CHAPTER EIGHT
In the next week, Magheen sulked more than ever and bossed the servants unmercifully. Rory Breslin wished aloud that Rafferty had won the wager and carried off both Magheen and the Englishman. Darrin Mudge complained that Jimeen O’Shea had stolen one of his pregnant ewes. Jimeen countered by setting fire to Mudge’s booley hut. More refugees arrived, a group of old men and young children who reported in dire tones that their womenfolk had been carried off by the Roundheads.
And through all the turmoil and all the arguments pushed the memory of the Englishman’s kiss.
Indecent, Caitlin told herself.
Incredible, said the fairy devil inside her.
I would go to confession if Father Tully hadn’t disappeared.
You’d not confess the passion you felt during that kiss even under torture.
It’s Alonso, Caitlin insisted. The kiss made me forget Alonso, who made me feel like a madonna.
Painted icons never have any fun, countered the fairy devil. Hawkins makes you feel like a woman.
“Don’t be kindling me, you great mutton-wit!” Tom Gandy’s angry shout carried across the hall to Caitlin.
Sighing in exasperation, she went to the round table to see what Rory and Tom were arguing about this time.
“Look now, you wee schemer.” Rory jabbed a finger at Gandy’s chest. “And what is it you think you would be up to entirely, using my stout turf cart to be after the dulse?”
Gandy thrust the finger away. “’Tis a high wonder, Rory Breslin, if you are not the dumbest creature God ever put breath into. The dulse is edible and we can gather it right off the fine wide strand.”
Rory made a terrible face. “The weed stinks, imp, and I’ll not have it in my—”
“Hush, both of you. I’m weary of the yammering!” Caitlin burst out. “Rory, you’ll let Tom use your cart and thank God for food the English can’t take from us.” She threw aside her shawl, stormed out of the hall, and marched to the stables.
“Come along,” she said to the black. “We’ll have a grand long ride, just the two of us.”
But as she led him across the yard, she felt his gait falter and heard a soft thud. One horseshoe lay like an inverted smile in the dirt.
“Blast,” muttered Caitlin. She started to call out for Liam the smith. Then she remembered his arm, still healing from the break he’d taken the night they had captured Hawkins.
Her luck had gone bad that night, and showed no signs of improving.
She considered summoning Rory. But his heavy hand with the hammer could damage the hoof. She bent and retrieved the shoe. “On with you, a stor,” she said. “I’ll do the job myself.”
“With my help,” said the resonant English voice that sounded in her dreams, yet never failed to startle her.
She glared at Hawkins. With his Irish garb and piratical smile, he looked indecently handsome. “And what would you be knowing about the fine art of shoeing a horse?”
“Enough of the smith’s craft.”
“Smithing is serious business. Sure didn’t the smith refuse to make the nails used at the Crucifixion?”
He tucked his thumbs into his wide, thick belt. “Then who made them?”
“Why, ’twas the lowly tinker, and isn’t misfortune on the tinker ever since and the smith a respected artisan?”
“Then I’m in good company,” he declared.
“I’d not risk letting a treacherous Englishman lay hands on my horse. One false blow of the hammer and you’d ruin him.”
His big hand stroked the black’s smooth cheek. “Does he balk at my touch?” The animal stood still, in calm acceptance. Ever since the race, the black had—to Caitlin’s great annoyance—taken to Hawkins. “I don’t know where this animal came from or why he’s here, but I suspect there’s not another like him in the world. God’s truth, if I feared any chance of my damaging him, I’d cut off my hand.”
The urge to believe him nagged at her, but she said, “Your hand, your head, Englishman. It doesn’t matter. None of your parts are worth the sum of this horse.”
“I value a good horse as much as you do.”
“Come along, then. You may as well earn your keep.” She led the black to the forge barn and looped the reins around a stone post outside.
Hawkins stepped inside. Flails and scythes hung on the wall along with an array of horseshoes. Caitlin selected one, laying it on a bench. “This is already forged for the black. Liam always keeps some in supply.”
Hawkins placed it on the anvil. “I’ll shoe him hot,” he remarked, “for a better fit.”
“Where did you learn that?”
He picked up a set of bellows and pumped them at the embers. “In the west of England—during my cavalier days.”
She pressed back against the stone wall of the building. “You were a cavalier?”
“Aye.”
“But you’re with the Roundheads now.”
“Aye.”
“Why?”
He gave her a slow, lazy smile designed to conceal the hooded look in his eyes. “Because Cromwell is Lord Protector of England now, and he has ordered me to stand with the Commonwealth.”
She came away from the wall, planting herself inches from him. “Just like that, you’d abandon your loyalty to the Stuart prince?”
“It didn’t happen ‘just like that.’” Heat roared from the furnace, and ashes plumed to the hole in the roof. He set aside the bellows, took hold of the hem of his tunic, and peeled the garment over his head and down his arms. “Believe me, my loyalty to Cromwell runs no deeper than the scars on my back.”
Stripped to the waist and gilded by firelight, he made a picture she saw only when she closed her eyes during one of Gandy’s hero tales. He grinned, pleased by her scrutiny. “You make a hard job easy. No wonder men follow you into battle.” He turned to rummage in the box for tools. “I’ll need to forge new nails.”
“Make them slender,” she said. “I’ll have no split hooves.”
He thrust a nail rod into the fire. While it heated, he turned to her. “God, Cait, you are lovely as the sunset.”
She huffed in disbelief. Her fingernails were chipped from helping the fishermen patch the curragh. Hours ago, she had braided her hair, but most of the tawny strands had escaped to swirl in disarray about her face. Bits of tar smudged her apron, and the hem of her kirtle sagged.
