Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) (25 page)

Love and a fierce sense of protectiveness toward this bold man and the people he sheltered, flowed through her as she reached around Tade's neck to fasten the clasp of the thin gold chain with fingers that trembled. The swan lay in the bronzed hollow of his throat, glistening against the warmth of his skin.

She raised eyes shimmering with tears, full of the emotion that seemed about to burst her heart, and the love that shone from Tade Kilcannon's face seared deep.

"I have no—no token to give you," he said in a choked voice. "Except this vow." His eyes pierced hers. "One day you'll be my wife, Maryssa Wylder. Mine. For nothing—not the laws of men or of God himself—will keep me from binding you to me. I swear it on my mother's grave."

He started to seal his promise with his lips, but suddenly it was as though a tempest in all its fury had whirled down upon them. "Your mother's grave," a voice snarled. "I vow you're not fit to spit upon it!"

Maryssa cried out in shock, her stomach plummeting to her toes at the hate-filled tones as Tade wheeled toward the man who stood but an arm's length away. She could feel his muscles jerk whip-taut, like those of a warrior readying for battle, the pallor of his face attesting to the fact that Tade, too, had been oblivious to the sudden silence that had fallen upon the hollow, unaware of the crunch of boots charging toward the place where they stood. Maryssa saw Tade's jaw set hard, proud, and defiant as his eyes swept the sea of hostile faces closing in on them, his gaze locking with the murderous glare of Kane Kilcannon. But for the first time she saw beneath the proud earl's rage and fury to the pain that weighed upon his heart.

"Mr. Kilcannon," Maryssa began, fighting to stay the storm lashing between father and son. "I—forgive me if I disturbed your worship. Tade was but—"

"But placing every man, woman, and child who dared come here in danger?" Kane snarled. "Dragging the daughter of English Wylder here, to the one place that was safe?"

"Da.” Tade's voice was hard and cold, a warning as he grasped Maryssa's hand in his own. “Don't say things you'll later regret."

"Regret?" the earl blazed. "The one thing I regret is having a son who would cast to the devil a man's courage, a man's honor. You're my son—my heir. These people are yours to protect, to defend, and you throw them into danger to amuse some English woman you've been rutting with?"

"Damn it, Father—" Tade's eyes flashed deadly fire. A fiercer anger than Maryssa had ever seen now burned in their depths.

"Damn you to hell!" The bellow of rage was rife with a desperation and helplessness that tore at Maryssa's heart as Kane Kilcannon's features contorted into a mask of torment. "Don't you dare defend her to me!" One powerful fist knotted. Maryssa screamed a warning, fighting to break Tade's grip on her arm and leap between the two men. She caught a glimpse of Devin running through the crowd, but they were both too late. Kane's fist arced in a savage path toward Tade's jaw, and the hard knuckles connected with a sickening thud. Tade's head snapped back with the force of the blow. He staggered a step back, his own fist flashing ready, then freezing in midair.

Someone in the crowd shouted. A baby set up a wail. But Maryssa saw only the white imprint of Kane Kilcannon's hand on Tade's skin and the thin trickle of blood dripping from the hard line of Tade's mouth. Yet even that physical evidence of the rift between father and son filled her with less horror than did the raw hatred that flashed between them.

"Kane! For the love of God!" Rachel's cry of distress mingled with a harsh-spoken "Hold!" as Maryssa stumbled backward. She felt a hand flash out to steady her and knew it as Devin's when he propelled her out of the path of the angry men. In her stead he stormed between them, his slender body seeming but a reed trapped in the joining of two raging rivers.

"Stop it, Da!" Devin's voice cut clear and strong through the rumbling of the crowd.

The bitterness that twisted Tade's mouth tore at Maryssa's heart. "You might as well spare your breath, Dev," he said, turning his glare upon his father. "You've ever been ready to strike me, have you not, Da? To wreak your punishment on me for the sin of being a failure as your son? Fine, then, take your fill of it if you have half as much courage as you have hate."

