Some Enchanted Waltz (12 page)

At last, he drew away, leaving her lips moist and aching from his caress. He was panting, a little. His eyes had that hooded look she knew well, a look that betrayed his own potent arousal. Would he leave her this night, or beguile her further until she was lying beneath him on the bed beyond?

“Good night, sweet lady. Pleasant dreams.” He whispered in a roughened timbre.

“Good night.” Tara murmured, gazing up at him with longing as he stood.

His footsteps echoed on the flagstones as he reached the edge of the carpet. The sound of the door closing behind him signaled his retreat.

Tara sat gripping the arms of the chair with tense fingers. She was panting, more than a little now that he was gone and there was no need to conceal her own arousal. She gazed into the crackling, flickering flames, imagining the the kiss had not ended. Imagining where it would take them. Imagining him, naked and magnificent in her arms. There were muscles beneath those fancy clothes. Hard muscles. Adrian Dillon was no lazy, indulged, paunchy aristocrat. He was solid man beneath his dove grey velvet suit.

“Damn.”  Tara swore aloud as she just thought of one more device they didn’t have in this realm;
a vibrator
.  

Tara watched the firelight as it cast eerie shadows around her new room. The day after the wedding, Adrian insisted on moving her into a more luxurious suite befitting her station as Lady Dillon. Her prior room had been a guest room, he explained, and thus, it was rather austere and Spartan in furnishings. She hadn’t minded the simplicity, before she saw the ornate luxury that was to be gained in the exchange.  

It was a tad overly feminine, as taste went, yet, as the days progressed she was coming to appreciate the lovely rose and ivory furnishings amid the rosewood paneling. She also liked the fact that all she had to do was pull the bell pull near the bed and a servant would appear to do her bidding. She could order food, a bath, or just summon a maid to keep her company. It was cozy sitting by the warm fire with a writing kit on her lap as she wrote down her impressions of this new life and lingering questions about her old one.

Tara asked the housekeeper for some writing implements. She wanted to keep a record of her thoughts and hopefully put together the missing pieces of her past life. The kindly housekeeper surprised Tara by giving her not plain paper but a rather fancy hand tooled leather bound journal with blank, gilded parchment pages. The quill and inkwell had been a shock. Through trial and error Tara was able to figure out how to use the awkward writing instrument. Geez, hadn’t anyone heard of a fountain pen?   

So far, she recorded random thoughts and names that came to her mind. She  looked at the list:
Arwen
and
Legolias
, were at the top. She knew who they were--fairies or elves-- she wasn’t sure of the precise label they went by, and yet, their names conjured images of beautiful beings with arched brows and pointed ears. Beings that were intrinsically familiar to her.  She also remembered a handsome, rugged fellow with a cloak and a sword,
Stryder
, also known as
Lord Aragorn
, a human who visited their realm often and was in love with Arwen. There was also a bearded man known only as
The Gnome
, and a blond giant who smoked constantly named
Lurch
. It was a short list, and yet, it was a start. She hoped that as she continued to write things down, more images and names would come to her.

She also made a list of place names as they came to her. They seemed familiar. Tara hoped to be able to look the places up on maps in her husband’s study. She looked down at the long list of place names on the page:
Rivendale, Green Bay, Middle Earth, Hogwarts Academy, Peshtigo,
then the most perplexing name of all;
Marinette
.
 She wasn’t sure if that last one was a place or a woman, it seemed to be both in her mind. It was most confusing. She saw an Indian woman at times when she said the name and at others, she saw a city near a river.

A knock sounded at her door. It was Maggie, her personal maid.

“Come in.” Tara said, patting the bed with her hand to invite the girl to linger. “Sit with me for a time.”

“Yes, Mum.” The girl replied. “I came to see if you needed anything else tonight.”

Maggie had long reddish brown hair that was swept up in a tight braid. Like the other servants here, she wore a white mob cap to hide most of it. She was thin and her youthful face was generously sprinkled with freckles. Her dress was plain cotton, not the traditional black garb Tara imagined servants wore in rich English households. The faded blue material was patched in places and appeared to be handmade. Maggie’s small hands were worn, evidence she was used to scrubbing long hours throughout the days as a scullery maid before she’d been given the task of caring for the new mistress.

Tara requested Maggie to be her personal maid after having her as a constant companion for a week in when she’d been recovering from the shipwreck injuries. “No, I’d just like a little company, if you don’t mind.”

The girl looked at her with surprise. “Why, no, mum.”

“Sit, please.” Tara pleaded. She wanted to chat with someone in a relaxed manner, but it seemed impossible here. The servants treated her with an awkward deference she wasn’t accustomed to. Lady Fiona and Dr. Magnus watched Tara so carefully it made her  uneasy, as if they expected her to say or do something outrageous. Adrian was the worst of all. He remained aloof since their erotic kiss, aloof and distracted.

“Tell me about your family.” Tara suggested as the girl sat down at the foot of the bed with a stiffness that betrayed her uneasiness at such an odd request from the mistress.  “I don’t understand why you have to work here instead of going to school. A girl your age should be dreaming about boys, not working long hours as a servant.”

“Ach, I’m sixteen, mum, too old for the schoolroom. I went to the hedge school to learn my letters. ‘T’was to prepare me to enter service. My sister works here, you see, in the kitchens, she recommended me as a scullery when I turned twelve. T’was a good arrangement, that. Now we’re both bringing in coin for the family. With me Da gone so much of the time Mama has her hands full with all the little ones to care for.”

Tara thought about Maggie’s reply. “How many brothers and sisters do you have?”

“Eleven.” Maggie answered proudly. “Liam and Angus, they’re married, with wives of their own. They live in Glengarriff. That leaves the nine of us at home.”

“And what does your father do?”

