Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) (6 page)

"Maryssa." His voice was ragged-edged, his face white. She froze, stunned that this man she had never seen before knew her name. Emotions, raw and undefinable, flashed across his face, the once-handsome features contorting with a fury that terrified her.

He wheeled on Tade, eyes wild. “Hellfire! That's Bainbridge Wylder's daughter!"

Horror froze every face in the room. Marisa stumbled back, the stark look of betrayal on Tade's face lashing her like the bite of a whip.

"Wylder!" Tade's throat knotted, and for a second she thought he would strike her.

"Tade, listen.” At the fear choking Deirdre's voice, he turned, the whole family stilling to silence. Maryssa's nails cut into her palms, her heart hammering in her chest, taking on an odd, lurching rhythm. Her heart? No. Hoofbeats. Scores of hoofbeats.

Her gaze darted to the window just as Tade bolted over to slam the shutters. He turned, his face ash gray.

"Tade?" Rachel quavered. “Who is it?”

"Soldiers." His eyes locked on Maryssa, and the menace in them shot through to her fingertips. "A whole cursed troop of English soldiers."

M
aryssa's head
swam with the horrible sensation of being swallowed by an equine sea as the soldiers swarmed around the cottage walls, the clank of their trappings and the sound of their shouts beating against the whitewashed clay with the force of siege guns. Tade rammed home the iron bolt, ludicrous as it barred the door, and in that frozen instant, Maryssa felt the warmth, security, and love of the family around her crack, each face reflecting its own sharp-edged pain.

Kane's countenance was filled with the rage of a conquered king, set in sharp relief against Devin's waxen yet proud features. Deirdre stood, stricken in the shadow of the other children while Rachel's dogged, quiet strength was laced with an inner torment so wrenching that Maryssa had a sudden feeling that she, too, was among the hunted.

But as the seconds stretched into eternity it was Tade's features that tore at Maryssa, because it was as if, somehow, he had lost his own soul.

"Quick, Dev, the loft." With the first slam of boot heels on hard-packed ground, Tade shoved Devin toward a shadowed corner of the room where short lengths of board scaled the wall to an opening in the ceiling. Eyes, blindingly green and deadly, lingered just long enough to see Devin bolt up the first rungs of the makeshift ladder before Tade spun around. Snatching the babe from the cradle by the fire, he pushed it into the gangly youth's hands, mouth hard and grim as he turned the cradle over. Tiny bedclothes tumbled across the floor, the soft shushing sound lost in an odd clatter. Maryssa stared in stunned surprise as a board at the bottom of the cradle fell out, spilling the contents of a hidden compartment onto tangled muslin. The gilded crest of a sheathed dagger and the dull gleam of a pistol glinted in the firelight, their jeweled, deadly hues pillowed in the midst of the baby's cradle blanket.

Tade swooped down to snatch up the dagger and whipped it behind his back to shove its sheathed blade into the waistband of his breeches as Deirdre flew up behind him to pick up the pistol, its thick brass butt making her hands look as fragile as a child's.

"Open in the name of the king!" a voice roared inches from the bolted door. Rachel dived for the baby things, bundling the mass of muslin into the cradle and righting it just as the sickening sound of splintering wood ripped through the room. Tade's eyes locked on the pistol in Deirdre's hand, their green depths widening in surprise and fear as the iron hinges screeched, the metal tearing free of its moorings.

"Don't, Dee," he cried desperately. "It won't fire—"

Deirdre's eyes darted from the weapon in her hand to Tade's face. She fumbled with the pistol, its weight suddenly seeming too great for her fingers to hold.

Maryssa cowered back by the hearth as the battered door exploded inward and a score of red-coated soldiers poured through the gaping opening, blades drawn. She glanced at Deirdre just in time to see the last glimmer of the pistol's butt cap disappear into the pocket laced beneath the girl's dimity apron.

"Stand where you are!" a whey-faced lieutenant barked. "Any of you Irish scum twitch so much as a muscle and your rebel heads'll part comp'ny with your shoulders." Maryssa's eyes flew up, her face burning as guiltily as though she were the one with the pistol beneath her skirts, but when her gaze snagged Tade's, the expression on his handsome features drove all color from her cheeks. His mouth curled back from perfect white teeth in a smile so deceptively bland it might have greeted a friend who had stopped by for a visit, but his eyes, crystal-hard, sharp as a splintered emerald, made a shiver scuttle up Maryssa's spine. The swarm of soldiers parted, allowing a stubby peacock of a man to strut into the room. A colonel by rank, he swaggered up to Tade with the bravado of a village bully, his thick lips drawn into a gloating grin that made Maryssa think of fat white slugs feasting in rotted meat.

