The Falcon's Bride (7 page)

Exhausted, she had just begun to doze when a strong hand fisted in the fur at the neck of her pelerine jerked her upright, and she looked once again into the eyes of the Gypsy Ros Drumcondra, his hooded stare intense. Those eyes held her relentlessly for longer than she cared to suffer
them, then he unfastened the gag and stripped it away. But he didn’t discard it. Holding it at the ready, he straightened up and dosed her with a warning glare, one finger placed across his sensuous mouth in an attitude that brooked no argument. Not only could the man rape with his eyes, he could speak with them as well—far more eloquently than his lips had done.

It was useless to scream, and Thea took another tack. “L-let me go. . . .” were the first words she uttered through her bruised lips. They hurt, reminding her of Nigel’s assault on the battlements. She’d completely forgotten until now.

Drumcondra crooked his thumb toward her mouth. “My men did that?” he queried, his eyes narrowed.

“N-no,” said Thea. “That occurred before I met your . . . ‘men.’ ” Savages came to mind as a better description of the gudgeons that had captured her, but she thought better of saying so. “The lump on the back of my head is their handiwork, though.”

He gave a dry grunt, squatted down, and laced his fingers through her hair feeling for the swelling. She winced when he found it, and he jerked his hand back as though he’d touched a live coal.

“You are the Cosgrove’s betrothed?” he said. How long the lashes were, wreathing his deep-set eyes. Those eyes were hooded now, not with passion, but cold, calculating scrutiny. There was hatred in that fierce stare. No, this was definitely not the phantom of her fantasy. But if not, why did her heart beat so rapidly under his gaze, and why was his breathing so audible of a sudden?

She nodded. “Y-yes,” she said, low-voiced. What sort of cruel game was this? He couldn’t be real. How could a specter be real? But he
was
real; there was no question. Her scalp still stung from his fingers groping her head for the knot his cronies had left, and the ghost of his arousal
still throbbed through her. She could still feel its pulsating pressure. He’d made no attempt to act upon his attraction, but neither had he made an attempt to hide it.

“Did he leave this mark on your mouth?” he asked, running his thumb along the bruise on her lip.

“That is none of your business!” Thea snapped, jerking her head to the side. His touch, though featherlight, was like a lightning strike, and she began to tremble from something other than cold.

Drumcondra’s eyebrow lifted. “What were you doing at Si An Bhru?” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Si An Bhru—the burial mound. What were you doing there all alone at sunrise? Do you not know that wars are waging hereabout?”

“You mean . . . Newgrange,” she said. He cocked his head, clearly nonplussed. “I . . . I was lost.” It was all she could think to say that he might credit as truth. She vaguely recalled Nigel saying that the passage tomb was once called Si An Bhru, and cold chills gripped her. Drumcondra would call it that, wouldn’t he? He was from the past after all. How hard it was to brook that he had traveled forward through time. It was incomprehensible.

His suspicious glance proved him skeptical. “New . . . grange?” he said.

“I-I am from England, sir,” Thea said, grateful for yet another inspiration. “That is what we call the place there.”

He gave a satisfied grunt charged with contempt for the English, and nodded to the old woman, who filled a trencher with the delicious smelling stew simmering over the brazier and thrust it toward her. A tankard of ale followed, which was nut sweet, rich and brown. Thea devoured both while Drumcondra crouched on his haunches,
watching. As soon as she’d finished, he surged to his full height and moved toward her with the gag again.

“Please,” she said, running her finger over her bruised lip. “Must you? It . . . hurts my mouth.”

He gave thought.

“I won’t cry out, if that’s what you fear.”

His green eyes blazed. “Ros Drumcondra fears
nothing
!” he said, “least of all a skinny bit of English fluff. No one will hear you if you do cry out but
me
and mine.” He waved the soiled rag in his hand. “I use this because I am not fond of women’s puling. It grates on my patience, and I do not think it wise that you risk angering me.”

“Then why don’t you just let me go? What use could I possibly be to you? What do you mean to do with me?”

“I intend to hold you for ransom,” he said. “My castle in exchange for you . . . intact.”