“Blarney,” she said. “If your English ladies fall for such praise, more fool they.”
He moved closer. She started to step back, but stopped herself. No. She would not give him the satisfaction of intimidating her.
“You wanted to humiliate me in front of my people.”
“Perhaps it was a way to get them to view you as a woman, with a woman’s needs, instead of simply their chieftain, the settler of their arguments and the hand that feeds them.”
“I know what you see,” she retorted. “You see an Irishwoman whose home and lands you mean to plunder for Cromwell.”
He winced. “I see a woman. A passionate, desirable woman. I cannot call you beautiful, nor pretty, nor comely.”
Caitlin hated herself for the lump of disappointment that dropped like yesterday’s porridge in her stomach. “No, and I’m not after asking you to.”
“You are all of those things, Caitlin,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “And yet you are none of them.”
“Now you are talking blarney.”
“No, but I’m at a loss. I’m usually glib with words. I know how to say things to women and I know how they’ll respond. But you’re different. Beauty is a pruned rose blooming on a trellis. Pretty to look at, but ordinary. And you are not ordinary.” He moved his shoulders. Mounds of muscle swelled and relaxed with the motion.
“Words cannot give shape to you.” He reached out and pulled her against him. She felt his smooth skin warmed by the fire, the undulation of muscles surrounding her, protecting her. The strange feeling passed like a warm breeze through her. No one ever protected Caitlin MacBride.
He bent to whisper in her ear. “Let my tongue not stumble over words, Caitlin. With you, my eloquence is one of hands caressing, like so…lips touching, like so…”
She stood unmoving while his mouth came down and savored hers with a lingering tenderness as if he were sampling a rare fruit. She became burningly aware of the texture of his lips, the varying pressure on her mouth, the slope of his neck and the raw silk of his hair twined through her fingers.
Only then did she realize she was clinging to him, offering herself with a wantonness that both shamed and enthralled her. With an effort of will, she lowered her hands, pressed them to the heated expanse of his chest, and stepped back.
“Your eloquence is wasted on me,” she lied. Her lips felt moist and bruised, her body curiously alive, sensitive and on edge. “It’s wrong. Dishonorable.”
He took her by the shoulders, the gentle pressure of his hands unnerving her. “Men and women search for a lifetime to find what we’ve found together, to feel what we feel for each other. Here we have our destiny dropped upon us like a stroke of fate, and you say it’s dishonorable. No, my love, praise all your Irish saints, for it’s a miracle.”
She turned away, wrapping her arms around her middle. He had to be mistaken. It was Alonso she wanted, Alonso who commanded her heart. She had to stay true to him, had to resist her enemy’s sweet embraces and false words of fate and destiny.
“It’ll be a high miracle if you can shoe the horse,” she said.
With his brows raised in challenge, Hawkins drew on a pair of thick leather gloves and set to work making nails. He took a rod of iron and drew it out with strokes of the hammer. Breaking off several nails with a header, he tossed the finished ones into the forge trough. Hissing steam permeated the air.
Caitlin regarded him through the diffuse mist. Steam softened the lines of his face and torso, while fire glow and shadows cavorted over his glistening flesh. His hair fell in a ruddy mane about his face and neck. He resembled an image from a dream, as warm and vibrant as sunshine.
He stopped working and smiled at her. “What are you thinking that makes you look at me so?”
“I’m thinking I’d best do something about you soon.”
“Are you open to suggestions?” Setting aside an iron chisel, he brushed her cheek. The glove glided, hot and rough, on her skin.
She pushed his hand aside. “Not of that sort.”
“Ah.” He leaned against the bench and crossed his ankles, his booted toe pointing at the earthen floor. “The way I see it, you have few options. You can’t send me back to Hammersmith. I’d reveal your identity as the chieftain of the Fianna. You can’t set me free to wander, for you can’t trust me not to sell your secret to the highest bidder.”
“True,” she said. “Perhaps I should have given you to Logan.”
“That would have been a mistake. In the first place, I don’t appreciate being cast in the role of a bride’s dowry. In the second place, I’m smarter than Logan, and I’d be compelled to escape.”
“You gave your parole.”
“To you, Cait.” His gloved hand came up again and brushed a tendril of hair from her brow. “Only you. Because I respect you, I’m bound by my word.”
“Are you saying you don’t respect Logan Rafferty?”
“No more than I respect a man-eating shark. Do you respect him?”
“He’s an Irish lord, and my superior.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
She hesitated. Logan was arrogant and presumptuous. But he was also her brother-in-law who had Magheen in agony with love for him. “Aye,” she said softly. “I respect him.”
“Then why haven’t you told him about the Fianna?”
“Surely you can guess.”
“I’d rather hear your answer.”
“Logan has his own ideas on how to deal with the English, and they happen to differ with mine. The success of the Fianna cuts at his pride. If he knew of my involvement, he’d put a stop to our activities.”
“How have you managed to hide it from him?”
“The same way we hide it from everyone else. We strike swiftly and cleanly, like a storm in the night. Logan believes it’s the work of exiled soldiers from Connaught. He has no reason to question me.”
Finger by finger, Wesley plucked off the gloves. “Do you worry about Magheen telling him?”
She smiled. “For the present, Magheen wouldn’t toss him a rope if he were drowning. And you seem to view my sister as most men do, as a pretty ornament with no more depth than a soup trencher. I know better. Magheen is a MacBride and loyal to me.”
He picked up his tunic and pulled it back on.
