CHAPTER FOURTEEN
They came to Clonmuir at night, the crew expertly heaving to at the outer banks of the rocky shoreline. Caitlin stood on deck amidships. Like a mother inspecting a babe, she probed the darkness for signs of trouble. Her heart exulted at the sight of the familiar profile, majestically intact, against the night sky.
MacKenzie clasped hands with Wesley. “Yon ship’s boat is yours to keep. We’ll nae be waitin’ for its return.”
Caitlin shot him a wry glance, understanding what the man refused to say. He feared the Irishmen of Clonmuir and would not tarry any longer than necessary.
The boat settled into the water with a resounding splash. Wesley picked up the oars and began rowing. Caitlin fixed her gaze behind him, on the huge craggy shadow of her home.
How would they receive her? When she left, she had been the MacBride, chieftain of the sept.
Now she was returning as an Englishman’s bride.
“Cold?” asked Wesley.
She realized she was shivering. “No.”
“I’ve worked up a fine sweat.” He pulled off his shirt, flexed his fingers, then resumed rowing. He extended his sinewy arms forward, then drew back, plowing through the swells. His flesh was pale in the moonlight and shaped by rippling muscles. Moisture dewed his neck and chest. His face wore a look of intent concentration, as if he enjoyed physical exertion.
Reach and pull. Reach and pull. The rhythm pulsed through her veins. She tried to disregard him, tried to focus her thoughts on Clonmuir.
But against her will, her whole awareness stayed fixed on Wesley. Reach and pull. The powerful cadence held her spellbound. She remembered the feel of his arms around her, his mouth pressed to hers, the giddy delight she felt when he caressed her. It was mad to want him so, mad to feel yearning when she should loathe him.
The sweat rolled in rivulets now, coursing down the center of him, into the cuff of his wide belt. Her gaze strayed lower; she saw the fullness there and realized what it meant.
Mortified, she jerked her gaze back to his face. And was struck by the knowing charm of his smile.
I want you. Silently he mouthed the words to her.
Frustrated, Caitlin buried her face in her sleeves and did not look at him again until the boat slid ashore on the strand below Clonmuir.
“We’re home,” Wesley said. “Give me your hand.”
His palm was hot and moist and sticky. She turned his hand over. “Blessed St. Brigid, you’re bleeding.”
“Bother it.” Bending, he plunged his hands into the surf and winced as the salt water bit into the broken blisters.
She would never get used to him. One moment he acted the conqueror. The next he worked his hands raw to get her home. Guessing his motive, she said tartly, “You’re in quite a hurry to flaunt your new status as my husband.”
He straightened, wiping his hands on his loose breeches. “I was in a hurry to bring you here. Right here where the magic between us started.”
Dawn was cresting on the horizon, gilding the lost garden of Siobhan MacBride. Slowly Caitlin approached the quiet tidal pools, the tumbled stones, the profusion of wind-raked gorse and brambles. A tide of memories washed over her.
Pluck a rose the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.
She had sought her true love. She had found Hawkins, an enemy to her people and a danger to her heart.
How could he be the one? He had been nothing but trouble since that portentous evening. And yet in spite of everything, she had never felt so alive, so…cherished.
She whirled to find him watching her, his eyes mysterious pools with undercurrents of passion streaming in their depths.
“You still feel it, don’t you?” He stepped closer, heedless of the water that closed over his boots.
She opened her mouth to reply but no sound came out.
The enchantment rose through her like the borning sun bursting over the horizon. He wasn’t Hawkins, but the Warrior of the Spring, reaching for a fairy maiden. His outstretched arms promised a world of passion. His deep, shadow-colored eyes pledged a splendor beyond imagining.
Don’t touch me, Caitlin. His words called across the weeks to her. Don’t touch me unless you mean it.
She could not tell who made the first move, the beguiling man or the ancient believer inside her. The cold water swirled around her ankles while his embrace bathed her in a fiery heat that banished the chill.
I mean it now, Wesley, God help me, I do.
“Caitlin,” he said, his mouth soft upon hers as he spoke between kisses, “I’ve missed holding you close.”
A sound of yearning rippled in her throat. She stretched up on tiptoe and pressed her hands to his chest. His heart hammered madly, and she realized he was not so calm or self-possessed as he appeared. Her hands moved up to frame his massive shoulders and discovered a tautness there. He was a man on the verge of explosion, a coiled spring about to be released.
A coiled snake about to strike.
But try as she might, she could read no evil into his intent. The idea that simply holding her strained the very bonds of his control gave her a heady feeling of power and delight.
She lifted her face and saw him framed by the pale sky. He plied his lips in a poem upon her mouth. The taste of him flooded her, racing through her veins and pooling with unbearable heat in the most vulnerable part of her. She pressed closer, discovering his rigidity and an answering softness deep within herself.