Thea felt a chill. “And . . . if he will not pay such a ransom?”

“He’ll pay.”

“You overestimate my worth, sir.”

“I can be very persuasive.”

“And if your persuasions fail? What then?”

“Then I will punish him in such a way that the castle will hold naught for him but sorrow, and in the end, I’ll have it anyway.”

Thea stared at him. “How?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“I need to know,” she persisted. She was goading him, which was a dangerous game, but she’d come too far to turn back now.

“Some things are better not to know,” he said. “But since you insist, if he will not meet my demands, I will resurrect the ancient rite of
prima nocte
—first night. The right of the lord of a land to take any man’s bride to his
bed on her wedding night. To be the first to take her maidenhead—her virtue, little lady—and give her back to him used baggage—spoiled.”

“That is barbaric!”

“Yes, and it was abolished long ago, but that matters not to me. Not after what he took of mine—my wife and children slaughtered by his sword. Why such a look? I am no savage. I am a lord, well-qualified. Who is to oppose me? I am clan chieftain in these parts. Cian Cosgrove may have taken my castle and my land, but he cannot take that from me. Tara has decreed it. It is only a matter of time before I have back what is rightfully mine. So! Either way I win. I’m half hoping that he does refuse my offer. Revenge is always sweeter taken of the flesh than by merely stripping a man of his possessions. The pain of human loss lasts longer.”

Thea swallowed, and her breath caught in her throat. “
Cian
Cosgrove?” she asked, having heard little past that.

“None other. What? Are you so simple that you do not know the name of your betrothed?”

“W-what year is this . . . ?” she murmured, scarcely able to hear over the the blood pounding in her ears.

He gave a start. “What year?” he asked, incredulous. “You
are
simpleminded, then, as well as insolent and foolish. It is the Year of Our Lord, 1695.”

Chapter Five

The miracle had clearly worked, but in reverse. The winter solstice sunrise had not brought the Gypsy warlord Ros Drumcondra forward in time through the passage tomb; somehow it had catapulted Thea back to his time, the end of the seventeenth century. How could that be? But it was, and she was in grave danger. He would never believe her if she told him the truth, that it was
Nigel
Cosgrove, Cian’s descendant nearly a century and a quarter into the future that she was to marry. Thea scarcely believed it herself.

Strangely, the one thing that threatened to make her a watering pot was worry over how frantic James must be over her disappearance, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to put her brother’s mind at ease. If only he had gone into the passage tomb with her, she would have his company for comfort now. But he had not, and she had to keep her wits about her and somehow find a way to go back the way she’d come to her own time. James and the
Cosgroves would doubtless think that she had been carried off by Gypsies.

She almost laughed. Wasn’t that exactly what had happened?

Making matters worse, time was passing—too much time. Thea tried to keep track of the days, but one seemed to melt into the next with nothing of consequence to mark their passing. Drumcondra came from time to time, scrutinizing her from a safe but visible distance. He said little. It was impossible to read the thoughts lurking behind those eyes boring into her, and she wasn’t even sure she wanted to, taking the physical attraction she had to this man into account, and the impossibility of any such situation. Things had been a lot simpler when she only had his ghost to fantasize about. His virile physical presence was entirely too much.

All in all, she was treated well, albeit roughly. Though her wrists were still bound, they were loosely tethered in front of her. She was fed, given warm water to wash, and privacy by way of a screenlike affair behind which she could execute a satisfactory toilette. At night, she had fur rugs to sleep in, and the old woman who’d first served her the stew watched over her so that there’d be no unseemly event such as what had occurred upon her arrival.

Though she continually begged Drumcondra to release her, her pleas fell upon deaf ears. Again and again she begged, but he was unmoved, the thoughts behind those copper-lit eyes remaining his own. She could not read them; she was almost afraid to, they seemed so dark and daunting. Still, he haunted her with his silent visits, and she thrilled each time he came into view. And so it went until what seemed at least a fortnight had passed and she’d all but given up hope of ever seeing the light of day again.

