The Falcon's Bride (26 page)

Could he have been mistaken? He turned to go, intending to have another look at the tracks in the snow, but soft sobs echoing from one of the side chambers arrested him. Holding the lantern high, he followed the sound. Thea lay crumpled on the chamber floor, dissolved in tears. At sight of him she groaned, scrambled to her feet, and went into his arms.

“Thea?” he cried. “What’s happened? Where is Drumcondra?”

“Gone,” she sobbed. “He’s gone back, James. I’ve lost him.”

Chapter Twenty

“What do you mean, he’s gone?” James was saying. Thea scarcely heard. It was as though his voice, the voice that had always been a comfort, was coming from an echo chamber. Her brother was kneeling on the cold floor beside her, and yet there seemed a barrier between them, as though she weren’t really there, as though she were caught halfway between time . . . not really anywhere. She was terrified.

The lantern he held up while he examined her gave off no more light than a firefly in the bowels of a bottomless cavern. The golden nimbus issuing from it seemed fractured, as though she viewed it through a spider web. She couldn’t feel the heat it generated so close on her face, or even the cold all around her. Was it shock or . . . something else?

“I don’t know,” she sobbed. “We entered to leave the gold. It was so dark. No light filtered in past the bend in the corridor. I remember crawling about on the floor, feeling
for the candle. I didn’t find it. I found my chinchilla pelerine instead.”

“Your pelerine, you say? I don’t understand.”

“There is so much you do not know, James,” she said. “So much I haven’t told you of my time among Drumcondra’s clan.”

“I think it’s best we remedy that, but not here. Come.”

Thea resisted. “No, wait!” she cried. “I feel so strange. Something is wrong, James. I fear to stay, but I fear to leave here also.”

“Very well,” he soothed, “but have it said quickly. I am not liking this. I have never seen you in such a taking. Just look at you. You’re trembling. You shall surely take pneumonia. Where is the pelerine?” He glanced about, holding the lantern high.

“That’s just it,” she wailed. “It isn’t here now. It’s gone.”

“He took it with him—what, Thea? You aren’t making any sense.”

“Sense? There is no sense. Don’t you understand? I have lost him, James. He is gone . . . and I do not know how to have him back!”

“All right,” her brother soothed, wrapping a strong arm around her. “The pelerine. Let us begin with that since it seems to have so overset you.”

“When I first passed through the corridor and found myself in Drumcondra’s time, there was a girl, a Gypsy girl who had been his mistress. Her name was Drina. She stole my pelerine. Drumcondra took it back from her and returned it to me. But she was obsessed with it, and just before we all fled Falcon’s Lair, she stole it from me again. I didn’t bring it back with me, James. It existed in 1695 once I returned—until I found it on this chamber floor not an hour ago . . . at least, I think it was an hour ago. I don’t know. Time seems so irrelevant somehow.”

“Go on,” James forced. Poor James, how all this must be taxing his logical mind. His expression alone was a picture of confusion.

“Ros picked up the pelerine, slung it over his shoulder, and mounted his horse. Then he reached for me, intending to wrap me in it once I’d climbed up also. But James, when I reached out for him to take me in his arms, mine closed around empty air. He was suddenly gone—horse, pelerine and all—he was just . . . gone.”

“Back to his own time, you mean?”

“It must be,” she said. “I do not pretend to understand, but I think that pelerine was a trap. He never should have touched it. She has taken him back, James. I shall never see him again.”

“Perhaps it is for the best,” he said, his words riding a sigh. “I know it isn’t what you want to hear, love, but in time I think you’ll come to realize it the only practical solution. Maybe deep down he knew it himself.”

“How can you say that?” she cried. “We are
wed
, James.”

“That ridiculous pagan ritual?” He scoffed. “No civilized culture would recognize such a union, and you know it, Thea. He didn’t belong here, and you certainly didn’t belong in his world.”

“But we do belong together, James. You will never convince me otherwise.”

James surged to his feet and reached to pull her up alongside. “We cannot stay here, Thea,” he said. “It will be light soon. We have to go back to Cashel Cosgrove before we are missed. We can sort all this out there. It will be all right, you’ll see.” He began leading her then. “Father won’t hold you to the engagement. He knows your mind in the matter, and he is quite put off by Nigel all the way round after suffering him and that mother of his under the same roof for a sennight.”

