A Rose in Splendor (6 page)

A muscle began to twitch in Lord Fitzgerald’s face. “Ye bloody bastard!” he snarled and took a step toward the English officer, who drew his pistol. “I would regret shooting you, Lord Fitzgerald, but I will do it without hesitation if I perceive myself in danger from you. You may cooperate or not, but I will see behind this wall before I leave here today.”

Lord Fitzgerald hesitated, not because he feared being shot. He might be willing to take a ball in the shoulder if it would prevent the wall from opening, but it would not do that. There was nothing left to do but bluster his way through this. “Ye’ll pay for every bit of damage ye’ve done, see if ye don’t!” Without waiting for the officer to put away his gun, he walked purposefully to the fireplace and reached for the head of one of the ornate andirons. When he twisted it, the latch set into its base made an audible
click
,
and a small stone door inside the fireplace opened a crack.

Captain Garret looked slightly bemused when Lord Fitzgerald turned to him. “So simple. I suppose your servants were unaware of it. I threatened one with hanging, yet none of the others would confess to its existence. If not for your cousin’s timely memory, ye might have lost an able servant.”

“Some men believe there are things worth dying for,” the Irish lord answered darkly.

“And surely things worth living for,” Captain Garret finished and nodded at his men. “If you should be hiding a criminal, I can’t promise—”

The scream that erupted from the depths of the fireplace brought the soldiers to alert as they grabbed for their muskets and Captain Garret drew his pistol. A second later, the door swung open with a loud scraping as Deirdre burst into the room.

“Da! Da! Do not let them kill me!” she screamed as she launched herself into her father’s arms. Giving up to the panic that had been choking her, she pounded her father’s chest with small hard fists. “Hide me! Hide me! The English will kill me, they’ll kill us all!” Twisting and kicking, she sobbed hysterically until lack of breath made her collapse against him.

Amazed to find Deirdre in the hole and as frightened as he had ever seen her, Lord Fitzgerald could only think that something terrible had happened in the attic while he had been pacing his bedroom floor, refusing to follow the English about like a guest in his own home. Anger showing in his eyes, he said, “What did ye blackguards do to me daughter that she’s hid herself where she might have died?”

As surprised as his Irish host, Captain Garret could think of no good answer. “We—we did nothing. I haven’t seen the scamp since she left the front hall.” Badly startled by her tirade, he turned to his men. “Did any of you see or speak to the child?”

Deirdre hiccuped a breath, twisted about in her father’s arms, and pointed at the captain. “He’s a devil! He roasts children for his supper. He’ll roast me if I don’t hide!”

“Dee. Deirdre, me darlin’ girl,” Lord Fitzgerald crooned against her ear, trying to calm his distraught child with the stroke of his hand. When she quieted to a whimper he turned to the captain. “There’ll be no more of this! Ye’ve had yer fun. Ye’ve stirred up me household and frightened me daughter half to death. We’ll be lucky if she doesn’t come down with brain fever behind it. I hope ye’re satisfied. But, whether or no, ’tis enough. Ye’ll leave me home or I swear I’ll shoot ye meself, and the treaty be damned!”

“Perhaps you’ve seen enough, captain?” Sir Neil suggested.

Captain Garret looked from Lord Fitzgerald to the opening within the fireplace. “Do you see anyone?” he asked the soldier nearest the secret door.

The man ducked his head in briefly and then looked back. “No, sir. Nothing.”

“I see.” The English officer surveyed the father and daughter, unable to still the niggling doubt that something was amiss and yet knowing that he had proceeded as far as his authority permitted under the circumstances. If he continued the search and no man was found, he would be shown to be an even greater fool that he was at present. If this were a plot to embarrass him, the livid look of rage on Lord Fitzgerald’s face proved that he had no knowledge of or part in it.

“Very well,” he said shortly. “Return to your posts, men, and see that you are prepared to ride immediately.” He then turned stiffly to his host. “For the inconvenience, I apologize. I trust you will be ready to accompany me to Cork within the hour?”

