The Falcon's Bride (14 page)

“Not yet, my lady, but soon . . .” he murmured huskily against her hair, his warm breath sending shivers along her spine.

Blood sped through Thea’s veins and scalded her cheeks. How could he humiliate her like this—lead her to the brink of heaven only to plunge her straight into hell? It would not be borne, and she drew back her hand and struck his handsome face with all the strength she could muster.

“Lord Drumcondra, you are no gentleman!” she seethed.

He threw back his head in a mighty guffaw. “I have never pretended to be,” he said, soothing his cheek where a red welt was forming. “And the day will dawn that you will be exceedingly glad that I am not, because upon that day, fair lady, I will pleasure you beyond your wildest imaginings.”

“I sincerely doubt that, sir,” she said. Did her voice really crack? Lud!

Again he laughed that maddening laugh that did not reach his shuttered eyes. Thea raised her hand to strike
again, but he caught it midswing in an iron fist, and strode to the Glastonbury chair with her in tow. Putting weight on the injured leg with a grunt and a grimace, he planted his other foot on the chair seat and threw her over his strong, sound knee.

“Here! Let me go! Let me
go
, I say!” Thea demanded, struggling. He paid her no mind, though she pounded him with flying fists, and kicked the air with her bare feet. For that was all she could reach in her precarious position as he hiked up the shift exposing her bare bottom.

“Mmmm,” he murmured, running his massive hand over the curve of her naked buttocks.

Thea held her breath. The roughness of that hand against her tender flesh set fire to her blood. What was happening in the region of her most intimate self was scandalous as he stroked her. Shocking orgasmic contractions that left her weak and trembling riddled her breathless. The phenomenon was, however, short-lived. All at once, he awarded her bottom three sharp slaps, and set her on her feet again.

Tears glistening in her eyes, she faced him, rubbing her behind through the soft ecru silk. They were not tears of pain, but of anger. He hadn’t hurt her, unless it be to wound her pride. He had embarrassed her, and she hated him for it—especially now in that he knew the effect he’d had upon her. How had it ever come to this?

“Disobedient children need a sound trouncing now and again,” he panted, his voice gravelly. Whether that was due to the turgid arousal challenging the seam in his leggings or that he’d taxed the wound, Thea couldn’t tell. Either way, his eyes, usually soulful and wolflike, were dilated and glazed, reminding her of the falcon’s eyes, like two sparkling chips of onyx. “Do not think to presume to
test my patience or my restraint again,” he said. “You have nearly gotten more than you bargained for.”

“I am no child, my lord,” she fired back at him. “I did not ask to be brought here. I do not want to be here. I want to go home.” She bit her lip as tears she could no longer hold back streamed down her hot cheeks. Where was her home, Cosgrove’s castle . . . her father’s Cornish country manor . . . the London townhouse? She couldn’t go back to any of them now—not after Falcon’s Lair. Not after Ros Drumcondra. Facing that was more than she could bear. Raw passion heretofore unknown to her, humiliation and anger roiled in her in fierce competition. Anger spoke. “If you mean to wreak your vengeance upon the Cosgroves at my expense, I beg you do so quickly,” she said. “Take that dagger from your boot and plunge it into my heart, because that is the only way you’ll have it. I would sooner be dead than let you rob me of my virtue, Lord Drumcondra!”

He stiffened as though she’d struck him. “Is the prospect of my embrace so distasteful, then?” he asked, all trace of his wry smile having dissolved.

“Distasteful?” she said. “It is frightening! Can you not tell? Can you not feel it when you touch me?”

“That is not what I feel when I touch you, my lady,” he said with a guttural chuckle.

“You are mistaken.”

“We shall see.”

“We shall not!” she sallied. “You may maul and humiliate me, embarrass and abuse me at your pleasure, my lord, just as the cat toys with its mouse, but you will
never
have my willing love.”

“So it is to be a test of wills between us, eh?” he mused. “That is a game you cannot win.”

“Is your heart so hardened against your enemy that you would stoop to ruin an innocent to appease it? Does your Gypsy heritage not frown upon human sacrifice? Because that is what I am at your hands, is it not?”

He was silent apace. “Where had you really come from when my men . . . found you?” he finally said.

Should she say? Should she throw caution to the winds and tell him the truth? Would he even believe her? How could he, when she scarcely believed the truth herself.

