The Maid of Ireland (37 page)

With cold rationality he maneuvered himself along the embattled parapet between two embrasures. He waited calmly for the next thrust. Hammersmith had him cornered. His death was a certainty. But for Caitlin he could do one last deed. He could escort Hammersmith to his death. He pictured them struggling, falling together, the terrifying flight to the jagged rocks below and the sea that offered the ultimate oblivion, the sea that had brought him to Caitlin.

Bending low, he threw aside his broken sword and made a beckoning motion with his hands. “Aye, come to me, Titus. Don’t let steel get in the way of our fight.”

“You tempt me with the prospect of an easy brawl. But I’m a soldier and not given to foolish games.”

“You invented the word foolish, Titus. All of Ireland laughs at you.”

With a bellow of rage, Hammersmith lunged. His blade scored a deep furrow in Wesley’s cuirass. Seizing the hilt of the weapon, Wesley ripped it from Hammersmith’s grip and flung it away with a clatter.

Possessed by a final surge of strength, he held fast to Hammersmith and made for the top of the wall.

“You’re mad.” Hammersmith’s voice shook.

“It hardly matters now.” Wesley shoved Hammersmith toward the edge.

The Roundhead’s eyes rolled back in fear. He clung like a limpet to Wesley. “Please, I beg you—”

“Plead with the devil, for I’m taking you to hell with me.”

Hammersmith hooked his thumbs into Wesley’s windpipe and pressed hard.

The two of them teetered on the precipice. Stars of pain shattered in Wesley’s head. Consciousness ebbed. He knew he had only seconds to act.

He pulled up his knee and pushed it against Hammersmith’s chest.

Still clinging to Wesley, Hammersmith flew over the wall. Wesley felt a rush of wind, a weird, momentary weightlessness. Terror and regret and love streaked through his mind in those final moments.

Then a hand grabbed him by the seat of his trews. The leather ripped. The tendons in Wesley’s arms stretched taut from the weight of Hammersmith. He pounded the Roundhead’s clinging hands against the wall. Hammersmith screamed in terror. His body tumbled down, wheeling hundreds of feet below into blackness.

“And where do you think you’re off to,
a chara?
” said a familiar and completely unexpected voice.

Blinking in confusion, Wesley leaned out to peer over the wall. The rushing surf outlined the thrusting rocks of the shoreline. The sea had already swallowed her sacrificial offering.

Turning back to his rescuer, Wesley doubled his fists. “You were too late to save him, Logan. Now, about that challenge...” But fatigue and fear weakened his knees, and he stumbled.

Logan Rafferty threw back his head and shouted with laughter. His braided beard shone silver in the moonlight. “Time was, I might have taken advantage of your state.” He extended his hand, helped Wesley to his feet, and jammed a dented helmet on his head. “I didn’t come to save Hammersmith, but to right a grievous wrong. Let’s finish this, my friend.”

Adjusting the helm, Wesley blinked in disbelief. Then, with a cry of jubilation, he staggered down the stairs to the yard, snatched up a sword from the mud, and rushed to join the fighting.

And found little fighting to be had.

With his hammer upraised, Liam chased five Roundheads out of the yard. Rory had revived; Wesley heard his hellish war cries through the smoke. He fought alongside a giant blond woman Wesley did not recognize. Seamus unleashed a pack of wolfhounds on the Roundhead cavalry. Father Tully grabbed a dagger from a rabid-looking Englishman. He swiftly made the sign of the cross over the man, then slit his throat.

Tom Gandy—Gandy, for God’s sake, looking like a deadly Cupid—calmly shot off arrows from the gate tower. Wielding a charred broom, Magheen chased, with age-old fervor, a stray soldier.

And then there was Caitlin. Lovely as the moon, graceful as the wind, she rode down panicked soldiers, herding them out of the yard with expert arcs of her sword. Her task accomplished, she gave a great whoop of triumph.

