The Forest Lord (37 page)

"No one beyond the dale will ever find out." Mrs. Singleton smiled again knowingly. "We gossip, right enough, but we also keep our secrets." She performed an incongruously formal curtsy. "Be happy, my lady. That is all we ask."

It was all anyone could ask. Whatever fairy tales might be told in the dale, whatever the nature of the man she loved, Eden intended to make her happiness last as long as possible.

In the elder days, the night of Lammas had marked the
beginning of one of the year's great celebrations, the time of the harvest. The festival honored Lugh, last leader of the Tuatha de Danaan, adopted as a god by many of the peoples of these islands. They had called the festival Lughnasadh.

Old days, almost forgotten.
But Hartley remembered the one they had called Lugh, a great Fane lord who had fled when men of the cross came to Albion and
Eire. He, like Hartley, had never sought mortal worship; with it came responsibilities that no Fane savored. Most were glad to abandon it and return to the homeland.

But traditions lingered. All day, working in the gardens and stable, Hartley had smelled the Lammas bread Mrs. Byrne baked in the kitchen. He had also seen her making a corn doll, constructed of braided straw, in the privacy of her sitting room. In times not so long past, she might have been burned as a witch for such practices.

As
he
might have been, had others seen his true nature. But centuries ago he had ceased revealing himself to mortals, except on rare occasions.

Now he waited for the one mortal who wielded power over him as none ever had.
Here, at the edge of the wood, where crickets sang and darkness came early, his thoughts were filled with
Eden and the long, sweet night that lay ahead.

For the past month there had been many such nights, each one only increasing his hunger for
Eden. Claudia had been absent from Hartsmere longer than anticipated, and with her absence came a freedom that made
Eden ever more daring. She had become a wanton in truth. She hardly bothered to hide her feelings from the servants; twice he had slept in her bedchamber until dawn.

At last he, incongruously enough, had been the one to caution her. His warning came none too soon. Claudia had returned yesterday, and the way she smiled at Hartley in the garden made him understand why mortals referred to cold-running blood. Though
Eden insisted that her aunt was unaware of her physical relationship with him, he could not dismiss the elder woman as that much a fool.

He had lived too long among the beasts not to sense danger. But she was still mortal, and limited in her powers. He set Tod to watching Claudia and put her from his mind. Tonight she kept
Eden late at the house, but nothing short of disaster would prevent
Eden from coming to him.

Their trysts were for a greater purpose than physical pleasure. Hartley had still not gotten
Eden with child. It was the one darkness in the world of light they created together, and his failure continued to trouble him. It was almost as if his own fertility was the price for the
dale's
.

Tonight, in the spirit of the ancient rites, he had prepared the wood to welcome
Eden as if she were a goddess and he was about to take her in ritual marriage. The birds would sing late this eve; their song would join that of the beck and the wind in a symphony sweeter than any mortal man could devise. The path to his bower was lined with summer wildflowers, chosen for their beauty and scent. And he had gathered berries and fruit as ripe and delicious as any found in Tir-na-nog.

If he could go to that happy land and bring back a thousand treasures for her, he would do so. But once he passed through that gate, he would not return.

A rush of wind warned him that Tod was near. He materialized close to Hartley's perch in the fork of a birch and sat cross-legged on a young branch that would have snapped under a mortal's weight.

"She comes," he said with a grin. "The lady comes, like Titania to Oberon."

"Tonight I am as powerful as Oberon," Hartley said. He leaped down from the tree. "And you are as swift as Puck himself."

Tod laughed.
"Swifter by far.
The sour-faced mortal had to be convinced to seek her bed."

Hartley did not ask how Tod had convinced Claudia to retire.
Eden had come, and all else was unimportant. "Go back and watch," he commanded.

Eden
floated into Hartley's view dressed as the sylvan nymph he had imagined her, clad in an insubstantial, nearly transparent gown that hinted at her body without completely revealing it. The silky fabric slipped between her thighs, caressing her with every step. She wore no undergarments. Claudia could not have seen that gown without understanding
Eden's reason for donning it.

With hungry impatience, Hartley strode to meet her. He lifted her high in his arms and kissed her urgently. She opened her mouth to accept him with a soft groan. Her nipples were firm nubs against his chest, begging to be suckled. The scent of her body grew rich with arousal.

He had wanted her to see what he had prepared, but all his intentions fell by the wayside. Her mortal steps were too slow for him now. He swept her up and carried her through the woods, over hidden paths that revealed themselves only to him. Her breath came swift and shallow with the same desire that raged in his blood. When they reached the bower, he forced himself to set her down gently and allow her to keep the gown in one piece.

But her hands were already at work on his shirt before her feet touched the ground. He tugged it off over his head. Her cool hands rested on his chest, and then her hot mouth kissed and caressed where her hands had been.

He bent back and allowed himself a moment of surrender.
Eden had learned the arts of love with remarkable speed, enough to more than match her reputation among her own kind. And all of her skill and enthusiasm was for him.

She nipped the skin of his shoulder, and he grinned fiercely at the challenge. There were still some things at which she could not best him. Tonight he was not the gentle lover, one who might find a place in the Fane queen's elegant court. Tonight he was like the stag whose form he could assume, intent upon only one conclusion.