Drumcondra hadn’t come today at all, and she’d begun
to fear that something had happened to him. Though his presence was always alarming, he brought an odd facet of comfort as well. All day she’d worried over his absence. What if he never came? What if she were to be left at the mercy of those that, without him to prevent it, would surely slit her throat as easily as look at her? Or worse? Finally, she began to doze. It was hardly wise, half naked in a den of thieves without the warlord watching over her, but there was nothing for it. She was exhausted. She did her best to convince herself that Drumcondra’s minions would not molest her again after the display she’d witnessed upon her arrival. Neither would
he
, wanting her intact for his bargain with Cian Cosgrove. That was her most calming argument. Still, there was that odd business about
prima noctea
. But surely he couldn’t have been serious—all that had been abolished centuries ago. Still, she had no doubt that he would resurrect it in her case to further his own ends without batting an eye. Who would oppose him? None she’d seen so far in his domain.

The sight of the old Gypsy woman from time to time was oddly reassuring, though Thea had no idea how she could be there, unless she had been lurking in the passage tomb also. Of course! That had to be it. She had to have come from somewhere nearby Cashel Cosgrove when she’d trudged through the snow to give her cryptic warning. Could she be living inside Newgrange? Hadn’t Nigel said the bones of the Drumcondra clan had been found inside when the tomb was excavated? If it were possible then, why wouldn’t it be possible now? These thoughts drowned in the stuff of dreams, however. She was just too tired to care.

It seemed as if she had just closed her eyes when rough hands roused her, jerking her to her feet. It was Drumcondra. She groaned. Every muscle in her body ached from the
rough handling, and from being so long housed on the hard floor of the cave with nothing to cushion it but the skimpy fur pelt.

Her hands were still bound, and without a word he seized her arm and hauled her along the passageway to the entrance of the cave, but she dug in her heels when the snow drifts loomed up before her.

“Where are you taking me?” she demanded, resisting. He tightened his grip without answering. “No! Please!” she cried. “I cannot walk out in that like this. My boots! Give me back my boots!” That she was naked under the fur pelerine was bad enough; the mere thought of stepping barefoot into those snowdrifts riddled her with crippling waves of gooseflesh.

“No boots,” he grunted.

“But why?” she cried, still struggling.

He jerked her to a standstill. “You cannot run without boots in the snow,” he said.

“Please, I beg you,” she sobbed. “I shan’t run. I’m so cold. Isn’t it enough that you’ve ruined my frock—torn it to shreds? You cannot mean to make me walk through those drifts with nothing on my feet.”

Loosing a string of muttered blasphemies, Drumcondra scooped her up in his arms and plowed through the snow. Only then did she notice the magnificent Gypsy horse tethered in a stand of young saplings alongside the mouth of the cave: a stallion as white as the snow, its feathered feet and forelegs pawing the frozen ground. It looked magical standing in the sugary frosted twilight, white clouds of visible breath puffing from its flared nostrils, like a mysterious creature of myth. One horn protruding from that proud brow would not have seemed amiss.

Without ceremony, Drumcondra hefted her onto the animal’s back and swung himself up behind. Tethering her
against him between the reins, he walked the horse out of the grove. Thea’s hood had fallen away. She shuddered, and he tugged it back in place. The man wasn’t entirely without feeling. But she wouldn’t thank him for it, the great lout!

“Where are you taking me?” she insisted.

“What? You do not fancy a moonlight ride on such a fine night—upon so fine a horse as Cabochon here?” he said.

Thea didn’t answer. She dosed him with a withering glance and stiffened in his arms.

His deep baritone laughter responded, reverberating through her body in a most alarming way. There was something so sensual in this experience, riding bound and naked but for the soft chinchilla fur on the back of the majestic stallion in the arms of this gargantuan Gypsy warlord. Was that his manhood leaning heavily against her thigh? He was aroused! That she could feel his sex through the thick fur of her pelerine made her heart leap. His height was evidently not the only thing gargantuan about him. Thea gasped in spite of herself, and tried to inch away, but it was no use. Her other thigh was forced against the studded pommel. She was trapped between it and his throbbing hardness. Drumcondra threw his head back and loosed a mighty guffaw.

“I say again, sir,” Thea snapped, trying to ignore what could not be ignored. “Where are you taking me?”