No. She had to calm herself and make a thorough search of the area. There was time enough to panic if she didn't find him. She was about to rein the stallion down one of the side roads to begin a methodical inspection of the village when she heard the sounds of a commotion a few streets away.
Angry voices, shouts. Her heart sank, and she urged Cuchulain toward the noise. A blur of eager faces greeted her. A sizable crowd had gathered before a red brick house, and an altercation was taking place on its front porch.
From her perch on the horse's back, Fallon could see past the ocean of heads and shoulders to where a distraught woman shrieked and sobbed, and a bantam rooster of a man with thinning, carrot-colored hair battled with all his might against the iron grip of a man twice his size.
Ciaran. Fallon's heart thudded against her ribs in recognition. He was in the midst of a fight! But the thought had barely formed when she realized Ciaran was merely holding his assailant at arm's length by a handful of collar, the planes and angles of his perfectly honed body just beyond the furious little man's reach.
"No! No!" the woman wailed, dragging at the bantam rooster's sleeve. "Norton, stop this madness!"
"I'll kill him! I vow it! You took him to your bed! I saw him!"
Fallon scrambled down from the saddle and started shoving her way through the mob. She'd never spoken to either the red-faced man or his wife, but in that frozen instant she knew who they were: Norton and Vanessa Fyfe, Glenceo's most scandalous couple, responsible for the most feverish bout of gossip the village had ever known. Even Fallon had heard about the notorious appetites of Vanessa Fyfe for handsome men, an appetite unhindered by anything so paltry as her marriage vows.
No. There had to be some mistake. It was impossible that Ciaran knew the Fyfes.
"If he hadn't leapt from the window we would have finished it last night!" the bantam's shout rang out. "Bastard! You cursed bastard! Cuckolding Norton Fyfe!"
Fallon shouldered her way past a baker's flour-dusted bulk and a hostler who reeked of horse dung.
"I've never seen this man before!" Vanessa's denial pierced the murmur of the spectators. She glimpsed Ciaran through a maze of limbs.
"Are you certain?" Ciaran demanded fiercely, casting the woman a glance that should have shattered the brick wall behind her. "I need the truth! I must have been here. It's the only reasonable explanation."
"Are you out of your mind?" The wild-eyed woman shrilled. "Look at Norton! He'll... He'll..."
"Liar! Faithless slut! Don't even try to deny—"
"There's a way to prove it once and for all," Ciaran snarled. "The clothes that were left behind last night in your wife's bedchamber. If they fit me, I must be the man you're seeking. And if they do, she can damned well tell me who—"
"That's... that's right!" the wife cried. "Let him try on the clothes he left behind! Norton, they'll never fit!"
Fallon's stomach plunged to her toes as Vanessa Fyfe raced into the house. Clothes left behind, a leap from a bedchamber window... Heaven above, was there a chance that what Norton Fyfe claimed was true? There could be no doubting the rage suffusing his face, and the pain of his betrayal.
She felt sick. No. She couldn't be wrong. He was Ciaran of the Mist. He was.
A gasp rose from the onlookers as they recognized her. The villagers parted, making way for Miss Delaney of Misthaven. She burst from the crowd and stumbled, striking her shin upon the stone step so hard tears stung her eyes. "Stop this! Ciaran, please—"
At the sound of her voice he wheeled, a stricken expression darting across his face. He hurled Norton Fyfe away from him and turned away from the man, as if he were so sickened she'd witnessed the sordid scene he would be grateful if the little man plunged a knife into his back.
"Damn it, why?" Ciaran growled low, anguish filling his eyes. "Why the devil did you follow me?"
"Did you think I could just let you walk away?" She choked out, hated herself for the thickening in her throat, the stinging of her eyes. Damn, she wouldn't cry in front of all these people. She wouldn't cry in front of him. "When I woke up and found you gone, I—"
She stopped suddenly, horribly aware of the silence that shrouded the throng, the eager way they were listening.
"What a lot o' fuss an' bother!" a high-pitched voice interrupted. "Let Sarie O'Dowd be settling this once an' for all." Notorious for her enormous bosom and nonexistent virtue, Sarie sauntered up, her hips swaying. "I saw the whole thing meself last night, while I were waitin' for one o' me soldier-boys."
Her blowsy golden curls tumbling about lush mountains of half-exposed breast, Sarie swept pansy-blue eyes from the crown of Ciaran's head to his feet, lingering with feline appreciation. Fallon ground her teeth. If the woman had been a cat, she'd be twined around Ciaran's legs, yowling her eagerness to mate loud enough to bring every tom in Ireland thundering down on her.
"Now, mind, all I saw was his bum," she cooed, reaching out as if to pat that part of Ciaran's anatomy. A roar of laughter erupted from the onlookers. Fallon slapped the woman's hand away.
Sarie's eyes widened. "Now, Miss Delaney, don't mean to offend yer sensibilities, but if I'm t' help, I have t' take a glance at the part I was seein', don't I?"
Ciaran's fists clenched, white-knuckled. "Am I the man you saw?" he demanded, looking as if he were in some prisoner's dock, waiting for his sentence to be handed down. "Just tell me."
"I'd be able t' do it better if ye'd just drop those breeches of yers, handsome. Give Sarie a little peek." She flounced her skirts above trim ankles, drawing a ripple of laughter from the men in the throng.
"Absolutely not!" Fallon dodged between Ciaran and the lightskirt. "Don't even think of it! Just answer the man's question. Unless you'd prefer that my brother becomes involved."