Gently rocking his still-crying child, Lord Fitzgerald stared at the Englishman before speaking. “Here’s me hope for ye, captain. That one day ye’ll have a daughter of ye’re own. When ye do, then every time ye gaze on her ye’ll think of this hour and remember, and that’ll be me revenge.”

The curse was mild enough but even so the hair lifted on Captain Garret’s scalp. He bowed stiffly. “An hour, Lord Fitzgerald. We’ll wait in the yard.”

Lord Fitzgerald watched without emotion as the Englishmen filed out of the room. Only when Brigid hurried in, closing the door behind herself, did his daughter stir in his arms.

“Me lord! I’ve lost Deirdre. She isn’t—Oh! There ye are, and me that worried about ye!”

Deirdre lifted her head from her father’s shoulder and amazed him with a bright smile. “I had to save him, Da. He’s up the air shaft,” she whispered, and motioned toward the hole.

“He’s—But how?” Lord Fitzgerald exclaimed.

“I gave him a boost, on me back,” Deirdre answered as she wiggled to be free.

A series of expressions crossed Lord Fitzgerald’s face, among them wonder, disbelief, and pride. “Ye did that? Ye might have been shot!”

Deirdre put a finger to her lips. “I wished him here. I do not know how to wish him away. The English would have hanged him.”

“Wished him—?” Lord Fitzgerald shook his head. “Dee, lass, what are ye saying?”

“The black-haired lad…I wished for such a man just this morning. I told Brigid all about it. Well, he’s come, and one day I will marry him.”

To humor her, her father said, “Oh, aye, lass. He’s every father’s wish for his daughter’s husband. He’s a murderer and wanted by the English.”

Deirdre paled. “Ye’ll not betray him?”

“Of course not,” he answered quickly. “’Tis not an Irishman among us I’d turn over to the likes of Captain Garret. Only ye must be brave a little longer. Go now with Brigid and change yer dress. And when ye have, ye must ride in the carriage with yer stepmother and wee Owen and never, never mention to them what happened today. Will ye swear it?”

“I swear.” Deirdre cast a last look at the priest hole. “Will I see him again?”

Lord Fitzgerald gave his daughter a long, considering glance. She was young, but she did not behave as a child. In many ways she was uncannily mature, and romantic enough to have taken a fancy to a handsome face, and he had no doubt that the lad scrubbed up to good effect. The fact that she had risked her life to save this stranger would join them in a bond that was better broken at once. Deirdre was his pride and joy. He would allow no common rapparee to steal her affections.

His face grew more serious as he grasped her by the shoulders and knelt before her. “If a thing is meant to be, lass, it will sort itself out. Do ye believe that?”

Deirdre bit her lip. “Ye’re going to send him away.”

“Aye, for his protection and ours.”

“If ’tis meant to be, ’twill sort itself out,” she repeated wistfully and turned to take Brigid’s hand.

“Send Sergeant O’Conner to me,” Lord Fitzgerald ordered the nurse.

When he was satisfied that he was alone, he stepped into the priest hole and peered up into the vent. “Are ye still alive, lad?”

“Aye,” came the groggy reply.

“Hold steady, we’ll have ye out in a trice.”

Killian did not reply. His muscles were locked in tortured spasms that would not have been worse than results on the rack, he decided. A few minutes later, hands reached up for him, supporting his spine and feet, and he relaxed, slipping out of the shaft as easily as a babe out of a womb.

When he had been laid on his back, he saw a stern, weatherbeaten soldier’s face above him. “Where is she?”

“Who?” Lord Fitzgerald questioned innocently.

“The lass,” Killian whispered.

“Lass? There’s no lass, lad, nor has there been. ’Tis only two Irishmen determined that the English won’t hang ye this day.”

Killian shut his eyes. So, it was a dream after all. Or had he been pixied by the fairies?

“Find a crate to put him in,” Lord Fitzgerald ordered his sergeant. “He’ll become another bit of baggage.” When the soldier was gone, he reached out and touched the cross hanging at the boy’s waist. He would take the lad to Cork, perhaps even sail him to Calais. But that was all he would do for him.

As for Deirdre, she would forget, as they all must. Ireland and its misery would soon be behind them.

The Exile

I know how men in exile feed on dreams of hope.

