Bride of Fae (Tethers)

by Rigel, LK

  BOOK TWO OF THE TETHERS SERIES

  Copyright 2012 L.K. Rigel

  Published by Beastie Press

  Cover design and interior layout and formatting by TERyvisions

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. With the exception of quotes used in reviews, no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work.

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you so much to the wonderful beta readers: Julie Helligrath, Christine Powell Gomez, Melissa Lummis, Olivia Hardin, and Jessica Gibson.

  For Bea,

  who gave me

  my first book of fairy tales.

  L.K. RIGEL

  Bride of Fae

  (Tethers 2)

  Table of Contents

  1 - Mischief Night

  2 - The Yew on the Ringyew

  3 - Open to Persuasion

  4 - Into the Mystic

  5 - Troop Night

  6 - The Fairy Cup

  7 - Cissa Steals the Show

  8 - Disaster

  9 - Mudcastle

  10 - An Unfamiliar Fairy

  11 - In the Temple of Joy and Wonder

  12 - We’re No Angels

  13 - And Laughter Holding Both His Sides

  14 - Bright Cut

  15 - Tea at Bausiney’s End

  16 - Piccadilly Circus

  17 - Chorus

  18 - The Fairy Cup Redux

  19 - Madness at Hyde Park

  20 - Tradeoffs

  21 - Love and Affection

  22 - Fairy Politics

  23 - The Language of Crows

  24 - Wyrding Woman

  25 - A Fairy Bride

  26 - The Wedding Gift

  27 - In the Panopticon

  28 - Bride of Fae

  Mischief Night

  1876. Faeview, Dumnos

  DONALL BAUSINEY SAT UPRIGHT in his bed. He held his breath and listened. In the dying fire an ember crackled, punctuating the stillness. A woman’s faint laugh echoed off the wall then faded beneath the mantle clock’s chime. A quarter hour before midnight.

  Was the laugh real? Or a remnant of his jumbled nightmare, the recurrent dream where Lydia Pengrith said no.

  Why did she torture him? When Lydia and her parents came to Faeview next week, it would be the perfect time to announce their engagement, but she’d made him promise to wait until the Varsity Match for her answer to his proposal.

  In a world that made sense, Miss Lydia Pengrith, daughter of a clergyman, would accept him without delay. But the world didn’t make sense. Miss Pengrith—who should be poor and eager for any suitor and therefore amenable—had recently inherited a fortune from her grandfather who, late in life, had married the childless widow of a Manchester manufacturer.

  Donall had discovered, to his shock, that a woman with money of her own more often than not did only what she liked and only when she liked to do it.

  Still. He was Donall James Utros Cade Bausiney, Lord Tintagos, the future Earl of Dumnos. As his wife, she would be a countess one day. That had to count for something.

  If Donall was entirely honest with himself, Miss Pengrith did seem to prefer the company of Mr. Charles Sarumen. The thought soured Donall’s stomach. Lydia had expressed a casual wish to see Charles again, and to please her Donall had invited his friend to Faeview during the Pengriths’ visit.

  Bollocks.

  The Varsity Match was a million years away. Well, not until December. Tomorrow was but the first of November.

  Again the noise. Donall held perfectly still and listened—for what? A rustling of wings. An echo of fairy song. An ember in the fireplace snapped, and he jumped with a self-conscious laugh. Tonight was Mischief Night, after all. The night when, according to local legend, the Dumnos fae trooped en masse from their woodland homes to play in the human world.

  Ridiculous, of course. Donall was a man of the world. He’d been to Shrewsbury and Cambridge. Magic had no place in this age of progress and invention, of telegraphs and telephones and trains that crossed continents in fewer than four days. Donall was no mystic and certainly no ghost romancer. His education had cured him of childhood beliefs in wyrding spells and fairy curses.

  There. Definitely laughter. Faint drumming, perhaps.

