Lord of the Isle (14 page)

“You can see from here to the high cross at Maghera?” Morgana asked in an astonished voice. Landsdowne Abbey
was an hour’s ride east of Maghera. “How far away is that?”

“Hmm…” Hugh considered the distance as he adjusted knobs to bring that Celtic cross into clear view. He didn’t think it important to mention that only on the clearest days, like this one, was such a sighting possible. Today Hugh’s scopes could see fifty miles or better.

Once the scope was adjusted, he relinquished his seat to Morgana. It wasn’t right that he continued to treat her as familiarly as he had during the night. Her status as a religious troubled him greatly. It seemed natural to want to hold her and touch her. He refused to think of what had passed between them last night as a sin.

Loghran would tell him otherwise, and Morgana’s confessor would surely tell her the same. Hugh did not intend to let his emotions get away from him again. She would be perfectly safe in his care on the journey to Dunluce.

“Goodness, I see it,” Morgana whispered.

She was obviously awed by the distant sight of the sacred high cross, Hugh thought. St. Patrick had converted the kings of Ulster there, and together the kings had built the cross in Patrick’s honor after his passing, commemorating the day of their baptism.

“It’s just the tiniest speck in the distant hills, but I can see the cross, and the stele beneath it.” Morgana’s whisper rose to outright praise. “I’m impressed, Hugh O’Neill. This is a wonderful tool!”

Morgana stole a glimpse of Hugh’s solemn face. He was so distant, so very formal and reserved, completely lacking the passion he’d exhibited the night before.

“Have I done something wrong?” she asked.

“What makes you ask that?”

Morgana took a deep breath. A gentle wind played havoc with Hugh’s long black hair, ruffling it over his brow and his cheek. And the day’s bright sun gave proof that his beard was red, even though he kept it cleanly shaved. That told her
he was a man of deep contrasts, extremes and possibly opposites.

“I’m not certain what makes me ask that.” Morgana made an effort to explain her question. “I seem to sense that you are distancing yourself from me. Am I keeping you from something important?”

“Not at all.” Hugh stroked the hair out of his eyes and turned so that the wind was in his face and not behind him. “My time is my own. When the sun goes down, we are expected to attend supper in the hall. Now that you’ve had the chance to recover somewhat from your adventure, I must present you properly to my uncle and my sisters. You needn’t worry that you’ll be the focus of censure. I made certain no one knows about—” he paused just long enough for Morgana to wonder why “—about last night.”

She made no effort to hide the deep breath she needed to take before launching into discussing that topic. “I conclude you have some regrets, then?”

“I didn’t say that,” Hugh said very quickly. “And you shouldn’t, either. What happened happened, and can’t be undone. There’s no good to be accomplished from flaying ourselves and wearing hair shirts for a natural sin. Even in your state—”

“What state is that?” Morgana interrupted him deliberately. “You haven’t been thinking you forced me, I hope. Don’t you think I made a conscious choice at the time?”

“Did you?” Hugh’s brow lowered.

“Yes, Hugh O’Neill, I did make a choice. After what you witnessed yesterday, you should realize that I would not let any man take me unless I wanted him, as well.”

Morgana’s frankly spoken words put him back two full paces. He regarded her more soberly than ever. “Forgive me, I am not used to ladies speaking bluntly about matters regarding bedding. I certainly didn’t expect to hear that from a…a…”

Again his words halted, as though he’d just realized what he was saying and clamped a vise on his tongue.

“A what?” Morgana asked as she rose to her feet. She put a hand out to steady herself. Standing caused her to see the shimmering sunset glazing the lake. That touched off her sense of vertigo.

“A whore?” Morgana asked, putting her own words to what he wouldn’t say. “If that’s what you think I really am, I shouldn’t think plain speaking about intercourse would cause you to color to the roots of your hair.”

“I am most certainly not!” Hugh emphatically denied his outright and obvious blush. “No one would dare think of a novitiate as a whore, and I resent that accusation. As I tried to explain earlier, there is no sense trying to put a hair shirt of guilt on either of us for what happened. It just did. I’m certain your confessor will find some means to absolve you of whatever sin you care to call it. Rest assured, in my eyes you are most certainly not a whore. That you even say that is blasphemy to my ears.”

