Some Enchanted Waltz (33 page)

“How does Tara figure into it? You mean to tell me you just married the prettiest stranger you could find to prevent the Sheriff forcing you to marry his daughter?”

“This charade has gone on for nearly a year. At first I ignored Sheriff Burke’s threats. He became more persistent, resorting to blackmail. I left the country for a few months. Upon my return, I told everyone I was betrothed to a beautiful foreigner, and she would be arriving on a ship in Glengarriff with her father just before the wedding.”

“And in drops Tara, a lost waif with no memory who needs your protection. They ought make it into a movie.”  MacNeill scoffed. “Hell, they probably have. So, you find this beautiful girl who just happens to be the sole survivor of a shipwreck, she has no family that you know of, no memory. A little lost lamb dropped into your lap just when you needed her. A gift from the fairies, hey?  Brilliant. Then I show up at your door--after you’ve slept with her and fallen in love with her. Oh, couldn’t you just die!”

Adrian didn’t know if the man was cursing him or mocking him. The tone was clear, one of contemptuous sarcasm, yet his words were strange, just like Tara’s often were. This was outside of enough. “You’ve had your answers. Now, I’ll have mine. I am tired of being called a Male Chauvinist every time your daughter loses her temper. This term she spews at me rings of insult, yet I know not what she implies in her taunt.”

MacNeill dissolved to laughter, holding his sides as the forest echoed his deep baritone chuckles. “Oooh-ho-ho-ho. Learned that from Tracey, I’d stake my life on it. She was one saucy wench, always filling the kid’s head with tart remarks.”

“Mrs. MacNeill was a saucy wench.” Adrian snapped. To be insulted by a slip of girl was one thing, to have her father laugh rather than apologize for her cheek was another.

“Tracey is not my wife or Tara’s mother. Her real mother abandoned Tara when she was a baby.”

“Think you it humorous that she insults her lord, a less patient man might give her the back of his hand. ‘Tis a indolent father who allows his daughter to learn the impudent ways of his mistress.” Adrian pushed himself off the rock, distancing himself from MacNeill as he volleyed forth his rebuke.

“Tracey was not my mistress.  She’s a kind-hearted woman who befriended Tara a few years ago. Oh, God--why do I even have to explain myself? You aren’t experiencing anything the rest of the male populace hasn’t, women in my time are not meek or submissive, weak and dependent, they are . . .”  MacNeill searched the forest about them for the proper word.

“Hoydenish bullies.” Adrian supplied. “Your daughter attacked my person on several occasions, once she nearly blinded me, another time, she sought to geld me.”

Instead of outrage, the large man laughed---and laughed, slapping his leg and holding his sides as the forest rang with his mirth.

If MacNeill were a smaller man, he would have laid him out cold on the forest floor. Adrian was no fool. To attack MacNeill was to court death. Instead, he paced back and forth in front of the chortling giant, tapping his riding crop against his thigh as he waited for MacNeill to gain control of his wits.

Adrian reached for the reins of his mount, intending to ride out and leave the impertinent man to find his way home through the woods alone. He placed one foot in the stirrup and lifted his leg to mount up.

“Well, did she succeed?” The taunt punctured his anger.

“In what?” Adrian hissed, looking down at MacNeill from his stallion.

“Did she geld you?”

“No.” Adrian gave MacNeill an icy look. “I succeeded. I conquered her fear of my touch and then I claimed her innocence.”  It was partially true. He helped Tara past her fear of coupling with him but she had not been a maid. That was between Tara and himself, none other. Adrian touched his mount’s sides with his knees and rode proudly out of the glen.

He rode through the forest, his breath streaming about him as he defended his actions in his own mind. Tara wanted him to befriend her father. He
tried
, hadn’t he?

The man was impertinent, insolent, crude and without conscience. Cunning as the devil. Taunting him, cajoling him with false promises, seducing him into revealing his secrets under the guise of presuming to spill his own. Treacherous as . . . .