Caitlin breathed a sigh of relief, for the sight of his bare chest scattered her thoughts and chipped away at her resolve.
“Then that narrows the choices to two,” he concluded, the white fabric muffling his voice.
“And what might those choices be?”
His head emerged from the neckline, his hair gloriously ruffled. He was a fine lion of a man. Not for the first time, she wished his sympathies lay with the Irish rather than Cromwell.
“You can either kill me. Or marry me,” he said.
His suggestion slammed into her with the force of a blow. She reeled back. “No!”
He bent and began fishing nails out of the bucket. “No to what?”
“To both choices. I will neither kill you in cold blood, nor marry an Englishman.”
“I’m relieved by the former, but you’ll have to explain the latter. Why won’t you marry me?”
“It isn’t obvious?”
An intoxicating smile slid across his face. “Not with the taste of you still fresh as the dew on my lips.”
She willed away the blush that heated her cheeks. “I would never marry a man whose aim is to subjugate Ireland, a man who knows I would fight to the death to keep my people free. Besides being Sassenach, you could be a—a criminal or an outlaw of some sort.”
Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, but the look was so quickly gone that she could not put a name to it.
“What sort of man would you marry, then?” asked Hawkins.
Leaning against the stone wall of the forge barn, she closed her eyes.
A Spanish nobleman as dark and beautiful as a song at midnight. A man who kept the true faith in his heart. A man who set her upon a pedestal and worshipped at her feet. A man who shared her desire to keep her people free.
She opened her eyes. Hawkins stared at her with a stark yearning that caught at her heart.
“What is it now?”
“I would forfeit the very surety of my soul to be the man who brings that look upon your face.”
“That’s a high price to pay.”
“It’s useless anyway. You’ve obviously conjured up some hero no mere mortal could ever rival. The man you dream about doesn’t exist.”
He does, she thought with an ache in her chest. He does. “Let’s be about our business.” She went outside.
She needn’t have worried about his skill with the horse. The hot shoe bedded into the horn of the hoof. A little cloud of blue smoke arose, neither worrying nor hurting the horse. Hawkins tapped the shoe on with a few swift, sure strokes, then cooled it with water.
A few moments later, they led the stallion across the yard.
“I’m going riding,” said Caitlin.
“Let me come with you.”
Ah, she wanted him to. They were so easy together, the two of them. Such an ill-matched pair, enemies who spoke together as old friends. “No,” she forced herself to say.
“I won’t try to escape.”
“I have only your word on that. And an Englishman’s word has no more substance than spindrift.” Grasping the black’s mane, she swung onto his back. Hawkins’s gaze caressed her bare leg and foot.
“Are you sure you’ll be warm enough?” he asked.
“Don’t worry about me.”
“Caitlin, I was born to worry about you.”
“Fag an bealach!” came a cry from the gate. Children playing in the yard cleared the way.
Perched like a king atop Rory’s cart laden with seaweed, and pulled by Curran Healy, Tom Gandy appeared through the main gate. “Got the beast shod again, have you?” he asked.
Startled, Caitlin said, “You’ve been out on the strand all day. How did you know?”
“A leprechaun told me.” Tom tipped his hat, and the cart rolled past, leaving the fishy stench of dulse in its wake.
Hawkins scratched his head. “How did he know?”
“I’ve learned not to be after questioning Tom Gandy.”
She rode off, but could not ride fast enough to escape the remembered burn of the Englishman’s touch, the musical timbre of his voice, and the secrets he guarded in his eyes.
* * *
“Dying! I’m dying! Ach, musha, yerra, and bedad, Jesus save me!”
Alarmed by the pitiful cry, Caitlin sped through the hall, past silent huddled men and women who wept loudly and prayed desperately. In the passage behind the hall were offices and private apartments. She entered one that blazed with oil lamps and reeked of the peat smoke that wafted from a brazier.
On a pallet in the middle of the room lay a small figure, wailing in agony. “God, I’m dying of this cruel griping in me!”
Caitlin dropped to her knees beside him. The sight of his flushed face and glazed eyes filled her with terror and pity. “Tom? It’s me, Caitlin. Curran said you took sick after eating the dulse.”
“I be past sick.” His head rolled to and fro on her father’s best gullsdown pillow. “It’s dying I am, my girleen. Strangled for all time in the big gut. St. Dympha pity me!”
Tears scorched Caitlin’s eyes and blurred her view of Aileen Breslin, who knelt on the other side of the pallet. “Here, Tom.” Aileen held out a cup. “Have a bit of the senna.”
With a grimace, Tom turned his head away. “I’ll not touch it, woman. You’ve put sheep scour in that!”
“Just a wee dropeen of the purgative,” Aileen cajoled, “to give the drink strength.”
“Please, Tom,” said Caitlin. “Just a sip.”
“Yerra, let me die in peace!” He turned his face into the pillow and doubled himself into a ball of agony. “Aye, ’tis strangled in the big gut I am, and no way to save myself. Soon the sidhe will come to frolic with my poor dead soul.”
“Sure the Little People will think him one of their own,” Rory said mournfully, stepping into the room.
Tom’s terrible cries swept through Clonmuir, echoing in the stone corridors and coiling stairwells. Before long, the entire household had gathered in the sickroom and in the hall outside.
“Dying!” Tom burst out again and again. “I’m dying, and there is no priest to ease my poor soul into eternity. It’s damned, I am. Damned to the high fires for all time.”
“That’s for the Almighty to decide,” Aileen assured him.
