The Falcon's Bride (32 page)

“So! You
are
in league with the Gypsy!” Nigel bellowed from the threshold. “I thought as much.”

Both men spun toward him.

Nigel strolled closer. “You can consider the betrothal dissolved, gentlemen,” he drawled. “I do not accept damaged goods.”

“That goes without saying, Cosgrove,” James said. “My sister couldn’t marry you even if you wanted her. She is already wed. To
him
.”

Nigel staggered back apace. “She is what, sir?” he said.

“You’ve heard me rightly. My sister is wed to Drummond by Gypsy rite. You couldn’t have her now in any circumstance.”

James father’s violet eyes faded to a murky, lackluster hue. All color but a tinge of blue in his lips drained from his face, and he sank like a stone onto the lounge.

“Forgive me, Father,” James said. “I would have preferred
to break the news less abruptly, but it was not to be.”

“I want you out of my house,” Nigel seethed. “Both of you! Now! Tonight!”

“We have unfinished business, Cosgrove,” said James. “None of this would be if you hadn’t misused my sister. You put your hands upon her. You frightened her and abused her—left a
mark
upon her. You must be called to account for that. Choose your weapon, sir, and inform your second. As soon as this benighted rain ceases, we meet on the dueling ground.”

It was three days before the sheeting rain dwindled to a fine drifting fog that cloaked the land in a gauze of white not unlike the snow. Dawn brought no relief, and when they gathered for the duel in the meadow south of the castle, the mist was milling about their feet like restless ghosts.

The viscount insisted he stand second for his son, and Nigel called upon Boon to stand for him, which was highly irregular, James pointed out. However, in the interest of keeping the locals in ignorance of the duel, Nigel insisted, and they met in the meadow at first light. Regis, the reluctant butler, was enlisted to act as referee. He appeared like a wraith bearing a brace of dueling pistols in a leather case lined with burgundy baize. The seconds loaded the weapons. Nigel would have had first choice if the pistols hadn’t belonged to him. Since they did, James was allowed to choose. Hefting both, he made his choice, Regis handed Nigel the other, and they squared off.

A small clump of bracken poking through the mist served as their starting point. Standing back-to-back beside it, they waited for the signal. James chose to duel in his shirtsleeves, while Nigel appeared fully dressed for the occasion. James hadn’t fought a duel before, but he had
served as second in several. How much experience Nigel had was unknown. Judging from his character—the very makeup of the man—James assumed he’d had plenty.

The signal was given. They were to pace the distance, stop on Regis’s command, then turn and fire at will. Pistols cocked, they began to pace. Overhead, something stirred the air. James paid it no mind, in hopes that a zephyr would disperse the fog. Then he heard the tether bells, and looked up. Nigel heard them, too. He fired, but not at James. He fired blind into the fog toward the sound of the bells, a spate of blue expletives pouring out of him.

“Reload this, damn you—
now!
” he commanded, thrusting the smoking pistol toward Boon.

The valet moved to take it, but the viscount’s bark arrested him.

“Hold, there!” he charged. “You’ve taken your shot, Cosgrove. ’Tis James’s turn. Ready yourself to receive his fire!”

James hesitated, his breath suspended. No bird had fallen from the sky, but he didn’t hear the tether bells any longer either. Nigel’s expression was deadly. His jaw muscles had begun to tick, and his eyes had narrowed to slits as he turned his body slightly to the side.

“Reload the damn thing and give it here!” Nigel charged.

Boon had already done so, but he, too, hesitated, his eyes oscillating between the viscount, James, and his master, standing livid, his outstretched hand working in punctuation of his command.

“Sir, I beg your pardon,” the valet said, his voice cracking in falsetto, “but the viscount is right, ’tis Mr. Barrington’s fire.”

“The devil take it!” Nigel thundered. “Fire, then! Take your damned shot!”

The viscount stepped back, squaring his posture, and
James leveled his pistol at Nigel. He had dead aim. It was an easy shot. There was virtually no wind. But for the fog, conditions were perfect. Across the field, Nigel’s one-eyed stare was deadly. Was that a look of arrogance upon his face, or anger masking fear? It didn’t matter. James could not countenance shooting the man down. He aimed the pistol toward the ground and fired.

