Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) (16 page)

There was another spate of drunken guffaws. Tade grabbed up a fresh shirt and shrugged it onto his shoulders.

"You're going?" Devin's voice was serious, his features still pale with the secret Tade had confided moments before.

"Neylan won't give me any peace until I do," Tade said lightly. "I should be gone a few days. Perhaps it will give me time to think on what we've discussed." He reached up, moving aside a loosened slab of the turf that formed a base for the thatch overhead. He could feel Devin's eyes on him as he slipped an oilcloth-wrapped bundle from the nook, tucked it under his arm, and attempted to replace the turf over the bared straw.

Suddenly the dark slab escaped his grasp. Tade's hand shot out, but just as his fingers touched the falling piece of turf, the weight of the oilcloth bundle slipped free. He lunged for it, catching one corner, but the thick cloth only unrolled the faster, spilling its contents to the floor. Tade swore under his breath as metal thunked heavily onto the aged wood.

Candlelight spilled over the worn floorboards, picking out the curve of a brass powder flask, a bullet pouch, and the menacing length of a pistol pillowed upon a hood of black silk. Slowly Devin bent down to ease the bit of cloth from beneath the engraved weapon. His slender fingers traced the embroidered talon of a Falcon with a resigned sadness.

"So you still break ruffians' noses for tormenting those weaker than yourself, Tade," Devin said so softly it was scarce a breath beneath the rafters. "But now you use more deadly measures than your fists."

"Devin—"

"No, Tade. I know. Since the day I landed in Eire, I've heard tales of the Black Falcon of Donegal. And somehow I knew it was you even then."

The shouts from the yard faded, the stirrings in the cottage below blurring in Tade's ears until it seemed that the world consisted only of him and Devin spun into the web of aching understanding they had shared since childhood.

"Godspeed, brother." Pale fingertips ghosted over Tade's forehead in the sign of the cross. "And about your Maryssa . . ." Devin slipped the silken hood into Tade's hand. "May Christ be gentle to you both."

Emotion knotted in Tade's throat. "If any ill should befall me now, or in the time to come, you'll tell her for me. Tell her I—"

"I'll go to her," Devin promised.

Tade turned, swirling the folds of the black mantle about his shoulders, and leaned down to bundle the weapons and hood back into the oilcloth parcel.

Yet even hours after he slipped out into the night, he was plagued by the images his mind wove in the mists. Devin, bending over Maryssa, soothing tears from eyes dark with sorrow. And another man, a phantom garbed in satins and brocades, crushing her beneath him in a velvet-draped bed, shattering the fragile dreams that had shone in her face.

M
aryssa huddled
in the carved wooden chair beside the hearth, staring into the blaze with eyes that ached from a fortnight of bitter tears and nights barren of sleep. Two weeks. Had the sun truly risen and set only fourteen times since the night Tade had embraced her in the Marlows’s rain-damp cart? It seemed as though an aeon had crawled past in the days since he had touched her, kissed her, vowed he would return.

He had branded his promise into her heart with the heat of his kiss, yet now even the flames unfurling bright banners of red and orange seemed to paint the words in mocking hues within the darkened chimney above:
Wait for me, love
...

Maryssa rose from her chair and walked to the window, flung wide to the sweet-scented Donegal air. A hundred stars winked like jewels on the velvet cap of night, their glittering blue light dancing above the shadow-veiled mountains, yet to her the landscape seemed as bleak as a gale-tossed wasteland.

Wait
, he had said, and she had waited with every breath she drew, minded each minute jealously in the hope that Tade was in the next meadow, on her window ledge, around the next curve of the rutted, winding road. Yet as each day passed, empty of his smile, Maryssa felt a little of herself crumble away.

"Tade." Maryssa whispered his name, tasting in its sound the bittersweet tang of hope lost. A tear squeezed itself out of the corner of her eye and trickled in a hot path down one raw cheek to fall softly onto a thick sheet of paper lying on the window ledge beneath her listless fingers.

She lowered her gaze to Christabel Marlow's delicately penned script and was surprised to find it spotted with tears.
My dearest Maryssa . . .
She had read the message with numb detachment when the Marlow's footman had delivered it a week ago, and as each day passed, its loving, rollicking tone sounded more discordant in her ear as she skimmed the elegant lines:
Mr. and Mrs. Reeve Marlow request the pleasure of your company at a small soiree in honor of Miss Maryssa Wylder of Nightwylde, said fete to be held at Marlow Hall on Saturday evening at eight o'clock.

The day after tomorrow... Maryssa's eyes trailed down to the bottom of the page where Christabel's quill seemed to have fairly danced across the paper:
Reeve has finally released me from the torment of our excursion to Londonderry to purchase the sorrel brood mare he claimed he would perish without. I vow, if I was not certain of the man's distaste for orange hair, I would have fallen into spasms of jealousy, the way he was taking on about that beast!

However, he did manage to redeem himself by purchasing for me the sweetest dress length of blue aligar in all of Derry, and another most mysterious parcel with the name Maryssa scrawled on its wrapping...