Maryssa flinched as Kane gave a cry of fury, but Devin's hand dug deep into his father's bulging arm, holding him with astonishing strength. The holy man's mild eyes glinted with sorrow and pain tainted with blade-sharp indignation. "Enough, both of you! This is no highroad suited for a brawl! It is a place of God."

“It is a place for the heir Kilcannon to be dallying with his English witch, more like!" someone in the crowd dared.

"Well, I vow we'd best leave the glen to those a-trysting, then, if this is any example of the reverence with which you treat the saying of mass," Devin blazed, his challenging gaze sweeping the faces about him.

The grumblings of the ragged parishioners died to a murmur, and the eyes that had been boldly glaring at Maryssa were now fixed upon the ground, the cheeks of most flushing pink at Devin's reproof. "Look at you, all of you!" he went on. "Aye, and most especially you, Da! Charging up here with your hate, casting it like stones at a woman who has done nothing to you." The mutterings of the crowd rose, the catlike face of Sheena O'Toole peeking out from the rest, dripping hatred.

"Done nothing to us? This woman is the daughter of the man who stole your father's lands!" she sniffed.

Devin wheeled on the girl, his face deathly white. "The English have left us but little. They've taken our lands, our churches, the food from our mouths, but by God, don't let them take our common decency! I know Maryssa Wylder, and I would stake my life on my trust in her."

"You may well be called on to meet that wager," the earl snarled, "at the point of the hoodman's knife! If she leads the Sassenach hounds to this mountain, sets Rath upon us."

"Maryssa has proven her loyalties where Rath is concerned," Tade said between gritted teeth.

"I hate Rath's cruelties as much as any of you do!" Maryssa choked out. "I would never harm you."

"Harm us?" Kane Kilcannon's lip curled in raw hatred. "You've done more than harm us, my fine English lady. You've ripped one son from my heart, aye, and you may well send the other to the gallows. And I hope to God you burn in hell for it beside your traitor father!"

Sick horror twisted inside Maryssa's belly as she saw Tade lunge toward his father, his face taut with black fury.

"Nay, Tade!" she shrilled, diving toward him, but before she could reach him, Tade froze, his muscles standing out like bands of steel.

Seconds seemed to stretch into eternity, every person in the valley strung to the snapping point of tension. Tade's eyes glinted like splintered emeralds. "You needn't consign only Maryssa to hell, Da," he said. "You'll not rest happy until all of us—Dev, Rachel, the little ones, aye, and myself—burn there with you."

He straightened, his eyes seeking out Rachel's tormented, tear-streaked face. "I'll have my things out of the loft before you reach the cottage," he said softly.

"Tade! Tade, no!" Rachel pleaded, clasping his wrist.

"Let him go!" At the sound of Kane's harsh voice the brood of Kilcannons, from wee Katie to little Ryan, crumpled into wails, the older lads battling their tears behind pathetic, torn faces.

"Da, you can't hurl Tade out." Deirdre stumbled to her father, her copper hair streaming about a face suddenly childlike. "You can't!"

“It is long past time I left, Dee," Tade comforted softly, pausing to touch his sister's tear-streaked cheek.

"Nay! Tade! Me wants Tade!" Katie's piteous shrieks rose above the others.

"I'll bring you a present when next I visit, Katie darling,” he said through a throat thick with pain. “Perhaps a sugar swan." Tade straightened, and Maryssa could see it was as though his soul were being wrenched from him, but he turned to her, offering his hand. Nay, Maryssa thought, her heart rending. He was not offering only his hand. He was offering her his life and all the love he had known.

She stared at the long bronzed fingers, unable to take them, to rob him of a birthright far more treasured than any castle built of stone. But he only curved one arm about her waist and led her through the silent crowd. With each step he took, Maryssa could feel pieces of his life shattering—memories of the past, friends long cherished, a family who had been his heart's blood until this day.

Mothers tugged their children out of her path as though she were marked with the lesions of a leper while their menfolk raked Tade's tall, proud shoulders with the scorn reserved for the foulest Judas.

