The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) (9 page)

And each time she laid her hands upon them, she transformed.

Rhys chewed on the end of a reed. Maybe he was seeing something that wasn’t really there. No one else seemed to notice. She had hands as slim as an Irish harpist he’d once seen in the Prince of Wales’s court. Those fingers fluttered over the wounded with the lightness of a leaf drifting down from a tree. A half–smile curled her lips, a contented smile, and it nagged at him where he’d seen such a look until he remembered the statues in the great stone churches of Normandy. Mother Mary as she held her child.

A woman who’d healed every ailment she’d touched. A woman with a touch of faery blood who can cure your curse with a pass of her hands. A miracle worker, like to be a saint.

Rhys closed the door and nudged his chain–mail hauberk off the bench. It slid into a heap of metal onto the paving stones. He sat down on the bench and brooded into the flickering light of his own hearth.

Like to be a saint.

He twisted the reed between his teeth. He’d seen enough battles with the Prince of Wales to know that at least two of the men sleeping in his hall should be dead. Another should die before the night was through. Yet all three showed every chance of recovery. From the devil’s hand, or an angel’s, the lass had power. A power she’d refused to use upon him even though he’d offered her a fortune.

He tugged out the reed and tossed it into the flames. Hate and treachery, horror and betrayal. Familiar emotions these past five years.

The door swung full open with a flash of light. She strode in as bold as a wife, clean linens draped over her shoulder. A bowl of water swished in her arms. Up close, she looked painfully human—haggard and weary.

No, she wasn’t saving any of that magic for him.

She clanked the bowl on the bench and then reached for the bloody cloth on his arm. “You’ll let me look at that wound now.”

He seized her hand. “My boy did a fine enough job.”

She wrenched her hand away. “Even the simplest wounds can fester.”

“It’s the deepest wounds you do your best work on, I’ve noticed.”

“You know I’m a healer.” She yanked a cloth off her shoulder and dunked it in the steaming bowl. “That’s your sword arm, is it not? If you want use of it within the week, pull off that rancid rag and let me at it.”

No, he wouldn’t settle for a dose of her broth, not now, not when he knew for sure there was richer witchery to be had. “You’ve taken a foolish gamble, Irish.”

“You are as stubborn as a bull.”

“You must have tasted it. The salt–air of your island. Your mother’s own cooking.”

“I’ll taste it yet, I wager.” Something shifted in her eyes. “Dafydd tells me the ship will stay—”

“Yes, that ship will wait. I owe much gold to the merchant who owns it. Castle–building is an expensive undertaking, and I need this man to ship me more quarrymen in the spring.” He knew that the only thing this woman wanted was her freedom. Well, the only thing
he
wanted was a healing. “But you won’t be with the Irish laborers when I send them back to Ireland. Not after what I saw upon the field of battle today.”

“What you saw this day,” she began, straightening her back, which made her nipples press against her shift, “was nothing any doctor in Ireland couldn’t do if he was there so soon after the battle.”

“Was it compassion? Or could you not resist using your sorcery after so many weeks of hiding it?”

“Still with the sorcery.” She splattered the linen into the bowl and jerked up off the bench. “I’m sure if you call him, the devil will show his own face here quick enough.”

Oh, she was a sight. Her hair burst from the edges of the net she’d stuffed it in. Tight curls fell over her shoulders. Blood streaked her tunic. Saint or sinner, he didn’t know which. She was broomstick–thin yet quivering with anger from head to toe. And those eyes, those damned silver eyes, biting and snapping at him like a wolfhound’s. She looked him square in the face, mask and all, without fear.

This must be part of her sorcery, for him to notice such things in the plain face and thin body of a peasant woman.

He said, “You know what I want.”

“I offered to heal you once. You refused me.”

“You offered me salves and simple words.” He stilled the urge to pull one of those tight curls toward him and wind it around his finger, to trap her here, to make her do his bidding. “Not a witch’s sorcery.”

“If I were a witch,” she said between clenched teeth, “I’d change you into a beetle. Then a woman could at least have a chance to crack that shell of pride.”

“Call it healing if it pleases you.”

