The Falcon's Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

awhile.”
    Leaking an exasperated sigh, Nigel shook his head and stalked from the room, his bare feet slapping the floor-boards. He grumbled a curt command that the others follow, but James hung back.
    “Are you sure, Thea?” he asked, a look of genuine concern in his violet eyes. “I shall stay with you if you like. I shan’t sleep again now in any case.”
    “No, James,” Thea responded, stirring the fire to life in the grate. “I’ll be fine. Run on and leave it to me.” She went to him and, under the guise of a kiss on the cheek whispered, “We’d best not make too much of this. I’ll settle her down. Oh, and thank you.”
    “For what?”
    “For not calling me Theodosia.”
    “You heard that, did you?”
    “I did, and I bring it up only to let you know that arguing the point is useless—just in case they’d convinced you.”
    “Fat chance, little sister.”
    “Good! Now, go back to bed, and let me see if I can calm her. And if you happen to see Ros Drumcondra lurking about, kindly tell him he’s caused quite enough trouble for one night, since he isn’t supposed to be abroad until the solstice. Now, shoo!”
    James quit the chamber then, with a lopsided smile that had always put Thea at her ease, and she turned back to Annie.
    “I don’t care what ya say, miss,” exclaimed the maid, “I seen ’im. I did , and he weren’t no pigment o’ my imagination, neither.”
    “You saw him, Annie,” Thea corrected her, “and he wasn’t a ‘pigment,’ but a figment of your imagination.”
    “Yes . . . no . . . you’re mixin’ me all up now!”
    “Yes, well, let us leave that, and talk of pleasant things for a bit. Then, when you’ve calmed, we shall both go back to sleep.” Inspiration struck. “I know!” she said. “There’s a decanter of sherry—at least I think it’s sherry—in my chamber. What say we both have a glass?”
    “Oh, no, miss! I couldn’t.”
    “Nonsense,” Thea argued, padding toward the door. “I’ll just be a minute. Oh, now, what a face! Don’t worry, I shan’t get you foxed. A little spirits will be just the thing to relax you, so you can fall back to sleep.”
    “I don’t think I’m ever goin’ ta sleep another wink in this horrid ol’ house!” the maid grumbled in a low mutter.
    The decanter was on a drop leaf table beside the door in Thea’s chamber—left there no doubt as a remedy for chill rather than a welcoming gift, she surmised. The fire had nearly gone out, and but for the opalescent shimmer the snow cast through the window, the room was in bleak semidarkness.
    Thea took up the pewter salver that held the decanter and glasses, and shivered at the touch of the cold metal in her hands. Turning back, she pulled up short, trembling from head to toe as waves of crippling chills knitted the bones rigid in her spine. She staggered back a pace. There, in the shadows, stood the misty image of a towering black Irish warrior, his raven-colored hair worn long in stark juxtapositionto his bronzed, clean-shaven face. He wore wide-top turned-down boots over dun-colored leggings that left nothing to the imagination in the region of his well-turned thighs. A mole-colored leather jerkin girded his torso. His muscular arms were bare but for the leather caps on his jerkin and the studded leather gauntlets beneath a cloak made of the pelts of a short-haired animal that was slung over his left shoulder and fastened with a silver brooch. The look in his eyes riveted her like cannon fire. Those eyes were deep set and the color of tarnished copper flecked with gold, like the eyes of a wolf bearing down upon her in the eerie light filtering through the window. They held her relentlessly.
    Shocked though she was by his sudden appearance, come so soon after Nigel’s chilling account of the man, it was the scandalous firestorm those seductive eyes set loose inside her that drained her senses. They stripped her naked. And to her horror, she let them. In stark terror she