Uncertain Magic Read online

  Her lowered eyes flashed up, the way other people’s did when she read their true hearts and let it slip. He touched the tip of her nose with his finger, leaving a drop of sherry to hang perilously. “Don’t ever grow up, sweet child. Play with me.”

  The drop was dangling, a funny tickle. She reached out her tongue and tried, unsuccessfully, to catch it.

  He laughed. He swept her up, carried her with gown dragging to the bed, bounced her into the thick down, and kissed away the drop on her nose. His body came beside her, sinking down the bed so that she rolled against him, her feet all tangled up and bound by the gown.

  With one quick twist he reached down and freed her, sliding his hands up the naked length of her legs. She drew in a startled breath at that intimate touch, but he was laughing still, silently, his eyes crinkled in a way that made him look much younger. Roddy squealed and giggled breathlessly as he found her ticklish places. She jerked away, but he rolled over and held her down, ruthless, nipping and nibbling until she wriggled beneath him and tried to retaliate. It was like a romp from the old days with her brothers, when they had tumbled together in the grass and each vied to outwit the other. In this contest, Roddy was sadly outgunned, but she struggled gamely for the upper hand.

  Then his movements changed, slowed, and he returned to the places he had teased with a different intent. Roddy lay quiet, breathing hard, her muscles relaxed from the merry tussle. The close contact was a pleasant sensation, the weight of his leg across hers warm and right. When his hand slid downward, stroking the tender skin of her inner thigh, she closed her eyes and arched a little toward the delightful touch.

  His fingers skimmed up and down, and up and down, and then passed lightly over the soft down between her legs. She drew in her breath as he stroked that secret place. A throbbing grew there, a need that she could not quite define. She wanted to move, to somehow encourage him, and she pressed up blindly beneath his hand. He bent his head over her breast, still sliding his fingers rhythmically down and up across the place that had grown tender and damp and so responsive that when his mouth closed over her nipple her whole body jerked with the leap of sensation.

  She tilted her head back into the pillow, giving up to the sweet, hot pleasure that sang through her limbs. Her hands moved aimlessly, seeking in ignorance until they followed the path of black hair downward to the band of his breeches. When she touched him there he groaned and shifted himself hard against her hip. She reached out, reasoning that if his hands on her could give such ecstasy, then she could do the same for him. She fumbled, meaning to unbutton buttons, but he trapped her hand against the pliable doeskin and pushed her fingers away.

  “Patience, little love,” he said hoarsely, bringing her hand up to kiss her knuckles. “I don’t want to hurt you too much.”

  Roddy blinked, having forgotten all about that part. Her body tensed, and he gathered her close.

  “Only this first time,” he said. He stroked her arm and kissed her shoulder. “Only this once. I promise.”

  She looked up into his eyes, and thought that if he’d promised to bring her the moon on a platter of silver stars, she would have believed him. “I don’t care if you hurt me,” she whispered.

  His thick lashes lowered at that, his fingers digging into her skin as he lifted her and bent to suckle and tug at her breast. She ran her hands down his muscled arms, spread her fingers across his chest, and then moved them persistently downward again, into the heat where his body half covered hers. He made another sound, a short, impatient growl of defeat, and this time his hand lingered when he brushed hers away, tearing at buttons and ridding himself of the soft barrier that contained him.

  He shifted above her, seeming much larger suddenly, a smooth slide of hard body between her parted legs. She began to be afraid again, trembled with a little scared-excited shiver of anticipation. On his elbows, he leaned over her and kissed her, forcing her lips wide, holding his weight back so that all she felt was the unfamiliar thrust of maleness against the heat between her thighs.

  She arched in unthinking response, pulling at him with her hands on his hips, rubbing her body against him with moves that sent sweet agony up and down her limbs. It didn’t hurt; it was wonderful; she couldn’t stop, though she heard him breathing ragged protest.

  He moved suddenly, pulling away from her hands, and then his weight came down on her as he reached to find the place he had stroked and drive himself swiftly into it.