Pure love flooded Wesley’s heart. He wrenched off his helm and flung it away. Spying him, Caitlin did the same. Her tawny hair rippled like hammered gold. Her eyes shone brighter than the stars of midsummer night.

The stars of eternity.

His throat clogged with words he could not speak. He grasped her about the waist and lifted her from the saddle. The shells of their breastplates clashed as they came together. They were kissing—hard, desperately, joyfully—before her feet touched the ground.

“Caitlin. You’ve come back to me.”

“Aye, my Wesley. This time, forever.”

“But how—”

She pressed her fingers to his lips. “Tom will tell it better than I. And I’ve the rest of my life to be making explanations. For now, my darling Wesley, I’ll be after saying just one thing to you.”

He tasted the damp tendrils of hair at her temple. “And what is that?”

“I love you.
Dia linn!
” Her kisses rained upon his astonished face. “I love you!”

“That’s three things,” he said shakily.

She laughed with a sweet, pure joy that nearly brought him to his knees. “And before the night is gone, it’ll be a thousand more.” She turned and loosed the cinch of the black’s saddle. From out of nowhere Brigid came and lugged the saddle away.

Brigid? But Wesley had ordered the women and children of Clonmuir to take shelter with Magheen at Brocach. Another mystery. Another miracle.

“Come ride with me.” Caitlin swung gracefully onto the black. “There’s work aplenty to be done here, but all can wait.”

Wesley mounted behind her. The black grunted and settled beneath the added weight. As they rode toward the gate, Logan Rafferty doffed his hat, his arm encircling his beaming wife. He handed a flask to Rory Breslin who shared it with the blond Amazon. Tom Gandy began ordering people to see to the wounded, strip the corpses, and set the yard to rights.

Caitlin urged the black to a gallop. As it shot through the gate, she gave a fierce yell. A few straggling Englishmen hit the ground and rolled into a ditch for cover.

Caitlin’s laughter trilled across the silvery landscape. To Wesley’s surprise, a faint gray glimmered over the hills to the east. The battle had devoured most of the night.

He reveled in the feel of Caitlin’s healthy young body clasped in his, in the song of her mirth on the wind.

They came to the strand, where milky light illuminated the tangled garden. Caitlin dismounted, waited for Wesley, and then slapped the black on the rump. “Go on, Sean,” she said. “Sure you’ve earned a bit of a rest.”

The horse trotted off.

A chill of shock froze Wesley. “Sean? But that’s Irish for John.”

“Aye, I’ve finally named him. ’Twas Gandy’s suggestion. Do you like it?”

He blinked. Tom’s uncanny choice nagged at strange memories in his head. “Yes, but you said—”

“I said a lot of things. A lot of blarney-brained, ill-considered things.” She bent and pulled off her boots one by one, then clapped them together to clean off the dust. “And sure I’ll be saying many more in the fine long years to come. Can you live with my sharp tongue?”

He took her by the shoulders, his hands filling themselves with the miracle of her living flesh. In a voice hoarse with emotion, he said, “I would die without every part of you.”

She turned her head into the lee of his shoulder. “I must tell you—”

“What, love?”

“It’s about your—” She broke off, studying his face, and her expression deepened with raw desire. She rose to kiss his cheek. “Later, my darling. Haven’t I earned a moment or two alone with my hus—” Her body stiffened when she spied the center of the garden. “What’s this?” Moving away from him, she went to inspect a carved stone.

“Something I made for you. When I thought you’d—” He stopped and swallowed, unable to shape the horror into speech.

Caitlin bent to inspect the low stone chiseled in the shape of a harp. The Irish epitaph read,
For Caitlin, the MacBride of Clonmuir, gone with the tide to a heavenly shore.
A rosebush had been planted at its base. A single white blossom pushed past the thorns.

“’Tis wondrous,” she said softly, reaching out to touch the stone. She turned her pain-filled face up to his. “When I think of how you suffered—”

“Don’t think of it,” he interrupted. “Think only of the joy we have now.”