—Agamemnon

The Wild Geese shall return, and we’ll welcome

them home

So active, so armed, so flightly,

A flock was ne’er known…

—Eighteenth-century Irish poem

Chapter Three

Nantes, France: Summer 1702

“You mistake my intentions entirely, mademoiselle. I beg a single kiss. That is nothing!”

“Nothing?” the young lady questioned, her cheeks coloring above the flirtatious lace of her fan. “Are then my kisses nothing to you, monsieur?”

“
Mais non
,
mademoiselle!” the young Frenchman answered. “I assure you, there is nothing further from the truth. In my ardor, my haste to offer my most solemn and heartfelt adoration of your beauty, I misspoke.” The young man smiled his most beguiling smile. “From you, a kiss would mean everything,” he added in a husky undertone.

“Everything, monsieur?” the lady repeated in a scandalized tone that belied the laughter in her eyes. “If a kiss is ‘everything,’ how, I wonder, does a lady of your acquaintance escape complete corruption? I have heard it said that a kiss is but an overture. If it is the entire opera, then I dare not sing even a note for you.”

“Mademoiselle,” the young man countered, his voice quavering as his defeat drew closer. “A kiss from you
would knight my soul, a token of greater value I cannot imagine.”

The lady regarded him skeptically. “Claude, am I to consider you less a wit and considerably less a lover than your face and form advertise? I have heard on good authority that there is a certain sort of lady who, granting a gentleman her kisses, will grant him much more. If you tell me you have not received such bounty, then I must wonder about your ability…or your honesty.”

“Non.”
She stepped away from him and shrugged elegantly as he reached for her. One sleeve of her pink silk gown slipped in delightful abandon down the curve of her shoulder until she caught it and lifted it back into place. “I am afraid I must deny myself the most tempting offer of your lips, monsieur.”

She turned to face him, her smile still hidden behind her fan. “For, you see, I am not quite convinced that you would think me the most wanton of creatures in going against your own advice.”

“Advice?” he questioned in bewilderment. “I gave no advice contrary to my desire to kiss you.”

“Did you not? Did you not say that a kiss means everything? If not in fact, then in intent, you implied as much. We are not strangers, Cousin Claude, else we would not be permitted to be here in my father’s garden without a chaperon. Haven’t you guessed? It is a test.”

She suddenly lowered her fan and allowed him the full benefit of her radiant smile with the dimple in her left cheek. “A test, Claude, and we have passed! Brigid! Brigid! You may come out now. We are to be trusted!”

“But—but!” Claude protested, only to fall silent as the formidable figure of Brigid McSheehy appeared from behind an elephant-shaped shrub in the topiary garden. In the ten years that he had made cousinly calls upon the Fitzgeralds he had never lost his awe of the black-clad Irish servant
who treated her mistress like a naughty child of eight rather than the beautiful young woman of eighteen she had become.

Ignoring the gentleman as she approached, Brigid said in Gaelic, “Aye, ye’ve passed a test ye knew was in the
making. Little enough honesty to be found in that, Miss Deirdre. If I were ye, I’d be more concerned that me brothers were cleaning the mud from their boots this very minute, without a sister to give them a proper greeting.”

“Conall and Darragh? They’re home? Truly?” Deirdre cried in delight. At her nurse’s terse nod, she turned back to her companion. “They’re home, my brothers have returned from Cremona,” she explained in French. “Oh, monsieur, it’s wonderful! Da will be so pleased! I must go. Forgive me!”

To the young man’s astonishment, she grasped him lightly by the shoulders and placed a quick, hard kiss on his mouth before running toward her house with skirts lifted.

Brigid’s eyes narrowed on the young Frenchman, disapproving of the show of affection her mistress had given the man, who was clothed in a beribboned habit and red-heeled shoes. The mass of golden curls that framed his pleasant but weak face were not his own but those of a full-bottomed wig. He was nothing like the broad, clean-limbed lads of Ireland who grew their own thick heads of hair. He might be a nobleman and a Fitzgerald cousin, but he was no man for her Deirdre. “M’sieur Goubert,” she said finally in badly accented French and turned toward the house.