The first thing Sorcha thought when she woke was that she had exploded. She was sprawled on the floor. She must have hit her head; it was suddenly stuffy and thick, as if the blood were congealing inside it. Worst of all, she was cold. Dear Goddess, how could she be so cold in this close little room? Then the pressure began to build up in her head again, and she realized she’d been wrong. Being cold wasn’t the worst thing.
“Oh, how do you stop it?” she asked, trying to rub it away.
“Stop what?” Harry Wyatt asked.
She couldn’t manage an answer. The pressure wouldn’t go. Just rose and rose, taking her breath, stopping her nose up, burning until she couldn’t help it, she—
“A—chooo!!”
—exploded. Again.
She grabbed the sides of her head, sure they would be in pieces. She whimpered, terrified of this thing that was happening.
“Is it the Dubhlainn Sidhe laying this curse on me?” she demanded, and thought her voice sounded pinched and tetchy. “Will they torture me until I fail?”
“Torture you? What are you talking about?”
She barely heard him. “Didn’t I tell her I wasn’t worthy? I am a fairy of small talents, quiet moments….” Finally she opened her eyes to find the Earl’s face just above hers. He seemed to have gathered her in his arms. Shouldn’t that make her warm? “My head,” she whispered, and then sniffed, for some reason. “How many pieces is it in now from the explosion?”
The burning was back, searing her nose, her eyes, her throat. Building again, building…
“Explosion?” he asked.
“Please,” she begged. “Tell me what you see. What dread magic has been visited on me. A—choooo!”
“Good lord, Harry,” a new voice intruded. “Not another one.”
“Hello, Gwyneth,” Harry’s grandmother said.
Sorcha was too busy hanging on to Harry to look away. “But my head…” she protested. “My…my throat. There is poison inside. I know it.”
“Not really, child,” Gran said, sounding sympathetic. “It’s a virus, that’s all. You have a cold.”
Sorcha tried so very hard to understand. She certainly was cold. What did it mean that she had a cold? “And the explosions?”
“It’s called a sneeze,” Harry said briskly and hauled her to her feet. “Which you know damned well. Now, if you don’t mind, the play’s over. It’s time to rejoin the real world.”
Sorcha rubbed at her head. “Is this a mortal ill?” she asked, swaying where she was.
“Oh, Harry, how awful,” the new woman protested. “Can’t the police do something about these people?”
“This person,” his grandmother said, “is my guest. Is that a problem, Gwyneth?”
Sorcha finally got her eyes open to see a very tall, very slim, very tight-lipped woman standing in the doorway, staring at her as if afraid she’d stolen something.
“No, of course not,” the woman said, but she didn’t mean it. Sorcha could see it in the set of her shoulders. She was furious and frustrated.
“Not a believer, then, is she?” Sorcha asked Harry’s gran.
The old woman grinned. “Sorcha, my dear, I’d like you to meet Gwyneth Adderly, Harry’s fiancée. Gwyneth, this is Sorcha. She’ll be staying for a few days.”
“Gran…” Harry warned.
“At least until she’s feeling better. She’s ill, Harry.”
Sorcha obliged her by sneezing again. It took her balance from her, and she had to hold on to a chair to stay upright. “I’m sorry…I just…”
“There she goes again,” the woman Gwyneth said, just before Harry grabbed her under the arms.
He dragged her to a chair, sat her down and shoved her head down between her knees. “You are not about to faint on me, young lady. I don’t have time for it.”
“Ah, I’m that sorry…” she managed, wondering if her head was going to fall off and roll away. “I don’t feel well at all.”
“She looks terrible,” his grandmother said. “Feel her forehead, Harry.”
“I will not—”
“Harold Marcus—”
“I’ll do it,” the dark lady said in that soft, whispery voice that made Sorcha feel calmer.