"What is the meaning of this!" Kane Kilcannon demanded, starting to stalk toward the man. A flash of keen-edged steel hissed through the air, its point blocking Kane's path. Maryssa saw Tade's hand jerk toward his back, freeze, then flatten against the oak table behind him.

"Things too quiet at the barracks, Rath?" he asked, breaking a piece of crust from the loaf of bread to his right and biting off a hunk. He chewed slowly, lounging back against the scarred wood as his eyes roved disparagingly from the intricately curled white wig perched atop the colonel's low brow to the glossy boots straining to encase his plump calves. The barest trace of mockery tilted one corner of Tade's mouth. "I can assure you that your method of storming cottages full of women and children remains, as always, impeccable. Of course, if you would merely have knocked—"

"And given you a chance to slip our quarry out a window? Ah, no. Far better to surround the place and kick in the door. You Irish would slide a man full grown back into his mother's womb if you thought you could hide him there."

"Aye, and you English would cut open every lass of child-bearing age in the county to find him." Tade straightened, a muscle in his jaw snapping tight. "But if you're running down some desperate criminal who dared say a rosary or teach his child to read, you'd best get back to your hounds. There is no one here but Kilcannons tonight, and little Ryan's not been about his cutthroat ways of late. He's a bit of a rash beneath his napkin."

"Don't play the buffoon with me, you arrogant Irish buck, or I'll show you just how deep I'm willing to cut to find my prey."

"Your prey? And just who is this fox that he takes half an army to hunt him down?"

"You know full well whom we seek and why. Your brother, fugitive from His Majesty's justice."

"Justice?" Tade chuckled, leaning over to drop the unfinished chunk of bread into the babe's tiny fist. "That explains everything. It's impossible to be fugitive from that which doesn't exist. Ryan, here, couldn't—"

"Damn you, Kilcannon," Rath exploded, his face puffing scarlet as his coat. "I'm not after babes and well you know it! It's Devin we want. And I swear I'll tear these walls down with pickaxes to find him if I have to! Men—"

The command Rath had been about to give was lost in a shriek as Deirdre stumbled forward. "Devin?" she cried. "He's alive?”

Every eye in the room snapped to her face, and Maryssa watched in astonishment as the girl clutched at her throat, her thick honey-gold lashes fluttering closed as she drooped gracefully into a dapper young captain's arms.

The startled officer's sword clattered to the floor, his hands barely catching her as she sank to the floor. But the heavy, thunking sound of another metal object clunking against the wooden planks shattered the sudden silence like the crack of a musket. Maryssa stared in clutching fear as the side of Deirdre's apron bulged out, the outline of the pistol clearly visible beneath the thin cloth. It was a deadly gambit, Maryssa sensed in that instant, designed to distract the soldiers from their search in the desperate hope Devin could find some way to escape. Yet the danger to Deirdre herself with her scarce-concealed gun. . .

For all the girl's spirit, Maryssa could see Deirdre’s eyelids twitch, and sensed that this girl— who had probably never fainted in her life— was now terrified. A flash of movement caught Maryssa's eye. Tade reached for his knife hilt, and she knew in that instant that if he reached it he would die. Knew, too, that she couldn't let him.

"Out of my way, knave!" She swept in front of him, knocking him off balance as though he were a cur in her path. The fingers that had been a finger’s breadth from the gilded dagger crashed against the wall, any hope Tade might have held of slipping the blade out in secret dissolving as the soldiers' eyes locked on the two of them.

"Halt, wench!"

"Halt?" Stiffening her spine in Lady Dallywoulde's most haughty manner, Maryssa pushed past the stocky soldier who had stepped in her way, stamping around him to face Rath in high dudgeon. "You dare command the daughter of Bainbridge Wylder about as though she were some Irish trollop?" she demanded, praying her pounding heart would not beat its way out of her chest. "My father will have your hide for this!”

"Wylder?" Rath barked a laugh. "And what would the lord of Nightwylde's daughter be doing dressed in peasant rags warming herself at Kilcannon fires?"

"The lord of Nightwylde's daughter was all but killed by the most disgusting mount in the manor's stables." Maryssa's chin jutted upward. "The wretched beast wandered off, then threw me into a lake where I all but drowned." She let her gaze flick scornfully about the room, her voice wavering just an instant as her eyes flashed over Tade's murderous glare.

"Considering the low company I've had to suffer since this Kilcannon person brought me here, I was beginning to wish I had drowned." She forced a disdainful sniff, patting her curls in the fashion she had seen the vapid court beauties adopt. "Can you imagine? They wanted to take me back to Nightwylde in a donkey cart! And now, when I dare hope that I am to be rescued from this hovel and accorded the respect I deserve from honorable Englishmen, I am slandered and degraded!"

