Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) (35 page)

"I'll never be your wife," she said, her gaze meeting his, defiant, strong.

But the laughter that rolled from between those thin lips pierced the numbness Devin's death had wreaked within her, filled her instead with sick dread and terror for the infant she sheltered in her womb, as Ascot bent close. “Oh, aye, my sweet cousin, you'll wed me. You shall know what it means to suffer beneath a godly man's hands. I swear to you. Even if my beloved uncle and I are forced to drag you to the altar in chains."

T
ade wheeled
to face his sister, nearly losing what little balance he had gained as his eyes locked on Deirdre's face. “He's dead!" Tade cried out. “I let them torture him.”

"Nay." Dee rushed to his side, her hands closing around his arm, steadying him, as tears coursed down her cheeks. “He didn't suffer. Revelin Neylan shot Dev before they could—could hurt him."

"Neylan? Where—"

"He—he was cut down by the Sassenachs, Tade. They said here were three hundred of them waiting. If you had gone—"

"If I had gone, Rev Neylan would be alive!" Tade jerked his arm from her grasp, wanting to drive his fist into something, anything, shatter the wooden shutters, feel flesh split beneath his blade. "Sweet Savior, I should've taken those bullets,” Tade gritted. "Dev was my brother! Mine."

"He was my brother, too!" The anguish in Deirdre's voice yanked Tade's gaze back to her face. Her mouth was twisted with torment, her hair a tangle of fire about her waxen cheeks. “But I'm glad it was not you who cast away your life at Rookescommon! I couldn't help Devin, but you . . . to lose you both . . ."

Her words seemed to drive spikes deep into Tade's fogged mind, jarring memories of the night before—the chamber door flung wide, Maryssa and Deirdre framed in its opening.

"You." Tade felt a fist crush his heart. "You knew that she was going to seduce and drug me—knew that Sassenach bitch was going to do.”

"Don't call her that!" Deirdre blazed. "Don't you ever call her that! She saved your life. Gave Devin peace before he died. He begged her to stop you, and he told us where to obtain the potion to—"

"Damn him! He had no right!”

"Aye, he did, Tade!" Deirdre shouted. "God knows he did not have much when he faced those soldiers, but he did have the right to die knowing that the brother he loved wouldn't fling his life to the same wolves. He had the right to believe that you would live to guard Rachel and the babes, to comfort Da. Aye, and to be father to your own child!"

Bitterness and rage ripped through Tade, his fist lashing out, knocking a platter from the scarred oaken table. "Aye, and did Dev think I'd ever soil myself with love again? Did he think I would take another woman when I've seen that love leads to lies and betrayal? God's wounds, Maryssa Wylder duped me into abandoning my brother!”

"She saved the man who is father to her babe!"

The blood drained from Tade’s face. "Babe? What the hell?"

"Aye, babe!" Deirdre spat back at him. "That 'heartless bitch' who saved your life is carrying your child."

Emotions roiled inside Tade, grief, pain, joy, hate, as his mind whirled with images of a tiny pink face, eyes innocent of lies, a mouth a delicate and fragile as the bud of a wild rose. A babe. Hi babe nested in Maura's womb. It was impossible, wondrous, devastating.

"Where is she?" The demand carried more anger than inquiry.

For the first time Deirdre's eyes faltered away from his face, her hands knotting in her skirts. "I—I do not know. Just before dawn she came to me, asked me to stay with you until—until the drug's power palled. Then she left."

"Left? When the hell is she coming back?"

"I don't think she is. Ever."

"Damn it, Dee!" Tade caught her wrist, jerking he around. "Where did she go?"

"I don't know!" Deirdre cried, her eyes pooling with tears "She said—said you'd hate her once you woke! That you'd never forgive her for giving you the drug. I told her I would give it to you, but she wouldn't let me. She said you'd need your family to help you heal after Devin died. She said you'd hate her."

