Ireland. Here we straddle the Atlantic and Celtic Seas. Some say the silkies come here, to shed their hides and sun on the rocks in human form. And the faeries come out of their rafts under the hills to dance in the moonlight."
Allena slipped the stems of shorter blossoms into a squat bottle. "Do you say it?"
"Some say," he continued without answering, "that my great-grandmother left her raft, her palace under the hill, and pledged herself to my great-grandfather on the night of the summer solstice while they stood by the king stone of the dance on the cliffs. One hundred years ago. As a hundred years before, another with my blood stood with his woman in that same place to pledge. And a century before that as well, and always on that same night in that same place when the star shows itself."
She touched her pendant. "This star?"
"They say."
"And in two days it's the solstice, and your turn?"
"If I believed my great-grandmother was other than a simple woman, that
I have elfin blood in my veins and could be directed to pledge to a woman because of the way a star shines through the stones, I wouldn't be in this place."
"I see." She nodded and carried one of the vases into the living room to set it on a table. "So you're here to prove that everything you've just told me is nonsense."
"Can you believe otherwise?"
She had no idea what she believed, but had a feeling there was a great deal, a very great deal, that she could believe. "Why couldn't I walk away from here, Conal? Why couldn't you?"
She left the question hanging, walked back into the kitchen. She took a sip of her tea, felt the hot flow of whiskey slide into her, then began to select her other arrangements and put them where she liked. "It would be hard for you, being told this story since you were a child, being expected to accept it."
"Can you accept it?" he demanded. "Can you just shrug off education and reason and accept that you're to belong to me because a legend says so?"
"I would've said no." Pleasing herself, she set bottles of heather on the narrow stone mantel over the simmering fire. "I would have been intrigued, amused, maybe a little thrilled at the idea of it all. Then I would have laughed it off. I would have," she said as she turned to face him.
"Until I kissed you and felt what I felt inside me, and inside you."
"Desire's an easy thing."
"That's right, and if that had been it, if that had been all, we'd both have acted on it. If that had been all, you wouldn't be angry now, with yourself and with me."
"You're awfully bloody calm about it."
"I know." She smiled then, couldn't help herself. "Isn't that odd? But then, I'm odd. Everyone says so. Lena, the duck out of water, the square peg, the fumbler always just off center. But I don't feel odd or out of place here. So it's easier for me to be calm."
Nor did she look out of place, he thought, wandering through the cottage placing her flowers. "I don't believe in magic."
"And I've looked for it all my life." She took a sprig of heather, held it out to him. "So, I'll make you a promise."
"You don't owe me promises. You don't owe me anything."
"It's free. I won't hold you with legends or magic. When I can leave, if that's what you want, I'll go."
"Why?"
"I'm in love with you, and love doesn't cling."
Humbled, he took the heather, slipped it into her hair. "Allena, it takes clear eyes to recognize what's in the heart so easily. I don't have them.
I'll hurt you." He skimmed his fingers down her cheek. "And I find
I'd rather not."
"I'm fairly sturdy. I've never been in love before, Conal, and I might be terrible at it. But right now it suits me, and that's enough."
He refused to believe anything could be so simple. "I'm drawn to you. I want my hands on you. I want you under me. If that's all, it might not be enough for you, or for me in the end. So it's best to stand back."
He walked to the peg, tugged down his slicker. "I need to work," he said, and went out into the rain.
It would be more than she'd had, she realized, and knew that if necessary, she could make it enough.
The storm was only a grumble when he came back. Evening was falling, soft and misty. The first thing he noticed when he stepped inside, was the scent.
Something hot and rich that reminded his stomach it was empty.
Then he noticed the little changes in the living room. Just a few subtle touches: a table shifted, cushions smoothed. He wouldn't have noticed the dust, but he noticed the absence of it, and the faint tang of polish.
She'd kept the fire going, and the light, mixed with that of the candles she'd found and set about, was welcoming. She'd put music on as well and was humming along to it as she worked in the kitchen.
Even as he hung up his slicker, the tension he'd carried through his work simply slid off his shoulders.
