The Falcon's Bride (31 page)

They were given the lead wagon to themselves. No one objected. Rumblings of astonishment were mild, and soon gave way to a greater press—persecution. Tensions ran high the while they traveled, as prejudices against them surfaced and grew to an ugly murmur. One sennight gave way to the next until a month had passed, and then another. When they reached Killarney, they turned the wagons northward again, intending to follow the coast to Galway then turn east-northeast and amble back through County Meath on a course that would, to Thea’s dismay, take them dangerously close to Cashel Cosgrove and Newgrange . . . and the corridor. That, however, was still days off.

It was a soft night with the weather turned warmer when the caravan camped beside the estuary at Galway Bay. The air was brisk with the taste of salt on the wind,
on the ghostlike mist that it couldn’t chase. Thea had scarcely climbed into the wagon after the evening meal, when Drumcondra seized her in strong arms, swooped down and took her lips in a kiss that left her weak and breathless, her mouth no less set aflame than if he had seared it with a firebrand.

Taken by surprise, Thea nearly lost her footing. She laughed as he scooped her up and laid her upon the raised pallet fitted with feather quilts. It was warm in the wagon. A little brazier sufficed to maintain a comfortable temperature. Set in the corner and heaped with peat, the compact basinlike affair gave off radiant heat, while the fragrant smoke escaped through a chimney pipe in the roof.

Thea looked on shamelessly as Drumcondra shed his clothes and climbed in beside her. Her hooded eyes, lit with desire, slid the length of his bronzed torso in the shaft of moonlight peeking in at the wagon window. Those eyes flitted over his chest, and lingered on the magnificence of his aroused sex. It grazed her as he peeled away her clothing one piece at a time, commencing with the indigo-laced corset of carded wool. Loosening the drawstring on the embroidered waist beneath, he spread it wide, feasting upon her breasts, the tawny buds grown hard under naught but his gaze. He had the power to seduce with a look, to ravage with a whisper of that deep baritone resonance that delivered her name as it did now, riding a husky tremor. The skirt and petticoats came next. Thea arched her back as he slid them over her hips, down her legs, and then consigned them to the floor in a heap with the rest.

Rolling on his back, he took her with him until she straddled him. Thea’s breath stuck in her throat as she gazed down into his eyes, dilated black in the darkness. They shone like quicksilver with reflected light from the wan moonbeam striking their bodies broadside. The fingers
of a blush crawled up Thea’s cheeks. Surely only light-skirts made love like this. His hardness throbbed beneath her. She gripped his shoulders as he cupped her breasts, his deft fingers grazing her nipples, lightly at first, in tantalizing revolutions that set loose a firestorm at her very core.

Thea groaned, her head thrown back as those skilled fingers slid the length of her body, following the curve of her waist, her hips, cupping her buttocks. Raising her as though she weighed no more than one of Isor’s feathers, he lowered her upon his engorged sex, filling her with its hard, throbbing heat. Thea cried aloud at the swiftness of the motion, at the shuddering impact of his thick veined shaft reaching inside, delving deeper than he had ever gone before. He was holding back no longer. The wound in his side was too newly mended to stress, but that seemed not to matter to him, and he moved inside her, setting off undulating waves of icy-hot fire that scorched her loins, and knit her bones in rigid anticipation of excruciating ecstasy.

Just when she feared she could stand no more, he rolled her over, impaled thus, and gathered her closer still. Arched against his hard muscled torso, her body reached for him as if it had a will of its own. He took her deeper—slow, shuddering, heart-stopping thrusts that drained her senses. It was a possession, as if he were trying to absorb her into himself, as if all his hopes and fears hung in the balance of that one searing moment.

Thea took him deeper still. She couldn’t help herself. The wild, pulsating climax that riddled her crippled her senses and paralyzed her mind. His undulations drained her dry—milked every drop of her precious essence until it sheathed his sex like a silken veil. He groaned, grinding his body against her in mindless oblivion. The thrumming sound reverberated through her body like a flesh-tearing wind, from his thick arched throat to the rock-hard member
pumping, exploding inside her, leaving her weak and trembling in his strong muscled arms.

He didn’t let her go. His life still throbbed inside her. In minutes he was hard again, reaching, probing, sending shock waves coursing through her belly and thighs.
Again.
His body, slick with sweat, moved against her in the moonlight, kindling desire, thickening her moist sex.
Again.
The sexual stream that joined them tightened, setting loose such heat as if he had burst into flame in her arms.
Again
.