Ah, but she wanted him, and she was losing her powers of resistance. He plucked them away, one by one, like red berries picked from a rowan branch.
Unable to stop herself, she pressed her lips to his skin, tasting the salt-sweet flavor secreted in the hollow of his neck.
His hands slid up her torso, his thumbs gliding over her breasts. She caught her breath, then let it out slowly as warm, melting sensations poured through her. He brought her body to life with his touch, and yet he tormented her heart with dreams of what could never be.
“Cait,” he whispered, his voice mingling with the hush of the waves, “London—everything—is behind us. God knows what lies ahead.”
The truth of it caught at her heart. They had only this moment, suspended between their two worlds. And in his eyes glowed a promise that, if she would just open herself to him, he would show her where the stars were lit.
A slow sigh escaped her. She twined her fingers into the thick mane of his hair and drew his head down to hers. Their lips met and clung together; the shared taste of ancient pleasure intoxicated her. They tumbled to the sand, not Englishman and Irishwoman, not even husband and wife, but two searching souls desperate for the narcotic oblivion of physical ecstasy. He took her swiftly, roughly, and she cried out and returned his turbulent caresses with exultant wantonness. The frenzy left them spent, panting, a little dazed.
Something had changed between them, but Caitlin was too tired to puzzle it out. Shivering in the chill dawn, she stood and shook the sand from her clothes.
The furious barking of a dog echoed down from the cliffs. With a gasp of mortification, she stumbled back. Wesley was no Irish legend, but a conquering Englishman, Cromwell’s creature. Whipping a glance over her shoulder, she spied the wolfhound, Finn, bounding toward them. The thick gray fur bristled on his back as he raced down to the strand.
His barking turned to yelps of greeting. His feathered tail drew great circles in the air. Careening through the pool, he made a leap for Wesley, placing huge paws on his chest.
“Enough, you great beast.” Spluttering, Wesley pushed the dog away.
Caitlin barely acknowledged the wet tongue licking her hand. For on the cliffs high above stood a dozen men, their feet planted on Clonmuir soil and their weapons at the ready.
The last pulsations of pleasure ebbed away as she climbed up to face them.
Rory Breslin swung a spiked war flail back and forth, back and forth, with a chained, hypnotic violence. “You’ve had your adventure, Caitlin.” His furious gaze snapped to Wesley. “Now can I kill him?”
She hesitated, became aware of the wind whistling through the crags and the explosion of the surf upon the rocks far below.
The men waited, Rory with his swinging flail, Liam with his iron hammer, Curran with his sling; the rest as well armed and as vengefully angry as Rory.
And before them all stood John Wesley Hawkins with naught but the look on his face for defense.
“Well?” Rory demanded.
Yes, screamed the warrior inside Caitlin. Put him out of my life so everything can be as before.
No, countered the yearning woman inside her, the woman whose thighs still tingled from his loving. Nothing can be the same, for he has transformed me.
“Put away your weapons,” she said wearily.
The men exchanged looks but maintained their combative stances. Caitlin drew herself up. Whatever else had happened, she remained the MacBride.
“Put away your weapons,” she repeated. “Now.”
Rory stilled the war flail. Curran flicked the stone from his sling. Conn put away his crossbow and the blacksmith lowered his hammer. One by one, the others followed suit.
“He lied to us a hundred thousand times,” said Rory.
“Yes, he did,” Caitlin replied.
“He nearly drowned me in the cold sea,” Conn reminded her.
“Aye, that, too,” Caitlin conceded.
“He abducted you.”
“So he did.”
Rory gave a bellow of frustration. “Then by the Blessed Virgin’s sweet smile, why don’t you let us avenge you?”
She glanced at Wesley. He had stood silent through the exchange, distant but respectful. Leaving, as he so often did, the decision to her. Not because he was weak, but because he respected her.
She drew a deep breath. The surf slammed down on the beach, and the sand hissed as it was drawn back to the sea. The dry grass rattled in the wind.
Then Caitlin spoke: “Because he is my husband.”
* * *
Wesley sat at the round table that evening and surveyed the assortment of people in the hall. The room overflowed with newcomers who had arrived half starved during their absence. Brigid told a tinker’s brood of children how she had helped to swim twenty of Clonmuir’s ponies to Little Island for the high summer grazing. A group of men huddled around the central hearth and worried aloud about rebuilding the fishing fleet the English had destroyed. The few undersized mussels that had been found clinging to rocks would not feed the people through the winter.
At the table, conversation was held exclusively in Irish. Wesley heard himself insulted, vilified and denounced.
Caitlin had told, in one bitter, cathartic rush, the tale of their excursions to Inishbofin, to Galway, and to London. Her marriage to an Englishman on the deck of a ship. Her meeting with Cromwell at Whitehall Palace.
“’Tis a terrible, bad thing you’ve done,” said Tom Gandy, facing Wesley and switching to English.
“Aye.” Wesley saw no point in denying the statement.