She didn’t move for fear that her head would break. She could see Harry’s feet in front of her. In great, thick shoes, they were, tied and strapped, barricading his feet from the air. It was no wonder he couldn’t feel Mother Earth, Sorcha thought distractedly. No wonder he had no real whimsy in his eyes like his grandmother. If Sorcha were his grandmother, she’d make him take off his shoes altogether.
“I refuse to be party to this,” the Gwyneth woman snapped. “First the man in the park, and now this. It’s just too much, Harry. You have to stop it.”
“You tell me how, Gwyneth,” he snapped right back.
Sorcha felt sad for him. She felt sorry she was causing such stress. And something about the way his fiancée had talked about a man sent a frisson of warning down her back.
She would have said something, but she couldn’t gather the energy. It seemed she was simply going to disintegrate right here in this little pile on a stiff chair in a stone prison.
“Child, you all right?” the dark woman asked.
“Oh, aye,” Sorcha answered, hearing the unfamiliar rasp in her voice. “I just feel…”
The gentlest of hands lit on her forehead, offering cooling and calm. Sorcha sighed with it.
“You might want to call a doctor,” the woman said, her voice still unspeakably peaceful. “This girl’s burnin’ up.”
“Give her some aspirin,” Gwyneth said, sounding almost frantic. “A decongestant.”
“Ah, no,” Sorcha protested, getting her head up. The room spun, and she held on to the hand of the kind woman, bracing herself with that calloused gentleness. “Mortal remedies aren’t for me. Who knows what they’d do, now?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Gwyneth said, sounding frustrated. “Take away your fever and stop your sneezing?”
Sorcha struggled to get in a breath. She felt her energy ebb. Goddess, could this mortal cold overcome her fairy life so quickly? Desperately, she fumbled in the pants where she’d stashed her bag, but her fingers were clumsy and her breath short.
“Somethin’s real wrong here,” the kind woman said.
“My herbs,” Sorcha begged. “They’re in a bit of a bag. If I can get to them…”
She felt fingers fumble alongside hers. She heard voices echoing and felt the frustration in Harry Wyatt’s heart.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he said, and slapped her pouch into her palm. “Here. Do you mix them with anything?”
“No.” She desperately tried to focus. “One is for fairy ills on mortals, the other mortal ills on faerie. Oh, which is it?”
She squinted, separating the two packets and trying to read the bean tighe’s horrible handwriting. It was harder to breathe, harder to see, and she felt another of those fierce awful sneezes coming on. She couldn’t allow it, not with the most delicate herbs in both worlds in her hands.
“Ah…here.” Her hand was shaking hard, but she separated out a pinch. No more. She slid it under her tongue and closed her eyes against the pain of it. Nothing is worth the cure that doesn’t hurt, the bean tighe was wont to say. Well, this herb sent shock waves through her whole system.
She was struggling to get her herbs put away. “I can’t…” There were tears on her face, tears in her lungs and heart. She wasn’t sure she’d been in time.
Big hands took the pouch from her, calloused hands that knew work, but were gentle and delicate as they closed away her precious medicine.
“I thank you, Harry Wyatt,” she whispered, and managed to look up into his face, his dear, troubled face that she would have liked to know better. “And I’m sorry. I think, after all, I’ve failed, and there will be no more spring. Forgive me.”
They were the last words she managed. Her strength vanished, and her eyes slid closed. This time she felt Harry Wyatt collect her into his arms before she could hit the floor.
“Yon fairy bower is prepared, my lord,” Sims intoned.
“Knock it off, Sam,” Harry said. “Did you call the doctor?”
“Indeed I did, sir. He said he’d be over after his surgery. In the meantime, he suggests aspirin and decongestants.”
Harry followed Sims down the hall to one of the habitable guest rooms. His shoulders were aching. Fairies were heavier than they looked. This one might not be big, but she was dead weight.
She was also pale as death. He could hear a slight wheezing when she breathed, too. He had no business being worried for this latest entrant in the fairyland sweepstakes. But, God, he was. He’d never seen anybody get so sick so fast. And it was a dead certainty she wasn’t faking it. Her skin was still hot enough to vaporize water.
