Читать книгу Stealing Midnight - Tracy MacNish - Страница 13

Olwyn’s hands trembled, but she held them flat against her thighs lest he see and know her nervousness.

“What do you mean, you’ll set me free? Am I your prisoner, Olwyn?” Lóchrann asked. He used her given name with a mocking familiarity, as if he tried to bait a further outburst from her.

“My meaning is quite clear. Yes, I saved your life, and when you’re well enough you’ll be on your way, and I’ll be on mine,” Olwyn replied with what she hoped sounded like a flat decree. In reality, she was completely shaken to her core. She turned back to preparing his tea, unable to continue looking at him.

Lord, he was magnificent, she thought, a tawny male animal alive with sexuality. The firelight illuminated his hair in shades of gold and amber. Unbound, it hung around his face in soft waves that were streaked with the sun. Its tousled, touchable softness contrasted the hard angles of his face, which had lost every vestige of what she’d perceived as boyish charm whilst he slept. He bore the stubble of several days’ growth on his cheeks, and as she’d spoken to him, he’d rubbed a big hand across his stubbly jaw.

No boy, he. And no prince, either, if that meant a man accustomed to being cosseted. This was a man, virile, tall, tightly muscled, and self-possessed.

As for his eyes, she’d seen their color briefly in the dungeon, but he clearly had not been fully awake. She had not noticed then the sensuality found in the dark fringed beauty of Prussian blue so deep and dark they could only be likened to a fathomless lake.

Olwyn had never been alone with a man, but Rhys had spoken often enough of their animal nature. Hadn’t she spent the past years locking her door against Drystan’s drunken lust?

Now she’d gone and made herself completely alone with a stranger, and a large one, at that. And though he was physically weak, the look in his eyes was anything but.

When Lóchrann got strength back, he would be formidable. He could ravish her. Kill her, even, leave her for dead where no one would ever know where to look for her. She had no idea who he was or where he’d come from, and she berated herself for her foolishness, a mix of maternal instinct for a helpless person, coupled with silly notions of love and affection for a handsome sleeping man.

The water boiled. Her hands trembled as she poured.

Suddenly being closeted in the dim, stony shelter seemed unwise. Olwyn set the tea down beside him without meeting his eyes. “I need something. I’ll be back.”

She hurried to her feet, lifted her skirts, and all but ran outside. Nixie raised her head and looked placidly at her crazed owner, blinking as if curious to her mood.

Olwyn leaned her back against the wagon, breathing heavily, looking to the sky as if for answers.

What had she done?

There wasn’t time to gather her composure. Lóchrann appeared in the tiny doorway, nearly filling it with his broad shoulders and tall frame. He leaned against the doorframe, obviously weak, but just as obviously determined to get an answer from her. Still nude, he clutched a fur around his hips.

And Olwyn’s eyes widened at the sight.

His legs were long and muscled, his belly narrow and tapered. The chest that her father had nearly cut open was wide, and looked hard and unyielding. Her eyes traveled up his neck, masculine in its width. And then to his face.

His lips were curled as if in a half smile, his eyes questioning.

“Surely you’ve seen all God gave me, Olwyn. Why the modest blushes?”

“I played nursemaid, not slut,” she snapped. And recalling the touches she’d stolen, felt ashamed.

“I’m not diminishing your care. I live, and I’m grateful for your tending.”

Olwyn ducked her head from the disconcerting sight of all that male flesh. He was right—she’d seen his skin. And stroked it. But when he’d been unconscious, she’d not found him so overwhelming. Now, however, she couldn’t help but envision every last inch of that body, and the memories made her cheeks burn. “Cover yourself.”

“Gladly. Where are my garments?” Lóchrann touched his chest once again, to the cut that her father had made. “And I wore a pendant, also.”

Olwyn rummaged in the back of the wagon and withdrew the long, tattered nightshirt, stockings, and cloak she’d stolen from her father. She handed them to Lóchrann without meeting his eyes.

“These are not mine,” he said.

“You were nude when I found you,” she told him, knowing this would prompt more questions from him, but not knowing how else to explain his lack of possessions. “I saw no pendant.”

Lóchrann let out a little laugh, but he didn’t sound happy. He held the garments up for inspection, clearly noting that they were made for a man shorter and plumper than himself.

Olwyn stole a glimpse at his face, saw the frustration evident in his expression. He seemed to struggle for a moment to gain his composure, before biting out, “Where, pray tell, did you happen to find me, Olwyn?”