Maryssa brushed the tip of one finger across the words, blurring the ink with the tears that lay on the page. No doubt Father would be stricken with apoplexy when he returned from his business in Armagh to find the daughter he despised being feted by the belle of the county. A month ago Maryssa herself would have offered every acre of land she stood to inherit for just one moment of the joy of Christabel's friendship. But now even the Marlows’s generous insistence that she spend the fortnight after the soiree as their guest at Marlow Hall only added another shade of melancholy to the fire's curling flames.

"Witling!" Maryssa hissed at herself, digging her nails deep into her palms. "Most likely you were staring up at Tade like a moonstruck calf and he did not have the heart to humiliate you.'' She swiped her knuckles savagely across her eyes, grinding hot tears into the stinging softness of her cheeks. "He pitied you, Maryssa. Stop crying after a man who—"

She bit her lip, then sat back down in the chair and pulled her knees tight against her chest.
A man who gave you life, who took a hundred bleak yesterdays and sprinkled them with bliss,
her mind screamed.
A man whose merest touch banished all your pain, giving you hope for tomorrows struck through with sunlight.

He had held out joy, poured it into her cupped hands, and she had sipped from it, then watched helplessly as its silvery glow dripped like crystal water through her fingers.

Maryssa rested her burning cheeks against her knees, pressing her face into the limp brown petticoat she had not had the energy to shed in favor of a night rail. "If only he had let me drink full measure once. Just once." She whispered the words aloud, capturing in her mind the sweet, heavy weight of Tade pressing her down into the coverlet she'd spread on the grass of the glen.

She wanted to cry some more, but the rest of her tears were dammed up inside her breast, lodging there with an emptiness borne upon the breeze that crept in through the open casement. Maryssa shifted on the hard seat of the chair, her stiff muscles shooting needles of pain down her spine. Raising bleary eyes to the night-veiled mountains beyond the window, she drank in the scent of wild heather and sea-swept darkness. Then she stared into the night until the stars flickered out beneath her heavy lashes and loneliness draped itself around her in dark gray folds of despair.

M
aryssa burrowed deeper
into the warmth enfolding her, her sleep-numbed brain struggling groggily to understand how the rosewood chair that had cut into her shoulders moments ago could suddenly cradle her with such delicious comfort. She had been cold. So cold. She had felt the chills scuttle beneath her skin, yet her eyelids had seemed weighted with bits of lead, far too heavy to open even enough to allow her to stumble to the bed, that was only six steps from the chair on which she had fallen asleep.

But now . . . sensations crept up her fingertips. She was suddenly aware of the sleekness of finely woven cloth, downy soft warmth snuggled about her shoulders.

Maryssa's eyes flew open, and she shoved herself upright, her gaze darting about her in stunned surprise. The partly drawn bed curtains let in trickles of sunlight to frolic among the bedclothes tucked about her with the greatest of care. One bright ray darted up her wrist to where the lace cuff of her nightdress ruffled out over her hand.

Maryssa's fingers fluttered to her throat to touch the buttons that ran down her breast. The heavy corset and layers of petticoats were gone. Each tiny ivory button on her night rail had been slipped through the loop that held it. A hazy memory of the faintest of sensations stirred inside her, as if the mountain breeze had flowed over her sleeping body in dreamlike whispers. Had the chambermaid come in after she had fallen asleep, taken pity on her, and helped her into bed? No, she had barred the door, unable to endure the thought of even that stout old woman bearing witness to her misery. Had—

A sudden chill gust of wind surged into the room, setting the bed curtains whirling in heavy sweeps against each other. Maryssa jumped from beneath the coverlets and scurried toward the open window. She slammed to a halt, and froze, her fingers a hand's length away from the window latch.

Elation and disbelief bubbled inside her as she stared at the ledge, blanketed now in a tumult of riotous color. It was as if wood nymphs had stolen great armfuls of happiness and strewn them upon the ancient stone in the guise of every wildflower that grew on Donegal's hills. Palest rose, butter yellow, crimson, and purple, myriad blossoms crowded one another among tender fronds of meadow grass, the stems of one nosegay bound with the loveliest piece of lace Maryssa had ever seen.

She couldn't breathe, couldn't speak as she reached shaking fingers toward the square of paper tucked beneath a half- blown primrose.

Maura-love
— Maryssa felt her heart flip over as the boldly scrawled words leaped up at her.
You are softer and sweeter than any angel when you sleep, but watching you, holding you, makes me want to sweep the dream dust from your eyes and fill them with wonder. Let me, Maura. Come to the lake when the sun is high. I will be there. Waiting.

Clutching the note to her breast, she whirled in a dizzying circle, a joyous laugh rippling in her throat. Tears spilled down her cheeks, but she welcomed their healing wetness, welcomed the bite of the paper's edge in her palm, as if the sensations could convince her it wasn't a dream. Tade had returned, kept his promise. He had scaled the wall to her window and . . .

Heat suffused her skin beneath its thin icing of lawn at the thought of Tade's dark fingers peeling away the layers of her clothing as she slept, then easing her into the nightdress that flowed in a thin veil about her nakedness. She scooped up an armful of flowers and buried her face in their fragrant brightness.

