Bride of Fae (Tethers) (4 page)

She’d
left school after the crash. It was impossible to think of shipping Marion off to relatives in Scotland they’d never met. The earl intervened on their behalf to ensure Beverly was named Marion’s guardian, and he’d arranged for this job at the Inn.

By all reports
Lord Dumnos was the only witness on the scene. Dad had run the car off the Ring and driven head-on into a yew tree. He and Mum were killed on impact.

According to the accident report, his lordship pulled Beverly and Marion from the wreckage. According to the therapist, the
Beverly’s golden man was a hallucination, a childhood imaginary friend brought back by the shock.

But why did he seem so real, even
in her memory now four years later?

“He’s a man,” Ian said.

“The golden man?” Beverly looked up from the note, confused.

“What?
I wouldn’t go that far. His lordship takes an interest in you girls to compensate for not saving your parents.”

“So now you’re a psychiatrist,” Beverly said.

“It’s all part of the service.” Ian picked up the tray. “I’d better get these over there.”

At the table of tourists, a girl held up her empty glass for Ian’s benefit
.

“That one fancies herself an expert on all things Tintagos
,” he said. “She’s been going on about Igdrasil and the ghosts like she was a don. Except she’s got every bit wrong.”

“Oh, bugger.
I know that girl,” Beverly said. “She was in my dorm at university. What’s she doing here?”

“Bevs!”

Bugger, bugger.

“Beverly! Ooh-hoo! Over here, love. It’s me, Felicia!”

Beverly relieved Ian of the tray. “Might as well let me.”

As
she set a pint down on the table, one of the customers brushed his fingers over her wrist. “Thanks, Bevs. Long time, no see.”

Triple bugger
. George Sarumen. He was an Oxford man, a friend of Felicia’s. When she and Beverly were in the dorm together at UCL, Felicia was always going on that he looked like George Harrison. Now he’d grown a mustache and wore his hair long like the former Beatle. He looked silly.

“Beverly Bratton.” Felicia rested her hand possessively on George’s forearm. “I never thought I’d
find you working as a barmaid in the middle of nowhere—oh.” She wrinkled her nose at the handbag hanging from Beverly’s shoulder.

“Hello, Felicia.” Beverly felt
her face redden, acutely aware of the smell of fish emanating from the bag and the bottle poking out of the top. She wasn’t a barmaid. She was the concierge. She was being groomed to manage the entire Tragic Fall Inn, but she wasn’t about to explain herself. She finished handing out the round. “Hello, George.” 

His eyes were as blue as she remembered, but
were they always so cold? Not when they saw each other last. He’d chased her—to Felicia’s displeasure—the entire first term. His clever words and endearing attentions wore Beverly down, and she was in his bed by Christmas.

It all came back in a rush. His lips hard on hers, his tongue pushing greedily into her mouth. The way he groped and pinched and sucked. Sucked everything out of her and gave nothing back. A gorgeous man and an ugly bonk.

He promised to call, but he never did. When she didn’t return to school after the accident, her London friends sent flowers and condolence cards, but there was nothing from George. Weeks passed, months. She found she didn’t mind. She felt well away from him.

“You’re local then.” The other girl at the table shared a mean grin with Felicia. “Tell me. Is it true the fairies can’t get you if you stand in a circle of salt?”

Felicia said, “Mona’s making a study of Dumnos folklore.”

“
Dumnos is a land of mist and rain
,” George sneered, quoting the flyer on the wall. “That much is obvious.”

“How about
if you eat an apple and light a candle on Halloween then look in a mirror,” Mona said. “You see your true love over your left shoulder, right?”

“I’m sure that’s right.” Beverly groaned inside. “Mischief Night is Sunday. You should try it.”

“Don’t forget the oak tree at the cliffs,” Felicia said. “They say when the wind blows you can hear a woman crying inside the trunk.”

“It’s the sea breezes in the branches,” George said
with a sneer. “But tourists love the story, I’m sure.”

“Actually, it’s the wind god Aeolios
blowing,” Beverly said. “A woman’s spirit is captured inside Igdrasil, and he wants to set her free.”

“Igdrasil?” Mona said.

“The name of the tree,” Beverly said. “The woman’s spirit inside cries when the wind blows.”

“I hadn’t heard that one.” The guy who wasn’t George nodded kindly.
“It’s lovely, and sad.”

“If the spirit of the tree likes you, she’ll grant your wish,” Beverly
said. “But there’s a risk. Aeolios is in love with the spirit, jealous of anyone who speaks to her.” She looked directly at George. “He might blow you over the cliff.”

“What about the bleeding ballerinas?” Mona said. “I’ve heard fairies
will enthrall people with music and force them to dance until stumps are left where their feet used to be.”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Beverly said. “I really must go. I’m having dinner with Lord Dumnos tonight, and I have so much to do.”

George’s eyes widened in surprise, and Beverly grinned listening to their conversation as she walked away.

“The earl?” Mona hissed. “I thought you said she was nobody.”

“Silly girl,” George said. “It’s a fantasy. As real as your bloody dancer story.”

O
N FINE DAYS, BEVERLY
walked to work. This wasn’t one of them. Her four-year-old white Volkswagen Beetle was in the Tragic Fall’s car park beside a red Aston Martin Lagonda convertible with its top down. The posh car had to belong to George.