Tom brightened. “And yet you did find the captured priests. You rescued our own Father Tully.”
Wesley brooded into the fire. “One day we’ll free them all.”
“We?”
He held Gandy’s gaze for a moment. “I’m charged with keeping the Fianna from raiding. But Cromwell hasn’t ordered me to stay away from Inishbofin.”
“So where’s our good chaplain now?” Rory demanded.
Wesley took a very small sip of poteen. “I thought to find him here when we arrived. But perhaps he took my advice and stayed away.”
“You’d keep the shepherd from his flock?” Conn slammed his fist down on the table.
“He was betrayed once,” said Wesley. “It could happen again.” He drank once more as the horrible implications of his statement found a home in the fierce hearts of his Irish family.
Rory lurched up from the table. “I’ll not be listening to any more of this.” One by one the men followed him to the central fire.
Caitlin stood and glared at Wesley. “Is this your purpose, then? To worry my people with your distrust?” Without waiting for an answer, she went to join Magheen, who sat wan and listless among the women. With their heads together, Caitlin’s tawny waves contrasting with Magheen’s pale, silky braid, the sisters spoke quietly.
Only Tom Gandy remained. His stumpy finger traced a bead of spilled ale along the surface of the table. “So,” he said at length, “has it happened yet? Have you fallen in love with the girleen?”
Wesley was learning to accept Gandy’s uncanny insights into the hearts and minds of people. “I think I loved her from the first moment I saw her. Before that, I loved her, too. Before I even knew she existed outside the realm of my dreams.”
“Spoken like a true cavalier.”
“No, Tom. Spoken from my heart. Loving Caitlin is the only certainty in my life right now.” He studied the broad, wise face, the shining eyes, and smiling mouth. “You knew all along I would fall in love with her.”
“Of course I knew.”
“But how?”
“How does the sun know to shine? How does the dew know to mist the heaths at dawn?”
The blithe, evasive words jabbed at Wesley’s temper. “Because God made it so! Damn these riddles of yours—”
Gandy nodded toward the women’s corner and interrupted, “You see how it is with the girleen.”
Caitlin’s features were gilt by rushlight, her hands gently soothing Magheen’s trembling shoulders. Fatigue and worry haunted her face.
Wesley sighed. “If I’m to win Caitlin’s heart, I must also win the trust and respect of this household.”
“The question is, which will be the harder battle?”
“No question at all,” said Wesley. “The answer is Caitlin.” He drummed his fingers on the table. Conditions at Clonmuir had gone from bad to worse. Magheen’s natural vibrancy had dimmed to a wistful glow. More refugees had arrived with their empty hopes and frightened eyes. And, according to Curran Healy, Hammersmith had indeed managed to garrison the fort at Lough Corrib, sealing off Clonmuir’s traditional eastward land routes.
“I’ll take the problems one at a time,” Wesley said. “How long will the stores last?”
Tom took out a stylus and notch stick. “With the extra mouths to feed and the potato yield so poor, I’d say a week, give or take a day. Might have been more if it weren’t for that tinker. Fourteen children he has, and another in the oven.”
Magheen gave a loud sob and buried her face in her hands.
“We also need to do something about that one,” Tom said ruefully, “before she floods the hall with her tears. Faith, but she flings bad humors on the night.”
“I have an idea that could take care of both the refugees and Magheen,” said Wesley, leaning forward and lowering his voice: “Listen.”
* * *
“What did you say?” Caitlin’s eyebrows clashed in a frown. She had withdrawn to her chamber, and Wesley had followed her there.
“I said, I’m sleeping here with you.”
“Oh, no, you’re not.”
“I’m only behaving as a husband should.”
“Only until Father Tully can help us be done with this farce.”
“What about this morning on the beach?” His voice turned harsh. “Was that a farce?”
The memory warmed her cheeks. Discomfited, she walked to her three-legged dressing table and sat on the stool. “It was…something that shouldn’t have happened.”
She heard him draw an angry breath. “Why can’t you just accept it?”
“Do you really need an answer to that?”
“No,” he muttered. “Damn it.”
Her mother’s pedestal mirror stood before her. A boar-bristle brush and some wooden combs lay at hand. Glancing into the mirror, she saw Wesley’s face contort with a look of tension. “Something wrong?” she asked with sarcastic sweetness.
“Oh, no.” He gave a dry laugh. “However, I was just thinking. If the good-night wishes of your men had been poisoned darts, I’d be convulsing on the floor in my death throes. That should make you happy.”
“I could have ordered your execution any number of times. Sure it would have meant one less mouth to feed. I can’t think why I didn’t.”
He came up behind her. In the mirror, their eyes met, hers wary and confused, his angry and pained. “Is it because—”
“I said I don’t know why, so don’t you be after trying to have a dance of words. I’m tired. I’d like to go to sleep.”
He picked up one of the combs. “Something’s wrong here.”
