Some Enchanted Waltz (37 page)
“I wasn’t thinking of leaving him.”
“Oh, ho! Have your gallant hero and all the conveniences of the twenty-first century, too?” Dan laughed. “Sorry, it’s mister wonderful in his century, not ours.”
Tara leaned back on the bed, her arms extended behind her for support. “It’s hard. Everything is so different here. I miss some things.”
Dan set aside his pipe with a snort. “Let me guess, you miss your Facebook pals?”
She giggled at his teasing, and scrunched up her nose. “Oh, I can live without Facebook. Even without email. It’s not so much that. It’s harder for a woman in these times. There are so many rules and expectations from society. You can’t have a job unless you’re a governess or a housemaid. You can’t have a career here. And I do miss modern plumbing.”
“Yeah.” Dan agreed. “And you aren’t the one who has to dump the slops, so what are you complaining about? You have maids to do those vulgar things. You could take up writing. Be another Jane Austen.”
Tara rolled her lips, considering his suggestion. She hadn’t thought of that. Writing a novel instead of a research paper could be fun. “The music. I miss the music of our time most of all.” Tara gave him a woeful look. “I think that’s what gets to me so much. It’s so
quiet
here. No radio, no Ipod to listen to. I miss my playlist.”
“I overheard your lover singing that Meatloaf tune you always used to open your show with.” Dan smirked.
“
I’d lie for you and that’s the truth
?” Tara smiled, remembering the words.
“Your husband thinks Meatloaf is a fairy.” The blue eyes were gleaming, his face crumbling with the promise of roiling laughter rising to the surface at the idea of the rather solid rock vocalist being a woodland fey. It made about as much sense as imagining The Rock as a ballet dancer, complete with a pink tutu.
When Tara shared the impression aloud, Dan gave in to a fit of laughter.
Pointing at her, he chortled, “Yeah, I think he did wear a pink Tutu now that you mention it.” He was quickly turning red. “In a movie called . . .” Howls of laughter interrupted his declaration.
“
The Tooth Fairy
!” Tara and Dan said in unison, both laughing as they did a classic high-five salute.
“Adrian thinks you are a fairy, too. Being you are my father and all.” Tara informed him between giggles. “Although, I haven’t seen you pirouette about the castle in a pink tutu yet. Just a ladies nightgown.”
“This is what men wear here. It’s damn comfortable, too.” Dan groused.
“Adrian doesn’t. He wears nothing at all between the sheets.”
“Oooh, too much information!” Dan scowled, drawing away from her. “Now, as to the things I miss about home, how about logic? That is a commodity sorely lacking here. The Notorious Captain Midnight has his servants put food out for the little people---Every night, mind you. An offering for the wee folk, the kitchen maid tells me, as ordered by his lordship. And that’s not all. When I was out walking outside the castle the other day the scullery maid hauled her buckets of wash water outside and she yells to the air ‘mind the water.’ as she’s dumping it out. So I ask her who she’s yelling at and she says, ‘Why, the fairy folk. They’d be most upset with us all if I should douse one of them with the dirty wash water. They’d blight his lordship's crops or curse his livestock.’”
Tara was not surprised by his report. She was familiar with the local superstitions regarding her fey relatives. They might be misconceptions, yet they were born of respect and reverence. “Which brings me to the reason I woke up in the first place. He’s gone. He’s out with his militia, and I’m worried.”
“He’ll be fine. Just go downstairs and check the kitchens, maybe he woke up and wanted some milk and cookies, or he’s in his study calculating this year’s wool harvest. You don’t really know that he’s out raiding, you just think he is.”
Tara shook her head, denying Dan’s assurances. “When we were in Cork, he told me that he’d never set foot in his own kitchens. When he’s hungry he has no qualms about waking the servants to go fetch him something. And I doubt he’s reading the Cork Gazette at this hour. No, he’s getting himself in trouble.”