  She did hurt, then. A little. It was surprise and pleasure and pain, and a flinching back she could not help, because she had expected much worse. His entry met no barriers that she could feel, no stab of tearing membrane as she’d imagined, but only a faint burning stretch that turned quickly to a hotter fire as her body awoke and accepted his gladly. She relaxed, opening to him, feeling foolish and glad at the same time to know her timid fears had proved groundless.

  But he did not move. She lay still beneath him, not sure of what would happen next, half afraid that it was over while this excitement still sang in her blood. Tentatively, she reached up and curled one hand in his hair in wordless question.

  He lifted his head, and the expression on his face made her throat tighten. “My lord—” she whispered in dismay, unable to understand the sudden dark fury in his eyes. “My lord—” The question came out an anxious croak. “Have I displeased you?”

  Without answering, he pressed into her as he watched her face. Slow and hard, and that did hurt, so that she bit her lips and tried to hide it, for fear that it was her flinching which had angered him. “My lord,” she said desperately. “’Tis not so much pain. I only thought—I was a little afraid, because I thought it would be more. It hardly hurts at all, my lord. Truly.”

  He just looked at her, and she’d never felt so helpless in her life, pinned and possessed by this man who defeated even her gift. She could not conceive what he might be thinking behind those eyes, and worse, his body in hers made her hardly care. She arched her hips and shivered with eagerness even as he frightened her.

  He answered her movement with a harder pressure. She saw the anger waver in his eyes, the intent go hot and unfocused. He gripped her shoulders and drew away and rammed again, filling her with short, deep thrusts. She whimpered under the pleasure-pain, closed her eyes and threw her head back, felt his breath harsh on her throat as he kissed her.

  “Damn you,” he rasped. “Damn you for a liar. Or an innocent babe.”

  Roddy did not understand. Her mind would not focus on words. The sentences made only a jumble of sound as he buried his face in her hair. She saw nothing but his shoulder, a glaze of sweat and firelight that moved as he did, with his weight and his drive that dragged her upward on sensation. “God help me,” he groaned in her ear. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter now.”

  Nothing mattered to Roddy now. Nothing but him. Her breath was gone and her body was exploding. She clutched at him, at his arms and his back and his hips, frantic for something she could not name. She made a sound—a long, low, inhuman moan that rose from deep within her throat as he met her seeking. Her legs spread and her body rose, arching and straining to his surging thrust, until she cried out in fright and pleasure as the tremors racked her limbs.

  Then she was in his arms, sobbing for air, cradled and kissed and covered with his scent and her own in mingled warmth. She collapsed back into the curve of his arm, limp and stunned and absurdly sleepy.

  She raised her lashes to find him looking steadily down at her. There was cool speculation in his blue eyes, and for one terrible moment she thought he was still angry. Then his gaze drifted down to where her breasts still heaved quickly as she worked for air. He watched. After a long moment, she saw the taut line of his mouth relax.

  “Good,” he said, with his devil-smile. “You liked that.”

  Roddy tried to stop panting. She swallowed and took a deeper breath. His grin was infectious. She tilted her chin up and giggled.

  Yes. Oh, yes. I liked it.
r />   And she liked it still when he lay on his side, his arm around her, curving her body close into his. She liked the feel of his chest rising and falling against her back. She liked his hand moving over her skin, its rhythmic stroke a drowsy beat that seemed to guide her into sleep. His low voice barely reached her through the haze when he asked in a soft and oddly intent voice, “Do you ride your horses astride, little girl?”

  It seemed a funny question, not at all what she would have thought he might want to know. “Only to…race,” she mumbled, struggling to hold herself out of sleepy mists. “Don’t tell…” She yawned, slurring the words. “Don’t…tell m’mother.”

  “No.” He pulled her a little closer into the warmth of his body. His breath stirred her hair as he added softly, “I wouldn’t tell.”

  She relaxed against him. “Faelan,” she whispered, half conscious and drifting. “Faelan. I love you.”

  His hand paused, but she was already sliding down the dark hill. In the fuzzy edge between sleep and waking, she dreamed that his mind was open to her, and thoughts echoed through and around and between them both.

