The Maid of Ireland (6 page)

No one had invited Wesley to prayers. They assumed that he, like most Englishmen, protested the Catholic faith.

They had no priest to sing mass. He wanted to ask where the cleric had gone, but wasn’t certain they knew. Admitting he was Catholic and had studied at Douai would have wrung some sympathy from the Irish, but Wesley held silent. Something sinister was happening to the priests of Ireland; all he needed was an overzealous bounty hunter after him.

The church bell clanged with the dissonance of aged iron. A few minutes later, Caitlin MacBride and her entourage streamed up the road toward the stronghold.

The sight of her struck Wesley with a fresh bolt of yearning. His hand gripped the door frame, and his eyes devoured her. She wore a clean kirtle and apron. Her loose blouse and skirt molded a form similar to those he had heard described in the confessions of notorious skirt chasers. Suddenly he felt every minute of his three years of self-imposed celibacy.

She walked beside an exceedingly pretty girl with sleek blond hair and pale skin. He remembered her from the night before; she had been sulking in the women’s corner.

“Who is that with Caitlin?” he asked Rory.

“’Tis Magheen, Caitlin’s younger sister.”

“So there are two MacBride sisters.”

“Magheen’s not a MacBride any longer. She wed not long ago.” Rory scowled in disapproval. “She came back home because Caitlin failed to make good on the dowry.”

Wesley eyed the voluptuous younger sister, a blooming Irish rose who lacked the savage appeal of Caitlin. “What man would turn such a beauty out?”

“You’ll see.” Rory returned to his chore.

And Wesley did see, later, at the feast. People swarmed to Clonmuir from the countryside. They came on foot or crammed into carts, or by sea in
pucans
and curraghs—large, loud families who brayed greetings to one another and ate and drank as if the meal laid out on tables in the yard were their last—or their first in many days.

A high whistle pierced the noise. Heads turned toward the main gate. A large man on a handsome mare came clattering through, followed by two sturdy-looking retainers. He wore a long tunic woven of heather wool and studded with polished stones. His mane of black hair flowed around a face fashioned of strong, clean lines and draped with a long, braided beard.

The quintessential Irish lord, thought Wesley as the man dropped lithely to the ground, tossed his reins to a boy, and strode toward Caitlin and Magheen. He might have ridden off the tongue of a gifted bard.

Putting down his mug of ale, Wesley moved closer to the lord’s table to await the approach. Above his white beard, braided with brass bells for the occasion, Seamus MacBride’s face was florid, his eyes sparkling, and his mood blissful from drink.

Caitlin sat beside him, silent and watchful, her plate of spit-roasted beef untouched.

“Logan Rafferty!” Seamus spread his arms. “’Tis well come you are to our feast!”

Rafferty aimed a thunderous glare at Magheen. She moved closer to Caitlin and peeked demurely at him from beneath her long golden lashes.

Logan tossed back his inky hair. “And while the lot of you makes merry, Hammersmith is on the move again.”

“Hist!” said Caitlin, her amber eyes wide and fierce. In rapid Gaelic she added, “Have a care with that tongue of yours,
a chara.
We’ve an English visitor.”

Wesley stood with one hip propped on the table edge and an easy smile on his face. Inside, he seethed like the Atlantic in a gale. Surely this arrogant lord was the leader of the Fianna. Why else would Caitlin have been so quick to silence him? And who else would know the plans of Titus Hammersmith? For that matter, why had Hammersmith decided to go on the offensive so quickly? Damn the murdering Roundhead! Only a week ago they had agreed he would wait for a report from Wesley.

Rafferty subjected Wesley to a long perusal punctuated by flaring nostrils and glowering black eyes. “English, you say?”

“John Wesley Hawkins.” He lifted his mug. “My friends call me Wesley.”

“My inferiors call me Logan Rafferty, lord of Brocach.”

“I’ll do my best to remember that.” Wesley pulled himself to his full height. The two men stood as equals, eye to eye, each broad of shoulder and narrow of hip.

“What do you intend doing with yourself, Hawkins?” Rafferty demanded.

I’m here to take your head off, thought Wesley. Aloud, he said, “I’m for Galway tomorrow.”

Rafferty hooked his thumbs into the band of his trews. “Galway, is it?”

