The Falcon's Bride (4 page)

“Annie?” she cried, swinging her feet to the cold bare floor. The scream came again, and her heart nearly stopped at the sound.

Shuddering in involuntary spasms, Thea snatched her shawl from the floor where it had fallen, whipped it around her shoulders and burst into Annie’s cubicle through the adjoining door. The girl was whimpering in the corner, babbling and trembling, her mousy brown hair straggling from beneath her nightcap, both hands clasped over her mouth as if to keep more shrieks from escaping.

“What is it?” Thea asked, shaking the maid. “Stop that infernal caterwauling for pity sake, and tell me! Is it rats?
What?
”

“I-it was just like they said,” Annie stuttered. “The housekeeper, Mrs. Mabley, Regis and the others. I seen ’im! I seen ’im plain as day. Leanin’ right over my bed, he was, with that eagle on his shoulder!”

“Someone was in here?” Thea cried. “Who, Annie?”

“ ’Twas
Ros Drumcondra
! I seen ‘im, I
did!
”

Frantic pounding at the door and shouts from the corridor outside sent Thea to answer. Nigel and James burst into the room, a troop of lackeys and footmen decked out in their night rails pouring in after them.

“What the devil’s going on up here?” Nigel demanded, cinching his dressing gown about his middle with rough hands.

“Are you all right, Thea?” James urged, before she could answer.

“Uh . . . nothing . . . er, yes, James, I’m quite all right. Annie had a dream . . . a nightmare, that’s all. I’m sorry if we’ve disturbed you.”

“
A dream
?” the maid shrilled. “ ’Tweren’t no dream. I seen ’im plain as I’m seein’ all o’ you.”

“Who?” James and Nigel asked simultaneously.

“Ros Drumcondra is who!” Annie wailed. “Standin’ right over my bed, he was!”

“A figment of her imagination,” Thea explained. “The servants have filled her head with tales of the ghost that’s supposed to haunt the castle, and frightened her half out of her wits. Leave her to me . . . please. She’ll be seeing specters in every shadow now. Go back to bed. I’ll sit with her awhile.”

Leaking an exasperated sigh, Nigel shook his head and stalked from the room, his bare feet slapping the floor-boards. He grumbled a curt command that the others follow, but James hung back.

“Are you sure, Thea?” he asked, a look of genuine concern in his violet eyes. “I shall stay with you if you like. I shan’t sleep again now in any case.”

“No, James,” Thea responded, stirring the fire to life in the grate. “I’ll be fine. Run on and leave it to me.” She went to him and, under the guise of a kiss on the cheek whispered, “We’d best not make too much of this. I’ll settle her down. Oh, and thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not calling me Theodosia.”

“You heard that, did you?”

“I did, and I bring it up only to let you know that arguing the point is useless—just in case they’d convinced you.”

“Fat chance, little sister.”

“Good! Now, go back to bed, and let me see if I can calm her. And if you happen to see Ros Drumcondra lurking about, kindly tell him he’s caused quite enough trouble for one night, since he isn’t supposed to be abroad until the solstice. Now, shoo!”

James quit the chamber then, with a lopsided smile that had always put Thea at her ease, and she turned back to Annie.

“I don’t care what ya say, miss,” exclaimed the maid, “I seen ’im. I
did
, and he weren’t no pigment o’ my imagination, neither.”

“You
saw
him, Annie,” Thea corrected her, “and he wasn’t a ‘pigment,’ but a
figment
of your imagination.”

“Yes . . . no . . . you’re mixin’ me all up now!”

“Yes, well, let us leave that, and talk of pleasant things for a bit. Then, when you’ve calmed, we shall both go back to sleep.” Inspiration struck. “I know!” she said. “There’s a decanter of sherry—at least I think it’s sherry—in my chamber. What say we both have a glass?”

“Oh, no, miss! I couldn’t.”

“Nonsense,” Thea argued, padding toward the door. “I’ll just be a minute. Oh, now, what a face! Don’t worry, I shan’t get you foxed. A little spirits will be just the thing to relax you, so you can fall back to sleep.”

“I don’t think I’m ever goin’ ta sleep another wink in this horrid ol’ house!” the maid grumbled in a low mutter.

The decanter was on a drop leaf table beside the door in Thea’s chamber—left there no doubt as a remedy for chill rather than a welcoming gift, she surmised. The fire had nearly gone out, and but for the opalescent shimmer the snow cast through the window, the room was in bleak semidarkness.

