Some Enchanted Waltz (19 page)

“I don’t know.” She burst forth with exasperation. “It’s just here, in my head.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “It’s a part of history, as real to me as the dinner was this evening. I cannot explain how I know these things.”

He was looking at her with the same frightened desperation she felt inside, the same stilted breathing came from his lips. “History, whose history?
The Tuatha an Danaan’s
history? Did they send you across time to warn me?”

Tara shrugged. She had no idea of what he was referring to.  

“No, don’t look at me so. I’m not mad.” Adrian insisted, with a frightening vehemence considering she’d not uttered a word of doubt regarding his mental state. “I’ve always honored the Tuath an Danaan, never failed to have the servants leave milk and food for your kind at the back door. I always speak of the fairies with respect, I’ve kept the ancient customs . . . the same as my mother and grandmother before me.”

Crap. He was about to go on about The Fairies again? Tara rolled her eyes. She glanced quickly at him and was taken aback by his sudden pallor. A fine mist coated his brow and he seemed to be a little shaky. “Adrian, are you feeling well?”

“Did you know that you are named after . . .” He continued in a detached tone, having dismissed her inquiry or didn’t hear it. “. . . The High Place of Tara, a sacred place where Kings were sworn in  . . . and given . . . the Tara Brooch, a legendary symbol the High King wore, signifying his exalted position.”

“No. I didn’t.” She admitted, pleased by his story. It made her name sound important.  Indeed, it made her feel pretty damn good. Tara was just an Irish name to her, she had no idea where the name originated or what it meant.   

“
Tara.
” He said her name again. “Does it not seem strange to you that you recall nothing before you awoke in my castle?” He stared at her, his eyes aglow with a belief that bordered on fanaticism.

That was fine, as long as he saw her as a goddess, a fairy queen. Not so great if his delusion switched gears to make her out to be some sort of demon and act accordingly. Sure, the Salem Witch trials might be a century and a half past . . . and yet, history had a way of repeating itself.

“I remember someone shouting at me.” Tara explained, “Telling me not to touch something. And then I remember Pain. Excruciating pain as blue and white light surrounded me. Adrian, I believe I was struck by lightning on that ship. I might have been trying to clutch the mast. Remember, my hands were burned severely. I remember I was paralyzed for a time. I somehow drifted to shore, the British Soldiers found me . . .”

“You remember the soldiers?” He was aghast at her confession. “I hoped you would not.”

“I have been having nightmares about that night in the barn. The soldiers were arguing about whether to rape me or tie me to the triangle and rip the skin from my hide with their cat-o-nines.  And then a masked hero named Captain Midnight dropped down from the rafters of the barn and rescued me. He took me to a cave, and in the darkness he kissed me. I thought it was a stupid dream, dredged up from some silly romance novel I read. Until tonight, Jasper called you
Captain Midnight
and you didn’t deny it. That’s when I realized it wasn’t a dream at all.”

Adrian remained silent. She was sent from the fairy people. How else could she have survived a shipwreck when the entire crew as well as the passengers had been lost? She didn’t remember any family because there wasn’t one, not among mortals. She knew things about the future that only an enchanted one could know. It was not uncommon among them. Many had the gift of being able to peer into the future. And yet Tara had no schooling in the simple things of everyday life among the mortals.

He married her without a thought of the consequences . . . she was his link to the little people. . . .Offending her--in any way--would mean offending them . . . bringing disaster upon his family if they felt he had abused her.

“Why do you look at me as if I’m about to disappear?”

That dream haunted him now. She danced in her spirit form, those enticing green eyes drawing him to her as a magnet draws a piece of iron, calling him to lay with her in the enchanted forest on a bed of moss . . . she was his soul-mate.

“Tara, my sweet lass.” He whispered, as his face swam with sweat and his stomach roiled and lurched. “I-I think I should lie down  . . .” The room was spinning. A frightening thought came as his temples throbbed and his mouth went dry. Had he been poisoned this evening? He glanced at her, fear rimming his distorted vision.

Surely she wouldn’t? No--not Tara.

Perhaps someone else wanted him dead.

Tara was frightened. Adrian was babbling on incoherently about the fairy people sending her to him. He leaned back on the sofa and clutched his abdomen. Abruptly, his eyes closed and he went limp on the sofa.  

She reached over to feel his brow. No fever. On closer inspection, she recoiled at the odor of pungent, stale beer on his breath.
So much for his delusions
. 

“Fairies!” She scorned his prostrate figure on the sofa and sighed with relief as the butler entered. “Have someone help you carry his lordship upstairs. He’s drunk. Let Rupert attend him.” She left the butler to stare after her as she ascended the stairs.

What is wrong with me?
  The question begged an answer, still none came.

Tara sat before the mirror, studying her reflection.

Why can’t I remember where I belong?  

Her inexplicable sense of not truly belonging here was exacerbated by Adrian’s drunken ramblings. In a moment of weakness, he too, was admitting she didn’t fit in, that she belonged someplace else.

Did the Fairies send you across time to warn me?  . . . across time . . . 

An image flitted across her mind like a meandering butterfly through a tangled garden. A teenage boy on a skateboard rose in her memory. She knew him. His name was Marty. He was talking with a wide eyed scientist with tousled white hair. The scientist kept muttering something about the time space continuum and flux capacitors . . . there was a machine they used to move through time . . .  

Just as quickly another man, tall, handsome and young appeared in her mind. The Doctor?  Tara couldn’t remember his name. He was a Time Lord. He traveled through time in a closet like box called a Tardis.

Adrian kept referring to the Tuath an Danaan. Were they Time Lords like the doctor and people here just thought they were fairy folk? People in primitive cultures had a habit of bestowing those of more advanced cultures with deity status. Did they send her as Adrian said, to warn him?