Maryssa cast but one glance over her shoulder as Tade led her away, her eyes catching the pain on Rachel Kilcannon's face, the loathing darkening Sheena O'Toole's sharp features.

Yet even as Tade swung her onto her mare and spurred his own mount down the path they had trekked a lifetime ago, she could not banish the images from her mind. She held them with Tade's silence as the two horses made their way across the stony ground. Even the wind tangling through the wilds seemed to mourn as they neared the lands that had once been Tade's birthright.

And as the daunting stone walls of the castle rose before them, Nightwylde itself seemed to jeer at the fierce revenge it had exacted, not only from the usurpers who had raped the land but from the true heirs who had failed to hold it.

Maryssa's gaze swept the gray turrets that pierced the sky, making the heavens bleed broken dreams. "Tade," she whispered as he reined Curran to a halt in the shadows, "I can't let you cast aside your father and the rest of your family.''

His face tipped down toward hers, his eyes full of such solemn sorrow that tears welled up on her lashes.

"You're my family now, Maura. It is long since over between my father and me," he said. "I could never be the son he wanted, could never tell him I rode as the Falcon. To keep the family safe, I had to let them think I was naught but a heedless rake. And Da believed the worst so easily, Maura. The facade was all he ever saw. I needed him to sense who I was inside, to have faith that I could not be so shallow as to watch others suffer and do nothing but guzzle ale and play at catch-skirt."

His words were a knife twisting in her breast. "I know," she said brokenly.

"Maura, I need but a little time to think . . . to be alone. I—“

"Shh!" Maryssa reached out to where his fingers still clung to his reins, her voice quivering. “It is all right, Tade."

"Nay." Tade's gaze shifted to the stone gate. “It is not all right. It will never be all right for us in this place, this time. But my father's hate changes none of the vows I made to you. On All Hallows Eve I will come for you, take you to the celebration fires, aye, and farther still, if you dare."

Icy fingers seemed to creep beneath Maryssa's skin. "Nay! It is too dangerous for you to come to Nightwylde now. If any of your enemies should tell my father what happened in the glen . . . I'll steal away and meet you at the crossroads."

He opened his mouth as if to protest, then compressed his lips, his mouth a hard line. “It would end our plans right early if I were seen at the castle," he allowed. "Very well. I'll await you at the crossroads until midnight. If you've not been able to escape by then—"

"I'll be there, Tade. I vow it."

His emerald gaze seemed to pierce her, and in it she caught a glimmer of the fire and a shade of the hardness she had seen in their green depths that night at the Devil's Grin. “Until All Hallows Eve, then." He reined his stallion in a circle, his mantle streaming out behind his broad shoulders like liquid midnight as he spurred Curran away.

Her eyes strained after him, his words, his promises, echoing within her. But as she watched the man she loved melting into mist, the faces of the peasants in the glen rose before her—their ragged forms helpless, with nothing but Tade's courage and wit to shield them.

"My rogue," she breathed on a sob, "my gallant rogue of the night." Despair seemed to clutch at her, but she clawed it away, tearing loose as well her hold on him. "Nay, not mine, Tade," she whispered. "No matter how much we both wish it." She closed eyes filled with tears.

On All Hallow’s Eve I will come for you
… His voice seemed to breathe the promise on the wind. And he would come, Maryssa thought, clenching her fists in torment, but he would carry away with him nothing but his mantle of legend.

M
ist swept across the mountain
, swirling in ghostly dances as twilight crept over the craggy earth. All Hallows Eve, the church called it, renaming the ancient druid celebration in an effort to banish the memory of pagan rites. Yet still it was Samhain in the hearts of the Irish, the night of evil pookas, cavorting with demons, the night when the dead walked again upon the earth. Tade shifted against the dark mouth of the cave, the stone on which he had been leaning for the past hour suddenly feeling cold against his back.

