“You shame me, woman.”
Orla didn’t even bother to look away from the view out the window. “You infuriate me, lordling.”
She turned at last.
He stood just inside the doorway, disheveled and a bit bloody, his temper uncertain. Orla didn’t care. She’d just spent her time inspecting his house again, and her impression had changed not a whit. There had never been a child in this man’s home, and of a certainty no girl of any kind. There were two bedrooms, and both were as spartan as a military camp. No dollies or blocks or toys to soften the edges of a solitary life. No scrawled pictures or sloppy notes of affection left by a child who might have once lived here. Who might, by the goddess, be invited to visit her own father.
He was alone.
Which elicited the question, who was this daughter Faolán spoke of? And where was she? What else did Orla not know about this husband of hers that might surprise her when she could least handle it?
For a moment she didn’t care. She could feel the heat of him no more than a foot from her. Her skin crawled with his proximity, and her mind sparked to life with the memories of him in her hands, of him inside her.
She wanted him. She yearned.
Goddess, she hated that word. She hated the feeling more. Aching and hollow-chested and impatient for the touch of his skin. For the taste of his mouth and the brush of his words against her ears: anxious words, impatient words, hungry words.
It took every ounce of strength she had, but she stood her ground at the window, her fingers splayed across the faintly uneven glass.
Faith, they didn’t even know how to blow glass in this place so the world outside wasn’t distorted and unreal. She should tell him that, right after she chastised him for allowing a melee to destroy the sanctity of the banquet.
“And I want you, as well,” he said, his voice strained.
But he moved no more than she did.
“Not till we have the first discussion of our marriage,” she said, finally giving in to the urge to rub at her forehead. “Oddly enough, I prefer to know the man whose cock I invite into me.”
There was a pause, filled to bursting with electricity. “An odd thing for the leannan sidhe to say.”
She closed her eyes at that. Ah, and didn’t he know just where to plunge the knife? “Indeed it is,” she said. “But then, I’m the leannan sidhe no longer, am I? I imagine this is part of learning my new gifts.”
“I am no gift.”
She actually laughed, even though it was a sore sound. “Ah, husband, how can a woman argue with such perfect logic?”
She heard him shuffle a bit. “You frightened me,” was all he said, but it forced her to turn from the haven of the night.
“I frightened you?”
She saw the strain in his eyes and knew he spoke the truth. “Well, wasn’t that you wading right into a mass of the biggest, most unpleasant hurlers in the fairy kingdom?” he demanded,
She still didn’t understand. “And?”
“And they could have hurt you!”
Orla realized that she was gaping. “You really…”
Had feared for her. Something tiny and insubstantial broke loose in her chest.
“It never occurred to me that I might frighten you, husband. Sure, haven’t I broken up my share of fairy fights in my time? Even a mortal fight or two, for you can imagine how surly they can get with a bit of competition for the leannan sidhe. I was more distressed that those men disrespected your king so much.”
Now Liam seemed confused. “Disrespected him?”
Orla tilted her head, as if it could help her comprehend him better. “Aye, husband. Disrespected. How dare they destroy the banquet? Faith, the bard had not even sung yet.”
Oddly enough, that was what broke through the tension on her husband’s face. “By Lugh’s light, woman,” he said with a laugh. “What has the bard to say that’s better entertainment than a good fight in the hall?”
She knew she was staring again. “Then this happens all the time?”
He shrugged. “Actually, it took longer tonight. Probably in deference to the king’s welcoming of his new niece.”
She couldn’t seem to manage more than a shake of her head. “Ah, well, no wonder the women here all look as if they could do with a good meal, if they never make it through one uninterrupted.”
“Sure, they don’t mind. It’s only the crockery that’s annoying, as don’t they have to rebake it again the next day?”
“And this happens every night?”
“As close as makes no difference.”
Orla shook her head, amused. “Well, then, it seems I’ll be knocking more heads here than I thought.”
Immediately his good mood was gone. “That, you won’t. Not when I’m there to protect you.”
