Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) (19 page)

Maryssa's fingers tightened on the handle of her fork, driving its silver scrolls deep into her palm as she remembered Devin's pale, gentle face. "Surely you can't mean to set hounds on priests?''

"Aye, and great sport it will be, too. Wilier than wolves, they be, these priests, and thrice as dangerous. Why, just last month I found one secreted away in a hole carved into the wall of Tiernan MacCarthy's hovel. Before my men could rout him out, MacCarthy nearly slit my throat."

“It is hardly a wonder," Christabel said, an edge to her voice. "The priest was Mr. MacCarthy's son."

"Well, both sire and his spawn have got their just punishments," Rath said, spooning up a glob of potato cake and gravy. "MacCarthy lies rotting in Rookescommon prison, and his papist son. . .” Rath guffawed, then stuffed the heaping spoonful of food into his mouth. "I vow he lies rotting over half of Londonderry."

"Over half of Londonderr?” Maryssa stammered. "I don't understand."

"A chunk here, a chunk there. Drawn and quartered he was, and by the time the horses were done with him—"

What little food Maryssa had managed to choke down rose in a sour ball in her throat. She saw Christabel's face take on a greenish cast.

"Rath! Enough." Reeve snapped, his gaze flashing to his wife. "No one at this table has any interest in your barbaric sport."

“It is not so barbaric." Rath shrugged. "Even in England priests are sometimes hunted. And here on this cursed island the papist poison runs far deeper. Their clergy fester like a cancer, spreading foul, sinful lies to these brainless peasants. It is the duty of all God-fearing men to cut it from their hearts."

Maryssa looked up at his sagging jowls, his face puffed with self-righteousness. "Odd," she said softly. "Your words are near echoes of the claims made eighteen hundred years ago."

"Your pardon, Miss Wylder?" Rath's mouth was set in a line of displeasure, and all eyes about the table had fastened on Maryssa.

She leveled her suddenly steady gaze on Rath. "I said, the men who murdered Christ used much the same excuse."

Forks froze midway to a dozen separate mouths, faces washed with lead paint waxed whiter still as shocked silence fell over the room. Maryssa saw Reeve's mouth twitch into a smile as Christabel lifted her chin with pride.

"Miss Wylder," Jacinth's high-pitched voice trilled, her eyes bugging out in horror, "surely you cannot compare those foul beasts to Colonel Rath. Why, after all, this is Ireland. He is but ridding the land of vermin who—"

"I doubt Tiernan MacCarthy considered his son vermin, Miss Levander," Maryssa challenged.

"And I doubt that your father will be pleased to be informed that he harbors one so sympathetic to the Catholics' plight," Quentin Rath snarled. "Especially since it was at Bainbridge Wylder's prodding that we sent for Sir Ascot."

Maryssa felt something snag in her breast. "Who?"

"Sir Ascot Dallywoulde, the most ruthless priest hunter ever to loose his hounds."

Maryssa gripped the edge of the table so hard her fingers ached, the pain that had torn through her at Tade's betrayal deepening to a sick horror as she pictured her cousin's fanatical eyes. A priest hunter, an animal who tracked down men like Devin—gentle men, men of faith. "Father?" Maryssa croaked. "Father knew Sir Ascot was—"

"Miss Wylder, you look most distressed at the thought of these brigands being brought to justice," Rath observed in frigid tones. "Just when did you acquire your sympathy for papists? While you were in England? Or was it perhaps during the night you spent at the Kilcannons'?"

A murmur swept over the table, and Maryssa could feel Christabel bristle. "Colonel, how dare—"

"The night your soldiers smashed in the door, Colonel Rath?" Maryssa cut Christabel's sputtered words off, the horror that had wrenched her moments before giving way to blazing anger. "That was most heroic of you!" she bit out. "An entire troop of soldiers raiding a cottage full of babes."

"Not all babes, eh, Miss Wylder?"

Maryssa struggled to keep the guilty flush from her cheeks as Rath's eyes skimmed over her décolletage. Her chin tipped up, eyes clashing defiantly with Rath's cunning gaze.

"Just what are you intimating, Rath?" Reeve challenged, his eyes hot with anger.

"Merely that it is most unusual for a well-born English lady to wax so, er, pugnacious in defense of low-born peasants like the Kilcannons."

"The blood of kings ran through Kilcannon veins when our grandsires were still mucking out swine huts," Reeve said.

"That may be true, but I doubt it is their royalty which holds such allure for Miss Wylder."