They kissed again, their mouths sliding slowly and languorously together while their hands worked feverishly at buckles and fastenings, until breastplates and undertunics lay on the sand.

Wesley laughed shakily. “I never imagined I’d have to disarm my wife just to make love to her.”

They broke apart and he went down on his knees before her, tenderly divesting her of her trews. Her legs were thinner than he remembered. Questions crowded his throat, but he stopped himself. Not now. Not yet.

Leaving his own clothes draped over a rock, he took her hand. “Come into the sea with me, my love, to wash us clean of the battle,” he said.

Hand in hand, they waded in. The surf swirled around his knees and her thighs. Shivery warmth flowed through him.

Her hair made a veil over her shoulders and breasts. The wind lifted the tawny drapery from her creamy neck and bosom. Moving like a willow stirred by the wind, she came against him, their skin burning at the contact.

“Do you feel it, Caitlin?” he whispered against her damp, salty cheek. “Do you feel our love, like a brand upon the flesh?”

“It hurts, sometimes,” she admitted. “But sometimes I want it to.”

Nodding in understanding, he crushed her to his chest. Their love was borne of a thousand hurts. The agony of desire was a sweet reminder of their triumph.

He took her face between his hands and kissed her deeply. Her fingers skimmed over him in a caress of silken subtlety.

They waded deeper to where the restless waves lifted them, surged them together as if nature itself demanded their completion. The sting of salt honed passion to a sharp edge.

Wesley kissed her lips, her throat, her breasts, and the taste of her mingled with the tang of the great wide sea, an elixir more potent than fairy nectar. Her legs tightened, and she began to move.

Their bodies beating with the rhythm of the sea, they mated like wild creatures. He held nothing back, for he knew the woman in his arms was strong enough to accept his fierce, consuming love. In each thrust he poured all the passion, anger, sorrow, and joy that had been in his heart since he had first met her. In return, she offered hungry kisses, wild cries of abandonment, and love words so precious that he felt buoyant, free, capable of anything.

The waves carried them up to the shore, where the surf pulled at the sand and made a bed of foam for their love-fevered bodies. Caitlin’s eyes swept open. In them Wesley saw the mysteries of her, and knew his wife was the rarest woman in the world.

* * *

Spent, they lay still joined while passion ebbed in gentle pulsations, leaving a glowing warmth, the warmth of knowing that all would come right at last.

Almost all. Burying his face in her damp, tangled hair, Wesley thought of Laura. Anguish invaded his contentment. What had Cromwell done with his daughter?

The time had come to tell Caitlin everything. She loved him. Nothing he could tell her would change that.

Propping his elbows on each side of her face, he gave her a lingering kiss. Her eyelashes were spiky with salt water and perhaps tears. The colors of the coming dawn suffused her cheeks.

“There is something I must tell you.”

“Ah, Wesley, you can tell me anything.”

“I have a daughter who—”

“I know.”

“—has been in my care for three years, but—”

“I know.”

“—taken from me when I was arrested for—”

“I
know.
Is it deaf you are, John Wesley Hawkins?”

At last her words penetrated his painful rush of speech. He stared at her in astonishment. “How do you know about Laura?”

“I discovered the truth the second time I went to London.”

“London? Christ, you went to London?”

“And where do you think I’ve been,
amaden?
” She laughed at his confusion. “Taking the waters in Bath?”

With a lithe, rippling movement, she rose from the surf and dove beneath the waves to wash away the sand. Wesley gazed in pain and wonder at her sleek, darting form. Didn’t his beloved care about Laura? Perhaps it wasn’t fair to expect her to. Yet she was so caring with other children.

She emerged from the water and tossed back her streaming hair. “Your only problem is how you’ll cease being a stranger to the wee girleen.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Aye, it is. Get dressed and come with me.”

Nineteen

“P
apa!” A small figure ran across the yard of Clonmuir. Then she stood still, glancing back uncertainly at Aileen Breslin.

Wesley looked from Caitlin’s smiling face to the red-haired sprite twisting her tiny fingers into her apron.

