The Absinthe Earl Page 16

  “You’re certain?” he asked.

  Ada repositioned her body, and by this I knew that Duncan had tried to see beyond the door.

  “I’m certain.”

  A pause. “Then I’ll leave you to your rest.”

  “Please wait a moment.”

  Closing the door, she crossed the room and retrieved the pistol from a table by the window. She went back to the door and held out the pistol to Duncan. I was astonished by her composure.

  “Hadn’t you better keep that?” Duncan asked.

  “There’s no need,” she replied, reaching for his hand and closing it over the weapon.

  There was a long pause, and I felt certain he had held on to her hand, for she did not withdraw. Finally, he asked, “Has he agreed to do right by you, then?”

  “I assure you, Duncan, Lord Meath is in no way blameworthy.”

  “And what of … what of the other?” asked Duncan.

  “Even he,” she assured him.

  She was always far kinder to me than I could be to myself. Far kinder than I deserved. I knew that I had injured her with my bungling proposal. In believing I was doing the honorable thing, it had not occurred to me that she might like to be wooed. Was she not a pragmatic young woman? But more than this, I feared that in some dark corner of my mind lurked the notion that a woman of her status was unlikely to refuse such an elevating offer. Whatever my reasoning might have been, I had certainly taken her acceptance for granted. And in doing so, I might very well have lost her, all evidence of the past half hour to the contrary.

  “Good night to you, Duncan,” she said. “Again, I thank you.”

  “You are quite welcome, Miss Quicksilver. Send a servant if you need me.”

  She closed the door, hesitating with one hand on the knob and one pressing against the panel. Then, finally, she turned and met my gaze.

  “When I received your note,” she began, “I understood why you had pressed me to leave you. Forgive me if I was ungracious in refusing you.”

  I shook my head. “It is I who must beg forgiveness. You were right to call my offer cold. It was not due to lack of warm feeling, I assure you.”

  She blushed prettily at this, which charmed me. “So you have demonstrated,” she said. I took a step toward her. She had donned her dressing gown hastily, and the neckline dipped low, exposing the upper curve of her breasts. Had my lips touched her there not a quarter of an hour ago? It seemed impossible now, yet I had the memory of it, and I burned afresh with desire.

  Her sudden frown stamped her forehead with worry lines. “Edward, I don’t know how to—”

  Closing the distance between us, I folded my arms around her. “Neither do I,” I murmured into her hair. “I am grateful beyond expression for the gift you have given me, but I confess that I am ill at ease with these circumstances. You must understand, I was raised a gentleman, and it goes against all that I was taught concerning the proper way to treat a woman.”

  “I do understand. Certainly, I do, and I … I admire you for it.”

  She raised her head from my chest, and I took her face in my hands. “And you won’t reconsider? Even if I vow never to command you?” Was I equal to such a promise? I wasn’t sure.

  Her hands came to my forearms, and I pressed my forehead against hers.

  “Ask me again, Edward,” she whispered. “If you like, ask me again when we are more sure of each other.”

  Her words settled like a lead weight in my chest. Was she unsure of me, or did she believe I was unsure of her? With a protest on the tip of my tongue, I pressed my lips together. She was right, of course. Did she love me? Did I love her? Was it possible for either of us to know after so little time? I had never expected I would marry solely for love, but she might never have imagined marrying for any other reason. She had an independent nature and did not require support. And though she had told me her mother’s family possessed an old name, she had no ancestral seat that required an heir. In short, she did not need me.

  She fires your blood. So long as she wants you, what does the rest of it matter?

  The thought was intrusive, and I couldn’t help wondering to what degree my mind was under my own control. Yet, instinctively I knew that if I dwelt on that question, I might very well go mad. Only yesterday, I had compelled her to speak without my even being aware of it. And I felt the presence of this “other” in the same way one sometimes feels another’s eyes on his back.

  “We should speak of Diarmuid,” she said, perhaps giving up on waiting for my reply.