"Hate her?" Rage blazed white-hot within him. "Why the hell would I hate her? She lay with me when she was betrothed to another man, lied to me, drugged me, cheated my brother out of a chance to live, and now—now she's taken my child—my babe—and run away. Damn her!" He drove his boot into the wall with a savagery that cracked the rotted wood.

"Tade!" Deirdre's alarmed voice fed the fires of his rage. He faced her, his jaw knotting with fury.

"Nay, Dee. Maryssa Wylder stole my brother, broke my pride, but God damn her to hell, she'll not take my babe!" He hated himself for the catching of a sob beneath his fury. "She'll not bear my babe in some cursed Sassenach mansion to live among the swine who murdered Dev!"

Grief ripped through Tade again, as if Maryssa's betrayal and Devin's death had gouged out all within him except devastation and rage. Even now, with Devin dead, with Tade's love shattered, she chained him, kept him from satisfying his searing need to bury his sword in Ascot Dallywoulde's belly. Bitterness raked Tade. He did not even dare wait long enough to send Dev's murderer to the devil. He had to flush Maryssa from her sanctuary before she flung herself into marriage with her cursed cousin. The son or daughter of the heir Kilcannon would not be raised by some Sassenach bastard who was even now most likely ensconced in his perfumed London salon, dipping snuff from a jeweled box.

Battling to steady his wobbly legs, Tade stalked to where his cloak lay draped across a squat-legged stool.

"Tade, where are you going?" Deirdre asked tremulously.

"To hell," he grated. "But I full intend to drag Maryssa Wylder with me."

It was past midnight of the second day when he reined Curran to a halt in front of Nightwylde and flung himself from his saddle to crash wide the doors. But the ornate entryway beyond lay dark as a vacant tomb, the single candle borne in the quaking footman's hand casting a haunting glow over the carved ceilings.

"Where is she?" Tade bit out, glaring until the gangly youth nearly dropped his taper.

"Wh-where is who, sir?"

"Miss Wylder. Curse it, I—"

"She and the master, aye, and their guest departed for England yesterday"

"Where were they bound for? What estate?"

"I—I do not know. They left in such haste that Master Wylder didn't say. He owns lands sprinkled over half of England."

Tade spat a vicious oath. So Maura had turned coward yet again and had fled to her gilded Sassenach tower. His mouth was set, grim. Nay, if she barred herself in the king's own treasure house she'd not escape him. He'd drag her out of her hiding, secure the safety of his babe, and after . . . Dallywoulde's face rose in his mind. Tade's mouth slashed into a feral snarl as he spun, almost trampling upon a wee gray puff staring up at him with intrepid blue eyes.

Odysseus.

A shaft of pain and bitterness slashed through him at the memory of the night he had given Maryssa the little beast, and the secret of the Falcon as well. He clenched his teeth. Nay, there would be no more trinkets for Miss Wylder, no more tenderness from a besotted fool. Instead, she would taste of his own pain and rage.

Tade bolted down the stone steps and hurled himself back into his stallion's saddle.

England. He pressed his heels into Curran's sides. He'd reach those cursed shores before the week passed, and then . . . then he'd find Maryssa Wylder, find his unborn babe, and crush the blood-hungry beast who had taken Devin's life.

M
aryssa dug
through the tiny mound of trinkets on the dressing table, the waning January sun glinting through the window of her chamber at Carradown casting sparkles of crimson, emerald, and blue diamond fire across the walls. The only three jewels her meager store of ornaments had to offer lay piled upon a square of gray cloth that held, as well, her silver-backed brush and one bent shilling.

One shilling, Maryssa thought grimly. It was blessed little to keep her and her unborn babe from starvation until she could find a way to sell her few treasures to the moneylenders and book passage to somewhere, anywhere, far away from Ascot Dallywoulde's grasp. But the shilling would be enough to support her until she sold the jewels. It would have to be enough.

