Briar Rose

by Kimberly Cates

  "Sometimes people have to make difficult choices. Do things that they regret."

  "I've driven families out of their homes, Rhiannon. Shattered the walls so they couldn't crawl back into even that meager shelter. I've offered Judas silver to hungry peasants to tempt them to betray their fathers, brothers, neighbors."

  Rhiannon's stomach hurt at the images he spun. Hadn't she seen with her own eyes the suffering the English army had brought to Ireland? Known of the cruelties, the injustice? Her heart had bled for her people. And yet her heart now broke for this man, who had no idea how many shadows those acts had left on his own face.

  "Lion, when I found you on the hill, I almost left you there. For just a moment I was tempted. I knew the things you must have done in your king's name. I can't imagine what it must be like to be forced to do such things. To carry such regrets."

  "I didn't regret a damned thing I'd done. I told myself it was necessary. The quickest way to eradicate the poison. I didn't realize then that the poison was inside me."

  She stroked a lock of hair back from his brow. "How can anyone expect you to care about other people's pain when you can't even feel your own?"

  "There is no excuse for what I've done, orders or no. There must have been other ways, gentler ways."

  "You'll think of them now. Don't you see, Lion? If you were as hopelessly wicked as you claim, I could never love you."

  "You don't. You can't."

  "I didn't fall in love with the icy captain, handsome as you were. From the first, I was drawn to the tender places in your soul. The wounded places you hoped no one could see."

  "Rhiannon—"

  "Don't try to pretend them away. Not anymore. When you touched me, kissed me, when you danced with me, I could feel so much sadness in you, so much yearning. Loneliness. No, I couldn't have mistaken it, Lion. I've been lonely too long myself not to recognize that ache in someone else."

  She swallowed hard, framed his face with her hands. "I know you didn't want me to love you. But I couldn't help myself. You kept trying to push me away. But every time you did, Lion, I heard something deep inside you calling me back. I couldn't help but hope that maybe—maybe you needed me as much as I needed you."

  "Christ, Rhiannon, the last thing on earth an angel like you needs is a"—he winced, as if sickened—"a scoundrel like me."

  "You're wrong. The fairies would never have led me to you if we weren't destined to—"

  "The fairies? If they led you to me, sweetheart, they're a damned spiteful lot."

  "To some. But never to me. Ever since I was a tiny girl, Lion, I've felt... something special, as if a ribbon were strung from my heart to the land of fairy magic. Every time I listened and followed the tug of that ribbon, I found something that healed the ugliness and anger within me."

  "Healed you? You're the most perfect creature God ever saw fit to put on this accursed planet. There's never been anything ugly inside you, Rhiannon Fitzgerald. You have such unshakable faith, such courage, such goodness. Don't you see? That is why I could never, never be worthy of even a scrap of your love."

  "Is that what you think, Lion? That I'm perfect? That I don't know anger? Hate? The night before we lost Primrose Cottage, I heard a noise. Crept downstairs."

  She felt the familiar clenching in her stomach, tasted the bitter tang of regret. It had been such a long time since she'd probed that painful memory, felt the shame of it wash through her. But she would have suffered poring over it a hundred times over if it would wipe away some of the hopelessness in Lion's eyes.

  "Papa sat at his desk, his face buried in his hands, crying. It was the only time I ever saw him cry. Over and over he kept sobbing, 'I'm sorry, Moira. So sorry.' The next day, I was going to lose the only home I'd ever had, everything I knew and loved. And there was Papa, crying over my mother. Eighteen years she'd been gone. Gone to the land of the fairies, Papa always claimed. But I'd heard other people whispering that it was all one of Kevin Fitzgerald's ridiculous stories. More likely she'd run off with a lover. Maybe she had another daughter and forgot all about me. Or maybe she was in her grave and Papa just couldn't face her death."

  She drew in a shuddering breath, confessing it all for the first time—her own pain, her doubts, her grief, the mocking whispers that stalked her late at night. "The only thing I knew for certain was that she hadn't loved me enough to stay."

  "Rhiannon, no one could look at you, even once, without loving you," Lion rasped. "I can't believe she left you behind."