They had nearly reached the opening. Thea’s head was swimming. She hadn’t shaken the odd detached feeling that had overwhelmed her since Drumcondra disappeared. The last place she wanted to go was back to Cashel Cosgrove. He hadn’t meant to leave her; why couldn’t James see that? Drumcondra loved her; she knew he did. She had felt his love when he held her, when he kissed her, when his sex came to life inside her, respecting her innocence but at the same time fulfilling them both, awakening her to pleasures beyond her wildest imaginings. He was reaching for her when he disappeared, and she had been nearly driven mad since by trying to find the corridor; but the portal was closed to her. Her heart was breaking.

A cold blast of air funneling through the entrance almost snatched her breath away. James had a firm hold upon her arm, and he was leading her toward the waiting mount. Relaxing his grip, he stooped to reach for the saddlebag, and she dug in her heels.

“No!” she cried. “I won’t go back. I cannot. It does not matter that Father won’t press for the union with Nigel. He will take me home to England, to Cornwall. I will never find Drumcondra there. He will never be able to find me.
No
!”

With a mighty shove, and designs upon a head start, she caught her brother off balance as he hefted the heavy saddlebag, and he careened into the stone basin. Lifting her skirt, for it dragged on the floor, she ran through the opening, leapt astride the waiting horse, and galloped off into the star-studded night.

James’s shouts rode the wind behind. They stabbed her like knives. His fury was unmistakable, but it couldn’t be helped. She was sorry for shoving him; she’d heard him curse when he struck the stone basin, but there was nothing for it. He would never have let her go otherwise. She
was so light-headed from the strange happenings in the passage tomb that she would never have escaped him without an advantage. That shove had given it to her, and now she rode like the wind toward Drogheda in search of the corridor there.

Drina must have found the one at Newgrange for the pelerine to have been there. A sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach told her she should have stayed, but how could she have? It would be the first place they would look for her now. Drogheda was not that far distant, and the corridors between the passage tomb and Falcon’s Lair were linked, after all. She would just have to make the best of it. She
would
find him. She had to; he had taken her heart with him.

She would be going back to his time after the carnage, if she could go back at all. There was no way of knowing what she would find there. Drina had evidently escaped the Cosgrove’s attack. If only Jeta had escaped it as well, she would help. Hadn’t she come to her at the very beginning? History told nothing of the aftermath of the onslaught, only that it was then that Ros Drumcondra disappeared. While she rode, Thea prayed that this was not the disappearance behind those recorded words.

According to the legend, she had disappeared as well, if she were to equate herself to Cian Cosgrove’s betrothed in the past. What else could it mean? There was no other betrothed. Cold chills riddled her spine until the bones snapped, as another thought surfaced. If any did escape the carnage at Falcon’s Lair, they fled to Newgrange, where their bones were eventually found. Was that how the pelerine got there? Dear God, was she going the wrong way—straight into the stars alone knew what sort of danger awaiting her at Falcon’s Lair?

First light broke quick with fugitive mists that reminded
her of her home in Cornwall. Drifting over the land, they seemed to pick and choose the hollows where they wished to settle. One valley appeared draped with ghostly veils, while the next lay untouched. The first gray streamers of that cheerless dawn crept westward from the quay outlining the wounded shape of Falcon’s Lair silhouetted black in the distance. Thea’s hopes raised and sank again in the space of a heartbeat. It would be in ruins after the devastation. Was she still in her own time? There was no way to tell at this distance. Until that moment, she had been alone. She hadn’t seen a soul since she left Newgrange, not even a woodland creature prowling the snow for food, or a bird in the sky. All at once two riders appeared coming on at great speed from opposite directions. Her heart leapt. A gasp squeaked past her dry throat trying to make them out. One was approaching from behind, out of the west, his caped greatcoat spread on the wind of his motion, for there wasn’t a breath of a breeze stirring. The other was charging toward her from the east, with Falcon’s Lair at his back, his fur mantle scarcely moving as he galloped out of the mist. His horse’s heavy hooves gouged clumps from the snow-covered ground—flinging them into the air sullied with bits of the earth beneath. Her heart fairly leapt from her breast. Could it be Drumcondra? Had she found him after all?