“I cannot get my fill of you,” he murmured huskily. All things passionate lived in that voice, those arms—that dynamic body joined to hers so totally it had gone beyond the physical plane of their existence, just as the corridor had taken them beyond the physical phenomenon of time. There was almost a facet of frantic desperation in their joining. It both frightened and excited her. She was answering the call of some primeval force as old as eons working in her then, in them both, for she could feel it in the power of his passion. It was almost as if he feared it was their last time together, as if he were trying to beat back the inevitable.

Rich, guttural moans bubbled up from his throat and filled her mouth as he took her lips and deepened the kiss in one swift thrust. Her breasts were not exempt from his ardor. His skilled tongue blazing a fiery trail along her arched throat, sidled over her curves and encircled first one hardened bud and then the other, drawing them into the warm silkiness of his mouth. Thea’s head reeled like a castaway lord. His image blurred before her. She shut her eyes as the palpitating waves of white-hot fire rushed through her body, pumping through her veins, lifting her out of herself to another plane of existence, as if she could bear more tears in the cosmic veil draped about her. It was fast falling to tatters. They were hopelessly in love—matched in their
passion—committed for life . . . But there was something wrong, a nagging, invisible, intangible something like a specter between them. Waiting to make itself known.

Thea knew what was troubling her conscience. Ros had a right to know what had happened to his mother, and she was keeping it from him. If he knew, he would somehow go back and extract Gypsy justice from her murderer, and she would lose him. Keeping it from him in those circumstances was justified in her mind, though she hated the deception.

Though she had her suspicions, she was almost afraid to probe him for the cause of his malaise. Still, that was exactly what she’d decided to do when he collapsed spent and breathless in her arms, his heart beating a heavy ragged rhythm against her breast.

Drumcondra lay back and clasped her to him. She was where she needed to be, where she was born to be, in the arms of the soul mate she had traveled through time to embrace. She had him . . . but not totally, and she wouldn’t settle for less.

“We travel north again,” she said, screwing her eyes shut tight against his heaving chest. “Will we return to Meath?”

“We pass through Meath and book passage for the east at the estuary in Drogheda,” he said.

“You aren’t going to seek out the corridor again, are you?” Her voice was anything but steady, and he pulled her closer in the custody of his strong arm, and soothed her gently. Thea’s heart sank like lead in her breast at his hesitation.

“I shan’t,” he said at last, “but Isor shall. He must, if you would have me send word to your father and your brother.”

Her breath stopped at her throat. She had almost forgotten, but he had not. Was there no end to the mystique of the man?

“Will they still be there, do you think?” he said.

“I cannot imagine them leaving without some word of me.”

“It is not safe for you to go back,” he said, “and I have other plans.”

“What . . . plans?” She was almost afraid to ask.

“I have no need to access the corridor,” he said, “when I can see for myself, with my own eyes what has become of my archrival.”

“I do not understand,” said Thea, nonplussed.

“If this is the year 1747, there is the possibility that Cian Cosgrove is still alive, albeit in his dotage. The way I calculate, he would be in his seventies, if some other adversary hasn’t done him to death. We know he lived to father sons, who have passed my keep down through the generations as a Cosgrove holding.”

Thea vaulted upright in the bed, her flushed breasts trembling against the fur throw. “Please, my lord, I beg you do not do this,” she pleaded. “What is the point? We are safe and away. Whatever sorcery afoot here that has given us a chance to live out our lives in peace did not include this mad plan. I know it. I
feel
it. Why fly in the face of the fortune it has given us. As things are, history is undisturbed. I beg you, do not change it now!” All she could think of was Jeta’s sacrifice—whatever trial she must have faced to reunite them, even in death. It was beyond bearing that such a feat would be for naught.

Drumcondra looked her in the eyes. His own were hard and cold. “I will see what has become of him with my own eyes, Thea,” he said. “If he lives, he will wish he hadn’t, and if he is dead, Ros Drumcondra will piss on his bones.”

Thea sank back down and rested her head on his chest, her fingers combing the silky curls beneath her face. It was no use to argue with him. His decision was resolute. The mere thought struck terror in her heart, and she couldn’t
think why. If Cian Cosgrove were alive, a wizened old man, he posed no threat to her hulking husband, in his prime of life. Why had this news stricken her so?

