Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) (5 page)

"Please forgive Deirdre," Rachel said. "I wish I could say she is not often so rude, but she takes after her brother, in tongue if not in temper. If you've suffered Tade's company for the tick of a clock you know that.” One work-roughened hand reached out, and a gasp escaped Rachel's lips the instant her capable fingers touched Maryssa's chilled skin. Rachel spun on Tade in blustering fury. "What on earth did you do to this child, Tade Kilcannon? She's as cold as a well in winter and wet through to her shift!"

"She was taking a late-night bath, and I rescued her.”

"Rescued her? Gave her her death of lung fever, more like! She's all but stiff with cold and you stand there spinning nonsense! Go bore the rakes at the inn and drown yourself in ale if you can't still your tongue. I'm going to get this poor child out of these clothes."

"N-nay." Maryssa started to protest, but Tade's laugh stilled her.

"Out of her . . ." He let his echo of Rachel's words dangle, unfinished, his eyebrow arching wickedly at Maryssa. "I'm sure I can hold my tongue long enough for that. There is nothing at the Grin to compare—"

"Devin, leash your brother or I'll take a switch to him!" Rachel threatened, grabbing up a shawl to drape around Maryssa's shoulders. "Deirdre, I'll need your rose gown, petticoats, and some clean dry rags from the basket under my bed. Get them." With a quelling glare at the girl's mutinous pout, Rachel wrapped an arm around Maryssa and whisked her through the carved door into a smaller room.

Within what seemed like seconds Rachel Kilcannon peeled off the cloying wet layers of clothing that clung to Maryssa's skin. Maryssa tried to help, but her shaking fingers knotted the lacings, until at last she gratefully abandoned herself to Rachel's ministrations, lifting her arms and moving as Rachel asked, obedient as a child.

As Rachel pulled free yet another petticoat Maryssa's gaze roved the room, and she smiled in spite of herself. There could be no question about to whom the room belonged.

Rows of pegs driven into a strip of wood on the far wall sported an assortment of breeches and little boys' frocks, the peg nearest the ceiling boasting a branch with a fat cocoon in its fork. A wooden bedstead sprawled across most of the room, pillows stuffed beneath its coverlet at odd angles, the bedclothes rumpled, strewn with small rocks and sprigs of leaves. In her imagination Maryssa could hear the bedtime shouts of Rachel Kilcannon's sons as they buffeted each other with the plump pillows. The warm scene vanished as chill air touched Maryssa's bare skin. She hugged her thin chemise against her, clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering.

"As though a body could sit on this, let alone sleep in it!" Maryssa turned her head to see Rachel scowling at the lumpy bed. "Kilcannon men!" the woman scolded with a shake of her head. "Be they four or forty, they cause nothing but trouble!" Grasping the corners of the coverlet, she whipped it upward.

Maryssa took a stumbling step back as a spray of childhood treasures flew into the air, the motley assortment clattering to the floor, earth colors, spangled also with brighter, glossier hues. Something heavy thunked at Maryssa's feet, its surface catching the candlelight. She looked down to see a miniature cannon amid a host of toy soldiers, its barrel bent and battered from many a fanciful battle. Two dozen tiny swords gripped in molded hands pointed ignominiously toward the roof above painted jackets that had once, no doubt, been the pride of some small boy. The blue lacquer now was chipped and worn away, the jaunty hat plumes dented.

Strange, Maryssa mused with an uneasy stirring of remembrance; blue coats, and plumes exactly like the one bedecking the toy soldier on the table at Nightwylde. She had seen that soldier but an instant, yet she knew it had been wrought by a master, a plaything for a rich man's cherished child. These well-loved toys, battered though they were, were equally intricate; they seemed out of place in this clean, yet humble cottage.

"Warring." Maryssa was startled out of her thoughts by Rachel's wistful voice. "As if Ireland hasn't had her fill of killing these past hundred years. Seems like they train the boys up in it from the minute they leave the womb. Heroes, all of them," she said softly. "But fighting a hopeless war." One reddened hand touched the painted boot of a foot soldier still tangled in the coverlet's folds.

"Where did you get them? The soldiers, I mean?"

Rachel shook the coverlet briskly one more time, then bundled it around Maryssa.

"They were Tade's when he was a boy. His da had them made special just before his mother died and the family lost . . ." Rachel's voice trailed off. "I wanted him to save them for his own babes, but Tade, he'd have none of it. Started hiding them about where the little ones would find them among the eggs in the hens' nests, in the toes of winter stockings. He even managed to bake that cannon into a pie somehow. Shane cut into the crust on his saint's day, and his face got so bright it nigh blinded me."

