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.
And each time he looked into her face he would see his own life. From now until the day he died, glimpses of her would be stone picks hacking away at the remnants of the memories, until they, too, were nothing but rubble.
Rhys seized one of the bladders of mead off the table and headed past Dafydd toward the door. “Tell the bondsmen we’ve a hut to make.”
***
The afternoon sun sifted in through the doorway of Aileen’s new hut. Humming one of her brother’s harp–melodies, she worked through the small house, brushing a twig broom across the paving–stones. Beyond the walls, cows lowed on the hillside as they made their way back to be milked. She smiled, thinking she could distinguish her own cow’s lowing amid the herd.
Aileen paused in the doorway, half in the warmth of the July sunshine, half in the cool interior. The fresh thatch which hung over the door smelled of clover and sweet herbs she’d woven into it to keep away the fleas. Rich brown soil lay drying in the sun in the garden plot she’d only turned over this morning, and sprigs of precious herbs Father Adda had sent over to her fluttered nearby, waiting for their beds in the earth.
A fine hut, it was, overlooking a stretch of a cultivated field in the base of the valley, not far from the other huts which clung to the foot of the slope. Another woman tending her garden straightened and lifted a hand in greeting, and Aileen waved back while warmth spread through her heart.
She’d done right coming back here. When she’d woken up that afternoon on the cliffs of Inishmaan she felt as if she’d spent years asleep. It had all come to her so clearly. She had no place in her childhood home, not anymore. To stay in Inishmaan was to stay a child. To return to Wales was to face the consequences of her actions and to put the gift that rushed through her to good use again.
She would be a woman in her own right at last.
As for Rhys … She hugged the tip of the broom under her chin. He had never loved her, for all her imaginings. But she still loved him. She knew it the moment she’d set eyes upon him and felt the floor tilt beneath her feet. A faery had brought her to this place and to this man. She held no hope that this love she felt for him would ever fade, or that any other man could come into her life and move her heart as he did. She would have to take what joy she could and find some pleasure in the memory.
As if by thinking of him, she made him materialize, for there he rode, clear across the valley as if chased by demons. There was a body over the back of his steed. It didn’t take long for her to realize that Rhys was riding a straight line to her hut, and the boy behind him was little Owen, his head covered in blood.
She raced down the unpaved path and met them at the edge of the garden. “By the saints, what happened?”
“An accident at the castle.” Rhys swung down and caught Owen in his arms as the boy sagged off the saddle. “Hit by scaffolding.”
Aileen raced ahead to direct him to the pallet. There was only one in the hut now, but there would be a second, soon enough, when she got herself settled. No doubt many a night would be spent with someone ailing. She smoothed the hay with a blanket and rounded Rhys as he laid the boy down.
She fell to her knees at Owen’s side. The boy’s breath came shallow through cracked lips, and a pulse throbbed in his throat, but he did not wake to her gentle shaking. Blood matted his hair against his cheek. An ugly gash stretched just above his eye, and the skin around it swelled purple.
Rhys hovered behind her. He smelled of horse and leather, and his cloak brushed against her back with every pass of his pacing.
He asked, “Will he live?”
“You just set him before me.” She passed her fingers across the boy’s temple. “It’d help if you’d give him some room to breathe.”
He drew back and light flooded over the pallet.
She asked, “How long has he been unconscious?”
“Not long. He was alert when I put him on my horse. He slumped against me on the way over.” Rhys blocked out the light again. “Use your herbs, woman, make him come to.”
She seized her skirts and rose to her feet, finding him too close for comfort. He loomed over her and he smelled like man, all sweaty and strong and breathing hard from the long ride across the hills. She stumbled back, but her knees bumped against the edge of the pallet. His blue gaze flared over her. He made no effort to step away. The moment of awareness rang between them like the single string of a lyre plucked in silence.
She forced steel into her breathless voice. “How am I to help him if you won’t let me move about in my own house?”
He turned reluctantly to one side and then cast his gaze around the room. “This hut’s not fit for a cow.”
