Free The Falcon's Bride by Dawn Thompson Page A

the bastions single-handed. When he started up the grade, she gasped again. It seemed as if that was exactly what he was about to do.
    She laughed aloud. “You needn’t have worried about the possibility of my escaping,” she said. “One man alone onhorseback against that ? You dream, Lord Drumcondra . They will slaughter you.”
    “You think so, do you?” he asked. “Watch!”
    Without warning, a falcon swooped down and perched upon Drumcondra’s outstretched arm. Thea hadn’t even realized it had been circling aloft, and she cried aloud as it landed, its great wings stirring the air, grazing her fur hood, its feathers rustling in her ear.
    “Shhh! Be still!” Drumcondra commanded. “Not a sound, or it will be the worse for you, fair lady.”
    Thea shrank from the bird. “Then keep that creature away from me!” she snapped.
    Reaching beneath his shaggy fur mantle, Drumcondra produced a sizable stone wrapped in parchment tied with string, and placed it in the bird’s beak. Then, pointing toward the castle battlements, he gave the bird flight.
    “Go, Isor!” he commanded. “Go and deliver!”
    Thea’s breath caught watching the great bird soar toward the castle, watching it glide on the updraft of a fugitive zephyr in the cold still night, and circle the battlements. Only then did a shadowy figure pacing there become clear. A sentry was posted aloft. He looked up. Something dropped. He stooped to retrieve it, and the falcon soared back and landed again upon Drumcondra’s outstretched arm.
    Thea strained her eyes toward the castle. The moon had risen bright and full. In its light, she watched the sentry disappear as Drumcondra walked the Gypsy horse closer.
    “What now?” she asked.
    “We wait.”
    “For what?”
    “For Cosgrove. We would have made this little twilight ride long since, had he not been off marauding in the north. He has returned.”
    “You actually believe he will just walk out here and speak with us?” Thea breathed, incredulous. “He will bring the army that defeated you, and God alone knows what will become of me—not that you care. Why don’t you just let me go? I told you, Cian Cosgrove and I have never met. The betrothal was arranged. He will not be moved to pay ransom for a stranger—an English stranger at that. You will be killed for naught!”
    Drumcondra’s cold smile did not reach his eyes. “I am touched by your concern for my welfare, fair lady,” he said seductively. “But disappointed in your lack of faith in my abilities.” The last was said with mock sorrow. The man was insufferable. He pointed. “See? He comes!” And so Cosgrove did, backlit by torches set in brackets inside throwing golden ribbons of light upon the snow through the open doors. They were different—two, instead of just one in her own time—than the ones Thea remembered, heavily studded with spikes and reinforced with iron hinges and bars. “Where is his army, fair lady? Who dreams now, eh?”
    “W-what was in that missive?” she murmured.
    “It is not so important what was in it, but how it was delivered,” he said. “Cian fears the falcon, and well he ought.”
    Thea wanted to ask him why, but her lips wouldn’t work, watching Cian Cosgrove standing belligerantly in the snow-swept courtyard, his jutting chin uptilted. She gasped, and gasped again. She could have come face-to-face with Nigel Cosgrove for the uncanny resemblance. Cian’s hair was slightly darker, and he was not as tall, but the rest was so similar it took her breath away.
    “What do you here, Drumcondra?” Cosgrove thundered, his gravelly voice amplified by the snow. It shot Thea through with gooseflesh. “Send that bird here again and my men will shoot it out of the sky, your precious familiar .”
    “You will not shoot Isor, Cosgrove. You fear otherworldly reprisals too much for that because you have not been able to conjure any creature to match him. Besides, everyone knows you cannot kill a familiar. It will