  I love you. I love you.

  I love you, little girl.

  Chapter 6

  The couturière thought slowly, in simple words, because she had to translate from French to awkward English before she spoke. Such concentration gave Roddy a headache. She let her mind go fuzzy as she stood amid pins and ribbons, which was a way to block not only the dressmaker’s lumbering thoughts, but also the crush of humanity from the city outside. London was noise and emotion, a confusing babble. Roddy found her talent dulled, blunted by the countless thoughts and voices that jumbled together into the city’s tumult.

  Slowly, she was learning how to cope. How to relax and think of the chaos as something like the wind: a natural force, an elemental energy that would flow around and past her if she let it. But it sapped her strength to maintain the balance. All the other changes: new life, new place, new people; they all combined to wear her soul down to exhaustion. There was only one refuge in the tempest—Faelan—and she clung to him with desperate vigor.

  He had given Madame Descartes strict instructions. The demure young ladies of the city were wearing shapeless, high-waisted gowns of luxurious fullness, made of yards of shirred material that puffed at the sleeves and below the bodice. It was an effect that Roddy was sure her mother would have approved.

  The new Countess of Iveragh, however, was to dress with no such becoming modesty. The gowns that Madame had created for Roddy were at the forefront of fashion. Flimsy tubes of sheer muslin, low-cut necklines, and tiny sleeves evoked Mediterranean sunshine rather than the English winter. Her pastel-colored slippers were no more than shaped pieces of silk with ribbons that wound up around her calves, and the matching gloves did nothing to hide her body or warm her skin. When she walked down the cold marble stair to where Faelan waited in the lofty salon, she felt that the heat of her blush alone must raise the chill of the room ten degrees.

  Madame fluttered after, trying to give an appearance of calm sophistication as she searched for words to explain Roddy’s shortcomings.

  “The hair,” she said quickly, “the pretty blond, it will cut, yes? To be—to make the curl. Now—too long, you comprehend? Short you want. Curls. But the figure—” She grinned slyly at Faelan. “Very pretty, eh, monseigneur? Very straight. Perfect.”

  “Perfect,” he agreed, and smiled at Roddy in a way that made her heart contract and her knees go liquid.

  For a week she had gone about with such wobbly knees, and they were not all the result of long days in a traveling carriage. A hundred times a day he touched her, or smiled at her; a caress in passing, a kiss on the nape of her neck as she bent over a letter to her parents or strained to read by the light of a wavering candle.

  And at night…oh, God, at night there was a whole world she had never known existed. He taught her; he made her body sing with pleasure. So now, when he asked her to dress in these scandalous fashions, she felt she could not refuse. She wanted badly to please him.

  Turning in the clinging gown, she peeked uncertainly at him over her shoulder. “Do you like it, my lord?”

  He glanced at the couturière, and the woman responded to the silent command without hesitation, gathering up the net she had been about to suggest for a veil and disappearing back up the stairs toward the bedroom.

  After she was gone, Roddy waited nervously, searching for some sign of approval, all too aware that Madame Descartes had considered Roddy’s coloring hopelessly unfashionable, with her slash of black brows against golden hair. Dark tight curls were the rage: dark hair and coolly classic features, not Roddy’s strange combination of storm and sunlight. After trying seven different styles, Madame had thrown up her hands in frustration and sent Roddy for viewing in the gown she had on, having never before encountered a face that could not be complemented, a face too striking to be softened or improved by the dressmaker’s art.

  The moment of waiting dragged into a small eternity. Roddy stared at Faelan’s boots in despair, certain that he must think she wasn’t even suitable to be presented in public.

  When the apprehension became unbearable, she hesitantly raised her eyes.

  He was smiling at her, a slow, sensuous smile that might have meant anything. It made her breath stick in her throat. Beneath lowered lids his gaze traveled from her toes to her hair, lingering at her hips and breasts and mouth.

  “A witch,” he said. “My golden witch.”