“Husband,” she said, her voice patient. “I appreciate the help and all, but I’m perfectly capable of caring for myself. After all, haven’t I taught the women battle tactics for years?” She stopped, considering, and smiled for him, finally seeing a way out of her loneliness. “There’s none here to teach the women, is there? I could help.”
“Teach the women what?”
“Well, combat, of course. Sure, didn’t I lead the archers in the late war? Haven’t I strapped on the shields and wielded the great sidhe sword when needed? I’ll never claim domestic skills, husband. But by the right hand of Oisín, I can teach war.”
For some reason, that riled him even more. Faith, his face was all but brick-red. “You’ll do no such thing! You think we’d allow our women to set so much as a foot on the field of battle? Are you mad, woman?”
“And if the men are off on the battlefield, who is it, then, that protects the homes?”
“If the battle goes well, there’s no need.”
She laughed at him. She couldn’t help it. “And how often has that happened?”
She saw it then, a flash of something in those night-dark eyes. Pain. Grief. Distress. But before she could say anything, he shook his head.
“Not while I live,” he said baldly.
Orla slammed a hand on her hip. “I made a vow to you,” she said. “It was to protect you as you protect me. I take no vow lightly, husband, or else what would I be doing here arguing with you over nothing?”
He actually waved off her words. “Ah, well, no one really believed that bit of nonsense. What woman would protect her husband, after all?”
Orla glared. “A Tuatha woman.”
“Well, you are no longer Tuatha, are you?”
“Why, yes, I am,” she retorted, unable to keep her eyes from his mouth. Faith, was arguing with him always this stimulating? Suddenly she was yearning again, and she hadn’t even gotten around to the daughter business. “I might now claim Dubhlainn citizenship, but I’ll be Tuatha till the day the West bids me come, and it wouldn’t do any good for you to be forgettin’ it. For aren’t you Tuatha, as well, as is the way of my people?”
His eyes had grown even darker, and he stepped closer to her, ratcheting up the heat between them. “And where about you do you see these people of yours?” he demanded, reaching out to wrap his hand into the hair at the base of her skull. “Do you see them here, woman? Do you hear their music in our halls or their voices in this house? This is my house, and in it, my word holds. My wishes, my command. And it’s an obedient wife that counts in my clan. A submissive wife. A wife who lives to please her husband—in everything.”
Orla knew her own eyes had darkened. Goddess, she loved the challenge of him. “Indeed, husband. Is that the way of it?”
She set her own body flush against his, so that the heat of her skin reached him. So that she could feel the hard angles and valleys of his flesh. So she could know the insistent prod of his cock against her belly.
And she smiled. “Is it?”
His fingers still tight in her hair, he bent his head toward her. “It is.”
She nodded, lifting her head. “Then what do we do,” she asked, “about this?”
And then she reached between them to take hold of his cock.
Ah, delight, all that hard, sleek arrogance in her hand. Her husband’s knees all but buckled.
“You…”
He could manage no more than that rasp, because she’d slipped right into his mind with her intent, and there she set her mouth hot and fast over his penis, her teeth nibbling at the soft, plum-shaped tip of it, her fingers wrapped around his sack until he dropped his head back in agony.
“Stop…”
Letting the images between them dissipate, she dropped to her knees and laughed. Tugged at his clothing until she pulled him free. Until she felt the trembling in his thighs that betrayed his effort to hold still before her. Until she could hear the harsh rasp of his breath as he fought for control.
“I don’t think I will,” she said, and settled her mouth over him.
Hot; he was so hot, sleek and long and hard, stone swathed in velvet, alive, twitching, seeking, as she licked and bit and sucked. Oh, she sucked, pulling at him as if drawing the very life force of him out through his rod. She gloried in the musk of him, in the salt of him, in the earth-solid weight of him.
She wrapped her long fingers around his balls and felt him shudder. She had him caught, right there in his window, victim to her ministrations, the scent of his sex rising around her, the urgency of his arousal inciting her.
“I’m not so sure it’s about pleasing my man,” she said, pulling back enough to run her tongue slowly up from the base of him to that delicious little ridge at the tip, “as it is about controlling him.”