Thea took up the pewter salver that held the decanter and glasses, and shivered at the touch of the cold metal in her hands. Turning back, she pulled up short, trembling from head to toe as waves of crippling chills knitted the bones rigid in her spine. She staggered back a pace. There, in the shadows, stood the misty image of a towering black Irish warrior, his raven-colored hair worn long in stark juxtaposition
to his bronzed, clean-shaven face. He wore wide-top turned-down boots over dun-colored leggings that left nothing to the imagination in the region of his well-turned thighs. A mole-colored leather jerkin girded his torso. His muscular arms were bare but for the leather caps on his jerkin and the studded leather gauntlets beneath a cloak made of the pelts of a short-haired animal that was slung over his left shoulder and fastened with a silver brooch. The look in his eyes riveted her like cannon fire. Those eyes were deep set and the color of tarnished copper flecked with gold, like the eyes of a wolf bearing down upon her in the eerie light filtering through the window. They held her relentlessly.

Shocked though she was by his sudden appearance, come so soon after Nigel’s chilling account of the man, it was the scandalous firestorm those seductive eyes set loose inside her that drained her senses. They stripped her naked. And to her horror, she
let
them. In stark terror she stood, her gaze locked with that of a ghost—a ghost that aroused her with a look alone.

She swayed. Someone screamed. The sound rang in her ears. Had it come from her own parched throat? Thea saw no falcon, but the flapping of its wings was suddenly all around her. She blinked, and the specter was gone, taking consciousness with it. But the palpitating sensations in her most private regions remained.

The scream came again as glaring white splinters impaired her vision, then the light failed altogether and Thea’s bones seemed to melt away underneath her skin. The salver and everything on it hit the floor before she did.

Chapter Three

“So you, too, have made the acquaintance of our resident ghost,” Nigel said tongue in cheek the next morning. At his request, they had climbed up to the battlements after breakfast. He’d insisted that she accompany him there under the pretext of showing her the breathtaking view, but Thea surmised that the interview was to take on the form of a lecture, and she’d steeled herself against it.

“Nothing of the sort,” she said. “Annie’s nonsense had my imagination playing tricks upon me is all. That and the gruesome tales you told at table last night were enough to make any girl swoon.”

“Hm,” he grunted. “You don’t believe in ghosts, I take it?”

“I’ve never given them much thought.”

“Well, the servants in this house do, I’m afraid. Most of them are locals, and they are a superstitious lot. In these parts some folk still leave their front and back doors ajar at night to permit the fairies to walk through unhindered. Pay them no mind, and do try to control your imagination
in the future. That little scene on top of Annie’s hysteria won’t bear repeating. As it is, the unfortunate business will have them buzzing below stairs for weeks.”

“I shall do my best,” said Thea, gazing out over the grounds. The falcon had returned, or another like it, sailing lazily aloft, dipping and soaring overhead as if it were watching them. Everything for miles was pristine white. Even the distant trees wore thick snow mantles. The snow had stopped, but the gray sky threatened more, bleeding from zenith to horizon like a watercolor painting. It outlined a distant mound she recognized as Newgrange, its menhirs and wet kerbstones silhouetted black against the drifts. Pulling the hood of her fur pelerine closer about her against the wind, Thea nodded toward it.

“What is that place exactly?” she asked, hoping to divert his attention from the scolding he’d intended to deliver out of range of the others’ hearing. “You only touched upon it briefly when we passed it on the way here.”

“Newgrange is our mysterious antiquity,” he replied, “a passage tomb constructed some odd five thousand or so years ago.”

“A passage tomb?”

He nodded. “An ancient burial mound, supposedly a link between the living and the dead, and a passageway to the Celtic gods they serve—
An Dagda
, father of all the gods and goddesses, his daughter
Brighid
, goddess of wisdom,
Lir
, god of the sea, and
Balor of the piercing eye
, whose own grandson is said to have put his eye out with a spear, to name but a few. There are several such in these parts. For centuries it appeared as nothing more than a hilly mound of earth. Then, when excavation began in 1699, the stone mound underneath and corbelled vault that forms the roof of the inner chamber were discovered.” He pointed. “Look
there,” he said. “You can barely see . . . a circle of twelve menhirs surround it. Archeologists say that these curious upright boulders and the tomb itself were once the focal point of pagan ritualistic celebrations.”