Maryssa's stiff fingers fluttered to her breast, and she felt as though the despicable colonel could almost see the tracings of Tade's lips upon her skin.

Reeve hurled his napkin onto his plate, bounding to his feet in barely coiled fury. "By God, Rath, I'll—"

"Nay, Reeve. It is all right." Maryssa drew herself up haughtily as she faced Rath's sly leer. "I care not whether Rachel or Tade or any of the Kilcannons were born in the lowliest ditch in Ireland. They were kind to me, loving. They took me in when I was lost and frightened and—" The words caught in Maryssa's throat, the cunning light in Rath's beady eyes making her feel naked, vulnerable.

"I beg your forgiveness, Miss Wylder." The apology slipped like oil from Rath's tongue, his lips curving into a knowing smile. "Until this very moment I did not comprehend the full extent of your . . . loyalty to the Kilcannons."

Maryssa flinched, feeling the jaws of some invisible trap snap shut about her. A sudden primal need to escape gripped her.

Her eyes darted to Christabel's worried features. "I-I'm sorry," she said. "I've a bit of a headache. Perhaps if I could withdraw?”

"I'll go with you." Christabel started to rise.

"Nay, I'll not be long. Mayhap a turn about your garden will help to clear my head." Maryssa rose, struggling to affect a calm mien beneath Rath's cold, assessing stare. "If you'll pardon me, Colonel Rath?"

"Pardon you?" A smile slithered across Rath's lips, his voice dropping to the hiss of a snake. "That entirely depends upon the seriousness of your offense."

Maryssa felt a chill prickle her skin. Squaring her shoulders beneath the ivory damask of her gown, she walked to Christabel's side to give her friend's hand a reassuring squeeze. Then Maryssa turned and swept away through the ornately carved doors.

The night was sweet, heavy with the scent of darkness, as Maryssa fled into the garden's warm embrace. Yet in spite of the scores of paper lanterns bedecking the moonlit maze in a dozen glowing colors, it seemed to Maryssa as if the garden's precisely trimmed hedges pressed about her like the bars of a jail.

Rath's silkily voiced threats seemed to lurk within the night- shadowed pathways, lashing her with coils of panic, driving her ruthlessly through countless shifting images that seemed to dart across the darkened sky like scenes from some macabre play.

Maryssa clenched numb fingers in the lace that tumbled past her wrists, the starched patterns rasping against her palms. She did not care if Tade took a thousand women to his bed, if she never again felt the wonder of his touch—if only he was safe. Yet even as she fought to banish the nightmare visions from her mind, they roiled onward, giving her no hope, no peace.

Hounds pursued their quarry through dream-hazed mountains. Devin, his slender wrists bound with stout rope, lay stretched beneath brutal hands, his face contorted in agony as the executioner's knife bit into his flesh. And a midnight-black mantle shrouded Tade Kilcannon's broad, lifeless shoulders in its scarlet-stained folds as green eyes, glazed in death, stared up at her through slits in a black silk hood.

The bullet I buried in his flesh
. . . Maryssa shut her eyes against the hideous image Rath's words painted, but the rich imagination she had cultivated during childhood proved her betrayer, casting across the canvas of her mind a hundred vivid images of Tade, the pistol ball tearing his hard bronzed flesh, his lean body crumpling, falling . . . dying.

"He's not the Black Falcon! He's not!" Maryssa pressed her knuckles against her teeth, tasting the salt of tears. "Deirdre said nothing of Tade being wounded. He's hale. Safe."

Yet in the darkest corners of her mind echoes of horrifying laughter rose to torment her, fanatical tones honed with a blade-thin edge of evil. Maryssa's flesh crawled at the memory of Dallywoulde’s colorless eyes, cold and treacherous as ice veiling a churning sea, eyes soulless with hate, their eerie light greedy as he watched a child devoured by flames.

Maryssa shivered. From the first moment she had squirmed from Tade's arms upon the lakeshore, seen his achingly handsome features and his reckless grin, she had known he was a man who courted Dame Death with the same bold abandon with which he had wooed scores of other mistresses. But this evil . . . Dallywoulde . . . was spawn of another world, dark and stygian as the face of Satan, yet far more dangerous because he cloaked himself in the guise of righteousness.

And nothing would give him more pleasure than to slash his hatred into the lives of the only people Maryssa had ever loved.

"Nay! I won't let him," Maryssa cried fiercely, panic licking tiny flames through her veins. "Ascot and my father will not take this from me, too. I have to warn Devin and Tade while there is still time.”