His hands tightened in her hair. His voice escaped in a low moan. His head fell back again, and she could feel his knees all but fail. The climax was coming on him, rising in waves, robbing his breath and his voice and his control. And she smiled and took him deeper, as deep as she could, so she could feel him at the back of her throat and know he was helpless in her hands, ready to do anything, anything, to please her in return for what she was about to accept.
She closed her eyes and reveled in the rasp of his fingers against her scalp, in the just-painful pull of her hair, in the sounds and smells and sensations of him as he lost control, as he ground out a deep, surprised cry, as he gave her everything she wanted, there on her knees before him with him in her sway.
And when the pulsing stopped, she slowly let him loose, letting him remember at the end what she’d brought him with her mouth and hands and teeth, and she let him crumble before her onto his own knees.
“Don’t you ever…” His voice was husky, his eyes closed.
“Stop?” she asked, wrapping herself around him to kiss him.
She could feel his reluctant smile against her mouth. “Witch.”
And oddly enough, that was what she took to heart. Not his arguments or his commands or his accusations, but the almost gentle word she’d surprised out of him that sounded as close to an endearment as she’d heard from him.
“We haven’t finished this discussion,” he assured her, pulling her into his arms where they knelt face-to-face.
“Indeed we haven’t,” she acknowledged, laying her cheek against his chest to enjoy the drumbeat of his heart. “We haven’t even discussed this daughter business yet.”
He bent down and claimed her mouth with a kiss that left her dizzy for air. “Later,” he said. “Right now, I have a bit of tormenting to do myself.”
And he did. Oh, by the strong hand of Cúchulainn, he did.
By the time she awoke, he was gone. Orla stretched, savoring the lazy-cat feel of a morning after hours of exhausting, mind-altering sex. Sure, she’d known it before, in her life as leannan sidhe, those moments when it had all seemed enough. When the sight of a man lying shattered and limp and smiling in the heather had been enough to make her smile. Now, though, there was more….
Maybe it was just that this time she hadn’t needed to rely on magic for what had happened, only her natural appetites. She smiled. Maybe she’d just needed Liam the Protector.
Faith and the goddess, she thought, closing her eyes over the memory of what he’d done to her the night before. Sure I could get used to such a pastime. Such hands and words and the invasion of a cock that sure could challenge a girl’s courage.
She could still imagine him inside her, slamming into her, scouring her with sensation the likes of which she’d never known. He’d almost begged her pardon once. She’d shushed him and pulled him even deeper. And if she were any other being in the world of faerie, even herself only days ago, it could have been enough.
Unfortunately, now that she was no longer leannan sidhe, she suddenly realized that the sex, wonderful as it had been, was no longer enough. She needed him to offer more than his body. She needed his memories and his wishes and the sum of his days. She needed to know why it was he strapped on leather arm bracers and breastplate before slipping out into the predawn chill. She needed to know what Faolán had been talking about.
A daughter? How could such a hard, self-contained man ever cherish a daughter? Faith, in the heat of their own lovemaking, he hadn’t given her a word of love, even as a sop to urge her on. His own cries had been wrenched from him, as if they were the last thing he would have allowed. How could he nurture a little girl? Sure it was obvious no one else in this benighted clan would ever think to value her.
How could he imagine that his wife didn’t even need to know about the child? And how could he have left her this morning without giving her at least an idea of what she was supposed to do this day without him?
Ah, there it was again, that damnable sense of emptiness. That feeling that he’d taken a part of her with him when he’d crept out this morning. The wondering if he’d felt the same, or if he’d walked out with no more regret than the loss of sleep he’d suffered.
Just the thought was enough to take her breath. How could she bear to mark her days this way? Was this what her new life meant? Was this what she would face every morning for the rest of her days?
She gave herself a few selfish minutes to rub at her face with her hands and stare at an uninformative ceiling. Then, not knowing what else she could do, she rose and dressed. No matter what else, it wouldn’t do to have this crowd think her weak and wanting, especially if she was. She would just have to see about getting on with things.
It was to be that brown gown again. She was afraid sometimes it was all she would ever don, a color that reflected nothing, that gave her no definition or distinction, even in this half-colored world at the edge of the mountains.
