Uncertain Magic (43 page)

She did not have to sing the last lines, the sad stanzas of parting between a girl and her ghostly lover, come across years and miles for one night. Geoffrey relaxed, recognizing her voice and the message in the song. He did not retreat when she moved closer, but waited until they were both lost in the shadows to reach out and grab her arm and pull her against him.

"Poppet," he whispered, right into her ear. "I need Faelan."

Aye
, Roddy thought,
and I won't let you have him
.

"The stable," she said, beneath her breath.

She felt his hard exhalation of relief, and did not correct his mistaken assumption that it was Faelan who would be waiting in the stable. She pulled away without speaking again and moved out into the luminous shaft from the nearest column of light. She looked up. Faelan stood there, outlined against the candlelight behind.

He gave no sign that he saw her. But she was sure that he must—the dewy air reflected and compounded the cool glow from the window, turning it into a shimmering prism that held her at its center. She bowed her head, pretending to straighten her skirt, and took up her song again. In a voice too soft to reveal the pounding of her heart, she sang:

When that night, it nearly was ended,

And the early cocks, they began to crow,

We kissed, we kissed, and alas we parted,

Sayin' good-bye, darlin', now I must go.

As she reached the end of it, she was saved from having to linger further by the arrival of a straggling parry of dairymen. The shadow from the window moved and disappeared, and the group inside roused themselves from exhaustion to start the ritual of oaths and weapon counting again.

Roddy slipped away.

The stable had many noises in the dark. There was the wind, ever present in the eaves, and a hundred small rustlings of mice and straw. An owl lived in the tree outside: Roddy had often drifted to sleep with his low mourning note in her ear, mingling with the deep, steady rhythm of Faelan's breath in her hair.

She heard Geoffrey scramble up in the straw as she entered.

"Faelan," he said in a low voice. "By the saints, I thought I'd never have a chance at you."

"It's not Faelan." Roddy moved into the thick, hay-scented darkness. "It's me."

There was a hiss of straw as he stumbled toward her. He came up against her and took a step back. "Ah—poppet. I can't see a damned thing in here. I nearly blacked my eye on a pitchfork. Where's Faelan?"

"He isn't coming."

She felt Geoffrey's quick surge of annoyance, but he kept his voice soft. "I need to talk to him—can't you get him away?"

"No. I came to tell you—he doesn't know you're here, and he isn't going to find out."

"What?" The annoyance changed to exasperation. He caught her arm and shook her. "Roddy, believe me, this is no game. I've got to have his help—"

"No!" She steadied herself against him in the dark. "I saw you this morning. You were there, when Willis accused Faelan. He can't take that risk, helping you. You have to stay away from him."

His hand tightened around her upper arm. "But you haven't told him I'm here? Roddy, you must. Aye, there's some risk, but I know Faelan. He won't think anything of that."

"Of course he won't," Roddy snapped. "That's why I want you away from here."

"But, Roddy—"

She shoved at him, angry and desperate. It was not so much that Geoffrey cared nothing for his friend's welfare; it was rather that he had an unshakable faith in Faelan's ability to handle any scrape. As if Faelan were somehow above human weakness, unable to make a mistake that might kill him.

"Geoffrey," she said between her teeth. "If you go near my husband, I will turn you in myself."

It was the only leverage she could think of. He took the threat in the light of a childish tantrum, but Roddy didn't allow him to open his mouth and say so.

"I swear to God, I
will
," she hissed. "If you think I won't see you ham?, for your stupid rebellion before I'll let you endanger Faeian, you mistake me at your peril."

It was bluff, pure bluff, for she could never have done it, but the words and her tone of voice finally sank in. For all her life, Geoffrey had thought of her as "poppet," as a child, a female: soft and submissive and not very bright.

She suddenly dropped into a new category: a woman, who would grasp at any weapon to protect her man.

He might not respect her methods, but he developed a sudden and healthy respect for her resolution.

"All right," he said slowly. "I won't mistake you."

Six hundred fifty-three pikes, twenty-two pistols, and five guns were not enough.

Nothing would have been enough, except the full shipment of Geoffrey's smuggled muskets.

Rain swept the great house in showers, throwing drops with a spattering sound against those windows that had panes, and puddling on the stone floor beneath those that didn't. The fireplace in the dining room leaked. There was a shiny dark spot on the marble hearth where a warm fire should have been.

But the smoke that drifted in with the drizzle was not the comforting, clinging smell of peat. The damp breeze carried a heavy, peculiar odor: the pungent scent of burning grain.

Faelan sat before the empty hearth. His face was a mask. He gave no sign of hearing the intermittent pop of pistol fire that heralded the systematic slaughter of his imported Frisian cattle.

Five days had passed since the army had come. At first the soldiers had only taken excess: poultry and potatoes and livestock enough to feed themselves royally. But as each day passed without the guns, Roberts had unleashed his men a little more, until by now they were angry, and impatient for results. They had taken all they could consume and more—far more—and the free-quarters had become free destruction.

