There had been no other woman. Not ever.
Why? The question reverberated through him.
Was there something wrong with him? Some fatal flaw he couldn't remember? Was there a sacred vow barring him from this devastating pleasure? Or a past mistake so terrible that he'd turned his back on the possibility of feminine softness filling his arms, hot, eager, honey-tinged lips filling his senses? He couldn't be certain.
He should break away from Fallon, surrender the magic of her body beneath his hands. He had no right to touch her. But did he have the strength, the courage to let her go? Her hero of the mist would have done so. Her hero was a damned fool. And yet, Ciaran felt his kiss gentling, hunger shifting to tenderness, passion to a reluctant yielding. To honor? He didn't know. But Fallon was certain he possessed it.
He drew back because of her belief in him, not his own. And when the moist heat of her lips came away from his, something tore in his chest. Reality spun into focus again—the sterile room, the voices of guards beneath the window, the suffocating scent of danger.
"Blast it, Fallon," he ground out. "I must have been out of my mind."
She flinched, for an instant the mask of bravado slipping away to reveal the girl who believed that magic and fairy tales and heroes truly existed. But there would be no happily ever after for her. And Ciaran hated himself for putting the shame and the hurt in her eyes. "You can always blame your sudden impulse to kiss me on the blow to your head. After all, why else would anybody—"
"Damn it, it's not because I kissed you," he tried to amend. "I mean, I had no right. And—"
"And it's against the code of heroes with amnesia to kiss women they think mad?"
"I don't think you're mad, just a trifle... hazy about reality now and then. And right now our reality looks dashed grim. What if Redmayne had walked in while you were in my arms?"
Rose-petal lips, still swollen with his kisses, tipped into an ironic smile that almost obscured her pain. "Then the insufferable captain would be far more likely to believe all the lies I told. In fact, maybe we should listen for his footsteps and stage the whole kiss again."
"The hell we will!" Ciaran roared. He'd rather let Redmayne flay the skin off his body one knife stroke at a time than allow the Englishman to witness something so intimate, so forbidden, so... beautiful.
The word echoed through him, reverberating like the shaft of a spear that had suddenly pierced his chest. And he knew that he'd made a terrible mistake when he'd succumbed to the temptation of kissing Mary Fallon. Every fiber in his body was still sizzling like a lightning bolt, damned uncomfortable in its intensity. And she looked so bruised, so tired suddenly, so sad.
He groped for the right words to make her understand. It was too dangerous, too painful, this quickening in his heart. If he cared for her, loved her, it would give Redmayne yet another weapon to use against them. And what would happen in the end, when Ciaran had to walk away, back to the life he couldn't remember? "Blast it, Fallon, listen to me—"
"We don't have anything more to say to each other," she said, a catch in her throat. "Except wedding vows."
She turned, walking into Redmayne's chamber. Ciaran could hear her splashing water from the washbasin as she bathed her face. But he could have told her it was hopeless.
Nothing either of them could do would wash away the danger that had glittered like an assassin's stiletto in Redmayne's cunning eyes. And there was no way to scrub away the taste of the kiss that had altered Ciaran forever.
Chapter 8
Fallon stood in the shaft of light beneath the stained glass window, the fragments of color filtering down over her in a chaos of broken rainbow, that wild disorder reflecting the anarchy in her heart.
It was as if she'd stepped into a bizarre dream—the musty chapel, Father Gerrard intoning gentle warnings about the sanctity of marriage, Redmayne hovering near, with the fiendish patience of a spider enjoying the struggles of the prey trapped in its web.
The whole improbable scene unfolding here was so unreal it might have been woven during the time when the triple goddess still ruled in Ireland and hero tales were new, and anything from sorcery to sea monsters to star-crossed love was possible.
She was marrying Ciaran of the Mist, becoming the bride of a legend. But the man who stood so rigid, so grim beside her, his hand closed protectively over her own, was real. She could feel his pulse beneath her trembling fingers, the scent of him—sea wind and uncertainty and reckless honor—filling her senses.
His eyes, those green eyes she had seen glittering with rage, eclipsed with confusion or softening with vulnerability, now darkened to the hue of a primeval forest as he gazed down into her face. Confused. Hurting. Desperate to do right. Knowing that somehow he had failed her.
The image seared into her heart, ached there. And she wanted to comfort him, wanted to tell him everything would be all right. Because it was him that she was marrying, as if their union had been destined before time began.
How could she begin to explain that she finally understood why she'd never dreamed of wedding rings and bridal trips, or kisses beneath the rose arbor?
When other young girls had been in a romantic dither over the county's most handsome beaux, thrilling to fox hunts and waltzes and the dashing tilt of high-crowned beaver hats, Fallon had been curled up in the topmost tower of Ciaran's castle. Hour after hour she'd listened to the waves piercing their breasts on the cliffs below, hurling themselves against the rocks in an effort to possess something they could never have.
She'd felt one with those waves as she devoured the tales in books whose pages were near worn thin. She'd dreamed of bold Celtic heroes in horse-drawn chariots, spears flying, magic swirling, immortality beckoning with gossamer wings.
She'd fallen in love with theideaof Ciaran there, perched on the crumbling ledge of his castle, and once she had, no man of flesh and blood could ever challenge his hold upon her heart.
And now, she was to be his bride. She would have the right to touch him, to share his body, his bed, his inmost thoughts for as long as the fates allowed. A dream come true. If, a voice whispered inside her, if he is truly the Ciaran of legend.
"Mary Fallon?" Father Gerrard's voice made her start, and she turned her gaze back to the priest who had offered Margaret Delaney such comfort during the weary years of illness. He was as familiar to Fallon as the tiny chip in her front tooth, and she paid as little attention to him. Yet the good father had baptized Fallon and done his best to offer spiritual guidance to a girl far more intrigued by the pagan than the saintly.