"I made some soup," she called out. "I hunted up some herbs from the kitchen bed, foraged around in here. You didn't have a lot to work with, so it's pretty basic."
"It smells fine. I'm grateful."
"Well, we have to eat, don't we?"
"You wouldn't say that so easy if I'd been the one doing the cooking." She'd already set the table, making the mismatched plates and bowls look cheerful and clever instead of careless. There were candles there, too, and one of the bottles of wine he'd brought from Dublin stood breathing on the counter.
She was making biscuits.
"Allena, you needn't have gone to such trouble."
"Oh, I like puttering around. Cooking's kind of a hobby." She poured him wine. "Actually, I took lessons. I took a lot of lessons. This time I thought maybe I'd be a chef or open my own restaurant."
"And?"
"There's a lot more to running a restaurant than cooking. I'm horrible at business. As for the chef idea, I realized you had to cook pretty much the same things night after night, and on demand, to suit the menu, you know? So, it turned into one of my many hobbies." She slipped the biscuits into the oven. "But at least this one has a practical purpose. So." She dusted her hands on the dishcloth she'd tucked into her waistband. "I hope you're hungry."
He flashed a grin that made her heart leap. "I'm next to starving."
"Good." She set out the dish of cheese and olives she'd put together. "Then you won't be critical."
Where he would have ladled the soup straight from the kettle, she poured it into a thick white bowl. Already she'd hunted out the glass dish his mother had used for butter and that he hadn't seen for years. The biscuits went in a basket lined with a cloth of blue and white checks. When she started to serve the soup, he laid a hand over hers.
"I'll do it. Sit."
The scents alone were enough to make him weep in gratitude. The first taste of herbed broth thick with hunks of vegetables made him close his eyes in pleasure.
When he opened them again, she was watching him with amused delight. "I like your hobby," he told her. "I hope you'll feel free to indulge yourself with it as long as you're here."
She selected a biscuit, studied it. It was so gratifying to see him smile.
"That's very generous of you."
"I've been living on my own poor skills for some months now." His eyes met hers, held. "You make me realize what I've missed. I'm a moody man, Allena."
"Really?" Her voice was so mild the insult nearly slipped by him.
But he was quick.
He laughed, shook his head, and spooned up more soup. "It won't be a quiet couple of days, I'm thinking."
Chapter 5
He slept in his studio. It seemed the wisest course.
He wanted her, and that was a problem. He had no doubt she would have shared the bed with him, shared herself with him. As much as he would have preferred that to the chilly and narrow cot crammed into his work space, it didn't seem fair to take advantage of her romantic notions.
She fancied herself in love with him.
It was baffling, really, to thin
k that a woman could make such a decision, state it right out, in a fingersnap of time. But then, Allena Kennedy wasn't like any of the other women who'd passed in and out of his life. A complicated package, she was, he thought. It would have been easy to dismiss her as a simple, almost foolish sort. At a first and casual glance.
But Conal wasn't one for casual glances. There were layers to her thoughtful, bubbling, passionate, and compassionate layers. Odd, wasn't it? he mused, that she didn't seem to recognize them in herself.
That lack of awareness added one more layer, and that was sweetness.
Absently, with his eyes still gritty from a restless night, he began to sketch. Allena Kennedy from New York City, the square peg in what appeared to be a family of conformists. The woman who had yet to find herself, yet seemed perfectly content to deal with where she'd landed. A modern woman, certainly, but one who still accepted tales of magic.
No, more than accepted, he thought now. She embraced them. As if she'd just been waiting to be told where it was she'd been going all along.
That he wouldn't do, refused to do. All his life he'd been told this day would come. He wouldn't passively fall in, give up his own will. He had come back to this place at this time to prove it.
And he could almost hear the fates giggling.
Scowling, he studied what he'd drawn. It was Allena with her long eyes and sharp bones, the short and shaggy hair that suited that angular face and slender neck. And at her back, he'd sketched in the hint of faerie wings.
They suited her as well.
It annoyed the hell out of him.
Conal tossed the pad aside. He had work to do, and he'd get to it as soon as he'd had some tea.