Samhain. From the time he was a lad, toddling about the bonfires the mountain folk built to drive away the devils, he had gloried in this night, so ripe for the pranks and jests he adored. He had dismissed the lurking mysteries and dangers that filled the others with fear. But tonight the crude shelter he had shared with Devin since the altercation at Christ's Wound seemed alive with menace. Neither the presence of Devin's robes, abandoned now upon the straw tick beside the cave wall, nor the crudely carved crucifix propped reverently near the bundle of Tade's possessions seemed to hold the power to banish the stirrings of evil born of this night.

“It will be a fine night for the fires," Devin said softly as he joined Tade.

"Aye." Tade turned his gaze away, hoping his brief answer would signal to his brother his need for silence, as it had unerringly in the days since they had lived together in the cave.

But for the first time, whether as a result of impatience with his morose companion or the conviction that Tade had brooded long enough, Dev failed to heed the warning. "Do you remember the year you strung a skeleton together with old twine?" he asked, hunkering down in a way that indicated quite clearly he meant to stay. "You rummaged around for bones in every rubbish heap from here to Derry, and at midnight you rigged it with string and made it dance over my pallet. I almost died of terror."

"Aye, and Da bloodied my backside with a butter paddle."

"Only because you gave him a fright, too. I mean, poor Da, rushing up that loft ladder, with me screaming as if the devil were carrying me away, and you . . ." Devin chuckled at the memory. "I vow, Tade, Da would have thought the jest a grand one if you hadn't made the creature swoop down on him, toppling him from the ladder."

Tade made no reply, just stared out to the distant crossroads where tiny flickers of orange flame were beginning to splash the dusk.

Yet Devin, it seemed, was bent on bedeviling him, stirring childhood memories that now only brought Tade pain. "Remember the night you scaled the roof and moaned and screamed into the chimney like a banshee?''

"Aye. I remember. I tumbled in and nigh set the seat of my breeches afire in the embers Rachel had banked on the hearth before bed."

"Well, it was lucky the worst of it was a few blisters on your hinderparts. By rights you should have broken your fool neck."

"Maybe it would have been better for Da if I had."

"Blast it, Tade, that's not true and you know it." Devin shot to his feet, exasperation in every line of his pale face. "Despite the fact that the two of you have spent the last six and twenty years ramming your stubborn heads against each other, Da loves you. And you love him. If you'd both just open your eyes and your hearts, strip away your cursed Kilcannon pride—"

"Kilcannon pride?" Tade's mouth twisted with irony. "Is that not all that matters to him? He's had nothing but contempt for me since the day Patrick Dugan was murdered." The tiniest catch in Tade's voice betrayed his pain, the infinitely patient, wearily amused face of the long-dead schoolmaster rising in his memory.

"Tade . . ." Frustration vanished from Devin's tone, and the fingers that had dug into Tade's flesh grew gentle. “That was nothing but a child's mistake you made. Master Dugan would not have blamed you. And Da has long since forgiven you."

Tade hated the stinging in his eyes, the haze that transformed the horizon into images from of the past. He could see a hank of fleece all dyed gold, its edges sewn together with a boy's awkward stitches. "That child's mistake cost Patrick Dugan his life."

"You only wanted to surprise the man with the gift you had made. Thank him for the world he’d opened up to you by giving you the book."

Tade gave a bitter laugh. "Oh, aye, I thanked him right well for putting the story of Jason and the Argonauts into my hands. I abandoned my post as sentry—"

"To retrieve the fleece you'd made from its hiding place. Blast it, Tade, you were but a child!"

"Aye, but I was a Kilcannon." Tade tasted bitterness on his lips. "Kilcannons are allowed no mistakes, no frolics. Do you know that when I cried for Patrick Dugan the night they cut him down, Da told me that if I'd had Kilcannon honor—if I had stayed at my post—I would have been able to give the schoolmaster fair warning, and Bridey Houlihan's treachery would have come to nothing?” Tade closed his eyes, the features of the bitter informer who had caused Dugan's death filling his memory.

“It was her choice to betray Master Dugan, it was her plotting, Tade. Not yours." Devin raked one thin hand through his pale hair. “It is hard to understand what moved Da to act so harsh about what happened at the cave that day. But his honor is the only legacy he has left to give his sons, the only thing that has not been crushed in him or stolen from him. He knew you had no way of knowing that the schoolmaster had been betrayed."