  He crossed to the window, the floor cold on his feet even through the new Turkey carpet. Moonlight streamed in through the curtains, and for a moment he really expected to see a wyrding woman outside on the garden path. Or perhaps the famous Dumnos ghosts, waiting to pounce on any pair of lovers foolish enough to walk out together tonight.

  Tonight the villagers would be safely indoors, afraid of what they might meet on the road, whether ghost or fairy. No surprise there. In Tintagos Village, the vicar’s Sunday sermons were well-attended, but on every other day of the week the people still talked to Brother Sun and Sister Moon.

  Everyone knew somebody who’d heard of someone who’d once danced with a fairy or conversed with the ghosts, whose little cousin had chased a sparkle into the woods and returned a few weeks later all grown up, or whose grandfather or great-great aunt had received some service from a wyrder.

  On Mischief Night such stories were told in every Dumnos household.

  “You choker,” Donall said aloud. “Nanny’s got you boggled.”

  In the Bausiney tradition, he’d visited the nursery earlier to eat holy cakes with Sophia and Caroline and hear Nanny’s Mischief Night story, told exactly the same year after year since he was Caroline’s age. Like his little sisters, and himself when he was young, someday his—and hopefully Lydia’s—children would delight to the annual recital of the tale of the Dumnos war between wyrd and fae.

  His pulse quickened. There it was again, and no doubts. Faint music. Laughter and pipes with the drums. He ran to get his slippers tucked under the bed. As he reached the fireplace, he heard unmistakable voices.

  “Admit it, Aubrey. I’ve done it!”

  Donall half leapt and half stumbled away backwards. He sat on his bed, his heart pounding. The man’s disembodied voice had sounded like it was coming from the embers.

  “Not so fast,” said another. “You didn’t drink the full measure.”

  Donall pulled his coverlet close and stared at the glowing embers, trying to make sense of it. They couldn’t be the Dumnos ghosts, male and female, a pair of doomed and desperate lovers. These voices were both male and robust. Vital. Hardly ghost-like.

  “And you must spin three times,” said a woman. Her voice tinkled like those shards of colored glass his sisters had strung on a line at the gazebo and left to dance in the breeze.

  Donall slapped his forehead and laughed. The voices weren’t coming from anything mystical. They had funneled down the chimney and amplified in the fireplace. The servants were on the roof, trying to catch their good luck for the coming winter.

  “And you haven’t said the words!” The female’s pout was evident in her tone. Donall couldn’t think who she might be.

  Recklessly loud. And drinking. On clear nights this time of year, the Faeview servants went up on the roof to catch sight of the aurora borealis. Everyone knew a glimpse of the northern lights had before All Souls Day brings good luck through the winter.

  Donall sighed and put on his robe. He wouldn’t spoil their fun, but
he’d better go up and warn them to take care. If the mater and the governor were disturbed, this would not end well.

  It was colder in the hallway. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and automatically looked over his shoulder, as if he were still a child expecting a sharp word from Nanny for his bad manners or a disappointed frown from the mater.

  His hand brushed against Nanny’s last holy cake, a dry lump of flour and water crossed on top with salt—guaranteed to thwart the very devil and his disciples on this most dangerous of nights. So armed, he made way up the back stairs.

  The music came through clearly in the stairwell, and the raucous laughter bounced off the walls in the confined space. They were drunk. Donall once asked his father why he tolerated such behavior among his servants.

  “Let them be, so long as they’re quiet,” the governor had grumbled. “It does no harm and feeds their souls.”

  Feeds their souls. The phrase turned a lock and opened a door in Donall’s mind. He’d thought souls were for feeding on Sundays, but submission to the vicar’s weekly sermons generally left his more depleted than fed. He’d always considered himself a failure in the reverence department.

  The romance of servants creeping up Faeview’s back stairs to glimpse the heavens’ display enchanted him. From that moment their superstition secured a fond corner in his heart, and he felt bound to protect them in it.

  He opened the rooftop door to the clear night, the moon a bright flat disk and the stars blazing. Cold air nipped at his ears and filled his lungs, and he again jammed his hands into his pockets for warmth.

