The path threading upward through furze and gorse had been easy to follow, but suddenly it leveled out and vanished in a stretch of rough grass and seemed to spread into infinity in the mist. Roddy paused. Around her, light shimmered through the atmosphere. She shifted MacLassar on her shoulder, and he gave a satisfied grunt.
There seemed to be some reason to go forward, and none to go back. She walked slowly into the open area. In front of her the paleness formed into shapes: flat stones set on end in a line that curved away like silent soldiers into the mist.
She walked forward. The only sound was the drag of her skirts on the dewy grass. As she moved past the line of rocks she could see that it curved back upon itself and made a circle, with a single group of odd-shaped boulders near the center. A few bushes grew among the spaces between, and a scattering of the tiny white flowers Senach had shown her, giving the group a softer, more welcoming look than the circle of brooding sentries.
She sat down on one of the rocks in the center. MacLassar wriggled until she set him on the ground, where he curled up at her feet and went to sleep.
Roddy went to sleep, too. At least, it seemed she must have, for when she looked back where she had come from the mist had thinned, and in a shaft of cool sunlight sat the woman who had danced with the militia captain on the night of the fairy ball.
Roddy recognized her instantly. She thought that she had even dreamed about her, so familiar did that face of winter beauty seem. The woman’s hair was loose and long, a cascade of icy light. She sat with crossed legs amid a carpet of tiny, luminous white flowers, and looked at Roddy.
“How pretty you are,” Roddy said.
The woman tilted her head and smiled.
“I’m Roderica,” Roddy ventured again.
“I know,” the woman said. She did not offer her own name.
“You helped us at the ball. I thank you for that.”
The woman laughed, a sound that brought a pleased echo to Roddy’s lips.
“Do you live nearby?” Roddy asked.
“Oh, yes. I do.”
“We’ve only just come. My husband is rebuilding the old great house. Do you know it?”
The answer was a nod and another laugh. MacLassar lifted his head, and then came to his feet and ambled over to their visitor. He leaned against her, and Roddy felt his little shiver of pleasure as the woman touched his ears.
“Do you come here often?” Roddy asked.
“Often. To dance. Do you like to dance?”
“Yes.” Roddy surprised herself a little with that answer. “I like it very much.”
“Come back, then. Dance with me.”
They both sat silent a moment, smiling at one another with the delight of discovery and new friendship.
The woman said, “I’ll tell you stories.”
“I’d like that.”
“I’ll sing for you. And you can sing for me.”
Roddy nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Fionn.”
Bright and fair, that meant, though Roddy had no notion how she knew. “Like the flowers.”
“Yes.” The woman shook back her hair and rose fluidly. “You’re called,” she said. “I must go.”
Roddy sat rooted to the boulder and watched as the slender figure was swallowed by the mists. MacLassar stumbled onto his short legs. With a happy, bucking leap, he shook himself out of sleep and ran to Roddy.
A moment later, she heard what Fionn must have: a voice shouting her name through the mist, hoarse with exhaustion and discouragement.
She stood up, and called out quickly in answer.
“Roddy.” Faelan’s outline appeared, a black shape, a rock that moved in the twilight atmosphere. He came through the circle with a determined stride, and only when he was very close could she see the strain in his face, the tight lines etched around his mouth and eyes. “Thank God!”
She thought for a moment he would pull her into his arms. But he stopped in front of her, his gaze sliding over her with a piercing urgency, as if to determine any hurt, and then he threw back his cloak and sat down hard on a rock. “I ought to beat you,” he said fiercely. “God, I ought to beat you.”
MacLassar trotted up and presented himself for an ear scratching.
“And you, too, you worthless beast,” Faelan snapped. “I’ll warrant you’re the cause of this.” He tore open the lacing at his neck and brought a leather pack and flask from beneath his cloak. “Here,” he said, opening the pack and holding an oatcake out to Roddy. “Just eat a little at first. You must be half dead.”
“I’m not hungry,” Roddy said. “Give it to MacLassar.”