As the fairy folk who played their games with mortals.

“Death Alive.” Adrian swore. “I’ve been gulled.”

He turned his horse around, edging carefully through the trees half expecting to find MacNeill surrounded by forest sprites plotting their revenge on the man who stole his daughter.

He found MacNeill’s horse wandering half a mile from the rock. Gathering the reins, he led the mount behind him as he made his way into the secret glen. There, on the rock where he left him, Dan MacNeill lay on his back, smoking his pipe with his knees drawn up, one leg crossed on the other with his great foot bobbing impatiently.  “Sent you back to fetch me, did she?” The immense man snorted. “I figured you’d not dare show up without me. Lord of the Castle or not.”

Adrian checked the urge to trounce the man where he lay, reminding himself that stirring up such as him would only bring folly upon his own head. He couldn’t best him with physical strength, yet perchance his wit would prevail over the enchanted giant.

“I’d appreciate some help in getting up off this rock and back into the saddle. My back is locked up, the dampness and cold have gone from the stone right into my lumbar  region.”

Adrian smirked. Perhaps it was his turn to glean information. “What will you give me for aiding you?”

“What do you want? You’ve plundered my household, taken my daughter into your home.”  The big man snapped as he lay prostrate on the rock. “I’ve no pot of gold, if that’s what you’re after. You Irish yokels are so damned gullible.”

“I want answers. Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll help you get up.”

“First things first, lad. Get me up off this frozen rock.”

“As soon as I have my answers. We agreed to share our secrets. I’ve given you mine. Now, I’ll have yours.”

“I said I’d think about giving you mine.” MacNeill snapped.

“I’ve plenty of time and nowhere to go.”

“Except home, to explain to my daughter why you’ve arrived without me.”

Adrian circled the rock with his mount, a satisfied grin on his face as he looked down at his incapacitated father-in-law.  “Aye, she’ll not worry overmuch as I’m out riding for long periods every day.” Adrian lifted his hand to gesture to the sky above them.  “We’ve hours yet before the sun sets.”

Chapter Twenty Two

 “What did you do to him?” Tara demanded, furious with her spouse.

“Nothing. He isn’t suited to riding. You might have told me he had severe back problems when you insisted I take him riding.”

“I forgot.” Tara mumbled.

Tara didn’t know what to make of the situation between her spouse and her father.

Her husband left the house surly and upset with her father, who had seemed very happy. They returned at opposite poles. Adrian was whistling a tune, apparently pleased with their outing, while her father limped in under the support of two grooms.

The gleam in her husband’s eye was not lost on Tara. Something occurred between the men while they were away and she was determined to get to the bottom of it.

“Did he fall? Was he thrown? Did you attack him?”

 He gazed into her eyes with a strange look she couldn’t fathom. “Nay love, we spent the better part of the afternoon getting to know one another. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

Disconcerted by Adrian’s shrewd look, Tara pulled away from his embrace. “I want to know what caused his injuries.”

“He fell on his bum when he dismounted. He seemed to be well enough at the time. I left him to rest for a short time while I rode about the forest. When I returned, he was laying on a large rock and couldn’t get up without my assistance. He claims this happens frequently. I rode home and returned with the coachmen to bring him here in comfort.”

“What did you find to talk about? You were gone for hours. Before today, you barely spoke two sentences together to my father since his arrival.”

“We talked about you.” Adrian quipped, giving her a pleased look.

She moved to the stairs, disconcerted by Adrian’s wolfish grin and those searching grey eyes. “I want to make certain he’s comfortable.” She offered as an excuse, eager to escape his knowing gaze.

To her surprise, her father verified Adrian’s story.  

She wondered if he’d been threatened by her husband, so readily did he comply with Adrian’s tale. Then again, looking at the man on the bed, she couldn’t imagine her father being afraid of anyone. Most people were afraid of him because of his size.

“So, you’re friends now?”  Tara asked with sarcasm.