Faelan's imported stores bore the brunt of their fury. Still gathered and awaiting distribution according to his careful plans, the cattle and seed wheat and commodities he'd brought for exchange in a moneyless economy were too easy to reach. It was more entertaining and far less trouble to burn sacks of grain piled high in a thatch-roofed barn that to search out the small huts in the mountains and seize a few year-old potatoes. And the soldiers did not stop with stores. The plows were broken up, the half-finished pier burned to the waterline. Even the lime and saltpeter Faelan had bought for the fields was carted away and dumped into the sea.

The oaths of loyalty had been futile. As long as the guns were withheld, Roberts said, he'd accept no false professions of good faith.

Roddy sat at the table with Earnest and smelled the smoke and listened to the guns and watched her husband stare at nothing until she could bear it no longer. "I'm going to take a walk," she announced.

Earnest roused instantly from his gloomy reflections. "I'll go with you."

The last thing she wanted was Earnest's company, with his eternal pressuring at her to leave Ireland with him. Beyond that, she had her other reason to be alone: Geoffrey, who had proved himself every bit as troublesome as she'd feared.

The hiding place she'd chosen for him, the remote cottage that had been MacLassar's first home, had stood vacant for months. Long ago, Roddy had convinced Faelan to move the woman and her child to a better holding, where the widow had since become mildly famous as being favored by the
sidhe
because of the occasional small gifts that would appear in the night on the woman's new hearth. These Roddy attributed to Faelan, for she could find no other donor through her talent.

The
sidhe
luck must have rubbed off on Geoffrey, too. It was certainly no natural aptitude for concealment that had kept him undiscovered. He would not stay put; he took a ramble every morning and evening through the hills, and Roddy could not convince him that he couldn't build a smokeless fire. Someone had taught him the trick once, and he was certain that he had the way of it. As far as Roddy could tell, only the unfamiliar spread of smoke from the soldiers' fire kept Geoffrey's from instant detection.

"I'd rather go alone," she said to Earnest. "I shall be back before supper."

"Roddy—it's not safe." He automatically turned to Faelan for support. "You won't let her go wandering about alone."

Faelan looked sideways at her, a glance that puzzled Roddy, that seemed cynical and questioning at once. "I'll go with you, if you like."

Roddy wet her lips. His unexpected focus on her made her uncomfortable, burningly aware that she was hiding something from him. For days, it seemed that he had looked through her without even seeing her. All night, every night, he sat in this cold, spare room waiting for more arms and watching the countryside burn. It had been easy to pretend, easy to go to bed in the stable and then sneak out after dark to carry what food she could conceal to Geoffrey. It was as if her husband did not know whether she was there or gone. But now…

She picked up her cape of bright green baize and threw it across her shoulders with a deliberately casual move. "That's isn't necessary at all. I'd really rather go alone."

Faelan rose. Roddy bowed her head, hiding the guilt she was certain shone clear in her eyes. She felt his light touch, and refused to look up as he traced her cheekbone and temple. Need struck her—a longing that made her throat close and her chest ache. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and cry for what the army was making of his dreams—of
their
dreams... for the future here had become hers, too. She wanted to confess her fears for Geoffrey, her hopeless inability to think of a way to get him safely out of the country. She wanted to lie again with her husband on a blanket in the clean, sweet straw, too tired from honest work to make love, but not too tired to be close, to feel his arms around her and his skin warm against her back.

But her secret stood between them, and she was afraid to meet his eyes.

"I'd like to go," he said softly.

"I don't want you." It was breathless, quickly spoken and ill considered. She stepped back away to avoid his touch.

From a safer distance, she dared to look up. If her words had hurt him, she could not tell it in his face. Only Earnest's irritated confusion reached her, his bafflement and concern at what he saw of their marriage.

"Very well." Faelan turned away to the window. His voice held a brittle precision. "Then go alone."

"No!" Earnest's chair made a scrape as he leaped to his feet. "I forbid it."

Faelan looked back. Roddy saw it then, like a mirror breaking. The mask of control cracked and shattered; Faelan's face went to violence and his body moved with savage grace—one moment Earnest was standing and the next he was sprawled back on the table. The blow took Roddy, too, made her stomach wrench and her knees stagger, and Faelan's snarled words came to her through Earnest's haze.

"
You
forbid it!" He jerked Earnest up by his coat. "You meddling bastard, you think I can't protect what's mine? You think there's a damned thing you could do better?" He let go, and Earnest stumbled, clutching the table behind. "You don't forbid anything here, my friend," Faelan sneered. "You don't open your mouth if I don't like what you have to say, because I own everything you can see, and that includes your precious little sister, and if I choose to sit on my backside while they burn the place down around our ears, then you can go or you can stay, but you'll damned well keep your mouth shut!"