No, she thought, straightening her shoulders, then wincing. Her shoulders were sore with all the straightening she’d done this past day. Would it be enough to make them think she was brave? she wondered. Would it convince them that she could face their disdain with indifference? Would it incite them to welcome?
Well, there was only one way to find out. It was time to step out into her day.
Accompanied by his small squad of four, Liam stalked the sharp ridges of the Reeks as he had almost every day of his adult life. It was his gift, his purpose. He was a protector. He led the other protectors in their mission. He would never fail his people in this duty.
He’d thought, once, that he was impervious to temptation or mistakes. But the crimson throb of the Coilin Stone had called to him with the seduction of a sly woman. It had promised him power and independence and success. It had brought him Orla, daughter of Mab, instead.
“Sure, don’t you think you want to save the scowls for the enemy?” Faolán asked.
“If I’m scowling, it’s at the liberties you thought to take with my wife last night,” Liam said as if it were true.
Fortunately Faolán laughed. “Ah, no, it can’t be jealous you are, can it? I can show you how to woo her, all right, if you’re unsure of yourself. And don’t we all think her worth the effort altogether?”
“You’ll think nothing or suffer my fist. She’s naught but a pain in the arse, and you know it.”
This time Faolán stopped right in the middle of the faint track along the bare mountain pass. “By the brave balls of Fionn mac Cumhaill, if you aren’t a feckin’ idiot for thinking that,” he said, shaking his head in awe. “Did you see her banging those heads together last night? I couldn’t take my eyes off her, and that’s the honest truth.”
“She shouldn’t have had to do any such thing,” Liam growled.
“Ah, but wasn’t it a thing of beauty when she did?”
It had been. Even Liam had to admit it, no matter that she’d sparked a fury the likes of which he couldn’t ever remember with her blithe progress through the thick of the fight, her back impossibly straight, her hair billowing out behind her like a battle pennant. The worst part had been the slavish looks of devotion her victims had turned on her before they’d slumped unconscious to the floor.
“They were ensorceled,” he snapped. “Wasn’t it the leannan sidhe they saw amongst them?”
Faolán frowned at him. “I saw no leannan sidhe in that hall, Liam. I saw a princess.”
Liam glared at him, furious that it was Faolán who spoke the truth.
“You’ll not say a word against that girl,” Flann said, he who’d fallen first the night before.
“Not say a word?” one of the other guards retorted. “Were you blind, as well as deaf, man? She committed heresy. She should be stoned—meanin’ no offense at all, Captain.”
“And why would any be taken?” Liam asked drily.
“Heresy?” Flann yelled. “It was poetry, sure, to watch her. I was honored to feel her gentle hand on my head.”
Liam all but growled as he whipped around on him. “And would you want your own wife to be buttin’ heads together like a palace guard?” he demanded.
Flann looked stunned. “Of course not,” he said. “But sure, isn’t she of a different sort altogether, with those heathenish Tuatha ways?” Turning, he shook a fist at his comrade. “I’m tellin’ you, you won’t say a word against her or you’ll feel my wrath.”
“You and what troop of griffins?” the guard demanded.
“Enough,” Liam commanded, raising his hand before the two of them set to brawling at the edge of a precipice. Faith, but it seemed there was no patience in the land anymore. The slightest excuse was enough to set the men off. And it had to be his wife, of all things.
“How could you speak ill of her?” Flann asked his outspoken comrade. “Wasn’t she a fair sight, along with all her people, when they went into battle with the fairy gold glinting off their breasts?”
“Ah, well, that’s true, then,” another of the guards agreed in a dreamy voice. “And did you see herself your wife at the head of the archers with her proud strong neck and lithe arm and all?”
Liam glowered. “She told you she was there, did she?”
Both men blinked at him. “Sure, didn’t you see her, man?” Flann demanded. “Isn’t that why you chose her for yourself?”
Chose her for himself? Liam almost choked. Faolán, the traitorous sod, laughed until he was bent over double. “Ah, faith, but this just gets better and better, doesn’t it? I don’t suppose you lads were after tellin’ the women of the village how magnificent our little Orla was at the head of battle, were you?”