“Tom, no,” said Caitlin. A devastating helplessness closed over her. Sickness was no enemy she could vanquish with lightning raids. “You’re ailing, but you’ll recover.”
“Ach, musha, the end is hard upon me.” His fever-bright eyes swam with sorrow and despair. His hot hand clung to Caitlin’s. “For the love of God, I need a priest. Caitlin, a stor, if ever I’ve meant something to you, you’ll find me a cleric.”
“The priests are all gone from Ireland. But we shall pray for you, dear Tom. We’ll pray very hard.”
A tear slipped down his cheek. “Let them all come to me one last time, Caitlin,” he said. “I would look upon the good folk of Clonmuir before I face judgment.”
With a bleak and empty heart, Caitlin moved out into the passageway and motioned for the others to enter by turns. Women and children, even some of the men, sobbed with unabashed, heartfelt gusts.
Loudest of all was Rory Breslin, who snorted into a handkerchief and said, “The stubborn little imp. I’m sorry for every foul word I said to him. I never should have let him use my cart…”
“A priest,” Tom wailed once again. “My soul from the devil, but I need a cleric!”
Her shoulders sagging with sorrow and frustration, Caitlin hurried into the chapel. The alcove nestled in a curve of the ancient curtain wall. Here she had prayed for her mother’s soul. Here she had prayed for Alonso’s return.
And now she came to beg mercy for Tom. Her hand shook as she lit a candle. Shadows flickered in the corners, uncertain company for her unquiet soul. She knelt before a statue of the Virgin, carved by her great-grandsire many years before.
The musty smells of damp stone and forgotten incense tinged the air. She pressed her palms together. The carved Virgin stared serenely down at her.
“Blessed Mother, help me,” she whispered. “My darling Tom is dying, and he needs a cleric to ease his way to heaven. I don’t know what to do.”
“Is there truly no hope?” Hawkins knelt beside her.
She shot to her feet in a fury. “And what would an Englishman be caring about a dying Irishman? Sure if the Roundheads hadn’t burned our fleet and fields, Tom would be feasting on peppered buttermilk and fresh meat instead of choking himself on seaweed!”
Hawkins’s face paled. “I feel nothing but shame for what my countrymen have done to yours.”
“Tom is leaving me,” she snapped, not wanting to hear the sincerity in his voice, “and I cannot even do him the final favor of bringing a priest to cleanse his poor soul.”
“Is it really so important, having a cleric?”
She rubbed a finger along the bridge of her nose. “You wouldn’t understand. An Irishman’s faith is his most precious possession. We endure a life of toil, but the hardships are bearable because of our faith. Knowing he’ll pass on to a greater reward is Tom’s only comfort.”
Pain and mystery glimmered in Hawkins’s shadowy regard. His shoulders sloped downward, weighted by invisible burdens. Her fury subsided into misery.
“Being shriven is important to Tom, then.”
How did Hawkins know about the shriving? “Tom is a good man, but he’s human and fallible. He has sinned and must answer for those sins. A final confession will cleanse him. But we have no one. No one.” She pressed her hands to her eyes. “Why couldn’t Daida have returned? I took wisdom and encouragement from Tom all my life. But I cannot fulfill his last request.”
* * *
Wesley recognized the desolation in her face, in her posture as she stood before the Virgin. He’d seen the fear of death too many times. And he’d seen the ease the shriving had given to the survivors of the loved one.
His heart ached. He remembered the whispered confessions he’d heard in secret during his travels through England. He felt again the weight of the faith the people had placed in him. But with Caitlin the burden pressed harder, because she was so strong, because he cared so much. Because she needed him.
“Come here.” He pressed her cheek to his chest, stroking her hair. She submitted willingly, shuddering a little with a quiet sob. The manipulative rogue inside him told him to seize the moment. She was vulnerable now, vulnerable to the betrayal he had conceived for her. The magic that had bound them from the very start revived the liberating, soul-deep conviction that he was never meant to be a priest. Come away with me, Caitlin MacBride…
Her need probed a soft spot in him. Despite his dire situation, despite his fear for Laura, he could not let Caitlin suffer. A decision rose within him, pushing through doubt and hesitation.
“Caitlin, if Tom were to be shriven your heart would be easier.”
“Aye.” Her breath fanned his neck. “Mine, and every other heart at Clonmuir.”
It was madness to reveal even a part of his secret to the warrior woman who held him captive. Yet he heard himself saying, “I can help you.”
She drew back. The evening sunlight slanted through a high cruciform window and found a warm, sparkling home in her sad eyes. “How?” she asked. “He needs a cleric, and you’re obviously not—”
“I am.” He took her face between his hands. Caitlin laughing was a sight to delight a man’s spirit. Caitlin weeping was a sight to compel a man to sell his soul.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“I’m a Catholic.”
“Sure aren’t we all—” Her mouth dropped open as she apprehended his meaning. “No.”
“Aye, and was once a novice of the Holy Faith—”
“You’re a hard and cruel liar.”
“—trained at the seminary of Douai in France.”
She swallowed, her throat rippling smoothly. “Douai. Isn’t that where they train English priests to return to England and minister to Catholics?”
“Precisely.”
She pulled away, looking him over as if seeing him with new eyes. “Then what were you doing with Hammersmith’s army?”
Trying to save my daughter, he wanted to say. But Cromwell’s threat hung like a thundercloud in his mind. He could not risk Laura’s safety, not even for the sake of telling Caitlin the truth.
“Fighting for the Commonwealth.” He tried to draw her back into his embrace.
She jumped away. “You sinner! You’ve taken sacred vows!”
“That’s true.”
