Revelin smiled at the beggarly woman’s haughtiness. Her head was high, but the muddy hand gripping the younger woman’s shoulder oozed blood from a cut. She swayed slightly, as if about to faint, and he realized that the women leaned against each other to keep their balance. Sympathy for their plight made him move a step closer despite the fierce face challenging him. “Could I be worse than the others?” he asked with a nod toward the forest.
“Ye could be less and still do harm,” Una answered unhesitatingly, but she put out a hand to grip his arm tightly. She closed her eyes momentarily against the needle-sharp pain that suddenly shot through her chest. There was no time to give in to the pain, no time to do anything but help Meghan escape before the herdsmen regained their courage and returned. “’Tis the lass. She tried to stop them. I fear she’s most hurt.”
“Let me have a look at her,” Revelin answered. As his hand gently closed over her slim shoulder, he felt a shudder pass through the girl. “There’s nothing to fear, lass. I want only to help you.”
Meghan’s head pounded with blinding fury. The terror of the last minutes was with her still, overriding the realization that she was safe. Only a moment before, hard hands had been about to cast her into flames. This touch was more gentle, yet it prodded her to action. Instead of turning toward him as the pressure of his hand demanded, she jerked free and took a few halting steps before she stumbled and sprawled in the rain-slick grass. The impact left her breathless. Incredibly, the warm, wet edge of a rough tongue reached out and bathed her face before she could even draw a breath.
Ualter sniffed the girl delicately and then licked the wound on the back of her hand. Finally he thrust his muzzle under her palm.
“Ualter!” A few quick strides brought Revelin to the fallen girl’s side and he aimed a booted kick at his dog. “Let her be, you mangy cur!”
He knelt and lifted her, turning her over so that her head came to rest against his chest. The fleeting thought of how light she was disappeared as he saw the purple bruise on her right temple where a stone had struck. Had its blow been harder to the fragile spot, he knew, she would have been killed. Restraining a fresh spurt of anger in English curses, he gently touched the trickle of blood at the corner of her lips. Her face was turned from him and for a moment he wondered if the fall had broken her neck. His fingers splayed over the slender column of her throat to the place where her pulse throbbed rapidly.
“Is she dead?” Robin called from his saddle.
“No,” he shouted back, not looking up.
Meghan stirred, trying not to moan as she breathed. “Please! Please, don’t hurt us any more.”
Encouraged by the sound of her voice, Revelin answered, “Hurt you? You’ve nothing to fear from me, lass.” He caught her chin. “Open your eyes and you’ll see nothing to harm you,” he said gently.
Meghan shook her head, straining against the sensation of comfort in the man’s voice. There was no help; why would her dreams taunt her now?
“Look at me, darlin’,” Revelin coaxed in yet a softer tone. “I may not be the man of your dreams, lass, but I’ve never made a lady swoon yet.”
No other words could have made Meghan open her eyes, but the mention of her dreams made them fly wide.
His face loomed above her. His bright hair! The rain had darkened it, though, to bronze rings that clung to his brow. They were his eyes—the deep green irises ringed by violet now as full of surprise as her own.
The moment she looked up at him Revelin felt a jolt of familiarity. Sea-blue eyes caught and held him a moment in their whirlpool of emotion, then his gaze moved to the hand covering her left cheek. Frowning, he pried loose the fingers she had clamped over her cheek, though her nails curled into her flesh in clawing desperation. The gesture touched him deeply. Was she so afraid of a man’s regard? And then he saw it. A perfectly shaped blood-red rose birthmark.
“You!” he whispered, jolted back into English by his surprise. “You are real.”
With the lightest of touches his thumb caressed the fine velvety plush of her cheek and then drifted across the distinct floral mark that was no trick of mud or bruise. He had not imagined it. He had not dreamed her.
“So you know her? Trust you to make the most of your days in the wilds.”
Revelin raised his head to find that Robin had dismounted and come to stand over him. His mouth tightened in annoyance. There was little of this he was ready to explain to Robin, least of all why he knew the girl.