“One of the few honest truths I’ve heard you utter.”
“I was speaking of your dressing table.”
“And what in the name of Saint Ita’s stag beetle is the matter with my table?”
“It lacks pomatums and beauty pastes. Patches, perfumes and such.”
“For a man who once studied for the priesthood, you seem to know a lot about the contents of a woman’s dressing table.”
“I know a lot about personal vanity. And you seem to have very little of that.”
“I haven’t time for frippery.” She pushed a stray curl behind her ear. “I’ve barely time to plait my hair, let alone paint my face.”
“It doesn’t bother you that you lack the leisure to primp?”
She remembered Alonso’s reaction to her, in English dress, hair done up and cheeks rouged. The devastating effect had given her a brief sense of power, a different sort of power than the one she wielded as the MacBride.
But Hawkins desired her whether she was dressed as an English lady or an Irish warrior.
She dodged the thought, for it flattered him. “The objects of my pride don’t sit on a dressing table. I need nothing more than my sword and helm to satisfy my personal vanity.”
“I understand. I do.” He untied the leather thong at the end of her braid.
“What are you doing?” She tried to jerk away but his free hand held her still.
“Let me,” he said softly, unweaving her braid. Their eyes met again in the mirror, distorted in the wavy glass. He took up the brush and stroked it through her hair.
“This isn’t necessary,” she began, but the tingle of the bristles over her scalp relaxed her, even when the brush caught a snag. With the dexterity of a fisherman mending his best seine, he separated the tangle and stroked the lock to silky smoothness.
He followed each motion of the brush with his other hand. “Your hair is so lovely. Did your mother used to brush it?”
The question brought on misty visions of bedtime tales and good-night kisses, childish prayers uttered in fervent voices, and bright linen ribbons around expertly woven braids. How simple times had been then, how sweet.
“Yes,” Caitlin said finally, grieving for the loss of the evening ritual. Now, bedtime meant falling exhausted onto her pallet and awaiting a restless sleep plagued by worries.
“Bend your head down,” he said. He brushed her hair forward, baring the nape of her neck. She felt his fingers unravel another tangle, felt the slide of the brush over her scalp.
Glancing through the fall of hair into the mirror, she saw that his face wore a look of deep tenderness. He was only brushing her hair, and yet the task held a sense of intimate familiarity.
He touched her neck softly, sending pixies dancing down her spine. And then his lips were there, kissing secret hollows usually concealed by her hair. His breath blew warm upon her flesh, making her shiver.
“I think you should be stopping that for now.” She shook back her hair and was annoyed to see a flush of color in her cheeks.
“Look at yourself, and tell me I’ve done you harm.” He tilted her chin so that she caught a full view of herself in the mirror. His patient attention had given her hair a sheen like the sun on bright water, a texture like silk. The waving curls seemed fuller, glossier. More feminine.
The idea brought back thoughts of her troubles. “I suppose I should thank you.” Carelessly she clubbed her hair at the nape with a bit of leather.
Annoyance flickered in Wesley’s eyes but still he smiled, and his hands massaged her shoulders until the tension melted from her. “Very well,” he said. “Pandering to your vanity won’t gain me your heart. I should have known that.”
“Yes, you should have.”
He pulled up a stool and turned her to face him. “Magheen seems worse for knowing you’ve gone and found yourself a husband.”
Caitlin smiled ruefully. “She despairs for lack of a husband, while I despair because I have one.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose you consider yourself an expert on women.”
“Were I an expert, we’d not be sitting on these stools but lying in that bed, doing shocking things to each other.”
She tried to shrug off the suggestion as lewd, but she had sampled his loving and learned that certain things were not lewd at all. “What makes you think you can help Magheen?”
“I can recognize a broken heart when I see one.”
“A one-eyed badger could see her heart’s been broken. I’ll not applaud you for that.”
“Would you applaud me for remedying the situation?”
The certainty in his voice rankled her. “It’s not your problem.”
“But it is.” He gripped her hands and held tight.
“Magheen’s too proud to pay for the privilege of being a man’s wife. Even the wife of a great lord.” Caitlin pulled her hands from his and rubbed her palms on the rough homespun fabric of her kirtle. “I never should have tried to keep the bride price a secret. She was bound to find out.”
“And that’s when she came home? When she found out about the bride price?”
“No. That’s when she refused her favors to Logan.”
A rueful grin tugged at one corner of his mouth. “You MacBride women.”
“We have standards.” She found herself struggling not to smile. And then the laughter burst from her, mirth as sweet and cleansing as water from a mountain spring. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to reach out and draw him into a hug.
“She wants to go back now, doesn’t she?” He spoke the question into the cloud of her hair.
“Aye, but the stubbornness is on her. To her mind, he must want her and her alone and have no thought of cattle and booley huts.”