“And yet you—you hold me and kiss me with lust in your heart. You make a sinner of me!” She fled toward the door.
He followed, grasping her by the arm. “I sinned long ago when I chose the seminary, for I had no true vocation. I went to Douai to test my faith, and faith failed the test.” He paused, grappling with the words. “Look at me. I am years past the age of a novice. I could not bring myself to make the final submission to the Church.” Even if Laura had not appeared in his life and changed it irrevocably, he would not have taken holy offices. The religious passion of his youth had been eclipsed by a true lust for living. He had come to realize that his purpose was to be a good man here and now, in this life.
He touched Caitlin’s cheek, loving the feel of her soft skin under his finger. “At last I have found what I sought, Cait. Not in the Church, but in you.”
“But it’s wrong, it’s—”
“Ah, the darkness is after me!” Tom’s far-off wail swept into the chapel.
Yanking her arm from him, she said, “Can a novice administer last rites?”
“When a patient is in extremis, and there is no priest available, it is permitted.”
“Can I believe you, Englishman?”
“I have no credentials to give you save my word, and the scars of torture.” He touched his back to remind her of the healed lacerations that branded him.
“You were tortured for your faith? But I thought—” More loud wails drifted in through the passageway. Caitlin winced as if Tom’s pain had found a way into her heart.
“Where did your chaplain keep his vestments?”
She tensed, hesitating. Another surge of grief keened through the castle. Her features took on the firmness of sudden decision. “This way.”
A few minutes later, clad in a white cassock and smoke-colored robes, and armed with vials of holy water and olive oil, Wesley stepped into the sickroom.
For a moment no sound stirred the astonished silence. Then whispers erupted, hisses of outrage and disbelief.
“How dare he profane a priest’s vestments?” “Heresy!” “Blasphemy!” “He should be clifted like a diseased sheep!”
“Hush,” said Caitlin. Quickly she related his tale. “We have no choice but to trust in his word.” She faced Wesley with fire in her eyes. “The Almighty will exact a price if he’s played us false.”
Tom lay weaker than ever on the pallet. His tongue lolled out of his mouth and sweat beaded his forehead.
Wesley stood at the foot of the pallet. The torches and braziers haloed him in warm light.
Tom dashed the sweat from his eyes. “Ach, musha, my prayers be answered. A high miracle, it is!”
Wesley handed a globe-shaped censer to Curran, who had been the chaplain’s acolyte. The spicy aroma of incense filled the room.
The sea lapped with a distant swish at the walls of Clonmuir. Rooks called through the twilight, and badgers chittered in the wood. Wesley studied the dying man, and a familiar futility welled inside him. The power and mystery of God beckoned, but dangled just out of his reach. Forbidden fruit.
A leaden weight descended on him. He was charged with accepting a man’s sins and saving his soul. He did not know if he had the heart, the strength, to do so. His own soul was soot black with sins.
But for Caitlin MacBride he would attempt the impossible. He breathed in the incense. “We’ll need privacy for—”
“Not so!” Tom interrupted. “They’ve been my friends in life. Would you have them abandon me as I die?”
“Of course not,” said Wesley. “Whatever comforts you, Tom.”
“Almighty God bless me, for I have sinned.” Tom Gandy launched into his confession, his voice gathering strength as he spoke. “All my life I have been a vain and wicked man, and greedy, too. Why, time was, Red Niall and I caught seven nets full of herring, and him with his wife and the wee ones hungering so, and I did not give up my share.”
“The Lord forgives your gree—”
“And, God, remember the day old Jamesy went to his reward? By my black soul, I’m not worthy to be mentioned in the same day as Jamesy. Back in ’thirty-six it was, and myself just a snip of a lad with an eye for his daughter. Beauteous, she was, with her boozalums like bladders of fresh cream, and…”
“I remember that girl!” Rory Breslin cut in. “Sure wasn’t she the one what run off with a babe in her belly?”
“Sure wasn’t I the one what put it there?” moaned Tom.
The stories went on and on—cattle raids, petty thefts, lusty trysts and sins of pride. Tom Gandy played the bard of Clonmuir to the very last of his strength, regaling the folk even with the sickness snatching away his breath. People gathered close to hear. Some couldn’t keep from grinning; others jabbed each other in the ribs and exchanged knowing nods of the head.
Twilight slid into deepest night. Wesley’s back and shoulders began to ache from kneeling motionless beside Tom. He resisted the urge to stretch, to rotate his neck and stamp some feeling back into his feet.
But the others sat enraptured by the soliloquy. Mugs of poteen made the rounds, and even the doomed Gandy found the strength to take a quaff. “Sure and wouldn’t it be a cruel thing,” he gasped, “if myself and the cup should part without kissing…”
Wesley felt a yawn coming on. Too late, he put up his hand to stifle it.
“Ah, the time has come.” Tom sighed, interrupting himself. “Dear Lord, I have told you but a wee bit of my misspent life, but sure the idea must be upon you. I am ready to receive your blessing.”
With the oil, Wesley used his thumb to draw the sign of the cross on Tom’s forehead. “Per istam sanctam unctionem…” He murmured the words while entreating the Almighty to absolve Tom of his sins and take his soul unto the bosom of heaven.
His orator’s voice and smooth Italianate Latin served him well. Tom’s friends pressed close, their faces aglow with cautious amazement, then joy, then delight. And finally, heartfelt relief. He realized then how much a priest meant to them, even a failed one. The onus of their dependency sat like a bit of bad meat that upset his stomach.