The door banged open, Deirdre huffing into the room in a swirl of pink gingham. She threw the cloth on the bed, stamping one small foot. "Ma, if you have to go on thus about how wonderful Tade is, at least don't do it where he can hear!" she cried, pulling a face. "Every word you said came right through that wall, and he's sitting out there so puffed up I swear I'd like to stick him with a toasting fork!"

Rachel rolled her eyes heavenward in amused tolerance as she slipped the blanket from Maryssa's shoulders, then reached for a lace-edged petticoat. "Speaking of the toasting fork, Deirdre, you'd best be sticking some bread on it and scraping together something for your brothers to eat. Devin looks half starved, and Tade—"

"Tade would eat the hide off his horse if it wasn't stuck on," Deirdre grumped. "He abuses me, and I'm supposed to make food for him? I'd like to feed him the fire irons!"

"They wouldn't taste half as bad as your bread." Tade's gibe rang through the crack in the door.

Deirdre flung the portal open and stomped out. "You—"

"Deirdre!" Rachel's cry of warning was not quick enough. The open door had given Tade a clear view of Maryssa's nearly naked body. Maryssa heard the sharp sound of breath hissing through teeth. A blush fired her skin from head to toe as her eyes locked on the source of the noise. Tade was staring at her over Deirdre's curls, his parted lips robbed of any hint of teasing. His eyes swept up trim ankles, over ribbon garters, to linger for several hot, heavy moments on the chemise that clung, in transparent wetness to Maryssa's breasts.

It was over in an instant. She saw his jaw clench, could almost feel him rip his gaze away from her as Rachel lunged for the door, slamming it shut so quickly a blast of warm air from the peat fire struck Maryssa's chest, the heat of it spreading over her skin.

She scarcely felt Rachel's deft fingers as they fastened the borrowed gown around her, knotting the laces and tying the sashes, punctuated by muttered scoldings. Only the absence of Tade's voice in the murmurings from the other room touched Maryssa, his silence thick, laden with a tension that trembled inside her, as though his gaze had somehow drawn a part of her into himself or a part of him into her.

Rachel settled the rose gingham over Maryssa's should, a sharp tug snapping her attention back to the woman's angular face. Dark eyes flicked to the door, pale lips crumpling into a nervous smile. "I'm sorry, child, about Deirdre and all. The girl doesn't think at the best of times, and when she and Tade start jabbing at each other, well, I know to listen you'd think they were half a step from murdering each other."

“It's all right. She didn't let him . . . I mean, she didn't open the door on purpose."

"She opened that door with a vengeance, but she meant you no harm. Lord knows Tade's seen more than his share of colleens in their shifts.”

Maryssa flushed, a picture of Tade amid a throng of conquered beauties flashing through her mind.

"I—I meant that with a houseful of sisters he probably scarce noticed—" Rachel stammered, stopped, her own cheeks flushing. She turned, bustling to fish a gap-toothed comb from the shelf of a wooden washstand. When she again faced Maryssa, she gave her an open, wry smile. "I'm doing nothing but making it worse, aren't I, child? We'll speak no more if it. Your hair is tangled as a whaler's rigging. Let me help you." Rachel's offer, so earnestly made, coupled with the gentle care of her hands as she plied the comb, made Maryssa want to cry.

"Thank you." She struggled to keep her voice from shaking. "For being so kind."

A chapped finger crooked under Maryssa's quivering chin, puzzled light clouding Rachel's face. The woman asked no explanation for the tears welling from Maryssa's eyes, only wrapped her in arms that had comforted a thousand childhood woes and held her close. "Warm yourself here as long as you need to," she said gently.

It was as though Maryssa could feel a downy coverlet close around her shoulders, and she knew the rawboned woman offered not only her hearth but a piece of her heart as well.

Suddenly Rachel stilled as the creak of cart wheels jouncing along the rutted path outside crept through the bedchamber's open window. Maryssa peered past Rachel to see a lantern bobbing from a hook in the cart. Bits of brightness glimmered through holes pierced in the lamp's tin sides silhouetting the shape of a man.

