Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) (23 page)

The deep, rich tones seemed to have been born of her dreams. Her eyes struggled to pierce the darkness outside the window; then she wheeled, her heart leaping as her stunned gaze took in the lean, jaunty figure lounging against the bedpost. A cry of joy rose in Maryssa's throat.

"Tade!" Still grasping the kitten, she hurled herself at the tall form, nearly toppling him into the huge feather mattress. She felt the kitten being plucked from her hands, and dropped into the fluffy mounds of pillows, as Tade's sinewy arms closed about her.

He swept her high, twirling with her clasped to his chest while his lips caught tastes of her throat, her brow, the curve of one shoulder bared by the slipping of her dressing gown.

“It is . . . It is truly you!" Maryssa gasped, reveling in the hard expanse of his shoulders beneath the black mantle. "Truly! I scarce believe it!”

"Aye, my Penelope, and I hope you're not accustomed to anyone else ascending through your bedchamber window while your Odysseus is away." His eyes held emerald sparkles of joy. "Of course," he mused, planting a kiss on her nose, "sound as you sleep, I vow the whole of the Trojan army could tramp through here without you stirring an eyelash. Tell me, Maura-love, were your dreams sweet?"

She winced at the remembered torment of hours before, but his palms swept up to frame her face in tenderness, driving the fear away.

"My dreams were sweet,
mo chroi
," he breathed into the curls that brushed her temple. "Passing sweet. Filled with garlands of roses and the touch of lips so soft they stole my very soul."

Maryssa buried her face against his chest, clinging to his lean-muscled frame, the hoarse, passion-thick tones of his voice robbing her of all strength. "T-Tade.” She squeezed his name through a throat roughened with joy and banished fears. “It was so awful, and I was so afraid. I didn't know where you were or if you lay wounded. Dead."

He crushed her against him, soothing her, gentling her with his hands as he tried to hush her broken words. “Do you think the Sassenach musket ball has been molded that could cut down the heir Kilcannon?" he cajoled.

"I've never known a musket ball to be particularly discriminating," Maryssa snuffled into his shirt.

She was rewarded with a laugh, rich and loving, as he lifted her high against him, her hair tumbling in a silken cascade about them. "By the saints," he gasped, looking at the gamboling kitten with such a comical expression of feigned shock that Maryssa felt a smile tug at the corners of her mouth. "Odysseus, I vow she made a jest!" He plopped her down on the feather bed in a tangle of twisted night rail and bare legs, to the delight of the kitten, which pounced on her toes. But Tade spared the little rogue not a chuckle. Instead, the tall Irishman strode to the open window and leaned out into the night. "Come, horned god, take me," he cried. "I can die without regret. Maryssa Wylder made a jest!"

A shaft of disbelief and panic shot through Maryssa as the sound of his voice echoed into the castle yard. Nearly toppling the kitten off the bed, she leaped toward Tade and clamped her hands over his mouth, yanking with all her strength to drag him away from the window. "Dear God, are you crazed?" she chided, spinning to close the windows. "Half of Donegal could hear you!" She leaned against the wall, quakes of fury and raw fear bounding through her.

"The whole of Donegal lies asleep," Tade said, crossing his long legs and offering her a totally unchastened grin. "And any who rove about this late are most like so far in their cups they'll think it was a banshee wailing."

"I much doubt my father believes in your banshees. And the servants! If any heard—"

“Whist, Maura, it is the risks that set your blood pounding that let you know you are alive."

"Then it is a miracle anyone who loves you is still sane!" Maryssa ground out, suddenly struck by the audacity of the wretch before her. He was so devastatingly handsome as he took up one of her hair ribbons and trailed it across the pillow to the infinite satisfaction of the frolicking kitten. The planes of his face showed not the slightest trace of sleeplessness or concern; his grin seemed totally unaffected by what, for Maryssa, had been six weeks of pure hell.

"Damn you, Tade Kilcannon!" she bit out under her breath. "How dare you vault through this window with your jests and your kisses when I've been wild with worry for six weeks, while no one—not Rachel, not Reeve, no one—had any idea whether you were alive or dead!"

The ribbon fell from his long fingers, and he paced toward her, the devilment that had graced his features darkening into something solemn and disconcerting—a passion that made Maryssa's tongue seem to fuse to the roof of her mouth, made her knees feel as weak as water.