  She gave a ragged laugh. "Just then I didn't care if she was on the far side of the moon. I needed Papa. I needed him to tell me everything was going to be all right. The strange thing is that all I had to do was walk through his study door. He would have wrapped me in his arms, soothed me. We could have cried together. But I wanted him to—to choose me instead of Mama. I'd been with Papa forever, loved him, taken care of him, while she—"

  Rhiannon's voice broke, and she was stunned to feel something warm against her trembling hand— Lion's strong one, covering it with such gentleness, such sorrow for the girl she had been. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to. She felt his anguish in her heart.

  "I turned, ran back up the stairs. I had a little box I'd filled with the things I loved best. The fairy cup was on top. I took it, and I... I threw it across the room. I'll never know why the cup didn't shatter into a million shards. Maybe fairy magic, or maybe the porcelain was far stronger than it looked. But Papa heard the crash, came running up. The look on his face when he saw the cup, I'll never forget it. He hadn't looked so—so desolate even when he'd first learned Primrose was lost to us.

  "He picked it up, touched the broken place in the rim, told me not to worry. Accidents happened, and he was certain I hadn't meant to do it. He carried the cup downstairs, as if it were... were something alive, wounded."

  "You were barely more than a child. You were afraid."

  "I tried to destroy what was most precious to him."

  "You're wrong, Rhiannon. The cup was just a memory, a symbol of someone he had loved and lost.

  Much as he treasured it, the cup could never run to your father with a broken-winged bird in its hands. It could never fling its arms around his neck or laugh or love him. The most precious possession your father had was your love, and I'm certain that he knew it."

  Lionel gave a harsh laugh. "I know it must seem absurd, me lecturing you about the love between you and your father. I've never loved anything. Anyone. I've never dared."

  His brow creased, as if he were groping for something, trying to piece it together. "All I do know about love is that someone has to teach you how to love. You can't learn it by yourself. Your father taught you. And your love is so boundless that he must have loved you more than life. And far, far more than a simple china cup."

  Hope blossomed in Rhiannon's breast. She clung to his hand. "You're right. After all that pain, all the ugliness of what I'd done, what matters now is that it didn't change the magic of that cup, Lion, or the love I feel whenever I touch it. We all break things, be they china cups or other people's hearts. We make mistakes, hurt each other. Sometimes we even mean to. But we can learn from what we've done. Mend what we can mend. Try to do better."

  "You make it sound so simple. I could almost believe—" He stopped, his gaze fastened on their hands, fingers interlaced.

  "Believe what?" she prodded, sensing he was balanced on some inner precipice, trying desperately to decide which way to fall.

  "From the time I was a boy, I had to learn things, things I never wanted to know, things I hated. But even then, learning was the one thing I was good at.

  Do you think that—that if I wanted to... if I promised to try... you would be willing..."

  "To what, Lion?"

  He raised his eyes to hers, and what she saw there devastated her with hope and joy. "Teach me, Rhiannon," he asked, a lifetime of loneliness and desolation in his eyes. "Teach me how to love."

  CHAPTER 16

  L
ion had seen many expressions steal across Rhiannon's open features in the brief time since she'd burst into his life—tenderness, frustration, confusion, delight, empathy, determination, and grief—but never had he seen such pure joy, such unshakable faith as that which blossomed in her face at his plea.

  So powerful was it that for an instant it terrified him, made him want to pull away from her, from the chance that he would fail her, disappoint her, and that his world would be left even more barren than before. For if Rhiannon couldn't teach him to love, he knew with sinking suddenness that he was beyond help, beyond hope. Condemned to a hell far more terrifying than any realm of fire and brimstone that Satan himself could design. Because for an instant, he had tasted Rhiannon's world, harbored the most fragile hope that she might somehow be able to open the gate, let him in.

  She grasped his hand in hers, so tight, as if even now she understood his fears, refused to let him slip away. "I'll teach you, my love," she promised, angels in her eyes. "I won't leave you alone."