“Aye.” Wesley had just made the decision. With a stab of loss he realized he no longer needed to seduce Caitlin MacBride in order to coax secrets from her. “If I manage to give Hammersmith the slip, I’ll take a ship to England.”

“The sooner the better,” muttered Rafferty. Turning his back on Wesley, he said to Magheen, “The fiddler’s playing a reel,
agradh.
”

She gave him a beautiful, false smile. “Why, thank you for telling me so. I was just thinking, our English guest might like to learn the steps.”

Wesley found himself pulled into the center of the dancers. Magheen danced like a shadow on a breeze, light and graceful, conscious that the movements of her willowy body attracted every male eye in the yard. Although she smiled up at Wesley, her gaze kept straying to Logan Rafferty.

Wesley was curiously unresponsive to the lovely woman on his arm. Again and again his attention strayed to the golden-skinned girl who stood with her father and Logan Rafferty by the table.

“It’s generous of you,” said Wesley, “to give an Englishman this dance when your husband’s obviously such a great lord.”

“My husband’s a great fool,” she retorted. “I’m using you to show him so.”

Wesley could not suppress a grin. “All men should find themselves so used.” The pattern of the reel brought them near the table. Like a she-wolf guarding her cubs, Caitlin watched their every move. Feigning casual interest, he remarked, “Rafferty must be a busy man, times being what they are.”

“Aye. He expects me to sit and warm the hearthstones while he—oh!” Magheen lurched against Wesley. He whipped a glance over his shoulder in time to see Caitlin drawing back the foot she had stuck in her sister’s path.

The deliberate interruption convinced Wesley that he had guessed correctly about Rafferty.

When they passed the table a second time, the lord of Brocach reached out and grasped Magheen’s arm. “Get some manners on you, wife,” he ordered.

Magheen tossed her head. “I’ll not be your sometimes wife, Logan Rafferty. ’tis a full partner I’ll be or none at all.”

His spine stiffened. The people nearby hushed, the better to hear the quarrel.

“I came here to make a bargain,” said Logan. To Wesley’s surprise, he addressed not Magheen or Seamus, but Caitlin. “I’ve decided to reduce the dowry, out of the goodness of my heart.”

Magheen’s face blossomed into a smile that might have set the mountains to singing.

“The betrothal papers specified twelve healthy cows,” said Rafferty. “You offered one bullock as a token of good faith. I’ll take that, and call us even.”

While the onlookers gasped, Magheen buried her face in her slim white hands. Seamus hid behind the wide rim of his mug. Caitlin closed her eyes, nostrils thinning as she tried for patience and lost the battle.

“You picked the wrong time to let reason come on that great fat head of yours, Logan,” she burst out. In one swift movement she picked up her untouched wooden trencher of beef and thumped it down on the table in front of him. “There’s your bullock, and welcome to it!” Leaping up from the table, she stormed across the yard and disappeared up a crumbling flight of stairs to the wall walk.

* * *

Christ have mercy, Caitlin seethed, her bare feet clapping against age-worn flagstones. “Will nothing go right with me these days?”

She had arranged a brilliant marriage for her sister only to have the two fighting like Roundheads and Irishmen. She had cast a spell for her lover and had conjured a renegade Englishman. And to cap all her woes, Hammersmith was on the march again.

She paused at a wide break in the wall. Her gaze traveled down the sheer drop of Traitor’s Leap, where the sea hurled white-bearded breakers at the pointed rocks. Back in the Tudor queen’s time, a member of the MacBride sept had tried to adopt English policies. His efforts had driven him to this spot; his guilt had hurled him over.

Her thoughts circled round and round like a flock of gulls after a fishing boat, and came to rest on John Wesley Hawkins. She should feel relieved that he had decided to go. And yet a hidden voice in her heart whispered that he must stay, for there was unfinished business between them.

“I’d been wondering why you wouldn’t touch your meal,” said a smooth, golden voice.

She spun around. There stood Hawkins, smiling that heart-catching smile, transfixing her, backing her against the rough crenellated wall.

“I take it that roasting the bullock wasn’t your idea,” he added.

“My father’s.” She swung back to look over the wall. Waves exploded against the shore but farther out, the waters lay dark and calm. How many times had she stood here, gazing at the flat empty line of the horizon, seeking a glimpse of a tall ship coming toward her, bearing her heart’s desire?

“It’s a good harbor,” Hawkins said.

