The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2)

by Lisa Ann Verge

  Rhys burst through the chapel door. Father Adda stumbled up from his seat by the altar, gripping the Eucharist cup and a piece of linen. Rhys strode down the nave, his gaze fixed on the cross hanging over the altar.

  The cup clattered on the paving stones as Rhys fell to his knees before the priest.

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned… .”

  Chapter Twenty–Two

  The physician of Myddfai swept into the room in a stench of perfume so strong it set Aileen to choking.

  “I have just the thing to put an end to that cough.” The physician reached into his wide–sleeved robe and pulled out a packet. He handed it to a young man hovering behind him. “Boil figs in strong ale, and then add this to the liquid.” The physician bowed at Rhys and smiled wider at her. “The brew is good also for rheumatism and chilblains and for preventing drunkenness—”

  “So very useful, this potion of yours,” she interrupted. Propped up against the mound of pillows on Rhys’s bed, Aileen eyed doctor number three who was perhaps the most ridiculous of all, with his long white beard and his eyebrows oiled into curls. “But I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time, doctor, and my lord has wasted his gold.”

  Rhys glowered. “I’ve summoned the doctor all the way from Myddfai just to see you, and so he will.”

  Aileen shoved up her sleeve to show a series of angry cuts. “This is by far the most damage this body of mine has suffered, and it was done right here in this room by a doctor.”

  The physician pursed his lips. “It is clear by your disposition, my lady, that you have no need for bloodletting. Now if you were more melancholy—”

  “Choleric is what I am.” She tugged the sleeve down and glared at Rhys. “And getting more so by the minute.”

  The physician lay a hand on Rhys’s arm. “My lord, a moment, if you will?” He drew him away from the bed. Bells jingled from somewhere beneath his cloak, and the light from the smoke–hole gleamed off the embroidered moons, stars, and suns scattered across the dark blue wool. She scowled at the two of them whispering with their heads together as if she were some ignorant idiot and not a healer in her own right. She heard the physician discussing the color of her hair and the alignment of the stars and how much time it would take for a full recovery until she couldn’t stand anymore of the hypocrisy.

  “If you want to help,” she interrupted in a loud voice, “then get me some of that wild cherry juice that last physician prescribed. Or put saffron in my milk—aye, I’ve developed a taste for that. And you won’t see me objecting to almonds, or those sticky little red fruits the physician from Aberffraw brought from the Holy Land—”

  “It’s good to see you have an appetite,” the physician said, his smile not quite reaching his eyes. “But we have a saying in Myddfai. Supper has killed more than ever were cured by the Physicians of Myddfai.’ “

  “So, have the physicians of Myddfai killed so many, then?”

  “It is more wholesome to smell warm bread,” the physician persisted, “than to eat it.”

  “So I’m to be starved now?” She glared at Rhys, and ignored the flex of his cheek as she tossed the covers off her legs. “I won’t have it.”

  Rhys said, “Get back into that bed, woman.”

  “I won’t be eating the powdered poisons he makes, all the beetle’s backs and the like.” She swung her knees over the side, not caring that she wore nothing but her undertunic. “He can stuff them in his own mouth.”

  “Perhaps,” the physician interrupted in the calm sing–song voice that made her hair stand on end, “it would be better if I stepped out for a moment.”

  “Step out and keep on walking,” Aileen called after him, rising to her feet. “We have no need of you here. I’d kill the patient myself before sending him to the likes of you.”

  The door banged shut. Rhys turned on her with murder in his eyes.

  “Don’t you look at me like that,” she said. “I’ve told you enough times—you’re wasting your gold with those men.”

  “We have nobody of your skill here to tend to you.”

  “I don’t need tending. Your brother didn’t stab me with that knife. All he left were bruises and scratches and a ringing in my ears which only God and time can rid me of. No stinging poultices, no poking and prodding, and no bleeding will do a bit of good.”