She’d grown taller. Her hair hung longer down her back. It seemed only yesterday that she had been a cherubic baby, cuddled in his arms, so sweet and trusting. And now she stood before him, a little girl with a mind of her own, fearful, uncertain...

And then he was running, feeling his daughter’s presence like a warm breeze through his soul. He caught her in his arms, swung her around and clasped her to his chest. “Laura.” The tautness in his throat choked off any more words.

He detected the faint stiffness of hesitation in her, and his heart constricted. “Oh, Laura...”

Caitlin’s strong hand clasped his shoulder. “Sure and she’s had plenty of adventures for such a wee one.” Bending, she placed a kiss on Laura’s head. “Haven’t you,
a storin?
”

Laura nodded gravely. Her little hand fit itself into his.

In Irish, Caitlin said, “She is too young for scars.”

He willed himself to believe it. And then he did believe it, for Laura moved closer yet, laying her cheek to his chest, the way she used to do when they were on the run together, and he’d make a game of sleeping in hayricks and stillrooms. “You smell good,” she whispered. “You smell like Papa.”

Having her in his arms again brought the whole world back in focus, made sense of the months of turmoil that had gone before. His heart brimmed over, full of love and joy and awe for his daughter—and his wife.

“I came on a sailing boat to see you.” She pulled back to study him. Her small hand brushed his whiskers, and she made a face. “Papa, why are you crying?”

“I’m just so happy to see you again, poppet.”

“At first I didn’t want to leave Hampton Court, but wee Tom and Caitlin said you needed me.”

“And so I do, my treasure,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head and inhaling her familiar fragrance.

“Brigid showed me the ponies. Caitlin said I could have one for my very own.”

His tongue felt thick and clumsy. “Of course you can.”

Laura glanced across the yard where noisy children, home from Brocach, played with a litter of piglets. Only the crumbled wall and small mounds of straw placed here and there to soak up the blood gave evidence of the battle that had taken place. Piglets? Wesley rubbed his eyes. Where had they gotten meat on the hoof?

“I like it here,” Laura said. “Aileen says I don’t have to wear shoes anymore, and I like being near the sea. Do you like this place?”

He looked over her head at Caitlin. “Oh, aye, I surely do. We shall stay here forever, or so long as we’re welcome.”

“That’s forever,” said Caitlin.

Laura squirmed to the ground. “Can I go play now?” Without waiting for an answer, she sped off toward the group of children. In a moment of blind panic, Wesley started after her.

“Let her go.” Caitlin’s soft voice stopped him. “You have all your life to hold her now.”

“That’s the truth,” said Tom, coming forward with a spritely step. “Cromwell won’t be getting his hands on her—or any other bairn—ever again. Nor will you be subject to arrest, Caitlin.” He gave an impish grin. “The old devil died, you see.”

Caitlin made the sign of the cross. “Blessed Mary, then the poison finished him.”

“It was more likely the bog sickness,” Tom said over his shoulder as he walked away. “He caught it in Ireland.”

“Poison?” Confusion buzzed in Wesley’s ears. Then he listened, gape-mouthed, as Caitlin told of her capture, her imprisonment at the Tower, and her fateful interview with the Lord Protector on the eve of her execution.

He stretched out his hand and she took it, and together they walked across the yard, past Rory Breslin, who was making calf eyes at the buxom Englishwoman, Daisy Lane; past Father Tully who was tearing charred thatch from the spring house; past Conn and Curran and all the people of Clonmuir who had fought half the night and spent the other half clearing away the stains and rubble of the battle.

When they came to Magheen and Logan, they stopped. Behind the lord and lady of Brocach was a train of carts stuffed to the rails with bags of grain. Drovers tried to keep order amid the sheep and pigs and cows in the bawn.

Wesley’s gaze locked with Logan’s.

Logan stuck out his large hand. “It’s a grand day for the mending of hearts.”

Wesley clasped the proffered hand. “Aye, my lord. It certainly is that.”