“Novitiate? Confessor? Blasphemy?” Morgana’s voice rose somewhat, for she was more confused than ever after his very strange dissertation. “You’ve got that wrong, if you think I am in need of a confessor for anything. Do you realize I killed a man yesterday?”

“It was self-defense,” Hugh argued. “That’s not the same thing as murder.”

“Really?” Morgana countered. “Had I had my way on the riverbank, I’d have murdered five more without so much as a dram of remorse. They deserved to die. My little brother, an angel only six winters old, was poisoned by one of Kelly’s bastards. They cut down eight men before my eyes at Benburg, then turned on me. It was my life or theirs.”

“That proves it isn’t murder,” Hugh reasoned. “You needn’t worry about losing your state of grace.”

“Grace!” Morgana laughed, pressed to say more than she knew she should by the raging emotions calling for revenge that he set loose within her. “Know you this, sir—the very last thing I seek on this earth is a confessor to listen to my
sins. I was damned to an eternity in hell long before last night, Hugh O’Neill.”

“This is upsetting you.” Hugh took hold of her arm, drawing her toward the stairs leading back into his loft.

Any other time, Morgana would have stood her ground and argued there, but the high tower gave her vertigo and the shimmering water made her nauseous.

“I’m not a whore and I’m not a witch!” she declared ferociously, as if saying that out loud denied the terms completely.

“No one here has said you were,” Hugh snapped in retaliation. “I refuse to listen to you disparage yourself with such unseemly terms. Do so again, and I’ll be pressed to do something about it. Is that clear?”

Hugh felt her hand trembling where it clamped on his forearm. As they went below, he studied her grimly set profile and worried that he’d caused her more grief. Her face was now as pale as candle wax.

“Have you eaten?” he asked concerned. He led her to his worktable and brought a stool to seat her.

Morgana didn’t argue as she sank onto the stool. Her head was doing things again. The circular room around her seemed to spin on a separate axis. “Yes, I ate.”

Hugh cast a glance over the cluttered table, looking for the bowl of fruit Mrs. Carrick had brought him that morning. A sampling of last winter’s apples was all the fruit available this early in the season. He took up one, and cut the fruit in half with Morgana’s golden dagger, examining it for spoilage before offering Morgana a crisp, peeled slice.

As she chewed on that, he brought another stool to the table and sat, clearing his machines out of their way. When he moved the last, an arbalest, he uncovered her wooden rosary and crucifix. Deliberately ignoring those objects, Hugh cut another slice from the apple and handed it to her.

“You know, I did tell you that I have the rolls from all the monasteries and abbeys in Ireland.”

The apple was on the edge of being overripe, grainy in texture and bland in taste. Morgana swallowed it, then reached across the table and pulled the rosary to her. “How did you acquire this? It looks just like the one in my saddlebags.”

“That’s because it is from your saddlebags, Morgana Fitzgerald.”

“You went through my things?”

That accusation stung. Hugh cut the remainder of the apple into quarters, then turned the blade toward her, exposing the ancient ogham writing on it. “This knife is the reason I looked inside your bags. I shouldn’t think that would come as such a surprise to you. O’Neills are capable of reading ogham and divining the meaning of crests and symbols. This knife was made for Gerait Og Fitzgerald, the ninth earl of Kildare.”

“And it belongs to me!” That response was delivered with considerable heat.

“I have not questioned that, my lady. Be assured that when the time is right, it will be returned to you. I do find my curiosity deeply aroused by an Arroasian nun traveling Ireland armed to the teeth and prepared to die defending herself. The nuns who lived at Saint Mary de Hogges’s Abbey were reportedly a penitent order, consecrated to vows of silence and poverty. In my understanding, their mission is committed to unbroken prayer and atonement for the sins of the entire world.”

“You’ve got that right.” Morgana snapped. “What’s your point?”

Exasperated, Hugh thundered, “Aren’t you an Arroasian?”

“No. I am most certainly not. When the deeds to my dower properties failed to arrive, they tossed me to the wolves. Likewise, my brothers were expelled from the good sisters’ charitable orphanage, on the grounds that I was available to care for them.”

Hugh said nothing for a long while, as he carefully considered her words. It relieved him on one hand, and troubled him deeply on the other. He had to know for certain her exact status with the church. That was most important to him.