Tade murmured something low in his throat as his hands curved about her ribs, the thumbs warm against the undersides of her breasts. "Is that anger flashing in your eyes? Turning them to blue-gold fire? God's teeth, look at you, Maura. Look at you!" His mouth came down on hers, hungry, hot with leashed desire, but she thrust the heel of her hand against his chest, still clinging to her anger.

"Tade, don't you dare try to distract me. I want to know—" Maryssa battled to keep the words from coming out in tiny breaths.

"Believe me, Maura, there is nothing I'd rather do than distract you." Tade caught her wrists, pinning her hands against the ruffles at his throat. He kissed the hard bumps of her fists. "Yet I am sorry for every moment you spent afraid. I'd not cause you one moment of pain if I could help it. But know this: The grave has not been dug that could keep me from you, love. I left, having tasted only once of your sweetness, and I vow to you that since the instant I rode from your side, my heart has known nothing but the need to hold you again. The need to see if it was possible our joining was as beautiful as I remembered."

"So beautiful you were able to just ride away? Leave me half mad with worry?" For all her anger, her words sounded broken and plaintive, as though she were a good wife berating a thoughtless husband, or a village lass hurt by her swain. Maryssa hated the sound of her voice, the raw pain in her words. For in truth, though she had once shared his body, known the wonder of his practiced caresses, Tade Kilcannon belonged to her no more than did the Donegal mountains or the hawks that swept its wide slate-hued skies.

She turned away, fixing her gaze on the roguish bewhiskered face of the kitten, Tade's gift to her. "I'm sorry, Tade," she whispered. "I had no right to snap at you."

His hands were achingly gentle as he grasped her shoulders and turned her into his embrace. "You have the right to all things with me—the loving, aye, and the anger as well. They are both but emotions—different sides of the same coin. I wish I could spend the rest of my years watching your eyes kindle to flame, only to wash away the hurt with my loving." He pressed a kiss to her stiff lips, his mouth wooing hers, coaxing hers in a way that was at once a plea and a demand. "Let me love away the pain, Maryssa," he breathed. "Please."

Maryssa drowned in the tenderness in his voice, the earnest curve of the lips that had just parted from hers. And with a low cry she strained against him, whimpering as her mouth caught his. She felt herself being tumbled back into the pillows, her body crushed by the welcomed hardness of Tade's. And as his hands and mouth wove their magic about her, it was as if, indeed, he were trying to wipe away the nightmare of the weeks without him, to banish all from her heart but this moment. This mating.

But even as he swept her into a passion as fierce as any gale, she felt like a captive in the tempest, lost among the savage tides tearing at them both. Mysteries, dark and dangerous, lurked within his eyes, secrets that could destroy him, aye, and her as well. And when at last they lay quiet, the fierce hunger of their bodies sated, the fires in their souls yet unquenched, she stirred against his chest, then sat up to curl her feet beneath her and peer into his face.

His mouth, still red and swollen with kisses, parted, one bronzed finger reaching up to trace her cheek. "I love you, Maura," he said, running the callused pad over her chin.

"Do you?" she looked away, turning her head to avoid his touch as an odd, dry dusting of bitterness fell over her.

"Aye, Maryssa, I do," he said, his voice edged with strained patience. "I rode like the devil for three days over damnable muddy roads to reach you. Now come, love, back into my arms."

Maryssa struck the covers away, nearly treading on the tail of the disgruntled kitten as she slid from the bed. Scooping up the dressing gown pooled upon the carpet, she jerked the garment about her. "If you forced yourself here at that pace, you must be passing weary. You had best rest."

"By Satan's beard, what is amiss now?" Heaving a sigh, Tade levered himself up with his elbows, propping his back against the carved headboard.

"Amiss? What could be amiss? You had to leave. You conducted your business at whatever jail Devin sent you off to. Now you are home, alive and safe." Maryssa felt the catching of tears in her throat. "God knows I prayed—prayed that you were." She wheeled back to him, all the helplessness and fear crashing over her. "You're my heart, Tade, all of it. All the joy I've ever known I found in your arms. But until now I never understood that joy, aye, and even love mean little without trust."

"Trust?" Tade's eyes darkened with a disarming hurt. “Do you think I spent the nights dallying with some lightskirt? Since the day we met, I've taken no other."