The men exchanged bemused looks. “Why shouldn’t we, so?”
Faolán turned less amused eyes on Liam. “If it’s gentling her way into the clan you’re wanting, I’d go home now and help,” he said. “For it’s a certainty that not one of those women will forgive her the men’s interest.”
Liam dropped his head, furious. All he wanted to do was walk his route with the men of his unit alongside. All he wanted was to fulfill his task for his clan. Not babysit that she-devil he’d married.
Instantly his mind filled with what they’d done the night before. He could see the impish delight in her eyes as she’d looked up from the unspeakable pleasures she’d visited on him right there in front of the window. His cock stirred. Worse, his heart did.
“And don’t you owe it to her,” Faolán quietly asked as if he’d heard him, “after your behavior to her in front of the assembly? She didn’t deserve it, Liam, and so you know it.”
Liam met his friend eye-to-eye and knew he was right. He’d shamed both her and himself, and then left her to suffer the consequences. He’d known better than to leave her to the mercy of his people. Slinging his great sword over his shoulder, he spun on his heel and turned back.
“Can you tell me aught about this daughter it’s said he has?” Orla asked the little group of women.
She’d found them clustered in the square using the sun to help them see their work, weaving and knitting and mending the dinnerware back into shape. Their chatter had shut off like a water tap the minute she’d approached.
“That is for your husband to say,” Aifric, the daughter-in-law of the king, said without looking up from her loom.
Orla fought the urge to rub her forehead again. She’d been at this for most of the morning, giving greetings and getting raised eyebrows, asking questions and getting puzzles, asking help and getting cold shoulders. She’d even seen a fight break out over whether she had the right to step into a smithy to look at a small sword. She’d had enough entirely.
“All right, then,” she said, trying hard to sound friendly in the face of their hostility. “Would you mind if I sat with you a minute? I have to find my skills, so, and I can’t think better to learn from than you. Faith, your weaving would make the goddess weep with wonder.”
Her words gained her nothing. The women went back to their work as if she didn’t exist.
She couldn’t stand it anymore. “Do you all like my husband?” she demanded, fighting the urge to shred her plain brown robes in frustration.
Every head lifted. “Liam?” Aifric asked, eyes wide. “Who could not like Liam? We honor him. And sure, don’t we care for his house when he is away on the borders?”
Orla nodded. “And if you like him so much, why would you wish him ill?”
Outraged, the pleasantly plump young princess with a goddess’s hands at the loom, climbed to her feet. “How dare you say that to us? Who do you think you are?”
Orla managed to keep her voice even. “Ah, well, that’s the problem, then, isn’t it? I’m his wife. Whether any of us wants it—especially me—a queen and a king have so ordered it and two priests consecrated it. And so Liam is stuck with me. And the way I see it, those who love him here can either help him along to some peace and harmony, or make certain he lives the rest of his long life in misery for having a wife with no skills, no life and no idea of how to go on in his world to make his way easier.”
“Why don’t you just go back where you belong?” demanded a woman with wet clay on her fingers.
Orla straightened yet again, and made sure her eyes were as calm and placid as she could as she sadly shook her head. “Ah, I didn’t know…”
“Know what?”
“That this was a land where an oath holds no honor. It’s sad I am at that.”
Now all the women were on their feet. “How dare you say such a thing of the Dubhlainn Sidhe, Tuatha, when you stole our stone?” a woman demanded, pointing knitting needles at her.
“I say such a thing,” she said quietly, facing the older woman without apology, “because you have just asked me to break an oath held sacred in two worlds. Since no Tuatha in the history of the world would ever have thought to do such a thing, I find I’m fairly flummoxed by the idea of it.” She shook her head again, as if too perplexed to understand. “Faith, I’m not sure it’s something I’ll be after getting used to anytime soon.”
“I challenge you to say that to the menfolk,” an older, sterner woman snapped. “Sure, they’d break you in two like a stick.”
“And further disgrace their family names?” This time she didn’t have to pretend sadness. “Mayhap this isn’t a place I want to know, after all.”