“Christ. Don’t get heroic on me with a goddamned pig. You eat it, before you fall down. Two days without food; I’m surprised you’re on your feet at all.”
“Two days!” She frowned at him. “Don’t be silly. I broke fast and had tea, too, before I started up here.”
“Sit down,” Faelan said. “You’re light-headed.”
“No, I’m not. It hasn’t been an hour since I—”
He grabbed her skirt and dragged her down beside him. “Sit down. Eat.”
Roddy sat. She broke off a corner of the oatcake and stuffed the dry morsel in her mouth. MacLassar came rushing up, and she gave the rest to him.
Faelan simply took out another and handed it to her.
“I’m not hungry,” she said. “And you didn’t have to come after me. I could have found my way back.”
“For God’s sake, are you feverish? You disappear for two days and then sit there and tell me I didn’t have to come after you?”
“What are you talking about?” she demanded. “I took a walk, and I came up here and sat down for a few moments. I don’t know what you mean—disappearing two days. I’ve worked just as hard as anyone! Yesterday I spent the whole afternoon on my knees clearing out the rubble you’d pushed down the drawing-room chimney, and the day before that I pulled down the last of the silk in the ballroom. With your help—or have you forgotten your grand fit of sneezing already?”
He looked toward her sharply. The concern on his face went to sudden wariness. Her question had been almost joking; his answer was soft, and deadly serious. He said slowly, “No. I remember that.”
“Well,” she said, as if that explained everything. But her heart began to thump in dismay.
He stared out at the circle of standing stones. The black mood came on him; she saw it in the way his eyes narrowed and his mouth curved. He stood up and walked to the tallest stone, put his palms flat against it as if he would shove it down. His teeth bared in that quick, savage straining at a hopeless cause. The rock never moved. With a jerk and a choked sound of frustration, he straightened, glaring at the gray-streaked surface as if some answer should be written there.
It was easy then to be afraid of him. Easy to suspect what Senach’s story hinted. Unnatural son. Murderer. She could look at Faelan’s rigid stance and believe there was a darkness in him, a demon that drove him and bowed to no morality or law.
She had married him because he was beyond her gift, and she clung to that fragile safety. She dared not probe too deeply. She could hope…as long as she did not know.
He swung away from the stone, and came to stand over her. “You’re not hungry?” he asked softly.
Roddy shook her head.
“Nor tired? Nor cold?”
“No.”
“I am,” he said. He sank down onto his knees beside her. “All of them.” His lashes sagged, a weary relaxation over blue-mist eyes. “Tell me. Tell me how that’s possible if I dreamed it all.”
“You’ve been working,” she said.
He crushed some of the silvery flowers beneath his palm as he leaned on it, resting in the grass. “Roddy. I haven’t slept since you left.” He reached out, stroked the back of her hand. “I’ve been looking for you.”
She could not argue with him. Exhaustion softened and blurred his features. “You’ve found me,” she whispered.
>
His fingers interlocked with hers. “Yes.” His eyes rolled shut. He drew her hand against his cheek and lowered his head to the ground. “…found…” His words mumbled into indistinctness. Roddy saw a shadow move in the mist beyond him. She looked up, and Fionn stood on the other side of the circle.
The other woman laughed, a sound like bright bells on the wind. That joy washed over Roddy, banishing darker things. She watched as Fionn came closer and knelt over Faelan’s sleeping form.
Roddy was near enough to touch the sunbeam of hair that cascaded over Fionn’s slim shoulders. Fionn looked up at her, with a hand over her mouth like a child holding back a giggle.
“Faelan.” Roddy touched his face and rocked him gently. She wanted to introduce him to Fionn. But he only murmured and curled her hand more deeply beneath his cheek. She glanced at Fionn apologetically. “He’s very tired.”
“You can wake him,” Fionn said. “When you wish.”
Roddy looked down at her husband. His hard mouth was brushed with a faint smile; he looked younger, and infinitely precious. “I’ll let him sleep.”
Fionn reached out and drew her finger through his hair. “I know a story about him,” she said. MacLassar came up, shoving his small snout jealously under Fionn’s hand. She transferred her caress to the piglet. “I’ll tell you someday.”
