Faerie

by Jacobs Delle

  She couldn’t help sighing. None of this was the way she had imagined her wedding night.

  “Promise me.”

  “All right. I promise.”

  With a smile, he lay back down on his back, raising an arm to press against his forehead. “You will be safe. I promise you. You will never know all that is done, but what must be done will be done. And now, precious bride, I am more than a little tired. Give out a little squeal and moan, will you? That will please them, and then we may both get some sleep.”

  “Do your own moaning.”

  He chuckled and rolled on his side away from her. Almost instantly, she heard the funny rattly, whistling sound she had so often heard among the snores of sleeping men in her uncle’s hall.

  Deep and hard the night wind blew, like dark, frosty fingers lacing into his hair. Armorless, he rode, swiftly as his great grey warhorse would take him. The road beneath the hooves turned to dust, to mist, to heather-strewn rock, and fell away behind them.

  Fly, my Tonerre, fly like the eagles!

  “Help me! Philippe, save me!” She struggled against her captor, who would force himself on her to obtain her land.

  “I charge you with her life, Peregrine,” said Rufus. “Do not fail me.”

  He was the king’s man. The woman was his. His heart throbbed with fear for her and ached at the thought of losing her. Calling to her, he rode hard, forcing his stallion to greater speed over the countryside after the fleeing villains.

  The grey horse rose into the air and sped past clouds and moon, chasing the brigand knights on their ghostly mounts as they raced across the moors and valleys toward the spires of Durham, sitting on its hill above the sharp curve of the river.

  He sliced and stabbed his way through the dark knights, parrying their blows, his sword swinging wide and deadly arcs until he reached the leader, who clenched Philippe’s struggling wife with one arm and the hilt of his gleaming steel sword in the other hand. Fulk. Hot rage surged power into Philippe’s arm. With a mighty swing, his sword took off the villain’s head. The head flew through the air and landed among the rocks, bouncing and bouncing, and came to rest in a trail of its own gore.

  The head of Fulk glared in frozen hatred, the mouth gaping and still. But nay, it was not Fulk. ’Twas Clodomir, the sorcerer. And this time, dead. His enemy, and hers, both dead, gone. She was safe now. Even from the sorcerer’s curse.

  Philippe’s wife. Leonie, his wife. She stood before him, still and beckoning amid the bloody battlefield, her strange, compelling green eyes seeking her mate in him.

  They’d had clothes, but now the garments were gone. It had been so long; weeks, months, and years had passed since he had taken a woman, and each day his bollocks had grown harder with need, their hunger unsatisfied. Now he had a wife again, one with sleek curves and long, long legs to wrap around him while he embedded himself deeply inside her, all the way to his hilt.

  “You must not.” Nay, it was Joceline who spoke to him, but Joceline was dead. Had died because of him.

  “You cannot kill another,” said the voice he could never forget. “You are cursed. Let me be the only one.”

  Nay, said his heart. The sorcerer is dead, the curse ended. It will be all right. She will be safe. And I will not let myself love her, just make love.

  “I want you,” said his voice to his wife, its rough, low sound betraying his raw hunger.

  “You want me. I am here. Take me, Peregrine.” She trailed the tips of her fingers down her chest between her breasts, over her navel, down to touch the rusty-blonde curls she wore like an indiscreet garment.

  Through his hungry, slitted eyes, he saw her differently. His hands pursued the curves that had danced in his imagination for longer than he had allowed himself to know. His tongue grew thick, trying to form the words to tell her what he wanted, words he thought a virgin would understand. But his cock grew thicker, harder with the effort, for it was not a virgin’s lovemaking he wanted from her, and virgin she might not be, but he didn’t care. He only cared that she was here, and he craved her.

  He thought to lay her down in the mossy grass to make love, but lifted her in his arms, and her long, long legs wrapped around him, trapping his hard shaft between her body and his. And then he was on his back, her knees spread out on either side of him, nestling herself but a tickle away from his wildly springing cock. The heady, musky scent of sex swirled about them against the sweetness of the night air, her scent and his, mingling.