"Asleep?" Maryssa giggled to herself. "I must have been nearly dead not to feel it.”A delicious shiver of anticipation raced up her spine. Her gaze swept out over the mountains to where the sun climbed, a sphere of liquid gold set in a cerulean sky. "I'll have to make haste if I want to be ready."

She danced to the elegant washstand in the corner and swept up the silver-backed brush to smooth it through the waves of hair tumbling past her hips. Coiling the luxuriant strands in a glistening crown about her head, she hummed a sparkling little tune, half-remembered from a day Evangeline Boucher had taken her out berrying.

Anchoring the last wayward strand with a hairpin, Maryssa turned back to the blossoms she had set on the washstand. She would weave them through her hair, splashes of brilliance against the dark tresses. A crimson bud, all but buried among butter-colored flowers seemed to beckon her. A smile touching her lips, she plunged her fingers into the bouquet seeking the stem.

Pain drove itself into her thumb. With a cry of surprise, she yanked her hand away, spilling the blossoms across the thick rug. Bright red, a drop of blood welled up on her skin. Maryssa's gaze flashed to the tumbled flowers. There, tangled among their satiny petals, lay a tiny spray of thorns—danger bathed in beauty. She reached down, lifted the sharp spikes, and gingerly held them in her cupped palm. Danger. Was that not what Tade faced in sending for her? And she, in running to meet him?

Her gaze strayed to the elegant silver-framed looking glass that hung on the wall. Maryssa stared for long minutes at the image peering back at her. The happiness setting her eyes a-sparkle could scarce hide the dark circles smudged beneath them, and the blush of pink now tinting her cheeks only heightened the pallor that two weeks of sleeplessness had stroked into her skin.

Nay. Maryssa banished the thought of danger, tipping her hand to let the thorns fall onto the stand's embroidered cover. Today would hold only joy. Yet when she spun back to the window, the smile that curved her lips was touched with defiance.

The sun was nearly halfway to its crest, and heaven lay in wait for her beside a shimmering lake.

"
B
last it
, Dee, you nearly made me lay open my jaw with this thing!" Tade jerked his razor away from his skin, steadying himself as his sister swept past him. His exasperated voice cut through the clamor of the crowded room as he wheeled away from the basin of steaming water, brandishing his razor at the thunderous countenance of his sister. "You know cursed well I need to finish in haste."

"Scrape that thing across your face with any more haste and you'll slice your nose clean off," Deirdre snapped, pushing past him. "Though I vow the loss of it might be an improvement, the way you're always poking it into the air."

Tade grinned, jerking the towel from around his neck and snapping the damp length at her skirts with a well-practiced aim. He winced, gritting his teeth against the sudden stab of pain that shot through his arm at the quick movement. But even the soreness that throbbed up into his shoulder and the serious, questioning weight of Rachel's gaze upon him could not quell his amusement as Deirdre skittered to one side. Her foot snagged on a pair of pudgy legs sprawled out from the overturned stool behind which Brody and Tamkin lay dragging wisps of twine beneath the paws of three mischievous kittens. Tade couldn't resist a burst of laughter at Deirdre's black curse as she stumbled and pitched scowl-first into the heaping willow basket at the side of the washstand.

"Plague take you, Tom and Brody!" she sputtered, extricating herself from the soiled clothing. "I've told you a hundred times to take those infernal beasts out into the yard before you kill someone! And you, Tade Kilcannon—” She wheeled and shot Tade a killing glare. “—can go straight to blazes!"

"According to most of Donegal, I'm going there as quick as I am able, thank you very much," Tade said with mock solemnity. "Of course, if you know of a shorter route . . ."

"You . . . oh!" Deirdre's small fists clenched in fury, her face washing red as her hair. "You are the most disgusting, arrogant bast—"

"Shame, shame," Tade teased, clucking like an old dowager. "Talk like that and a fairy is apt to come steal away your tongue. Perhaps if you could uncross your eyes but a trice, Dee, you'd save getting your freckles flattened."

"I wouldn't dream of robbing the high-and-mighty Tade Kilcannon of so much amusement gleaned at my expense," Deirdre snapped, stooping to snatch up the travel-stained clothes strewn on the floor. "Maybe you should follow me down to the stream and watch me while I wash your filthy clothes. You might be fortunate enough to see me fall into the water and drown. That would send you into pure spasms, no doubt."

"Aye, no doubt, since you swim like a gannet and the stream is knee deep," Tade agreed, chuckling as he turned back to the mirror. "Now, if you'd permit me to finish my shaving before the soap turns stone-hard, I do have a most important assignation in but an hour's time."

Deirdre muttered another oath, and Tade struggled to keep from nicking himself as he drew the razor across the lines of merriment crinkling about his mouth.
An hour's time
. His smile faded at the memory of satiny skin beneath his fingertips, firelight glossing rose-tipped breasts, slender legs. Maryssa. Every muscle in his body was taut with the wanting . . . Waiting . . .