  The revelers at the north corner didn’t notice him—and they weren’t who he was expecting. Heart in throat, he dove behind a half wall at the parapet, clenching his fists and crushing the poor little holy cake. Half hoping, half hoping not, he peeked around the wall.

  Fairies!

  More than a dozen sat cross-legged in a circle playing flutes and pennywhistles and drums. In the air above them, two females held hands and spun around each other. Their wings glittered in the moonlight, and their bodies shimmered under skin-tight gauzy material that made no mystery of their female features.

  “Aubrey, dance with us!” one of the fairy ladies cried.

  Donall recognized her voice from the fireplace. Her bright red hair was short and ragged, and she wore a collar-like necklace of red cord and sparkling beads.

  “My pleasure, princess.” A lean, bare-chested fairy stood at the edge of the circle. His straw-yellow hair stuck out at all angles. He was delicate and manly all at once and reeked of sexual energy. He spread his arms and flexed his chest muscles. Glittering golden wings sprouted from his back. He wore a similar choker but more ornate, the color of ship’s rope.

  He flew up to the redhead and offered a gentlemanly hand to the other female fairy. “Morning Glory?”

  Morning Glory’s long white-blond hair fell gently over her shoulders. Her breasts were clearly visible through the filmy material she wore—as was the dark patch between her legs. She had large eyes and thick lips painted garish red. Anxious desire shot through Donall, through his chest to his loins. She was the most captivating, the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.

  Sod it, man. How could you be disloyal to Miss Pengrith?

  Morning Glory smiled at Aubrey. Donall’s guilt evaporated, replaced by raging jealousy.

  “Take care.”

  Merely two words, but they commanded the attention of all. Manly, strong, confident, they came from the first voice in the fireplace, the one who’d claimed some sort of victory.

  The speaker rose within the circle. He was like a king, tall and muscular, of aristocratic bearing. His sleek dark hair was pulled off his face like a romantic warrior of the Highlands, secured in a topknot by two silver sticks that glittered when he moved and falling down his back like a river of hair.

  “We’ll not disturb Lord Dumnos,” he said.

  He wore a skin-tight leather waistcoat and no shirt. Like the others, he wore a necklace, but his was different. A simple black woven collar at his Adam’s apple. The bright-cut stone at its center caught and reflected moonlight like a diamond.

  Donall surveyed the others, some dancing, some sitting and playing instruments. All were beautiful, some exquisite. All wore the collar-like necklaces with bright-cut center stones. Straw-haired Aubrey’s was the most elaborate, extending over his bare chest and loaded with beads of glass or jewels and stone.

  That fairy has a healthy self-opinion, Donall thought.

  “You’re not yet our king, Dandelion,” Aubrey said to the regal, dark-haired fairy. “You haven’t completed the ritual.” He sighed with fake sincerity. “Perhaps it’s as I feared. You don’t have what it takes.”

  Dandelion glared at Aubrey and held up a leather pouch for all to see. The others stopped dancing, stopped piping, stopped drumming. The red-haired princess and blonde Morning Glory hovered, their bright eyes on Dandelion as he emptied a pale golden liquid from the pouch into a magnificent glass cup.

  “Say the words.” The princess fairy circled Dandelion and kissed his cheek fondly then flew back up to join Morning Glory. The ladies linked arms, a delightful floating picture silhouetted against the moon.

  “Say the words.”

  “Say the words.”

  The chant dimmed as Dandelion made eye contact with the fairies one by one. When he’d silenced them, he tossed the bag aside and raised the cup.

  Moonlight shone on its embedded jewels of blue, green and red. Morning Glory tossed something from her hand—fairy dust? A shower of light illuminated Dandelion and his long hair—which wasn’t brown or black at all but a rich dark chestnut. He chanted:

  “By the fae cup I swear,

  And by dandelion wine,

  To claim the fae crown

  Ever meant to be mine.”