  Her hands framed his face, and she brushed his lips with hers. Rose-petal soft, dewy, and impossibly sweet, her kiss melted into Lion, filling him with the warmth of healing. He groaned, threading his fingers through her hair, cradling the nape of her neck in his palm as he explored her lips, kissing her as if it were his first time.

  And it was the first time he'd truly kissed a woman—no game of strategy fired by mutual lust, no expediently disposing of inconvenient physical needs, no carefully guarded distance maintained between them despite the intimacy of mouth upon mouth. He came to this kiss more terrified than he had been in his first battle, the smell of gunpowder stinging his nostrils. He came to her far more naked than he'd ever been in his life—a nakedness of spirit.

  "Rhiannon..." He murmured her name against her lips, needing for the first time in his life, allowing himself to tumble deeper, deeper into the sensation. Love—the ultimate recklessness. Nothing made a man more vulnerable. And yet as his mouth moved with heart-hunger over Rhiannon's, the risk was worth the pleasure. A boy's wonder of discovery, a man's first foray into something finer than mere lust. The sensations shook him to the core of his being.

  Or was he selfish? Weak? Allowing her to banish his nightmares, his loneliness, take them into herself in an effort to heal him. He didn't deserve her love, her care. Nothing could ever change that.

  Though it was like ripping his heart from his chest, Lion loosened his fingers from the silken cinnamon strands of hair, drew his lips reluctantly away from hers.

  "Rhiannon, I don't think—"

  "You do think," she breathed against the sensitive cords of his throat, "far too much. Love isn't about thinking. It's about feeling. Trusting."

  "You'd be a fool to trust me, sweetheart," he confessed. "No matter how much I might wish... wish it were different."

  "Then you'll just have to trust me." She raised those eyes to his, luminous, a little shy. "Lion, do you remember when we were in the glen? When I was splashing in the water with Milton?"

  His mouth went dry. "You'll never know how hard I have to work to keep from thinking of it. You looked like a water sprite, droplets sparkling on your face, your chemise soaked through with water, clinging." He swallowed, his voice dropping low, bitter. "But I found a way to crush that vision. I just pictured your face after I told you the truth about why I—"

  She stopped the words with the tips of her fingers, laying them across his mouth—such a fragile barrier to hold in something so very ugly. Her lips curved in a trembling smile. "I wanted you to see me that way. To stare at me with that heat in your eyes, almost as if I were beautiful."

  "As if? God, have you any idea how beautiful you are? You're everything warm and bright and loving. Everything I was so sure I could never have."

  A flush stained her cheeks with rose. "But you could have had me. I offered myself to you."

  "Damn it, Rhiannon, how could I, no matter how much I might have wanted you? Apparently even I wasn't that heartless. To take such a gift from you, when I could give you nothing in return except pain and disillusionment and regret."

  "Is that what you were taught? To give gifts only when you could expect something in return?"

  "I never gave anything away, my dear, unless I knew the giving would work to my advantage."

  "But in that case, it would have. I mean, I wanted to make love with you. I didn't expect anything from you, Lion, except that one night. It should have been a perfect bargain to your way of thinking. And still you pulled away."

  "No, angel. I didn't pull away. I shoved you away from me with all the ruthlessness I could muster, bastard that I am, because"—he sucked in a shuddering breath—"no matter how hard I tried to deny it, you touched something inside me, something buried so deep I wasn't even certain it existed anymore, if it had ever existed at all. The tiniest fragment of—of decency, the barest shadow of what might once have been my heart."

  "Even then, dastardly villain that you were, you were trying to protect me, weren't you? A knight-errant fighting hardest against the demons in himself."

  "Even an imagination rich as yours will never be able to garb me in the robes of a Galahad. You should have fled while you had the chance, Rhiannon. It would have been better for you, I'm afraid."

  "Never. The fairies brought us together, Lion. And the first lesson I'm going to teach you about loving is this one. It isn't always smooth and easy and fair. But once you have it, real love is worth any risk, worth believing in, worth fighting for, even when it seems all hope is lost, because love is the one thing no one can take away from you. My father kept his love for my mother alive for eighteen years after she disappeared from his life. Wherever he is now—in heaven or in the land of the fairies—I'm sure he has that love still. And if you'd succeeded in sending me away from the garrison the night we arrived, I would still be loving you, from somewhere among the green hills, and you would know it, no matter how hard you tried to pretend it away."