He sat back, his hands lingering at her knees. “I think there’s a way to salvage Logan’s pride, find homes for some of the refugees, and get Magheen back where she belongs.”
Caitlin lifted her eyebrows. “Haven’t I pondered the problem for weeks, and—”
“Just listen. I want to help.”
“Why?”
“Because Magheen is your sister. Because her sadness tugs at your heart. I don’t want you to be sad.”
She gave a bitter laugh. “Sure and haven’t I been sad since the day I clapped eyes on you.”
“It was evening,” he corrected her. “And you didn’t seem at all sad. But we were speaking of my plan for Magheen.”
Caitlin realized she would not get a moment’s peace until she heard him out. “What is your plan?”
“I shall go to swear fealty to Logan Rafferty.”
Surprise knocked the breath from her. “What?”
“When a man comes new into a district, he must pledge himself to the ranking lord.”
“True, but—”
“Then it’s only right that I do so. In the company of you and Magheen. Rory and Tom should come along as well. Oh, and that tinker and his family. They eat like horses.”
She pictured Wesley striding into Logan’s keep, the two men facing off, Wesley as bright as a burnished blade, Logan as dark as shadows at midnight. Never, she reflected, were two men so clearly marked to be enemies as brash Wesley Hawkins and proud Logan Rafferty.
“He’d probably cut you down before you got a word out of your mouth,” she cautioned.
“I’ll risk it.”
“But what does swearing fealty have to do with reuniting Magheen and Logan?”
He grinned and told her.
“You’re mad,” she said when he’d finished, but she found herself smiling, recognizing the cleverness of his ploy. “But then, madness and determination sometimes wear the same mask, don’t they?”
* * *
The day dawned bright and cool, the sky a shattering shade of blue. Wesley and Caitlin accompanied by Tom, Rory and Magheen raced on horseback along the coast. The tinker’s family walked the distance. Wesley did not want them to arrive until later.
His spirits lifted. No one rode like the Irish, in saddles so slight they seemed a mere formality, with bits so dainty a teething baby would not feel them.
Wesley rode a tall brindled pony. Why the Irish called them ponies was beyond his ken, for the mare stood taller than most hunters from Kent.
Caitlin took the lead, setting the pace at an easy canter. The stallion’s hooves seemed to caress the uneven ground. Horse and rider united to become one, a creature of the wind, swifter than the kestrels that haunted the coastal bogs.
Wesley knew now where the black horse had come from, and why Caitlin treasured the beast so.
His mind jerked back to the days in London. What a fool he had been to imagine that seeing the truth about her Spanish hero would send Caitlin running to Wesley’s arms. Instead, the revelation had underscored her distrust in men and made her more wary than ever.
He forced his attention to the others. Rory Breslin rode in the manner in which he did all things: hard, blunt, and uncompromising. A crevice in the terrain or a rock in the path was nothing; winning the game against Cromwell would be easier than befriending Rory.
A distracted rider, Tom Gandy let his pony tarry behind the others while his gaze wandered over the passing landscape. Magheen rode gracefully, her ladylike mien duplicated by the smooth gait of her tall ivory pony.
Wesley absorbed the ruggedness of land and sea. Connemara might have been another world, untamed and alive with the pulsing of the waves on the shore and the song of the wind through the crags. The mountains reared to the east, great hulks of thinly wooded rock, brooding in ancient defiance at the pummeling sea.
The mist-shrouded magic of the land seeped into his soul, and he remembered something Tom had once told him. The Irish cannot be conquered. For centuries untold, Viking and Norman and English had battered her shores and tried to subdue her people. Rather than breaking the Irish to a new way of life, the victims became victors. The conquerors surrendered to the spirit of the Irish, absorbed their language and customs, and succumbed to their charm and their power.
England commanded Wesley’s loyalty. She needed Charles back on the throne, needed law and sanity pulled from the quagmire of intolerance Cromwell had made of the Commonwealth.
But Ireland. No man could compromise his sentiment about the vast, wild land. One loved it, or one hated it. No one shrugged an indifferent shoulder.
Wesley watched Caitlin racing on horseback across the heath. The wind made sport of her thick braid, unweaving her hair until the strands sailed out in a golden veil behind her.
She was the very essence of Ireland: strong, mysterious, unconquerable, her character a potent distillation of the warriors and heroes of generations. He had married her and come into her household. But he knew better than to deceive himself that he had broken her will.
With these thoughts moving his mind, he rode the remainder of the distance to Logan Rafferty’s ancestral home, Brocach. The stronghold crowned a steep hill, slender Norman towers piercing the sky, thick, pitted granite walls surrounding a square keep.
Sentries spied them a quarter mile from the hilltop castle. A horn blared. Caitlin slowed her horse to a canter, and Wesley drew up beside her. He glanced back at Magheen to see her reaction to the home she had left in a rage.
She held herself like a queen, only the high color in her pretty face and her white-knuckled grip on the reins betraying her nervousness.