“Huh.” the prostrate man groaned. “Hardly. We have an uneasy truce.”  

The room was dimly lit at her father’s request. He’d had a hot bath, and been helped into bed. Adrian had sent for Dr. Magnus. They were still waiting for the man to arrive from Glengarriff. In the mean time, Cora made him a hot posset. She was tending her charge with dedication, as was her way with the sick or injured at Glengarra Castle.

At a nod from Tara, the nurse left them. Tara took the chair near the bed that the nurse vacated, noting that her father looked very relaxed and comfortable now that he was out of his wet clothing and tucked into a warm bed.

“Adrian seems pleased with your afternoon together. He said you talked about me. What did you tell him?”

A meaty hand lifted in the darkness, reaching for her. She took it between her own, hugging it to her. As the silence lingered, she prodded him. “Papa? I need to know what you said to him. He’s taken on an odd manner with me since your return. He looks at me as if he’s in awe of me.”

“Nothing but the best, my chick.” She noticed his speech was slurred. So, Cora was giving out her famous whiskey posset again. When Tara was recovering, a slight grimace of pain would send Cora off to make her posset, as it was called. The taste reminded Tara of a Tom & Jerry you’d have at Christmastime. It had sugar, whipped eggs and warmed cream in it, along with the whiskey. The soothing warmth was comforting and made it hit a person quickly, literally knocking them on their ass. “How many of her medicinal drinks have you had, father?”

“Two, maybe three. So warm and creamy.”

“What did Adrian ask you about me?” Tara returned to the matter at hand.

“Wanted to know why you needed training in sh-shelfff-defense and who taught you shush sheeky schpeech. And I advise you to stop calling him a chauvinischt. He doesn’t know any better. He missed the 60’s feminist movement, you know. You can’t expect him to act like a man from our time. And he’s not so bad . . .”

 Crap. Why were they discussing her life in private yet when she asked either one about her past, both men eluded her questions? “Why did I need self defense lessons?”

  “Two years ago, in our own time, an ash-hole who you met in some online chat room who called himself Darkling Prince attempted to asshalt---asshal--to rape you.”

Tara went cold inside. Not just from her father’s tale, but that name! Somehow, the name frightened her more than the story of nearly being raped by some chat room perv. She hugged herself as the creepy feeling of being snatched up by some dark angel pervaded her senses. “How did I escape him?”

“I found you before he succeeded. Still, you were pretty shook up afterward, afraid of your own shadow, practically afraid to leave the house. So, I talked you into taking Tae Kwan Do at the Y.  Hey, kid, it’s good to know you can defend yourself.” Dan muttered laconically and cleared his throat. “You shouldn’t be beatin’ on the poor lad here. He’s a nice bloke, as backwards Irish lords go. You could have done worse, a lot worse.” Her father yawned. “I’m tired, lemme schleep.”

“Not just yet.” Tara said with annoyance, shaking his arm roughly to rouse him. She was finished with having people shoo her away when she asked for answers about her own life. “Who was my mother? What was her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean? How could you
not know
?”

“Never met her.” Her father replied. “She abandoned you as a babe.”

Nausea flooded Tara’s nostrils and clogged her throat as she rose to her feet.

Abandoned, as an infant?
Her mother didn’t want her?  No, it wasn’t true.

Tara’s world was crashing in about her. A hot surge of white pain shot through her head, as distorted bits of recurring dreams collided in her mind with the veracity of a bullet hitting a brick wall.

Bored with waiting for her mother to finish gathering, Tara wandered along the shoreline, skipping, dancing, turning a circle and then running into the incoming waves. Her hair was loose, blowing in the wind. She was happy, carefree as she wandered along the quay, away from the broken hull of the ship and her family. There would be great feasting and dancing tonight deep inside the mountain fortress. Tara loved the pretty things her mother and her brothers brought home to her; the shiny gold disks felt cool and smooth in her hands and shimmering rocks of every color that were her toys.