The O'Madden: A Novella (The Celtic Legends Series)

  THE O’MADDEN

  Lisa Ann Verge

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  CAN LOVE CHANGE DESTINY?

  Bound by a family curse, Maeve journeys to the Samhain fires of a distant village for one purpose alone: To conceive a child with a nameless stranger. The gentle giant who catches her eye proves a passionate lover. But when moonlight gives way to dawn, Maeve has no choice but to leave him behind. For the strong Irishman she’d spent the night loving is now the one man she can never have.

  One

  Ireland, the Year of Our Lord 1370

  The time had come to find a lover.

  Maeve pulled her cloak closed as she reached the height of the hill. A bonfire snapped in the clearing and hazed smoke into the sky. She lingered in the shelter of the woods, searching the faces of the villagers who clasped hands and raced in drunken circles around the All Hallows’ Eve fire. A girl screeched across Maeve’s path, her fair hair streaming, chased by a young man who seized her by the waist and sent her skirts flying.

  “Glenna,” Maeve whispered to the woman beside her. “I must have been daft to come here, to think of doing this.”

  The fairy-woman sank her walking stick into the earth and clasped gnarled hands over the hilt. “It was your choice.”

  “I’m not putting the blame on you. But look at them.” Maeve frowned at the young men jostling in the crowd, vying to be the next to leap through the fires. “A full month’s spinning says there isn’t one of them older than five-and-ten.”

  “A young man’s passion flares then dies just as quickly, but it’ll get the job done nonetheless.” The old woman’s face collapsed into folds of humor. “Isn’t that what you wanted from this night?”

  “This is no matter for teasing. I’m nigh five-and-twenty, an old woman in their eyes. I’ll be invisible to all of them.”

  “Be patient, my Maeve. The evening has just begun, and you’ve not yet seen the whole herd. Soon the youngest of them will be paired off and snoring somewhere in the bracken.” Glenna leaned into the stick and rubbed the ache of her back. “As will you, daughter of my heart, as will you.”

  Heat crept up Maeve’s cheeks. Her turnip-gourd lantern banged against her knee as she turned away from Glenna’s side. She walked the line between the shadows and the light, not knowing which nauseated her more: the curious, hungry glances cast toward her, or the throaty laughter rising here and there from the woods. She would know both before the night was through.

  So it had come to this, she thought, sweeping her cloak out of the way as another couple hurtled past her. Here she was searching for a mate by the light of a foreign village’s All Hallows’ Eve fire. She certainly wouldn’t be getting the tender loving she’d imagined in her foolish youth. Tonight, in the embrace of one of those red-cheeked boys, she’d get no slow, patient tutoring. She’d be lucky if she managed to lure him far enough away from the fires for a bit of privacy before he hiked up her skirts and had his way with her.

  Things could be worse.

  She could have been forced into a marriage to an old man, or a hated one, or an enemy. She was old enough to know that few women realize the full of their romantic dreams. The only thing that made her different was the mantle of duty that lay upon her shoulders.

  So she would choose one of these boys. She would lie with a stranger this night. At least the deed would be quick and done. At least, she thought, scanning the crowd, she had the power of choice.

  She took a closer look at her options from the protection of her hood. Ashes from the bonfire drifted down like black snowflakes. There were so many young faces. Such high-pitched giddy laughter, like the giggles of children being tickled too much. A fire-leaper hurled through the flames, collapsed into a ball and tumbled across the ground. A flock of women descended upon the boy to quench the fire with their skirts.

  Then Maeve saw him.

  A blond giant of a man stood at the outer edge of the light, wearing a well-fitting tunic and a belt of studded leather, clearly no soft-cheeked boy. Bristle darkened the line of his jaw. She watched him as he made some sidelong comment to his companion and then raked his hand through his long hair. Hooking a thumb under his belt, he laughed at his companion’s response.