A tiny quiver crept into Maryssa's voice, and she hoped Rath would interpret it as wounded dignity rather than the fear it was.

Revulsion prickled her stomach as his pig eyes sank deeper into their folds, their eager, slavering light skimming over her body as though it were a prime haunch of mutton. When he raised his gaze to hers, his features were schooled into a careful mask of deference and a genuine approval that made Maryssa want to retch.

"My dear Miss Wylder, what you must have endured, being stranded in such crude surroundings! Can you find it in your heart to forgive my men and me this unconscionable breach of manners?"

"I shall consider it if you will escort me to my father's estate at once. These clothes make my skin itch. Heaven only knows what kind of creatures are crawling inside them."

"My men and I will deem it a privilege to deliver you safely to your father. But first let us give you the pleasure of watching His Majesty's army ferret out an enemy to the Crown."

Maryssa felt her palms go clammy as the soldiers ringed around the room tensed, readying for the search. With so much effort she thought her face would crack, she made her lips curl in distaste, letting her gaze stray to Tade, then dismiss him. "Colonel Rath, it would be a weak Crown indeed that found an enemy in these lowly creatures."

"The Irish are most deceptive to the eye, Miss Wylder, and sometimes"—Rath's beady eyes fastened on Tade—"winning to the heart. But rest assured that the man we seek is a criminal as vile and depraved as the devil himself."

The horror that whitened Maryssa's face was so real it left her chilled and numb. "What..." She barely whispered the word, wanting to ask what Devin was guilty of, then realizing she did not want to know. She swallowed, her gaze dropping to the floor.

"Miss Wylder, have you seen anyone else here in, say, the last three hours? A man a head taller than I, blond hair, blue eyes? On last report he was wearing black breeches and a frock coat, but he might have—"

"Nay.”

"You are certain?"

She could feel the tension in every Kilcannon, from little Katie to Devin, who was hidden away in the loft, but eclipsing all of that was Tade, the knotting in his muscles, the fire in his green eyes. He seemed to touch her, though they stood half a room apart. An enemy to the Crown, Rath had claimed. Devin— evil, depraved.

Maryssa forced her eyes to Rath's. "Colonel, I vow I've seen no one. Now, if you would kindly escort me home—"

"All in good time, my lady." Rath's eyelids narrowed, and as he scanned the room she could almost see his nose twitch, scenting its prey. “It will not take much time for my men to search this hovel before we leave. Something may have escaped your notice. Perhaps even now that devil Kilcannon lurks beneath a pallet or in a trunk."

"And perhaps the French army is hiding in the thatch straw," Tade observed with a brittle grin.

Maryssa hazarded a warning glance toward him, panic rising yet again in her throat as her gaze flashed back to Rath's paunchy face. "Do you judge me a liar, Colonel Rath?" she demanded, desperation choking her. "Or do you think me merely a fool?"

“No. I only—" Rath stammered, his neckcloth suddenly seeming too tight for his throat.

Maryssa clenched hanks of petticoats in fists that felt too stiff to move. "I was nearly killed, was dragged off to this mud hut, forced to wear rags, and very nearly had to be trundled home in a manner that would have battered my sensibilities, not to mention certain parts of my anatomy." Tears brimmed over her lashes, burning her cheeks in hot trails of fear. "But to be humiliated—called a liar—by you, an English gentleman—I'll not bear one more second of this outrage! Tear the cottage down looking for phantom criminals if you must, Colonel Rath. I'm going to Nightwylde. Now. If I have to walk every step of the way!"

"Miss Wylder, surely you cannot mean—Why, every brigand in Ireland frequents these hills. Just last night the Black Falcon—"

"Perhaps the Black Falcon will prove to be more of a gentleman than you!" Maryssa spun around and ran through the door. The thin facade of control she had held over herself melted in the misty night air, terror, desperation, and guilt causing her knees to quake until she was certain they would pitch her into a heap on the rocky yard. She could merely turn around, confess everything to the soldiers, and tell them Tade had threatened her into silence.

But it was not Tade's rage that had stilled her tongue, not fear of his revenge. Maryssa bit her lip until it bled, welcoming the stinging pain. It had been their love she could not betray—Devin's, Tade's, Rachel's. No matter what Devin's crime, Maryssa could not have borne seeing the soldiers tear him away from his loving family, could not have borne the tiny Kilcannons' sobs, Rachel's keening.

Maryssa buried her face in her hands. She was aiding a fugitive from the Crown. A thief? Murderer? Traitor? No court in England would acquit her if she shielded a truant from justice. And her father would no doubt rejoice to be rid of her.