“’Twas mean spirited to keep your companions waiting while you exercised your tender charms upon a country wench.” Robin bent over Revelin’s shoulder with a mischievous grin. “Let’s have a look at your Hibernian sweetheart.” He cupped the girl’s face. “She’s a bit muddy, isn’t she, but—God’s blood!” His full horror echoed in his words as Robin jerked his hand away and took a backward step.
Meghan turned her face into the coat sleeve of the man who held her. She did not need to understand English to know that her mark had once again frightened a stranger.
Revelin’s arm tightened protectively as he felt her shrink against him. “What the devil ails you, Neville?”
Robin swallowed hard, his boyish face suddenly pale. “She…she bears Satan’s mark. Put her down, Rev,” he continued as he raised his palm to look at it. “Oh, God, and I’ve touched her, too!”
“Curse you for a fool,” Revelin answered. “What’s a mark, more or less?”
“But, Rev—”
“I’ll thank you to shut up, Robin,” Revelin cut in, amazed by the tide of anger he felt rising within himself and yet sure of its validity. “The girl doesn’t need your superstitious prattling; she needs your help.”
“My help?” Robin voiced faintly. “Really, Butler. This is above all call of duty, even for a gentleman. Leave her, man. Who’s to tell when that rabble may regain their courage and return? We aren’t even privy to the reason for the attack. Mayhaps the women are witches and…”
Robin faltered, amazed at the look on Revelin’s face. Court gossip whispered that the young Irishman had the devil’s own temper when aroused, but never before had Robin glimpsed the danger that lay like a treacherous current beneath the surface.
Revelin’s voice was taut with anger as he said, “This ‘witch,’ as you would brand her, pulled me from the bottom of a marshy pond where I was entangled and drowning five mornings past. If she be a witch, then I thank God for it.”
“All the same,” Robin murmured, glancing anxiously from Revelin to the girl, whose face was hidden in the crook of his arm. She looked so fragile. Though blood streaked, her slim legs were velvety smooth and seductively curved. Long black hair tumbled about her shoulders and pooled in ebony ringlets in the grass behind her. For a moment, envy stirred in his breast that Revelin held such loveliness.
Then reason reasserted itself. Had he not heard from boyhood of the seductive beauty of Satan’s consorts? Perhaps she had saved Revelin from drowning. Witches could swim. And there was her mark. The mark always meant evil when found on a female.
Revelin watched Robin’s thoughts play across his features. When he saw fear reassert itself he responded quickly. “If the girl frightens you, then see to the old woman,” he directed, then looked away to prevent Robin from answering him.
Reluctantly, Robin turned away. And yet he was glad to move from the girl’s vicinity. He glanced down at his hand once more. He would almost swear that his fingers tingled where they had touched her. When he looked up again he saw the old woman stagger toward him. Passing his tongue nervously over his lips, he paused as she did. “How do you fare, ma’am?” he asked awkwardly.
Una did not respond though she understood the English tongue. To draw even a breath filled her with pain. She fought it, one fist pressed against her breast, but the pressure increased until she thought her chest would burst. When she opened her mouth to speak, she choked on blood, and the coughing spasm that followed drove the agony through her lungs as she pitched forwa
rd.
“Rev!” Robin called out, alarmed by the touch of the old woman, who had fainted into his arms. Yet, he gently laid her on the ground. When his hands came away slick with blood, he shivered. “God strike me, I think she’s dead!”
“Una!” Meghan sat up, her eyes dilated with fear. “Una!” she repeated as she struggled to free herself from her comforter’s embrace. “Let me go, ye great brute!” she cried when the embrace tightened. “Let go!”
Afraid that fighting her would only hurt her more, Revelin reluctantly released her.
Meghan scrambled to her feet, unaware of her own aches as she hurried across the grass to the place where Una lay. Dropping to her knees, she grasped one of her aunt’s hands in both of hers and squeezed the cold, unresponsive fingers. Bending low over the old woman, she whispered, “Una, please, ye cannot die.”
Una’s eyes opened, and her fingers clenched convulsively over the smaller hand. “Meghan,” she whispered, her gaze no longer focused. “Meghan, lass…where…is he?”