Disconsolate, Rory shuffled forward to have a closer look. He trod on Magheen’s bare foot. She let out a shriek and pinched him hard on the backside. Rory yelped. “Ouch! Just you wait until we have done with the imp, wench, and I’ll—”
“Get some manners on you!” Aileen shook a finger at her overgrown son. “Faith, that you’re acting like this and God visiting…”
While waiting for the squabbling to subside, Wesley slid a glance at Caitlin. She regarded him with equal measures of distrust and wonder. He had lied to her by omission. It was neither the first nor the last time he would do so.
I’m sorry, Caitlin.
Together, the people of Clonmuir and their reluctant shepherd fell to their knees in a vigil for the dying Tom Gandy.
* * *
Cold to the bone and stiff in every joint, Caitlin awakened at dawn. She had meant to spend the night in prayer but exhaustion had finally claimed her.
She pressed her palms against the chilled stone floor of the sickroom and blinked to clear her vision. A few others lay about, sound asleep. The smell of poteen and usquebaugh mingled with incense in the air.
Tom Gandy’s pallet was empty.
Grief crashed into her with the force of a breaker on Connemara stone. She jumped up and stumbled out into the passageway. Gone! Her Tom was gone! He had died in the night, and she had not been there to mark his passing. Tears scorched her cheeks.
Damn Hawkins—damn them all—for not waking her. She sped through the passageway and burst into the hall.
The peat fire burned low, casting shadows against the lime-washed walls. One shadow loomed tall and broad, the other small and round, a plume nodding lazily above his head.
“…and after the lady Siobhan passed, we went adrift, Wesley,” Tom was saying. “You see, she was our anchor, the voice of all that is gentle in a harsh land.” Tom paused to quaff from a large mug. “Pass me that herring, will you? I’ve a sharp hunger on me. Anyway, the Sassenach were on the advance and it only got worse when Cromwell came to power. And then Caitlin—”
“—is going to give your soul to the devil!” she hollered, striding toward the hearth.
His smile was brilliant, his color deep with robust health. “Are you now, girleen?”
Belatedly she remembered the tears on her cheeks and scrubbed them away with her sleeve. “I ought to…” Adequate threats eluded her. She glared at both of them. “A few hours ago you ripped my heart out, making me think you were dying. Now here you sit, swilling ale and eating herring as if you hadn’t a care in the world.”
“I was dying. But a miracle occurred.”
“Don’t you believe in miracles?” asked Hawkins.
“Not when they’re brought about by a selfish bard and a lying Englishman!”
Hawkins cuffed Tom on the shoulder. “Tell her, then. It wasn’t my doing.”
A sheepish grin spread across Tom’s face. “’Twas Aileen’s sheep scour. My good man here persuaded me to swallow it. Then it wasn’t a priest I needed, but a privy.”
A sound of disgust burst from Caitlin. She stormed from the hall, pausing in the yard to wash her face at the well. Moments later, mounted on her stallion, she shot out of the main gate and streaked along the rocky fields toward the strand.
She could not outpace her anger. Hawkins had duped her and Tom had enjoyed it.
Before the pounding ride could drive the rage from her, she dropped to the sand and let the black run off at will. A few minutes later Hawkins trotted up on Clonmuir’s best pony, a rangy stallion painted white and brown.
“Who gave you permission to leave the keep?” she demanded.
“Your steward.” He dismounted and stood before her. The wind caught at his hair and burned high color into his cheeks. He must have washed and shaved, for he looked as fresh and clean as a cleric before Sunday mass.
Lord help me, thought Caitlin, a man has no right to look so appealing this early in the morning.
She was glad he had shed his priest’s garb, for the sight of him clad in cassock and robes had stabbed at her conscience. Not that his borrowed tunic, tight trews, and knee boots pleased the eye any less. He seemed made for an Irishman’s garb. A wolf in sheep’s clothing.
“Well, I’m ordering you to go back,” she said. “And no tricks, now. You’ve given your parole.”
As if he hadn’t heard her, he took her hand, holding her just firmly enough that she couldn’t escape without a struggle. “Come walk with me. It’s time we faced the matters that are between us.”
She probed his gaze with her own and had a sudden flash of realization. Now she recognized the veiled sadness that always seemed to haunt his eyes. A confessor’s eyes, they were, weighted by the sins of others.
He led her down the strand. The damp sand chilled the soles of her bare feet. The sea washed around great jutting rocks that thrust their sharp peaks into the morning sky.
In the distance lay her mother’s forgotten seaside garden, overgrown and forlorn with memories. Caitlin bridled. “I won’t go there with you.”
“You must.” He placed his free hand in the small of her back and gave her a gentle push. “It’s where the enchantment started. A place for us to explore the magic.”
Still she resisted. “Magic? Bah. You’re worse than Tom.”
He turned to face her. “What are you afraid of?”
I’m afraid of the way you make me feel, her heart cried out.
“Nothing,” she said. “Let’s go.” Pulling away from him, she marched toward the garden. She skirted a calm tidal pool where the rising sun touched the surface with fire. Gorse and brambles choked the spaces between the rocks. The garden was ugly, barren, a scar upon the shore, all beauty scraped away by the wind from the sea and the turmoil at Clonmuir.
With bleak satisfaction, she said, “You see, there is no magic here.”
He caught her against him so swiftly that she gasped. “That’s because we haven’t conjured a spell yet. But we will, my love.”
“No.” She tried to ease away but he held her fast. “You are my enemy. And you’re pledged to God.”
“Not anymore. Not since—”
“You took a vow of celibacy. Your lust condemns us both to hell!”
