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“If you’re not careful, the whole house will hear you.”
Her dark eyes burned a hole right through him.
“Don’t worry, Lissa. I’ll not upset your apple cart. You and the respectable Mr. Shaw will wed and have respectable babies and lead a respectable life.”
Instead of spearing him with a suitable scathing response, she lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and swept past him to the doors. Throwing them open, she sailed back into the crowd as proud as any queen.
He let out the breath he’d been holding with an audible sigh. He’d jumped the first fence cleanly. He was in.
Brendan wandered the Dun Eyre gardens, reacquainting himself with the extensive grounds. Assessing terrain. Studying the landscape. Seeing the parkland not as the masterpiece of tidy parterres and man-made wilderness, but as a means to hide, escape, or fight, depending upon circumstance. These skills had been the first things he’d learned while in exile. And had kept him alive more than once in the intervening years. By now, it had become second nature.
This should have been easy. Growing up close by, he’d spent countless hours running wild over this ground and knew Dun Eyre like the back of his hand. Coming upon a high hedge that ought not to have been there, he had to admit the back of his hand hadn’t looked the same since being crushed beneath a boot heel last November.
He curled his fingers into an awkward, aching fist. The grinding of rough-healed bones a memento of those dangerous days when it looked as if his crimes had finally caught up with him.
The gods had smiled on that occasion. It remained to be seen if he’d be so fortunate again.
He backtracked, hoping to loop around the thorny barrier and come upon the house from the west. The cold penetrated his coat while the bones of his hand throbbed. A weather sense he could do without. It had been too long since he’d experienced Ireland’s cold, damp spring. He’d grown used to sun and bleached blue skies and dry desert breezes.
The longer he remained close to his childhood home, the more memories surfaced like unearthed corpses. Every familiar landmark and well-known face brought those last horrible days back in vivid nightmare. Father’s reproachful gaze piercing him with shame and guilt. Father’s death playing out in eternal bloody violence until even waking there was no respite from the images.
Had it been quick and painless, or had the Amhas-draoi spent their vengeance in excruciating butchery? Had Father known in the end Brendan had been his betrayer? Or had he gone to his death ignorant of his beloved son’s treachery?
He blinked, pulling himself back into the present. He could drown his sorrows at the bottom of a bottle for the rest of his pathetic life if he wanted. Now he needed to be cool, confident. Focus on his goal.
Retrieve the Sh’vad Tual.
Take it to Scathach for safekeeping.
And grovel as he’d never groveled before to save his sorry life.
Simple.
Hunching his shoulders against the chill, he trained his eyes on the path ahead, ears tuned to any hint of fellow wanderers. In the thick shadows away from the house, he’d shed the fith-fath. He was sorely out of practice, and the concentration it took to maintain the spell left little energy for aught else. Best to use his powers sparingly.
The hedge folded back upon itself, the path spilling out in a shallow set of stone stairs. Below him, the house stretched wing to wing from its foursquare central block. The ball had ended, guests leaving in a line of carriages or retiring to their quarters for the night. A few lights glittered from windows, but the blaze of candleshine and torchères lighting the entrances had been doused, night closing thick against the buildings.
He counted third-floor windows. Seven in from the right. Elisabeth’s bedchamber. Light still
shone behind the curtains. She would be undressing. Slowly untying her garters. Seductively rolling down the stockings on her long legs. Her luscious curves held tightly captive by stays and petticoats freed to fill the thin muslin chemise she wore to bed. The pins holding her chignon in place would be removed, letting that spill of dark red hair slide deliciously over her back to her hips. And last but not least, she’d lift her hands behind her neck. Unclasp the necklace that lay in the valley of her sweet, full breasts, and place it back in its box.
A wry chuckle escaped him. Gods, he must need it bad to be fantasizing about Elisabeth. She’d been close as a sister. A little sister. She amused him. She was smart, funny, daring, and rode a horse as if she’d been born in the saddle. But never had she been fantasy material. And yet now? If she’d been struck by the changes wrought in him, he’d been equally surprised.
He remembered Elisabeth as a little plump. A lot freckled. Hair a wild riot of dark red curls. And an impish gleam in her big brown eyes. Then he’d looked up and, instead of the girl of his memories, he’d fastened his gaze on a voluptuous woman tempting as chocolate with a body that made his blood rush faster. Seeing her made him light-headed and stupid with thoughts he never should think and ideas he daren’t let take shape.
He should have joined Jack their last night in Ennis. His cousin had that scoundrel’s knack for finding the perfect woman to scratch any itch. Brendan shifted uncomfortably, dousing his lust-filled imagination with more somber thoughts—the consequences if Máelodor gained possession of the Sh’vad Tual.
War between the Fey-born race of Other and their un-magical Duinedon neighbors. And the cataclysm for both sides should this come to pass.
“. . . a king’s ransom . . . what does she wear . . .”
“. . . doesn’t matter, Marcus . . . let it go . . .”
Men’s voices rose up from the bottom of the stairs. Automatically, Brendan went still, his breath barely stirring in his lungs. No shoes scuffed the stone steps. They must have taken shelter in one of the numerous benched alcoves.
He delayed conjuring the fith-fath. Instead, he bent closer, letting the shadows glide up and over him until nothing moved to alert the men they had an audience.
“I’m going mad with boredom, Gordon. What the blazes do people do around here?”