So what if she was a bit delusional? So what if she was going to make his next few days a living hell, what with his grandmother insisting the girl was a fairy and Gwyneth insisting the girl go?
All he wanted was a little time away from the pressures of the city. He wanted to walk his land and rest in the battered old leather chair in his library. He wanted to pretend that Waverly Close wasn’t just one disaster after another. Instead he got to pretend that a fairy princess had come to visit.
Brilliant.
“I will not be part of this,” Gwyneth said behind him, sounding frightened. He didn’t blame her.
“What would you suggest I do, Gwyneth?” he asked, his voice sounding as weary as he suddenly felt. “Throw her out?”
“Call the police,” she said. “Just like I told Sims to do with the other one.”
He knew he should ask. She wanted him to. Sorcha must have had a co-conspirator they’d left back out on the moor. Well, let somebody else take care of him.
She smelled like rain and cinnamon.
Well, where in the hell had that come from? He almost closed his eyes and just breathed in. It wasn’t a sensual smell, not exotic or dark. But somehow it snaked in under his defenses and made him want to touch her. Her breasts were pressed against his chest. Her skin was so soft he wanted to drop his face against it and rub, and her hair, that unbelievable silk, tickled his arm.
From one step to the next, one breath to the next, he was suddenly ravenous for her. And here he was traversing the main hallway of the second floor like a bloody parade, with his butler leading the way and his fiancée and his grandmother and her companion bringing up the rear, Gwyneth and Gran still arguing over the best disposition of the girl in his arms.
“You can’t expect Harry to give consequence to one of these creatures,” Gwyneth was protesting.
“I can and I will,” Gran answered. “It’s still as much my home as his, Gwyneth, and I’ll have my say.”
“But she could be anyone….”
“She stays,” he growled, whirling on them. “Do. You. Understand?”
Gwyneth flinched as if he’d slapped her. Suddenly he didn’t care. He wanted them all gone. He wanted this woman all to himself, no matter that she was unconscious with fever and as vulnerable as a human could be. He wanted to be on top of her. He wanted to be inside of her. He wanted to make those huge green eyes widen and darken and close, close with languor, not with illness. He wanted to hear her shriek his name….
His grandmother slammed her cane against the wall. “Harry!”
He stopped, his breath shuddering in his chest. His grandmother was looking aghast, and he wasn’t surprised. He was hard again, just with the scent of this fairy girl in his nostrils. He was trembling with the effort it took to keep from shoving every other living soul down the stairs and shutting himself away with her. He was going mad; he knew it. And it was evident that now everybody else did, too.
“Mary,” he said, his voice still low and harsh, “if you would stay with her once we get her settled…? Gran, I’ll take you back to your room.”
“I think that would be wise,” his grandmother said.
Gwyneth didn’t seem to have any words at all. She looked shaken. There were tears in her eyes, and she seemed unable to hold her hands still.
“I have some business to attend to in York,” she said in a thin voice. “It might be best if I take care of it now.”
Harry snapped off a nod. “Yes. I’ll see you after, then?”
“Yes.”
Sims held the door open to the Chinese room, and Harry stepped through. He wasn’t overly fond of this room. Too overdone by one of his distant aunts. Silk birds on silk walls, and a bed the size of a battleship swathed in more silk, all of it crimson. Birds under glass and parasols stuffed in ginger jars. His poor fairy child would have a seizure when she woke to all of this.
He laid her on the bed and stopped himself from climbing in after her. He took a deliberate step back and let Mary by. The woman named Sorcha looked lost on that monster of a bed. Harry knew he had no business being attracted to her. But she had breasts that made a man’s hands itch and hips that just called to his cock. And her scent. A common thing, sea air and cinnamon, but suddenly mesmerizing. So uniquely her that he wanted to bend over and sip it.