And then, taking one of the greatest chances of her life, because she just didn’t know what else to do, she turned to walk away.
“You ensorceled my husband!” the knitter accused, and Orla heard real distress in the words.
She turned back and saw that the woman meant it. Worse, that it really hurt her.
“Ah, now, how could I?” she asked. “Didn’t you see my fingers when I came, the shame of having no stones? Didn’t you hear that because I allowed Liam the Protector to steal away our beloved Coilin Stone, I was stripped of my skills as leannan sidhe? I no longer have the power to ensorcel anything.”
“Then why is it that my husband hasn’t stopped talking about you since you knocked his head in the hall last night?”
Orla considered what the woman said. If it was true, it was unknown in her experience. In her world, what she’d done simply wasn’t that unusual.
“Could it be he just wasn’t used to seeing a woman exerting her rights?” she asked.
She got more than one bemused look.
“Your rights to do what?” Aifric asked.
Orla snorted unkindly. “My rights to finish my dinner in peace, if you must know. Just how long have that lot been making mice feet of your banquets now?”
The knitter shrugged. “Ah, sure, they’ve always been easy to rouse. It’s the warrior in them, like.”
“It has been getting worse,” another woman admitted.
Her compatriots glared at her.
The woman shrugged. “Sure, couldn’t we do with our dear Dearann Stone to soothe things a bit? It’s getting fair fractious these days, is all I’m sayin’.”
She was smiling, as if her words held no import. Orla saw the strain in her eyes, though. Faith, were things worse than the odd dinner brawl?
“Well, and whose fault is that, that we have no Dearann Stone?” the knitter demanded, glaring at Orla again.
“I’ll say this once, and then be done with it,” Orla said, already vastly weary of this line of thought. “No Tuatha de Dannan stole your stone. If we had, sure, wouldn’t we be wearing the bloody thing for all to see?”
Her vehemence seemed to surprise them a bit. The square was silent with resentment.
“Do the women often get caught in the middle of the dinner brawls?” she asked, instead, hoping they would follow her change of topic.
Oddly enough, they did. “It’s just a matter of getting free before the worst,” Aifric said. “Sure, they’d never hurt us.”
“Not intentionally,” another offered. “Sometimes, though, if you’re in the wrong place and all…”
Orla looked around at them and wondered whether they were ready for her in this place, after all. For sure, she wasn’t going to stop knocking heads together anytime soon.
“Well, then, don’t you think it’s something you might want to change, now? If nothing else, sure it’s a criminal waste of food.”
“And just how do you expect us to do that?”
Orla ignored the sudden acceleration of her heart. Could it be this easy? Would she find a purpose here?
“I know you heard it last night,” she said, “but my name is Orla of the Clan of the Tuatha. I’d be happy to tell you what I think. I’d just like to know who I’m after telling it to.”
Aifric, obviously the ringleader, turned to silently consult the others. The women kept silent, but they must have passed some kind of information, because she turned back.
“You know that I am Aifric,” she said. “Wife to Owain, heir to the king, and weaver to the Dubhlainn Sidhe.”
Orla smiled, trying hard not to betray the real relief she felt at this small gesture of welcome. “Greetings again, Aifric.”
“And I am Tullia,” the pretty, thin woman with the clay offered. “Consort to Flann of the Coimirceoiri and potter.”
Orla grinned. “Ah, so it’s you always tasked with replacing all the dinnerware, is it?”
The potter blushed hot. “Ah, no. Not all.”
“I give you greetings, Tullia.” Evidently none of the others were ready to make the same gesture, so Orla nodded, knowing she had to move on. “May I ask a question of you all, since I’m new to the land of the Dubhlainn Sidhe?”
It seemed Aifric had to consult her friends once more. Ah, Orla thought. Definitely a qualified acceptance.
In the end, they pointed her to the edge of a wall where one of the knitters sat. Orla accepted the invitation and settled herself on the warm stones.
“There truly aren’t any camorgie teams here?”
“Not for years upon years,” Tullia said, wiping her hands with a towel. “It has been deemed unwise.”