  “If you wish,” I agreed. Though it was certainly the last thing I wanted to be doing. I resented the being that kept co-opting my body to make advances on the woman I had tried so hard to protect.

  I led her to one of the chairs before the now blazing fire and sat beside her. “You wouldn’t prefer to wait until the morning? You must be tired.”

  “I’m not sure that we can afford the delay,” she replied.

  “All right. Tell me what he said to you.”

  She hesitated, gazing into the fire as she collected her thoughts. Her head still wore the crown of bejeweled plaits, waves of silver cascading below. Her profile was regal and radiant, and she was completely unaware of it.

  “Diarmuid seems to believe …” she began. “He seems to believe that he and I have been lovers. That he has been with me in his own time, somehow. Or perhaps that we have been lovers in the future—though I realize that must sound nonsensical. The woman we read about—Cliona—she is tied up in it too. He once called me by her name. But I can’t make sense of that, either.”

  Resentment took a step toward jealousy, and the wrongheaded proprietary feelings rallied.

  “He speaks in riddles,” she continued, meeting my gaze. “I don’t think he means to. It’s as if his heart is too full to speak plainly.”

  “What else did he say?” I asked quietly, hiding my uneasiness from her.

  “He called me ‘the mortal woman who stands with the Danaan.’ He also said that ‘fey’ runs in families and that it was my blood that brought me here.”

  I nodded, but I broke away from her gaze. I did not want to share her with this cause any more than I wanted to share her with my ancestor. I wanted to send her away somewhere safe. But there was an answer to this riddle that she was not seeing, perhaps because she was so close to it, and it would draw her in even deeper than she had yet imagined. I was not ready to admit it to her, not even to myself.

  “How well I know it,” I said.

  “Know what, my lord?”

  I looked at her. “That fey runs in families. But I’m not sure that I agree with this assessment of your character. You are one of the most sensible people I know.”

  She smiled, taking my honesty for a compliment. “I pride myself on good sense, I admit. But I have what some might consider an unhealthy fascination with a race of beings that many believe are no more than children’s stories. He seemed to be suggesting there is a reason for that.”

  “Did he not offer any more specific explanation?” I asked carefully.

  She shook her head and dropped her gaze to her folded hands. “As I said, he speaks in riddles. And he is always very … distracted.”

  “Yes, by more interesting topics.” My words carried a bite, and she shot me a troubled glance. I covered my ill humor with a smile. She in no way deserved my ire.

  “He did say that I had been marked.” Her fingers played absently with a lock of her hair. “If you’ll recall, Captain O’Malley—”

  She suddenly looked up, her gaze focusing beyond me. I turned to look at the door.

  “Do you see them?” she breathed, her tone anxious.

  I continued to scan the space where her gaze had settled. “I see nothing.”

  “What do they want?” she cried, and I turned to find she had clapped her hands over h
er ears.

  The absinthe. She had drunk it. I had not. “Ada,” I said, reaching out to take her hand, “tell me what you—”

  The words froze on my tongue as her body rose from the chair without any movement of her limbs, as if gravity had released her. And then I did see “them”: banshees, a dozen or more of them. They were not formed of green mist, like the other times I’d seen them. Though still ghostlike in form, their features were ashen and they wore gowns of black or gray. They clearly had more substance, as they managed to support Ada with their arms and backs, lifting her into the air.

  I jumped to my feet, reaching for her with both hands, but she was torn from my grasp.

  “Edward!” Her eyes were wide with fear.

  I stumbled across the room after her as she shrieked. The window shattered, and they bore her out into the night.

  OUT OF SHADOWS

  Edward

  Her white dressing gown fluttered and flapped in the breeze, reflecting moonlight and rendering her a luminous spirit.

  “Ada!” I cried, cursing my compliance with the queen’s abstinence order. But for that, I might better have anticipated what was happening to her.