He could actually see the scene in his head. He could hear her gasps of pleasure, feel her long, delicate fingers trailing down his naked skin. Smell the sweat on her skin as he drove into her.
“Good God, Harry,” his grandmother snapped, smacking her cane against the back of his knees. “Snap out of it.”
The sting of the cane was quite adequate to deal with an errant daydream. Harry came back to attention and backed farther away.
“Go apologize to Gwyneth before she leaves,” Gran suggested.
Harry looked over to see not condemnation, which he’d suspected, but sympathy. Did she understand? Could she explain it to him? He dragged a hand through his hair and closed his eyes. He struggled hard for his legendary control.
“What’s happening?” he demanded. But only to himself.
His grandmother heard anyway. “You’re facing the unexplainable,” she said, her voice more gentle than he thought he’d ever heard. “Don’t be alone with her. Not for a moment. Not until we know exactly what brought her here.”
He pointed a shaking finger at her. “I love you, Gran. But do not mistake that for complicity. She’s not one of your fairies. She’s a confused girl, and she’s going home as soon as she’s well enough. Do you understand?”
“More than you think,” she said with a smile, and turned her wheelchair around.
Harry stood in the door of the bedroom watching her go and couldn’t think how to answer. Finally he realized he had no choice but to intercept Gwyneth before she left. He had to explain what had just happened.
He had to try to explain, anyway. That was if somebody could explain it to him first.
It was time to ease the storm. Darragh, who held clouds in his hands and set loose the lightning, was tired of being cold. Storms were a different thing altogether in this land of mortals. Not something of majesty and power, but a burning, stinging misery that did nothing to help the earth. And no matter how angry and frustrated a fairy was, he was not allowed to injure the earth. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was cold and wet and shivering.
So he calmed the clouds and the wind. Then, for good measure, he opened the bright metal door of the automobile he’d seen the beautiful woman wield and slipped inside the back. He’d seen automobiles, of course. He’d always been fascinated by them, sleek beasts that had all the benefits of a horse without the attitude. But he’d never actually been inside one. The seats were soft as doeskin and the air warm. It would be so easy to sleep here. So much more comfortable than waiting outside that great pile of stones for Sorcha to reappear.
She was his way to the Dearann Stone. She was the key. And after he’d gone to all that trouble to follow her across the gates into this living hell, he wasn’t going to lose her.
He might have slept a little; he wasn’t sure. Before he realized it, one of the doors opened, and he saw gleaming blond hair over the back of the seat.
“Great, hateful cow,” she snarled as she climbed in. “‘Don’t hurt the fairies. Don’t confuse the trespassers.’ As if it weren’t patently obvious that girl is nothing but an escaped lunatic. Who could ever see her perched on a bloody flower?”
She threw some kind of satchel over the seat and hit Darragh square on the head. He almost yelled at her. But then he caught a whiff of her scent, a brisk, sharp tang that was new to him. She was still muttering as she fiddled with something up there. Darragh thought it might just be worth his while to see what she would do. She certainly didn’t seem to like Sorcha. She might just like to meet somebody who felt the same way.
He would wait a bit and see. And in the process get a ride in this marvelous creation.
“Gwyneth’s a bit angry,” Harry admitted. The faint handprint that could still be seen on his cheek said as much.
His grandmother smiled, but she didn’t look happy. “And you’re surprised, are you, Harry? After that display in the bedroom, I’m surprised she didn’t heave a chair at you.”
They were sitting down to dinner in the small dining room, small being a relative term. This room was decorated in just as many trees as the other, just not as tall, and with a few structures painted in the corners that looked for all the world like something from a Disney movie. He hated it here. He couldn’t stay away.
“I’m afraid I’ve been under a bit of stress lately,” he said, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. “Work and all.”
“Not to mention a beautiful woman who sets off your libido like Guy Fawkes rockets dropping into your lap.”
He was already shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain it. I already told Gwyneth that.”
His grandmother snorted. “I’m sure she understood.”