Olwyn opened her mouth to answer, but words failed her. The truth was horrifying. He’d been pulled from a crypt and dumped on her doorstep. Her father was a ghoul and Lóchrann’s corpse had been lain out in their dungeon, ready for dissection.

He didn’t seem to remember waking in the dungeon.

She could lie to him, and maybe when they parted ways he would remember her as the woman who saved his life, and not the scion of a fiend who’d perched at his side, prepared to sketch his liver.

Lóchrann’s mouth flattened. Those dark blue eyes bored into hers, transfixing her. The hand that gripped her father’s garments tightened into a fist. “Olwyn. Some truth, please.”

He was so handsome. The truth was so ugly.

If she told him, he would be repulsed by her. Just like all the men in her village.

“You were brought to our keep, stripped and presumed dead,” she whispered. Lies were for cowards.

“Your keep,” he repeated, stressing the latter word with what sounded like disbelief. “Who brought me there?”

Olwyn closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and said, “The resurrection men.”

Aidan fought back a wave of dizziness that swept through his brain, and his legs were so weak they trembled with the effort of standing.

Resurrection men. Yes, he knew who they were and what they did. They were gravediggers who pulled bodies from crypts and graves so they could sell the corpses.

His gaze traveled around the landscape. The rolling hills were stark and lifeless, the trees black and naked against the steely silver-white sky. Above them a hawk glided on a cushion of air, and in the distance he heard its screaming call, a hunter’s warning to its prey.

Aidan brought his attention back to the strange woman before him. In the full light of day he saw her beauty, her strangeness. Her eyes were as gray as the sky behind her, like hammered metal. The garments she wore clung to her form in fey, draping swirls and belled sleeves, their smoky shade of plum contrasting her fair skin and black hair. That white streak drew his eye, and seeing his train of vision, she touched it self-consciously.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Somewhere in England,” she replied. He watched as Olwyn’s lips trembled. She glanced at the wagon, and then back to him. “Cheltenham, Gloucester, perhaps. I am not certain. But for now, you really ought to go lie down. ’Tis too cold for you to be outside.”

“You are traveling?”

“I am.”

“Where do you go?”

“South,” she replied, as if that were answer enough.

Aidan didn’t have much strength left. Soon he would need to go lie down again. And yes, the warmth of the fire beckoned.

Looking at Olwyn, however, he found himself rooted there, caught up in the sensation of being in another time. It felt like he and she were removed from civilization as he’d known it, reduced to stone huts and fire pits carved from the earth.

And Aidan realized he rather liked it, the notion of being in this woman’s care, pulled from the grave into a different time and a new life.

For years he’d felt buried, suffocated. His life never felt quite like his own, and the map of his future had been kept from him. Yet Aidan had always felt honor-bound, a slave to it, never free to be his own man, make his own way, and live his own life.

He toyed with the notion of not asking more questions, but just going off with this odd, witchy woman into an unmapped future. He envisioned what that could be like, simple, sensual, stripped to basics.

Everything about Olwyn was mysterious and different, from her clothing to her hair, the way she spoke with such forthright self-possession, and the way she smelled of a hauntingly unfamiliar smoky perfume. Looking at her lips, he realized he wanted to touch them, kiss them. He wanted to ease that pointed chin down and plumb her mouth with his tongue.

Aidan reveled for a moment in the fantasy of burning his past and becoming someone different. No one would know who he was, his titles or his heritage. No one would look at him with that all too familiar glitter of curiosity: which twin is the heir? Which twin will be duke? Questions to which even he did not know the answers.

He could just be Lóchrann.

Olwyn and Lóchrann, two names as ancient as the soil they stood upon, as the humble building behind them, and as the standing stones he saw in the distance.

He imagined what that future could hold: a journey, discovery, primitive attraction. And if Olwyn found herself enamored with him and he her, Aidan would not fight it. He would follow his impulses. He would handfast with her, a ritual nearly lost in an age of published banns and licenses to wed.

Such strange thoughts ran through his mind, driven by a single curiosity: what did her body look like beneath that unusual gown?

Aidan pulled back from his own thoughts in disgust, mentally scolding himself. Where was his loyalty to Padraig, his parents, and his betrothed? Why had he so easily forgotten Mira’s gentle sweetness and sunny smiles, spellbound as he was by this raven-haired enchantress?

It seemed impossible. Aidan did not think himself the sort of man whose romantic attentions were easily diverted. He was loyal. Steadfast.