“He’s a fisherman, my lady.” Maggie replied, looking away with guilt in her eyes as she said it, giving the impression it wasn’t the whole truth. “Most men around these parts are fisherman, sailors, or sheep farmers. All of them work for Lord Dillon or Lord White across the Bay.”

“And do you have a boyfriend?”

Maggie gave her a blank expression.

Tara rolled her lips inward, trying to think of the right phrasing for her question. “Let’s see . . . is there a young man you have taken a fancy to--someone you’d like to spend more time with and perhaps marry one day?”

That
was a language any sixteen-year-old girl understood.

With a beatific smile, Maggie told her mistress all about the young man in the stables with laughing blue eyes and a dimpled smile.

Adrian came home each night tired and stiff from his long ride about his estates in the cold January winds. They shared dinner with his mother and Dr. Magnus. The doctor seemed to be a regular at their table. Tara didn’t mind the doctor’s presence.  He provided a buffer to Lady Fiona’s odd outbursts and to Adrian’s resentment of his mother’s obvious drinking problem. After dinner, Adrian spent a short time with the family in the salon before withdrawing, claiming extreme weariness.

After Adrian’s retreat, Tara played cards with the older couple for a short time. Lady Fiona and Dr. Magnus were teaching her whist. She enjoyed it. Within an hour she sought the privacy of her own luxury suite, as by that time Lady Fiona’s steady descent into inebriation was beginning to wear on Tara as well.

During the long days, Adrian’s mother was typically shut up in her room or in the red parlor. Either way, she was almost always lost in the bottle and provided little in the way of companionship for Tara.

Left to herself, Tara began to explore the castle. She found every corner of her new home intriguing from the vast kitchen with massive stone hearths at opposite ends of the room where servants bustled about, to dungeons below the castle. Thankfully, there were no rotting corpses that she could see there, yet, she’d only visited the first few chambers down there, as it was too spooky to go further without a light.

She investigated the empty state rooms, the great hall, even the old armory that was well stocked with swords and daggers, muskets and other relics. She loved the suit of armor standing sentry in the great hall. Tara named the armor statue ‘Reggie, and took to greeting him each morning as if he were a real person. She also took to peeking inside the visor each morning, hoping a real knight might be hiding inside of it.

Stranger things had happened to her. She’d left one world full of every kind of convenience a girl could wish for and been transported into a world that was vastly primitive by comparison.

So, the fairies had sent her here to save Lord Dillon, had they
?

Save him from what
?

Tara meandered through the rooms on the ground floor to find where Lady Fiona was positioned before making her way to the master’s study.

The red parlor was Lady Fiona’s favorite room, a pleasant atmosphere for such a dreary winter day with its bright red wallpaper and warm golden furnishings. It was vacant this morning. Tara rambled down the hall toward the most recent addition at the turn of the century, a ballroom.

She entered the large, empty chamber. A long expanse of polished blue marble flooring was lined with elegant white colonnades. A few arched fan windows marked the outer wall, and heavy, sheet ensconced chandeliers hung from the ceilings. This room was an addition to the castle that was added in the past century, judging by the newer architecture that was in the fluffier Baroque style instead of the stark medieval style of the main rooms at Glengarra.

Tara walked into the center of the room. She imagined what it would be like to have the room lit up, filled with dancers and guests. There would be musicians in one corner, a few potted plants here and there and a table of refreshments. The candlelight would give the room a warm glow and the richly dressed guests moving about the dance floor would brighten the solemn, empty chamber and make it come alive.

Unable to resist, Tara twirled about the empty dance floor in a pirouette, watching as her loose, long skirts twisted about her in elegant swirls. She closed her eyes, imagining what it must be like to attend a ball with women dressed in rich silks, the air scented with perfumes, hothouse flowers adoring every table near the walls, and men lining up to ask her to dance. She imagined stuffy music playing in the background.  

That would never do.

Tara stopped in mid-twirl in the center of the floor. She tried to imagined the right music to accompany her fantasy. Try as she might, the only song that came to mind was one as out of place as she was in this elegant ballroom. It was a ballad she recognized instantly and knew by heart.

 “
I’d Lie for You (And That’s the Truth
) by Meatloaf, from his
Welcome to the Neighborhood Album
.” Tara spoke aloud. She saw herself speaking into a black microphone and seated at a table before a computer that had little red and blue boxes flashing inside the frame. She shook off the odd impression. Dr. Magnus cautioned her not to force the memories, to just let them come on their own. Tara was coming to the point of not wanting the impressions to come to her. They only brought confusion when she couldn’t understand their meaning.

Tara closed her eyes again. She stood in the middle of the darkened ballroom, her hands outstretched at her sides. The musical intro to the song flooded her mind; a soft piano solo reminding her of gently falling rain. The sound of it captured her heart, compelling Tara to glide about the empty room on light feet as if she were a ballerina, her arms outstretched, spinning and twirling with abandon. The barest hint of a guitar strumming was added to the piano music in her mind. She imagined it as a ghostly male lover slowly stepping across the dance floor to move in time with the seductive feminine piano notes.

Tara surrendered to the music and sang the ballad aloud. “
I’d pull the sun from the sky to light your darkest night, I wouldn’t let one drop of rain fall down into your life.”
The words came easily. Her heart soared as she glided across the room and sang them aloud. “
I’d lie for you and that’s the truth, move mountains if you want me to . . .”
 

The door leading to the gardens opened. Lord Dillon, wet and cold, slipped into the room and swiftly ducked behind a marble column as he spotted the beautiful apparition swirling across the floor with her eyes closed as if she were dancing in the mists, singing her song of enchantment. The sunlight streaming in the windows illuminated her peach silk dress and her coppery tresses as she moved across the windowed wall.