Orla nodded. She was beginning to see, indeed. “And which women on the council thought this?”
“Women on the council?” Aifric asked. “What women?”
Orla kept her outrage to herself. If her mother the queen had indeed known where the Dearann Stone was all along, she had a lot to answer for to these women, who had no feminine power to offset their men’s aggression. Sorcha had been sent to find the stone, but there was no guarantee she would succeed.
“You truly don’t know how the Dearann Stone went lost?” she asked.
Tullia shrugged. “Well, my Flann says that he heard it went missing during the last Realm War.”
“Realm War?” Orla asked. “We’ve fought no Realm War.”
“Ah, no, you wouldn’t. Isn’t it the task of the Dubhlainn Sidhe, then?”
“Some say the stone was spirited away for safekeeping, but that the keeper himself was lost before he could return her,” another woman offered.
“Our bards say it’s in the land of the mortals,” Orla said.
The woman nodded. “It seemed odd to us.”
This time Orla gifted them with a grin. “Much more believable to think a Tuatha spy had crept in and made off with it, I’d think.”
Aifric, at least, had the decency to give a chagrined smile. “More enjoyable, at least.”
Orla found herself grinning back at Aifric’s honesty. “Sad to say,” she said, “we weren’t smart enough to think of it.”
What this Tuatha did think was that even without the help of their Dearann Stone, the women of the Dubhlainn Sidhe could use a bit of power. And helping them might just earn her a stone.
“Would you let me help you till we can get the stone back?” she asked.
“How?” Aifric asked.
Orla looked around to find the women at least listening. “Well, sure, I could teach you how to do what I did last night.”
“You could not,” her husband said suddenly, and sent the gaggle of women into chaos.
Orla was almost amused. To a woman, they couldn’t decide whether to be frightened, outraged or titillated. Yes, she imagined, her husband had the same effect on women everywhere. Especially when he was clad in his leather arm bracers and breastplate, standing not a stone’s throw from where they sat.
“Greetings, husband,” she said, not bothering to get up. Ah, faith, he had legs on him. If only he hadn’t brought them here just now, when she finally had something to do. “Have all the enemies of your people been vanquished this quickly, or is the hurling practice merely over?”
She knew better, so. She could see the fury gathering in his dark eyes. Still, she had the feeling no one in this world ever pushed him except his friend Faolán. Certainly none of the women would think to challenge him, now, would they?
Certainly not these. They were all straightening dresses and patting hair, as if waiting to be asked to dance.
“What are you about, wife?” he demanded.
She gave him a languid look. “Why, trying to earn my stones, husband. What did you think I was doing?”
“Fomenting rebellion.” He held out his hand. “It’s time you came with me. We have a discussion that’s overdue.”
She raised an eyebrow but didn’t move. “Indeed. And here I was about to get to know the women of your village.”
“You need to get to know me first.”
That actually made her laugh. “And that, Aifric,” she said to the plump little weaver, “is a man for you. Haven’t I been after begging him to do just that since we met at the border? But it seems hurling and fighting are more important—until I offer to teach the women of the village some of my own skills.”
“Are you coming?” he demanded.
“Are you finally going to tell me about this daughter of yours?” she demanded right back.
“I told you—”
“That it’s not my business?” She shook her head. “Then you offer me nothing, husband. I’ll stay here with my friends.”
Her friends looked pitifully uncomfortable. Faith, she thought. I hope he relents, so I don’t put them in an untenable position. And oh, I hope I can hold out till he does. Her breath was getting short again.
“Fine,” he finally snapped. “I will tell you of my daughter. I’ll tell you of my favorite horse and the apple tree I raided as a child. Just come along. Now.”
Even though her legs were trembling after the chance she’d just taken, Orla gracefully rose to her feet and settled her brown dress around her. Then she gave the women a regal nod.
“It would please me to visit later, if I may,” she said. “I thank you for your gracious welcome.”
More than one of them blushed with the knowledge that they’d given her nothing of the sort. But Orla was building bridges this day, and she gave them each a huge smile before taking her husband’s hand and following him into his house.