"Kane!" Rachel's voice was joyous, reverent, and eager, her face suffused with love as the man pulled the cart to a halt in the cottage yard. “It is my husband returned from tending his kerns." Formerly nimble fingers grew clumsy with haste as they twisted at Maryssa's mahogany curls. Hairpins that had clung in the thick mass slipped and rattled to the floor. Maryssa stared out the window at the man who had just arrived. He was silhouetted against the lantern's glow. Confusion swirled in Maryssa as her gaze swept the humble bedchamber in which she and Rachel stood. Rachel had spoken as though the crudely clothed Irishman climbing down from the cart were some baron out viewing his estates. Yet even in the meager light from the lantern, Maryssa could see that Kane Kilcannon's boots were probably older than little Katie, his mantle faded through countless seasons.

"Hasten, everyone! Hide!"

Her musings were quelled by the sound of Tade's voice, low and filled with mischief.

"Dev, get in here!"

Maryssa heard the sounds of the Kilcannon children as they darted to do Tade's bidding, the older ones battling to hush the younger ones, stifling giggles, and shuffling of bare feet on the floor. She could almost see them scurrying to hide themselves.

"Tade," one high-pitched voice squeaked, "Boyd sat in Ma's bread dough."

"Well, Katie's licking the sugar rock!"

"Ouch! Quit pinching! "

"You quit!"

The squabble was cut off by Tade's whispered baritone. "I'll break that sugar rock over your heads if you don't be quiet!''

The threat drew a spate of giggles from the offenders, but the sound of their laughter was suddenly lost in the creak of the cottage door swinging open.

"Surprise! Da! Da! Devin's come home!" Whoops of laughter, shouted greetings, the heart-soaring cacophony of ten loving people speaking at once bubbled through the doorway. Rachel fumbled with the comb, grabbed for it, but it clattered to the floor at her feet.

Cupping her palm over the troublesome knot of hair at the nape of her neck, Maryssa turned to the now-frazzled woman. "Go on," she prodded gently. Rachel beamed her a grateful smile, dumping the rest of the bone pins into Maryssa's other hand.

The bedchamber door flew open. Rachel ran into the midst of the clambering group, her drab linsey-woolsey splashed with the bobbing, bright faces of the little ones, her eyes fastened adoringly on the towering figure of her husband who was crushing Devin in a hearty embrace.

Rachel had called him Kane, Maryssa remembered, staring at the man who, except for his bright russet hair, might be Tade twenty years from now. No, she amended, in a hundred years Tade would not look like his father. Tade's rakehell grin would never harden into lines so cynical; never would the dancing light in his green eyes die; and no amount of world-weariness would eclipse the beauty of his features.

Maryssa winced as she jabbed a hairpin into her scalp, but oddly the thought of Tade's face changed to be like his father’s stabbed more deeply.

"Da! Da!" The high-pitched voice of the red-curled waif pierced through the babble of the others. Kane Kilcannon reached down to lift his tiny daughter in his arms.

Even from the doorway, Maryssa could see the child's cheeks puff with importance. "Devin came home."

"So he did, Katie-love," Kane Kilcannon chuckled.

"And Tade, he brought a pretty lady, too. She gotted wet and he wescued her, and Deirdre yelled and—"

The joyous chatter died. From the open doorway Maryssa could see the eyes beneath Kane's dark brows narrow with a look that made her flinch. He turned their sparking green fury on his son. "Tade, you brought a stranger here, knowing Devin—"

Little Katie tugged at her father's hair, her tiny face puckered with worry as her gaze darted from her beloved brother to her father's implacable face. "Not stranger, Da, a ‘Ninglish."

"English! Damn you!" In one swift motion, Kane shoved Katie into Rachel's arms and grabbed for Tade's shirt front. Tade's hand flashed out and locked around his father's wrist. She saw a muscle knot in Tade's jaw, his eyes glint dangerously.

"Don't."

"Don't? You know what will happen to Devin if they catch him? They'll—By God I ought to—"

"Beat me?" Tade's challenge tore blade sharp through the threat. "I'm not ten years old, Da."

"Kane!"

"Tade!"

Devin and Rachel leaped toward them, hands clutching at arms, trying to separate the two men.

Kane knocked Rachel's hand aside, Devin's straining fingers ludicrous against the rock-hard muscles of his brother. Every fiber in Tade seemed tight in barely controlled rage, and Kane looked even more frightening. Maryssa swallowed hard as his huge fist clenched.

"No! Please." She stumbled forward, astonished at the sound of her voice.

Her assurances that she would cause Devin no harm withered in her throat as Kane Kilcannon spun to face her.