  She could not hear his laughter across the blaze of the flames, but she sensed the vibrations as if his chest were pressed against her own. Beneath the cover of her cloak she ran a hand down her belly, down to the drape of her belt across her hips. An odd sensation spiraled in her abdomen, a slumbering, tingling awareness.

  A branch snapped behind her as Glenna leaned in, bringing with her the smell of crushed greenery and wildflowers from years of making the herb-potions of her livelihood.

  Glenna murmured, “Now there’s a fine-looking man.”

  Maeve watched as the giant pulled a cork out of an ale-bladder. “Do you know him?”

  “He’s not from Birr or anywhere close. I’d remember such a sight as that.” Glenna leaned forward and squinted toward him. “A traveler, by the look of those boots. Maybe he’s one of the pilgrims sleeping up at the monastery tonight.’’

  A traveler. A tall, strong-armed, barrel-chested stranger. Here today, gone tomorrow.

  Perfect.

  Maeve couldn’t stop looking at his face, at the easy drift of a smile across his lips, at the humor in his eye as he watched the antics of the villagers. “That man is good Irish stock, no doubt of that.”

  “There’s no knowing the truth until you hear the Gaelic coming from his mouth.” Glenna tugged the tail of Maeve’s hood until the cloth crumpled onto Maeve’s shoulders. “Go on now. Do you think a man like that will be standing around the fires without a woman for long?”

  Glenna lodged her walking stick between Maeve’s shoulder blades. Maeve stumbled forward. An uncertain shame rippled over her as the light fell upon her face. She’d traveled far from her own home for this. She’d spent months thinking about it, planning it, deciding it. Yet with all her careful plans, she’d always skipped over this part in her mind— hoping that when the time came, she’d just somehow know what to do to entice a man to her side.

  Now she stood as frozen as a statue on a nook in the church. Maeve knew she wasn’t hard to look at, but she’d never used her face or her figure in such a way as she needed to use it now. Even the finest-honed bow and the sharpest arrows were useless in the hands of the innocent, the untrained.

  The walking stick wedged between her shoulders again, and she found herself nudged into the madness. The fire breathed its own hot wind, lifted the ends of her hair and swept the dark strands across her face. He was just a man, she told herself. Finer of figure and face than she’d ever dreamed of, when she’d dared to dream of such things. And he knew nothing of her, nothing of her secrets, and nothing of the significance of this act they would commit tonight. Here, for the first time in all her life— and probably for the last—she could be Maeve the woman. And nothing more.

  She let the power of that knowledge suffuse her. She willed the strength, and as she did, his brow furrowed as if he sensed her watchfulness. He cast his gaze around the clearing. Despite the curtain of ashes raining between them, despite the shimmer of heat and the dart of excited young bodies, despite the roar and cackle of the fire and the shriek of voices, their gazes met and locked.

  That sleepy swirling in her abdomen tightened to a fist. For a moment nothing else existed—not the dry rustle of late autumn leave
s in the trees, not the villagers around them, nothing but the fierce intensity of their silent communion and a strange sort of yearning which made her throat go dry. Suddenly she understood why the priests turned a blind eye to the doings on the hills of Ireland on All Hallows’ Eve. It was an ancient, pagan ceremony, full of a licentiousness that the people dared not confess come Sunday, but there was power here. It was an evening, so Glenna told her, when the veils between this world and the Otherworld thinned to mist.

  The man nudged the ale-bladder into his companion’s arms. There was no hiding the power of his stride as he made his way through the heat and the throng. Excitement set her body trembling. The man was all muscle swelling beneath the tight sleeves of his tunic and the wool of his hose. She was not ignorant of male beauty. She’d seen many men sweating in their braies in the fields in the heat of summer, their naked backs slick and gleaming with sweat. But none so tall, none so straight-backed, none as lean as this man slowing to a stop before her.

  He bore a man’s face, well-used. His nose sloped crooked, as if he’d broken it more than once. A scar cut a path through one brow and another through the stubble on his chin. Blue eyes gleamed at her. The skin around them crinkled as he disarmed her with a smile as boyish as that of any of the young men hurtling through the fire.