The terrifying memory of the child merged with the righteous rage of the man. "I vow, if Bridey Houlihan hadn't fled to France that very night, I would have found a way to repay her in like coin for what she did that day, even though I was but a lad." Tade's fists knotted. "But she was gone even before the soldiers rode in to do their butchering. It was a cursed lot of blood the vindictive bitch spilled because poor Patrick Dugan dared to love his calling more than he loved her."

"Passions can be like a madness in our souls—love, jealousy, hate, rage." Devin turned his gaze to the steady banner of flame now unfurling from the distant bonfire. "Trapped within those passions, we can be less than the most savage beast that stalks the wilds or, rarer still, we can touch such splendor as angels seldom know.''

"What am I, then, Father Devin? A beast because I dared to mate with a woman I would die for? A woman I love and who loves me? Are Maryssa and I accursed, then, because of some paltry law thought up by some pope sitting on a gilded throne in a gilded palace a hundred years ago?"

“It is no paltry law, Tade, especially here in Ireland. I wish I could tell you to take your Maryssa, cherish her as I know you would, but the faith we hold is much battered in these times. It is a war we fight here, without weapons, and each of us must be certain about which side we are fighting on."

"I've fought your cursed battle since the day I turned seventeen, but I fought it with weapons, Dev. I bought your God's safety with my blood. But now—” Tade's eyes flashed up to meet the pale blue of Devin’s. “—I’m casting down my sword. I'm taking Maryssa away. Away from her bastard father, away from Ireland."

"Tade, you can't—can't mean that!" Twilight painted bruised hollows in Devin's thin face. His eyes looked stricken, stark with disbelief and despair. "Where would you go? How would you feed her, clothe her, keep her from her father's grasp? Do you think Bainbridge Wylder will let you simply sweep away his only daughter without taking rash measures to stop you?"

"I doubt Wylder will even know Maryssa is gone, unless he turns to beat her. And if he does give chase, it will give me the greatest of pleasure to repay the cursed bastard for the bruises I saw on Maryssa's cheek."

"Despite the fact that Wylder has used her harshly, she is still his only child—heiress to all he owns. Even if Maryssa would willingly go with you, he'd hunt you down."

"By then he will be too late. She'll be my wife, Dev, perhaps with my child growing inside her."

"Tade—"

"Nay, Dev. I'm taking her, riding to the coast, and from thence setting out for Cannes. Once I wed her, I'll contrive some way to build a life for us there. Perhaps French Louis has need of a strong sword arm among his armies. If that fails, I'll ply my skill at coloring gaming cards."

"And when you get shot for cheating some drunken Gaul, what will happen to Maryssa?"

Tade's voice dropped low. "She will still be my wife, Dev, joined to me as one. And if ill befalls either of us, it will be worth the pain to have known that bliss." Tade raised his gaze to Devin's, needing desperately for this brother, whom he had tormented and teased, but whom he loved more deeply than any other member of the embattled Kilcannon clan, to understand.

Devin cleared his throat, and the eyes that darted away from Tade's were filled with tears. His chin dropped to his chest. "When I was in the cane fields and the Barbados sun was beating down on me like the devil's breath, I used to make a game of remembering your pranks," Devin said softly. "I recounted them all, Tade, in the months I slaved there. It was those memories that held me strong—aye, more, sometimes than the faith to which I am pledged."

He raked one slender hand slowly through his moon-gold hair. "I thought you would never change. That you would always be a half-wild boy, driving us all mad with your scrapes."

"I vow I'll have to be getting myself out of them without your help from now on," Tade said. Throat knotting with emotion, he unfastened the pouch at his waist and withdrew a thin silver crucifix affixed to a loop of dulled beads. "I want to give you something before I sail," Tade said, turning the rosary in his hand. "Most likely it will be years before. . . before Maryssa and I can return to Ireland."