“I’m still after thinking this is a crazy idea,” Caitlin said. “Logan is bound to see through your plan.”
“If he’s truly in love,” said Wesley, “then he’s as blind as a mole in broad daylight.” He lowered his voice. “I know I am.”
She lifted her chin. “I just hope you’re right about Logan.”
“If I am, will you swear to be appreciative?” he asked.
“In what way?”
He shrugged. “Oh, enough so as to give me a son.”
Her eyes widened in surprise; then she scowled. “I give no Englishman a son.”
Wesley laughed, for beneath her anger he recognized longing, and it gave him hope. “Very well. I’ll settle for a daughter…if she looks like Magheen.”
Four men-at-arms joined them on the road. They spoke little after Wesley stated their business. He occupied himself with studying the outlying lands.
The landscape seemed healthier than the empty villages and desolated fields they had passed. Far in the distance, on a narrow strip of emerald grass between the road and the sea, great brown rocks dotted the slopes. Wesley gave them only passing interest; then one of the rocks moved. With a start of astonishment, he realized he was looking at a herd of shaggy Irish cattle.
The sight was a revelation; he’d had no idea Logan was so prosperous.
To the east lay a field. Reapers had harvested the early crop and left a light brown stubble, even as a newly trimmed beard. An image flashed through Wesley’s mind: other fields, burned by the Roundhead invaders. No smooth cloak of well-shorn stalks, but blackened stubble.
“Rafferty’s crops weren’t burned,” he said to Caitlin in a low voice.
She nodded. “Logan manages the English well. He’s capable of compromise. He plays the landlord now, charging rents and paying taxes.”
“He sold out to the Commonwealth.”
“He chose to protect his people in the best way he sees fit.”
“Could you not compromise, too?”
Her chin lifted even higher. “I prefer the old ways. I prefer freedom.”
“Don’t you rebel at the unfairness of it? Rafferty lives in prosperity while you struggle just to feed your household.”
“I’d have no household, should Cromwell have his way. It’s not a perfect world. Each does as he sees fit.”
“But don’t you prefer peace—”
“Peace is my dream,” she hissed vehemently. “But fighting is my reality. I have to live with that.”
Hearing the fierce words, Wesley felt a rush of love so intense that his head seemed to spin. He knew beyond all certainty that he wanted to spend his life with this woman, to watch her grow round with his children, and then to grow old and mellow as the years passed.
As they entered the lofty hall, he only hoped Rafferty would not see fit to spike John Wesley Hawkins through the gut.
The Lord of Brocach looked as if he’d enjoy it. Rafferty occupied a thronelike chair, the high back carved with rowan leaves and berries. As Wesley and Caitlin, followed by their party, walked the length of the hall toward him, he made no move to rise. Instead he propped an elbow on the chair arm and toyed with the ends of his braided beard. His gaze settled coldly on Caitlin and Wesley, but just for a moment. The Lord of Brocach had eyes only for his wife.
In spite of his distrust of Rafferty, Wesley felt a twinge of empathy for the Irish lord. Rafferty’s dark anger failed to conceal his helpless adoration and frustrated desire, two passions with which, in recent weeks, Wesley had become unwillingly acquainted.
He reached the raised dais and bowed. “My lord.”
One corner of Rafferty’s mouth lifted in a mocking grin. “So you’ve finally come to Brocach, have you, Hawkins? As I recall, you had an invitation some weeks back.”
“I’ve come on my own terms,” Wesley said pleasantly. “As Caitlin’s husband.” He felt her stiffen beside him. He stifled the urge to shake her. He wanted her to feel pride, not resentment, when he announced that he was her husband.
Rafferty’s face contorted with disbelief, then anger, and finally mockery. “Well, well. The lady rebel of Clonmuir has finally been brought to heel. And by an English nobody, no less. Tell me, Caitlin, what brought about this amazing development?”
“True love,” Wesley said before she had a chance to respond. “She couldn’t help herself.”
“My hands were tied,” said Caitlin. Wesley looked at her sharply and saw a spark of amusement in her eyes.
“Well!” Magheen stepped forward and planted herself in front of Logan. “Don’t be expecting such as Logan Rafferty to understand true love.”
“This from a woman who abandoned her own dear husband.” Logan tried to conceal his eagerness as he added, “Are you ready to come back to me, Magheen?”
Her pretty features softened with longing. “Only if you’ll accept me without a dowry.”
“St. Patrick preserve my immortal soul.” He lifted his clasped hands toward the rough-beamed ceiling. “A man who takes a wife with no dowry is less than a man.”
“A theory that bears ruminating…later,” Wesley said. “My lord, I’ve come to swear fealty to you.”
Rafferty lifted his eyebrows in surprise, then shot a look at Caitlin. “What trick is this? You MacBride females are full of tricks.”
“No trick,” Wesley cut in. “It’s a sincere offer.”
“Sure you’re as sincere as a weasel in a dovecote.”
“Look,” said Wesley, “if we’re to live together in this district, we’d best not be at each other’s throats.”
Logan waved a hand, the thick fingers weighted with rings. Reaching to his belt, he withdrew a gleaming, pointed dirk. “Let’s be after it, then. On your knees, Hawkins.”
While every impulse told him to rebel, Wesley knelt before the Irishman. In London Caitlin had seen his pride broken by her Spanish lover. Now again he must allow himself to be humiliated. But it was all part of his plan, he reminded himself.
She looked on gravely, but utterly without sympathy. And why should he expect sympathy from a woman he had forced into Cromwell’s presence?
Because, damn it, said a mutinous voice inside him, it was time she saw the value in compromise.
“Do you swear to uphold the laws of this district and obey my rule?” Logan’s black eyes danced with enjoyment.
“I so swear,” said Wesley in his best bell-toned voice.
Logan extended the dirk for the customary kiss of peace. “And if you break this vow, may this blade bury itself to the haft in your heart.”
His face flaming, Wesley bent over the large, rough hand. He clamped his jaw to stifle a sound of surprise.
Then, his mind boiling with suspicion, he brushed his lips over the blade. But his eyes stayed on Rafferty’s signet ring: a golden rowan branch surmounted on the back of a badger.
Brocach, he thought. Irish for badger’s warren. God, why hadn’t he realized sooner? He straightened, schooled his features to blandness, and lifted his hand in salute. “My lord.”
“Very good, Hawkins. Let us have a cup of usquebaugh, and we’ll discuss the fines owed to me by Clonmuir.”
“Fines?” Caitlin burst out. “What blarney is this?”
He strode to the table. He did not look at Caitlin or Magheen. “No blarney,” he said. “Simply a fine I’m compelled to levy for your disobedience.”
She joined him at the table and slapped her palms on the surface. “What disobedience?”
His face became a hard mask of accusation. “The Fianna.”
Her face paled. “And what’s that to do with me?”
“Don’t waste your wind in arguing. Of course, I knew all from the start, but I waited to be sure. You were careless in that last raid.” He fixed his stare on Tom Gandy. “You were recognized.”
That last raid, thought Wesley, when the men had ridden in a rage without their leader. A feeling of protectiveness rose fierce and hot through him, and he moved to her side.
Caitlin hesitated, then sank onto a bench. “My people are starving. More exiles come every week. How can I turn away the crying babies? Hammersmith has an endless supply of stores from England.”
“I’m your lord. You should have come to me.”
“I did, Logan. Remember? I begged you for provisions but you refused.”
“Didn’t I take Magheen off your hands—”
“For a price, damn your eyes,” Magheen cut in.
“—and I a lord who should have wed high nobility?” Logan’s hands kept busy, handling his horn mug, rubbing the table. His eyes shifted—to the fire, to the wolfhound sleeping at his feet—everywhere but at Caitlin.
Wesley’s suspicions froze into icy certainty. Suppressing his rage, he walked to Tom Gandy and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Scuttle the plan—we can’t leave Magheen here. Rafferty’s a traitor.”
Tom started. “Sure and that’s a hard accusation.”
“That ring he’s wearing. Titus Hammersmith has an ornament in the same design. I saw it in his office.”
“Bless me, are you certain?”
“Aye, and then there’s Father Tully. Didn’t he disappear from Brocach?”
“Aye, but—”
“And Logan’s lying about knowing of the Fianna from the start. He’s got more pride than sense. Would he really sit idle while Caitlin led raids that moved Cromwell to murder and the bards to ballads?”
“The sin upon my head, but you’re right! What are you going to do?”
“I can’t carry on with the plan for Magheen. He betrayed a priest. He’d not balk at betraying his wife.”
“I disagree,” said Tom. “If you’re right, we need her here more than ever.”
“What can Magheen do?”
Tom smiled. “She’s Caitlin’s sister. And tell me, do you relish entirely the prospect of taking Magheen back to Clonmuir to starve with the rest of us?”
Wesley shuddered. “I still don’t like it—”
“It was your idea.” Tom pushed him toward the table. “All will be well. Do something terrifically clever. I’ll play my part.”
Wesley made what he hoped was a deferential bow. “My lord, about the fine.”
“Aye, let’s talk about the fine,” Logan boomed.
“In payment, I offer you a skilled tinker to see to repairing your fine possessions. A good man from Wexford, very—er—prolific. You’ll not find better in Ireland.”
Logan’s eyes narrowed in calculation. “You offer another mouth to feed.”
Try sixteen, Wesley thought. “I offer an honest worker. Surely you can use him.”
Logan’s gaze locked with Magheen’s. She stared at him implacably until he said, “Very well, I accept. But a tinker doesn’t cover the amount owed by Clonmuir.”
Wesley smiled. “I agree. There’s something you need more than a tinker, my lord.”
“And how would you be knowing what I—”
“A wife.”
Logan’s eyebrows crashed together like black lightning bolts. “By God, Hawkins, what kind of a scoundrel are you, to be offering a woman as payment for a fine? Damn it, I have a wife!”
“Take me and cancel the fine.” Magheen braced her arms on the table and gave Logan a heaven-sent view of her bosom. Just as his eyes kindled, she stepped back. “That’s our offer.”
“It’s preposterous. I won’t hear of it.”
True to the plan, Tom tapped his mug on the table. “Saints of heaven be praised, the mood has been hurled upon my tongue!”
Everyone stopped what they were doing. When a gifted bard felt the urge to relate a tale, it was a special occasion. England had outlawed the bards of Ireland, so this treat had the fine seasoning of the forbidden to sweeten it.
Logan looked torn between continuing the argument and listening to Tom. Seizing the moment, Tom stood on a bench and drew his audience in with the long sweep of his gaze.
To Wesley’s surprise, Caitlin inched down the bench toward him. He felt her presence like a warm glow, a flicker of light in his heart. “I hope your plan works,” she whispered.
“I must know. Do Logan and Magheen love truly?”
“Look at them. Do you have to ask?”
Magheen sat across the table from Logan, staring at him with pained yearning. She had dropped her shawl. Her unbraided hair hung like a long, loose veil around her face and down her back. Rosy color suffused her cheeks. Her moist lips and blue eyes gleamed in the rushlight.
Rafferty had one elbow propped on the table. His lidded gaze clung to Magheen in silent worship.
“You’re certain he’d never hurt her?”
She shifted away from him on the bench. “He’s not like you. He doesn’t use women.”
Her statement slapped him in the face like a bucket of ice water, awakening rage. “I went on my knees before him for your sake! What else must I—”
“Hush. I’m listening to Tom.”
He made himself smother the fury. Giving no sign that he understood the Gaelic, Wesley pretended great interest in the bottom of his mug and prayed Tom’s powers of persuasion would weaken Rafferty’s stubbornness.
The narrative came forth in hushed whispers, bursting shouts, dramatic pauses. The audience listened, enraptured, absorbing every word as grass in springtime absorbs sunlight.
“What’s he saying?” Wesley asked Caitlin.
“It’s the tale of Bridie McGhee. An abduction tale.”
Caught up in his own recitation, Tom paced the narrow bench, gestured and contorted his face. The audience listened in a state of breath-held captivation.
“What’s happening to Bridie now?” asked Wesley.
“Faith, she thinks she’s lost him. She’s standing on the edge of Leacht Cliff about to hurl herself over.”
Tom lamented in dirgelike tones.
In an undertone, Caitlin translated, “She’s calling out to Ruath, begging him to snatch her from black suicide, but he doesn’t hear.”
To Wesley’s surprise, he noticed tears in Caitlin’s eyes. She slid her hand under his beneath the table. Very gently he moved his thumb in slow circles in her palm. With absurd swiftness, his body jolted to life.
He had been indifferent to ladies of the blood royal. He had resisted with ease the arts of talented courtesans. And yet the simple act of holding Caitlin’s hand filled him with a sharp, sweet yearning that left him breathless.
It must be true love, he thought. I could die happy just holding her hand.
Her grip tightened. “Ruath has bridled a wind horse and is after saving her.”
Forcing an agony of suspense on the audience, Tom described in minute detail Ruath’s flight to the coast. The love-struck hero battled her kinsmen and braved a storm.
Bridie stepped off the edge of the cliff.
Magheen wailed and buried her face in her hands. Logan rushed to her side and cradled her against him. He inhaled, his face blissful and stupid from the scent of her.
Ruath sailed off the cliff after her. Just as Gandy had convinced the listeners that the lovers were falling to their deaths, Ruath scooped Bridie onto his horse. The enchanted beast landed with exquisite ease in a dark meadow.
To the glory of Ireland, Bridie and her lover lived happily ever after.
Women dabbed their eyes with their shawls. Men wiped their noses with their sleeves. Tom winked at Rafferty. “Nothing like a good abduction to prove who’s master,” he said.
Sensing Logan’s perfect state of vulnerability, Wesley rose and announced that it was time to go. Logan had the look of a dying man about him as Magheen drew herself from his arms.
They had ridden a mile to the south when hoofbeats drummed behind them. Like a horseman from the underworld, Logan Rafferty galloped out of the twilight.
Magheen gave a shriek of both terror and triumph. Logan bore down on her. Their horses ran neck and neck, so close that their shoulders bumped. He snatched her from the saddle in a move worthy of a carnival gypsy.
Magheen screamed. And then fell silent.
Wesley’s last glimpse, just before they crested a rise in the road, was of the lord and his lady embracing passionately, on a horse galloping back to Brocach.