“Look, he’s been at this sort of thing long before you came along. Don’t worry. I’m sure he can take care of himself. Go back to bed. You can interrogate him in the morning.” Dan yawned, giving her a strong hint that he’d rather be sleeping about now.
Tara padded softly down the cold stone corridor, feeling the hackles on the back of her neck rise up as something bumped against her in the grey shadows of moonlight. It wasn’t a rodent, it was something else--someone much bigger. She gasped as an arm snaked out of the darkness behind her and a gloved hand clamped over her mouth.
Tara stomped the boot behind her with her slippered heel, at the same time thrusting her left elbow into the abdomen of her assailant and flinging her right fist back over her shoulder in hopes of smacking him in the nose.
The grunt of pain over her shoulder answered her throbbing knuckles. Wasting no time, she screamed with all of her might, just as they taught her in self defense class.
As she paused to fill her lungs for a second loud outburst, Dan was in the hallway with a candle. She continued to scream to draw attention as she’d been taught, while the man who had attacked her raced down the hall with Dan lumbering after him, still stiff from his back injury.
The candle had been thrust down in Dan’s haste to chase the intruder. Terror stricken, Tara felt about in the darkness for it, finding a gooey, warm pool of wax and the cold pewter stand. That old feeling of sickening dread enclosed about her as she recalled the time Dan had rescued her from Mike’s perverted attentions late one night at the radio station. Was he here now, too, that Damned Darkling Prince, stalking her in this century?
Tara needed light, and people about her to chase away the demons in the shadows.
A golden halo of light flooded a lower stairwell at the far end of the hall as the servants rallied to her defense. The soft candlelight inched up the stairwell to the second floor, preceding the footmen who stumbled and cursed in the confusion and panic.
With renewed courage, Tara lifted her nightdress to free her ankles and raced down the hall toward the cries of pain. “Dan!” She cried, fearing he’d been stabbed from the horrible groaning he made. There was no mistaking that deep voice. She edged cautiously about the doorframe, peering inside her dark chamber. “Dan? Are you hurt?”
A tall, lean figure was outlined at the window in the faint pink dawn. A black scarf hid his upper face and his hair. Black ash streaked across his lower jaw line and neck to camouflage his white skin in the dark moonlight. “Close the door.”
She knew that voice. Tara slammed the portal shut just as the servants reached it. She secured the bolt to prevent their entry. “Sorry, it was just a family quarrel.” She shouted through the heavy oak. “Go back to bed. Thank you. We’re all fine.”
The intruder struck a flint and lit the lamp, showing Tara where Dan lay half crouched, clutching his back with one hand, pain contorting his facial features.
Leaning against the door and panting for breath from her sprint down the hall, she pulled her gaze from Dan’s misery to the man responsible for it. The scarf had been removed, and the soiled face of her husband glared back at her. Tara ignored his dark looks. She rushed to Dan’s side to help him get up from the floor. She tried to help him rise. It was a futile effort with their comparative sizes.
Adrian poured water into the basin and began scrubbing the grime from his face, ignoring their efforts with the air of an affronted king.
“Help me.” Tara burst out. “Damn you. You are the one who hurt him. Dan--er--Father was only trying to protect me.”
Dan crawled on all fours to the chair. With a gut-wrenching cry he pulled himself up on the chair and sat down on the edge with a grimace.
“He needn’t have exerted himself.” Adrian spun about with a snarl, rubbing his eye where she had struck him. It was starting to swell. “If you would have just let me explain myself, this never would have happened.”
“When someone grabs me from behind and puts their hand over my mouth, I usually don’t wait for an introduction.” Tara placed a protective hand on Dan’s shoulder as she soothed, “Papa, I’m sorry he hurt you.”
“Actually, it wasn’t him.” Dan’s hand covered Tara’s. “I tripped on the carpet edge and fell into that thing over there.” He nodded at the rumpled area rug and overturned three legged table that had once supported an expensive vase that was now so many pieces on the floor. “He was five paces ahead of me the whole time.”