He couldn’t help a wry grin. “Would you?”
“Absolutely not. If your grandfather had tried something like that, he would have had to wear a hat to hide the lumps. I’m sure it was just insult to injury that she had to admit she thought a man flew over her car.”
“Jumped. He jumped.”
“That’s a Jaguar coupe, Harry. One does not jump over a Jaguar coupe. She sounded as fascinated with him as you are with little Sorcha.”
“I am not—”
“That’s what Gwyneth said. But she was awfully flushed when she said it. When Sorcha wakes, we’ll have to ask her if she brought along any friends when she came over.”
“Came over from where?” he demanded. “Liverpool?”
His grandmother just smiled and dipped into her soup. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from that worthless physician.”
“Just that he has other priorities before coming out to the big house for a cold.”
Grandmother shook her head. “It’s not a cold, Harry. At least not one the likes of which I’ve ever seen. Mary is worried for her.”
“Then we should get her to the hospital.”
“No.” She shook her head again, focused on her spoon. “They’d kill her for sure.”
Harry wasn’t sure how much more he could take of this. “Please,” he begged. “Don’t put that girl’s life at risk because you want to play fairies.”
If she could have, his grandmother would have surged to her feet. Her color was high, and her eyes glittered. “I know it’s been a disappointment to you that the estate has suffered. I know you would do anything before admitting that your parents, or indeed your grandfather, could have been right. It would negate every iota of logic you’ve held on to for your whole life like words from the Bible. And I know it’s far more comforting to think of your grandmother as a charmingly eccentric recluse with a penchant for fanciful stories. But I’m afraid you’re about to be surprised, Harry. And if you can’t keep an open mind, you could very well be shattered against the walls of your logic.”
“She is not—”
“Pretending. She is not pretending. You’ve certainly seen enough of those to tell the difference. And my instincts say that the young blond gentleman dressed like Robin Hood who went sailing over Gwyneth’s car was not pretending, either.”
“Oh, no,” Harry heard from the doorway. “Blond, you said?”
Harry leapt to his feet. Sorcha was standing in the doorway, Mary right behind her.
“What are you doing out of bed?” he demanded, stepping up.
He pulled himself to a halt when she walked into the room. She looked perfectly fine. A little wan, slow to move, but awake. Alert. Smiling. “I am well, thank you,” she said with a look behind her. “Thanks to Mary’s help and the bean tighe’s herbs, I…oh…oh, my…”
Harry instinctively looked behind him, but her focus was on the walls. Up to the ceiling, where the recessed lighting twinkled like stars. She stood stock still a foot inside the door, and there were tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Goddess, it looks just like home.”
“You think so?” Gran asked.
Sorcha turned her attention to the old woman and smiled, a couple of tears slipping down her cheeks. “Ah, I do, so,” she said. “It’s the small hall, then, isn’t it? The wee fairies reside here where they can’t be all over trampled. See them? Up there in the ceiling, where they can flit and flirt with each other? The trees are a bit different is all, and the mountains. Ours are softer, gentler. Sure, aren’t these broad-shouldered and sharp?”
It was all Harry could do not to throttle her. “Stop it,” he commanded.
She didn’t seem to hear him. “Oh, mother, I miss it so. But how did you do it? How did you know?”
“My grandfather described it,” Gran said, her own head back to take in the view. “My husband painted it.”
The two women were beaming at each other. Harry wanted to break something with his fists.
“Are you sure you’re well, child?” Gran asked her. “Mary?”
Mary smiled and took her regular seat. “Wish I had me some of them herbs. She was six inches from dead, I’d swear it on my mother. Then, poof! Up she sits and apologizes for the fuss.”
“I don’t want to be a bother,” the girl said.
Harry saw new shadows under her eyes and wondered if that was from whatever she’d been through for the last four hours. He was not going to worry about her. He was just not.
“You said something about the blond man?” he asked.