“You cannot still be lusting after that castle,” she said.

“No,” he said, clouding. “I knew I could not ever make it my home once I slept again within its walls—they ran red with the blood of my children. I saw it waking and sleeping: rivers of blood, innocent lambs to the slaughter. Maeve earned her fate, I have no sympathy for her, but my children must be avenged—in this time or any other. The game we played, Cosgrove and I, would end in retribution, we both knew it. Anticipation made the wounding crueler and the dying that much more acute. He feared Gypsy magic, and was inept at his, else the game would have ended long since. It is not too late for justice, and by God I mean to have it however I may.”

“What did you mean about the bird?” Thea murmured.

Do you remember the night I took you upon Cabochon to the Cosgrove?”

“How could I ever forget?”

He soothed her gently. “Do you remember the message the bird delivered?”

Thea gasped.

“He knows the corridor,” Drumcondra said. “Write your missive, fair lady. When we reach the keep he will deliver it, just as he did then. He will not return until he has done so. And then, perhaps once that is done, you will be mine completely.”

Chapter Twenty-five

James paced before the hearth in Nigel Cosgrove’s study. Across the way, the viscount, his father, stood before the window, staring out over the courtyard through the sheeting rain sliding down the diamond-shaped panes; hardly an agreeable prospect. The guards had come and gone a dozen times as the weeks passed. They’d conducted their search throughout the county. They’d even made a thorough search of Newgrange inside and out, but there was no sign of Thea, and no evidence that she was ever there.

Everything was changed. The weather had turned warmer. Overnight, the snow was gone, except for stubborn patches dotting the soggy lawn here and there. The teeming rain had washed it all away. The downpour only added to the drear clinging to the very air in the ancient castle.

The guards had paid their last visit. There was nothing more that they could do. Nigel had gone to calm the countess, who was anxious to have her unwanted guests
leave, and said so in no uncertain terms. That wouldn’t award them much time. Having no patience for that chore, Nigel had ordered an herbal draught to be prepared to calm her, then he would join them. Looking toward his father’s faded countenance, James couldn’t help thinking he, too, would benefit from a dose.

“What’s to be done?” he asked his father. “We cannot stay on here. There’s to be a duel, or had you forgotten? How can we simply settle in and wait after that?”

“Where could she have gone?” the viscount said, as if he hadn’t heard.

“I’ve told you where she’s gone, Father.”

“What—that drivel about the passage tomb being a time corridor? Are you addled, boy? She’s run off with her Gypsy lover, plain and simple. We helped her!”

James rolled his eyes. “We did,” he said, “and you were only too willing to take the Gypsy’s gold. Look here, if she had done herself a mischief we would know of it. The guards have left no stone unturned from here to Drogheda.”

“Well, m’boy, you’d best try and mend your fences with Cosgrove post haste. The Gypsy wasn’t with her when the gudgeon sighted her on the downs west of Drogheda. His feckless ineptitude has lost your sister, and I shan’t leave this place until I have her in my sights again. The coil must be unwound without delay. I cannot spare much more time to the bogs and byways of Ireland. I’ve urgent business awaiting me in London.”

“Yes, sir,” said James, dourly. “I know the sort of ‘business’ you have awaiting you there. She shall have to wait. You ought instead be thinking on what you will tell Mother, who sits at home expecting nuptials!”

“You forget yourself, sir!” the viscount barked. “Hold that insolent tongue! The day will never dawn that I let a greenling whelp dictate my affairs.”

James let his breath out on a long sigh. “I am not liking that Cosgrove saw no sign of the Gypsy when he sighted her,” he said. He was thinking of the corridor. Thea obviously meant to access it at another point of entry and reunite with Drumcondra. What if the Gypsy had tried to do the same? Had they missed each other and become separated in time? One thing was certain. Too much time had passed without word. Could they have passed each other, become lost? Cosgrove had seen the bird, and it hadn’t been seen since. Was that a good sign or bad? There was no use explaining that aspect of the coil further to his father. The man’s vision did not include the supernatural—but then, the viscount hadn’t been where he had been, seen what he had seen. “But,” he continued, “I strongly feel that the Gypsy must have been close by. If I am sure of nothing else in the muddle, it is that he would never leave her, and as long as they are aligned, Thea is safe.”