the other women idling up and down the length of the mead–hall, joking and cajoling the Irishmen he’d shipped over to labor at the castle. His woman needed a lesson in her duties. Before the thought passed through his mind he’d already tossed his knife upon the table and stepped over the bench.

  He thrust open the door to the mead–hall and headed toward the kitchens. If he believed in such things, he would think that she’d bewitched him. His throat was always dry except when he had a mouthful of her flesh against his lips. He spent his hours crunching through the snow around the castle, listening to the master mason babble on about details that once had been the only things he’d cared about, finding instead his thoughts drifting off to the delights of the evening before. Now he’d left a fine supper for one reason only—to taste this peasant–lover of his who scorched the sheets with her passion.

  He swallowed a derisive laugh. His woman, indeed. She was his but to borrow and now they lived on borrowed time. He was no fool. One day she would discover what he’d been hiding these past weeks.

  Not tonight.

  He strode into the steamy kitchens. He thrust the door closed behind him and squealed the iron bolt into its sleeve. Aileen whirled around.

  He said, “No more hiding from me, Irish.”

  She slapped a full flagon down upon the table with a never–you–mind and picked up another to be filled. “I’m not hiding, I’m here plain as day. And there’s food and ale to be served.”

  “There are servants for that.”

  “Not enough of them, with the master mason and his carpenters and stone–cutters all filling up the table.”

  She had a bit of a fit upon her. He’d learned to read the fl
ash of her eyes. His blood rushed at the thought of it.

  He said, “The conversation in the hall wasn’t to your liking, then.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You fled in a temper.”

  “Me? In a temper?” She scraped the leavings of the leeks into a basket for the pigs. “You mistake me. I was quite interested in that stonecutter who said he’d been set upon by a swarm of wasps just the other day, so early in the season, with not a flower blooming in all the hills of Wales.”

  “I’d have wagered it was the talk of the north tower that had you seething.”

  “It’s funny how the stones crumble into dust as soon as they’re brought over the bridge.”

  He felt the ghost of a smile tug at his lips. She never backed down from a confrontation, no, not Aileen the Red. His cock hardened at the sight of her, so proud before him despite the woolen tunic and the streak of soil across her cheek. Maybe that was her witchery over him—to give so much and yet still hold true to herself, while he floundered about trying to find the anger and ambition that had propelled him through each day until now. He didn’t recognize himself anymore. Maybe she was a lianhaun–shee, the Irish faery–creature Marged claimed lived upon the vitals of the chosen until the host wasted away and died.

  He dismissed the idea. After all these nights when she’d laid her bare hands upon his bare face and chest, he now knew for sure that this woman wielded no magic.

  “So,” she said, tugging a lock of her hair off her shoulder where it had clung to the perspiration beading on her neck. “What brought you across the cold yard into the heat of these kitchens? I saw you eat enough bread to fill two men’s bellies and enough soup to drown—Oh!”

  He’d rounded the table and seized her by the hips. Then he hefted her up on the wooden surface. After the initial shock, a smile started to play about her lips. The wench. She knew her power over him.

  “If it’s not dinner,” she murmured, running a finger down his throat, “then it must be a game of chess you’re hankering after. There will come a day when I will beat you yet.”