Magheen and Caitlin let out their breath in a burst of relief. Seamus strolled up, buckling on a sword belt. “Ah, Rafferty, I see you got some manners on you at last.”

“Aye, sir.”

“None of this sir business,” said Seamus. “You’ll call me your da now.”

“Daida?” asked Caitlin, eyeing his antique armor. “What are you up to?”

“Another quest, and a grand one this time. Brian and I are off to France to join Charles of the Stuarts. Tom says he’s returning to the throne. I hear one of his mistresses is going to bring him back to the True Faith.”

His daughters shook their heads as he walked away, his old armor creaking. Logan went to oversee the unloading of the supplies.

With their hearts united and their world at peace, Wesley and Caitlin made their way up the stone steps to the wall walk. Already the English had abandoned the village, and people were returning to their houses.

Wesley looked down the west wall. The shore was empty save for the weed-draped crags. “I battled Titus Hammersmith here,” he said. “He went to hell by way of Traitor’s Leap.” The tide had sucked the body out to sea, just as the events of the night had leached the evil from Clonmuir.

“You gave the murderer no more than he deserved,” she said.

He pulled her against his chest. “At last,” he said, breathing in the sea scent of her hair, “at last I feel you are truly my wife.”

“I’m still the MacBride.” A smile he could not see sweetened her voice.

“And so you shall always be. Chieftain of the sept.” He lifted her hair and kissed her neck. “And mistress of my heart.”

“I thought there was no more magic in Ireland. But you’ve proven me wrong. Thank God we lost never a soul last night.”

He closed his eyes, thought a moment. “There was one loss.”

She stiffened. “Who?”

“You don’t know him. Or perhaps you know him very well.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure I do, either. It was someone who...lived inside me. I can think of no other way to explain. He...was a priest, a stranger who had the vocation I could never find with the church. When I was tortured, he came forth and accepted the pain for me.”

She made a sound of confusion in her throat, and he went on. “He helped me pass the initiation.”

“Aye, you did seem charmed during the ordeal.” He heard no surprise or disbelief in her voice.

“It wasn’t really me, but this other part of me, this Father John.” Wesley rested his chin on her head and gazed out at the dazzling golden line where the risen sun struck the sea. “I never knew it until last night.”

She shuddered a little. “What happened last night?”

He held her closer against him. “During the battle, he came to me. Not to fight for me as he had in the past, but to bid me farewell. He vowed I didn’t need him anymore. And he was right.”

She laid her hands over his. “I should call you a madman, but I cannot. There were times when you seemed strange to me, not yourself at all. That first time I bathed you. And when you tamed the black. Perhaps it was the stranger I was seeing.”

She turned in his arms. “I don’t see a stranger now, but the man I shall love for all my days and longer, into forever.”

“We’ve much work to do,” he reminded her.

“And much love to make.”

He smiled. Together they watched the breeze rippling through the green-clad hills. “Men will always try to conquer Ireland.”

And the Irish will always resist.

“Always.” He skimmed his fingers delicately over the rise of her cheekbones, loving the softness of her skin. “And she will always rush out to greet her invaders, grab them to her breast and fill them with the fine, soft essence of the land. In that way, Ireland will endure.”

“How wise you sound—for a tight pants, that is.”

“It’s a wisdom I learned from you and your people. I came here to conquer you. And here I stay, a willing prisoner of your heart.”

She reached up to kiss him. Pure as rain, love flowed across the bond. All around them, the great heart of Clonmuir beat in the breast of the wild and vital land.

The sea crashed over the rocks; dogs barked and men shouted in the yard, but for Caitlin and Wesley there was a stillness. She drew back, and her hand tenderly brushed his face. “Do you feel the magic?”

“Aye,” he breathed into her salt-dusted hair. “It’s all around me, but most especially, here in my arms.” As he bent to kiss his wife, the mist of enchantment rolled forth to fold them in gossamer softness, to sweep them away to the long, shining years ahead.

* * * * *