The Forest Lord (43 page)

The air prickled with building tension, electric currents that wove back and forth between her and Hartley. She knew with utter certainty that something was about to happen.
Something more terrible than anything that had occurred in the past fifteen minutes.

She could not move. She could only stare into those forest-green depths and wait.

"There is something I must tell you, Eden," Hartley said in a halting voice. "I should have told you long ago."

Incredibly, he was afraid. She sensed his fear, and it only increased her own.

"Please," she whispered. "Let us go—"

"The time has come," he said. He seemed to grow larger before her eyes, taller, more imposing. The lines of his face lengthened, smoothed,
became
oddly and terrifyingly familiar.

And then he vanished. In his place was the stag, still as a marble sculpture. She had only a handful of heartbeats to recognize what she had seen when the stag vanished and Hartley
was
back again.

Only it was not Hartley. Not this godlike creature dressed in flowing rags of green and brown, handsome beyond even Hartley's good looks.

Antlers, many-branched and hung with leaves and moss, sprang from his brow.

All the blood rushed from
Eden's head. It was true. Good God, it was true. She swayed, and Donal's small, strong body supported her.

"
Eden," the creature said. Its voice was deep and commanding and utterly beautiful. It was a voice she had heard before. A face she had seen before.

Once it had called itself Cornelius Fleming.

"
Eden," Cornelius/Hartley said from very far away. He raised his long, elegant hand. "Do not be afraid. Nothing has changed.
Nothing."
He almost seemed to smile. "Donal—Donal is our—"

Roaring filled her ears, cutting off his last word he did not need to say.

Donal was his son.

Hartley saw her face, and his hope shriveled like
Fane-cursed crops.

It was not simple shock, or consternation, or any of the less devastating emotions she might have displayed. It was not even horror, or disgust, or open rejection. She simply stared at him as if her entire world had collapsed for the second time in her life.

That was most painful of all.

He had not wanted this to happen under any circumstances.
Eden had undergone a great trial in witnessing Donal's danger and trying to save him. He cursed himself for not having watched the boy more carefully at Hartsmere. Instinct should have told him what Donal might do.

Instinct was useless to him now.

"
Eden," he said, his voice cracking. "Look at me. I have not changed. I still… care for you above all others, you and Donal. I would die to protect you.
To… stay with you."

She continued to stare, her hand clutching Donal's. "You are the one who bargained with my father. Who wanted me just for…
"
She swallowed convulsively. "What
are
you?"

"I am Hartley.
Your lover.
The father of our child."
He took a step toward her. She flinched.

"You are not a man," she said. "You… are not human."

"No, I am not. But—"

"You lied," she said. "You lied six years ago, and you lied when you returned to Hartsmere."

"Yes," he
admitted,
sickness in his belly. "I thought I had good reason. But I came to see… that it was wrong,
Eden.
Because I had learned…
I had learned to—"

Eden
covered her ears with her hands.
"Stop.
Stop. I will hear no more." She turned about and seized Donal's shoulders. "Run, Donal! Run down the fell to the house." She gave him a little shove, and he looked at Hartley with a question in his eyes.

"Da?"

"No!"
Eden propelled him to the edge of the glade. She cast one glance back at Hartley, and in that glance was everything Hartley had feared.

Then she began to run. She carried Donal along with her by sheer force of will. Donal did not resist. He knew that his mother needed him now.

When they were beyond his sight, Hartley sank to his knees. He willed the antlers gone, and his form to its now-familiar shape. As he cast off his Fane body, the weight of the mortal world seemed to settle upon his shoulders.
The weight of grief, and sorrow, and self-hatred.

It was just as if the events of six years ago had repeated themselves. He had lost her. Surely he had lost her. And in that knowledge he raged: against himself and against
Eden. Eden, who would not accept or
forgive
.

He tore at the earth with his fingers. Tree branches tossed violently over his head, though there was no breeze. Clouds gathered thick and heavy over Rushborough's new estate. Not a sound was heard from bird or beast.

When his rage was past, Hartley sat back and gazed up at the sky. Slowly it cleared, and a shaft of sunlight found its way onto his little patch of ground. He closed his eyes and let it bathe his face.

All the Fane that he had known, long gone, marched through his memory: those that had been contemptuous of man and fled when mortals became too numerous; those that had fallen under the mortal spell and been drawn to mate with them and help them, sometimes to the Fane's ultimate peril; those who had merely used men for their own amusement without a thought to the consequences. And those like
himself
, bound longest to earth by affection for its creatures.

But rare, rare was the Fane who gave his or her loyalty to one thing or one being.

Hartley looked up at the sun. Awed wonder filled his chest and spilled through his body.

He had become like the sun with its constancy and steadfast light. He could not simply run way, turn his back on
Eden, and pretend she meant nothing. He could—must—persist when others of his kind would yield, swallow the pride that came as naturally to his people as magic.

This had been a test: a test of his courage and of
Eden's.
A test, too, of the depth of her feelings.
But perhaps she had not failed. Perhaps she, being mortal, needed more time to absorb what he had revealed.
To know her own heart.

