While on Yule, Beltane, Samhain, and Lughnassadh, the Keltar still enacted the rites that kept the walls solid between their worlds, they no longer recalled that such was the purpose of those rites. Perhaps one generation had neglected to pass down the oral tradition in full to the next. Perhaps the elder had died before he'd been able to impart all the secrets. Perhaps old texts had not been faithfully recopied before time had disintegrated them, who knew? One thing Adam did know was that mortals ever seemed to forget their history. Those days that were so sacred to The Compact were now seen as feast days, little more.
He snorted, watching the car crest the hill. Humans couldn't even get their own religious history sorted out, from a mere two millennia past. It was no wonder that their history with his race had become so obscured by time's passage.
So, he thought, watching from his perch upon a high tor, the darkest Druid has come home, bringing with him all the resurrected evil of the Draghar. Fascinating. He wondered what his queen would make of it.
He had no plans to tell her.
After all, in Adam's opinion, it was her fault they'd been there to be resurrected in the first place.
Even now, she was ensconced with her council, where they were busy determining the mortal's fate.
Four thousand and some odd years ago, his people had withdrawn to their hidden places so that mortal and Fae would not destroy each other. Shortly thereafter, the Draghar, with their black arts, had nearly destroyed both their worlds.
His queen would never permit such a thing to happen.
He sighed. The mortal's time was finite.
* * *
Chapter 12
Gwen MacKeltar, former pre-eminent theoretical physicist, now wife and expectant mother, sighed dreamily, leaning back in the bathtub against her husband's hard chest. She was between his muscular thighs, with his strong arms around her, soaking in warm bubbly water and deliriously content.
Poor man, she thought, smiling. In her second trimester, she'd nearly punched him if he'd tried to touch her. Now, in her third, she was inclined to punch him if he didn't touch her. Frequently and exactly how she wanted. Her hormones were all over the place and the darned things just wouldn't function according to any equation she'd been able to compute.
But Drustan appeared to have forgiven her for the last few months, after the marathon sessions they'd been having. And not only didn't he seem to care that she was hopelessly fat, he'd happily devoted himself to finding new and unusual ways to make love that compensated for her physical changes. The tub was one of Gwen's favorites.
Hence, there she was at seven o'clock in the evening, with dozens of candles scattered about the bathroom, and her husband's strong arms around her, when the doorbell chimed downstairs.
Drustan dropped a kiss on the nape of her neck. "Are we expecting someone?" he asked, the small kiss turning into delicious nibbles.
"Mmm. Not that I know of."
Farley would get the door. Farley, properly christened Ian Llewelyn McFarley, was their butler and every time Gwen thought of him her heart went all soft. The man had to be eighty if a day, with bristly white hair and a tall, bowed frame. He lied about his age, and everything else, and she adored him.
What made her heart go really soft was that Drustan also had a tender spot for the old geezer. He had endless patience and invited his tall tales in the evening before a fire, as butler and laird shared a wee dram.
She knew that, regardless of how well her husband had adapted to her century, part of him would always be a sixteenth-century feudal laird. When they'd first moved into their new home—instead of doing what a normal twenty-first century person would have done, and taken an ad out in the paper for staff or contacted an employment agency—Drustan had gone to Alborath and dropped word in the local grocery and barber shop.
Within two hours, Farley had appeared on their doorstep claiming to have "buttled in some of the finest homes in England" (the man had never been out of Scotland), and further claimed he could arrange the entire staffing of their castle.
They'd since been overrun by McFarleys. There were McFarleys in the kitchen, McFarleys in the stables, McFarleys doing the ironing and the laundry and the dusting. As near as Gwen had been able to count, they'd employed the man's entire clan of nine children (and spouses), fourteen grandchildren, and she suspected there were a few "greats" floating about.
And though it had soon become dear that none of them had any experience in their respective positions, Drustan had pronounced them all satisfactory because he'd heard in the village that positions were hard to find. In modern terms, the economy in Alborath was not good. Work was hard to find. And the feudal lord had surfaced, taking responsibility for the McFarleys. She adored that about her husband. A sharp knock at the bathroom door jarred her from her thoughts.