“It is as I’ve said,” she murmured, sinking down on the edge of the bed. The devil take it; her knees would no longer support her. “I was lost, and I became separated from my brother in the storm.” James! What was happening to James? she suddenly wondered, as reason began to trickle back, jogging recent memory.

“Hmmm,” he grunted.

“I want to see my brother!” she cried. “Please, I need to see him—to talk to him! I beg you, my lord!”

“Not until he has first talked to me,” he replied. And spinning on his heels, he quit the chamber.

Thea threw herself across the bed and sobbed her heart dry. A woman’s tears were frowned upon by society. No woman wanted to be branded a watering pot. But if there was ever an occasion for crying, this was it. And who was to know? Who was to see? For that matter, who was to care?

What would James ever say? Would he tell Drumcondra the truth, or concoct something else the warlord might believe? She didn’t dare to speculate or she would go mad. If only he had let her speak with James first; but he had not, and she was on the verge of madness over that when the rasp of a key turning in the lock bolted her upright on the edge of the bed. Drumcondra had just left her. He couldn’t be returning so quickly.

She held her breath as the door handle moved, and
gasped as the door came open—not in Drumcondra’s hand, but in the wrinkled hand of the old Gypsy woman whose cryptic words had started her on this mad journey. At sight of the bird perched upon the woman’s arm, Thea groaned and fell back down again, dissolving in fresh tears.

“Shhhh,” the Gypsy said. The minute she released the bird, it flew to the candle stand and perched there, clucking, its head bobbing up and down in what Thea was convinced was a display of arrogance. She glared at it, and it responded with a significant cluck and flutter, extracting a toothless grin from the Gypsy. “Ye have naught to fear from Isor, miss,” she said. “He is duty bound to protect ye.”

“He has a fine way of showing it!” Thea sobbed. “That creature pecked at me—at my head, my hands.” She pointed out her scratches. “It is a menace!”

“How else was he to get your attention?” asked the woman. “Ye are a willful child.” She clicked her tongue. “Aye, willful, but a perfect mate for the master.”

“Never!” Thea cried, her whole body delivering the word. “You came to me at the castle. How are you here? You cannot exist in two places—in two times. I saw you in the cave when I was shackled, helpless. You and that bird, the very same bird that attacked Nigel Cosgrove and followed my brother and I to the passage tomb, I have no doubt.”

The Gypsy nodded. “The very same,” she said. “He too travels the time corridor. He must. He is the Black Falcon’s familiar.”

“But . . . you were there when those men . . . when they nearly . . . nearly . . .”

Again the Gypsy nodded. “I was,” she said, “and I knew Drumcondra would prevent his men from doing ye harm. I needed ye to see that . . . to know that he would protect ye. No matter what ye think ye see in him, he is an honorable
man. He has what ye
Gadje
call a ‘tendre’ for ye, even if he may not know it yet.” She winked. “I would never have let ye come to harm. Did I not bring ye here?”

“
Gadje?
” Thea repeated, puzzled.

“ ’Tis Romany for all ye without the Gypsy blood.”

“But why? I do not understand. Where did you come from that day on foot in that storm? The only place close by would have been Newgr—Si An Bhru. Do you live there, then?”

She nodded. “But that is not important now.”

“It is to me,” said Thea, “if I am to understand this. That cave those savages took me to . . .”

“It was no cave, miss. Ye never left Si An Bhru, they simply took ye back inside. Ye did not recognize the chamber—our hiding place—as it is now, in his time. It looks different in your time, after the renovation.”

Thea gasped. “But why? Why did you lure me here? I do not understand.”

“Ye do not have to understand, just accept your destiny,” said the Gypsy, her raisinlike eyes flashing. Ye are Drumcondra’s mate. I could not let ye wed the Cosgrove. He has not fallen far from the tree that grew his ancestor, Cian. His seed must not continue. It must die with him to break the feud and lift the curse. In a bloody onslaught, the Cosgrove slaughtered Drumcondra’s heirs and took his land. There is a justice that goes beyond the physical world—Gypsy justice. Ye cannot oppose it, nor can ye ignore it standing here with me in his time. Ye are part of that justice. Do not tax your brain for understanding. Accept the offering. The alternative is too terrible to imagine.”

“W-what . . . alternative?”