  “I was just warned,” the giant rumbled, “about creatures like you.”

  Her skin tingled, for he had a deep voice that brought to mind lazy mornings and entwined limbs.

  “Beware of fairy-women,” he said, capturing a tress of her hair risen aloft by the wind. “On this night, they slip between the veils to bewitch human men.”

  His words brought a flush of pleasure to cheeks, a flush that made her feel as foolish as someone half her age. This was a common enough thing to say on this night. Fairy-women were said to be beautiful, lissome creatures, and she supposed many a young man used that knowledge to find his way into a girl’s good graces. Yet she felt her smile widen anyway. The words may be common, but she’d never heard the likes of them before.

  “You had to be warned?” Her voice rushed husky through her throat. “I thought every man in Ireland would know such a thing.”

  “Where I come from, this night is for mischief, not fires like this in the midnight woods.” He stretched her hair across the back of his hand and then let it slip out of his grip like unfurling silk. “It’s a night for young masked men to hurl themselves through the dark streets and frighten any who dare to linger about.”

  “We’ll have enough of that, too.” She tilted her head, as she’d seen a dozen young women do when flirting with their men. “You’ve no fires where you come from?”

  “None like this one.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to ask what strange part of Ireland he came from that didn’t celebrate All Hallows’ Eve with fires—and then she stopped herself. She didn’t really want to know whence he came. He spoke a fine Irish Gaelic, not with the musical lilt of her own clan, but a true, easy Irish nonetheless. In the end, she supposed it would be best that they know as little about one another as possible.

  She swung up the hollowed-out turnip lantern she clutched by a leather thong. “Did no one give you a lantern?”

  “Who needs a lantern with that moon and this fire?”

  “You’ll need it to ward off the dead who also walk this night.”

  “I’ll share yours.”

  The air she sucked into her lungs rushed tingling through her body. “Then it’s a bit of luck for you that you found me.”

  “I was told there’s magic in this night, and now I know it’s true.”

  Her lips trembled into a smile. “Don’t you have a tongue full of pretty words.”

  “What’s closest to the heart is closest to the lips.”

  “Aye,” she mused, “and ale-talk gets weaker with the night air.”

  “You wound me, woman.” He clutched his breast with a work-hardened hand. “Haven’t you struck me enough with your beauty?”

  “Beware the love at first sight which happens in the twilight.”

  “Life would be a boring thing,” he said, “if a man took such care.”

  Then he thrust his hand past her cheek and into the fall of her hair, and she reeled with the feel of those work-hardened hands curling against her scalp. He smelled of wood smoke and sweet ale, the warm scents of a man’s hard body. She suddenly found it difficult to breathe. Under the sight of his laughing eyes, she wondered if maybe what they said was true, that a man like this could make a woman forget herself, forget duty and obligations and the power of ancient curses.

  His fingers brushed the nape of her neck. “As thick and black as a cloud of soot. Be you fairy or not, it’s good to find a woman here who doesn’t look like she just put away her teething-blocks.”

  “I could say the same for a man,” she said, “who doesn’t look like he just stood up from making mud-castles.”

  His smile stretched warm. “What’s your name, my beauty?”

  Her name stuck in her throat like a chicken bone. “My name,” she stuttered around the lump, “is Maire.”

  She met those blue eyes as a fair brow lifted over one of them. His lips curled in a knowing sort of smile.

  “Well, Maire,” he said, placing an emphasis on her name that left no doubt that he didn’t believe her, “maybe you’ll tell me why you came to the fires this night.”

  His fingers wove magic along the nape of her neck. With every brush, that strange sensation in her abdomen twisted tighter, reminding her exactly why she’d come here— to submit herself to the physical power of this giant of a man.

  To give her body over entirely.