“It is fine enough for me.” She bustled to the waning fire, filling her lungs with the air that he’d stolen from them. “It’s no larger or smaller than any others built here.”
“You need more room,” he argued, waving his hand to the rafters hung with a few drying herbs, “for … things. Your plants. Whatever it is you use. What are you doing?”
“Setting a pot of water to boil.”
“See to the boy.”
“He’ll be needing some broth when he comes to, and a poultice for that wound after I see to the stitching—”
“Then do the stitching and I’ll set to that.”
He seized the heavy pot from her hands. He fiddled with the tripod until the pot hung over the weakening fire. She opened her bag and pulled out her precious silver needle. Three times, she tried to thread the thing while her gaze drifted to the hulk of a man hunkering by the fire. He stoked the flames and piled up the fuel until heat blossomed in the house, then grabbed a bucket. “I’ll get water.”
Banging the wooden–lathed bucket against his knees, he strode out of the house and headed to the trickle of a stream down the slope. Aileen took that moment to tug a fresh linen out of her bag and set to sewing the boy’s gash together before he came to. When she was done, she glanced over her shoulder but saw no one coming up the path. Rhys’s scorn of her powers still burned, mostly because she’d failed him in that. Well, she wasn’t going to furtively hide the fact that her healing worked on others, so she’d best get to it.
Later, Rhys strode in with the metal rings of the bucket clattering against his sword, cursing the distance and the ruts in the path that had made him splash mountain water all over his boots. After he poured the water into the cauldron, he fell into silence. She sensed his gaze upon her as she continued to pass her hands across Owen’s wound. The power now engulfed her, the drawing away of poisons, the mending of tissues, the slow easing of the swelling pressure, the current of light and warmth. The boy had taken a solid bump on his head, not enough to kill him, but enough to keep him abed till Lughnasa.
She drew her hands away. She could have been at the healing for a minute or an hour, she never could tell. The light in her hut had dimmed, but it only took her a moment to realize that something cast a shadow over her. Rhys stood close again.
He said, “He’ll live.”
She slipped by Rhys to tend to the pot of boiling water. “It was a hard knock he took, but he’s a strong young man. I’ll know better by evening.”
Rhys frowned down at the boy, who now rested peacefully. “He’s a foolish boy.”
“You said it was an accident.”
“An accident meant for my head—not his.” Rhys turned away and sank a shoulder against the doorjamb. “He saw the scaffolding g
ive. He ran clear across the island to push me out of the way.”
Aileen twisted the wooden spoon in her hand. Aye, loyalty is a hard thing for you to understand, isn’t it?
“What was he doing at the castle?” she asked. “I thought his duties were at the homestead.”
“He got it in his head to take up a trade rather than tend to hounds.” Rhys shrugged. “So I took him to meet the master–mason, thinking he could always use a pair of eager hands.”
“It was a brave thing he did, not a foolish one. Of the two of you, your head is the harder, though.”
“You’ve much to learn, woman, about how to speak to your lord and master.”
“We had no master upon my island. And I’ve never taken much to all that bowing and scraping. I’ve no doubt that wood was for your head. Mayhap to knock some sense into you.”
“It isn’t the first time there’s been danger upon that site.”
“Nay, and it won’t be the last, until you come to your senses and tear the whole thing down.”
“I’ll find the culprit first. The Englishman in our midst. Or the Welsh traitor.”
“I won’t wish you luck if you’re thinking of getting rid of the faeries.”
He was in such a mood this day, distracted by the wounding of the boy, all in a flux about something. There was no need for him to be hovering about. No doubt there were a hundred thousand things for the lord of the land to be doing right now, with a castle half–built and a household to run and enemies raiding cattle on the borders. She’d seen little of him this past month while she’d slept next to Marged waiting for the hut to be built.
Yet now he lingered.
“My mother told me a story,” she said, before he could scoff. “It got me to thinking about you and that castle in a way I’d not thought of it before.”
She swept a horn of mead off a peg and paced to the door to thrust the thing at him. He raised a brow at it. “Is the price of this mead a bunch of faery–stories?”
The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) Page 23