“What ye would face as wife of the Cosgrove. He has done murder. He killed a whore in London in cold blood, in a fit of jealous passion, and tried to blame it on another.
His father paid him free, as often is the case among your
ton,
and he will do murder again if ye return to what he calls Cashel Cosgrove in your time. He has already laid hands upon ye. The Cosgrove is an evil man, with much to answer for, but I would not worry over that. His hour will come. I have saved ye from a dreadful fate.”

“For what?” Thea asked, on her feet now. “So that Ros Drumcondra can murder me instead? Forgive me if I am not grateful for the offering. He has put you up to this, I take it?”

The Gypsy shook her head. “He does not even know,” she replied. “And ye must not tell him of my . . . interference. What is said here in this room between ye and me, must never be spoken.”

Gooseflesh puckered Thea’s scalp and drained the blood from her face. She did not need a mirror to tell her she had lost her color. Her skin had suddenly gone clammy and cold despite the warm glow radiating from the hearth and the heat of passion slow to subside. None of this was possible, and yet here she was, living proof of the Gypsy’s words.

“I saw his ghost—I did!” Thea asked. “How can I have, when now I see him in the flesh?”

The woman’s reply was as Thea had already surmised: “You see him in the flesh in
his
time. How else but as a ghost could you see him in your time? Do not trouble over that. These are things beyond human understanding.”

“Why are you doing this to me?” Thea sobbed.

“I have seen Drumcondra’s death,” the Gypsy went on. “It is too terrible to contemplate—even for me—and I have seen many deaths, miss, in what your kind calls premonitions, and am . . . how do ye say . . . conditioned to the things I see. It is a Gypsy gift that sometimes, like now, seems more a curse than a blessing, because it hurts the
heart. It is my mission to prevent what I have seen if I can—but I need your help to do it.”

Thea sank back down on the edge of the bed, afraid to hear more though she knew she must.

“But why me?” she murmured.

“Because ye are the Cosgrove’s betrothed,” said the Gypsy. “Mine is a kinder justice all around than what Drumcondra is planning. It will lead him to his doom—and such a doom must not be. It is too monstrous.”

“H-how do I know you tell the truth?” Thea snapped. “I have only your word.”

“I will show ye—if ye dare.”

“H-how . . . ?”

The Gypsy laid a finger alongside her nose and went to the door. She only stepped out briefly before returning with a bucket of water, which she placed upon the hearthstone before the fire.

“You planned all this!” Thea cried. Why else had she come equipped with that bucket?

The woman flashed a toothless grin that, like Drumcondra’s, did not reach her eyes. “Draw near and look,” she replied, pointing toward the bucket.

Thea gestured. “What? In there?” she asked, padding to the hearth.

The Gypsy nodded. “Since time out of mind, Romany have seen the future in such a bucket—no need for crystal balls and other scrying fripperies, ’tis Nature tells the tale. Water, fire, wood, and stone. Look in it now, and ye see what brings ye here—what I have seen, and what will be unless ye have the courage to change it.”

Thea hesitated. This was passing strange. The shadowy black water undulating in the bucket was tinted shades of red and gold in the fire glow. It seemed to beckon to her, and
while she was drawn to the edge—even though she wasn’t sure she credited the Gypsy’s words—she feared to look.

“Looking cannot harm ye,” the Gypsy assured her, “but not looking can harm him. Oh, aye. Come, then.”

Thea drew nearer and stooped over the bucket. At first all she saw was the satiny breast of the water, and then . . . But no! It couldn’t be, but it was. A scene took shape that held her relentlessly—a scene too terrible to be believed. She wanted to turn away, but she could not. It would not let her. Not until the fire and the blood—so much blood—subsided and became water again could she tear her eyes away.

Thea reeled back from the bucket. “No more,” she sobbed. “Show me no more.”

The Gypsy nodded. “Ye saw, then?”

“I saw. But I
couldn’t
have seen, could I? I mean . . . tell me it shan’t happen thus. Tell me it shan’t!” She was sobbing openly, pacing in her bare feet, giving the bucket a wide berth and wary glances. Coming too close to the candle stand, the falcon clucked and raised one wing stirring the air. Thea cried out and backed away.

“It shan’t if ye prevent it,” promised the Gypsy.

“How can I possibly prevent it?” Thea asked.

“I cannot tell ye,” the Gypsy said. “Ye must think. Ye already know, miss. ’Tis already written. All that’s left is for ye to see it through, and ye will know how when the time comes. Aye, ye will, but time is short. When the falcon took the Cosgroves’ eyes, it was begun—in this time and yours.”