“What of your lust, woman?” The words burst from him on a rush of anger. He gripped her shoulders and held her away from him. “Damn it, you like this. You like the way our bodies fit together, and our mouths—”
“That’s a lie, John Wesley Hawkins!” To her mortification, fresh tears stung her eyes.
He closed his eyes tightly and drew a long breath as if to calm himself. “Were I your enemy, I’d take this lovely neck of yours…” Very delicately, he traced her throat with his finger. “I’d wring the life from you, steal your horse and hie away to Galway.”
She knew he had the power to do so. She also knew, to the very depths of her soul, that he would never, ever harm her. But, Lord, how much easier things would be if he were simply a murderer.
“I’m not going to do that, am I?” he asked softly.
“You can’t.”
“Would you like to know what I am going to do?”
“I have no interest in your plans.”
His arms moved around her once again. Despite the chilly bite of the wind, she felt warm and protected and…cherished.
“Sit with me.” He took off her shawl and spread it on a patch of sand. He drew her down beside him, and she went without protest, for already the force of the spell defied resistance.
He tucked her head into the lee of his shoulder. She hugged her knees to her chest. His hand moved up and down her arm, up and down, a slow, sleepy motion that made her feel soft inside like an undercooked egg.
“I want you to know exactly how I feel about you.”
“A confession?” She laughed. “Sure you must be tired of confessions after last night.”
“It’s good to hear you laugh. I think you’ll be surprised at what I say because no man has ever said these things to you.”
“I hear nothing but words from a Sassenach,” she said. “Lies are made of words.”
“That’s why I’m going to make love to you. Not just with words, for I don’t trust my tongue to say what’s in my heart. I shall make love to you with my hands and mouth and body—”
“For pity’s sake—”
“—so that you’ll truly understand. I’m going to look at your bare breasts and put my hands there, probably my lips as well. I shall kiss you in places you never imagined being kissed, and then I’ll slip my hands down your beautiful smooth belly and into your woman’s place.”
“No.” A strange rapture stole the vehemence from her denial.
“You’re hot there even now, aren’t you?” he murmured. “I want you to think of the feel of my hands, massaging, writing poetry on your skin. When two hearts mesh as ours do, the coupling demands completion and release.”
“And who says our hearts mesh? It’s the plan of a treacherous blasphemer,” she said.
“Shall I go on? Shall I tell you how you’ll feel when I’m so deep inside you that—”
“I won’t listen to this! You would treat me like a Roundhead’s doxy—”
“No, my darling. I’ll love the woman you keep hidden inside you. You’ve led men to battle, but never into your heart. Men respect you, they obey you, but they see you as a warrior. You’ve never had the chance to blossom.”
She pulled back even as her heart leapt toward his honeyed promises. “You took a vow—”
“Even before I met you, I knew my vocation was only a hiding place for a man who’d lost his soul, a man who hungered to belong somewhere, anywhere.” He gathered her back into his arms. “Our love was fated by powers stronger and wiser than mortals.” He lowered his mouth gently, tenderly, shaping his lips to hers.
She tried to bolster her will with an image of her beloved Alonso. But the picture in her mind was hazy, diffuse, shrouded in a fog of desire that had nothing to do with the man of her past and everything to do with the man kissing her.
I am faithless, she thought. Where was the strength she was so proud of?
On fire with passion for the woman in his arms, Wesley found his conscience at odds with his purpose. He hated himself for misleading her with lies of love, hated himself even more for the betrayal to come.
But even self-recriminations could not stem the hot tide rising through him. Like the waves on the sand, passion licked at him, slapped down his scruples and made him aware that, even if he had lacked the motivation of Laura, he would move mountains to possess this woman.
She was sweet, the taste of her as fresh as dew, the tang of salt on her soft lips a heady potion. She moved her head artlessly to one side and her tongue brushed his lips, evoking a stab of need as vivid as the sting of a bee.
Battling the urge to plunge into her and stifle her protests with his mouth, he broke the kiss and gazed into her flushed and startled face.
Against his will and his plan to entrap her, he smiled. “I promised I would confess my heart to you.”
“I don’t want your words or your kisses.” But her voice shook. Her eyes flooded with the need he had awakened in her.
“Life is short, especially in Ireland. Last night, Tom lay at death’s door. Only the whim of fate snatched him back among the living. You live a dangerous life. One day you might ride against the Roundheads and never come back. You would die having never known the fulfillment of being a woman.”
“Bold talk, Englishman. I don’t want to die at all. But if you think I suffer for wanting your kisses, you’re wrong.”
He framed her face between his hands. Amber facets flecked eyes so wide and deep that he fancied he glimpsed eternity. Her moist, love-bruised lips parted slightly as if she had been about to speak and had forgotten what she had meant to say.
Taking a deep breath, he prepared to speak the ultimate lie. He had rehearsed the line a hundred times. He knew just the amount of solemn sincerity to give each word. He strove for the same tone that had, many years before, lured duchesses into his arms, the tone that later brought secret Catholics to their knees in rapture.
“I love you, Caitlin MacBride.” The words didn’t come out as he had planned. For the first time since he was a gawky youth of fifteen, the bronze voice of John Wesley Hawkins broke. The words sounded raw and raspy. As if he truly meant them.
She wore a look of startlement, wonder, and cautious acceptance.
My God, thought Wesley. It’s working. She believes me.
Before the spell could break he rushed on. “It happened the first day I met you. Do you remember? You stood there gaping at me as if I were a ghost. You held yourself so straight and proud, you could have been a graven image. But your finger was bleeding. The instant I tasted your blood I knew you were a mortal woman, and that I would fall in love with you.”