  She tugged up the fallen covers in search for her tunic. Aye, she knew how battered she looked, with one eye swelling and her cheek purple with contusions, her arms and her legs streaked with angry scratches. Her ribs still ached and would for some time, she supposed. But she had to get out of this room with all its memories, out of this bed and the rasp of its furs, away from the pillows which smothered her with the scent of man and loving. She had to escape the fierce blue gaze of the man who’d hovered over her for days, making her yearn for things she had no right to want.

  She seized her tunic, shook it out, and then cast him a glare. “Did you have them bleed me when I was weak, just to see if I would bleed green?”

  “I knew the color of your blood,” he said, “when I dragged you from under my brother’s dead body.”

  New heat flushed her cheeks. She didn’t want to think of those foggy moments, else she’d be imagining things again. The tightness of his grip, the feel of his lips in her hair. The fierceness of his voice.

  She said, “I won’t have a minute more of this coddling. I have work to be done.” She tugged over her head her old woolen tunic, stained with blood and snagged in a dozen places. “And you have enough to do in this house without having a sick woman in your room. It’s a long voyage to Aberffraw, much packing and preparation. It’s not good to keep a prince waiting when he invites you to his castle.”

  He flinched. “So you’ve heard.”

  “Do you think your half–brother boxed my ears so hard that I’ve lost my hearing? Of course I’ve heard. The servants talk of nothing else but the Prince of Wales’s invitation.”

  The courier had arrived two days ago bearing an invitation for Rhys to join the Prince at Aberffraw to celebrate the knighting of one of Llywelyn’s foster sons. Rhys hadn’t mentioned a word. By now every sword, shield, every metal boss on every horse’s harness must be polished to the brightest sheen. Part of her heart trilled for Rhys, for now he would have his triumphant return. Now he could face the men who’d betrayed him, and be restored to his rightful place at the side of the Prince of Wales. He could again assume the life the affliction had stolen from him.

  The life she’d given back to him.

  He said, “I’m not going to Aberffraw.”

  The netting she struggled to sweep over her hair snapped out of her hand. Her gaze flew to him and it was as if she looked upon a stranger. Not because he stood before her unmasked, not because the affliction had receded to a ripple along his jaw and thus the true breath–stealing beauty of the man showed, not because he’d taken to wearing a blue silken tunic edged with braids of gold that made him look like the prince he was … but because his eyes shone with the same bright determination she’d seen the day he’d kidnapped her off the coast of Inishmaan.

  “I’m not going to Aberffraw,” he repeated. “Not without you.”

  ***

  One day in late winter, Rhys had hunted with Dafydd in the woods just south of Moel Cefn. They’d trailed the path of a boar over a league, beat him out of hiding and chased him across uneven ground. More than once the beast turned to fight his attackers, forcing them to retreat under the threat of those flashing tusks, but finally they trapped him in a ravine. The beast turned on them, heaving. In the moment before Rhys set loose his lance, the creature stood proud, waiting for the death blow.

  So he waited now, his heart pounding as if he’d raced through the winter woods, watching his woman and waiting for her words to pierce him dead. She’d cast him away before for reasons he had only now begun to grasp. In his arrogance, he’d thought she’d want better than a hut that smelled of cow and a pallet of scratchy wool, that
she’d want him for his wealth and his position. Strange woman. Uncommon woman. Born dirt–poor, she knew nonetheless that love was more important than the wealth of kings.

  What did he know of love—damn her—of gentle things and soft words? All he knew was that he wanted her. All of her. He wanted to bury his hands in that hair, to tilt that face up to his and see the silver spark of her eyes, the softness that made her lips pillow, and then taste them … taste them.

  Then, suddenly, he was standing in front of her. He didn’t remember crossing the room, but suddenly he was just standing there breathing in the scent of wild lavender rising up from her hair. She made him feel like a boy of fifteen eager for the taste of a woman, blind for it, his heart throbbing so hard in his chest.