  “Take me, Peregrine,” she said. “Make me scream. Make me soar into the sky with you.”

  His mind descended into an idiot’s haze, heavy with a man’s greatest hunger as he rolled her over, and came atop her, trapping her heat and moisture.

  “Take me. Take me.”

  Mindless, he eased into her, tight yet slick, her hands clasping his shoulders with a silken-padded grip in a pleasure so exotic it was nearly pain, driving him into the madness of need.

  “Take me, Peregrine! Take me to the skies with you.”

  He could do naught but obey, in the taking roughly going deeper and deeper, burying himself until his tip touched her womb. Her whimpers became moans, his gasps turned harsh. His balls turned hard as rocks and still he slammed into her as she thrashed beneath him.

  “More! Give me more!” she gasped, and her hips rotated and bucked against him, driving him so deeply he thought he’d shout.

  The grip on his shaft came upon her suddenly, a savage pulsating clench as she arched into him. God help him, what exquisite madness! In furiously pulsing thrusts, the Peregrine burst into his climax.

  The Peregrine soared freely into the skies and reached the clouds, his heart singing with passion released, and then in swirling spirals descended and became once more the man. He rested his head against her breast, listening to her heart beat a rhythm that gradually slowed and quieted. His passion was spent, but he knew it would return quickly. He knew he was lost. He would never stop wanting her.

  “By your own hand, Peregrine,” said the head.

  The head. It was the head of Clodomir, its lips dripping with blood, eyes staring evilly. Alive again. Refusing to die.

  Of its own, yet still in his hand, his sword slid forward, easing like a knife through soft butter, into her flesh, through her belly.

  His mind screamed, “Nay!” His muscles strained, fighting the thrust that moved still forward. Unstoppable.

  “By your own hand, Peregrine, you shall love none, save she who shall be slain by your own hand.”

  Clutching her belly, blood flowing, spurting, and he could only watch, helplessly, in horror. She screamed.

  She screamed.

  Philippe jerked awake. A dream. His heart pounded a screaming pace.

  His bride sat on the feather bed, clutching her belly. Nay, it could not be! It was a dream. ’Twas not real!

  “You stabbed me!” she gasped, her eyes wide in horror and pain as she edged back against the wooden tower wall as far away from him as she could get.

  But there was no blood.

  It had been his dream. Had she dreamed the same? People did not share dreams.

  But they had.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  DAWN BRIGHTENED QUICKLY as the brutal pain in Leonie’s stomach faded. She stared at her hands, which less than a moment ago she had known for a certainty were soaked in her own blood. There was no trace of it.

  The Peregrine fell to his knees on the feather bed, fully nude, his face contorted in horror as he reached out to her. She shrank back, terror racing her heart, her breath hard in coming.

  Yet—she was not harmed. No wound, no blood.

  “It’s a dream, Leonie,” he said, dropping his hands to his sides, for he must have sensed his very hands threatened her. “You are all right. Wake up. It’s just a dream.”

  She blinked, shaking her head, trying to dislodge the terror. Again, she searched her hands to persuade herself. But the searing pain clung tightly in the lingering shards of the dre
am.

  “Forgive me,” she said, still shaking, still unsure. “Aye, just a dream. I’ve accused you unfairly.”

  “Nay, you need no forgiveness, lady.” His eyes swam with anguish and guilt. “In our dreams, we cannot control what happens. You have been through too much these last few days. You were tired, and slept deeply. Breathe now and let the dream pass.”

  “Aye,” she said, and nodded to emphasize her word. “It was so real, I could feel the pain even after I woke. And the blood on my hands, I could feel it too.”

  “But there is none. You are all right now, Leonie. I know it is a hard thing for you to believe, but I will never harm you. Never.”

  Yet his warm brown eyes were hooded beneath their lids as if they sheltered some frightful secret. He looked so guilty, yet she knew he had done nothing wrong. She shook her head to clear it of her confusion.