Thea’s eyes flew between the two horsemen. The thunder of their approach shook the ground. All at once, as the morning mist lifted, the screech of a falcon soaring overhead drew her eyes. It was too high aloft for her to hear the tinkling of its tether bells, but she knew it was Isor circling above, and she gasped again looking back to the riders. Both were gaining on her, and she tugged on the reins, pulling the horse up short. It wheeled and danced, carving circles in the snow as her eyes snapped
back and forth between them and the bird now as well. Would it lead her?

“Which way?” she cried aloud as both men rode out of the milling mist and presented a clear image. She screamed again, scarcely able to believe her eyes. The horseman coming on at a deadly gallop from the west she recognized as Nigel, astride his favorite gelding. She could see him clearly now. But the rider bearing down upon her from the east wasn’t Drumcondra at all.
Both
men were wearing ugly black eye patches. The second was Cian Cosgrove.

It was a choice Thea couldn’t make—wouldn’t make. Screaming at the top of her voice, she dug her heels into the horse’s sides, leaned low over its sleek neck and drove the animal hard at a gallop northward, away from both. Overhead, the great bird’s screeches died off on the wind. She couldn’t see it now, but then she wasn’t looking for it, nor was she looking behind. The sleek Andalusian underneath her was swifter than Nigel’s gelding or Cian Cosgrove’s heavy, feather-footed warhorse. Blind to everything except what lay directly ahead, and deaf to the sound of any hoofbeats but those of her own fleet-footed mount, she failed to hear the whirring sound stirring the air close by until the net encased her. It struck her hard and stung, knocking the wind out of her lungs, as strong hands pulled her off the Andalusian’s back into stronger arms. The horse galloped on at a greater speed, with her weight suddenly lifted, its frenzied cries trailing off on the wind.

Thea screamed at the top of her voice as the horseman tightened the net around her squirming body. Looking through the wide rope mesh that contained her, she glimpsed the hills behind, but there was no sign of Nigel now. There wouldn’t be. She had passed through the corridor. She was in the arms of Cian Cosgrove, and they were
heading straight for Falcon’s Lair. The only constant on either side of that mysterious passageway that bridged time was the great falcon. Still, it soared above her. Why did its presence hold no comfort for her now?

“Why do you struggle?” Cosgrove asked, close in her ear. His voice was harsh—just as she remembered it from the night she’d first heard it astride another, grander, feather-footed stallion in Ros Drumcondra’s arms. Tears welled in her eyes. The wind did not whip them there. She hadn’t made this choice; fate had made it for her, and she was terrified. She was running from them both, and now she was where she’d set out to be, but in the arms of the wrong man. “You cost me dear enough, madam,” he spat, giving the net a rough jerk. “Half my army lies dead in the snow on your account, and I do not even know your name. For your sake, I hope you’re worth the price.”

Thea didn’t respond except to grunt and struggle with the impossible net he’d thrown over her. It was scratchy and hard, and smelled of tar. The mesh was large enough for her tiny fists to fit through, and she used them, beating him about the chest and shoulders until she’d scraped them raw on the rough hemp.

“Put me down!” she gritted out. “Let me go!”

“I think not, madam,” he said. “I’ve waited too long for you.” He shook her. “Stop that! It won’t buy you free. You’re mine now, what’s left of you. Did he keep his promise? Has he had you, with his bloody
prima nocte
, the black-hearted Gypsy bastard?”

“Drumcondra and I are wed!” she hurled at him. “Now, let me go!”

“Wed, is it? Ha! That won’t save you, madam. It only makes my job easier. I won’t have to break you in then, will I? Not after he’s rutted you. I had his first wife, too. You may as well stop struggling. I paid good Irish gold to
have you carted here from England as a token of good will. I mean to get my coin’s worth.”

Real fear gripped Thea now—fear that could be tasted, cold and metallic, like blood building at the back of her throat. They had nearly reached Falcon’s Lair. In close proximity now, she saw the devastation as it was in Drumcondra’s time—smelled the slag and char and stench of burnt flesh. It rose in her throat with the deathlike taste of her fear, and the unwashed odor of her captor. Bending over, she could not help but retch.