And yet…

“Are you some sort of witch, Olwyn?”

She hesitated only the barest second.

“People stopped burning witches a hundred years ago,” she answered, her tone brittle. “Surely you don’t believe in such nonsense.”

“That’s not an answer, is it?”

She raised one of her slashing brows. It formed a peak above her eye. “The streak of white in my hair is a birthmark. My mother had it, and her mother before her. ’Tis a family trait, not a mark of Satan.”

He suddenly felt foolish, addled by sickness and disorientation. He was behaving as indecorous as his surroundings, primitive and without any veneer of civility. “I apologize. I meant no disrespect.”

“I cannot imagine how I took offense,” she replied dryly. “After all, you only inquired as to whom I render my worship, the Lord or the Devil. I assure you, sir, the only spirits I consort with are of the distilled variety, though ’tis rare, and always in secret.”

Aidan nearly laughed, and though it came in response to his speaking so out of turn, he appreciated her ready wit.

“Truly, I am sorry,” he said, and shrugged his shoulders. “Forgive me, but I have awoken in a most unusual circumstance, naked, wounded, weak, and without an idea where I am and how I got here. To be told ’twas the work of gravediggers isn’t exactly easing to the mind, aye? I cannot help but wonder why men are bringing you corpses, and why you brought me here.”

Aidan watched those fair cheeks of hers turn pink, her gray eyes flinty, and knew that he was touching on a subject as tender as a bruise. He avoided asking all but the most pointed question plaguing him, for his legs were sapped of strength and his heart pounded with the exertion of being upright. “Please, Olwyn, forgive all my many impertinences and tell me this: what year is it?”

Her soft mouth turned up slightly on one side. The witch faded, and in her place stood a young woman, tender with concern. “Have you lost memory, Lóchrann?”

“Aye. No. Not exactly, I don’t think.” Aidan scrubbed his face with his hand and shrugged his shoulders again. The wintry air made him shiver, but it cleared his head.

He liked the way she called him by his name, and not by formal address. It was unpretentious, uncomplicated. Intimate.

Olwyn approached him. She reached out, as if she would touch him, as if touching him had become natural to her, but then seemed to think better of it. She dropped her hand. “You are cold.”

“I am.”

“You should go inside, lie down in front of the fire.”

“Tell me first.”

A slight crease formed between her brows. “’Tis 1806. Now, please, go lie down and get warm.”

Regret and relief swamped him in strange emotions. Yes, he would see his family again, and no, he was not lost in a different world where he knew no one. He was still betrothed to Mira, would wed, and give his parents grandchildren.

But the regrets were just as strong. He was Aidan Mullen, and not Lóchrann. He was not going to disappear into a new life with this woman. He would go home and resume his business, his courtship, and see to his future.

Why, he wondered, should that seem disappointing?

“Is that not what you expected?” she asked, studying his expression intently. “What year did you think it to be?”

“Your garb. This shelter. I thought perhaps…” he trailed off, unwilling to admit to something so impossibly absurd.

“My garb?” Her cheeks flushed.

“I have not seen its like, is all. I meant no offense. Perhaps ’tis the fashion in Wales?” he said lamely, hating himself for sounding so insipid. He added, “You look lovely in it. It suits you.”

Olwyn ran her hands over her gown, and her face reflected her emotions, shame, sadness, and weary dignity. “I make my own garments. I am not a skilled enough seamstress to manage anything more intricate than these. I copied their lines from old gowns found in the back of my mother’s wardrobe, and altered the gowns that were still serviceable to fit my frame.” She lifted her chin in an age-old expression of defiance. “I am far too poor to concern myself with what is fashionable, and I’ve done my best to outfit myself with what meager talents and fabrics I possess.”

An awkward silence filled the space between them.

“If you are so much a fool that you do not know better than to take shelter from the cold, I can see how you’re so easily confused by outmoded garments,” she said finally, her tone betraying her wounded feminine pride.

Olwyn brushed past him and went indoors. She busied herself with tending the fire, leaving Aidan to stand there in the doorway.

He was a fool. The cold had him shivering, his skin pebbled with gooseflesh. He ignored the physical discomfort, immersed as he was in a welter of confounding feelings. He realized he was fascinated and uncomfortable and intrigued. Out of his element, out of his depth.

Following that notion, he discovered that for all the odd circumstance, unanswered questions, and his own physical weakness, he’d never felt more alive.