"Nay. I know you'd not do that. It is that other part of you that deals me pain, the man you hold apart from me. The one I catch glimpses of only when you think I am not watching."

He started to dismiss her words with a laugh, but it was a hollow sound.

She turned away, hurt washing over her. "Aye, hide it away again," she said softly. "Never let me know where you ride, what mantle you don when you melt into the night. I'm the enemy, even now, Tade, am I not? The Sassenach bitch you named me that first night when I tumbled into the lake."

She flinched as Tade levered himself upright and stalked to the carved mantel to stare into the flames. The sinews and muscles of his thighs glistened bronze in the orange light, the steely curves of his buttocks rigid in his anger. "Damn it, Maura, you don't know what you're asking," he bit out, his mouth and jaw hard, his eyes wary slits of green. "Don't force me to thrust you into danger when—"

"Danger? And what is this? Trysting with you here within my father's walls—my father who hates your family with such fury."

Tade wheeled, and Maryssa's stomach clenched at the flashings of barely leashed fury in his eyes, but as the glinting emerald gaze fell upon her, the stony sparks softened, gentled. "Aye," he said at last. "I'll vow you courted danger with a vengeance when you entrusted your heart to me."

Tade raised his hand to his face and pressed his fingers against his eyes. "But the hate between the Kilcannons and the Wylders has nothing to do with you and me. It is a rage that goes far back, near the time when you were born." A misty, distant look drifted across his face, and Maryssa felt enthralled by it, held captive by some delicate, unseen thread as he touched the gilded horn of one of the unicorns dancing upon the bookshelf.

"This was my mother's room when I was but a lad," he said softly. “It is a wonder it still stands, the way Dev and I used to tear about it with our wooden swords and our leaden soldiers."

"Your mother? Here?" Maryssa stared at him, confusion spinning hints of the past about her, sweeping away all awareness of the delicately painted walls, the huge bed, even the tiny kitten nosing about on the dressing table.

"Aye. This was the place she loved best in this drafty mound of stone. She was beautiful, and she remains beautiful, Maura, in my memory. Even now, when I pray to the Blessed Virgin, it is my mother's face I see—her hair all struck with gold, her eyes so kind, blue as a mountain stream."

He stared into the fire, and it was as if he had forgotten that Maryssa still stood near him, as if he had forgotten all but the memory of his mother's beloved face. Maryssa was about to touch him, unable to bear the bittersweet flashes of love and loss in his countenance, but he straightened his shoulders, as though righting himself beneath a heavy burden.

"I was but five years old when she died," he continued. "Even so, I still remember the sorrow in her face. It was like that in the statue of the Madonna she kept beside her bed— full of courage, yet lacking the power to stop whatever threatened her peace."

"She must have been beautiful," Maryssa said softly.

"The old people claim she was the most beautiful noblewoman in all Ireland, with the blood of a hundred kings flowing in her veins. And my father—he was the mighty Earl of Nightwylde then, heir to one of the few Catholic peerages to survive the thieving of Queen Elizabeth and the scourge of Oliver Cromwell. Father loved this castle, these lands, and those kerns who worked upon it. He bought their safety with his sword, aye, and his wits." Tade gave a bitter laugh.

"He even managed to hold Nightwylde when that coward, Catholic James, cast Ireland to the devil at Boyne."

Maryssa's nails dug deep in her palms, a sick knot forming in her belly. "Then what happened?"

"The Crown decided to crush Ireland forever by turning the entire nation into ignorant wretches so poor they could think of nothing but attempting to feed their starving children. They outlawed our religion, made it a crime to educate any but the cursed Protestants, and snatched all property from Catholic hands."

"That, then, is how you came to lose this castle?"

"Oh, nay. It was not a cut so clean as that. For six years after his title was stripped away, my father thought Nightwylde safe. His boyhood friend, Bainbridge Wylder—"

"My father and yours were . . ." Maryssa's voice trailed off in disbelief and dread.

"Friends," Tade continued. "Wylder had offered to have the property transferred into his name—the name of an Englishman, a Protestant—with the vow that Kilcannons would rule Nightwylde lands forever. "It was common then, trust born of desperation. Reeve Marlow's father still holds title to the properties of Catholic friends—properties that, for all their financial difficulties, no one at Marlow Hall has ever touched."