With consummate care he pinned her arms to her sides and nipped her ear in return. Then he soothed the mock bite with his tongue. When she was pliable in his arms, he rained kisses from her neck to the barely contained swell of her breasts.

After months of loving, she still gasped when he caressed her. Her nipples were firm and dark beneath the diaphanous bodice. They grew darker as he covered her breast with his mouth and wet the fabric until it was almost invisible. He lifted her higher against him and suckled. Her hair came loose and draped like a veil over his head. She wrapped her legs around his waist, and he knew he could wait no longer.

He freed himself from his trousers and pushed her skirts about her hips. With a thought he transformed the bark of the nearest oak from rough to smooth, a soft resting place for
Eden's skin. He carried her to it and held her there, hands cupping her round bottom, while he made ready to enter.

Eden
gave a faint cry of shocked pleasure as he thrust deep and true. Hartley had never taken her like this, but tonight his need was almost reckless, wild, and if she had any notion to resist, she would have been helpless against him.

But she had no wish to resist. She reveled in his fierce possession, in the excitement of being held so effortlessly while he took her.

He thrust again, pinning her to the tree that was smooth as a cushion. She locked her legs about his waist and dropped her head back, lost in erotic sensation. The whole world seemed to spin around her. Deeper he moved inside her, impossibly deep, and her body drew him in and closed around him as if he could drive straight to her heart.

But he had done that long ago.

He pressed close, burying his face in the hollow of her neck. "
Eden," he whispered.
"My love."

She closed her eyes. The pain of his first declaration was so much worse than she had expected. Men said such things easily when they took their pleasure, and she did not believe that Hartley was an exception. But his movements came more rapidly, and her ecstasy built until it spilled over and carried her into oblivion.

She needed Hartley's support when her feet came to rest again on the earth. She looked up into his eyes, clear now of the lust that had driven him. He cupped her face in one hand and brushed back her hair. His eyes seemed to repeat what he had told her in his elation.

My love.

She smiled sadly to herself and touched his lips. "Tonight was worth waiting for," she said.

"I did not hurt you?"

"No." She laid her hand over his. "I am not
so
fragile as that."

"When I'm with you, I forget myself." He kissed her forehead. "You must tell me if I am too rough."

"Not rough, merely… enthusiastic." She looked up into the boughs of the trees. "Is it not late for skylarks to be singing?"

"They sing for you," he said. His face grew serious. "
Eden…" He stopped, but the look in his eyes made
Eden's legs unsteady all over again.

Surely he was about to tell her something important.
Something that would not come easily to a man like him.

What if he had meant the words murmured in the heat of passion? If he were to repeat them now, deliberately admit that he loved her…

Had she the courage to hear him say it?

He raised his other hand to frame her face. "
Eden, there is something I must—"

The sentence was never completed. A strange, high whistling cut it off, followed by a whoosh of air and a low thump very near
Eden's face.

Hartley's expression alarmed her before she understood the source of the sounds. She turned her head to follow his gaze, and found a lock of her hair pinned to the tree by the still-quivering shaft of an arrow. Instinctively she held very still, hardly daring to breathe.

Hartley seized the shaft and jerked it from the trunk. The arrow was capped by a wickedly sharp head forged of metal; he tested it carefully on the tip of one finger. With a hiss of pain, he dropped it to the ground and stepped back, searching the surrounding forest with raised head and body as taut as a bowstring.

Eden
stared down at the fallen arrow. Quite apart from the fact that it had nearly killed her, she was at a loss to imagine how such an antique should have come to Hartsmere's wood in midsummer. It was not yet the hunting season, and no one pursued game with arrows in these modern times. Such methods had been abandoned centuries ago.

She might have thought it the work of a child playing pranks, but this was no child's toy. Such a close shot could not have been an accident.

And if not an accident, it was deliberate—a deliberate attempt to wound or kill.

Hartley crowded Eden against the tree, making a
shield of his body. The forest had grown utterly silent, warning of the intruder by the very absence of sound.

He smelled the scent of man. Man—
a
man—who had entered his realm for a purpose he could not mistake.

"Hartley—"

He held up his hand to quiet her. "We are not alone," he whispered harshly.

Eden
's shiver passed into his own body. "What is it? Who—"

"I don't know. But someone is here in the wood…"
Someone who knows what I am.
Someone who knows enough to use Cold Iron in its purest form
.
"… and he meant that shot to kill."

"But who could possibly…" She wet the lips he had kissed only moments ago. "People do not go about murdering other people with arrows. We have no poachers at Hartsmere—not that I've ever heard. Who could wish to kill either of us?"

Considering how close she had been to death, her voice was remarkably steady and her questions perfectly sensible. He felt behind him, reaching for any part of her he could touch, as if to reassure himself that she was unharmed. Her fingers found his hand and clutched it tightly.

Had his head been a fraction of an inch to the right, that arrow would have pierced his neck. And the poison of Iron would have killed him more surely than the wound itself. But had it struck
Eden, she, too, would have died just as surely.

He wanted to bellow and paw the earth and charge off to hunt down the unknown enemy who had endangered his woman because of him. He locked his knees to battle the impulse and gritted his teeth against the pain in his forehead.

The man had already fled; he was sure of it. If the hunter knew Hartley's nature, he would not linger once he had failed in his mission. Hartley was too distracted to summon help from the forest creatures, at least until
Eden was safe.