Beverly eyed the clouds. Wouldn’t it just be fine if rain drenched those soft leather seats? She tossed her handbag inside the VW as thunder rumbled in the distance
.

The cottage was less than half a mile from the Tragic Fall. With only her and Marion there
now, it no longer felt too small. Two bedrooms were plenty, and the garden was almost too much to take care of.

She passed the house and
turned west onto the Ring. She’d eat at the cliffs and be back before her sister was home from school. Seeing George Sarumen had set her off. She wanted to see Igdrasil, touch the trunk and listen to the sound of the wind in its branches and for the spirit crying inside.

To
feel the eternal something she often sensed near the tree.

The Ring circled Tintagos, barely wide enough for two. Out of habit she pulled over to
make way for a line of vehicles heading to the village, five cars backed up by a slow-moving old panel truck. Mischief Night falling on a weekend was always great for business. There’d be no vacancies left when she got back to the Tragic Fall.

This is it.
The parade passed her by.
My life. Endlessly watching everyone else live theirs.
Her problem was she didn’t know what she wanted from life. True love would be nice, but it was highly unlikely she’d find it in Dumnos. She put the Beetle back in gear.

Something moved in the trees across the carriageway,
a deer with two fawns running through the wild grass. They disappeared behind a yew tree, and Beverly caught her breath. The tree had a scarred gash in its trunk.

This was the place. That was the tree.

“Sun and moon, bless them and keep them,” she whispered. She wasn’t religious, she told herself. She was spiritual.

Back on the Ring she drove to the cliffs and the small car park Lord Dumnos had put in for tourists, rarely used. Most skipped the old tree in favor of the more glamorous ruins of Tintagos Castle a jog further along the Ring.

Surprisingly, it hadn’t bothered her to leave university and come home. In the last few years a sense of the rhythms of nature had crept into her awareness, and being near Igdrasil was a comfort. She didn’t care if the legends weren’t true; she pretended to believe them. Maybe, as her psychology professor would say, it was in compensation for tragedy. But comfort was comfort, and she took it where it was on offer.

The tide was in, and the waves crashed loudly below. She looked up into Igdrasil’s branches. Great gods, what
was she thinking when she climbed out over the rocks? Had she ever been that brave? She spread her jacket on the ground in the dip between Igdrasil’s two largest roots. A bank of dark clouds was blowing in from the Severn Sea, and cool breeze promising rain played through her hair.

I have to
remind Marion to take an umbrella
.

She leaned
against Igdrasil and opened her lunch. Her mind wandered, and she pictured Aeolios emerging from the dark clouds, trying to blow the spirit out of the tree. The wind played through the branches overhead as if the petulant god was shaking them, crying for his love.

Bleah.
The chips were barely warm, and the fish was soggy. After a second bite, she rewrapped the food and opened the beer, tossing the cap and the opener into her bag. Those clouds were moving in faster than she’d realized. She might as well go home and pop the fish into the oven and have it warm. And make sure Marion packed that umbrella.

How pathetic. It was
her first free weekend in ages, and she’d volunteered to work.
Free.
Horrible way to put it. If she felt bound to her sister, it was only by love. At least she’d have tonight to herself, rescued by Lord Dumnos. When she got home from Bausiney’s End, she’d crack open the new novel she was reading,
A Woman on the Edge of Time
.

Or maybe she’d just listen to the storm and dream of true love.

“Igdrasil.” She ran her hands over the smooth root. “Is true love possible in an age of free love?”

The pill had set them all free.
She wouldn’t want to live like her mother’s generation, without it. Scary. But so far the connections she’d made with men had only left her lonely. George Sarumen being a prime example. There was something to be said for a time when a guy didn’t expect a girl to leap into his bed after drinks and dinner then disappear forever when she did.

“Oh, bollocks!”
The red Lagonda pulled off the Ring and into the car park beside her Beetle. While George and not-George put up the top, Felicia and Mona started toward Igdrasil. Beverly got to her feet.

“Bevs!” Felicia called.

Oh, groan.
She should have known they’d come out here. She again looked up at the branches bending with the winds. If only she were younger and braver, she’d climb up there right now and hide.

“Igdrasil
. I wish I were somewhere else,” she said. A tingle of superstitious fear flashed up her spine. Not that she believed in magic, but just in case, she made the wish more specific. “With my one true love, where or when he may be.”

A hint of nausea washed over her, and she closed her eyes
and swayed. She shouldn’t have eaten the fish after it went cold. She reached out to Igdrasil for balance, but the tree was as insubstantial as a ghost. She fell through the trunk and stumbled over the cliff.

She screamed as the rocks and waves flew up toward her, but then she felt caught and held by…something. She was surrounded by something like a force field in a science fiction movie. Carried.
Was this what dying was like?

Strange vibrations pummeled her
, irritating but not painful. There were sounds like a record played backwards, muffled and warped. A massive headache seared through her brain.

The vibrations stopped, and the
force field dropped her face down on dry wild grass.

“U
nh!” The sound of her breath anchored her, and she grabbed onto the world with her senses. The sweet air she breathed bore no hint of the sea. A sparrow sang nearby, answered by another. Wobbly, she got to her knees, then to her feet, her head still pounding.