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“…and in Ireland, Maggie,” he said, making her shiver every time he called her that, “you’ve got to take care, for the fey otherworld is close to hand, so near that on some nights, you lay awake and listen to things you know cannot be real, but they are, and then you realize the world is far more wide and wonderful than ever the priests did tell.”
They faced each other. His eyes were gleams of fading firelight.
“It sounds a most worthy place,” she whispered.
“I never should have left,” he agreed, regret thick in his voice. “But glory beckoned.”
She knew that thick coating in her own throat, all too well. Impulsively, she touched her fingertips to his hand. “That is the way of it, for some of us,” she said urgently. “We leave that which we do have, to seek that which we might have. Sometimes, we stumble along the way.”
Tadhg looked down at her hand, her fingertips barely skimming the back of his. Offering comfort, she emanated innocent desire. Her long hair spilled in glorious disarray over her shoulders, and her eyes were bright and full of fire—he greatly approved of fire in a woman, and so infrequently found it—and her lips were far too full to be only three inches away from his own, half parted, breathing on him.
“A besetting sin, then?” he murmured.
“That is it,” she whispered happily.
She smelled like sunshine, and her smile punched a hole through the densest, darkest part of him, the cloud of him, the roiling, rising thunderstorm in his heart. “Lass,” he said in a thick voice, “I swear on my life, I will settle this debt to you.”
She shook her head. “You already have.”
He smiled grimly to himself. She had no idea what he meant. She thought he meant what had already come, and that it was all over now.
But it was not over, and to the almost certain damnation of his soul, he was not yet done using her.
A melodic sound penetrated the walls of her shop. Church bells, calling the faithful to midnight mass, as they would every night of these Twelfth Night revelries.
Magdalena jerked a little, yanked out of the fairy-like cloud that had descended over her shop, almost startled to find herself still sitting behind her counter. In every way but the truth, she’d been far, far away, on the green hills of Ireland, with....
She sat up straight. “What is your name?”
He blew out something that sounded like a sigh. “Tadhg Nessan Cenn Nuallán O’Malley.”
The words tumbled out swiftly, a lyrical and utterly incomprehensible combination of syllables. “My,” she laughed. “It sounds nice and noble.”
“Oh, aye, quite. Nessan means stoat.”
She laughed—she’d laughed more with this man in a half-day of trials and tribulations than she had in a twelve-month of calm, proper living. Or a hundred-month of it.
“You can cal
l me Tadhg,” he said, looking at her mouth.
Shivers moved through her. “Tie-g,” she whispered, sounding it out. “What does it mean?”
“Poet.”
“And are you one?”
“I’m thinking of one now.” He looked from her lips to her eyes. “’Tis bawdy.”
A long, wide ribbon of excitement unfurled through her as she tipped her head back and laughed. He watched her appreciatively.
The bells finished their tolling.
“You should go.” She forced herself off the crate, away from the ribbons of excitement and laughter. “There is only one guard at the gate at this hour, Gustave, and he is quite amenable to negotiation.”
“So now you know the gate guards, too?” he grumbled as he got to his feet.
She pushed gently on his shoulder. “Go.”