  It had ever been like this whenever he stepped within the circle of her body. All the thoughts of a triumphant return to the royal court that had burned in his head for so long now blew away like ashes. She was the flame that burned away the rage that blinded him. It wasn’t Aberffraw he lusted after all these years, but something else, something he’d held in his hands before he’d sent it all away, something as simple as long winter nights and a bed warmed with Aileen.

  She stood before him as mute as stone, her face still swollen from the beating which only made her clear gray eyes all the sharper. Would she make him say it? Would she make him fall upon his knees like a pilgrim? What magic had she conjured to make his blood flow south while his head screamed not to touch her, not to hurt her anymore, to leave her to her life and her independence and her pride … to her own choices?

  Her lips parted. A breath trembled between them.

  Beware of faery women, he’d been told. Don’t let yourself be bewitched. They tempt a man with their fair tresses and uncommon beauty, they lure him into the faery–dance, then urge him to steal a kiss… a kiss that would capture a man in the madness of love and condemn him never to leave the enchanted place.

  Oh, but for one single taste of those lips.

  ***

  She lived a thousand years in the moment Rhys stood before her, searching her face as if he were searching for life itself. She knew with that blinding knowledge that comes to a woman in such times that she would remember this moment until the last of her days. The intensity of his eyes, a turbulent blue to rival the waters of Galway Bay. The twitch of a muscle in his darkly bristled cheek. The stutter of a pulse in his throat. The fragrance of a green hazel–shoot perfuming his ragged breath.

  She didn’t breathe. She waited for that old mask to shutter his eyes. She waited for the fantasy to stop and reality to finally wake her. She waited for things she didn’t want to dream of. Hadn’t she curled up on that lonely pallet in her home every night since she’d returned to Wales, thinking about this very room, this very bed, this very man? Only in the darkness did she ever take out her hope and look at it. Only in the night did she let herself imagine a handsome, mighty lord might love so fiercely as to take a spindly–legged peasant to wife.

  It seemed as if the air crackled around them and the room pulsed with brilliant, blinding white light, as it might in the moment before lightning struck. He scraped a hand along her jaw, and then cupped it in his palm, while his other hand trailed up to tug a strand of hair clinging to the corner of her lips. Her body swayed toward his. Their clothing brushed, crackled. He scraped a thumb along her cheekbone then pressed the swelling tenderness of her lower lip.

  “Aileen.”

  The word a whisper. No harp’s melody had ever sounded so sweet.

  She felt her lips move though no sound came out. Her heart sang the words—yes yes yes—and she curled her fingers into all that blue silk, tugging him down even as she raised to her toes. Anything, anything to feel his lips finally upon hers.

  He gripped her head and held it still. He spoke with his lips pressed against her skin, he spoke in a voice broken and ragged and husky with passion.

  He said, “Be my wife.”

  She spoke her yes into his mouth.

  ***

  Aileen stood in the circle of stones as the last of the summer light streaked the sky purple. The first embers of Lughnasa fires flickered among the hilltops. Torches pierced the ground between each standing stone around her, emanating a mist of blue smoke that rose to the sky.

  The wind shifted. She closed her eyes to breathe in the salt–sweet warmth of the first breath of the night. She smelled the honey–mead and heard the music, too, the ringing of a harp, the happy wail of pipes, and the rustle of veils grown thin as the air of each world mingled. Around her, the grass rustled. A pebble clattered off one of the standing stones. She knew she was no longer alone.

  The Sídh had come to give away the bride.

  A shiver fluttered through her body, tightening the symbols of blue woad painted upon her belly, her breasts, her legs. A white silk robe fluttered around her calves. Soon enough, Rhys would come and make her his wife in the old way, as her father had married her mother, and as her grandmother had married before them. On this faery island in the midst of a river, on a sacred spirit night, she and Rhys would finally become one body, one spirit, one life.

  Outside the ring of torches, all lay silent but for the lapping of the river … yet she heard the sudden shift in the gurgling. Rhys had wasted no time after the setting of the sun to leave the opposite shore. As moments passed, she heard something slip into the forest of reeds by the shore. An oar knocked upon the wooden rim of a coracle.