Time for what?
A voice jeered within her.
For them to run? Hide?

"Aye!" Maryssa dashed the thought aside, defiant. "I'll make them hide! Make them understand that they have to."

She spun back toward the hulking stone shadow of Marlow Hall, its windows, topaz with candle shine, glaring at her like great disapproving eyes. Silks and satins of every hue wafted past the open casements and she could hear the quartet Christabel had hired striking up the strains of a minuet. It would be but a few moments before Christabel or Reeve or—Maryssa shuddered at the thought—Rath came in search of her. Did she dare?

Maryssa's gaze darted toward the place where she knew Reeve's stable stood with its back to the brooding mountains—mountains teeming with cutthroats, brigands, long dead spirits from a hundred haunting tales stalking the night. Yet in spite of Maryssa’s fear, the toes of her satin slippers dug deep into the pebbled path, hurling her through the darkened maze toward the stable.

The hedges caught at her petticoats and sleeves; the crimson ribbon woven through her dark curls pulled free, sending the heavy mass of her hair cascading down her back. Yet still she ran as if the very night pursued her, as if somewhere in the mists Ascot Dallywoulde lurked beneath the shroud of darkness, his pale eyes watching, his thin lips twisted in unholy glee.

A sob choked her as she rounded yet another bend in the intricate maze, her slipper snagging on something veiled by the night. She stumbled, thrusting out both arms as she sprawled on the ground. Her palms struck the path, the tender flesh tearing on sharp-edged bits of stone. But despite the stinging pain, she didn’t pause. She shoved herself to her feet, pushing herself the last steps toward the opening of the maze, where an ancient oak split the garden pathway, its branches as black and twisted as Dallywoulde's soul.

Suddenly Maryssa froze in terror as the branches of the oak seemed to reach out for her. Fingers swept out to clutch her arms and yank her against a hard wall of muscle. She screamed and kicked, her fingernails gouging flesh as she raked their sharpness against a beard-stubbled jaw and the soft, fragile skin below an eye. A callused palm clamped over her mouth, stilling her cries. The sound of a curse hissed in her ear as she sank her teeth deep into the fleshy mound beneath her attacker's thumb.

"God's wounds, Maura!" A voice battled its way through the haze of fear enveloping her. "At least let me explain before you make me faint of blood loss."

A sob of relief snagged in her breast as light from a delicate lantern limned the achingly familiar curve of a lean bronzed cheek, marred now by thin tracks of blood.

"T-Tade!" She sobbed, collapsing against his chest. Strong, comforting arms crushed her tight into his muscled frame, the hard heat of him searing warmth into her fear-chilled skin.

"Easy, love, easy. Of course it is me. I swear to God, I didn't mean to frighten you." Soothing, incredibly gentle, the words wisped through the curls at her temple. "I was going to wait until the soiree was over, then come to you and explain, but when I saw you—" The tender rumble of his voice stopped, and she felt him suck in his breath. "Damn, you're shaking like a reed in a gale. What the hell—"

"Tade, I-I had to find you. Warn you. Devin's in danger, and you—"

"Devin?" Moonlight touched a menacing hardness in Tade's jaw.

"Aye. C-Colonel Rath—he's bringing in a priest hunter. A man from England."

"That doesn't make any sense. I know Rath wants Dev, but for the bastard to go to the expense and trouble of dragging in a master huntsman . . ."

"Rath isn't hiring him especially to find Devin. The hunter is to stalk the Black Falcon, then clean out any . . . any other priests hiding in the hills."

"Odd," Tade said with grim amusement. "In all the tales I've heard of this Falcon, I never guessed he was a priest."

"Tade, this is no jest! Ascot Dallywoulde—"

"Dallywoulde?" Tade rolled the name off his tongue as if it were a bawdy riddle. "Ascot Dallywoulde is the name of this savage huntsman?" Tade threw back his head and laughed. “The name alone is enough to send me hieing into the hills. Perhaps Dev had best fear Rath's huntsman after all. No doubt the second the Black Falcon hears that a man with such a fearsome name is stalking him, he'll cast aside his hood forever."

Panic filled Maryssa at the heedless twinkle in Tade's eyes. "This man is no buffoon," she cried. "He—"

"He's a priggish spider-shanks with a bulbous nose and a case of gout, I wager," Tade teased. "And most likely he's so cross-eyed he can scarce hit the side of a ship with a musket ball. No doubt the Falcon will be well pleased to sink his talons into such a vicious adversary. I vow, I'm almost tempted myself.”