“Oh.” Tara straightened the edge of Dan’s lace collar and ran her fingers over his ruffled hair with a grimace.
“I did not expect the pair of you to be awake at this hour. Or chasing me down my own hallway in the darkness, for that matter.”
“I hardly expected to awake from a nightmare and find you gone. I went to my father’s room for comfort. Where were you this evening?”
He didn’t answer. Adrian didn’t offer any concern at being caught prowling about in the middle of the night.
“The Fianna.” Tara answered for him. “You were out marauding with them as Captain Midnight, weren’t you?” She spoke the last with the scolding tone of a mother.
“That is my concern, not yours.” Adrian returned.
“It is just as much my concern as it was your mother’s when your father came home gut shot and then bled to death from the wound.”
His remote glare changed to startled surprise. “How did you . . .?”
“
Know?
I just do. And I’ll not be staying around here to repeat history in your mother’s stead.” Tara placed her hands on her hips in a challenge.
“I’ll just be getting back to bed now, kids, and let you sort this out.” Dan commented, attempting to rise. That brought him only more pain as he gasped pitifully and then sank back with his eyes closed.
“I have a commitment to them. Did you expect me to say ‘Sorry lads, I can’t go through with our plans, I’ve a wife now, good luck freeing Ireland from British rule?’ Tara, most of the men in my band are married with children. We’re doing this for you, trying to give our children a better life than we had.”
Tara glanced about the opulent room at his words. She pointedly returned his icy glare measure for measure. “Yeah, right.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Sucks to be Lord Dillon, doesn’t it?”
“This will all be over soon. I’ve business in Dublin in a fortnight. After things settle down we’ll take a holiday in Italy or Greece, or where ever you want to go. Just—“
“Just wait by the fire and hope you don’t get your head blown off?”
“It’s only few more weeks, a month at best. I’m off to Dublin next week. When I return—“
“I’m going with you.”
“No, it’s a four day journey by coach. Your father is in no condition to travel, nor are you.” He was doing his best at being
Lord
Dillon again, gazing arrogantly down at her with one eye swelling shut.
“Fine. When you return we won’t be here.”
Dan groaned behind her.
“Now, Tara, darling . . .” Adrian tried a different tact.
“No, don’t even go there.” Tara stood her ground. “Don’t
Tara, darling
, me.”
“I have to go to Dublin. I’m a member of Parliament.”
She swore under her breath, tired of the confusion between them. She didn’t even try to explain the meaning of the modern phrase ‘
don’t even
go there’
to this 18th century nut who thought he was Zorro without the cool cape. There was trouble brewing, she could sense it. It had something to do with Lord Fitzgerald and the United Irishmen. Tara was not about to let Adrian march into Dublin and get himself hanged.
“Either I go with you, and my father goes with me, or it’s over, Lord Dillon. We won’t be here when you get back.”
The next few days were tense between Lord and Lady Dillon.
Adrian had become aloof and brooding. He was out frequently during the day on estate business, so he claimed. Tara recognized that as an 18th century nobleman, he liked to be in charge. In fact, Adrian was used to it.
She also understood now why Dan insisted from the first that she allow her husband to believe she was of Fey descent. It gave her the upper hand in their relationship, at least psychologically. She had no powers that could best Lord Dillon, save the power of legends and the reverence of mortals for her kind.
Adrian agreed to Tara’s terms. She and her father would accompany him to Dublin. While he attended the Spring Session, they would enjoy the wonders of the city.
It was a grudging peace that settled over their household since the night Tara caught him in his highwayman’s get up. They still shared a bed. The shadows on the wall cast by the firelight betrayed their simmering passion as they sought succor in each other’s arms. Still, they remained tense and ill at ease with one other during the daylight hours.
Since learning the truth behind her tormented dreams, Tara was anxious to learn more about her Fey ancestry. She sat down with the awkward quill pen and journal to list everything she heard about the fey since her arrival here. Tara asked the maids questions, pretending that as an American she had little knowledge of the local lore and wanted to understand it.