“I have had satisfaction,” he said.

Nigel wrenched the pistol from Boon’s hands in a flash. “Well, I have not, sir!” he snarled through clenched teeth, the pistol wagging in his hand as he took dead aim at James.

From above and behind, the screech of a falcon and the tinkle of tether bells ripped through the quiet that had fallen over the meadow. James saw the spurt of fire blaze from Nigel’s pistol just as a rush of air fanned his hot face, ruffling his hair. Something hard struck James’s head with enough force to make him stagger. He fell to his knees, dazed, watching Nigel heave the spent pistol toward the low-flying bird that seemed to taunt him, strafing close before it soared off and loosed what could only be a cry of triumph.

The viscount ran to James’s side. Across the way, raving like a madman, Nigel crashed through the mist, kicking at the tousled ground cover of furze and bracken for the pistol he’d hurled at the falcon.

“Am I bleeding?” James said, gingerly feeling his smarting head.

“You aren’t pistol shot,” his father said. Groping the ground through the mist, he produced a large flat stone wrapped with parchment tied with twine. He handed it over. “Cosgrove missed because that bird beaned you with this,” he said. “If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I’d never have believed it. That creature dropped this stone—I
swear it seemed deliberate. You flinched, and Cosgrove’s ball shot right past you. If you hadn’t moved, the bastard would have drilled you dead center.”

The bird’s screeches echoed in the distance then, mixed with Nighel’s shouts, his clenched fists raised to the heavens. It was over. Regis and Boon had left the dueling ground. Nigel stalked toward the viscount helping James to his feet. His eyes were glazed with rage.

“Get off my land!” he snarled, then stalked off into the mist.

James tore off the twine, and peeled the parchment from the stone. Smoothing out the wrinkles, he read:

Father—dear, dear, James,

My only regret is that I shan’t see you again. I am safe with my husband on the other side of the corridor. Do not seek to find me. I am no longer in your time. I am where I want to be, where I was born to be . . . with my soul mate. There is no need to restore Falcon’s Lair. We will not be returning. Go home, my dears, think of me kindly. Cause no falcons harm. Ever. The bird links us now and forever.

Thea

James handed the parchment to his father. The viscount’s eyes flitted over the page once, twice. He looked up nonplussed.

“Now do you believe me?” said James. Taking the parchment back, he stuffed it into his pocket.

“Harumph!” the viscount grunted. “She could be standing on that hill over there. You think this is proof of your ‘corridor’?” James’s crimped mouth and raised eyebrow replied to that, and the viscount perused the missive again. “What will we ever tell your mother?” he murmured.

“The truth,” James said, “That she has run off and married her Gypsy lover.”

“You may have that pleasure, m’boy. I wash my hands of this debacle.”

“Just so,” said James. “Now then, come! We have a wedding to cancel.”

Chapter Twenty-six

The day was soft with rain when the caravan approached the castle. The bird returned at dusk. Swooping out of the misty sky, it came to rest upon Drumcondra’s shoulder just as it always did upon completion of a mission, signaling its success. Clucking and preening, its head bobbing, feathers fluffed, the falcon accepted its reward. It plucked the scrap of meat Drumcondra had saved from the noon meal out of his hand, then flew off to perch upon the colorful lead wagon to devour the morsel.

They camped in the woods south of Cosgrove’s land. Thea was occupied with the women preparing the evening meal. Ros had watched her throughout the day—for several days, come to that. He marveled at how well she took to camp life, as though she were born to it. She even looked the part, with her long black natural curls and sparkling eyes like precious gems shimmering beneath their sweeping lashes. For all of that, the farther north they traveled the more sullen and withdrawn she became.
The change had come over her once they’d crossed the border into County Meath. She should have been happy when the bird returned, the success of its task evident, but she wasn’t. Drumcondra would not try to draw her out. His paying a call at the castle was at the root of it. She’d begged him not to go. When that failed, she’d pleaded to go with him, which was out of the question. Why she would fear his facing Cian Cosgrove as he was now, an old man in his dotage, he couldn’t fathom. Was he not still in his prime? What threat could Cosgrove possibly pose? Still, she seemed in terror of it. That would not stop him. He needed to look upon his old adversary once more before he laid the feud to rest. It had been the main preoccupation of his life for far too long.