“I’ll listen now,” Roddy said.
Fionn tilted her head with a sly smile. “Not yet,” she said, and shook her head. “No. You won’t listen yet.”
It was the lightest of reproofs, but Roddy felt her pleasure shrivel into shame. She ducked her head, and touched Faelan’s hair as the other woman had done. It curled through Roddy’s fingers, smooth and cool and contrarily reminiscent of his hot sweetness.
I love you, she thought, with a faint despair.
When she lifted her eyes again, Fionn was gone.
Roddy had a moment’s curiosity, a flutter of doubt about where Fionn lived and her comings and goings in mist and silence. But the importance of it faded and dissolved as Roddy’s hand trailed through Faelan’s hair and across his jaw. She felt his breath on her open palm. It seemed such a human thing, such a warm mortal weakness…it made her throat close and ache with wanting.
His lips brushed her hand. She looked down, saw his eyes still closed; but there was an awareness, a slight lift of the night-black lashes. He was awake. His free hand found her hip and slid upward, drawing her skirt in tow.
A spurt of hunger seized her. He shifted, pulled her down beneath him, and buried his face between her breasts.
She felt his hands cup and weigh her, felt his thumbs make rough circles around her nipples. The low, greedy moan of pleasure in his chest was sound and sensation both, a soft vibration against her breasts.
She spread her legs in wanton welcome, arching up to seek him. The breath that had caressed her so softly the moment before came harsher now, burning the tender skin at the corners of her mouth. “Cailin sidhe,” he whispered. “Cailin sidhe. It’s been too long.”
Above him, far past him, the mists shifted and opened in patches, so that his black hair against the blue sky was like his eyes: bright and dark, the one drawing intensity from the other.
“Someone might come,” she protested, thinking of Fionn.
“Aye.” His thick lashes lowered as he fingered the ribbons on her cloak. “I’ve got searchers all over the mountain.” At the slight stiffening of her body, he looked up. “Ah—you don’t believe that, do you?” He grinned, his teeth flashing white in the moody atmosphere. He bent to her and spoke low in her ear. “You think I’m mad. I think you’re mad. We’re meant for each other, my love.”
Her cape came free, falling back to form a bed in the damp grass. Her sash and dress followed under Faelan’s knowledgeable hands. The cool air touched her skin like a kiss. She moaned, giving herself up to him, to the slide of his body on hers, to the arch and thrust of his possession.
She felt…like the earth itself. Like the earth beneath the wind, caressed and storm-tossed and then swept into the gale. He was rough suddenly, holding her face between his hands, driving deep with his tongue. Then he began to touch her, all over, to map each curve of her with his mouth and his hands.
“Roddy—” he groaned against her breasts. “Don’t leave me again.”
I didn’t, she wanted to cry. I never could.
“I want you.” His fingers went tight at her waist, pulling her beneath him, beneath his hot skin that had somehow gotten free of clothes. “I need you. Ah, God, if I wake up some night and find you’ve been a dream…”
“I’m not a dream,” she mumbled, unable to think beyond that silly phrase under the weight of sensation his hands produced.
His throat rumbled with an aching laugh. “Little love, cailin sidhe—are you not? Sometimes I look at you, and the mist seems easier to touch…”
“No,” she moaned. She traced the powerful curve of muscle down his back. “Touch me.”
His body weighed on her, pressing her down as his teeth scored her shoulder. “Aye,” he whispered fiercely. “I’m no saint. I’ll hold you as I can.” His hand slipped down to move across her inner thigh, guiding his hardness against her. “I know you this way. I know all about you.”
“Faelan…”
“Love me, Roddy,” he groaned as he found her depths and joined with her. “Stay with me. Don’t listen to the rest of them.” He lifted her, drove deep and hard, as if to brand her with his body. His words were a rasp in her ear: “My love. My life. Stay with me.”
She did not answer. She could not, for the cry of pleasure and need in her throat. He took her up and held her, spun her like the whirlwind amid the rocks and the sky and the mist. His hands locked with hers. In a wide sweep against the silky-wet ground, he forced her arms over her head and pinned them, bending to suckle and tease her exposed breasts.