Yes. Hope was not yet gone. Time she would have. He would send Tod to leave her a message: for three days he would wait for
Eden in the wood at Hartsmere.
And if she had not come to him by then…

At this moment he felt very, painfully human.

By the time
Eden reached the house, her legs would
carcely carry her another step. Donal, fresh as he had been at the top of the fell, showed no expression. He looked up the fell.

For
him
.

She must get inside. She must protect her son. She must think.

As if thinking would alter the circumstances one jot.

She led Donal into Caldwick's rose garden and sat down on a bench, resting her hot face in her hands. Donal sat beside her, legs dangling.

"Mother?" he said, patting her shoulder. "Don't worry. It will be all right."

Eden
hugged him against her. God love the child; he had obviously accepted his father without fear. And just how long had he known? Had…
he
… told Donal from the beginning?

How had a young boy kept such a secret from his own mother?

She took firm hold of her emotions and smiled at her son. "Donal, you know that… Hartley is your father."

He
nodded,
eyes wide and solemn.

"When did he tell you?"

"He didn't tell me," Donal said. "I just knew. Like I knew who you were."

Memory blinded her. That first day she had found Donal at Hartsmere, he had called her "Mother." But he had never seen her before.

He had simply known.
And given her his heart.
As he had done with…
him
.

You cannot keep this up forever. Pretending he does not have a name, that you did not lie with him night after night, and swear that you loved him.

Once she had believed she loved him in another guise. Now she knew that the love she'd felt as a girl had been a mere shadow of the reality. She had been flattered by masculine attention, attracted to wealth and looks, certain of her own ability to mold her cousin into what she wanted.

What she felt for Hartley—what she
had
felt—had grown deep and strong like the roots of a great tree. She had ceased wishing to change him or expecting him to be what he was not.

And all the while, he hadn't been what she'd believed.

She called up the vision of the being she had met in the glade. The magnificent, larger-than-life
form, like a god… like
Hartley but somehow more so. The clothes that seemed assembled of moss and bark and leaves. The rack of antlers that matched those he had worn as a stag.

He not only understood the beasts, he was one.
And not.

For his eyes had been Hartley's. They had pleaded for her forgiveness, her acceptance, casting aside the pride that he wore so naturally in all his forms.

Hartley.
Oh, Hartley. If only I had never known.

If only she had lived in ignorance, denying her doubts, deceived by the man she loved, who was not a man at all. If only they could have gone on as they had been, forever.

But that was not to be.
Two different worlds
.
Worlds
father apart than she had imagined, even in her wildest speculations.

The sole bridge between them sat beside her: Donal.
A boy who was also more than human.
Whom Hartley had saved twice from death.
Whom he would risk everything to protect.
As she would.

Donal's fey nature had no bearing on her love for him.

Why was it so different with Hartley? Because he had lied to her not once, but twice… and all but destroyed her life? Or was this a deeper, more primitive fear?

If he is not human, what is he?

But she knew. Mrs. Byrne had told her, and so had Mr. Kirkby. She had guessed part of the truth when she'd decided he might be, in some way, like Donal.
Or Cornelius.

He could speak to animals. He could change his appearance. He could take the form of a stag and God knew what else. He sprouted antlers from his forehead, and perhaps had other powers she could scarcely imagine.

But he could also lie with a woman and father a child who looked and behaved human in nearly every way. He could love her with the greatest tenderness and defend her ferociously. He held his son like any father, pride and love burning in his eyes. He worked with his hands in the earth, and gentled the most frightened horse with a touch.

That
was Hartley Shaw.
That
was the man she loved.

She straightened on the bench and looked up toward the glade, a splash of autumn color against the brown fell. Was he still there? Did he wait for her, hoping she would relent? Or had he accepted her rejection and fled, never to return?

No
. Not to see him again? Not to watch him with Donal, teaching her son—
their
son—with infinite patience? Not to be held in his arms, feel him moving inside her? Not to know that wherever she went, he would be waiting for her at the stable or in the wood, his green eyes alight with passion as she drew near?

She clenched her fists and stood up.
Decide
, she demanded of herself.
Which is the greater fear: to face what you do not understand, or to live without love
?

Donal took her hand. His touch comforted her. Donal was the very essence of love: his own, hers… and Hartley's. To reject that love was to deny the happiest days of her life.
To deny that Hartley—whatever, whoever he was—had the ability to love, to suffer, or to feel the bitter pain of loss.

Who was she to make such a judgment?

"
I still… care for you above all others, you and Donal
," he had said. "
I would die to protect you.
To… stay with you
."

She believed him.

The tightness in her chest gave way.
God help me: I must go back. I must talk to him. I must let him speak and ask a thousand questions, and dare to fight for this love
…

She squeezed Donal's hand. "Go inside to your room. You have had a very busy day. I will come and speak to you later, about all that has happened."

"Da?"

Such a simple question, with a world of meaning behind it.