  Though she opened her mouth, she couldn’t say the words. She couldn’t look into those blue eyes and let the man know that she was willing to lie under him as freely as any laundress at fair-time. The words wouldn’t come— she did not know them. Glenna must be cackling from the shadows now, seeing her as wordless as old Sean who had lost his tongue to English cruelty.

  She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but his lips silenced her.

  Shock bolted through her. He tightened his fingers in her hair to fix her in place under his kiss. The turnip-lantern slipped out of her hand and tumbled to the ground. The stubble of his jaw razed her cheek, her chin—a caress both gentle and rough, like the lick of a cat’s tongue. Every bone in her body softened. She swayed into the wall of a chest so wide and so strong a woman could lay a world full of troubles on it and he’d never feel the weight. He tasted of fresh yeasty ale. His skin smelled of salt-sea breezes and exotic spices. Cinnamon. Ginger.

  As soon as it began, it was over. The world spun as the hot breath of the Samhain fires coursed between them.

  “You have lips of milk and honey, little Maire.” He traced the curve of her lower lip with a callused thumb. “Better to have silence than to curdle the silence with half-truths.”

  Her lips swelled as tender as a bruise. His blue gaze roamed over her face. She felt as translucent as the waters of the Nenagh stream, which gave no cover to the roll and clash of the pebbles on the river-bottom.

  He loosened his grip in her hair. “The tale says I’ve now imprisoned myself with a fairy’s kiss. I’m lost to all my kith and kin.” He nudged her cloak aside, curled his hand around her arm, and then slid his fingers between her own. “They say the Otherworld is full of youthful pleasures. A place where time stops. A place where a man and a woman can live a lifetime in a day. If you’ll have me, lass, I’ll go there with you willingly.”

  He waited and watched. She felt as if she stood waist-deep in a river during spring flood, when the first wave of mountain water gushed down from the hillside, as if her feet had been swept out from under her and she was being buoyed along in a current with no hope of catching a branch or touching the bottom. Her body coursed with a roiling brew of fear and excitement, with the giddy exultation of being pushed along in the strong hands of a greater power.

 
; She never imagined it would be as simple as this.

  She tightened her fingers over his and then swept up the turnip-gourd with her free hand. She swiveled away from the light and headed toward the shadows of the thin woods, past Glenna’s silent figure, as still and as solid as an oak.

  Away from the blast of the fire, the forest floor crackled beneath her feet. She tugged the giant in her wake as she wound her way through the trees. His hand, thick-palmed, tough with many a day’s honest labor, lay hot on hers. Soon she’d feel those hands on places no man had ever touched. Muddled thoughts of forbidden bedtime fantasies set her breath hitching in her throat.

  Here at last she could set that secret part of herself free. In these woods redolent of oak-spice she’d know the love-secrets which glowed on the faces of the village girls the morning after Samhain. She’d finally feel the touch of a man who didn’t look up at her and then quickly look down in deference. In this moment in time with this looming hulk of a stranger, she would know a taste of paradise.

  Strangely, she had no fear. It had slipped away the moment she’d looked into his honest face. No shiftless tinker, this one. No foul-breathed laggard. The easy smile on those rugged features spoke of a man with a sense of humor, a man who knew and accepted the frailties of humanity and even admitted a few of his own. God’s gift, he was. Lord knew she’d deserved one for the fate she’d been doomed with.

  She led him over the rib of the hill where the voices and the laughter of the Samhain fire dimmed, right to an ancient felled oak. Ivy seeped from the decaying log where lightning had split it open. Here, the lush grass lay like fairy-hair, sheened by the moonlight in silver. When she and Glenna had arrived in this village yesterday, Maeve had spent a good hour before dusk roaming these hills. She’d discovered this isolated, private place, and in the detailed way she’d planned this whole evening, she’d decided that it would happen here. She had wondered if she would actually make it this far, or if her mate would press her down behind the nearest gorse bush and have done with it. She told herself it didn’t matter so long as the deed was done.