“I gave you a chance to take my healing,” she retorted, “and you scorned it. May the devil take you by the heels and shake you.”

“No curse you heap upon my head can do any more harm.” He tugged his shirt free from the rope–belt and pulled it off his body. Maddening, she was. She laid too much faith in a man’s respect for women. “I don’t care about your soul, Irish, whether it belongs to God or the Devil. I want your witchery now that I’ve seen the truth with my own eyes.”

“Men see what they want to see, rarely what is. I did no more than bind men’s wounds, and give them a chance at living.” In her pacing, the linens slid off her shoulder and tumbled to the floor. “You know nothing of healing which is why you and your kind are so quick to call it sorcery. Well, it’s more natural than spearing other men upon your javelins like rabbits on a spit! Spearing your own brothers.”

The muscles of his neck tightened. He tossed his shirt into a corner. This pup had a bite—and small sharp teeth.
I destroy, woman, yes, I destroy.
Everything his hand touched crumbled into dust. Everything but one, and that was still but a half–built dream of stone and mortar.

“What kind of place is this,” she argued, ducking her head to pick up the fallen linens, “for brother to set upon brother?”

“It’s Wales.” He spread his arms to the richness of the room around him, dark beyond the meager glow of the center hearth. “By our custom, every man’s son—bastard or legitimate—has a claim to his equal share of the holdings. But my father did it the English way and gave it all to me.” He tugged on the edge of the mask. The laces cut into his neck, his forehead, under his arm—a familiar tightness. “When this curse came upon me, my brothers challenged my hold. For all know that a king must be whole to rule. Heal me, woman, and you’ll stop the bloodshed.”

She absently folded the linens as she narrowed her eyes in speculation. “Now you’re asking?”

His nostrils flared.
You won’t make me beg for it.

In the silence, she slapped the pile of linens back over her shoulder. “Still too proud to say the words?”

A flash of a memory came to him, of a time in Llywelyn’s court at Aberffraw, on a feast–day when the mead flowed freely—a time before the affliction. Prince Llywelyn had given him a new sword with a jeweled hilt, and the Prince had beckoned him to the seat of honor at his right hand in the feasting–hall. His brothers had urged Rhys up, laughing in their drunkenness. They’d hefted him bodily over the trestle–table. Llywelyn had offered his own tankard of mead, smiled upon Rhys and called him son. Then Rhys had caught the eye of Elyned from across the room, as if to say,
Look at how high I’ve risen, my betrothed.
How golden her hair had looked that evening, shimmering down over her back, and her lips had parted in promise—

“Yes,” he said, shooting up off the bench. Damn this woman, damn her gray eyes to hell. “Yes, I’m asking you for a healing.”

A breeze sifted in through the smoke–hole, the wind of Craig Gwaun, whirling down from the icy peak and making a cold hell of his exile. It was an exile as unjust as that of the Emlyn ap Dafydd of Welsh lore, who dared to pluck a single flower from the land of the faeries and thus was barred with all his kith and kindred from the magical land forever.

The proud tilt of Aileen’s chin eased. “Very well, then. I’ll heal you, Rhys ap Gruffydd.”

***

She must have drunk too much of the mead Marged had slipped her. She’d emptied the bladder, she remembered, on a stomach that hadn’t seen food since a bite of bread at the break of day. Aileen could think of no other reason why she’d just stood before her bare–chested captor and agreed to give him a healing.

But the words were said. Truth be told, he could have forced her to stay in this war–torn, lifeless land until she’d agreed to give him what he wanted. There was no shame, Da had once told her, in yielding to someone more powerful. She’d have to be satisfied that she’d exacted a price, making him bend a stiff neck to ask for something she would have freely given under other, kinder circumstances. She’d seen that he’d swallowed a mouthful of bile to force those words out.

“I’ll heal you,” she repeated, flipping the linens off her shoulder and onto the bench. “But I’ll have two promises from you as well.”

“The devil never keeps his promises.”

“You would know that better than I.”

“I already offered you gold.”

“I’ll be happy to take your gold when the healing is done.”

His footfall scraped in the rushes as he moved away from the bench and started a restless pacing.