  He drank. The stillness was like a sacred silence. Aubrey watched intently. As his lips curled with satisfaction, a bad feeling crept over Donall.

  Dandelion finished the draught. With the last swallow the princess cried, “Hurray!” She and Morning Glory flew over Dandelion’s head, throwing out showers of sparkling dust.

  The music started up again. “Come, dance!” The princess and Morning Glory separated, enlarging the circle they made in the air. They spun around and tossed more fairy dust that exploded like tiny fireworks over the players. “Spin three times!”

  Donall nearly betrayed his presence with a gasp as Dandelion’s wings sprouted, huge, dark, the color of his hair. They unfolded with masculine vigor to at least twice the length of his body, and he lifted off the roof.

  The fairy began a grand sweep over the heads of the others, a victory lap. A few seconds into it, he lurched to the right and bumped against Morning Glory’s wings.

  “Ow!”

  “Slurry, Gloweye—I mean I’m sorry, Glory.” Dandelion’s strong face paled. He teetered in the air and shot an accusing glance at Aubrey.

  The smirking fairy didn’t seem surprised one jot by this turn of events. In fact, his smirk looked like jubilation. Donall leaned out for a better view and lost his balance. He smashed his knee against the wall’s edge and cried out in pain.

  The fairies froze in place.

  “Someone’s here,” Morning Glory said. Her gaze darted over the roof, and she quickly found Donall.

  An electrical jolt of desire whipped through him as her green eyes sparkled and she looked into his very heart. Somewhere in the back of his consciousness he remembered someone named Lydia, but he couldn’t help himself. Morning Glory was the most delightful, the most fascinating woman in all existence.

  “Fly away!” Morning Glory said.

  “No!” Donall couldn’t bear the thought. She was so beautiful. He had to know her. Touch her. Kiss her.

  She smiled right at him then. Generous. Kind. So full of promise. Her lips red and luscious. She gave him a sweet, sad smile, and he thought she was coming to him. But she touched her throat and was gone.r />
  Donall ran to the center of the fairy circle. He nearly touched a fairy, but it vanished. He shook his head as they all began to pop and flash away. He wasn’t imagining this. He wasn’t!

  “Everyone fly!” Aubrey gave Donall a wicked leer, touched his throat, and disappeared.

  Donall spun around at the roof’s edge amid the flutter of wings and unintended musical notes and strange pops and flashes.

  Then silence. A few seconds later, a screetch owl’s cry was the only sound in the night. The only shimmer was from stars sparkling in taunting silence. So mundane compared to the glimmering glittering living sparkles that were here only moments ago.

  They were here!

  And they were gone. Donall felt as if a cavern had been dug out of his heart and left empty. Something gleamed at his feet. The glass cup. He picked it up, stunning in the moonlight.

  “Ach!” The baleful scream came from behind him just beyond the roof’s edge. Dandelion hovered there at a listing angle, his eyes wide with rage. His wings beat angrily, impotently, against the air.

  Donall desperately hugged the beautiful prize to his chest. It was the thing that could keep him sane. Proof this wasn’t a dream. Dandelion lurched closer. Frantically, Donall dug into his robe pocket with his free hand and grasped a handful of holy cake crumbs. He threw the crumbs at the angry drugged fairy.

  Simultaneously, an eerie green and blue light streaked through the night sky. Donall let loose a wild whoop. The northern lights! He was in luck.

  “It’s a sign!” he cried. “Brother Sun and Sister Moon mean me to have it!” He tossed another handful of holy cake crumbs.

  The fairy backed off and shrieked again, an animal cry of despair. He spun three times at blinding speed and stopped. His eyes blazing, he pointed an accusing finger. Ferocious, crazed. He oozed both mystical and physical power.

  Donall took a step back, but that was all. He wanted to run, but his legs wouldn’t oblige. He said a silent prayer of gratitude for Nanny’s holy cakes.

  The would-be fairy king locked gazes with Donall and chanted: