Книга - The Maiden of Ireland

The Maiden of Ireland
Susan Wiggs


#1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs sweeps readers away to the misty coast of Ireland in an irresistible tale of falling in love with the enemy…John Wesley Hawkins was condemned to hang, accused of treason and heresy. As he's transported to the scaffold at Tyburn, however, the Lord Protector steps in and offers him the hand of mercy-if Wesley agrees to travel to Ireland on a dangerous mission into the heart of the Irish resistance against English rule. He'll have to seduce the rebels' secrets from a headstrong Irishwoman, but that shouldn't be a problem for a man of Wesley's reputation… . Caitlin MacBride is mistress of the beleaguered Irish castle Clonmuir, and she makes no secret of her loyalty to her countrymen. She's determined to remain strong for her people, but a wish for true love one evening at sunset yields the one thing that may sway her resolve.When Wesley walks out of the mist that fateful night, Caitlin's faith in the magic of Ireland is briefly restored-until she discovers he's one of the treacherous Englishmen she has spent her life fighting against.See more at www.SusanWiggs.com







#1 New York Times bestselling author Susan Wiggs sweeps readers away to the misty coast of Ireland in an irresistible tale of falling in love with the enemy…

John Wesley Hawkins was condemned to hang, accused of treason and heresy. As he’s transported to the scaffold at Tyburn, however, the Lord Protector steps in and offers him the hand of mercy—if Wesley agrees to travel to Ireland on a dangerous mission into the heart of the Irish resistance against English rule. He’ll have to seduce the rebels’ secrets from a headstrong Irishwoman, but that shouldn’t be a problem for a man of Wesley’s reputation….

Caitlin MacBride is mistress of the beleaguered Irish castle Clonmuir, and she makes no secret of her loyalty to her countrymen. She’s determined to remain strong for her people, but a wish for true love one evening at sunset yields the one thing that may sway her resolve. When Wesley walks out of the mist that fateful night, Caitlin’s faith in the magic of Ireland is briefly restored—until she discovers he’s one of the treacherous Englishmen she has spent her life fighting against.


Praise for the novels of Susan Wiggs (#ulink_302f8401-6865-5aa4-9fa1-ef9d25a71db1)

“A classic beauty-and-the-beast love story that will stay in your heart long after you’ve turned the last page.”

—New York Times bestselling author Kristin Hannah on The Lightkeeper

“Wiggs has a knack for creating engaging characters, and her energetic prose shines through the pages.”

—Publishers Weekly on Enchanted Afternoon

“Susan Wiggs delves deeply into her characters’ hearts and motivations to touch our own.”

—RT Book Reviews on The Mistress

“[Wiggs] has created a quiet page-turner that will hold readers spellbound as the relationships, characters and story unfold. Fans of historical romances will naturally flock to this skillfully executed [Chicago Fire] trilogy.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Firebrand


Also by SUSAN WIGGS (#ulink_d0e68eaa-7737-5f75-9e15-1ebf37352509)

CONTEMPORARY ROMANCES

Home Before Dark

The Ocean Between Us

Summer by the Sea

Table for Five

Lakeside Cottage

Just Breathe

The Goodbye Quilt

The Lakeshore Chronicles

Summer at Willow Lake

The Winter Lodge

Dockside

Snowfall at Willow Lake

Fireside

Lakeshore Christmas

The Summer Hideaway

Marrying Daisy Bellamy

Return to Willow Lake

Candlelight Christmas

The Bella Vista Chronicles

The Apple Orchard

The Beekeeper’s Ball

HISTORICAL ROMANCES

The Lightkeeper

The Drifter

The Mistress of Normandy

The Tudor Rose Trilogy

At the King’s Command

The Maiden’s Hand

At the Queen’s Summons

Chicago Fire Trilogy

The Hostage

The Mistress

The Firebrand

Calhoun Chronicles

The Charm School

The Horsemaster’s Daughter

Halfway to Heaven

Enchanted Afternoon

A Summer Affair


The Maiden of Ireland

Susan Wiggs

Refreshed version of THE MIST AND THE MAGIC,

newly revised by author




www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


Contents

Cover (#uacc27e3d-136a-5e1a-bc9d-dcbb71be0524)

Back Cover Text (#ufbea0ef6-8865-57f3-a532-4ee71b1adf04)

Praise (#u6c6283ff-f7ce-5b88-a614-1cb2cf901eb9)

Booklist (#u6b383d45-42f2-5b9e-b46a-647712d8dc2e)

Title Page (#u635e3dcb-9c7e-51e5-a065-1ad02fb4861d)

Prologue (#u552e7faf-acf4-5024-958b-f986b3ece649)

One (#ueabd5d06-558c-5f60-95b4-0880d3b204f4)

Two (#u09b37f69-ac38-5d5f-8b3d-fbc812114851)

Three (#u6030de42-857d-5fc4-b2c3-5ec6cfd41687)

Four (#u8fe8ddc5-ae55-5a58-b2ab-da45e636bbee)

Five (#u613da3dc-1432-5efc-9cec-13000ce6f0c0)

Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Afterword (#litres_trial_promo)

Extract (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


Prologue (#ulink_8181a552-b62c-5021-a2a8-c9cd3fcf7a84)

Tyburn Hill, 1658

The executioner wondered why so many women had come to watch the priest die. Were the ladies of London so bored, then, that the spectacle of a poor wretch being tortured to death lured them from their bowers?

Thaddeus Bull scratched his head through his black hangman’s hood. He had never understood the fascination of the Londoners. Give him a pint of ale, a joint of mutton and a smiling maid; that was all the entertainment he needed.

Strangely, these women represented every layer of society. Masked noble ladies in boxy coaches held pomander balls to their noses. Country maids in faded dresses moved their lips in silent prayer. Tradeswomen and merchants’ wives whispered behind their hands.

A bevy of seasoned Southwark whores brayed at one another in their sharp, rough speech. One of them elbowed a path toward Bull, tossed him a coin, and said, “Please, sir, be merciful!”

Bull ignored the plea and the coin. Only in lean times would he stoop to accepting a bribe from a whore. Thanks to Lord Protector Cromwell, present times were not lean.

Through the black rim of his woolsey hood, Bull caught a flash of silver from a woman’s throat: a crucifix or a Lamb of God, no doubt, worn in defiance of the ban on popish idolatry.

Guards flanked the road leading to the gallows where the priest would hang. Like Bull, Cromwell’s soldiers seemed struck by the abundance of female spectators. Their hard gazes roved over the throng, resting on a comely maid here, a buxom gentlewoman there.

Thaddeus Bull heard the unmistakable scraping noise that heralded the arrival of the prisoner. He glanced at the noose, swinging in the brisk spring wind. Thick hemp for this one, the sheriff had ordered. Thin rope strangles a man instantly and spares him the agony of the drawing and quartering.

The authorities, Bull knew, wanted Father John to feel every moment of slow strangulation, every stroke of the sword. Bull’s gaze moved to the blade of his knife. Specially wrought in Saxony, the weapon was designed to slit a man cleanly from gullet to crotch. He had honed the edge parchment thin, for he was no butcher to hack away at a poor sod, priest or not.

Thaddeus Bull was a simple man, but he knew guilt when he felt it. He could almost taste it in his mouth, like a knobby piece of mutton gristle.

Bull cleared his throat. He wished he could spit on the ground but the hood prevented it. Meting out justice was his job and he was paid to do it. Many of the condemned, eager to secure a place in paradise, gave him gold coins as tokens of their absolution—not as bribes. But he would accept no inducements today, for this priest was to die hard.

The crowd hushed. Between the beats of the dirge-like drum rhythm came the sliding sound of the wattled hurdle.

Amid the ranks of soldiers rode the sheriff. Behind him plodded a massive horse, its great lower jaw yawning at an iron bit. Harnessed to the beast was the hurdle, a plastered oaken beam dragged along like a narrow sledge.

The prisoner rode with his back aligned on the length of wood, bound at his hands and feet and waist.

The three-mile journey from Tower Hill hadn’t been easy, Bull observed. Bumping over the cobbled streets of Cheapside, through the mud puddles and horse dung of Holborn, and being dragged through the ripe garbage of the Strand had taken its toll. Father John’s face, hair, and robes were covered in filth.

The eerie silence drew out. Bull waited to hear the customary jeers, but none rang from the perfumed throng.

A plump doxy broke through the ranks of the soldiers. Before they could stop her, she dropped to her knees beside the priest and used a damp white cloth to cleanse his face and beard and hair. A soldier dragged the woman away.

Father John raised his clean face to scan the onlookers.

Then the weeping began.

Never had Bull heard the like: great, heartfelt sobs, high-pitched wails, ragged hopeless sounds that seemed wrenched from the very souls of the weepers.

Bull adjusted his hood, the better to see the priest. His long hair was a greasy, matted mane the indeterminate hue of London mud. The beard straggled several inches below his chin. Blast, thought Bull. Beards were a nuisance.

The priest’s deep-set eyes were as blank as polished stones. The face bore the ravages of a course of torture that, according to Tower rumor, hadn’t drawn so much as a word from Father John. His silence had defied the rack, the wheel, the iron maiden. One interrogator swore the priest was a practitioner of the black arts who was capable of slipping into a trancelike state. Others said he had lost his mind.

Bull heard a whisper, light and feminine, as sweet as a psalm sung by an angel. “Wesley. Oh, Wesley, no...”

Who the devil is Wesley? Bull wondered.

* * *

John Wesley Hawkins, formerly a king’s cavalier and presently a condemned Catholic novice, hoped no one of consequence had heard the whisper of his true name. For six years he had kept his identity a secret, known only to England’s underground Catholics and a few well-placed royalists.

How ironic to be discovered by the authorities now.

But he just might be. For he heard the name Wesley being hissed from woman to woman.

He was surprised and a little dismayed at the size of the crowd that had come to witness his launch into eternity. It was daunting to have to face so much desperate grief all at once.

Save it, he wanted to say to them. I’m not cut of the cloth of a martyr, never was.

Some men craved the fate that awaited Hawkins. They prayed for the day their tormenters would put their wills to the test and their souls to rest. They envisioned a glorious death and, afterward, elevation to sainthood.

Sainthood had a certain lofty appeal, but it wasn’t strong enough to make John Wesley Hawkins crave death.

Not just death, he reminded himself morbidly, but choking until death kissed his soul; then, still alive, he would be cut down and his body sliced open, his insides drawn out and his heart carved from his chest. Then the beheading and quartering, his parboiled parts displayed publicly to warn off those who dared practice the Catholic faith. A costly commodity, this sainthood.

He hoped he would lose consciousness at the first stroke of the knife, but he had never been a squeamish man and couldn’t count on fainting. At Worcester, he had survived a sword wound that would have killed most men. As a further taunt to death, he had stitched the gash with his own hands.

In the Tower, he had refined his ability to resist pain. He remembered little of the rack and less of the hot irons; the burns and bruises only tormented him later.

Someone removed the ropes. Blood rushed to the tips of his fingers and toes, so swift and hot that it hurt. But what sweet agony! His very blood had taken up the refrain he had been trying—and failing—to ignore: I want to live. I want to live.

But his fate was here, on this infamous hill surrounded by green fields and budding trees and weeping women.

As soldiers hauled him to his feet and shoved him toward the hangman’s cart, he allowed himself a last look at his mourners.

All those women. Some harkened back to his misspent youth. Others were devout followers who had embraced his later cause. There were pretty women and plain ones, rich ones and poor ones, women he had liked and women he had merely lusted after.

Good Lord, he thought. How quickly they had all discovered his identity. He suspected only a few had actually known him; the rest had been drawn by rumor and improbable tales that grew larger with each telling. Gossip through the Catholic underground flowed as swiftly as a river during flood season.

Yet despite their grief, he could summon no sentiment toward them. Torture had scoured all emotion from John Wesley Hawkins.

Until he thought of Laura.

The very thought of the child brought a shimmer of light into his soul. A sense of loss made the impending horrors seem no more threatening than a stroll through Bartholomew Fair.

Sweet Jesus, keep her safe. It was as close to true prayer as Hawkins had ever uttered, despite his vocation. Priesthood had been a foolish choice, one made in haste and desperation and a yearning simply to belong. He was glad Laura’s appearance in his life had stopped him from taking his final vows and forever binding his life to the church.

Only hours before his arrest, he had paid a widow named Hester Clench to pass Laura off as her niece and speed the three-year-old to safe obscurity. Now the widow Clench possessed the only person who truly mattered to him.

He pictured Laura’s round baby face, the profusion of rose-gold curls that gave her the look of a cherub. The memory of her childish laughter stabbed at his heart, for he would hear that sound no more.

Ah, the pain of it. Never to exclaim over his child’s first lost tooth, never to see her grow tall and willowy and beautiful, never to play the stern papa evaluating her suitors.

Heat prickled in his throat. He fought the tears. If his death were to have any meaning at all, he must die well.

He was a king’s man to the end, he wanted people to say. If he could coax admiration from this hard London crowd, jaded by so many executions, his death might make a difference, after all.

Goaded by the hangman, Hawkins stepped into the two-wheeled cart hitched to a mule. So this was where his life would end. No more saying mass in barns and cellars, always one jump ahead of the priest catchers. No more whispered messages to royalists, always looking over his shoulder for Cromwell’s hunters.

At the back of the crowd, a man in an opulent high-collared robe dismounted and tried to jostle forward. A felt hat, with the brim tilted up at one side and held in place by a golden clasp, shadowed his face.

He seemed to be shouting, but the wailing of the women and the beating of drums drowned his cries. Recognition niggled at Wesley’s torture-numbed brain, prodding a memory.

The executioner stepped up beside him. The cart groaned under the giant’s solid weight.

Good, thought Hawkins. The big lout should be able to put him out of his misery quickly.

A cleric arrived. He wore a black cloak unrelieved by ornamentation, and a hat with a round, flat brim. Wesley wondered which sect was in fashion at the moment. Puritan, Anabaptist, Leveler...he couldn’t keep all the Protesters straight.

“You’ve a dire sentence hanging over you,” said the cleric.

Hawkins shot a wry glance at the noose. “So it seems.”

“Recant, sir, and spare yourself from the sword.”

Wesley allowed a hint of wistful regret to soften his features. “My good friend, I cannot.”

Impatience tautened the cleric’s mouth. “You’re as insincere a priest as they come. Why play the martyr?”

“Better to die a martyr than to live a traitor.”

“Then you’ll suffer the full agony of the sentence. I shall pray for your everlasting soul.”

“Do that, and you’ll surely send me to hell.” Wesley turned to the executioner and sketched the sign of the cross. “For what you are about to do, I forgive you.”

“Aye, sir, you’ll not trouble my sleep.” The hangman had a deep voice muffled by the hood, and an East London accent. Wesley wondered what the man thought about, what he did with himself when he wasn’t torturing people to death. Did he stop off at the Whyte Harte for a pint of the plain, rocking back in his chair and regaling his cronies with morbid tales?

The giant removed Wesley’s filthy cloak and shirt. Cool air tingled over his bare chest and arms. Sighs gusted from the women, whether at the scars from the lash or at the musculature of his stomach and chest, he couldn’t tell.

The hangman flung the garments out of the cart. Feminine hands grappled for the clothing. As his wrists were tied behind his back, Hawkins winced at the pain. He heard the sound of rending fabric, shrill voices arguing. Each scrap of his cloak and shirt would be sold off as a holy relic.

Saint John Wesley Hawkins. It had an interesting ring. He would be made patron of something, but what? Liars and cheats? Gamblers and skirt chasers? Defrocked priests?

Through the slits of his hood, the hangman eyed Hawkins’s belt. The tooled leather, several layers thick, had ridden at his waist for many years. It was a beautiful piece, but that had little to do with its value. Inside the belt were several slim compartments, waterproofed with wax, in which he carried falsified documents, secret messages, and money when he had it.

The belt was empty now. “It’s yours if you want it,” said Wesley.

The giant shrugged. “Wouldn’t span me gut.” He took hold of the noose.

Thick rope pressed on Wesley’s shoulders; twisted hemp scratched his neck. The hangman stepped down from the cart. Wesley’s thighs tightened. He expected the mule to bolt any moment.

The executioner raised his hand to slap the beast and urge it forward. But he didn’t strike the brown flank yet.

Four women Wesley remembered from his cavalier days sidled close to the cart. He knew their intent was to rush forward and hang on his legs, speeding the strangulation so the rest of the sentence would be performed on a corpse.

Near the rear of the crowd he spied five masked and mounted men. Cromwell’s own, judging from their buff-colored coats and hooked halberds. For too many years, those evil hooks had buried themselves in the chests of royalists and men of reason and justice. Wesley tried to hate the Roundheads but couldn’t. They had supported the Commonwealth out of genuine concern for order and fairness. But in just ten years, Cromwell had made butchers of them.

The cloaked man, who had been wrestling his way through the throng, had been waylaid by the sheriff. They argued heatedly, their arms making sharp, angry gestures.

Hawkins inhaled the tang of springtime: the fragrance of new leaves and freshly mown fields, the heavy scent of blossoms wafting from the orchard beyond the hill, the smell of Tyburn Creek, so fresh compared to the sewage stink of the Thames.

Even the most vociferous weepers quieted during the drawn-out moment. Somewhere, a bird chirped and bees hummed. A baby cried and fell silent. A horse grunted, a sound like a man clearing his throat. A sound of impatience.

The time had come to speak.

He had rehearsed a lofty tirade for days. Before this mass of thousands he would utter truths so profound that the Londoners couldn’t help but be moved. His words would go down in history.

For the life of him, and it did come down to that, Hawkins could not remember a word of his wonderful speech.

That was the moment panic set in, a beast leaping out of the dark and clawing at his soul.

A whisper in the back of his mind rescued him: Say what is in your heart.

“God save England!” His voice had been the envy of Douai seminary. The bell-like clarity, the deeply resonant tones, and the rounded vowels were those of a gifted priest.

“God save England,” Hawkins repeated. “And God save Charles Stuart, her rightful king!”

Gasps exploded from the crowd.

Thaddeus Bull’s hand swung sharply downward.

Laura. Wesley clasped the thought of her to his heart. I love you, Laura. Will you remember me?

Bull’s palm clapped against the mule’s flank.

And John Wesley Hawkins, former king’s cavalier and reluctant Catholic cleric, felt the cart lurch out from under him.


One (#ulink_e27d65fb-bfca-5704-9f41-8e6ecdb624e1)

Castle Clonmuir, Connemara, Ireland

“He’s thrown me out!” Magheen MacBride Rafferty’s wail keened through the great hall, startling lazy hounds and drawing stares from the castle folk. “’Tis a mad and cruel man he is. My husband of only a fortnight has cast me from his house!”

Caitlin MacBride folded her hands on the blackthorn tabletop and regarded her sister. “What do you mean, Logan’s cast you out?”

Magheen spread her arms in a gesture of high drama. She reminded Caitlin of a young willow, albeit one with a temper. “Sure amn’t I here?” Lifting the back of her hand to her brow, she sank to the bench opposite Caitlin. “I would rather fall down ice cold and eternally dead than come to you, but he left me no choice. You must help me. You must!”

“Why did he send you home?” Caitlin asked, her voice low because of the avid listeners. Tom Gandy, the steward and self-styled bard, looked on with the interest of a bettor at a cock fight. Rory Breslin, who served as both armorer and marshal, set aside the harness he was braiding. Liam the smith put his finger to his lips to shush the brood of children who cavorted with the shaggy wolfhounds at his feet.

Only Seamus MacBride, chieftain of the sept and Caitlin’s father, paid no heed to the drama at the round blackthorn table.

“He sent me home because I refused to share his bed,” Magheen stated loudly.

“And you blame him for sending you back?” called Rory Breslin. The other men chuckled in agreement.

Magheen gave a magnificent toss of her head.

Caitlin pressed her hands hard on the table and prayed for patience. “Why? I thought you loved him well.”

“I do! What woman wouldn’t? The fault’s upon your head. You should have told me what Logan demanded as dowry.”

“I didn’t think you’d be interested,” Caitlin said calmly.

“You knew I’d be affronted,” Magheen shot back. “Twelve head of cattle and a booley hut besides! Sure that’s the price a man demands to take a lesser woman to wife. Logan should be satisfied with me alone.”

“Logan Rafferty is a great lord and a man of business,” said Caitlin. “Even for you, he asked a dowry.” And he was a blessed fool to divulge the amount, she reflected.

Magheen buried her face in her slim white hands. Her shawl slipped back, revealing a sleek blond braid coiled over her head. She was as comely as a primrose, as demanding as a queen.

“Did you ask him to waive the dowry?” Caitlin inquired with a twinge of hope. She had pledged more than she could afford to Logan and despaired of paying it.

“Of course. But he won’t listen to me. You’ve got to put reason in that big thick knob of his.”

“The problem is between you and Logan.”

“Then the MacBride must settle it,” said Magheen.

Caitlin glanced at Seamus, who gazed with feverish concentration at his book of hours. “Daida can’t.”

“You’re as cold as Connemara stone,” Magheen snapped. “You don’t know what it’s like to love a man.”

Ah, but I do, thought Caitlin, closing her eyes for a moment. Ah, I do...

“Caitlin MacBride!”

She opened her eyes to see a familiar figure striding toward her. Light from the yard outside limned his broad shoulders, narrow hips, and mane of curly black hair. Spurs jangled like discordant bells with every step he took. His long beard, parted and braided, brushed against his massive chest.

“Eek!” Magheen leaped to her feet and hitched up her skirts. “Stay away from me, Logan Rafferty!”

“Sure I wouldn’t have you for thirteen head of cattle and two booley huts!” he shouted.

“Well!” Magheen planted her hands on her hips. “You won’t be having me at all.” She started toward the privy apartments at the rear of the hall.

“Don’t you dare leave,” Caitlin said.

“I’ll not be after suffering the insults of this greedy spalpeen.” Magheen walked down the length of the lofty hall, hips swaying, looking over her shoulder in blatant defiance.

Logan watched with longing and regret on his face, but he stood his ground.

From the women’s corner, spinning wheels whirred to a halt. A sense of waiting hung in the peat-scented air.

Shoving aside an inquisitive wolfhound, Logan reached the table and stopped. Caitlin inclined her head slightly. “Logan.” Although he was her overlord, she addressed him informally. To do otherwise would have seemed strange, for she had grown up in his shadow, hitting short of the mark when she could have hit dead center, losing horse races she could have won, stumbling over poems she could have recited perfectly—all to save the vast male pride of Lord Logan Rafferty.

She had grown accustomed to deferring to him. But she would never grow accustomed to the bitter taste of it.

He eyed Magheen’s slowly retreating figure. “A handful, that one.” His gaze drifted to her derriere. “Two hands full.”

Caitlin faced him squarely across the table. “You’ve come about my sister?”

“Ah, it’s all business you are. You’re twenty-two years old, Caitlin MacBride. You’ll wither on the tree like an unplucked rowanberry.”

His sympathy was as insubstantial as the mist over the mountains. Logan cared not a dram for her unmarried state.

Unmoved, she said, “I know I owe you Magheen’s dowry and that I’m in arrears.” She slid a glance at her father, who sat poring over his book and looking lost, as he had since the castle chaplain, Father Tully, had mysteriously disappeared just after Magheen’s wedding two weeks earlier.

Help me, Daida. She tried to convey the silent message to him, but he continued his quiet study.

“Can payment wait until the calving?”

“I’ve been waiting. And Magheen won’t give herself to me on credit.” Mirth rose from the men at the hearth. “My people have gone without Clonmuir milk and meat since Easter.” Looking for accord, he glared at the men. “And I’ve gone without my husbandly privileges.”

Caitlin drew a deep breath. Drastic troubles called for drastic measures. “I’ve the best stable of ponies in Connemara,” she said. “Will you accept a mare and a stallion?”

“The Clonmuir ponies do tempt me. But I’ll not be taking them. They’re only more mouths to feed.” Logan leaned toward her. His black beard brushed the table. “And what are you doing with so much fine horseflesh, eh?” he asked softly.

She prayed he would not guess her secret. “The stable has been the pride of the MacBrides since the time before time. I’ll not be turning them out because of a few lean years.”

His thick eyebrows clashed. “You’re putting the welfare of Clonmuir horses before that of your own dear sister.”

She pressed her lips together, thinking of Magheen, of her other people, women and babies—sweet Saint Brigid, so many babies!—who depended on her. “Give me a week. I’ll send you a bullock as a token of my good intent.”

“What of my good intent?” Exuding the proprietary air he had been born with, Logan put out a hand and caressed her cheek. “I’ve offered a solution if you would but agree.”

“Have a spark of sense. You’re married to my sister.”

His coal-black eyes kindled with annoyance. “By Christ’s holy rood, I have no marriage with Magheen.”

She glared at him through the light fog of peat smoke. “You could have, if you’d reduce your demands.”

“Never,” he stated. “A lord can ask no less.”

“And I can do no better until the calving.” She gathered up her papers. “One healthy bullock. Conn will bring it to you.”

His fist crashed down on the table, hammering for attention. “It’s not a bullock I want, but a wife!”

“You’ll have her, I promise. But she’s nearly as unreasonable as you.”

The wail of a baby laid siege to any reply Logan might have made. The quality of the cry was unmistakable. Only hunger could give that earsplitting edge to a child’s cry.

Yet another family of starvelings had reached Clonmuir. Forgetting Logan, Caitlin hurried to welcome them.

Magheen was already there, cradling the baby in the crook of one arm and motioning urgently with the other for someone to fetch milk. Worrying the brim of his caubeen with his fingers, a man approached Caitlin. “You are lady of the keep?”

No one ever mistook her for an underling. Wondering why, she said, “Yes,” and smiled reassuringly. “Welcome to Clonmuir.”

“Talk is, your hearth is open to such as us.”

Caitlin nodded. Behind her, she heard the sounds of plates and utensils. The scenario had been repeated so many times that the servants needed no instructions. “Warm yourselves by the fire,” she invited.

As the family trudged past, she looked into their nearly senseless eyes. In the hollowed depths she saw suffering beyond imagining, sorrow beyond bearing, horrors beyond believing.

And she knew, with a painful twist of her heart, that these wretches were the lucky ones.

The unlucky ones lay in ditches, prey for wolves or—aye, she’d heard it said—starving Irish.

Damn the English. The curse trembled silently through her. “Still taking in strays, are you?”

She turned to Logan. “And what would you have me do?”

“I’d have you meet my price, Caitlin MacBride, or the marriage is off for good.” With that he strode out into the yard, whistled for his horse, and rode toward his home of Brocach, twenty miles to the north.

Caitlin rubbed her temples to soothe away a dull throb of pain. Unsuccessful, she went to see to the needs of her guests.

Ten minutes later a youthful voice called from the yard. “My lady!” Hoofbeats thudded on the soddy ground.

“Curran,” she said, picking up the hem of her kirtle.

She rushed down the long length of the hall, past the women at their spinning, past her father, past a group of children playing at hoodman blind. Not one of them, she knew, felt the pounding sense of trepidation that hammered in her chest.

She felt it for them as she always had. They never feared news from Galway, even in these dangerous times. In every sense save the formal one she was the MacBride, chieftain of the sept, and she wore their fears like a postulant wears a hair shirt.

A fast ride and a sharp wind had whipped up color in Curran Healy’s already swarthy face. He swung down from his tall, muscular pony and bowed slightly to Caitlin.

“What news, Curran?” she asked.

“I’ve been to the docks,” Curran said in a strained tone. He was but fourteen and lived in dread of his voice breaking.

“Devil admire you, Curran Healy, I told you never to stray to the docks of Galway. Why, if a healthy lad like you fell into the hands of the English, they’d geld you like a spring foal.”

He shuddered. “I swear not a soul marked my passing. I saw merchants—”

“Spanish ones?” she asked on a rush of air. Anticipation thrummed through her so sharply that it hurt. Months, it had been, since she had heard from him...

“English.” He rummaged in his satchel. “My lady, and the great God forgive the sin upon my head, but I stole this.”

She snatched the sealed parchment from his hand. “This is a bonded letter.” She whacked the youth on the chest with the packet. “Great is the luck that is on you, Curran Healy, for I should have you flogged for endangering yourself.”

He pulled at the pale sprouts of hair growing on his chin. “Ah, my lady, sure there’s never been a flogging at Clonmuir.”

Defeated by his logic and her own curiosity, Caitlin opened the letter. “It’s from Captain Titus Hammersmith to...” She bit her lip, then spoke the hated name. “To Oliver Cromwell.”

“What’s it say, my lady? I don’t read English.”

She scanned the letter. On feet of ice, apprehension tiptoed up her spine. I shall extend every courtesy to your envoy who is coming to solve this great matter...The covenant of this mean tribe of Irish is with Death and Hell! By the grace of God and with the help of this excellent secret weapon, the Fianna shall be as dust beneath the bootheel of righteousness...

“What’s an envoy?” asked Curran.

Fear tugged at her stomach. She forced a smile. “It’s something like a toad.”

“Can’t be. Legend is, that if you bring a snake or toad to Ireland by ship, the creature will flop over and die.”

“No doubt Cromwell’s toad will do just that.”

“And if he—it—doesn’t?”

She shook back her heavy mane of hair. There had not been time to plait it this morning. There was never time to behave like a lady. “Then the Fianna will have to ride again.”

“What of this talk of a secret weapon?”

She laughed harshly. “And who—or what—on this blessed earth could possibly defeat the Fianna? We’ll see that happen when the snakes return to Ireland!”


Two (#ulink_0dbaf65d-bda6-5d77-a04b-83adf14cafda)

“You’re one lucky man,” said a cultured, nasal voice. Very proper. Oxford or Cambridge. The clerics at Douai would be surprised to know St. Peter was an Englishman.

Wesley tried to lift his eyelids. Tried again. Failed. Exasperated, he used his fingers to pry them open. Blue sky and billowy clouds. Dull white wings stretched against the wind. Had he somehow escaped Satan’s horseman, after all?

“What’s that?” His voice rasped from a throat scoured raw by the hangman’s noose.

“I said,” came St. Peter’s voice, “you’re a lucky man.”

Wesley frowned. Why was St. Peter talking like a Gray’s Inn barrister? A cool shadow passed over him. He blinked, and the shape came into focus. A high-collared cloak, not an angel’s robes. A face he recognized, and it wasn’t the face of St. Peter.

“God’s blood!” he said. “John Thurloe! Are you dead, too?”

“I wasn’t the last time I checked.”

Wesley propped his elbows against hard wood and struggled to rise. Pain? No, pain couldn’t follow him into the light, where the sky shone blue and distant and his heart beat vibrantly in his chest. “By God, I used to hate you, sir, but now you’re as welcome as the springtime.”

Wesley heard a creaking sound, the groan of thick rope straining against old wood. Canvas luffing in the wind.

“Jesus Christ, I’m on a ship!” said Wesley.

Thurloe bent his legs to absorb a swell that rolled the narrow deck. “You must keep your popish confessor busy, priest, with all the swearing you do.”

The sin was minor compared to others Wesley had committed. “Last I remember, I was swinging from Tyburn Tree.” He touched his stomach and chest through the shirt he wore. The executioner’s sword hadn’t so much as split a hair.

Thurloe’s features pinched into a frown. “And your various parts would be spiked on Tower Gate and London Bridge if not for the tender mercies of myself and our Lord Protector.”

The cobwebs began lifting from Wesley’s mind. He remembered himself moving, as if he were galloping toward an eternity of regrets, of half-finished business. The terrible journey had taken him past the fair-haired child he had left behind, past words he should have said, past a crown he had tried to defend.

He asked, “Cromwell arranged a pardon?”

“A stay of execution.”

A memory flashed through Wesley’s mind: the hooded giant, the weeping masses, the jolt of the cart. His feet kicking at empty air, the wheel of green leaves and blue sky overhead, the burn of the rope around his neck.

After that, a muddle of pain. His body dragged to the block, the black hood looming into view, a blade glittering against the clear sky, steel slicing toward his bare flesh.

Then a shout: Hold thy stroke!

An ugly blur followed: horses’ sweaty hides, soldiers’ buff livery, clenched fists and muttered curses. Questions, protests, speculation spoken over his limp body. A dark robed man arguing with the sheriff at Tyburn.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” he asked Thurloe. “You stopped the execution.”

“I did.”

“I can’t say I’m fond of your timing. You might have come earlier.” Wesley cocked an eyebrow at Thurloe. The wind plucked at his wispy brown hair arranged in a tonsure around the balding top of the man’s head. “Just a stay?”

“That will depend on you, priest. Or should I say Hawkins?”

Damn. “Who’s Hawkins?” he asked.

“Don’t be lame, sir. Several of the ladies present called you Wesley. Lucky for you, I quickly deduced the truth.” Thurloe spun in a shimmer of dark velvet and brass buttons. He set a hat on his head. Wesley recognized the tipped brim fastened with a palm-sized brooch. “Come with me.”

Wesley dragged himself up on wobbly legs. The ship strained at her cables. His vision swam, then resolved into a view of a narrow deck and an aftercastle rising beyond a web of rigging.

To his left the sea swelled out endlessly. To his right, a small town huddled a stone’s throw away.

“Milford Haven,” said Thurloe.

“Milford Haven! My God, that’s two hundred miles from London,” said Wesley. Lost miles, during which he had imagined being borne to hell in the devil’s chariot.

“You see, we’ve not even left port.”

“Why not?”

“Because not all of us are going with you, Mr. Hawkins.”

“Going where?”

Thurloe made no response, but led the way down a hatch and through a companionway that smelled of wet timber and moldering rope. Two men descended on Wesley with soap and a razor. Fifteen minutes later, he found himself thrust before the Lord Protector of England. The sight of Oliver Cromwell freshened Wesley’s fears that he had gone to hell, after all.

Framed from behind by a bank of diamond shaped stern windows, Cromwell stood at a burl writing desk. Reddish brown hair, cropped to his shoulders, framed a bold-featured face ornamented by a curling mustache and pointed beard. The Lord Protector’s eyes had the gleam of ice-coated rock.

“Bit of an improvement.” His gaze sharpened on Wesley. “Ah, Mr. Hawkins. I’ve got you at last, after all these years.”

In the wells of the desk sat an array of crystal ink bottles with silver stoppers. The gilt-edged blotter and the straight-backed chair bore an imprint of the lions of England. The trappings of royalty.

Wesley planted his feet on the red Turkey carpet of the stateroom. “What ship is this?”

Cromwell’s lips tightened as if he found the question impertinent. He drew himself up proudly. The pose looked faintly ridiculous on the Lord Protector. His plain cloth suit appeared to be the work of a country tailor. “It used to be called Royal Charles but it’s been rechristened Victory.”

“And where are we going?”

“You are sailing west as soon as I’ve given you your instructions.”

“You’re sending me into exile?”

Beneath the legendary ruby nose, a controlled smile tugged at Cromwell’s mouth. “Exile? Too easy for the likes of you.”

“You obviously want something from me, else you’d not have spared my life,” Wesley reminded him. The truth hit him suddenly, a swift blow to his empty belly. He was alive! Laura. Laura, darling. The thought of her clasped him in an embrace of both joy and dread.

“You royalists are always so astute,” said Cromwell, his voice sharp as an untuned viol.

Wesley ignored the taunt. He had been astute enough to elude Cromwell for six years.

“Sit down, Mr. Hawkins.”

As the Lord Protector lowered himself to the richly carved chair, Wesley took a three-legged stool opposite him. Thurloe poured brandy into small glasses.

“The Irish problem.” Cromwell pressed his palm to the map before him. The chart depicted the island, with stars drawn at the English-held ports and hen-track markings tracing the route of Cromwell’s dread Roundhead army.

Ireland? Wesley frowned. Perhaps the pressures of his office were weighting Cromwell’s reason.

“I know nothing of Ireland,” said Wesley. Almost true. A hazy memory came to him, filtered by the years. His parents’ stern faces and cold eyes as they informed him that England was not safe for Catholics. His banishment to Louvain on the Continent, where Irish friars had put him to work printing outlawed books in Gaelic. The kindness of the brothers had almost filled the void in his heart. And the strange, lyrical language of the Gaels had lingered like a never-to-be-forgotten song in his mind.

“You stand to learn more than any civilized man ought to know.” Cromwell jabbed a thick finger at the map. “Dublin, Ulster, all the major ports belong to us. The Pale is ours. We gave the rebels a choice of hell or Connaught, and most of them made the mistake of choosing Connaught. And that’s where the problem lies.”

The west of Ireland. Wool, peat, herring...what else? He could not think of a commodity that would induce Cromwell to risk his men. But that was the Lord Protector: all-powerful, enigmatic, consumed by ambition, and unwilling to explain his motives.

“Galway,” said Wesley, deciphering the upside-down word near Cromwell’s finger.

“Aye, and the entire coast of Connemara. I’ve garrisoned troops at Galway. The Irish were driven out of the city long ago. But we’ve had resistance.”

The Lord Protector looked as if he could not comprehend this defiance. Why, Wesley thought ironically, wouldn’t the Irish wish to give up their age-old way of life, their tradition of self-rule, and their Catholic religion in order to embrace a revenue-hungry Protestant conquest?

Wesley realized he knew more about the Irish than he had thought. He took a drink. The brandy dropped like hot lead in his empty stomach.

“The heart of the resistance,” said Thurloe, “is a band of warriors called the Fianna. Do you know the legend?”

“No.” Wesley suspected it had to do with dark magic, fey folk, and shadowy deeds.

“It’s a medieval order of warriors, bound by blasphemous pledges and initiated in pagan rites. They fight like devils. Our captains swear the villains hold their horses under a spell, so fierce are the beasts.”

One corner of Wesley’s mouth lifted in a half smile. “I think your captains have been in the bogs too long.”

“They do God’s work,” Cromwell retorted.

“The Fianna use antique weapons,” Thurloe continued. “Broadswords, slings, cudgels, crossbows—and violate every rule of war. They strike like a sudden storm in the dark: swift, unexpected, devastating to men who pursue victory with honor.”

“And where do these warriors come from?” asked Wesley.

“Some are Connemara men. We know this because of the unique horses they ride. The Irish call them ponies, but the beasts are as large and thick as cavalry horses. Other warriors might have been recruited from the exiles of Connaught to the north.”

“And your army can’t contain them?”

“My army has righteousness on its side,” Cromwell insisted. “But they’re not trained in dirty, sneaking, bog-trotting tactics.”

And you think I am, Wesley silently observed. He took another sip of brandy. Resurrecting an ancient order was, he decided, an act of political genius, a clever way to remind the despairing Irish that they were the sons of warriors.

“They have a weakness,” Thurloe said.

Cromwell picked up a quill pen and brushed it over the map. “They have a blind, pagan devotion to their leader.”

Thurloe nodded. “The man has already achieved the status of legend. Our soldiers hear ballads sung about him. His Fianna will follow him to the very gates of hell and beyond.”

“Who is he?” asked Wesley.

“No one knows.” Thurloe’s sharp, Puritan features drew taut with chagrin. As master of protectoral intelligence, he prided himself on knowing the business of every last mother’s son in the Commonwealth. He resented the elusiveness of the Fianna. “We suspected the hand of popish priests in this, but we’ve culled every cleric from the area, and still the rebels ride.”

Cold distaste turned the brandy bitter in Wesley’s mouth. England was not the only dangerous place for the Catholic clergy.

“I want the devil taken.” Cromwell’s ruddy fist crashed down on the leather blotter. Crystal ink bottles clinked in their wells. “I want his head on a pike on London Bridge so all England can look upon an Irish thief and murderer.”

Wesley winced at the contempt in Cromwell’s voice. “He’s only a man fighting for his life and his people.”

“Bah! Honest Englishmen lived for years among the Irish, who enjoyed equal justice from the law. The rebels broke that union, just when Ireland was in a state of perfect peace.”

“Or perfect suppression,” said Wesley.

“I did not bring you here to debate questions of justice. I can drastically shorten your stay of execution.”

“Sorry.”

“Once this chieftain is taken,” Thurloe continued, “the Fianna will disintegrate.” A tight smile played about his mouth. “The Irish are sheep who lose their way without their shepherd.”

“Then from Galway we’ll take all the coastal districts of Connemara,” Cromwell stated with an air of finality. “We’ll put a noose around the rebels in Connaught.”

Wesley no longer wondered why Cromwell had cut him down from Tyburn Tree. He knew.

“Mr. Hawkins,” said Cromwell, “do you value your life over that of a murdering outlaw?”

I’m a Catholic, not a madman, thought Wesley. “Absolutely, Your Honor.”

“I thought so,” said Cromwell. “You’re to find the chief of the Fianna and bring his head to me before the year is out.”

The ship’s timbers creaked into the silence. The smell of brine and mildew pervaded the air.

“Why me?” asked Wesley. “I’m a king’s man, and one of the few left in England who’s not afraid to say so.”

“Where’s Charles Stuart now, eh?” Cromwell sneered. “Helping the man who helped him escape Worcester?” He planted his elbows on the table. “He’s wenching on the Continent, Mr. Hawkins, and doesn’t give a damn about you.”

Wesley wouldn’t let himself rise to the taunt, wouldn’t let himself think of the night spent in an oak tree with a frightened young prince. “What makes you think I’m your man?”

“I’ve learned much about you. Your parents sent you overseas for rearing among papists. You returned to England to become a thief taker, growing rich on bounties and blood money.”

Tightening his muscles, Wesley fought to govern his emotions. Few knew of his parents or of the deeds he had done, tracking thieves, hauling them kicking and screaming to justice.

“Then you threw in your lot with the royal tyrant,” Cromwell went on. “We lost track of you. But we knew you were in England, spreading sedition and popish idolatry.”

“I seem to have been a busy man,” Wesley said wryly.

“It’s your reputation for tracking that put the idea on us,” said Thurloe. “Men swore you were capable of finding the path of a snake over stone, or a bird’s flight through a cloudy sky.”

“I think that’s overstating my talents a little.”

“In your time, you were the most successful thief taker in England.”

“There are others who have given their loyalty to you.”

“True, but you’re fluent in Gaelic. From your training in Louvain.”

Wesley made no reply. This was no bluff, then. Thurloe was conscientious indeed. He had done his research.

“Ah, and one final thing.” Cromwell smiled, the drawn-back grin of a viper about to strike. “Your success with women. Even as a postulant you couldn’t resist.”

Wesley went cold inside. He wondered how much the Lord Protector actually knew of his lapse.

He found out when Thurloe presented him with a letter. “From William Pym,” the Secretary of State announced in a voice hot with venom. “You seduced his daughter, Annabel, and she died three years ago birthing your bastard.”

Wesley closed his eyes as shame scoured his soul. Here was his penance. He forced his eyes open. “I comported myself poorly. How will that help me corner an Irish outlaw?”

Thurloe produced another letter. A whimsical script danced across the page. “There is a reference to the Fianna in this, from a woman of Connemara to a Spanish gentleman in London.”

“You intercepted it?” Wesley asked.

He nodded. “The woman’s name is Caitlin MacBride. She’s mistress of a coastal stronghold called Clonmuir.”

“An excellent place to start your conquest,” Thurloe put in. “The attacks of the Fianna began not long after the English burned the fishing vessels of Clonmuir.”

“If you can sweet-talk your way into her bed as easily as you did into the beds of English ladies,” said Cromwell, “you’ll be able to coax secrets from the Irish whore.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, my lord?” asked Wesley.

The Lord Protector lifted his glass. “An unenviable task. Irishwomen are Amazons—dirty and ugly—and this Caitlin MacBride will likely be worse. She’s twenty-two and unmarried despite her holdings. But you’ll put up with her barbaric ways. Knowing your proclivities, you’ll probably find her interesting.”

“I cannot seduce a woman,” Wesley stated with a rush of guilt. The appearance of Laura in his life had made him swear off meaningless dalliances.

“You’ll do as I say now, my friend,” said Cromwell.

“And if I fail?”

Cromwell smiled grimly. “You won’t. My commander in Galway is Captain Titus Hammersmith. I sent letters ahead, explaining what is expected. You are to cooperate with him in every way.”

“I can’t work with Roundheads breathing down my neck.”

“Believe me, Mr. Hawkins, you won’t have to.”

An arrow of suspicion embedded itself in Wesley’s mind. Cromwell was too confident. Something rang false. “What’s to stop me from losing myself in Ireland?”

Cromwell waved a summons at someone standing outside the door. Wesley heard the sound of approaching feet, one pair heavy, the other light and rapid. The back of his neck began to itch. He rose from the stool and turned toward the door.

“Papa!” A tiny girl burst into the stateroom.

Wesley’s legs wobbled. He dropped to his knees. She leapt into his arms and pressed her warm, silky cheek to his.

“Laura, oh, Laura.” He kissed her, then pressed her face to his chest.

“Papa, you sound funny,” said Laura. She touched his throat. “What happened to your neck?”

“I’m all right,” he whispered. Tears needled the backs of his eyelids but he conquered them. Think. Cromwell had the child. Wesley raised his eyes to the woman who stood wringing her hands. He held Hester Clench captive with the same furious thief taker’s stare he used to employ on recalcitrant prisoners.

The truth shone brightly on the woman’s frightened face. She had told Cromwell everything.

Every blessed detail she’d vowed to take to the grave.

“Damn you,” he said quietly.

She had dark eyes and a handsome face he’d once thought kindly. Her chin came up, and she said, “It’s best for the child. Lord Cromwell swore he’d keep her safe and save her immortal soul from your popish training.”

Wesley regarded her over the top of his child’s head. “You lied to me,” he said in a low, deadly voice.

“For the sake of this innocent babe, I had to,” the woman said with conviction. At a nod from Cromwell, she withdrew.

Wesley’s faith in human mercy withered. Cromwell had outbid him for the loyalty of Hester Clench. He buried his face in Laura’s peach-gold hair and inhaled her fragrance of sea air and sunshine. Her soft curls bobbed against his face, and then she pulled back, regarding him through gray-green eyes that were mirrors of his own.

The miracle of holding his daughter in his arms once again brought on a rush of memories. Living as an unordained Catholic novice in England had been a dangerous business. The nomadic life had been hard, the temptations many. Nearly four years before, in High Wycombe, he had strayed from his path and bedded a woman named Annabel Pym.

Months later he had returned to the town to be confronted by the lady Annabel, her belly great with his child, her face a mask of censure. Annabel died giving birth. Her parents, furious with grief, had thrust the baby into Wesley’s arms and summoned the priest catchers.

Those early months on the run passed through Wesley’s mind in a blur of frantic action. He’d engaged a slovenly, illiterate wet nurse, then dismissed her as soon as Laura could tolerate cow’s milk. When people demanded to know what a cleric was doing with a child, he had passed Laura off as a foundling.

Most especially, he recalled the cherished moments—holding his tiny daughter close at night and breathing in her scent, noting the imprint of her ear on his arm when she fell asleep against him. Marveling over each little milestone, whether it be a first smile, a first tooth, her first tottering steps, or the first time she gazed up at him and called him Papa. The pure intimacy had planted a seed of paternal tenderness so deep that nothing could touch it. The seed had flourished into a strong, vigorous, protective love.

“Auntie Clench said I’d never see you again, Papa.” Laura’s voice, calling him Papa, made him believe in miracles again.

“We’re together now, sweetheart.” But for how long?

“I cried and cried for you. Then Master Oliver promised he’d let me see you again.” Laura peered over her shoulder. “Thank you, Master Oliver.”

The words of gratitude knifed Wesley through with fury. But his arms were gentle as he cradled his child, treasured her, felt his heart spill over with love for her.

“Look, Papa,” said Laura, holding out a silver bauble on a ribbon. “Master Oliver gave me a locket. Isn’t it pretty?”

Fury stuck in Wesley’s throat.

While Cromwell and Thurloe conferred over their maps and their plans, Wesley and Laura shared a meal of biscuit, small beer, hard cheese, and grapes. She chattered with the blithe innocence of untroubled childhood, and he listened with a smile frozen on his face. It would serve nothing to let her glimpse the black hatred that gripped his soul, to confess the loathsome thoughts that claimed his mind. To Laura this was all a great adventure. She’d had them with him before, fleeing priest catchers and Roundhead huntsmen, sleeping in haylofts, and bolting down meals in rickety farm carts. She had no idea she was a pawn in Cromwell’s deadly game.

At length the rocking motion of the ship lulled her; she settled her head in his lap and tucked her tiny hand in his.

“I love you, sweetheart,” he whispered.

As she fell asleep in his arms, Wesley felt the walls of the stateroom pressing on him, squeezing at his will. Cromwell had trapped him in a prison more confining than the dank stone walls of Little Ease in the Tower of London.

The Lord Protector broke Wesley’s reverie by calling out an order. Two burly sailors appeared in the doorway.

Wesley drew his arms more protectively around Laura.

“Restrain him,” said Cromwell.

Big sea-hardened hands grasped Wesley by the arms while Cromwell pried the sleeping child from his lap.

A roar of protest rose in Wesley’s chest but died on his lips. If he awakened Laura now, she might forever be plagued by the nightmare of being wrenched from her father’s arms. The less she knew of the sinister plot, the better chance she had of surviving the ordeal.

Cromwell held her in the crook of one arm. He looked so ordinary standing there, an indulgent uncle with a favored niece. Except for the stone-cold glitter in his eyes.

“You know, Mr. Hawkins, it would be beneath me to harm a child. But have you ever considered the fate of foundlings in London?” Without waiting for a response, he went on, “Lost children become virtual slaves.” He gazed tenderly at Laura, smiling at the way her golden eyelashes fanned out above her freckled cheeks. “This one is pretty and could escape the drudgery. It’s said that dwarves and children are used to serve people in brothels because they’re too short to see over the edge of the bed. Then when she grows too tall...we can always hope she’ll stay as pretty as she is now.”

The implied threat hit Wesley like a cannonball. “No, goddamn you—” He strained against his captors. The muscles in his arms braided into taut, trembling cords. Hard fingers bit into his flesh.

“If you succeed in bringing the Fianna to heel, you’ll win your own life, and that of your daughter.”

“You’ll have to put that in writing,” Wesley snapped, his mind galloping ahead. Seeing the expression on Cromwell’s face, he gave a bitter smile. “I’m well aware that you’ve been offered the throne, which means you’ll be guarding your reputation like the crown jewels. I want your sworn and witnessed statement that if I do as you bid, neither I nor my kin will be harmed.”

Reluctant admiration glinted in Cromwell’s eyes. “The Lord Protector always keeps his promises. You’ll have your statement. But if you fail...” His voice trailed off and he backed toward the door, pausing in a flood of sunlight through the hatchway so that Wesley could have a last glimpse of his beloved child.

“You accursed son of a—”

“Don’t let me down, Mr. Hawkins. You know what’s at risk.”

* * *

She had failed again. Caitlin had searched the high meadows for the bullock she’d promised Logan Rafferty. But the shaggy beast had vanished like St. Ita’s stag beetle.

Now Caitlin would have to endure more of Magheen’s strident complaints about being set aside by her bridegroom. Stabbing a shepherd’s staff into the loamy ground, she made her way back to the stronghold.

Springtime blew sweet upon the heaths. On the morrow would come the feast of the planting, and Seamus MacBride had decreed it a high holiday. But what sort of holiday would it be without food?

She found her father in the kitchen, a vast stone room connected to the great hall by a narrow passageway.

“More sage, Janet,” he said, peering over the cook’s shoulder into a bubbling iron pot. “Don’t skimp, now. It’s a feast to be sure we’re having tomorrow.”

“Daida.” Caitlin rubbed her palms on her apron. “Daida, I must speak to you.”

He looked up. Vague shadows darkened his eyes, his mind off on another of his mysterious quests. Then he smiled, giving her a glimpse of the handsome lion he had been in his youth. A lion with the heart of a spring lamb.

“Caitlin.” He spoke her name suddenly, as if he’d just remembered it. “Ah, ’tis a grand day, and praise the saints.”

“Yes, Daida.” Although Curran’s warning hovered like a bird of prey over her thoughts, she forced herself to smile and nod toward the door. “If you please, Daida.”

They stepped outside to the kitchen garden. The tops of Janet’s turnips and potatoes reached desperately for the weak rays of the spring sun. The sight of the sparse planting depressed Caitlin, so she looked out across the craggy landscape, the rise of mountains skirted by stubbled fields and misty bogs coursing down toward the sea. The late afternoon sun gilded the landscape in a rich mantle.

Seamus’s gaze absorbed the view. “Devil so lovely a day as ever you’ve seen, eh, Caitlin? Isn’t it grand, the broadax of heaven cleaving the clouds, and the great skies pouring pure gold into your lap?”

Why was it, she wondered sadly, that the splendor of the land moved her father to poetry, while the privation of his people affected him not at all? “Daida, about tomorrow—”

“Ah, it’ll be fine, will it not, colleen? And isn’t it we Irish that are brewed from God’s own still?”

She rested her hand on his arm. The muscles lay flaccid, the flesh of a man who shunned hard work as a monk shuns women.

“Tom Gandy says you’ve invited everyone in the district.”

“Tom Gandy’s a half-pint busybody, and a sorcerer at that.”

“But you did, didn’t you?”

“Of course. Your mother—St. Brigid the holy woman keep her soul—always planned the grandest of feasts. Now that she’s gone, ’twould be a sad and cruel thing for us to do less.”

“Daida, since the English burned our fishing fleet, we can barely feed our own folk. How can we—”

“Ach, musha, you worry too much. We be under the sacred wing of providence. We’ll feast on fresh meat, see if we don’t.”

Suspicion stung her. “What do you mean?”

He spread his arms in a grandiloquent gesture. “I’ve had Kermit slaughter that young bullock.”

Caitlin pressed her fists to her belly to keep her temper in check. “Oh, Daida, no! We needed that bullock for Magheen’s dowry. Logan won’t have her back without it.”

Seamus dropped his hands to his sides. “But won’t it be grand, the sweet taste of it and all our neighbors and kin toasting the MacBride. Think of it, Cait—”

“That’s just it, Daida,” Caitlin cut in. She had been raised from the cradle to honor her sire, but she had learned on her own to speak her mind. “You never think.”

She stalked off toward the stables. It was wicked to speak so to her father but she couldn’t help herself, any more than she could quell the impulse to run free along the storm-swept shores.

In the dim fieldstone stable, the black stallion waited in anticipation, muscles gleaming, nostrils flaring. Sunlight bathed his hide in gold as if he had been singled out by the gods to ascend to the heavens on wings of mist.

Caitlin walked between the stalls past the large strong-limbed ponies. For generations untold, Connemara horses had borne heroes to victory. But the stallion was different.

His velvet lips blew a greeting to her.

He had no name. He was as wild and free as the kestrels that combed the clouds over the mountains.

Black he was, the color of midnight, the shade of eternity, as beautifully formed as nature could manage.

“There, a stor,” Caitlin crooned, slipping a soft braided bridle over his ears. She used neither bit nor saddle. When she mounted him they became one mind, one soul, one will. Her bare legs against his bare hide formed a pagan bond of two spirits which, though as different as human and beast, melded into unity. The black needed no more than a touch of her heel to urge him out of the stable and across the rock-strewn fields.

The smells of the sea and of dulse weed enveloped her; the scent of greening fields should have reassured her, but didn’t. The Roundheads could, at any moment, swoop down and destroy the tender plants and subject Clonmuir to a starving winter.

Caitlin rode west, into the shattering colors of the sunset, toward the surging iron-gray sea. She let her hair fly loose, free as the mane of the black, free as the mist in a windstorm.

Her troubles lay behind her, an enemy she had left in her dust. Her swift rides renewed her spirit, made her feel capable of confronting and besting any problem that arose. So Seamus had wasted the bullock. She had faced troubles before. Despite the danger, she knew where she could get another.

The black’s gallop gave her the sensation of flying: a lifting glide that made the air sing past her ears. She abandoned thought and surrendered to the pulse of hooves, the rush of wind through her hair, the tang of salt on her lips.

They reached the coast where cliffs reared above the battering sea. Riding the wind, the black sailed over a ravine, then tucked his forelegs in a daring descent that made Caitlin laugh out loud.

On the damp sandy beach, she gave him his head. He arched his neck and leapt with breath-stealing abandon. He crashed through the surf, a black bolt of living thunder, full of the rhythm and mystery of Connemara’s wild, god-hewn coast.

The English claimed the coast from the shore to three miles deep. Caitlin scoffed at the notion. This land belonged to forces no human could claim.

The sun had sunk lower when the black slowed to a walk. Deep bronze rays winked like coins upon the water.

Caitlin dropped to the sand, the chill surf surging around her ankles. She patted the stallion’s flank. “Off you go,” she said. “Come back when I whistle.”

His tail high, the horse trotted down the strand. Tears stung her eyes at the sheer beauty of him. He was as full of magic as the distant lands of Araby, as handsome and noble as the man who had given him to Caitlin, the man who claimed her heart.

Alonso Rubio.

Come back to me, Alonso, she thought. I need you now.

“Sure there is a way, you know,” said a sprightly voice, “to summon your true love.”

Caitlin spun around, her gaze darting in search of the speaker. A chuckle, as light as the land breezes, drew her to a spill of rocks that circled a tangled, forgotten garden. Once this had been a place of retreat for the lord and lady of Clonmuir, a place of welcome for travelers from the sea. But time and neglect had toppled the rotunda where her parents had once sat and gazed out at the endless horizon.

“Tom Gandy,” she said. “Blast you, Tom, where are you?” Tidal pools were reclaiming the garden, and she stepped around these, lifting the hem of her kirtle. Crab-infested seaweed draped the stone blocks, and gorse bushes grew in the cracks.

A brown cap with a curling feather bobbed behind a large boulder. A grinning, leather-skinned face appeared, followed by a thick, squat body.

Glaring, she said, “You’re a sneak and a busybody, Tom Gandy. Cromwell would have you burned as a witch if you were worth the kindling.”

“No doubt he’d be after doing that if he could lay hands on me.” Tom climbed over the rocks and dropped beside a clump of briars near Caitlin. Even with the lofty feather, his head barely cleared her waist. Like the rest of him, his fingers were stumpy and clumsy looking, but he reached out and retied her straggling apron strings with the grace of a lady’s maid.

“Ah, but it’s a sight you are, Caitlin MacBride. Ugly as a Puritan. When was the last time you took a comb to that hair?”

“That’s my business.” She tossed her head. “Yours is as steward of Clonmuir, and you’d best see to your duties.”

“What duties?”

“Finding another bullock for Logan MacBride, to start with.”

“We know where to find plenty of healthy cattle, don’t we?”

She ignored the suggestion. “Perhaps I’ll banish you to Spain. I’ve heard King Philip employs dwarves as playthings for his children.”

“Then we’d both be playthings for Spaniards,” he observed, shaking his head. “Twenty-two years old and still not married.”

“You know why,” she said. “Though I still don’t know how you found out about Alonso’s pledge.”

“Pledge! You little oinseach—” He tilted his head back to gaze up into her face. “A hot young man’s promise has as much substance as the dew in summer. But we’re not here to discuss that. You wish for your true love—”

“How do you know what I wish?”

“—and I’m here to tell you a way to summon him.”

Caitlin regarded the little fellow warily. Some swore Tom Gandy was endowed with fairy powers. But not Caitlin. She had seen him bleed when he scratched his finger on a thorn; she had nursed him when he lay weak with a cough. He was, despite his extraordinary appearance, as human as she. If he possessed any gift, it was only the ordinary sort of magic that allowed him to come and go soundlessly and unexpectedly; his powers were those of a wise and wonderful mind that allowed him to see into people’s hearts as a soothsayer sees into a crystal.

“And how might that be?” she asked teasingly. “It’s the eve of a holiday. Have you a pagan sacrifice in mind?”

“Horror and curses on you, girleen, ’tis much simpler than that. And all you’ll have to sacrifice is... Well, you’ll find that out for yourself.” Tom swept off his hat and bobbed a bow. “Sure I’ve been furrowing my poor brain with great plows of thought, and I’ve found the answer. You simply pluck a rose at the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.”

“Pluck a rose, indeed!” She swept her arm around the tangled garden. “And where would I be finding a rose in this mess?”

A mysterious smile curved his lips. “You’ll find what you need in your heart, Caitlin MacBride.”

She rolled her eyes heavenward and spoke to the painted sky. “Such nonsense as that...” She looked down again, and her words trailed off. She stood alone in the bramble-choked garden. Without a sound, without a trace, Tom had vanished. A few moments later she saw the stallion vault back up to the cliffs, enticed back to the stables for a measure of fodder from Tom.

“Odd little imp.” Caitlin plopped down on a rock and stared out at the gathering mists of evening. “Pluck a bloody rose indeed.”

She drew her knees to her chest and sighed. Once, this garden had been a necklace of color and grace. The fallen rocks had been terraces dripping with roses. Her mother, the lovely Siobhan MacBride, had tended her flowers as if they were children, nourishing them on rich, lime-white soil and keeping back the weeds like a warrior staving off an invasion.

But the garden and everything else had changed when the English had claimed the coast in a choke hold on Ireland. The garden seemed to be eaten up by the pestilence of disorder and conquest. Weeds overran the delicate plants, trampling them just as Cromwell’s legions trampled the Irish.

I will rebuild my home, she vowed. Alonso will come. He promised...

Tall grasses, ugly and dry from winter, rattled in the wind. The sea crashed against rocks and slapped at the shore.

The wind shifted and its voice changed, a sigh that seemed almost human. A shiver scuttled like a spider up Caitlin’s back.

Deep inside her lived a dark, Celtic soul that heard ancient voices and believed fiercely in portents. As a haze surrounded the lowering sun, the secret Celt came awake, surging forth through the mists of time. On this night, the gates stood open to the fey world. Unseen folk whispered promises on the wind.

A curlew cried out, calling Caitlin back from her reverie. She blinked, then smiled wistfully. The world was too real to her; she knew too many troubles to escape, as her father did, to realms where bellies were full, grain yields bountiful, and cattle counts unimportant.

Still, the charged air hovered around her, heavy as the clouds before a storm, and she remembered Tom Gandy’s words: Pluck a rose the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.

Foolish words. Fanciful beliefs. There wasn’t a rose within miles of this barren, windswept place.

You’ll find what you need in your heart, Caitlin MacBride.

The sun sat low, a golden seam between earth and sky. A single ray, powerful and narrow, aimed like a spear of light at Caitlin’s chest. She felt it burning, the heat of it pulsing. She stood and stepped back so that the sunbeam dropped to her feet.

And there, straining through the thick briars and reeds, grew a perfect rose.

Caitlin dropped to her knees. She would have sworn on St. Brigid’s well that no rose could grow in this unkempt bower, nor bloom so early in spring. Yet here it was, white as baby’s skin. Secreted within the petals were all the hues of the dying sun, from flame pink to the palest shade of a ripe peach. Painted by the hand of magic, too perfect for a mortal to touch.

The breeze carried the scent of the rose, a smell so sublime that a sharp agony pierced her. All the years of waiting, of struggle, seemed to wrap around her heart and squeeze, killing her hopes with exquisite slowness.

The sun had sunk to a burning sliver on the undulating chest of the dark sea. Day was dying. A few seconds more, and—

Pluck a rose the moment the sun dies, and wish for him.

Without forethought, Caitlin grasped the stem of the flawless rose and squeezed her eyes shut.

A thorn pierced her finger but she didn’t flinch. She gave a tug and the plea flew from her lips. “Send me my true love!”

She spoke in the tongue of the ancients, the tongue of the secret enchantress buried in her heart.

Caitlin clasped the rose to her chest and repeated the plea. She touched the petals to her lips, anointed it with her tears, and spoke three times, and her voice joined the voice of the wind. The incantation flew on wings of magic to the corners of the earth, from her heart to the heart of her true love.

The sudden chill of twilight penetrated the spell in which, for the briefest of moments, she had been beguiled, helpless, wrapped in an enchantment against which she had no defenses.

She opened her eyes.

The sun had died in flames of glory, yielding to the thick hazy softness of twilight. The last purpling rays reached for the first stars of night. The mist had rolled in, carried on the breath of the wind, shrouding the rocks and sand and creeping toward the forgotten garden. Long-billed curlews wheeled black against the sky. Caitlin stood rooted, certain beyond all good sense that the spell had worked. She searched the desolate garden, the cloud-wrapped cliffs, the hazy shore.

But she stood alone. Utterly, desolately, achingly alone.

The wind dried the tears on her cheeks. The hopeful sorceress inside her retreated like a beaten horse.

Blowing out a sigh and an oath, Caitlin glanced down at the rose. It was an ordinary plant, she saw now, as common as gorse, pale and lusterless in the twilight.

There was no more magic in Ireland. The conquering Roundheads had stolen that as well.

She opened her hand and drew the thorn from her finger. A bead of blood rose up and spilled over. Furious, she flung the flower away. The wind tumbled it toward the sea.

Abandoning whimsy, she turned for home.

A movement on the shore stopped her. A shadow flickered near a large rock, then resolved into a large human form.

A man.


Three (#ulink_f7a865ae-4bc8-54e3-82c7-a0ab5c3f9eca)

Caitlin stood rooted, unable to move, to think, to breathe. Thick fog swirled around the man, tiny particles of moisture catching the brilliance of the new stars and bathing him in the hero-light of legend. Huge and unconquerable, aglow with an unearthly radiance, he strolled toward her.

Wild and primal urges pulsed through Caitlin, reawakening the slumbering believer deep inside her.

The stranger seemed more myth than human, the Warrior of the Spring from Tom Gandy’s ancient tales, a champion with the aspect of a pagan god.

Still he came on, walking slowly, and still she watched, suspended in a spellbound state woven of whimsy and desire.

She thought him beautiful; even his shadowy reflection in the dark tidal pool that separated them was beautiful. He was strong-limbed and cleanly made, his body pale, his hair aflame with the colors of the sunset, his face shapely and his eyes the hue of moss in shadow. Caitlin felt no fear, only the awe and enchantment that flowed like a river of light through her.

Above tall black knee boots, he wore loose breeches cinched at his narrow waist by a broad, highly ornamented belt. A blousy white shirt draped his massive shoulders, the thin fabric wafting with the subtle undulations of the well-conditioned muscle beneath. His clothing and his astonishing mane of hair appeared slightly damp as if kissed by the dew.

With his deep, shadow-colored eyes fixed on her, he skirted the tidal pool and came to stand before her.

He gave her a smile that she felt all the way to her toes.

Caitlin gasped. “Heaven be praised, you were sent by the fey folk!”

“No.” The smile broadened. His unearthly gaze shimmered over her, and she felt herself vibrate like a plucked harp string. “But I’d swear you were. God, but you catch a man’s soul with your loveliness.”

He spoke softly, his vowels and Rs as light as the mist, his stunning compliment a breath of spring wind on her face. He was so strange, so different...And then realization struck her. He was foreign. English!

The spell shattered like exploding crystal. Caitlin reached for her stag-handled hip knife. Her hand groped at an empty sheath.

Crossing her fingers to ward off evil, she stepped back and looked around wildly. The weapon lay on the ground a few feet away. Had she, in her trancelike state, set it down? Or had he, by some evil witchery, disarmed her by will alone?

Catching her look, he bent and retrieved the knife, holding it out to her, handle first. “Yours?”

She grasped the knife. He was a seonin, an English invader. In one swift movement she could plunge the weapon to the haft in his chest. She should.

But the tender sorcery of his smile stopped her.

She slipped the knife into its sheath, leaving the leather thong untied. “And who the devil would you be, I’m wondering?”

He touched a hand to his damp brow where dark red curls spilled down. “John Wesley Hawkins, at your service,” he said. “And you’re...”

“Caitlin MacBride, and I’m at no Englishman’s service,” she snapped. “What might you be doing here, Mr. Hawkins?”

He plucked a twig from his hair. “I was shipwrecked.”

She lifted one eyebrow. “A likely story, indeed. We’ve had no reports of a shipwreck.”

“Alas, you wouldn’t have. I was the only survivor.” He lowered himself heavily to a flat rock. “Bound away from Galway, we were, on a trading mission. No, not guns, don’t glare at me like that. A squall whipped up. Next thing I knew, the decks were swamped and we’d capsized. Everything was lost. Everyone.”

“Then how did you survive?”

“I’m a strong swimmer and managed to stay afloat. A big rowan branch happened by and I clung to it. It carried me here, and—” He slid her a sideways glance. “You don’t believe a word of this, do you?”

“No.”

“I’d rather hoped you would.”

“You weren’t really on a trading vessel, were you?”

“It was a very small ship.”

“How small?”

He hesitated. “A coracle.”

In spite of herself, Caitlin felt a glimmer of humor. “Then I’m after thinking you were the only one aboard.”

“Aye.” Unexpectedly, he reached for her hand. His was damp and cool from wind and water. “Sit beside me, Caitlin MacBride. I’ve had a close brush with death and it’s unnerved me.”

She didn’t think a howling banshee could unnerve him. Pulling her hand away, she settled herself on the rock a careful distance from him. The sky had melted into a rich indigo tapestry shot through with points of silver. The waves glowed as they curled toward the shore, crashing on sand and rock.

She thought of the letter Curran had stolen from Galway. Could this man have something to do with Cromwell’s new plan? Best to find out. “Well, then, John Wesley Hawkins, I’m waiting for the truth. Why are you here?”

He took off first one boot, and then the other, pouring out the water and then putting them back on. “I’m a deserter.”

She blinked. “From the Roundhead army?”

“Aye.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I don’t hold with killing innocent folk just to make an English colony of Ireland. Besides, the pay—when it came—was poor.”

“Where were you bound for, then?”

“I’d planned to sneak into Galway harbor and find my way onto a trading vessel. Unless you’ve a better idea.”

“I can’t be doing your deciding for you, Mr. Hawkins.”

“Wesley,” he said. “My friends call me Wesley.”

“I’m no friend of yours.”

“You are, Caitlin MacBride.” The evening light danced in the color of his eyes. She saw great depths there, layers of mystery and passion and pain, and an allure that drew her like a bit of metal to a lodestone. “Didn’t you feel it?” he persisted. “The pull, the magic?”

She laughed nervously. “You’re moonstruck. You’re more full of pixified fancies than Tom Gandy.”

“Who’s Tom Gandy?”

“I expect you’ll meet him shortly if I can’t find a way to get rid of you.”

“That’s encouraging.” He took her hand again. A tiny bead of blood stood out on her finger. She tried to snatch her hand away. He held it fast.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“A thorn prick, no more,” she stated.

“I didn’t know fairy creatures could bleed. I always fancied them spun of mist and moonlight, not flesh and blood.”

“Let go.”

“No, my love—”

“I’m not a fairy creature, and I am surely not your love.”

“It’s just an expression.”

“It’s a lie. But ’tis no high wonder to me. I’d be expecting falsehoods from a Sassenach.”

“Poor Caitlin. Does it hurt?” Very slowly, with his eyes fixed on hers, he put her finger to his lips and gently slipped it inside his mouth.

Too shocked to stop him, she felt the warmth of his mouth, the moist velvet brush of his tongue over the pad of her finger. Then with an excess of gentleness he drew it out and placed her hand in her lap.

“I think the bleeding’s stopped,” he said.

But something else had started inside her, something dark and fearsome and strangely wonderful. She retorted, “And I think you’re an English spalpeen through and through. You haven’t answered my question. What do you intend doing with yourself?”

“That depends on you, Caitlin MacBride. Will you take me in and succor me, then send me on my way with a fine Irish blessing?”

She needed another mouth to feed like she needed another sister like Magheen. “And why should I be extending the hand of friendship to an Englishman? You Sassenach take what you please without asking.”

“Caitlin. I’m asking.”

Ah, there was magic in the man, in the warm, beguiling honey of his voice, in the comeliness of his face, in the layers of world-weary appeal in his eyes. But there was magic in wolves as well, dangerous magic.

She felt at once angry and confused. She had cast a net of enchantment and managed to land a shipwrecked Englishman. And how had he managed so quickly to lure her thoughts from Alonso? An enemy on the loose was a greater threat than an enemy under one’s roof. She resigned herself. “Come along, then.” She glanced about as she stood, glad that the black horse had followed Tom home. She did not want the stranger to see her treasure. A plundering Englishman would think nothing of stealing her horse.

And as for the Sassenach, she would watch him like a hound eyeing the barn cat.

“Where are we going?” asked Hawkins.

“To Clonmuir. This way.”

* * *

Dark triumph surged in the heart of John Wesley Hawkins. The ugly business would be over before he knew it. He had made a rendezvous with Titus Hammersmith, the harried Roundhead commander who could not best the Fianna, and already he had gained the acquaintance of the maid of Clonmuir.

But God, he thought, his eyes riveted on her as he climbed over brambles and rocks to the top of the cliffs. The last thing he had expected was this. Cromwell had painted a daunting picture of a half-wild barbarian woman. Thurloe swore she was well past marrying age, but Wesley couldn’t believe it.

This, he thought, still gazing at her, is something a man might believe in.

The moon had started its rise, and pale, watery light showered her. She had skin as smooth as cream. Her tawny hair and eyes gave her the fierce beauty of a tigress, while the soft edges of her full mouth and the delicacy of her features reminded him that she also possessed an excess of feminine assets. Caitlin MacBride was a formidable yet irresistible mixture of implacable will, wily intelligence, and endearing Irish whimsy.

And she could lead him to the Fianna.

For a week, Wesley had combed the woods and dales west of Galway where the Fianna had last struck. But heavy rains had washed away any sign of the warriors’ retreat. Then he had scouted about Clonmuir, watching the comings and goings. He had observed no wild warriors, but fishermen and farmers. No mail-clad berserkers, but an old man chasing a shaggy black bullock. No host of heroes, only small bands of half-starved exiles.

Odd that he’d seen no priest.

We’ve culled every cleric from the area. The memory of Thurloe’s words swept like a chill wind over Wesley.

This evening he had watched a girl streak across the heaths on a beautiful black horse. He had followed her to the remote beach and had seen her speaking with a stocky dwarfish fellow.

When the dwarf had vanished, Wesley had initiated the encounter. His story of shipwreck was as weak as watered claret, but the lie about being a deserter from the Roundhead army had gained him a small measure of sympathy.

Sympathy was a useful tool indeed.

They walked across a boggy field. The earth felt springy beneath his feet. The girl beside him was silent and absorbed in thought.

He noticed the forthright manner in which she walked, a purposeful stride mitigated by the slightest of limps. The flaw was subtle but his tracker’s eyes took note. He burned to ask her what unhappy accident had hurt her. He held his tongue, reluctant to provoke her quick temper.

The night wind swept up the dark honey waves of her hair and fanned them out in a thick veil. Her bare foot caught a rock and she lurched forward. Wesley’s first impulse was to put out a hand to steady her, but he drew back.

Pretending not to notice the stumble, he asked, “Your father is the lord of Clonmuir?”

She hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes. He’s the MacBride, chief of our sept.”

“So Clonmuir is your ancestral home?”

“Yes. Since Giolla the Fierce became the servant of St. Brigid. And until the cliffs beneath it crumble and the keep falls into the sea.”

He started to smile at her vehemence, but realized his amusement would not sit well with her. “Cromwell claims the entire coast of Ireland, three miles deep, for the Commonwealth.”

Her chin came up. Her eyes flashed in the moonlight. Her body went as taut as a drawn bowstring. “I spit on Cromwell’s claim.”

“You’re devoted to your home.”

“And why shouldn’t I be?” She spread her arms, embracing the broad sweep of the rugged landscape. “It’s all we have.”

Wesley caught his breath and wondered at the ache that rose in him upon hearing her speak, on watching the reverential and possessive way she walked across Clonmuir land. The mood of the sere wind-torn grasses racing up to meet the broken-backed mountains, the spirit of the misty wide sky crowning the craggy jut of land, flowed in her very bloodstream.

Something about her called to him, and the yearning he felt discomfited him thoroughly. He had made a vow, broken it, and gotten Laura. Her appearance in his life had compelled him to renew his oath of celibacy. Like a drowning man, he had clung to that oath, turning aside invitations that would have brought a smile to Charles Stuart himself.

So how could he be feeling this heart-catching tenderness for a wild, barefoot Irish girl? Damn Cromwell. And damn Caitlin MacBride, for Wesley could not help himself. He stopped walking, touched her arm.

“Caitlin,” he said urgently. “Look at me.”

She stopped and eyed him warily.

“What happened to us, down there on the strand?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do. Don’t deny it.”

“Moonstruck English fool,” she murmured. Her words meant nothing, for the shadowy rhythms of her speech captured him, and the secrets that haunted her eyes beckoned mystically.

“Caitlin MacBride, you do ply strange arts upon a man.”

“I do no such thing.” She drew away and started walking again.

I cannot trust her, thought Wesley. Yet at the same time he admitted to himself that he had never met so compelling a woman. Heather and moonglow colored every word she spoke. Fierce conviction molded every move she made. She plundered his heart like a bandit after treasure.

A dangerous thing. For the plundering of hearts was supposed to be Wesley’s specialty.

They passed a great, brooding rock that sat on the upward-sloping lip of a cliff. Tiny facets in the granite winked in the moonlight. Wesley paused, passed his hand over the surface of the stone. “There are symbols chiseled here,” he said, and the rough whorls beneath his fingers made him shiver.

“So there are.” Sarcasm edged her voice. “Pagan runes.”

“Who put them here?”

“Probably the first MacBride to leave his cave and proclaim this the Rock of Muir, his throne. Come along, Mr. Hawkins. We’re almost to the stronghold.”

Clonmuir crouched like a great beast on a cliff overlooking the sea. Its west-facing walls resembled a set of teeth bared at the snarling breakers. To the east rose rocky hills that disappeared into the haze of the night. In the distance, moonlight glimmered around the high gable of a church topped with a heart-shaped finial.

They entered the stronghold through the main gate and walked across a broad yard of packed earth, empty save for a few weeds straggling along the walls and chickens roosting in nests of dried kelp. Wesley could make out the humped shape of a small forge barn and several thatched outbuildings, a cluster of beehives, and a cloistered walkway leading to a kitchen.

“Wait here.” Caitlin left him standing by an ancient stone well while she crossed to a long, low fieldstone building with a stout door. She opened the door and a chorus of equine noises greeted her. The famed ponies of Clonmuir, Wesley realized.

A man’s voice spoke in Gaelic and Caitlin replied in low tones. Wesley strained his ears but could not hear the words. A small girl with long braids crept around the side of the stable, gaped at him briefly, then darted back into the shadows. The years of conquest, Wesley realized, had taught all Irish to be cautious, even in their own homes. A flash of shame heated his face. He had come here under false pretenses to coax secrets from Caitlin MacBride—secrets that could force her to forfeit her home. The idea sat like a hot rock in his gut.

She rejoined him in the yard. “Come along,” she said briskly. “We deny hospitality to no one—even an Englishman.” They made their way to the donjon, a tall, rounded structure with walls pierced by arrow loops and tiny windows. She pushed the heavy main door open.

Sharp-scented peat smoke struck Wesley in the face, stinging his eyes. A translucent gray fog shrouded the scene in layers, from the woven rushes on the floor to the blackened ceiling beams. The great hall had no chimney, only a louvered opening in the roof to draw out the smoke.

Children cavorted with a lanky wolfhound in a straw-carpeted corner. A group of women sat knitting skeins of chunky wool on fat wooden needles. Most of them conversed blithely in Irish, but the youngest was silent, sulky, and dazzlingly beautiful.

At a round table a group of men drank from horn mugs and cracked nuts in their bare hands, throwing the shells to the rush mats. The eldest wore a knitted cap on his head and had a waist-length white beard. Beside him sat the dwarf Wesley had seen with Caitlin. The fellow spoke rapid, colloquial Gaelic and swung his legs as he talked, for his feet did not reach the floor.

Caitlin headed for the table. Wesley watched her face but she held it set, the pure, sharp lines of her features scrubbed clean of sentiment. “We’ve a visitor,” she announced.

A dozen inquisitive faces turned toward Wesley. He wondered if these rough-hewn Irishmen belonged to the Fianna. On the heels of that thought came a sudden, sharp ache. Too many years had passed since he had enjoyed the company of good friends.

He tried to take in their expressions all at once, but got caught on the dwarf. His face was a picture of such pure delight that Wesley couldn’t help smiling, even as he wondered why his appearance so pleased the man.

“He says his name is John Wesley Hawkins,” Caitlin explained. “He’s English.”

Gasps and grumbles colored the smoky air. Large hands closed around knife handles. Women gathered small children to their skirts. Wesley carefully kept his smile in place.

“Is he an idiot?” a big man asked in Gaelic. He had hair the color of West Indies yams and a face that resembled a well-cured ham. He held his horn mug in two great, red-furred paws. “Look at that grin,” the giant said, tossing a nutmeat into his maw. “I say he’s an idiot.”

Wesley made no indication that he understood the foreign, lilting tongue. He was not here to challenge a taunt, but to infiltrate the Fianna, to find out their secrets, and to capture their leader.

“You could be right, Rory,” said Caitlin. “But he’s our guest, and we’ll give him a meal and a place to sleep. Lord knows, Daida has made certain there’s plenty to eat.”

“And why should we be opening hearth and home to a seonin?” Rory demanded. “It’s the business of his kind to take the very food out of our mouths.”

Caitlin’s shoulders stiffened. “I didn’t know having an Englishman under the roof frightened you, Rory.”

He shook his shaggy head. “’Tis not that, Caitlin, but—”

“Then we’ll treat him as a guest.”

Enmity blazed in the huge man’s eyes. “If he makes one false move, I’ll put that gawm of an Englishman right through the wall with one great clout.”

Wesley kept a courteous smile on his face when every instinct told him to lunge for the door.

“You’re such a Goth, Rory,” grumbled the dwarf.

“He doesn’t look like an idiot to me,” the white-bearded man said in English. “He looks properly Irish, save for that naked face of his.”

“Don’t insult us,” said another man, dark-haired and nearly as large as Rory. “An English bastard would never fill the fine, wide boots of an Irishman.”

A roar of agreement thundered from others. Horn mugs banged on the tabletop. “Well put, Conn,” shouted Rory, then turned to the man on his other side. “What think you we should do with our guest, Brian?”

Brian had a quick smile, merry blue eyes, and a deadly looking shortsword at his hip. “I say we give him the same reception Jamie Lynch gave his son in Galway all those years ago.”

Shouts of approval met the suggestion. James Lynch Fitzstephen, Wesley remembered with a chill, had hanged his own son from the window of his house.

Caitlin waited for the uproar to subside. Desperately Wesley searched her face for some hint of mercy. He saw unadorned beauty and strong character, but no sign of whether or not she would let the men do their will with him.

The room quieted, and she spoke in a voice that trembled with grief. “Has it come to murdering strangers, then?” Her soft words captured everyone’s attention. “Have we learned to hate so much?”

“I suppose we might see what he’s about,” Rory grumbled into his mug.

Only when he let out his breath with a whoosh did Wesley realize he had been holding it. Squaring his shoulders, he approached the table and held out his hand to the eldest man. “I assure you, sir, I am English, but I don’t necessarily regard that as a virtue.” He clasped the man’s hand briefly, and their eyes met. The Irishman was handsome, with unusually soft skin and strongly defined facial bones. His eyes were light, the color of damp sand. “You’re the MacBride?” Wesley guessed.

“Aye, Seamus MacBride of Clonmuir, by the grace of God and several high saints. You are welcome by me, although I cannot speak for the others.”

“Devil admire me, but I like him,” piped the dwarf, bobbing his head. “Fortune brought him here.”

Caitlin’s gaze snapped to him. “And what would you be knowing that you’re not telling us, Tom Gandy?”

Tom Gandy’s eyes rounded into circles of innocence and he dropped to the floor. In his beautiful green doublet, silk pantaloons, and tiny buckle shoes, he would not look out of place in a portrait of the Spanish royal family.

Disregarding Caitlin’s question, Tom said, “Don’t we all know that it’d bring the bad luck on us to treat a stranger ill?” Rory slapped his forehead. Caitlin rolled her eyes.

Wesley looked back at Gandy only to find that the man had vanished. “Where did he go?” Wesley asked.

“He can go to the devil for all I care,” grumbled Rory. He scowled up at Caitlin. “You went off alone again. How many times must I tell you, it’s dangerous.”

“You are not my keeper, Rory Breslin,” she replied.

“Not for want of trying,” said Brian with a knowing wink.

Wesley observed the tension in her body, the pause no longer than a heartbeat during which she looked to her father. But Seamus MacBride didn’t notice; he had lifted his gaze to the patch of star-silvered sky visible through a high window.

Suddenly, Wesley understood her problem. He didn’t know which to credit—his experience with women or his experience as a cleric—but he had insights into female hearts, and he was rarely wrong.

Caitlin MacBride wanted her father to be a father, not an old man reminiscing over a mug of rough brew.

Furthermore, Seamus MacBride was completely unaware of his daughter’s needs.

Interesting, Wesley thought. And perhaps useful.

He paid close attention as Caitlin introduced some of the others, rattling off names like a general calling roll. Liam the smith, as wide and thick as an evergreen oak; young Curran Healy whose eyes spoke the hunger of a boy longing to be treated as a man; a surly villager called Mudge; and a host of others united in their loyalty to Clonmuir and their suspicion of their English visitor. In addition, there were wayfaring families who huddled around the fire and ate with the avid concentration of those who had known the ache of hunger.

Wesley told them he was a deserter from Titus Hammersmith’s Roundhead army.

The men of Clonmuir told him they were fishermen and farmers, shepherds and sawyers.

Wesley thought they were lying.

They thought he was lying.

“Our visitor’s got a thirst on him,” Conn O’Donnell announced with a wolfish grin.

To Wesley’s surprise and pleasure, it was Caitlin herself who held out a mug. Their fingers brushed as he took it. The contact sent a shock of heat through him. He sought her eyes to see if she, too, had felt the quick fire.

Her momentary look of confusion told him she had. She drew her hand away, tossing her head as if to shake away the spell. “Drink your poteen, Mr. Hawkins.”

He sniffed suspiciously at the contents of the mug. “Poteen, is it?”

Taking a mug of her own, she dropped to the bench beside him. An almost-smile flirted with her lips. “It’s not usually fatal to drink the poteen.”

Still Wesley hesitated. “What’s it made of?”

“’Tisn’t polite to be asking,” she retorted, taking a slow sip from her cup. Her lips came away moist and shiny. “Just barley roasted over slow-burning peat and distilled. Savor it well, Mr. Hawkins, for you English have burned the barley fields since we brewed this last batch of courage.”

Goaded by the reminder and by the gleam in her eyes, Wesley lifted his mug and drank deeply.

The liquid shot down his gullet and exploded in his gut. A fire roared over the path the poteen had taken. Tears sizzled in his eyes. An army of leprechauns bearing torches paraded through his veins. “Barley, you say?” he rasped.

“Aye.” All innocence, Caitlin took a careful second sip. “Also pig meal, treacle and a bit of soap to give it body.”

Wesley quickly learned the art of judicious sipping. Avoiding questions, he took supper in the hall, then retired with a cup of tame ale to the hearth. The meal of stale bread and something gray and soupy he dared not inquire about cavorted with the poteen in his stomach. He thought longingly of the sumptuous suppers he had enjoyed with England’s underground Catholics and royalists. White-skinned ladies had delighted in teaching Laura her table manners. His former life had been fraught with danger, but he had known occasional comforts.

As the men spoke of an upcoming feast, Wesley expected Caitlin to withdraw to the women’s corner. But she stayed at the central hearth, staring from time to time into the glowing heart of the turf fire as if she saw something there that no one else could see. Wesley wondered what visions lurked behind those fierce, sad eyes. Someday he would ask her.

* * *

“What are you looking at, seonin?” asked Rory. He and Wesley stood in a thatch-roofed outbuilding at Clonmuir. Rory held a broken cartwheel in one hand and a vise in the other.

“Your arm,” said Wesley, eyeing the intimidating bulge of muscle beneath Rory’s tan hide. Lord, they grew men big and tough in these Irish parts. He wore a broad silver armlet engraved with Celtic knots. From elbow to shoulder ran a long, shiny scar. “How did you hurt yourself?”

Rory tried to work a stave around the wheel. The iron hoop slipped. Patiently he set it back in place. “I cut it while sharpening a plowshare.”

And my mother’s the Holy Roman Empress, thought Wesley, propping his elbow on a stone jutting from the rough wall. It was a sword cut if he’d ever seen one, and he had seen plenty, some on his own body. He must remember to ask Titus Hammersmith if he recalled wounding one of the warriors of the Fianna.

Rory Breslin was certainly big enough to make a formidable fighting man. But Wesley doubted he could be their fabled leader. Though strong as a bullock, Rory was also as simple as one of the shaggy beasts that used to graze over the hills of Ireland. He didn’t possess the guile to lead men into battle and out so successfully, time and time again.

“Why don’t you drive a nail into the stave to hold it while you secure the other end?” Wesley suggested.

Rory’s thick eyebrows lifted eloquently. “I’ll not be needing your English advice.”

“I wonder,” Wesley said carefully, “why you and the men aren’t out fishing. It appears Clonmuir could use the food.”

“Because the Sassenach burned our fleet,” Rory snapped. “Every vessel’s gone save a curragh and the leaky hooker.”

Hearing the pain in the big man’s voice, Wesley flinched. “I don’t hold with such practices.”

Rory gave a dissatisfied grunt and went back to his work.

“Why aren’t you at prayers with the rest of them?” Wesley inquired.

“You ask a lot of questions, English.”

“Very well, I’ll leave you to your chores.” Wesley stepped toward the door.

“Wait a minute. I’m supposed to be—” Rory broke off.

“Keeping an eye on me,” Wesley said with a breezy grin. “Don’t blame you a bit, my friend. Seems you’ve ample cause to distrust an Englishman.” He gazed out the doorway. Beyond the walls lay the tiny village of thatched huts clustered shoulder-to-shoulder around the church, bleached white by the wind. Behind them the land rose up, hills scored by deep clefts and clad in budding heather.

No one had invited Wesley to prayers. They assumed that he, like most Englishmen, protested the Catholic faith.

They had no priest to sing mass. He wanted to ask where the cleric had gone, but wasn’t certain they knew. Admitting he was Catholic and had studied at Douai would have wrung some sympathy from the Irish, but Wesley held silent. Something sinister was happening to the priests of Ireland; all he needed was an overzealous bounty hunter after him.

The church bell clanged with the dissonance of aged iron. A few minutes later, Caitlin MacBride and her entourage streamed up the road toward the stronghold.

The sight of her struck Wesley with a fresh bolt of yearning. His hand gripped the door frame, and his eyes devoured her. She wore a clean kirtle and apron. Her loose blouse and skirt molded a form similar to those he had heard described in the confessions of notorious skirt chasers. Suddenly he felt every minute of his three years of self-imposed celibacy.

She walked beside an exceedingly pretty girl with sleek blond hair and pale skin. He remembered her from the night before; she had been sulking in the women’s corner.

“Who is that with Caitlin?” he asked Rory.

“’Tis Magheen, Caitlin’s younger sister.”

“So there are two MacBride sisters.”

“Magheen’s not a MacBride any longer. She wed not long ago.” Rory scowled in disapproval. “She came back home because Caitlin failed to make good on the dowry.”

Wesley eyed the voluptuous younger sister, a blooming Irish rose who lacked the savage appeal of Caitlin. “What man would turn such a beauty out?”

“You’ll see.” Rory returned to his chore.

And Wesley did see, later, at the feast. People swarmed to Clonmuir from the countryside. They came on foot or crammed into carts, or by sea in pucans and curraghs—large, loud families who brayed greetings to one another and ate and drank as if the meal laid out on tables in the yard were their last—or their first in many days.

A high whistle pierced the noise. Heads turned toward the main gate. A large man on a handsome mare came clattering through, followed by two sturdy-looking retainers. He wore a long tunic woven of heather wool and studded with polished stones. His mane of black hair flowed around a face fashioned of strong, clean lines and draped with a long, braided beard.

The quintessential Irish lord, thought Wesley as the man dropped lithely to the ground, tossed his reins to a boy, and strode toward Caitlin and Magheen. He might have ridden off the tongue of a gifted bard.

Putting down his mug of ale, Wesley moved closer to the lord’s table to await the approach. Above his white beard, braided with brass bells for the occasion, Seamus MacBride’s face was florid, his eyes sparkling, and his mood blissful from drink.

Caitlin sat beside him, silent and watchful, her plate of spit-roasted beef untouched.

“Logan Rafferty!” Seamus spread his arms. “’Tis well come you are to our feast!”

Rafferty aimed a thunderous glare at Magheen. She moved closer to Caitlin and peeked demurely at him from beneath her long golden lashes.

Logan tossed back his inky hair. “And while the lot of you makes merry, Hammersmith is on the move again.”

“Hist!” said Caitlin, her amber eyes wide and fierce. In rapid Gaelic she added, “Have a care with that tongue of yours, a chara. We’ve an English visitor.”

Wesley stood with one hip propped on the table edge and an easy smile on his face. Inside, he seethed like the Atlantic in a gale. Surely this arrogant lord was the leader of the Fianna. Why else would Caitlin have been so quick to silence him? And who else would know the plans of Titus Hammersmith? For that matter, why had Hammersmith decided to go on the offensive so quickly? Damn the murdering Roundhead! Only a week ago they had agreed he would wait for a report from Wesley.

Rafferty subjected Wesley to a long perusal punctuated by flaring nostrils and glowering black eyes. “English, you say?”

“John Wesley Hawkins.” He lifted his mug. “My friends call me Wesley.”

“My inferiors call me Logan Rafferty, lord of Brocach.”

“I’ll do my best to remember that.” Wesley pulled himself to his full height. The two men stood as equals, eye to eye, each broad of shoulder and narrow of hip.

“What do you intend doing with yourself, Hawkins?” Rafferty demanded.

I’m here to take your head off, thought Wesley. Aloud, he said, “I’m for Galway tomorrow.”

Rafferty hooked his thumbs into the band of his trews. “Galway, is it?”

“Aye.” Wesley had just made the decision. With a stab of loss he realized he no longer needed to seduce Caitlin MacBride in order to coax secrets from her. “If I manage to give Hammersmith the slip, I’ll take a ship to England.”

“The sooner the better,” muttered Rafferty. Turning his back on Wesley, he said to Magheen, “The fiddler’s playing a reel, agradh.”

She gave him a beautiful, false smile. “Why, thank you for telling me so. I was just thinking, our English guest might like to learn the steps.”

Wesley found himself pulled into the center of the dancers. Magheen danced like a shadow on a breeze, light and graceful, conscious that the movements of her willowy body attracted every male eye in the yard. Although she smiled up at Wesley, her gaze kept straying to Logan Rafferty.

Wesley was curiously unresponsive to the lovely woman on his arm. Again and again his attention strayed to the golden-skinned girl who stood with her father and Logan Rafferty by the table.

“It’s generous of you,” said Wesley, “to give an Englishman this dance when your husband’s obviously such a great lord.”

“My husband’s a great fool,” she retorted. “I’m using you to show him so.”

Wesley could not suppress a grin. “All men should find themselves so used.” The pattern of the reel brought them near the table. Like a she-wolf guarding her cubs, Caitlin watched their every move. Feigning casual interest, he remarked, “Rafferty must be a busy man, times being what they are.”

“Aye. He expects me to sit and warm the hearthstones while he—oh!” Magheen lurched against Wesley. He whipped a glance over his shoulder in time to see Caitlin drawing back the foot she had stuck in her sister’s path.

The deliberate interruption convinced Wesley that he had guessed correctly about Rafferty.

When they passed the table a second time, the lord of Brocach reached out and grasped Magheen’s arm. “Get some manners on you, wife,” he ordered.

Magheen tossed her head. “I’ll not be your sometimes wife, Logan Rafferty. ’tis a full partner I’ll be or none at all.”

His spine stiffened. The people nearby hushed, the better to hear the quarrel.

“I came here to make a bargain,” said Logan. To Wesley’s surprise, he addressed not Magheen or Seamus, but Caitlin. “I’ve decided to reduce the dowry, out of the goodness of my heart.”

Magheen’s face blossomed into a smile that might have set the mountains to singing.

“The betrothal papers specified twelve healthy cows,” said Rafferty. “You offered one bullock as a token of good faith. I’ll take that, and call us even.”

While the onlookers gasped, Magheen buried her face in her slim white hands. Seamus hid behind the wide rim of his mug. Caitlin closed her eyes, nostrils thinning as she tried for patience and lost the battle.

“You picked the wrong time to let reason come on that great fat head of yours, Logan,” she burst out. In one swift movement she picked up her untouched wooden trencher of beef and thumped it down on the table in front of him. “There’s your bullock, and welcome to it!” Leaping up from the table, she stormed across the yard and disappeared up a crumbling flight of stairs to the wall walk.

* * *

Christ have mercy, Caitlin seethed, her bare feet clapping against age-worn flagstones. “Will nothing go right with me these days?”

She had arranged a brilliant marriage for her sister only to have the two fighting like Roundheads and Irishmen. She had cast a spell for her lover and had conjured a renegade Englishman. And to cap all her woes, Hammersmith was on the march again.

She paused at a wide break in the wall. Her gaze traveled down the sheer drop of Traitor’s Leap, where the sea hurled white-bearded breakers at the pointed rocks. Back in the Tudor queen’s time, a member of the MacBride sept had tried to adopt English policies. His efforts had driven him to this spot; his guilt had hurled him over.

Her thoughts circled round and round like a flock of gulls after a fishing boat, and came to rest on John Wesley Hawkins. She should feel relieved that he had decided to go. And yet a hidden voice in her heart whispered that he must stay, for there was unfinished business between them.

“I’d been wondering why you wouldn’t touch your meal,” said a smooth, golden voice.

She spun around. There stood Hawkins, smiling that heart-catching smile, transfixing her, backing her against the rough crenellated wall.

“I take it that roasting the bullock wasn’t your idea,” he added.

“My father’s.” She swung back to look over the wall. Waves exploded against the shore but farther out, the waters lay dark and calm. How many times had she stood here, gazing at the flat empty line of the horizon, seeking a glimpse of a tall ship coming toward her, bearing her heart’s desire?

“It’s a good harbor,” Hawkins said.

He stood very close to her, so close that her shoulder grew warm. “Yes.” She took a step away from him. The natural harbor had a narrow entrance leading to a deep, horseshoe-shaped cove.

“Cromwell is determined to have Clonmuir in Hammersmith’s control, isn’t he? So he can have a port of his own, a port capable of accommodating deep-draught vessels.”

“Yes,” she said again. “That’s why we’re so determined to hold it for our own.”

“Cromwell’s army exceeds the entire population of Ireland,” said Hawkins. “He has enough men and guns to lay waste to every stone of Clonmuir. How will you stop him?”

“We’ll—” She clamped her mouth shut. How careless this disarming man made her. “You’d be surprised, Hawkins, what a few deeply committed warriors can accomplish.”

“No,” he said with an odd, wistful shimmer in his shadow-colored eyes. “No, I wouldn’t be surprised. And you’re to call me Wesley.”

“It’s such an English-sounding name.”

“That it is, Caitlin MacBride. A man can’t change what he is.”

How true, she thought. It was that very truth that had led her, again and again, to forgive her father’s follies. If she and Hawkins had been other than they were, they might have been friends.

“Tell me about Logan Rafferty and your sister.” He had moved closer again, a brush of heat against her arm.

She knew she should retreat, or better yet, push him away. Yet the commanding beauty of his face, the obvious ease with which he held himself, kept her in a thrall of curiosity. She knew she shouldn’t confess the turmoils of Clonmuir to an English stranger, but where was the harm in it? She had no confidant save Tom Gandy, and her steward’s habit of speaking in riddles was more vexing than satisfying. Despite Hawkins’s intimidating good looks and blatantly English character, something about him put her at ease. Just looking into his eyes gave her a feeling of peace, like the rocking motion of a boat on a calm sea.

“Logan comes from an old and industrious clan,” she explained, “although he’s taken on some English ways. That should please you.”

“So far, nothing about the man has pleased me.”

Caitlin held back a smile. “He should have chosen a wife of higher rank but...well, you’ve seen Magheen.”

“She’s very pretty.”

A tiny ache flared in Caitlin’s chest. Pretty was a word that could never apply to her. Tall and gawky, wild of hair, her face made up of harsh lines, she was not one to escape men’s attention. But it was not the soft, poetic devotion of smitten swains. Instead she commanded soldiers who had no choice.

Images of Hawkins dancing with Magheen harried her thoughts. He had moved with animal fluidity, a perfect foil for Magheen’s winsome grace. In looks, Hawkins was her masculine equal. She wondered why he wasn’t paying court to her now instead of pursuing Caitlin.

“Magheen’s not merely pretty,” she said. “She’s bright and amusing and wise in...important ways. She’s had many suitors, but would settle for no less than Logan. But nothing is simple. Because of her lower station, he demanded a large dowry. I tried to hide the sum from Magheen.”

“I take it she found out.”

“She did, and it burned her pride.” Reluctant amusement tugged at the corners of Caitlin’s mouth.

“So what did she do about it?”

“She refused to share his bed until he reduced his demands.”

“Ah. Your little sister has some of your defiance in her.”

Caitlin erected a wall of defense around her emotions. “We’ve been without a mother for six years. You’ve seen...our father. We don’t have the luxury of behaving like conventional ladies.” She sighed. “The matter might have been settled this very day. Logan would have had a live bullock, not one turning over a cookfire.”

“Your father’s doing?”

“Aye. So now I must find another means to appease Logan.”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You? You alone, Caitlin?”

“Aye.”

“It’s a heavy burden for a young girl.” His large hand came up. Like the brush of a feather, it coasted along her jawline.

Caitlin was so surprised by his touch that for a moment she stood unmoving, hearing the crash of the sea and the dull thud of blood in her ears. Her skin tingled where his rough knuckles caressed her. Pulled by a force woven of longing, loneliness, and magic, she leaned toward him, staring at his strange English-made shirt and the thick belt he wore at his waist. St. George’s cross was stamped into the leather.

The patron saint of England brought her to her senses. She drew back quickly. “You mustn’t touch me.”

Very slowly, he lowered his hand. “You need to be touched, Caitlin MacBride. You need it very badly.”

She girded herself with denial. “Even if it were so, I would not need it from an Englishman.”

“Think again, my love. We’re easy with one another despite our differences. Remember our first meeting—the shock of it, the knowing? We could be good for each other.”

“And when, pray, has an Englishman ever been good for Ireland?”

A lazy grin spread over his face. “Even I know that, Caitlin. St. Patrick himself was English born, was he not?”

“But he had the heart of Eireann.”

“So might I, Caitlin MacBride. So might I.”

Ah, that voice. It could coax honey from an empty hive. She wondered at his cryptic words, at the look of yearning in his unusual eyes. Beating back the attraction that rose in her, she laughed suddenly. “You should be Irish, with that head of red hair and that gullet full of blarney, Mr. Hawkins.”

“Wesley.”

She stopped laughing. “Go down and enjoy the holiday while you may, Mr. Hawkins. You’ve chosen to leave tomorrow.” The words, spoken aloud, hurt her throat like the ache of tears.

He put his finger to his lips and then touched hers. “As you wish, Caitlin.” He ambled off along the wall walk and joined the throng in the yard.

The phantom brush of his fingers lingered like a tender kiss on her mouth. Caitlin faced back toward the sea. Just a few minutes ago her thoughts had fixed on Alonso. But like a high wind chasing the surf, Hawkins had scattered those thoughts. Worse, he had awakened the slumbering woman inside her—the woman who yearned, the woman who ached.

Dusting her hands on her apron, she scuttled the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. She had no time to be thinking of either man. If Logan was right about the movements of the Roundhead army, she had best be after sending Hawkins away.

* * *

The task proved harder than she had anticipated. Early the next morning they stood together at the head of the boreen, the skelped path that wound through the village and looped over the mist-draped hills to the southeast.

The rich colors of the rising sun mantled him, picking out pure gold highlights in his hair and softening the lines of his smile. She would always remember him this way, with his back to the sun and its rays fanning out around him.

“Seems we’ll not be seeing each other again,” she remarked, forcing lightness into her tone.

“So it seems.”

“Have a care, then, Mr. Hawkins, for Hammersmith doesn’t like to be kindled by des—” Appalled, she snapped her mouth shut. Mother Mary, why couldn’t she govern her tongue in the presence of this man?

“You speak as if you know him.”

“And what kind of fool would I be if I made no effort to know my enemy?” she retorted.

He stood very still, his eyes never leaving hers. “You are no fool, Caitlin MacBride. I could wish—” He stopped and drew a deep breath of the misty air. He seemed as reluctant as her to speak freely.

“Could wish what?”

“Just...have a care for yourself. Hammersmith is a powerful man. A dangerous man. If he gets close to Clonmuir, promise me you’ll flee.”

She laughed. “Flee? Not likely. Clonmuir is my home. I’d defend it until the last stone is torn from my dying hands.”

His mouth thinned in disapproval. “I was afraid of that.”

“Don’t fear for me. ’Tisn’t necessary.” She glanced at the angle of the sun. “You’d best be on your way.”

But he continued to stand still, gazing at her while larks and sparrows greeted the day. Against her will, she remembered that other parting, the tears that had flowed as freely from her eyes as the pledges that flowed from Alonso’s lips. Somehow, this tense, dry-eyed farewell hurt more.

“God, I don’t want to leave you,” Hawkins burst out.

Stricken by his vehemence, Caitlin dove for the haven of formality. “The blessings of God be on you, Mr. Hawkins. And may your way be strewn with luck.”

He lifted his arm, reaching for her but not touching her. Caitlin understood the unspoken question. He wanted her to take the next step, to come into his arms.

But with the self-control bred into her by generations of warriors, she stood her ground. For if she stepped into his arms now, she knew she would never leave.


Four (#ulink_68322506-03a4-5b63-ad44-68cf679fe4a6)

Footsore and grubby from the long trek to Galway, Wesley reflected glumly on his visit to Clonmuir. He had found no barbarous Irish rebels, but men dedicated to preserving their lands and their very lives from English invaders. Caitlin MacBride was not the uncivilized harpy Cromwell had warned him about, but a fascinating woman with a heart big enough to embrace all of Clonmuir and Irish refugees as well.

A heart big enough to believe the lies of John Wesley Hawkins. She had believed him when he’d told her he meant to sneak back to Galway and stow away on a ship. She had given him a sack of provisions from her meager stores. She had consecrated his journey with the poetry of an Irish blessing.

An image of her rose in his mind. Like yesterday, he remembered Caitlin, her skin colored by wind and sun, her features stamped with remarkable character, her hair a waving cloud the color of wheat at harvest time. Most vividly of all he recalled her eyes, soft as honey one minute and hard as amber jewels the next. And filled, in unguarded moments, with a look that almost made him believe in magic.

Pushing aside the thought, he gazed down the street to the wharves. The English Commissioners for Ireland had promised that Galway would become another Derry, open to Spain, to the Straits, to the West Indies and beyond.

But no new world port took root in Galway. Its marble palaces had been handed over to strangers, her native sons and daughters banished. The town had become a ruin, a host to a few hulks full of plundering soldiers and Roundhead field artillery.

Wesley wished he could descend into the blind emptiness that had claimed him when he had faced torture, but the comforting oblivion eluded him. Everything he had done since Cromwell had seized Laura went against his unusual but rigid code of honor. If he thought too hard about capturing Logan Rafferty and delivering his rebel head to Cromwell, he would not be able to live with himself.

Heartsore, Wesley picked through pitted streets and neglected buildings to the house in Little Gate Street where Captain Titus Hammersmith kept his headquarters. The good stone town house had two chimneys, a neat kitchen garden on the side, and a guard posted on the stoop.

Where was the family Hammersmith had turned out in order to set himself up in comfort? Probably wandering in exile, possibly begging a meal and shelter at the gate of Clonmuir.

A sergeant-at-arms let him in and led him down a dim corridor. The house was overheated—Hammersmith complained loudly about the damp Irish cold—and smelled of burning peat and cooked cabbage. Wesley entered a well-lit library. Hammersmith stood at the desk, poring over maps spread out before him.

The Roundhead commander turned, his well-fed bulk filling the space between the desk and wall. It would be a mistake to assume him soft, though. In the middle of his thick body dwelt a heart as cold and immovable as Connemara marble. His one vanity was a profusion of glossy brown ringlets that gave him the look of a cavalier rather than a Roundhead.

“Ah, Hawkins,” he said. “You’re back.” His gaze slid from Wesley’s drooping hat to his damp boots. “Hard journey, was it?”

“I had to walk.”

“What happened to that little coracle I gave you?”

He had given the sailing vessel to a down-at-the-heels fisherman in the Claddagh who had lost his own boat to English thieves. “Battered on the rocks,” he said.

Wesley studied the maps. They were copies of the ones Cromwell had shown him, but these had been crisscrossed by battle plans. “So it’s true. You are planning an advance.”

“How did you know?”

“I heard at Clonmuir.”

Hammersmith’s jowls quivered. “You were at Clonmuir! But you’ve been gone less than a fortnight.”

“I told you, I work quickly.”

“You’re living up to your reputation. I’m surprised that mad MacBride woman didn’t roast your bald parts on a spit.”

She did worse than that, thought Wesley. She stole my heart.

“How’d you get out alive?”

“I overwhelmed her with my personal charm,” said Wesley.

Hammersmith’s eyes narrowed. “Are your papers still in order?”

Wesley patted his stomacher. The wide belt was stiff from the inner pouch of waterproof waxed parchment. “I still have my safe conduct from you, and my passport and letters of marque from Cromwell.” He frowned down at the maps. “You shouldn’t have planned to march without consulting me. An advance at this time would be ill-advised.”

Danger speared like a shaft of light in Hammersmith’s eyes. “And why, pray, is that?”

“I told you. They know about it at Clonmuir.”

“Impossible! It was in the strictest of confidence that I—” Hammersmith clamped his mouth shut. “They can’t know.”

“They do.”

“What else did you find out at Clonmuir?”

“The identity of the leader of the Fianna.”

Hammersmith’s eyebrows lifted, disappearing into the lovelocks that spilled over his brow. He held himself still, waiting, a snake about to strike. “And...?”

“Logan Rafferty, lord of Brocach.”

The eyebrows crashed back down. The cruel face paled. “Impossible!” he said again.

“I’m fairly certain,” said Wesley. “He has great influence in the district, and seems a man made for fighting. He’s also married to a daughter of the MacBride.”

“Is that all you offer me?”

Wesley recalled his dance with Magheen, the conversation interrupted by Caitlin’s well-placed foot. “His wife practically admitted he’s involved.”

“Then she was having you on.”

“I can find out for certain quickly enough,” said Wesley. “I know where Rafferty’s stronghold is. With a small party of—”

“I can spare no men.” Slamming the subject closed, Hammersmith gestured at the sideboard. “Will you have something to chase away the chill?”

Wesley hesitated, trying to see past the guarded look in the soldier’s eyes. “Please.”

As Hammersmith went to pour, Wesley lifted a corner of the map and scanned the sea chart. Inishbofin, an island off the coast of Connaught, was marked with a crudely drawn cross. Putting down the map, he turned his attention to what appeared to be a bill of lading half hidden under the leather desk blotter. Instead he saw that it was a list of women’s names and ages, each followed by a number. A census roll? Wesley wondered. Common sense told him that it was; the finger of ice at the base of his spine warned him otherwise.

Quick as a thief, he snatched the paper and slipped it into his belt. It would bear pondering later.

At the sideboard, Hammersmith splashed usquebaugh out of a crystal bottle. The bottle had a silver collar bearing the claddah, two hands holding a heart, oddly surmounted on a badger.

Accepting the large glass, Wesley took a long drink. The amber liquid slid over his tongue and down his gullet, heating his stomach.

Seeing the expression on his face, Hammersmith gave a satisfied nod. “Mild as new milk, eh? The Irish make good whiskey and comely women.”

Wesley was disinclined to pursue the topic. “Why do you insist on marching now? Wouldn’t it be safer to take Rafferty first?”

Hammersmith slapped his hand over the papers by the map. “New orders. I tell you, you’re wrong about Rafferty, and I can spare you no men. Cromwell’s son, Henry, wants that port now.”

For God’s sake, Wesley thought, isn’t the entire east of Ireland enough?

“We’re to garrison an abandoned stronghold on the western shore of Lough Corrib,” said Hammersmith. “After that’s established, we’ll march up from the south and take Clonmuir in a pincer movement.”

Crushing Caitlin MacBride’s home like a grape in a winepress, raping the women, and turning the battle-maddened survivors out to starve.

“Damn it!” Wesley slammed his empty glass on the desk. “Rafferty’s your man! Take his stronghold instead.”

Lifting an eyebrow up into his lovelocks, Hammersmith studied his guest. “What is it about Clonmuir that fires your passions?”

Wesley immediately saw his mistake. Never show you care, he reminded himself. He should have learned that lesson with Laura. He evaded the question with one of his own. “Have you been sent reinforcements?”

“No.”

“Then what makes you think your march will succeed this time?”

Hammersmith’s smile was the cold curve of a brandished blade. “Don’t be modest, my friend. This time, I have you.”

* * *

“Pissing Irish weather,” muttered Edmund Ladyman, a soldier riding beside Wesley.

A clod of mud flung up by a horse’s hoof struck Wesley on the knee. “I’m with you there,” he said as the mud slid down into his cuffed boot.

The roadway had been churned up by hundreds of hooves and the iron-bound wheels of supply carts. A thick mist surrounded the plodding army, turning the woods into a dark, dripping prison of lichened trees. Since the reign of Elizabeth, Englishmen had set themselves to the task of deforesting Ireland. But even the most greedy of shipbuilders hadn’t yet made a foray into the untamed western lands.

Galway lay miles behind them, but the difficult part of their march still loomed ahead, in the crags of Connemara where secrets wafted on the wind and wild warriors hid in the fells.

Wesley disliked Ladyman, a thick-lipped, foul-mouthed Republican from Kent. Wesley found that he disliked most of the English soldiers. But they had their uses. “Were you on the last march, Ladyman?” he asked.

Ladyman tugged at the towel he wore beneath his helm to keep the rain off his neck. “Oh, aye. And the four bleedin’ marches before that as well.”

“So you understand the way the Fianna works.”

“Aye. Bastards always go after the supply carts, that’s why we’re riding behind them. They won’t be expecting that. Pillaging natterjacks. Stealing the food from our very mouths, they are.”

“Probably because they’re starving.”

“That’s the whole idea, eh?” Ladyman peered through the damp green gloom. “We’re safe hereabouts, ’deed we are. They never strike in daylight, sneaking bloody kerns.” A drop of rain gathered on the tip of his nose. With a curse, he wiped it on his sleeve.

“So why do you carry on?”

Ladyman regarded him with astonishment. “The friggin’ booty, what else?”

“Any booty to be had in these parts has surely been picked over by now.”

“I’m speaking of Clonmuir,” Ladyman replied. “There’s a treasure in that castle worth a king’s ransom.”

“Who told you that?”

“It’s all the talk, has been for years.”

Wesley shook his head and stared downward. Between his aching thighs, the sodden body of his cavalry mare plodded with patient stupidity. A shame he could not reveal that he had been at Clonmuir.

Ladyman had been deceived, as had every other man who believed the tale. The advantage to Hammersmith was obvious. By enticing the men with the promise of rich spoils, he kept interest high and the desertion rate low.

Ladyman rode with the careless ease of a professional soldier. The fool. There was no treasure at Clonmuir.

Ah, but there was, he corrected himself. There was Caitlin MacBride. More precious than gold, she was a fiercely beautiful woman desperate to protect her own.

He didn’t want to think about her. He had deceived her about his purpose. Now he was marching toward her home with an army. He couldn’t afford to harbor tenderness toward her.

But thoughts of her dogged his path each day and plagued his sleep each night. In fact, he was dreaming of her one night as he slept in his damp bedroll near the banks of Lough Corrib. She stood on the strand amid a tumble of rocks. Proud and vulnerable, a look of stricken wonder on her face, the breeze blowing her tawny gold hair in billows about her shoulders. Her loose blouse seemed exotic in its simplicity; her feminine lines needed no molding by stays. He could sense her need, her desire, because within him burned an answering need of equal intensity.

She lifted her arms and stepped toward him, reaching, smiling, as if he were the answer to her most cherished wish. He brushed his lips against hers, just so, increasing the pressure until she surged against him and cried out—

“Guards!”

Wesley sat straight up and blinked into the darkness.

“Guards!”

Scattered campfires burned low, throwing the huge shadows of hurrying men against a wall of woodland.

“Guards!” The furious shout came from Hammersmith’s command tent. “Smith! Bell! Lamb! Front and center!”

By the time Wesley reached the tent, the commander had lined up the night watch outside and was pacing in front of them, a quirt slapping his thigh. “Not one of you heard anything?”

“Not a sound, Captain. I swear it, nary a peep. Naught but the whir of bats’ wings.”

“Then how, pray,” said Hammersmith sarcastically, “do you explain this?” Between his thumb and forefinger Hammersmith dangled a freshly picked shamrock.

“Why, these grow like weeds in Ireland, sir?”

“Not on my chest while I sleep they don’t!” Titus Hammersmith roared. “Some sneaking Irish left it as a sort of sign, or—or—”

“Warning?” asked Wesley. He moved toward the rear of the tent, which faced the rock-rimmed lake. He touched the canvas and saw where it had been slit with a knife. A grown man could never fit through the opening.

Puzzled, Wesley entered the tent through the front. Torchlight from outside threw eerie shadows on the canvas. Hammersmith’s cot stood several feet from the opening. It was not simply a matter of reaching inside, then.

“Here’s where the intruder entered.” Wesley indicated the sliced-open canvas. “Was anything else disturbed?”

Hammersmith gave a cursory glance around. “No, I—” He tugged distractedly at a sausage curl. “Cut!” he roared, making Wesley jump. “By God, the Irish devil has cut a lock of my hair!” He stumbled back as if he’d been mortally wounded. “I’ve heard the old Celts use human hair in their spells.”

“It could have been worse,” Wesley murmured. “The intruder could have slit your throat.” But he was beginning to understand the Irish character. They were warriors, not cold-blooded murderers.

“Jesus, Captain,” said his lieutenant. “D’ye think one of ’em’s havin’ ye on?”

“Shut up,” snapped Hammersmith. He whirled on Wesley. “Find the devils. Find them now.”

* * *

Wesley led a score of mounted warriors northward. The darkness hung thick around them, and the urge to light one of the pitch torches they had brought along was voiced by more than one soldier.

Like the troops of cavalry, Wesley wore a buff coat of thick leather over back and breast armor, and the menacing iron headpiece which gave the Roundheads their name. In addition to the torches, they carried swords, pikes, and pistols.

The latent sense of decency that had driven him to the seminary at Douai tiptoed up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. With an effort, he shrugged it off. Now was no time for scruples.

They came to a great spill of rocks that rolled down toward the lake. The horses balked and had to be led around the rockfall. Wesley paused to search for a sign. Squinting in the gloom, he studied the dead grass that grew in the crevices.

Before long he discovered a barely discernible depression in the mud, made by a small, broad foot. Christ, had the Irish enlisted children now?

An owl hooted a breath of song into the night. A badger rooted in the damp leaves.

“We’re going the wrong way,” muttered one of the men.

Wesley leaned down to inspect a gorse bush. One branch had recently been broken. “No, we’re not,” he said.

The hill rose to a ridge along the lake. The rocks formed a bowl around a small clearing, sharp peaks thrusting through the mist with a weird, stark beauty that captivated Wesley. For a moment he fancied himself gazing at a castle fashioned by giants. The lake lapped with a steady swish at the reedy shores.

And over all hung a thick, pervasive, unnatural quiet that Wesley didn’t like in the least. As he reached up to pluck a swatch of flaxen fabric from a low-hanging branch, he understood why. He straightened and turned, apprehension clutching at his belly.

His gaze darted over the area. Most of the Roundheads had descended to the clearing. Moonlight threw their shadows against the wall of rock opposite the lakeside. Directly ahead grew a thick forest, nearly as dark and impenetrable as the granite.

The wind keened across the lake, carrying the smell of fresh water and something else, a faint animal scent. Guiding his horse down from the ridge, he joined his companions.

“Well?” asked Ladyman.

“The trail’s too obvious,” said Wesley.

“Not to me,” said another soldier, scratching his brow beneath his round helm.

“They want us to follow them.”

“But why the devil would the bastards want that?” Ladyman demanded.

Another Roundhead uncorked a bottle and took a drink of beer. “Hammersmith’s nervous,” he said. “He’s starting to believe in all those heathen Irish superstitions.”

“I mislike this darkness,” a third man said, grabbing a bundle of torches and striking flint and steel.

“Douse that!” Wesley ordered furiously. “For God’s sake, you’ll give away our pos—”

But it was too late; the torch flared high, filling the air with the smell of pine pitch.

Ladyman reached for the beer bottle. “Let him comfort himself with it. I say the captain’s imagining things.”

“Did he imagine the shamrock?” Wesley challenged. “The shorn lock?”

Ladyman shrugged, his armor creaking. “I have a keen nose for the stink of Irish. I don’t think there’s an Irishman within miles of this place.”

“Fianna! Fianna e Eireann!”

The full-throated bellow burst from the darkness.

A rumble of hoofbeats pounded, the sound of a stampede out of control, coming at them from all sides. The man who had lit the torch fell, an arrow protruding from his neck. The bundle of torches caught fire, sizzling on the damp ground.

“Jesus Christ,” whispered Ladyman, wheeling his horse back toward the ridge. “Jesus Christ!”

Wesley gripped the hilt of his sword. The blade hissed from its scabbard.

As one, the party started back in the direction they’d come. A company of black-clad horsemen blocked the way.

“To the woods!” Ladyman yanked his horse back around. He disappeared into the darkness. The other Englishmen drew swords and pistols.

“We’re surrounded!” Ladyman’s desperate cry drifted across the field as he reappeared.

The men on the ridge stood sentinel, fists raised, horses blowing mist into the moonlit night.

“Fianna!”

The shouts and hoofbeats drew nearer. An almost forgotten feeling rose inside Wesley. In a flash he recognized the taut sense of anticipation, the feel of the sword in his hand, the cold sense of purpose that closed over his soul.

John Wesley Hawkins was ready to do battle. At the seminary at Douai, the priests had taught him to abhor violence. Yet all those values were scrubbed away by the dark, pounding thrill of impending action.