He stood very close to her, so close that her shoulder grew warm. “Yes.” She took a step away from him. The natural harbor had a narrow entrance leading to a deep, horseshoe-shaped cove.

“Cromwell is determined to have Clonmuir in Hammersmith’s control, isn’t he? So he can have a port of his own, a port capable of accommodating deep-draught vessels.”

“Yes,” she said again. “That’s why we’re so determined to hold it for our own.”

“Cromwell’s army exceeds the entire population of Ireland,” said Hawkins. “He has enough men and guns to lay waste to every stone of Clonmuir. How will you stop him?”

“We’ll—” She clamped her mouth shut. How careless this disarming man made her. “You’d be surprised, Hawkins, what a few deeply committed warriors can accomplish.”

“No,” he said with an odd, wistful shimmer in his shadow-colored eyes. “No, I wouldn’t be surprised. And you’re to call me Wesley.”

“It’s such an English-sounding name.”

“That it is, Caitlin MacBride. A man can’t change what he is.”

How true, she thought. It was that very truth that had led her, again and again, to forgive her father’s follies. If she and Hawkins had been other than they were, they might have been friends.

“Tell me about Logan Rafferty and your sister.” He had moved closer again, a brush of heat against her arm.

She knew she should retreat, or better yet, push him away. Yet the commanding beauty of his face, the obvious ease with which he held himself, kept her in a thrall of curiosity. She knew she shouldn’t confess the turmoils of Clonmuir to an English stranger, but where was the harm in it? She had no confidant save Tom Gandy, and her steward’s habit of speaking in riddles was more vexing than satisfying. Despite Hawkins’s intimidating good looks and blatantly English character, something about him put her at ease. Just looking into his eyes gave her a feeling of peace, like the rocking motion of a boat on a calm sea.

“Logan comes from an old and industrious clan,” she explained, “although he’s taken on some English ways. That should please you.”

“So far, nothing about the man has pleased me.”

Caitlin held back a smile. “He should have chosen a wife of higher rank but...well, you’ve seen Magheen.”

“She’s very pretty.”

A tiny ache flared in Caitlin’s chest. Pretty was a word that could never apply to her. Tall and gawky, wild of hair, her face made up of harsh lines, she was not one to escape men’s attention. But it was not the soft, poetic devotion of smitten swains. Instead she commanded soldiers who had no choice.

Images of Hawkins dancing with Magheen harried her thoughts. He had moved with animal fluidity, a perfect foil for Magheen’s winsome grace. In looks, Hawkins was her masculine equal. She wondered why he wasn’t paying court to her now instead of pursuing Caitlin.

“Magheen’s not merely pretty,” she said. “She’s bright and amusing and wise in...important ways. She’s had many suitors, but would settle for no less than Logan. But nothing is simple. Because of her lower station, he demanded a large dowry. I tried to hide the sum from Magheen.”

“I take it she found out.”

“She did, and it burned her pride.” Reluctant amusement tugged at the corners of Caitlin’s mouth.

“So what did she do about it?”

“She refused to share his bed until he reduced his demands.”

“Ah. Your little sister has some of your defiance in her.”

Caitlin erected a wall of defense around her emotions. “We’ve been without a mother for six years. You’ve seen...our father. We don’t have the luxury of behaving like conventional ladies.” She sighed. “The matter might have been settled this very day. Logan would have had a live bullock, not one turning over a cookfire.”

“Your father’s doing?”

“Aye. So now I must find another means to appease Logan.”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You? You alone, Caitlin?”

“Aye.”

“It’s a heavy burden for a young girl.” His large hand came up. Like the brush of a feather, it coasted along her jawline.

Caitlin was so surprised by his touch that for a moment she stood unmoving, hearing the crash of the sea and the dull thud of blood in her ears. Her skin tingled where his rough knuckles caressed her. Pulled by a force woven of longing, loneliness, and magic, she leaned toward him, staring at his strange English-made shirt and the thick belt he wore at his waist. St. George’s cross was stamped into the leather.

The patron saint of England brought her to her senses. She drew back quickly. “You mustn’t touch me.”

Very slowly, he lowered his hand. “You need to be touched, Caitlin MacBride. You need it very badly.”

She girded herself with denial. “Even if it were so, I would not need it from an Englishman.”

“Think again, my love. We’re easy with one another despite our differences. Remember our first meeting—the shock of it, the
knowing?
We could be good for each other.”