  Roddy moistened her lips in dismay. “A witch, my lord? Madame Descartes did say I was…difficult, but I hoped—”

  “Come,” he interrupted and held out his hands. He looked down at her as she obeyed him, sliding his palms up both sides of her neck, caressing her chilled skin with warm fingers. “Don’t let Madame trouble you.”

  She held his gaze, feeling his spell creep around and inside her. His fingers spread, his thumbs pressed upward under her jaw. The kiss was slow, heady, the way he had taught her. “In Ireland,” he murmured, “they’ll see you for what you are. One of the Daoine Sidhe.”

  She frowned in confusion. “Deena shi?” The strange syllables made an unfamiliar slur on her tongue.

  “The fairy folk.” His gaze wandered over her face. “The people who live between day and night, and drink the dew that’s neither rain nor river nor spring nor sea.” He caressed a lock of gilded hair. “The Shining Ones.”

  She looked up into his azure eyes, and thought that it must be he who lived between dark and light, like a demon prince. “My lord—” she whispered. “Do I please you, then?”

  “You’re mine.” The soft, certain words sent a shiver of wild music down her spine. He bent his head and brushed her mouth and cheek with his lips. “You’re mine,” he murmured against her skin. “And you please me.”

  London was empty this time of year, he told her, which made her want to giggle hysterically. Empty? The city nearly crushed her, a multitude of thoughts and feelings so enormous it had a kind of monolithic life of its own, surly and intense on days when the wind blew sleet and cold, and lighter-hearted, bubbling, on a sunny winter day like this—the first one on which she and Faelan had ventured forth from the house.

  They walked, because after the jolting trip from Yorkshire Roddy was heartily tired of carriages, and in her light dress and cashmere shawl she preferred some exertion to keep her warm.

  She could not avoid glancing back at the house as they strolled across the broad courtyard toward the iron gate. The dwelling was as rich as—far richer than—her expansive home in Yorkshire. A proud, princely house, with a double row of tall windows capped by elegant pediments. She counted the top row, and doubling that figure came to the impressive number of twenty-two windows on the front facade alone. Then there were the stables and the carriage house, set to either side of the square court, and behind it all the garden which she had seen from her bedroom window, stretching five times the length of the house to the next line of magn
ificent buildings beyond. Inside, there was no sign of reduced circumstances in the light and expensive French furniture or the intricate plasterwork upon the walls. She forced her gaze away from the mansion and found Faelan watching her.

  “My mother’s house,” he said, in that tone he used sometimes, that seemed to Roddy ominous in its utter indifference. “You needn’t fear that the rest of family is as destitute as I.”

  Roddy made no comment, but thought darkly that “the rest of the family” must enjoy a fine income, given the quantity of servants and the quality of the interior appointments and the fact that Banain House, as the majordomo had informed Roddy with pride, was kept open at all times, even though Her Ladyship traveled in great style ten months of the twelve.

  A fine income, for the mother of a man who had stood within a hairsbreadth of losing his estate to debt and taxes.

  Her Ladyship was traveling now; no one knew just where, or particularly cared. The generously paid servants functioned with the same efficiency under the majordomo whether the mistress was at home or not. They had their opinions on Faelan—unbounded respect for his authority and considerably less for his morals—and a sharp curiosity about his new bride. But they hid all that behind paper-board expressions, and treated Roddy with perfect solicitude.

  As Faelan had predicted, the huge square outside the mansion’s walls was nearly empty, the manicured geometry of flowerbeds frozen in winter brown. A milkmaid, her buckets balanced from the yoke across her shoulders, hurried toward the far corner. Across from Banain House, a young gentleman on horseback had stopped to bargain over a brace of rabbits. As the vendor haggled to raise the price, his two slender hunting dogs sat eyeing the fat, dangling hares in a quandary of canine optimism and restraint. When the sale was made and the rabbits changed hands, the dogs looked after the departing rider for a long, disappointed moment before they obeyed the vendor’s whistled command and bounded away.

  “Where is everyone?” Roddy asked, confused by the solitude of the neighborhood and the great press of humanity she felt through her gift.