Meghan stared in horror at the trickle of blood that emerged from Una’s lips. She dabbed at it with her fingers but succeeded only in smearing it. “Una, ye must nae talk. It makes ye bleed.”
“You’re right. She should lie quietly.”
Meghan looked up, her eyes wild with fright, to find Revelin standing over her. He bent down beside her to offer words of assurance, but the telltale trickle of blood from the woman’s mouth stopped him. He had seen enough wounds to know when a body had suffered fatal injury. Each breath the old woman took brought the foam of blood to her lips. She was dying.
“Do something!” Meghan begged, her expression frantic as she looked from one man to the other. “Do something!” she screamed again when their silence told her what she did not want to believe, and then her eyes filled with tears as she choked back a sob.
“Meghan,” Una murmured thickly. Her eyes closed for a moment as the last of the color ebbed from her face, then her gray-blue eyes opened and fastened in urgency on her niece. “Ye must…do as I ask. Beneath the turf fire…I buried it. Quickly, lass. Bring it.”
“What?” Meghan questioned, too numb with shock to comprehend the words.
Revelin had understood the old woman and seized the opportunity to distract the girl. “Robin, take the girl and see what you can do about putting out the fire in the hut. The woman says there’s something buried under the hearth. Dig it up and bring it here. Give me your cloak,” he added in afterthought. “She’s blue with cold.”
Robin gave his friend a disbelieving glance. “My cloak? For that wretched creature?” Reluctantly, he swung the costly green velvet from his left shoulder. With a regretful sigh he tossed it onto Revelin’s outstretched arm. “I charge you with its replacement if a single drop of blood is spilled upon it.”
Revelin placed the cloak in Meghan’s hands. “Cover her, lass, and then do as she bids you. ’Tis important to her so you must hurry.”
Meghan gazed dumbly at him, her eyes enormous with pain and shock. The face that stared back at her was that of the stranger from the pond. It was not real, not any of this. Beneath her, pebbles dug into the tender flesh of her knees, and the mist-laden sod oozed dampness into the hem of her leine, but still she could not believe she was awake. It was a dream. At any moment Una’s hard hand would shake her and the gruff but dear voice would admonish her for dreaming away the morning.
“Una won’t die. She cannot die.” She said it calmly, and then, when she had lovingly tucked the beautiful velvet cloak carefully about the older woman, a peaceful smile turned up the corners of her lips. “She’ll rest easier now.” She patted the cloak and then rose to her feet.
Revelin was not pleased by the look of dismay that came to Robin’s face as the girl turned to him, but she seemed not to notice Robin’s expression as he backed from her as she passed by. “Follow her, damn you!” Revelin hissed in English, and Robin did so, but at a distance.
“Curse you for a coward, Neville,” he added under his breath as he watched the girl move toward the now-smoldering rubble that had once been her home. A touch at his knee brought his attention back to the old woman; he looked down to see her regarding him.
Una gazed long and hard at him, eyeing his beardless cheeks with suspicion until she saw the glistening of blond stubble along his jaw line. She was dying and she knew it. So much depended upon the next moments. Yet, he was young, so young. Did she dare entrust him with the secret?
She reached out and gripped his thigh. “Hear me…Leinsterman. There’s nae time. I’m after dying and I know it. Do ye say true when ye say Meghan…saved yer life?”
He nodded, pleased at last to know the girl’s name.
Una’s grip slackened. “Then ye be…after owing Meghan, I’m thinking. There’s a way…to repay her.” A cunning light came into her eyes. “Yet, ’tis only fair I warn ye. ’Twill bring ye a deal of trouble.”
Revelin answered her readily. “Have you not witnessed with your own eyes how little I fear trouble?”
A ghost of a smile lifted her features. How easily the young rose to the bait of a challenge, she thought. Her estimate of him was not wrong. “Give me…yer hand, lad.”
Unhesitatingly Revelin placed his hand in her bony grasp.
“I give me Meghan into your fosterage—”
“Revelin, Revelin Butler,” he supplied.
“Butler?” Una’s gaze narrowed suspiciously.