She clenched her teeth against the pain that shot up her finger as the pin upon an onyx mourning brooch dug deep. One of Tade's curses rose to her lips, and she shut her eyes, but the tears that had once flowed so easily had dried up during the eternity of hours, days, and weeks that she had spent as a prisoner in this hateful room.

A prisoner of her supposed future husband. A prisoner of her father.

She placed the chunk of onyx on the cloth, gathered the frayed fabric into a little bundle, and knotted the ends. They had managed to hold her captive during the six weeks since they had dragged her off of the ship at Liverpool. They had trapped her between them during the jouncing coach ride through the countryside. And from the moment they had breached Carradown's door, they had held her in this gilded cell with nothing but the coarsest of food to eat and nothing but the dull winter moors to stare at three stories below.

Maryssa's lips twisted bitterly at the memory of that last evening at Nightwylde and of the expression on her father's face when Dallywoulde had dragged her into the chill study. She had vowed then that she would never wed Sir Ascot, never take to husband a man who thirsted for the sufferings of the innocent, but her father had scarcely seemed to hear her, his jowls swelling with indignation, anger, and a stunned surprise. Yet none of the emotions flashing across Bainbridge Wylder's face shocked Maryssa as greatly as the incongruous wisp of pain that had been in her father's dull eyes before he wheeled, turning his gaze away from her, to glare out the window.

"You'll buckle to your duty, damn you," he had spat through stiff lips. "Take as your husband the man I command you to. I'll not bear a cursed woman's defiance yet again, even if I needs must starve you into submission."

Maryssa's mouth compressed into a white line. They had all but starved her, driven her mad, locked alone in this room. Once a day her father had unbolted the door, his broad body blocking the opening, his mouth hard as stone as he demanded to know whether she would bow to his wishes. And after each refusal, the plate slipped in under Dallywoulde's watchful guard held an even more meager portion of coarse bread, a smaller portion of water. She had endured it as long as she could, until she had begun to fear for the new life growing inside her.

Then the morass of grief and listlessness, which had gripped her since the storm-tortured dawn when she had bidden good-bye to Tade Kilcannon, had shifted, giving way to anger and fierce resolve. Her fingers knotted in the white lawn of her chemise as she cast a fulminating glance at the heavy carved door. That evening when her father had entered the chamber, demanding she marry Sir Ascot, she had turned to him, seemingly broken, claiming that she would do whatever he wished if he would but give her something to eat and let her out of this solitary room.

It had been all she could do not to scream when confronted with the grim triumph on her father's features, all she could do not to fly into his face, scratching and clawing like an enraged hawk. Yet she had steeled every muscle in her body, hating him as he strode from the room, barring the door behind him.

He had dispatched to her a huge platter of beefsteak, green almond tarts, and pastries dripping with honey. And the next day he had hauled her to the dressmaker to be fitted out with a wedding gown and a costume for the masquerade ball that would serve to announce to all London society that the recalcitrant Miss Wylder had at last agreed to take the godly Sir Ascot in marriage.

Maryssa fought the urge to rend the delicate blue lace from the swan costume that hung now upon the cherrywood door of the armoire. Most likely even now her "caring" father was sitting below, observing the last preparations for the night's soiree, sloshing his finest brandywine into crystal goblets as he toasted the weak will of women with a gloating Sir Ascot. No doubt the two men were reveling in their triumph, Ascot drooling eagerly over the prospect of at last gaining total power over the vast Wylder wealth, and the woman who had humiliated and defied him, and who loathed him as well.

Maryssa shuddered. It had nearly driven her insane . . . his silence over the prison affair, his eyes piercing her, his mouth so cursed smug, so eager, as he quelled her father's wrath at her disappearance on All Hallows night. He had told Bainbridge that as her future husband, he should have the right to crush her unruliness—aye, and he would take great pleasure in doing so when the time came.