  I moved quickly, yanking my boots on and fastening the sword belt. Then I returned to the window, eyeing the distance to the ground. I could still see her pale form aloft over the winter-dormant fields, but she was moving away, and I couldn’t afford to lose sight of her.

  Neither can you afford to break your neck. The intrusive voice had returned.

  “Blast!” I shouted. “If you want to help me, then help me. Come out of the shadows!”

  Wind gusted through the broken window, and I took a step back. The room filled with chill sea air, as if the house had taken a great breath. The wind carried on its back a shrill, inhuman cry.

  On the ground floor, there was a disturbance—excited and fearful voices drifting up the staircase. A loud crash sounded; then came a series of heavy footfalls accompanied by shouts, as if a family of giants were running up the stairs.

  The door burst open and crashed to the floor, rent from its hinges. I shouted and raised the sword. Over the toppled door thundered a living nightmare—a great black horse, trailing rivulets and seaweed across the floor. Breath puffed from the beast’s nostrils, loud as wind from a bellows. She pawed the floor with a barnacled hoof and tossed her dark head, that same eerie cry issuing from her jaws.

  Aughisky.

  I tightened my grip on Great Fury. As a child, I had feared the Irish water horse, said to be a fierce and dangerous fairy. And like the púca at Brú na Bóinne, this was no absinthe-induced vision. Water pooled at her feet, the smell of low tide filling my nostrils. Her eyes glowed orange, bright as the coals of our fire.

  What are you waiting for? demanded the voice in my head.

  “You’ve sent for this beast?” I said, for I did not find it easy to converse without actual speech. “She’ll carry me to my death.” I was perhaps not as versed in fairy lore as Miss Q, but every Irishman knew better than to mount a water horse.

  If you want to catch a troop of banshees, you need Aughisky.

  I recalled the warning in the pub the night I first met her, and panic urged me to action.

  I took a few steps toward the water horse, and she continued to toss her head and paw at the floor, gouging the wood. Her steaming breath had created its own weather in the chamber, so that there was more mist inside than out. She was clearly agitated—whether over the summons itself or from some sense of urgency, I did not know.

  She stood tall as a draft horse, my head reaching only a little higher than her shoulder. I hesitated in supernatural dread despite my frantic worry over Ada’s fate. Finally, I dragged the tea table to the beast’s side and stepped up on it, steeling myself as I buried one hand in the dark mass of sodden, slimy mane. I heaved myself onto her back and had barely found my seat when she bolted. I flung my arms around the thick neck, powdery with salt deposits and sand, just as she vaulted through what remained of the window panes.

  “Edward!” I heard the queen shout from the chamber. Then, “Diarmuid!”

  Glass fragments rained down, clinging to Aughisky’s forelock and mane, catching the moonlight like diamonds as we arced toward the ground. The landing should have buckled her legs, and nearly did break my neck, but she hit the ground at a run and was soon thundering inland across the field behind the manor house.

  Aughisky rocketed across the uneven landscape, clearing stone walls and streams without any break in stride. I clung to the long tendrils of mane as best I could—they seemed to be coated in “starshine,” as Highlanders referred to washed-up jellyfish because the glistening blobs were once believed to be the remnants of falling stars.

  Beyond the fields lay miles of peat bog, which under normal circumstances would be suicide to try to cross on horseback. As I had no idea of our intended destination and no control over the creature’s movement, I could only hold fast and hope for the best.

  As we galloped over the island’s interior, the frigid air bit into my flesh, and pools of acidic bog water reflected the glittering stars. Soon, hulking masses of moonlight-limned cloud began to push like great ships across the sky. Mist rose from the vast, empty landscape, and I could no longer see anything below my waist. Aughisky skimmed across the treacherous ground, light-footed as a palfrey.

  Our path began to rise beneath us, and by this I knew we were leaving the blanket bog behind. The swirling mist cleared as we approached a lake, oddly situated on a bluff overlooking the sea and surrounded on three sides by oak trees and flaming beacons. The lake had a distinctive shape, like a lumpy crescent, and I recognized it as a place I had visited as a child. Yet the oak trees should not have been there. Nor should Ada Quicksilver.