“You read too much into a chance meeting.”
“No, my love. Open your mind and admit that something happened that night. I thought the feeling would fade but it has only grown stronger. I gave you my parole that I wouldn’t leave you, but more than my word binds me to you. It’s the feeling that spreads through me when I touch you, the magic of your smile and the certainty that we belong together.”
She stiffened in his arms. “No, Wesley.”
“My name on your lips is so beautiful to hear, a song from a fairy’s harp. Say it again.” He pressed a kiss to her throat just below her ear. “Say my name.”
“Wesley.” Her voice was soft, broken, and full of the need she tried so hard to conceal.
More than three years had passed since he had held a woman in his arms, yet even if it had been yesterday, the present moment would have felt wholly new to him. Caitlin was firm where others were soft, angular where others were curved. She was the brilliant sun while others faded in a sky filled with pale stars.
His long, heartfelt kiss drew an exotic sweetness from her lips and sent the heady essence of her purling through his veins. She was vulnerable beneath her layer of fierceness. He could feel her body trembling with a desire she could not conquer.
“Caitlin. Cait,” he murmured. “A thousand times have I seen you in my dreams. Now I would look upon you with my waking eyes, and you’ll show me how paltry my dreams are.”
Endearments he would have had to force out for any other woman seemed to pour from his lips like sand through spreading fingers. He pulled loose the front lacings of her blouse. She clutched at the fabric. Her eyes flashed a wild, hunted look.
He leaned forward and kissed her, traced his tongue over the curve of her lips and along the ridge of her teeth. At length he drew back and pulled the blouse down over her shoulders.
She wore a rough-spun chemise beneath, laced across her chest. Wesley lowered his head and put his mouth to the cleft rising from her neckline. Ah, she was a dusky mystery there, all shadows and secrets, the taste and scent of her wild and fey, a flower in a dark forest.
His teeth found the lace of her chemise and he tugged at the frayed bow, then let the garment drift downward to pool around her waist.
With a gasp, she clasped her arms across her bosom. She gazed at him for long moments while the waves slid up to stir the sand, and a pair of sea eagles glided to their nest in the cliffs. With resolution hard on her face, Caitlin slowly lowered her arms. “There is something inside me that wants you, but—”
“Then listen to the voice of your heart.”
Her breasts were beautiful, soft and full, the flushed tips pulled taut. “Sweet Jesu,” said Wesley. “I knew you’d surpass my dreams. By God, Caitlin, your light torches in my blood.” As he lowered his hands and head, he realized with a jolt of surprise that he no longer spoke words of idle flattery. His lips and tongue adored her, filled themselves with her.
With a hand so unsteady it surprised him, he lifted the hem of her kirtle and caressed her, his hands big and coarse on the silk of her skin. He slid his fingers over the curve of her hip, past wispy undergarments and downward into the secret warmth of her. Making a wordless Gaelic sound in her throat, she clutched at him.
“Shall I stop?” he whispered.
She covered his hand with hers. “Don’t you dare.”
He kissed her tenderly, almost chastely, while the movement of his hand was decidedly unchaste. She relaxed with a lovely rippling motion like that of a gentle stream moving over rocks.
The heat of her surrounded him and invaded his body. Her unabashed scrutiny settled on the commotion that strained against his trews. For a faltering moment he wondered if she were indeed a virgin, so direct was her gaze.
“My body has been awakened by women in the past,” he confessed. “But never my soul. God, you bewilder me, Caitlin MacBride.” He leaned forward to kiss her mouth.
A moan of anguish escaped her as she reached up to push him away. “You force a cruel choice on me, Wesley.”
“Is it so cruel to ask you to choose your heart?”
“I’m the MacBride.” She pulled her shift and then her blouse up over her shoulders. “The price of dallying with you cannot be borne.”
“I ask no price—”
“A man never does.” Putting her hands to her lips, she gave a shrill whistle. Wesley saw a glint of pain in her eyes. “For a woman, there is always a price. The MacBride cannot ride nursing a babe at her breast.”
A shout sounded from the cliffs above. Caitlin jumped up, snatching up her shawl and shaking it out.
Wesley spat a vivid oath, then lifted his eyes to the huge man on horseback coming toward them.
“There you are,” bellowed a deep, angry voice. Iron-shod hooves thumped into the sand.
Wesley gave Rory Breslin a smile he did not feel. “Top of the morning to you, Rory. Fine news about Tom Gandy, is it not?”
“Oh, indeed, your reverence.” Rory’s hard eyes took in Caitlin’s tumbled state, and he dropped to the ground. “Are you all right, a stor?”
She nodded a bit vaguely, as if that last show of resolve had wearied her. She seemed shaken, confused, a dreamer just awakened.
“May St. Ita’s stag beetle give you a pinch,” Rory burst out, reverting to Irish. “You can’t trust that Sassenach with a female oyster. Don’t you know better than to go off with the likes of him?”
“Shut up, Rory.”
Rory tied her shawl with a firm tug. “Nay, I’ll not shut up. You should have listened to me. Should have kept him under lock and key where he belongs. Musha, when I think of him…and what would have happened entirely if I hadn’t come along?”
She had nearly given herself to him. The answer was written on her face as clearly as fresh ink on parchment.
Meeting Rory’s fury with a careless grin, Wesley acknowledged that his plan had failed. He had shown Caitlin her own vulnerability; now she would be more cautious than ever.
He would need a new plan to lure her away from Clonmuir.
Three nights later, the solution dropped into his lap.