  As she rose to her feet, her brow knitted and she rubbed her forehead, once more trying to focus her mind on that moment when she had seen Philippe tighten his hands around her throat. How could this man have attacked her? What had really happened? It must be somewhere in her memory. It had to be.

  Knifelike pain stabbed through her head, violent as lightning striking. She grabbed her head as pain pounded and swirled like a whirlpool. She was going to be sick.

  Dark.

  Philippe dived to catch her as she spiraled downward. Anguish twisted through him as he lowered her to the mattress on the tower’s rough wooden floor, cradling her head against his chest.

  At the same time, he heard shouts from below and noises coming from the ladder.

  De Mowbray burst through the hatch. His battle cry thundered into the cool air as his hand lunged for his sword.

  “Stop! She’s ill!” Philippe shouted. He rocked Leonie’s limp body in his arms.

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Nothing!” Yet he lied, for it was his dream that had assaulted her. “She’s fainted again. She had a dream. She stood, and she was in pain. It must be the blow to her head.”

  The Black Earl’s great black brow frowned warily as his huge black eyes roamed swiftly over Philippe’s face, and the man knelt beside Leonie, then scanned her for new injury. Leonie began to moan and struggle to rise.

  “Not yet, sweet bride,” Philippe said. “Rest a moment. You’ve fainted again.”

  “The dream—”

  He ached for her—her pain, her confusion. He pressed his cheek against her mussed-up hair. “The dream is over. You will be all right. No one will hurt you.”

  “Aye, lass,” said de Mowbray. “I’ll see to it.”

  Philippe glanced at de Mowbray as Leonie fidgeted, and he knew she was recovering. He let her free herself from his embrace.

  “Call for Ealga to come up and help her dress,” he told the earl.

  “Nay—nay, I can do it.”

  “Nay, lady,” de Mowbray said, frowning. “You are the lady of the manor now. The servants would feel slighted if you do not let them perform their duties.”

  Philippe repressed a grin. He wished he’d thought of that. “Aye,” he said. “Allow your maid to help you comb your hair.”

  “Does it look bad?”

  “It’s beautiful,” he replied, “though wild as a winter storm.”

  “Aye,” de Mowbray said with a chuckle. “It puts me in mind of your mother, though hers was more the shade of pale moonlight.”

  Her brows knitted together as she looked from one of them to the other. Philippe wondered if anyone had ever told her how captivating her wild hair was, for it was not the sort of hair that was thought to be beautiful. Yet he could not resist touching it whenever he could. And he dared not stare at it for long, lest he find his nether parts growing hard as rocks as he imagined the long, long curls dangling over her shoulders onto his chest.

  Philippe squeezed his eyes tightly closed. That was one thought he dared not pursue. Abruptly, he turned away in an effort to grab up his garments, but not so quickly that de Mowbray could not see the arousal he tried to hide. He heard the man’s throaty chuckle behind his back as Philippe pulled his blue tunic over his head.

  “Well, then,” de Mowbray said, “I’ll be on my way. ’Tis past time I get on to Alnwick. A message has come this morning. There’s mischief from the Scots there.”

  “You must allow us to feed you and your men before you leave,” Leonie replied.

  “Nay, lass, as the old woman said, I’ve tarried far too long, and it’s a long ride from here to the sea.”

  “Then you must not leave until we can come down and properly say you farewell.”

  “You’d best promise her,” Philippe said as he fastened his braies beneath the tabard, an awkward task, usually not done in that order, and he knew de Mowbray noticed. But the tabard had more quickly covered his raging shaft. That embarrassment was beginning to subside, now that it was out of view.

  The two men hurried down the ladder and sent Ealga up to attend her lady before they started across the bailey toward the garderobe. Once inside the crude structure, the two men squatted over the trench. De Mowbray waited until no one else was in hearing distance to say more.

  “So you haven’t bedded her, eh, Peregrine?”

  Philippe supposed such a thing was obvious to a worldly man like de Mowbray, whose reputation for wildness in his youth still remained unsurpassed. “Say nothing to anyone, de Mowbray, or I’ll have your tongue on a spit to break my fast.”