Hatless, dressed in dark clothing and cloaked in a woolen mantle, Drumcondra mounted Cabochon and whistled for the bird. It swooped down from the resting place it had chosen in the uppermost boughs of an ancient rowan tree, and perched upon his shoulder with flourish. Thea watched him in silence from her vantage beside the wagon, her gaze unreadable, and he walked the horse closer, ranging himself alongside her.

Seizing Cabochon’s bridle, she stroked his long sleek neck. “Do not go, I beg you, my lord,” she murmured, searching his face in the lantern light.

“You know I must,” he said.

“Why must you?”

“What is it that you fear? That I cannot hold my own against a wizened old man? Have you so little faith in me? Have you forgotten who it is that I am?”

“I am not often given to premonitions,” she said, “but something frightens me here now. We are safe, we are happy. Why must you tamper with that?”

“You have been spending too much time amongst the
old mothers,” he scoffed. “They see grim specters in every shadow. It is how they pass the time. It is good practice for when they flummox the superstitious
Gadje
—the gullible non-Gypsy folk. Do not take them seriously, Thea.”

Thea shook her head and set her jaw. “It is not the mothers,” she said. “It is something I feel”—she thumped her breast—“here . . . inside.”

Were those tears in her eyes? He swooped down and took her lips in a searing kiss meant as reassurance. He could almost taste her fear. He would not quarrel with her. He would need her when he returned, in his arms, in his bed.

Drumcondra nudged the horse with his heels. Thea’s hands fell away from the bridle as Cabochon lurched forward, and he rode out into the night without a backward glance. It was best not to linger. The sooner he set out, the sooner he would return.

Once he cleared the meadow, the castle loomed before him, black against a blacker sky. Dark clouds hid the moon, yet there was enough light for him to see by reflected from the wet ground through the pearly haze that had begun to chase the rain. Besides, he needed no light to define this keep, these lands. They were emblazoned upon his memory, and he’d seen it in Thea’s time, had he not? Little had changed over the years. The one thing he couldn’t see was if there were sentries posted on the battlements. For that he needed Isor’s eyes, and he straightened his arm and gave the bird flight. He would know by Isor’s demeanor when it returned, and he reined in at the edge of a row of young saplings to wait.

Once, twice around the curtain wall that housed the battlements, and Isor returned to Drumcondra’s outstretched arm clucking and preening. No wildly flapping wings foretold danger.

“Good bird,” Drumcondra crooned, offering another
morsel. Nudging the horse forward, he gave the bird flight again, and rode out of the thicket toward the castle.

No sentries posted aloft? Cosgrove truly must be dead or in his dotage,
Drumcondra decided. He crossed the courtyard and rode right up to the portal unhindered. No one was posted at the gates either. Unless protocols had changed since his day, it was too early for the changing of the guard.

Dismounting, he tethered Cabochon to a clump of bracken alongside the circular drive—all that remained of the sculptured gardens of his time—and banged the knocker. He knew other ways of gaining entrance, secret ways, but boldness had overtaken him. He had come to gloat and extract reparation. He would enter by the front door to mete that out.

Presently, the door came open in the hand of a rotund woman he took to be the housekeeper. She was clad in black twill, her white mobcap askew, tears streaming down her face, a tilted candlebranch in her hand dripping tallow on the terrazzo.

“Thank God you’ve come!” she cried, pulling him over the threshold, “And so soon! Why, Mr. Connor just went ta fetch ya not half an hour ago. This way . . . follow me.”

Who did she think he was? Granted, he’d disguised his Gypsy ethnicity in dark clothes and a plain mantle, even to sporting a neckcloth, still he was totally nonplussed by her welcome.

“Do you always admit strangers to your master’s house so easily, madam?” he said, as she lit his way up the staircase. “Is that altogether wise in these . . . times?”

“Who else could ya be at this time o’ the night but the new surgeon from Oldbridge young master’s gone ta fetch?” She stopped dead in her tracks. “But don’t be tellin’ him that I done like that or he’ll skin me fer fair.”

“You need have no fear of that,” Drumcondra said.

She walked on, lighting his way along the corridor he could have traveled in the dark. Ros followed, trying to make sense of the situation from her babblings.