Maryssa had felt the menace beneath his words, the cold appraisal of his eyes, aye, and the waiting. It was as if he were savoring the prospect of tearing her secrets from her, anticipating an unholy glee at the chance to wring from her restitution for her "sins." Waiting until she was completely in his power, his wife, to chasten as he chose.

She lifted her chin defiantly. Let Dallywoulde and her father glory in their coming triumph, let them spin their plans of combining estates, investing their wealth, and wresting her soul from her body. For before this night was past, their plans would be nothing but castles built of air.

Maryssa picked up the tiny bundle and walked to the tall, carved armoire; her fingers reached out, touching the magnificent garment she was to wear this night. Glistening white satin overskirts parted as gracefully as any gentle wave to reveal a lake-blue silk underskirt caught here and there with rosettes of snowy lace, while upon a wide shelf sat a headdress so cunningly wrought it would have delighted a princess royal. Ice-white feathers swept back in downy wings from the arched neck of a graceful swan mask, eyes of black jet glittering against the white as though they truly held life. It was the most beautiful costume Maryssa had ever owned, but, as she hastily stuffed the little pouch into the hem, which she had slit with her scissors earlier that day, she could think of nothing except the relief she would feel when the costume lay at the bottom of some distant gutter. For then the ordeal that faced her this night—eluding her ever-alert watchdogs, melting from the crowd of revelers into the darkness—would be over.

She turned, her gaze straying out the mullioned window, her spirits lifting as the nearby rooftops turned rose with the tint of sunset. She let the wispy skirts of her masquerade gown fall back into graceful folds, a fierce resolve and gladness singing in her veins as she thought of the other dress Sir Ascot and her father had commissioned—the wedding gown with its stifling lace and heavy embroidery, which would never leave the shop of the seamstress who even now stitched upon it. By the time the sun rose on the morrow she would be far from Carradown's wintry gloom, far from Sir Ascot and the father who loathed her. Free.

Her fingertips smoothed over the soft swell of her stomach, the slight fluttering of life within infinitely precious, infinitely painful. Free? Nay, never free of the hauntings of tormented emerald eyes, broken pleas that still turned her dreams to nightmares.

"Tade." She formed his name lovingly with her lips, the memory of gasping it through laughter, crooning it in tenderness, crying it out in the fierce grip of passion filling her with aching emptiness. Even here in her silk-lined prison, far away from Donegal's hills, she had heard the tales of the Black Falcon's exploits. It was vengeance, the peaked-faced maids claimed, that drove the blackguard rebel to slash himself and his band of men in a fiery swath of fury across the emerald hills. Vengeance for the death of a common priest, fury against a woman who had betrayed the rebel rogue. And it could only be Satan himself who shielded the brigand in raids that should have left any mortal man dead.

Maryssa clasped her arms against her tender breasts, a tightness gripping her chest. Tade . . . lightsome, loving Tade, robbed of Devin's steadying hand, robbed of faith, of trust, left only with the searing imprint of her own betrayal to scar him. In her endless days at Carradown not an hour had passed in which Maryssa had not closed her eyes to recall the memory of Tade's face when he had first made love to her, or to cherish the image of his laughter the night he had stood naked, hauling her from the lake.

Her hands had ached with wanting to touch him, her mouth with wanting to kiss him, her body turning traitor as well, tormenting her with dreams of their joining, only to jeer at her and snatch him away or whirl her again into the prison yard at Rookescommon, Devin's pale face shifting until it was Tade who stood so gallantly beneath the hangman's noose.

But no matter how she fared once she escaped her father's grasp, she could never go to Tade, find him, hold him. She had lost him forever in that instant when she had emptied Mab Hallighan's potion into his leathern jack of ale.

Her heart twisted, the pain that never fully left her cutting blade-sharp, but she straightened her spine, her hand splaying again over the place where her babe lay safe. Nay, she had more of their loving to cling to than Tade did, and she would dare any danger, confront any nemesis to guard this tangible symbol of the love they had shared.