  But there I found her on the north side, between lough and sea, surrounded by perhaps two dozen keening women, half of them clad in gray and half in black.

  Aughisky slowed to a silent walk, and the group did not seem to notice our approach. But suddenly, the beast reared, neighing loudly against the night, and the women turned. I slipped from the jelly-slick back and struck the ground with force.

  Half the women—those in black—opened their mouths, and their desolate cries filled the air. I covered my ears and squeezed my eyes shut, gritting my teeth against the sound. Inside their cries were the retreat calls of defeated armies. Weeping mothers whose sons had been lost at sea. Howls of the plague-cursed and starving. My heart swelled with sorrow, and tears seeped from beneath my eyelids.

  “Enough!” cried Ada, and I could not understand how I had heard her over their unearthly wailing.

  The keeners, too, had heard her, and they obeyed.

  The air rang in the sudden silence as I rose to my feet.

  “Edward!” called Ada, stepping forward, though a narrow body of water lay between us. “Are you all right?”

  Before I could answer, the other half of the gathering began to keen. But this chorus of cries was entirely different. Their sorrow was just as pronounced, but they struck a high, clear note. It carried a call to hope that was as painful in its solemn beauty as the other had been in its desolation. Again I felt raw in the throat.

  “Enough,” repeated Ada, but in a gentle tone this time, and the voices fell silent.

  The tightness in my chest eased. The woman who stood before me shone with beauty and strength. The gems in her hair and at her throat caught the starlight and danced. In her countenance, I caught only a trace of the uncertainty that I would expect my Miss Q to be feeling right now—that I myself felt at seeing her among those supernatural beings. My heart swelled again, but this time it was the swelling of a heart divided, a swelling of recognition.

  Cliona, my own love, you have awoken.

  Ada

  The beast that Edward had ridden reared again with an equine shriek that tore the night. I flinched a
t the great horse’s proximity to him, but the earl staggered back a few steps, and she recovered her footing without harming him. No sooner had her front hooves struck the earth than she galloped toward the lake, leaped cleanly over it, and plunged down the bluff behind me before charging into the sea.

  As I turned back to Edward, a dark shape erupted from the surface of the lake. A crow larger than a man winged its way around the ring of trees several times before landing only a few feet in front of me. The great wings shook, scattering droplets like pearls in the air, and then closed around the bird’s body. A moment later, they unfurled to reveal the figure of a woman.

  How old she might be, I could not have said. At first, I thought her close to my own age, but as her head turned, I glimpsed the profile of a much older woman. Though her black hair was piled high on her head, thick ropes of it had fallen about her shoulders, hanging nearly to her waist. She was sheathed almost completely in black crepe, with only her chest, shoulders, and neck revealed behind panels of dark lace. Her skin was deathly pale, but a band of black had been painted from one temple to the other, crossing over and around her eyes, causing the whites to glitter like the cold, brittle light of the winter moon.

  “Ada, step back!” cried the earl. He had raised Great Fury and stood at the very edge of the water, opposite me.

  I did not need encouragement. The woman emanated power, and my instincts told me she was dangerous. But the beings who had brought me here pressed around me in a tight circle—protectively, it seemed, but they inhibited my movement.

  “Do you know me, child?” the woman asked. Her voice was disconcertingly uneven, shifting between youthful and clear, and ragged with age. She punctuated the question by knocking her staff against the ground, and I noticed it was not wood, but the chalky leg bone of some large beast. Where it struck, a tendril of white vapor unfurled into the night air, like smoke from a pipe.

  My lips parted, but I could only shake my head.

  She smiled, blackened lips peeling open to reveal gleaming white teeth. “The Danaan warrior does.” Her head craned slowly downward and left as she looked askance at Edward across the narrow reach of water between us.