She took her time in answering. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the tops of those trees. Harry wished like hell he knew why. Then maybe he’d know why he couldn’t, either.
“Oh, aye.” Finally she faced him. “I heard you mention him.”
“You know him?” Grandmother asked.
“What color was his raiment?” Sorcha asked. “Can you tell me?”
“Gray,” Harry said, even knowing he shouldn’t. “Silver-gray, Gwyneth said.”
Sorcha seemed to deflate. “Then he’s followed me over. Ah, this is fierce bad.”
“He? He who?”
“Oh, I’m that sorry. You don’t know. Darragh, son of Bran. He is the storm keeper, and he is beautiful. He has dark, dark eyes, and isn’t his hair the exact shade of moonlight?”
“That sounds just about how Gwyneth described him,” he said. “Why is it bad?”
She shook her head. “Because he’ll be looking for the Stone, too, so. And he won’t want good things for it. He’ll want to steal it away with him. He was shamed, you see, for helping my sister Orla in trying to take the throne. The queen exiled him. He must think this will get him back. Or find him a place with the Dubhlainn Sidhe.”
“You love him,” Gran suddenly spoke up.
Sorcha smiled at her and shook her head. “Loved,” she said. “A sad state of affairs altogether, for wasn’t he my sister Nuala’s intended consort? When he was replaced by the mortal she wed, he sought his own way to power. And in doing so, caused my own exile here.” She sighed, looking so sad. “And now it’s his enemy I must be. For I must find the Stone first.”
“Stone?” Gran asked. “What stone?”
“The Dearann Stone. A rare, bright stone of perfect clarity that holds the female power of faerie in its depths.”
“The Fairy Diamond?”
“Gran…”
“You know it, too?”
“Of course I do, girl. It’s right upstairs.”
Gwyneth parked the car in a lot alongside the York Minster Hotel, where she was to meet a partner in a futures trading firm who was interested in her. She wasn’t in the mood for the meeting anymore. She was still trying her best to overcome the day she’d already had. With trembling fingers, she reached up to move the rearview mirror, so she could get a look at her hair. Instead, she saw a face.
Not her own. A man’s, peeking over the seat behind her.
She shrieked.
“Ah, now, don’t do that,” a soft voice whispered in her ear. A lovely voice. A voice that made her want to smile and dance.
And how bloody absurd was that?
“How did you get in the car?” she demanded, slipping the keys out, and preparing to open the door and run like hell. She must have some kind of weapon at hand. Maybe the keys, right to the eyes. She’d seen it once on the telly.
“I’ve been here all along, lass,” he said with a sparkling smile. “I just didn’t let you see me till now.”
Gwyneth twisted around so suddenly that she was sure she dislocated at least one vertebra. “You’re the one!” she accused. “You jumped over my car!”
She should be screaming at him to get out, screaming to any passerby for help. One look in his otherworldly face stopped her. His eyes were deep, gray like storm clouds over the Atlantic. His face was as fine as a sculpture, pale and honed and aristocratic. His smile was…oh, bloody hell. His smile was enough to make a sensible girl slide right off her soft leather Jaguar seat.
“Sure, there was no jumping involved,” he said. “I was fascinated by your machine and what did you do but almost run me over with the beast? Well, a fairy has no choice but to take flight at such a time.” Reaching out an elegant hand, he brushed her English blond hair back from where it swung in her eyes and smiled that same heart-stopping smile at her. “But now I’m thinkin’ I’d much rather investigate its owner. What else on your mortal realm smells as fine as you do?”
As lithely as a dancer, he lifted himself from the backseat and took her face in his smooth, impossibly gentle hands. Gwyneth stared at him, frozen in place. Odd places on her body began to hum, and she was smiling at him even as she thought she should be running down the street in pursuit of the last dredges of her sanity.
She was engaged.
She was paralyzed. She was about to let a complete stranger kiss her in the middle of a parking lot, and she couldn’t remember how to care. Oh, bloody hell.