Foreboding slid down her spine as Sir Ascot's skeletal face rose to haunt her. If ever the sinister knight suspected that she was carrying a child . . . if ever her father discovered that she sheltered Tade Kilcannon's bastard within her womb, she could only imagine what might happen. She shuddered. The babe within her was lusty, strong, swelling its gentle world until soon even raising the waistlines of her skirts would not conceal it from those who would crush it if they knew it lived inside her.

Maryssa's gaze shifted to the window, the parcel of clothes, two treasured books, and a faded blue ribbon that had decked a tree castle an eternity ago, catching her eye. It was nearly time for the maid to come to help her dress. She would have to trust the deepening shadows of sunset to hide the bundle of clothes from suspicious eyes until she could retrieve it.

Hastening to where the parcel lay upon the floor, she picked it up and went to the window. The icy latch was stiff as she shoved it upward and flung the sash wide. How many times had she opened that window during the days she had been held captive, staring down to the freedom of the street below. It had beckoned her, tempted her with memories of Tade's reckless scaling of Nighwylde's walls, the shallow grooves cut into Carradown's stone seeming to mock her, threatening her with a fall that would crush her spine or drive the babe from her womb if she were to dare it. She had never had much courage, and the life within her was too precious to risk.

The winter wind swept in, so cold it burned her cheeks and her breasts through the thin chemise as she held the bundle over the ledge and let it drop the three floors to the ground. It had scarce struck the mounds of snow below when Maryssa stiffened at the sound of quick, light footsteps approaching down the hall.

Hastily, she pulled the window shut and darted over to sit upon the dainty chair beside the dressing table. She heard the bolt being slid to the side, heard the door latch click open, beckoning her to freedom.

L
ike carved
marionettes trapped on the strings of a sinister puppeteer, the figures moved across the ballroom floor, their bodies cloaked in dominoes, faces obscured by velvet masks, as though something hideous lay beneath. Something that lurked about brittle smiles tainted with cunning, or the cynical curl of cruel lips. It was as though in the mystery of the masking every feral instinct within the guests at Carradown had risen to the surface, leaving all, from the most elegant powered dandy to the dowdiest spinster, hungry to feed upon secrets and weaknesses, to stalk like savage wolves anything that smacked of intrigue.

Maryssa's gaze swept surreptitiously about the crowded floor, her nerves knotting, tangled through with foreboding. Aye, the guests Sir Ascot had invited to celebrate his betrothal had more the look of circling beasts than of peers deep in revelry. And the focus of their attention—for good or ill-- was the notorious woman who had left England in disgrace and had now returned to wed the notable Sir Ascot Dallywoulde.

Even the supposed anonymity of the masquerade had failed to shield Maryssa, whispers about the swan's identity having begun the moment she entered the room. And from the instant she had first heard the murmurs, felt the weight of hundreds of eyes upon her, Maryssa had sensed who had penetrated her disguise and revealed her identity. The cunning Sir Ascot had no doubt known that by exposing her thus she would be under constant scrutiny, trapped even more thoroughly than she had been by the bolt upon her bedchamber door. Even now, the loathsome knight was openly gloating over the success of his plan.

She hazarded a glance to where Ascot hovered near her, dressed as an eerie winged moth, his hair powdered pale as a corpse's face, three black patches affixed in a sinister pattern beneath the edge of his crimson mask. Though Bainbridge Wylder had been lulled by Maryssa's sudden capitulation, Ascot Dallywoulde had delved beneath her facade of obedience, to see the hopes she still harbored of escaping his grasp.

Aye, and through it all—the endless whirling about the floor in minuet and quadrille, the uncounted cups of ratafia, the tiny cakes, even the sly threats couched in flattery that made her cheeks flush and her palms sweat—she could feel Ascot Dallywoulde laughing inside, sneering at her desperation with the glee of a cruel boy watching a nestling squirm upon a spike.