  She didn’t need eyes that could pierce the darkness to know the sound of those muffled footsteps. Nor did she need the knowledge that two dozen of Rhys’s bondsmen ringed the valley on high, watching for a danger that wouldn’t come now that Rhys’s brothers had scattered into England after the death of their leader. She knew that those footsteps drawing closer belonged only to the man she loved with her whole heart.

  So when he stepped through the fencing of torches and standing stones into the amber glow of light, she waited for him with her arms spread wide. He wore the white robe she’d sewn for him out of linen bought for her own wedding–clothes for the Christian ceremony which would follow tomorrow. His dark hair, unbound and shining, lay upon his shoulders. If it weren’t for the way he cast his eyes about the circle of stones, she could mistake him for one of the Druids who once worshipped here.

  Then he set his gaze upon her and she was astounded anew that a woman as plain and unlikely as she would be marrying a nobleman with the face of an angel. For the affliction was all gone now, every last bit of it. The faery–mound they stood upon had once held the mortar and stones of his half–built castle. That castle had been torn down. He’d set the standing stones back in their places. By her request alone, he’d torn down his dream, and with a shrug of his shoulder had told her it was an old dream and the time had come to build a new one.

  Thus, he put the entire world to right.

  He strode toward her. He halted an arm’s–length away while his gaze scoured the robe from her body. She breathed in a deep and trembling breath. Ma was right, all that time ago, when she’d said there are powers beyond this world with plans of their own, and there’s no telling how they’ll weave the path of one’s life. What a wonderful tapestry they’d made of hers … and it had only just begun.

  “It’s a fine thing,” he rasped, “that Father Adda won’t be here to witness this.”

  “Father Adda will have his own ceremony, soon enough.”

  “A dull one it will be after this, Irish.”

  She let her smile drift wider, and then shrugged her shoulders out of the silk so it sluiced down her body into a pool at her feet. Under the blue woad, her nipples tightened into sharp, exquisite points of sensation—throbbing under the brush of his gaze.

  He reached out and traced the edge of a symbol painted upon her belly. “What’s this?”

  “Ancient things.” Her skin tingled where he touched. “Symbols. Prayers of a sort. For fertility.”

  “My pagan.” He curled his hand under
her jaw. “Are there any words to be said?”

  “Words?”

  “A ceremony.” He trailed a finger over her breast. “Something to chant under the stars. A pagan dance you’ll have me do and spend a lifetime teasing me about. Speak now, Irish, or there’ll be no more talking.”

  She’d half a mind to set him prancing about like a rooster, play the randy bull, or howl at the moonless sky, but her heart wasn’t into the mischief. With his naked flesh so close to hers and his fingers dancing over her breast, her body pulsed hot with the magic of the night. She was too full of wanting to wait.

  “Love me,” she whispered, stepping into his embrace. “Love me, and we shall be one.”

  His robe rustled to the ground. She wound her arms around those broad shoulders. Through the haze of pine–smoke, the stars gleamed down upon them and the wind whistled music through the river–reeds. He kissed her. She would never tire of his kissing, but while he did so, his hands found their way all over her body. He pressed her down upon the grass and she opened herself up for him. There’d be no long lovemaking tonight, at least not at once, not while the heat of Lughnasa pulsed in their blood.

  She’d felt this yearning every season as a girl, too frightened to do more than linger out of the light of the fires and watched the others dance and throw themselves through the flames and then melt away in couples into the shadows.

  She’d never be alone in those shadows again.

  Rhys shifted his weight and then he paused to lift his head.

  They lay alone in the sacred circle but for the gurgle of the river around the island and the crackle of the torch–fires, but Rhys grew tense.

  She said, “What is it, Rhys?”

  “I hear something.”

  She heard it, too. It was the rustle of wind in the reeds, the patter of tiny footsteps reeling in dances, the high whine of faint and distant music—the celebration of the union to come, drifting through the thinning veils of the worlds. She took Rhys’s head in her hands and lay the softest of kisses upon his lips.