The move brought him into her with a throbbing power, an urgency that sent her exploding toward fulfillment. Each time she rose to meet him he made a sound, a sob of passion between his teeth. She felt the wet grass on her hands, and smelled the hot scent of exertion that shone in his skin.
It seemed she was expanding, that her senses and her talent swelled to encompass everything. As they swept together to the climax, it even seemed she was with him in shared ecstasy: that his hunger was hers; that the fire between them coalesced in one flame—dancing and joyous and wild, and bright beyond any imagining.
They lay together afterward. Awake. It was a strange interlude, while the mists began at last to thin and lift, and the red shafts of evening turned the ring of stone to a glowing rose. It should have been cold, but it was warm. It should have seemed wrong, to lie naked and entwined in the open, but it seemed very right instead. Her cape lay in waves beneath them, and Faelan’s breath skimmed her neck and lifted a stray hair.
Eventually, in the same lazy, satisfied mood, they sat up and began to dress. It was a slow process, teasing and touching and helping one another. MacLassar accepted an oatcake with dignity from Faelan’s hand.
Dressed, they left the ring hand in hand like a pair of May lovers. There seemed no need for words or questions; just that contact of their hands, and the times when Faelan slid his arm around her waist and pulled her to him for a kiss. Roddy found the path as she had been sure she could. Below, the whole coastline spread before them in a shimmering roll of green hills and silver bays. It surprised her, how far she had come in the fog.
It was dusk when they heard voices calling. The subdued urgency in them caught her attention, and Roddy focused her gift, stretching to overcome the distance.
It was Martha, and the older O’Sullivan, calling Roddy’s name with weary regularity. Faelan raised his arm and shouted, waving. The movement caught O’Sullivan’s eye, and Roddy felt the strong and heady jolt of relief that swept him.
“Oh, mum!” Martha was sobbing when they finally reached the lower path. She grabbed Roddy in a hearty and unservile embrace. “Oh, mum, we
thought you was gone for sure! They been telling me such stories—about them soldiers and what happened to ’em, and cliffs and wolves and all such, mum! Oh, but I knew his Lor’ship ’ud find you; I just knew so! I said so to Mr. O’Sullivan, over and over, and him thinking that one night on the mountain be enough to murder a grown strong man, and you lost for two, and then His Lordship come up missin’ the third! Oh, but I knew that if any could save you, ’twould be His Lordship—” In her fit of thankfulness, she let go of Roddy and hugged Faelan, too. “Oh, sir, I’ll do my best for you all my days, for bringin’ Her Ladyship home safe. I’ll do anythin’!”
Roddy was barely listening to the maid’s protests of eternal loyalty. She was looking at Faelan, and hearing Martha’s “two nights” echo in her head.
“Martha,” she demanded sharply. “Don’t exaggerate. You can’t possibly have been searching for me for two days.”
“Oh, mum, we have indeed. Every minute of it, and I’m about dead on me feet, m’lady.”
“But, Martha—I’ve not been gone but an afternoon.”
“Oh—m’lady…She hasn’t gone and knocked her head, Your Lordship—”
“Of course I haven’t,” Roddy snapped, driven to agitation. “I tell you all, I left the house just after tea. I spent all morning helping you churn, Martha—you can’t think I’ve been gone so long.”
Martha gave her a wide-eyed stare. In the face of Roddy’s obvious emotion, the maid didn’t dare contradict her mistress, but in her mind she decided that Roddy had indeed hit her head and needed immediate attention. Mr. O’Sullivan glanced worriedly at Faelan, and Roddy knew he thought the same.
“You’re all being ridiculous,” she exclaimed. “I know what I’ve done, and where I’ve been. I went up the hill, and while I was there I met a lady. Fionn is her name. I talked to her awhile, and then Faelan came. That’s all. And if you’re all trying to play some sort of silly joke, you needn’t bother!” Her voice began to rise. “I won’t fall for it, and I don’t think it’s at all funny!”