  He gazed down into her face, so earnest, flushed with emotion, her eyes so bright. Pure love, poured like life-giving water into the hands of a man wandering for an eternity in the desert. Even though he was unworthy to drink it, how in the name of God could he stop himself?

  A burning started low in his belly, a fire he'd never felt before—need, pure, unadulterated need—not only of the body but of the very soul. He wanted to draw her into his arms, to strip away the gown that clung like fairy mist to the sweet curves of her body. He wanted to taste every delicate inch of skin he bared.

  Hell, he could already remember every sip he'd taken of her lips, even the most careless brush of her fingers—touches that had been so foreign to him before Rhiannon Fitzgerald had stumbled into his life, a tousled fairy maid who brushed aside his fiercest scowls, smiled through his iciest barbs, and dared to do what no one had done before—to see beyond what he was, to look deeper, until she saw all he could be.

  Never had he wanted a woman more than he wanted Rhiannon now, and yet... didn't he owe her far more than a tumble between his sheets? A quick, fierce bedding in answer to the selfish pounding of his own desire? Shouldn't he wait, make love to her the first time after meeting her at the altar? Lion garbed in his finest dress uniform; Rhiannon glowing and joyous, with flowers twined in her hair? Time. Perhaps she didn't need it, to be certain what she wanted. But he needed it, to know that he might somehow make himself fit to be her husband.

  Husband. He'd once briefly considered marriage— an accepted way to ensure one's advancement in the army. Plenty of senior officers were anxious to see their daughters wed. Families to be allied, a favorite weapon of the military dynasties like the kin of Thorne Carville. And yet, in the end the idea of living with anyone, the terror that she might hear his nightmares, discover his secrets, was unacceptable.

  Redmayne lifted his trembling hands to her face. "We'll take this slowly, sweetheart." Even if it puts me through hell, a voice inside him mocked. "That way we can make certain that I can learn to give
you what you need."

  "Oh, Lion. I don't need proof that—"

  "I do." Was that his voice? So fierce, run through with emotion? "Don't you understand?"

  She hesitated for a moment. "Yes. Yes, I do." She touched his cheek, so tenderly, eyes as wise and innocent as Eve's before the fall. Her lips curved in a smile. "Actually there is something I need right now if... if you could help me. My buttons. You see, I can't reach them."

  Astonished, he watched as she turned her back to him, and with her hands swept up the tumble of curls, exposing the tender curve of the back of her neck. Redmayne could scarce breathe. It wasn't an invitation. She had excused her maid, hadn't she? It was a request bred of simple necessity. Or had the fates designed it to test his resolve to do right by his lady?

  Gritting his teeth tighter than when he'd cauterized his wounds, he raised his fingers to the line of tiny buttons and began unfastening them. One after another, he made his way down between her shoulder blades, the fabric gaping open in his path, revealing undergarments gossamer as the wings of a dragonfly.

  The finest lace he'd ever seen edged the soft white cloth, but neither soft muslin nor rich lace could hold half the beauty or allure as the lily-fair skin that peeked out from beneath it.

  If this was a test of willpower, he was losing, badly. Fingers that should have marched down her back with the single-mindedness of a general taking a hill tarried over the delicate mysteries of undergarments so utterly feminine, trimmed with wisps of lace. Not the rich Mechlin or Brussels lace of women who had been his mistresses, but soft, delicate webs, doubtless fashioned by Rhiannon's own hands. Airy dreams of romance spun by a solitary girl, secret beauty she alone would see. The insight tightened his chest, filling him with the memory of those dreams unleashed tonight at the ball, as she'd spun about, butterfly-free, in his arms.

  Had she any idea that she'd loosed dreams inside him as well? Hotter, more earthy dreams, edged with needs fiercer than anything her innocence could imagine and yet softened, gentled with a reverence Captain Lionel Redmayne had never thought to know.