He fixed his eyes on the rosary, knowing that he might well never return home. "When I'm gone, MacGary and the others will continue to ride—to guard the mountain. There is a man coming, an English huntsman named Dallywoulde, whom Maura warned me about. I've told Neylan and MacGary about him. They'll be waiting at the ready."

"I'll depend upon them."

"You can, Dev. I'd not go if I didn't believe that you—all of you—would be safe. If you should ever find yourself in need of aid, send this to Reeve Marlow. He'll know how to reach the men I leave behind."

Devin took the rosary into his hand and ran the tip of one finger over the engraving that graced the back of the crucifix. "A falcon," he said softly as the waning light touched the carved image, bathing its patina in a rose glow.

"Aye. I fear it is far from polished, what with my neglecting my prayers so much of late. But it is one of the few things in my possession I've not gotten by slitting some rich Englishman's pursestrings or by dicing at some inn."

Devin's fingers closed about the gift, his sensitive mouth quivering in a smile full of love and sadness. "I'll use it to pray for your blackguard soul," he said, attempting to lighten his tone. "But perhaps Maryssa will have more luck in saving it than I have."

The jest had a hollow sound. Unable to bear the feelings of love and loss that were dragging both him and Devin down, Tade strode into the cave that had been home to the brothers these last days. From a niche in the stone wall, he pulled a blanket-wrapped bundle bound with strips of leather, which he slung over one broad shoulder. It contained the possessions of a lifetime. Crude forbidden weapons he had seized during his raids, the leather mittens Deirdre had worked for him last Christmastide, one ragged-bound book, its embossed letters long ago worn away by grubby hands and a boy's tears, and one faded leaden soldier.

He turned back toward Devin, seeing the twilight carve deep shadows into the beloved face that had once seemed so serene. Tade swallowed a lump of pain in his throat, feeling as though, somehow, he were cutting away a part of himself in this leaving, deserting this man who seemed now, not the steadfast priest filled with strength, but rather an innocent, groping in some abyss Devin alone could see.

"Tell Rachel and the babes I love them," Tade said. "And Da . . ."

Devin raised his hand as if to bless Tade, but the pale fingers froze in the air. With a choked sound, Devin lunged forward and crushed Tade in his arms. "Go with God, Tade."

Tade caught his brother tight with his free arm, feeling he had abandoned Devin to some private hell. "Dev," he began, "if there is anything troubling you, Maryssa and I . . . we can wait—"

"Nay." Devin gave an empty laugh. "The demons I wrestle this night can be bested by me alone. It is time for you to think of yourself before any other. It is growing dark, Tade, and your love will be waiting."

Torn and confused, Tade shifted the burden to his other shoulder, his fingers worrying the end of one leather thong. But as though Devin sensed the turmoil loosed within his brother, he divested Tade of the bundle and strode with it upon his own narrow shoulders to where Curran stood tethered. Tade watched, silent, as Devin fastened the rolled blanket behind the saddle.

Giving the leather strips one last tug, Dev took hold of the bay's reins. "Beware the ghosties as you ride," he said, his mouth twisting in a crooked smile as his eyes swept the faraway flickering of the bonfires.

"I will." Tade's fingers felt chill and numb as he gripped the saddle and swung up on the bay's back. "Don't forget to say farewell to Rachel and the babes for me. Aye, and Da."

"You'll not be telling them yourself?"

"How can I?" Tade's fingers clenched on the reins, the pain at not being able to see each round child's face, Rachel's loving smile, or his father's proud countenance washing over him afresh.

“It would prove a mite awkward, now that I think on it." A flat laugh broke through Devin's lips and died there. "I'll give them your love. Be happy, Tade." Devin's face turned up to meet his gaze, the rising moon casting a translucent pallor over the gentle, beloved features. "I need—need to believe you are happy."

Tade felt loss claw into his heart, as though half of his soul were being wrenched from his breast. But though he wanted desperately to tell this man about the special place he held in his heart, the words seemed to snag in his throat. "Dev, all these years . . . You . . . I never told you how much I—"