  “Aye, it will not come from me. But why? She’s a comely lass, and I can see you know that too. Is it that foolish vow of yours?”

  “It’s not foolishness. The girl is still afraid of me. She still believes I attacked and nearly killed her in the wood at Brodin, though I swear to you I didn’t.”

  “I know, lad. It’s odd that she still thinks it. Is she addled in the head, then, do you think?”

  “You know how head wounds are.”

  “It’s not the falling sickness?”

  Philippe shook his head. “The pain is obvious. That’s not so with the falling sickness. She just needs time.” The men finished their ablutions and returned to the bailey and the brightening morning.

  “The old woman might know what to do, but she is gone again,” de Mowbray said, hands upon his hips as he breathed in the fresh morning air with more delight than an ordinary man might take. Philippe added that to his growing belief that there was something unusual about the man, something perhaps other men did not see.

  “The old woman who was at the bride ale last night?” Philippe asked. “Doesn’t she live in the village?”

  “She lives where she lives. No one knows where but her.”

  “That’s odd.”

  “Aye. It is. But she honored you, to come.”

  “Who is she? She said she has no name; I can’t believe that.”

  “Haps she did once. None know it now.”

  “Ah. I heard someone call her Cailleach. Do they think her a goddess?”

  “Aye, they call her that. It’s not a goddess, yet ’tis. In the Gaelic tongue the word just means old woman, or hag. But the Cailleach is more than that. They say she makes mountains, and herds the deer, and meddles now and then in the affairs of man. The Cailleach lives a long time, they say, the span of many lives of men. She knows things—curses, cures, strange things no living man can know. ’Tis not always a good thing. But others say the Cailleach has blue skin and only one eye. That can’t be our old woman.”

  “She knows of curses?”

  “Aye. Many things she has told me about them.”

  “Do you believe in curses?”

  De Mowbray hesitated. “Do you not?”

  Philippe shuddered. He knew far more than most men of the power of curses, but he dared not say how. Now they even came to him in his dreams, and Leonie could feel them with him. How that could happen was even more baffling, but he dared not let the Black Earl know that, either.

  “Aye, I do,” he answered, glad for his years as Ru
fus’s envoy that taught him how to keep his own counsel. He smiled benignly. “Did she tell you how to break a curse?”

  The Black Earl stared off into the distance, somewhere down into the lower bailey. Philippe surmised the man must have secrets equally as dark as his own.

  “Curses, she told me, are only worth the strength of the man who makes them,” the earl said. “It’s a tricky thing. It must be said exactly right, or it will come to naught.”

  “Then how can a man know whether a curse will affect him?”

  “Aye, there’s the rub, now, isn’t it? All you can do is ask the old woman. If you can find her.”

  “Can she break a curse, then?”

  “Nay,” said de Mowbray, his jaw set so hard Philippe noticed the thick black beard jutted. “There’s a trick, though, in the words. The clue to unbinding must be in the words, or it will not hold. There’s always a way, if the man can find it. Why do you ask?”

  “I’m a curious man, de Mowbray,” Philippe said, though he doubted de Mowbray would believe it was no more than that. “I want to know things. You say she knows about cures, too? If so, then I must find her. Leonie needs her help.”

  For all that de Mowbray looked like a wild hermit of the mountains, he softened, looking almost wistful. “Aye,” he said. “And here comes your pretty bride. She looks well enough now.”

  She did. Her cheeks had regained their pinkness. Her butter hair was combed out in its wild, bushy way, reminding him of their journey when she had patiently made one long ringlet after another as they rode, and he had lost his patience rather than admit how the sight of it aroused him.

  She smiled at the Black Earl, the man who had been the scourge of all civilized Normandy. But she had no smile for her husband.

  He could tell her not to fear him over and over, but perhaps it was better if she did. Because she was right to. The dream was a warning. He might control his actions when awake, but who knew what he would do when dreaming?

  With every passing hour he was sliding down the steep slope into his own special Hell. If he couldn’t find a way to separate from her, he knew what was coming could not be stopped.