“Oh, God.”  Tara chided her reflection, “I’m just as delusional as he is.” 

Adrian woke the next morning with a raging headache. He recalled little of his conversation the night before in the drawing room with Tara, short of a few angry words. He wanted to go to her and apologize, and at the same time he was afraid to face her, afraid of what he might have said while he was under the influence of Jasper’s home brewed poteen. He shouldn’t have indulged in the potent drink. It was outlawed because of its unstable properties and that was why Jasper distilled it; because it was illegal.

“Oooh, Phew.” The sour taste in his mouth greeted him as he exhaled a breath. Rupert was in his chamber, puttering about with his clothes.

“Rupert, my good man, a hot bath.”

The servant nodded and left his chamber to carry out his orders.

Adrian dropped the sheets he’d wrapped about his nude form and grimaced as he tried to stand. The door opened at that moment and who should appear but Lady Tara, to find him naked and foul smelling as he stood in the middle of his bedchamber.

“Good morning.” Tara did not look away with maidenly embarrassment. Instead, she gazed long and hard at him, with obvious appreciation.  

Now was not the time for such things, as he was hardly presentable. Adrian shuffled to the bed on stiff legs and retrieved his morning robe. He wrapped it about him with clumsy movements.

“Are you feeling better?”

She seemed too damned cheerful on such a foul morning.

“Not so loud.” He grumbled. “What do you want? Did I offend you last night? Did I say something . . . do something . . .?”

The elfin face merely looked back at him with a pert smile as her green eyes lifted mysteriously. “We didn’t do anything, if that’s what you’re alluding to.” She glanced to the bed quickly and then back at Adrian again.

“Disappointed?” He couldn’t resist. She was definitely too cheerful as she pirouetted about his chamber while he was suffering the blue devils. “Or relieved?”

“A little of both.”

Her response grated on his tortured ear drums. He turned about to glare at her.

“Relieved, as I had a very real fear you were going to ‘ralph’ all over me.” She made nasty a face. “Oh, you probably don’t get that one, either, it means--“

With a groan Adrian waved her explanation away. “I believe I get the gist of your speech.” He never felt so low. A woman feared being near him because she thought he might retch on her? His cock shriveled at the mortifying imagine.

“I find it hard to believe you lack the drive to consummate our vows.” Tara went on in a true harridan tone that every man loathed and a talent every girl must have been born with, no matter how sweet. “Hey, maybe fairies don’t really have sex with mortals. Maybe you made that up. What do I know?”

“I have to use the pot.” He grumbled, hoping the suggestion would send her on her merry way and leave him to suffer his hangover in blessed peace.

She stood with her arms crossed, not allowing him a modicum of privacy by turning around. He was too much of a gentleman to piss in front of her, so he merely stared at her. Tara stared back, unaffected by his glower.

Adrian turned away from her. He stretched out both arms, pumping them to ease the kinks, and then rubbed his sleep laden eyes with the heels of his hands. “I did offer an apology, did I not?” Whatever I said or did, it was the poteen, I was drunk, I’m sorry. Now go away. I’m not presentable.”

“Yes, I figured that out, after you passed out on the couch.”

“Couch?”

“Settee, divan, whatever you call the damned thing here.”

Oh, she was in a nasty mood today. One would come to believe she was the one with the hangover. “Why don’t you go downstairs and have some tea while I get dressed. We can talk about what is bothering you then.”

“Yes, little wifey, go sew by the fire while I play superhero and get myself hanged, we’ve done that scene already. You scared me half to death babbling about me being sent to you from the fairies.”

“I don’t recall.”

“Well, join the party. I don’t recall much of anything these days. How did I come to be here?” She stood with her arms crossed, her eyes flashing with danger. “Tell me. I want to know every detail of our courtship, every detail—“

Adrian shuffled to the bed, sat down with his head in his hands, feeling the world spinning about him as he grabbed the chamber pot and leaned his head over it.

The next thing he knew, he was staring at the contents of his stomach in the polished white-bottomed urn.

“Are you sick?” The green eyed tyrant softened, placing a hand on his shoulder.

At her ridiculous question, Adrian lifted his head to look at her.

“Oh, you smell wretched.” the dainty nose lifted.

“I ordered a bath.” He grumbled. “You could at least wait until I’m reclaimed a bit before barging into my chamber and demanding answers.”

“Did the poteen turn bad?” She seemed genuinely worried about him. It was a small triumph, considering he felt like half-thawed horse shit. “Oh, God. I hope you don’t have E-coli or salmonella!”

“I have the blue devils, and if you don’t get out of my chamber they will leave my body to torment yours.” Oh, the pain of his voice hurt him more than hers. He grimaced.

“Lie down. I’ll have some peppermint tea brought up to soothe your stomach.”

She was suddenly accommodating as she pushed him back on the bed and pulled the covers over his body. “There, rest. I’m sorry I lost my temper. We’ll talk later.”

Adrian closed his eyes to shut out the pain in his head.

With any luck, later wouldn’t come.

When Adrian awakened again it was dark outside. He rose to find his bathtub still empty. The fire had been stoked throughout the day.

His first thought was Tara. She seemed to have taken on a very strong, demanding temperament of late. Or did it merely seem that way with his head pounding and his stomach churning?

She wanted answers.

God help him, he didn’t have them.

After summoning Rupert and ordering a bath. He shaved, waited for her to come as requested, only to learn she was not at home. “Where is she?” He snapped at the valet.

“Lord Fitzgerald dropped by early this afternoon, and she went out with him to the Park. Your mother is visiting a friend this evening, and will not be home until very late.”

Were all the females under his roof abandoning him in his illness?