“The first promise is this: You will cease accusing me of witchcraft.” She sought out his gaze in the shadows, keeping her eyes off the bare skin of his chest. “Your people know I’m a healer. I sense they accept that as it is.”

“My brother’s work.” His voice was filled with mockery. “Dafydd is a master at twisting the world to his will.”

“Then it’s to him I owe my thanks. Still, one word from you could shift their thinking. I would not have their minds warped with foolish talk. It’s fortunate that you’ve only spoken to me of such things in Irish, else your people would have me burned to bones by now. But Marged is a talker, and if she overhears—”

“Your secret,” he growled, “is safe.”

“It’s not a ‘secret,’ it’s truth. If I were a witch, I’d have made myself into a hare or a cat or a wolf and escaped from this place long before now—and probably taken all the milk of your cows just for spite.” A spray of drizzle sifted down from the smoke–hole to prickle her skin. “I’m not a witch, nor am I an angel, Rhys ap Gruffydd. I know not God’s ways. There are some afflictions that cannot be cured.”

He stopped his pacing. Red light glazed his stony face and gleamed on the black leather mask.

She said, “Don’t be looking at me like that.”

“How easy for you to say it’s God’s will.”

“And it might be, or maybe not. I won’t know until I set to you.”

“Too easy to lie.”

“Not all people are as treacherous as you or your brothers. In my world, there is nothing more sacred than a man’s—or a woman’s—word.”

“We have a saying in Welsh. An oath made under duress is no oath at all.”

“I don’t see you setting fire to a pyre under my feet.”

“But I could. And you know it.”

She felt the hot steady stare of those blue eyes. She remembered that moment on the windswept hill of Arthur’s grave when he’d seized her hands and tugged her so close she could smell the spice of honey–mead on his breath. She’d felt the power of him and something else . . . a wide–open yearning she’d later attributed to his lust to be cured, nothing more.

Faith, what kind of woman was she to stand here with her heart pounding in her chest, letting him try to frighten her?

She said, “I’ll do what I can to cure that face of yours. That is my promise to you.”

“And what is this second promise?”

“I want to be back in Inishmaan before Christmas.”

He shook his head once, hard. “You’ll stay until the work is done.”

“I told you—”

“Five years in the making, and you expect to cure this within two months?”

She cast her lashes down. She wasn’t giving herself away, nay. Truth be told, she’d never spent more than a couple of weeks on even the worst of cases, nor more than a month on the weakest of the wounded. If it could be cured, she’d do it quickly enough, and she’d only decided upon Christmas to allow for ample time for arrangements to be made to board another merchant ship to Ireland.

“This gives you your choice of vengeance.” He faced her square. “You can fail to cure it and blame it on God’s will. Or you can cure it then disappear into the mists, while I remain here watching it return, inch by inch.”

“Your brothers’ betrayals have curdled your blood.”

She knew better than to prod a man with his own weaknesses, but this one set her senses so awry she couldn’t help herself. Yet, no sooner had his fury flared than it ebbed, as if he were sucking it back within himself.

“If my brothers’ weapons were as sharp as your tongue,” he said, as he curled his fingers around a bladder sagging upon a table. “I wager not a single one of my men would have left those woods alive.”

“So you agree?”

“No.”

She closed her eyes and fought for patience. She resisted the urge to sink upon the bench, to ease the ache throbbing in her lower back, to give her weakening legs a rest. She never should have come in here to poke the bear. She should have curled up on a pallet against the wall of the mead–hall and saved this confrontation for the morrow, when she would have more strength.

“You’ll stay,” he said, “until spring.”

The months between now and spring stretched out before her like a hundred thousand years. She thought of Ma and the stored bales of wool to be spun and woven, with no one to help but a dreamy–eyed Cairenn. She thought of the long nights her family would lie awake wondering what had become of her.

Then she looked upon Rhys and knew there would be no bargaining.

“Done, then.” She gathered the linens then hefted up the bowl of water and headed toward the door. “We’ll begin tomorrow.”

“Oh, no, lass.” He seized her arm so hard that the cold water sloshed upon her hip. “We start now.”

Chapter Six