he’d be after doing that if he could lay hands on me.” Tom climbed over the rocks and dropped beside a clump of briars near Caitlin. Even with the lofty feather, his head barely cleared her waist. Like the rest of him, his fingers were stumpy and clumsy looking, but he reached out and retied her straggling apron strings with the grace of a lady’s maid.
“Ah, but it’s a sight you are, Caitlin MacBride. Ugly as a Puritan. When was the last time you took a comb to that hair?”
“That’s my business.” She tossed her head. “Yours is as steward of Clonmuir, and you’d best see to your duties.”
“What duties?”
“Finding another bullock for Logan MacBride, to start with.”
“We know where to find plenty of healthy cattle, don’t we?”
She ignored the suggestion. “Perhaps I’ll banish you to Spain. I’ve heard King Philip employs dwarves as playthings for his children.”
“Then we’d both be playthings for Spaniards,” he observed, shaking his head. “Twenty-two years old and still not married.”
“You know why,” she said. “Though I still don’t know how you found out about Alonso’s pledge.”
“Pledge! You little oinseach—” He tilted his head back to gaze up into her face. “A hot young man’s promise has as much substance as the dew in summer. But we’re not here to discuss that. You wish for your true love—”
“How do you know what I wish?”
“—and I’m here to tell you a way to summon him.”
Caitlin regarded the little fellow warily. Some swore Tom Gandy was endowed with fairy powers. But not Caitlin. She had seen him bleed when he scratched his finger on a thorn; she had nursed him when he lay weak with a cough. He was, despite his extraordinary appearance, as human as she. If he possessed any gift, it was only the ordinary sort of magic that allowed him to come and go soundlessly and unexpectedly; his powers were those of a wise and wonderful mind that allowed him to see into people’s hearts as a soothsayer sees into a crystal.
“And how might that be?” she asked teasingly. “It’s the eve of a holiday. Have you a pagan sacrifice in mind?”
“Horror and curses on you, girleen, ’tis much simpler than that. And all you’ll have to sacrifice is... Well, you’ll find that out for yourself.” Tom swept off his hat and bobbed a bow. “Sure I’ve been furrowing my poor brain with great plows of thought, and I’ve found the answer. You simply pluck a rose at the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.”
“Pluck a rose, indeed!” She swept her arm around the tangled garden. “And where would I be finding a rose in this mess?”
A mysterious smile curved his lips. “You’ll find what you need in your heart, Caitlin MacBride.”
She rolled her eyes heavenward and spoke to the painted sky. “Such nonsense as that...” She looked down again, and her words trailed off. She stood alone in the bramble-choked garden. Without a sound, without a trace, Tom had vanished. A few moments later she saw the stallion vault back up to the cliffs, enticed back to the stables for a measure of fodder from Tom.
“Odd little imp.” Caitlin plopped down on a rock and stared out at the gathering mists of evening. “Pluck a bloody rose indeed.”
She drew her knees to her chest and sighed. Once, this garden had been a necklace of color and grace. The fallen rocks had been terraces dripping with roses. Her mother, the lovely Siobhan MacBride, had tended her flowers as if they were children, nourishing them on rich, lime-white soil and keeping back the weeds like a warrior staving off an invasion.
But the garden and everything else had changed when the English had claimed the coast in a choke hold on Ireland. The garden seemed to be eaten up by the pestilence of disorder and conquest. Weeds overran the delicate plants, trampling them just as Cromwell’s legions trampled the Irish.
I will rebuild my home, she vowed. Alonso will come. He promised...
Tall grasses, ugly and dry from winter, rattled in the wind. The sea crashed against rocks and slapped at the shore.
The wind shifted and its voice changed, a sigh that seemed almost human. A shiver scuttled like a spider up Caitlin’s back.
Deep inside her lived a dark, Celtic soul that heard ancient voices and believed fiercely in portents. As a haze surrounded the lowering sun, the secret Celt came awake, surging forth through the mists of time. On this night, the gates stood open to the fey world. Unseen folk whispered promises on the wind.
A curlew cried out, calling Caitlin back from her reverie. She blinked, then smiled wistfully. The world was too real to her; she knew too many troubles to escape, as her father did, to realms where bellies were full, grain yields bountiful, and cattle counts unimportant.
Still, the charged air hovered around her, heavy as the clouds before a storm, and she remembered Tom Gandy’s words: Pluck a rose the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.
Foolish words. Fanciful beliefs. There wasn’t a rose within miles of this barren, windswept place.
You’ll find what you need in your heart, Caitlin MacBride.
The sun sat low, a golden seam between earth and sky. A single ray, powerful and narrow, aimed like a spear of light at Caitlin’s chest. She felt it burning, the heat of it pulsing. She stood and stepped back so that the sunbeam dropped to her feet.
And there, straining through the thick briars and reeds, grew a perfect rose.
Caitlin dropped to her knees. She would have sworn on St. Brigid’s well that no rose could grow in this unkempt bower, nor bloom so early in spring. Yet here it was, white as baby’s skin. Secreted within the petals were all the hues of the dying sun, from flame pink to the palest shade of a ripe peach. Painted by the hand of magic, too perfect for a mortal to touch.
The breeze carried the scent of the rose, a smell so sublime that a sharp agony pierced her. All the years of waiting, of struggle, seemed to wrap around her heart and squeeze, killing her hopes with exquisite slowness.
The sun had sunk to a burning sliver on the undulating chest of the dark sea. Day was dying. A few seconds more, and—
Pluck a rose the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.
Without forethought, Caitlin grasped the stem of the flawless rose and squeezed her eyes shut.
A thorn pierced her finger but she didn’t flinch. She gave a tug and the plea flew from her lips. “Send me my true love!”
She spoke in the tongue of the ancients, the tongue of the secret enchantress buried in her heart.
Caitlin clasped the rose to her chest and repeated the plea. She touched the petals to her lips, anointed it with her tears, and spoke three times, and her voice joined the voice of the wind. The incantation flew on wings of magic to the corners of the earth, from her heart to the heart of her true love.
The sudden chill of twilight penetrated the spell in which, for the briefest of moments, she had been beguiled, helpless, wrapped in an enchantment against which she had no defenses.
She opened her eyes.
The sun had died in flames of glory, yielding to the thick hazy softness of twilight. The last purpling rays reached for the first stars of night. The mist had rolled in, carried on the breath of the wind, shrouding the rocks and sand and creeping toward the forgotten garden. Long-billed curlews wheeled black against the sky. Caitlin stood rooted, certain beyond all good sense that the spell had worked. She searched the desolate garden, the cloud-wrapped cliffs, the hazy shore.
But she stood alone. Utterly, desolately, achingly alone.
The wind dried the tears on her cheeks. The hopeful sorceress inside her retreated like a beaten horse.
Blowing out a sigh and an oath, Caitlin