“Tomorrow is the winter solstice,” Thea remarked. “I want to see what happens.”

Nigel seemed annoyed. “In all this snow? What ever for?”

“I shan’t get the chance again for a whole year,” she replied. “I would like to be there at dawn when light fills the chambers.”

Nigel shook his head. “You want me to wear out old Beadle the stabler hooking up a rusty old sleigh that hasn’t been used in years, just to drive round to that dreary old place in such weather as this is? I think not. Look at that sky! There’s more snow on the way. You know, you’re becoming quite tiresome, Theodosia. That odd business with the old Gypsy woman yesterday, for one thing, not to mention the ridiculous brouhaha over ghosts. Mother says you’re just courting attention. Is that it? Or is this something of a different nature? I thought I was paying you more than enough attention. We need to settle these matters now, before the wedding, so that we understand one another going into this.”

“If you wish to cry off, I shan’t stand in your way,” Thea suggested, hoping he’d jump at the opportunity.

“Of course I do not want to break our engagement,” he said, turning her toward him. “I simply want to start us out on the right foot. I realize you’re young, and I’ve taken that into account. With nearly fifteen years difference in our ages, there are bound to be . . . difficulties. I merely want to keep them to a minimum. But I cannot do this alone. You need to grow up, Theodosia. The world does not dance to your whims, at least not here at Cashel Cosgrove. Others’ feelings must be taken into account. Mine—”

“And your mother’s,” Thea interrupted. The wind whipped tears into her eyes, and she narrowed them.
What an insufferable wretch! Could he really be so full of himself?

“Yes, and my mother’s. What is wrong with that?”

“Well, if you are too dimwitted to see, I shan’t waste my pains pointing it out. Suffice it to say that I am not the only one who needs to take stock, Nigel Cosgrove. She pulls your strings like a puppet master in Drury Lane. I thought I was marrying a
man
, not a marionette!”

“You doubt my manhood, do you?” he asked through clenched teeth. Seizing her upper arms in a viselike grip, he crushed her against him and took her in a savage kiss, drawing blood as one of his canine teeth bit into her lower lip. He tasted foul, of gin and undigested food. Thrusting one hand beneath her fur wrap, he groped her while tethering her to him with the other. “I’ve had no complaints in that department,” he said, his voice husky with desire. “It is all I can do to keep my hands off you, Theodosia.” All at once his eyes darkened. Traces of her blood glistened on his mouth, fixed in a sneer, and he licked it away with the tip of his tongue. “Why should I?” he said, wrenching her hard against him. “We’re as good as wed, and you, miss, need a lesson to show you who is master here.”

Terror caught Thea’s breath in her throat. Blood rushed to her head. Cruel, pinching fingers tore at the décolleté of her frock until he’d bared her breast to the icy wind. He bent her arm behind her back with such a savage wrench she feared it would break, meanwhile sliding his ravenous mouth the length of her throat to the trembling flesh he’d exposed beneath, and bit down hard upon her nipple. Pinned against the crenellation, she struggled in his arms, striking what she could reach of him with her free hand balled in a fist. Her legs were useless; the bruising pressure
of his sex, his rock-hard thighs and muscular torso crushed against her prevented her from raising them to her defense.

“Do not struggle,” he spat in her ear. “Struggling only stimulates me.” Thea cried out as he forced her free hand against his arousal. He shook her roughly. “Scream again and I’ll have you here and now. You have no idea how your pain excites me . . .”

He had hold of her wrist, but not her fingers. And she summoned all the strength she could muster to seize his member like a vise, digging her nails into the soft buckskin breeches drawn taut over its bulk until he cried out and let her go.

Thea tugged the gaping frock back over her nakedness, drew back the hand she’d dug into Nigel’s groin, and lowered the flat of it hard to his face. “I smell the Blue Ruin on your breath—and at this hour!” she snapped, struggling to free herself, for all she’d accomplished was to provoke him to seize her again, and more cruelly. The bear was loose of its tether. He was trying to force her to her knees. Adrenaline surged, and she fought him with all her strength. “Any beast in the field can satisfy its urges,” she snapped at him. “Lust is no measure of a man. You had best ponder that, and come to terms with what
is
before we take this relationship any further.”