“Are you telling me you did not take your final vows?”

“Hugh, surely you know the general rule of the orders. A woman, even one who is a propertied widow, must be twenty-one years of age before she can profess her final vows.”

Her words rocked Hugh to the bottom of his soul. He reeled from them, staggering with the import of everything she’d just said.

“Are you telling me you are also a widow?”

The words had already been spoken. Morgana had no chance to retract them. “Can we deal with one question at a time? I asked mine first.”

“Yes.” Hugh felt like swearing. “I am aware of the general rules of most orders. There are exceptions made, but not without special dispensation from the pope. But you told me last night that you are twenty-two years of age.”

“Now, this year I am twenty-two, sir. I was expelled from all hope of sanctuary when I was ten-and-seven.”

“Good heavens!” Hugh exclaimed, elated by that word in one way and distressed in another. “Where have you been living for the past four years, then? Surely you have not been wandering the island with two young boys, trying to evade English capture.”

Morgana inhaled deeply. Would it help Sean’s cause to answer that question honestly? She didn’t think so. Hugh O’Neill wouldn’t like any answer she gave him. “Suffice it to say I have good friends in both high and low places. I have learned to survive, sir. Nothing else matters in this life.”

“Answer me this—did you enter the convent after your husband’s death?”

Morgana glared at him, refusing to answer that question by remaining silent. She didn’t like to think of the sad and agonizing months of her short-lived marriage. It was too painful.

Hugh lifted his hand in a gesture that as much as said he was brushing her willfulness aside. He reached across the cluttered table for a pack of scrolls. “You don’t need to answer that question. If you prefer, I shall look it up for myself.”

“His name was Gregory O’Malley.”

“The privateer?” Hugh barked, stunned. “Grace O’Malley’s legendary twin brother was your husband?”

Morgana swallowed hard. She’d not fall apart or break down now, just because this bastard Ulsterman was pushing too close to her truths. “Aye, he was a good man, and I’ll not hear anything bad said about him. Be warned, O’Neill.”

Talking ill of a dead man was the last thing on Hugh’s mind. Especially not a dead man as renowned and revered as Captain Greg O’Malley. Had O’Malley lived, Drake would have lost his admiral’s rank by now. He took a deep breath to calm himself as he cast the scrolls back onto the clutter.

“How did you come to know James Kelly?”

On safer ground, Morgana managed a civil answer. “One cannot live in Ireland and not know James Kelly. He has insinuated himself everywhere, and made himself indispensable to both Lord Grey and Lord Sidney.”

“Lord Grey is responsible for closing the last of the Pale’s hallowed abbeys,” Hugh acknowledged, “Sidney for managing the government.”

“Yes,” Morgana replied. “But James Kelly is ever eager for advancement. When I first heard how they stripped everything of value from the abbey, it seemed like retribution from a just God to me. I repented that wickedness. The sisters didn’t deserve being brutally raped by Grey’s army.
Later I learned Lord Grey’s true purpose, and why his army behaved so brutally.”

“Are you implying they were after you?” Hugh didn’t follow her reasoning. “How do you figure that?”

“Yes. The English also had the convent’s roll, and access to the Christian names of all the nuns living within its confines. They specifically wanted James Fitzgerald’s eldest daughter. I think that was the only time in my life that luck has actually been on my side. No one on earth knew that I had found a safe haven on Clare Island save Grace O’Malley.”

“Clare Island,” Hugh murmured as he reached across the table and secured another apple from the basket. He began to peel it, turning the apple round and round against her grandfather’s blade. “That’s west, in Connaught, is it not?”

“Yes.” Morgana also reached across the table, but what had caught her interest was a miniature brass cannon. She rolled it toward her on the wooden wheels affixed to its cart.

The cannon was as long as her forearm and as thick around as a musket barrel. It was complete right down to a tiny wick sticking up from its flash box. She lifted it to her nose and sniffed, inhaling the scent of smoke, saltpeter and gunpowder. “Does this work?”

“Aye.” Hugh severed a portion of the peeled apple, offering it to Morgana. She refused it with a shake of her head, so he ate it. “It’s a deadly toy, when packed right.”

“How curious.” Morgana rolled the cannon aside and brought another machine from the clutter. “This looks positively diabolic. Grace O’Malley has something just like it. How do you use it?”