“My mother was an O’Conner,” Revelin supplied with a smile of admiration that the dying woman had enough wits about her to balk at his English surname. It was the name Butler that had opened his path to court, that made him acceptable to the peerage at Whitehall, the name whose power he hoped would win him the hand of Lady Alison Burke. How ironic that the old woman should prefer the name that he had not thought of using once in the past eight years.
The tension went out of Una at the mention of the Irish name. After a long moment she said, “Take her…take the lass away. She’s an O’Neill. Ach, Shane.” She sighed and briefly closed her eyes. “There are devils that wish me Meghan dead. Ye must protect her!”
“With my life,” Revelin answered.
“With yer life,” Una echoed, her eyes closing again as a fresh stream of blood coursed from the corner of her mouth.
“Una! Una! I’ve found it!” Meghan raced across the clearing and fell to her knees beside her aunt, holding a cloth-wrapped bundle to her chest. “Look, Una,” she continued, lightly shaking her aunt’s shoulder. “Please, open yer eyes and see for yerself.”
Una straggled to break free from the dark recesses of the twilight engulfing her. “Nae time,” she whispered. “Leinsterman…the knowledge is yers. Use it…when the time comes.”
Her eyes opened wide as she clawed in the darkness until she again found the solid strength of Revelin’s leg. Her nails bit deeply into his flesh as she whispered, “The lass…she’s not to know. The gift…she mustn’t touch it! Never betray the secret!
“Meghan,” she cried, the name garbling in her throat. “Meghan…when the sight comes on ye…forgive….”
“Una? Una!” Meghan dropped the bundle to seize her aunt by the shoulders and shake her. “Una! Wait! Una, ye weren’t to die! ’Tis my death they wanted, not yers! Una!”
But the eyes that stared up at her saw nothing, and Meghan released her and, with a shuddering wail, flung her body over the older woman’s, as though by doing so she could shield Una from the long-fingered grip of death.
“Ye promised ye’d never leave me,” Meghan whispered as with gentle fingers she stroked the still face. “Wait for me. I want to go with ye!”
Revelin’s mouth tightened as he watched the heaving shoulders of the sobbing girl. There was nothing he could do to ease her pain, and he wisely refrained from cutting short her grief, though her every gasp of misery tore a new rend in his composure. He had heard many people cry, some of them for loved ones, many more for selfish reasons, but never had anyone’s mise
ry so touched him. As he looked away toward the forest shadows stretched across the hissing grayness of the rain-darkened clearing, he wondered if there had ever been a more wretched sound than the girl’s tears.
One painful moment bled into another until Meghan no longer knew when her sobs turned to dry gasps and then stopped altogether. Una was dead. No tears would return her. There was no reason to live, no place of refuge; no one would ever look upon her again and not be repelled by fear of her ugliness.
And the fault was her own.
Then, overwhelming her conscious thoughts, a vision claimed her. So stealthily did it rise that for once she did not detect its coming. The soft woodsy green and gentle hills gave way to a foreign land where, in a gray sky, sea-swollen clouds dragged their ragged edges over the tumbled-rock mountains. Winds, whipped by the North Sea, careened down through the unfamiliar narrow valley where she huddled, alone with the never-ceasing wail of the wind.
A storm was coming. The fresh tang of salt dried on her lips, and she knew the sea was nearby. The sea’s roar came to her now on the breeze and she shivered. It was cold, colder than any winter she had ever known in her life.
From out of nowhere came the thunder of hooves and the whooping battle cries. Two armies of faceless riders surged from the mists before her frightened eyes.
“No! Don’t,” she cried, rising to her feet and lifting her hands in pleading to those nearest her. “I cannot be responsible for more deaths, do ye hear me? I mean no harm to anyone!”
Her words were lost in the cries of battle. The frenzied roar of bloodlust resounded as the warriors rode forward encircling her. The clash of blade on blade threw sparks above her head as they met. Horses and men whirled about her, forcing her to dodge hoof and boot. Clouds of dust erupted as they fought, obscuring her vision and cutting off any path to safety.
Rose of the Mists Page 7