For the past five years his battles had been fought in secret against an enemy he could not meet face-to-face. His only weapons had been words and deeds done in shadow. Now he rode with that very enemy as comrade.

But now, oh, now, he was about to pit himself, sword to sword, against a flesh-and-blood foe. That he had no particular quarrel with the Irish mattered little. His daughter’s life depended on defeating these wild warriors.

And defeat them he would. Unthinkingly he sketched the sign of the cross.

Ladyman gasped. “What the bloody hell—”

His words drowned in another flood of Gaelic shouting and galloping horses. Wesley’s gaze snapped from shadow to shadow at the fringe of the clearing. Their numbers too small to match the English, they had culled away this search party, ringing them on three sides and the ice-cold lake at their backs.

The Irish came like nightmares borne on a foul wind, black-clad and licked by firelight, their old-fashioned helms bobbing with the rhythm of their horses. All wore breastplates emblazoned with a golden harp, and many had veils flowing from their helms.

The Englishmen scattered. Gaelic shouts boomed across the field. The Irish ponies were more fleet and agile than the cavalry mounts.

A large Irishman on a thick-limbed pony galloped to the fore. Rafferty? Wesley wondered, admiring the man’s skill.

The warrior guided the horse with his knees alone. In one hand he held a short-handled ax, in the other, a large hammer. He swung the weapons with the ease of a reaper wielding a scythe. The hammer clapped against an English helm. The ax rived into an English breastplate. A hoarse bellow of agony rolled across the chill flat water.

Wesley rode toward the aggressor. If it were Rafferty, he must be stopped. Leaderless, the Fianna would scatter; lives would be spared.

The huge warrior on his dark horse spied Wesley. Sawing at the reins, he galloped across the uneven ground.

“Oh, my God,” Wesley whispered. His sweat condensed inside the round helm, flooding him with the rusty iron taste of fear.

The ax swung toward his head. Wesley ducked. “Jesus!” he yelled, wrestling his helm back in place.

Wheeling the horse, the warrior charged again. Wesley swerved. The motion carried him out of the saddle and onto the hard ground. His horse ran away in panic.

The warrior drew rein and turned for another charge.

Wesley grasped one of the torches. Running backward, he ducked the ax and hammer and retreated toward the lake.

Panting hollowly inside his helm, the warrior followed. Wesley waded in to his waist, his tender parts shrinking from the icy water. The bloody ax blade arced toward Wesley’s head.

At the last possible moment, in that cold slice of time that determines whether a man lives or dies, Wesley thrust the flaming torch at the horse’s face.

The beast skidded, splashing to a halt. The heavy rider pitched over the horse’s head and into the water. Wesley heard the dull snap of a breaking bone. The Irishman’s helm fell into the lake. In a blur, Wesley saw a mop of earth-colored hair. So his opponent hadn’t been Rafferty, after all.

The horse sidled away, its reins trailing. Wesley vaulted into the saddle. Leaving the Irishman floundering in his heavy armor, Wesley galloped the horse out of the lake and into the fray.

Some of the Roundheads had retreated into the water. Others made desperate attempts to flee into the woods. Two lay motionless on the ground. Those who remained had long since discharged their pistols and muskets, then flung them down, for they had no time to reload.

The Irish fought with lusty vigor, howling and singing in their ancient tongue.

Wesley rode toward them. An arrow buzzed past his head. Across the clearing sat a small man on a pony, nocking another arrow in a short bow. Wesley recalled the slit in Hammersmith’s tent; he’d lay odds he had found the culprit.

Several yards away, another Irishman fell. With relief and astonishment, Wesley realized the Gaels were flagging. For all their fierce bravado, their numbers were small.

He reined the horse toward another pocket of fighting. A motion caught his eye. He turned to see a warrior on a sleek horse sail across the clearing. Centaurlike, he rode with both hands free; one wielding a sword and the other a mace.

Wesley sensed a strange power in the horseman. Perhaps it was a trick of the uncertain firelight, but an aura seemed to hover about the warrior, drawing the eye and evoking a feeling of awe mixed with dread. The very sight of the warrior brought fresh war cries springing from the enemies’ throats.

Bending low over the horse’s neck, Wesley charged.

Lithe as a dancer, the leader of the Fianna guided the beautiful horse in an expertly carved loop. Wesley’s swinging sword hissed through empty air. The iron-spiked mace crashed against his shoulder.

Ignoring the numbness that spread down his arm, Wesley aimed the big Irish pony head-on at the willowy stallion. The beat of hooves kept pace with each quick-drawn breath. The smell of damp metal made his eyes water.

In a trick that had served him well in his cavalier days, he waited until the animals were nearly nose to nose, then hauled sharply on the reins.

The horse stopped while Wesley vaulted forward, wrapping his arms around the warrior, ripping his opponent out of the saddle and flinging them both to the wet ground.

The warrior had a small man’s quickness, twisting lithely beneath him, bringing his foot up toward Wesley’s groin.

Deflecting the strike with his own leg, Wesley grasped a flailing arm. Who is this? he wondered. Surely not the heavyset, broad-shouldered Logan Rafferty.

They tumbled and rolled, breath rasping and hands grappling for discarded weapons. Nearby, the pitch fire had risen to a roaring blaze. Heat lapped at Wesley’s back and singed the ends of his hair. Irish shouts and running feet sounded behind him, coming closer.

He slammed his opponent against the ground. A rush of breath flowed from behind the helm. The silk veil snagged on Wesley’s gauntlet. He heard a ripping noise and a metallic clatter as the helm came off and rolled away.

Wesley lifted his hand. One chop to the windpipe and—

“Good God Almighty!” The words burst from him on a flood of astonishment. Lying beneath him, awaiting the death blow, with tawny hair framing a savagely lovely face, was Caitlin MacBride.


Five (#ulink_916abe68-cf9a-5964-aaf7-f899e5642903)

She stared at him, frozen by awe and disbelief. Her eyes were mirrors of fury, reflecting the blaze of the fire. Her mouth worked soundlessly; then a furious cry burst from her: “Seize him!”

Strong arms jerked him backward. A blunt object clubbed his hand. Dull, cold pain shot up his arm. Fingers gripped his hair and yanked his head back, baring his throat.

“Move back, my lady,” someone said, “else you’ll soon be soiled by English blood.” A blade flashed in the firelight.

The tendons in Wesley’s throat stretched to the point of snapping and tickled in anticipation of the slice of the blade.

“No!” Caitlin scrambled to her feet and grabbed the drawn-back arm. “We’ll spare this one. For now.” Bending gracefully, she retrieved her helm and shook out the veil.

The pressure on Wesley’s neck eased, enabling him to take in the scene. The English had been routed. A few floundered in the lake. Three sprawled on the ground. He recognized Ladyman, horseless, melting into the shadows. The rest, presumably, had fled. Some of the Irish moved across the firelit field, gathering discarded weapons, catching riderless horses, and stripping the corpses of their valuables.

“Spare him?” asked Wesley’s captor. It was Rory Breslin; Wesley recognized the deep rumble of the Gael’s voice.

“Why the devil should we be sparing an English spy?” the big warrior asked. “We never have before. And this Sassenach stole into our stronghold and tried to learn our secrets.”

Caitlin tucked her helm under her arm. Her endless legs, lovingly hugged by tight leather trews beneath a short tunic, took her on a wide, unhurried circle around Wesley. She regarded him like a trader sizing up an inferior bit of horseflesh.

“He interests me,” she stated. “I should like to know why he entered my household under false pretenses and lied to us.”

“But the man almost killed you. It’s the closest anyone’s ever come to—”

“Nevertheless, perhaps he’s of more use to us alive than dead. A spy as bold as this one might be worth something to Hammersmith.”

Someone tossed the reins of the black to her. “Bind him and give me the rope,” she ordered. Then, for the first time, she spoke directly to Wesley. “You’ve a long march ahead of you, my good friend.” Her very words made a mockery of the moments they had shared at Clonmuir. “I do hope you’ll cooperate.”

As Rory bound his wrists so tightly his fingers went numb, Wesley resisted the impulse to wince. He made a parody of a courtly bow. “My lady, your wish is my command.”

She curled her lip in distaste. Yet in her firelit eyes he saw a brief wistfulness. “I knew there was no more magic in Ireland,” she whispered, more to herself than to him.

An ache of regret flared in Wesley’s chest. He had come to Ireland to romance secrets out of Caitlin MacBride and to destroy the chieftain of the Fianna. Instead, he had managed to get himself captured. And in unraveling the tangle he had made of things, he would have to hurt her.

If she didn’t kill him first. She swung into the saddle. He had never seen anyone, male or female, move with her grace, her movements as fluid as a mountain stream spilling over rocks. Her center on the horse was faultless, her posture perfect, all the more astonishing because he knew he had bruised her badly.

“God forgive me for hurting a woman,” he muttered.

She jerked the rope that bound him. “What did you say, Englishman?”

“I never would have attacked you if I’d known you were a woman.”

“English chivalry,” she snapped. “You’d not skewer a woman with a sword, but you’d steal our land and leave us to starve. More fool you, because I would not have hesitated to kill you.”

“You nearly succeeded.” A lingering sense of disbelief thrummed in his voice. “But thank you for sparing my life.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Mr. Hawkins. Before long, you may be wishing you’d died a quick death among your friends.” She nudged the sleek horse with her knees and started into the woods. The rope pulled taut. Wesley lurched forward, stumbled, then regained his footing. Half running, he forced himself to keep pace with the trotting horse. A jagged stitch seized his side, and his breathing came fast and harsh.

Caitlin’s warriors surrounded them, some ahead, others bringing up the rear. Wesley tallied no more than a dozen men. A dozen, yet Cromwell swore the Fianna had the strength to best legions of Roundheads.

To draw his mind from discomfort, Wesley concentrated on the extraordinary woman dragging him through the wild woods. He still reeled with the shock of his discovery. Beneath the tunic her armor, which must have been cast especially for her, molded her lithe form with delicate artistry. She rode with a dogged will that a cavalry captain would envy.

Tripping over rocks and ducking under branches, he tried to equate this new Caitlin with the vulnerable woman he had met on the strand. Even then he had guessed at the substance of her character, but never could he have anticipated this. He remembered wondering about the visions that lurked behind her fierce, sad eyes; he had meant to ask her.

He didn’t have to ask her now.

Caitlin MacBride, the leader of the Fianna. She was Joan, the martyred Maid of Orleans, incarnate. A century before, that young woman, crude of manner but possessed of an abiding dream, had led men to victory and laid waste to English claims on the French throne. Men thrice her age and thrice her size obeyed her smallest order. Such a woman was rare and dangerous, he realized with a shiver. Men followed her, enemies feared her, and Wesley had to stop her.

“Well?” she said over her shoulder. “You’re quiet as a sleeping saint. Saying your prayers, are you?”

Her fury had subsided. Yet he felt no easier about his situation. “You’ve given me much to ponder, Caitlin MacBride.”

“Ah. And just what would you be pondering?”

“Joan of Arc,” he said, trying not to pant.

“Joan of Arc? And who would she be? Your lady love?”

“You don’t know?” He leapt over a knotted tree root.

“That’s what I said.”

“I’ll tell you about her some day. It’s a long story.”

“You might not live long enough.” Her laughter cut him like a knife.

They jogged along in silence for a time. Wesley felt the distrustful stares of the others pricking at him. God, what tortures did these men have in store for him?

He had escaped being tortured to death at Tyburn, he told himself. He would escape this disaster, too.

For Laura. Her image, sweetly gilt by a halo of paternal love, drifted through his fading consciousness. God knew what Cromwell would do with the innocent child if Wesley failed. If he failed. If he failed....

The thought kept brutal pace with his every painful footfall. Caitlin refused to slacken the punishing pace. The woods grew thicker with spiny underbrush and rocky ground. Wesley’s foot slammed into something hard and jagged. White-hot pain shot up his leg and coursed like fire through his body. Brilliant light exploded behind his eyes. He was aware of his feet moving, his legs pumping, his pride overcoming the urge to flop to the ground. He felt his mind moving away from the pain, sliding deep into a familiar abyss of warm, white comfort.

He focused on the inner light. His breath slowed to match the rhythmical cadence. Always it happened like this, brilliance pulsing all around him, a burning shield against pain and suffering.

“Mr. Hawkins? Mr. Hawkins!” The strong melody of Caitlin’s voice penetrated the moment.

The blindness peeled away in layers, like living flesh being skinned from a hide. Clenching his jaw against the tearing pain, Wesley opened his eyes. The strange thoughts swirled away before he could grasp them.

The war party had stopped. Reeling with agony and exhaustion, he became aware of his surroundings. They had climbed the foothills west of the lake. Shallow caves, hidden by reedy dry grass and bushes, dotted the cliff sides. Wisps of smoke puffed from one of the larger caves. Caitlin dismounted. A girl scurried forward and took the reins.

“Thank you, Brigid.” Caitlin unwound Wesley’s rope. “See that my horse gets sweetened oats and a fine brisk rub.”

Wesley fell gasping to his knees.

Brigid regarded him with awe and fear. “Is it a Sassenach, my lady?”

“Aye,” said Caitlin, pointedly eyeing Wesley’s blousy pantaloons. “A regular tight pants.”

“I’ve never seen a Roundhead before. But where are his horns and his tail?”

Caitlin laughed. “You’ve been listening to Tom Gandy again.”

Brigid clasped the reins to her chest. “Oh, my lady, he tells such wondrous tales. I do so want to ride with you.”

“Perhaps one day you will, a storin. See to my horse. Off with you, now.”

Glancing over her shoulder, the child led the horse away.

Caitlin plucked a cork out of a leather flask and thrust it at Wesley. “Drink slowly, now,” she said, “else you’ll puke it all back up.”

Even through his agony Wesley’s pride rose up. He did not want her to see him puke. He sucked slowly at the flask, letting the cold, sweet water trickle down his parched throat.

“How far have we come?” he asked in a faint, hoarse voice.

“Some ten miles, I’d say.” Dawn had broken, and the rose-gold light of the rising sun gave her the look of an angel. But the gleam in her eyes reminded him of a fairy demon. “I’m pleasantly surprised by your stamina. I expected you to collapse after a mile.” A strange softness came over her implacable features. “What a pity you aren’t one of us.”

“Aye.” Fatigue crept up to claim him. “A great pity, indeed.” With that, he pitched forward where he knelt.

* * *

Throughout the day, Caitlin kept a surreptitious eye on her captive. Not that there was any need. Rory had tethered Hawkins’s bound hands to a tree, and besides, the man slept the sleep of the dead.

Still, she could not keep her gaze from wandering to the large Englishman lying in the shade of a sycamore tree. She had never taken a prisoner before. Least of all a deceitful Sassenach who had tried to worm his way into her heart.

“I doubt he bites,” said Tom Gandy.

“And what makes you believe I was wondering about that? Don’t you think we’d best have a meeting and plan our next move?”

Tom took out a chunk of beeswax and drew it carefully along his bowstring. “Aye.”

Careful not to betray her weariness, Caitlin walked with Tom to the largest of the caves where the men lounged, some of them sleeping, others quaffing ale and dickering over the meager spoils of the skirmish.

“We’re in luck,” said Tom, sitting back on his heels.

“The Irish are always lucky,” said Rory.

“A fine thought, that,” muttered Caitlin, “if only it were true.”

“I’ve spied out Hammersmith’s army. He’s well supplied with flour and lard. Some livestock, too. He thinks to fool us by putting his train in the vanguard rather than the rear.”

“We’ll take it,” Caitlin said decisively. “Without supplies, our friend Titus Hammersmith will run back to Galway.”

“And you’ll have a fine fat bullock for Logan Rafferty,” said Rory.

“That would be a blessing,” said Caitlin. “Although it would take a bit of explaining to tell him where we got it.”

“Shall we topple the powder and shot into the lake?” asked Rory.

“Yes,” said Caitlin. “It’s of no use to us, anyway, since we have so few guns.”

“We’ll have to get our hands on that food,” said Conn. He rubbed his bandaged side, cursing the cut Hawkins had dealt him in the fight.

She closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. Refugees, turned out of their homes by the Roundheads, came in a steady stream to the western provinces, bringing sickness, despair, and starvation to the very gates of Clonmuir. “I have an idea,” she said. “Hammersmith’s expecting an attack by land. So we’ll approach—and leave—by water.”

The men broke into smiles as she explained her plan. Under cloak of night, archers would harry the vanguard while the rest crept up from the banks of the lake and toppled the supply carts into the water, seizing stores and stowing them in the swift, light curragh.

“You make a fine chieftain, Caitlin MacBride,” declared Brian. “I only wish you had an army of thousands following you.”

Her gaze moved around the circle of her friends. Broad of shoulder, straggly of beard, in threadbare tunics and battered armor, the men resembled a band of pirates. Yet their loyalty enclosed her in an embrace of camaraderie that made her glad she was alive.

A thickness rose in her throat. “Nay,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “Many’s the time I have considered begging Logan Rafferty for his men-at-arms, or enlisting the Irish soldiers banished to Connaught. But we don’t need them, don’t need their hunger for plunder and revenge, their quarreling factions and their prejudice against following a woman. The Fianna alone can hold its own against the English dogs.”

She lifted a chipped horn cup and saluted them all. “I swear to God, I do not need a single man more. Except perhaps a priest, but they are all gone now.” She drank the bitter ale and smiled through a veil of tears. “Sleep now, my friends, for we’ve hard work ahead come nightfall.”

She stole a nap from the quiet afternoon hours. Visions of Hawkins haunted her sleep, and she awoke feeling groggy and strangely off center. At twilight, the men gathered on the slope below the caves. Caitlin checked on Hawkins. He slumped against a tree, still asleep. The uncommon appeal of his face raised a disquieting clamor in her heart.





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