Virginia Henley (10 page)

He asked himself what exactly he did feel for her. He recalled their first meeting when the mere sight of her entranced him. When she spoke she exposed a quick imagination and a wide-ranging association of thought. Her tongue revealed every nuance of a rich fancy. Sean was shocked by the possessiveness he felt toward her. Then he remembered the slap she had delivered on his birthday. His eyes lit with amusement. He rubbed his cheek, still feeling the sting of her hand. A man probably never forgot the first woman who slapped him.

    
W
hile Joseph O’Toole was sailing to Anglesey to warn Amber of her husband’s plans, William Montague was received with all pomp and ceremony at Dublin Castle by Sir Richard Heron, the official from England who had been appointed to assist Lord Castlereagh, Ireland’s chief secretary.

When the business of the revenue was concluded, Montague asked for a private word with Lord Castlereagh, whose job it was to govern Ireland and keep the peace. At the
moment he was a man beset by trouble. Insurrection had broken out in four different counties and Castlereagh had sent in English soldiers to quell the trouble before England had a full-scale Irish revolution on its hands.

After being ushered into Lord Castlereagh’s presence, William wasted no time with small talk. “I have information that could prove invaluable to you,” William confided.

“And how much will this information cost, Montague?” the beleaguered chief secretary inquired cynically.

William looked offended. “Not a penny piece, my lord secretary. My loyalty and my duty to England compel me to come forward with this information.”

“Then speak on, Montague. The troubles escalate by the minute. Insurrection is spreading from Belfast, at the top, to the tip of Ireland in Cork.”

“I have information about the identity of a Captain Moonlight.”

“Captain Moonlight!” Castlereagh exploded. “There are a dozen such renegades arming the peasantry and inciting them to treason!”

“I have no doubt of it, my lord. But surely if you apprehended just one of them, it would be a simple matter to extract the other names from him?”

“You’d be surprised just how closemouthed and clannish the Irish can be, Montague. They are a breed unto themselves, God rot them! But tell me, who is this particular Captain Moonlight?”

“Since the name I am about to divulge is a noble and powerful one, I will need complete anonymity.”

“You have my word on it,” Castlereagh pledged.

    
T
wo armed guards from Dublin Castle carried the strongbox aboard the
Swallow.
As the small ship left Dublin’s harbor, William felt quite patriotic. After all the petty disservice he had committed, today he was making amends
by helping his country. The fact that he was helping himself at the same time filled him with satisfaction. There was no feeling on earth to compare with the knowledge that he was at the helm controlling events that shaped Destiny, so that she smiled upon him.

    
A
mber held Joseph at arm’s length. “You shouldn’t have come today. This is wrong, Joseph. We must stop seeing each other.”

“Stop it, Amber.” He loosed her hands to take her by the shoulders. “I’ve never felt this way before; I can’t just turn it on and off like a tap!”

The shadow of Emerald stood between them. “I’m old enough to be your mother, Joseph,” she said miserably.

“You’re little more than thirty, for God’s sake, young and alive and married to an old man!”

“Emerald must have found out about us when she went to Greystones. She looks at me with loathing. She won’t even stay under the same roof with me; she leaves the house at dawn and doesn’t return until dusk.”

“I don’t even know what the child looks like, Amber. It’s ridiculous to entertain the notion we could ever be betrothed.”

“I’ve told William she’s too young. She is going away to school when we return to London. All our boxes are packed; we’re leaving tomorrow, Joseph.”

“I’m coming to London.” His voice was implacable.

Amber gazed deeply into his blue eyes with sorrow. It could never be. She would have to take him to bed and use the persuasion of her body to try to bend him to her decision.

Amber reckoned without Joseph’s powers of persuasion. Their tryst had such urgency, touched with the painful poignancy that it might be their last time together. They clung,
they whispered, they promised, they pledged their undying love; they parted.

Amber, filled with delicious lassitude from too much looking, drifted into slumber in the warm afternoon. Joseph remained awake, watching as Amber lay peacefully beside him. He dared not sleep. He knew his crew had the ammunition loaded and were anxious to get it past customs inspection and into Greystones’s own harbor.

    
A
s Joseph’s blue-and-gold
Brimstone
slipped from the mouth of the Menai Strait, William Montague walked the deck of the
Swallow
, humming a tune. He was almost past Anglesey when a most pleasant idea came to him. Why wait until tomorrow to pick up his family? He could spend the night with Amber and close the summerhouse in the morning. The farther away from Ireland they were when the warrant was issued, the less suspicious Shamus would be.

Montague called out an order to head south. The
Swallow
rounded Penmon Point, sailed past craggy Beaumaris Castle, and entered the Menai Strait from the east. He spotted Joseph FitzGerald’
s
schooner under sail and assumed he’d been to pick up the rest of the ammunition. As he departed the ship and climbed the steps that had been cut into the rock leading to his home, silence met his ears. He discerned no activity about the house; it almost seemed deserted. Perhaps Amber had already dismissed the servants in anticipation of tomorrow’s departure.

The downstairs rooms were indeed empty; boxes and packing cases stood piled in the entrance hall. The chambers echoed with his footsteps. William’s eye fell upon a violet silk robe discarded on the stairs. It inexorably drew him up those stairs.

As William came into the chamber the unmistakable musk of sex assailed his nostrils. His steps drew him close to the bed in fascinated horror. Amber’s naked body was
lush, still soft with surfeit, still warm with passion, still damp with exertion.

Amber stirred in her dreamless sleep. She half awoke and stretched her naked limbs across the rumpled sheet. When her ears caught the sound of his step, her mouth curved softly. “Joseph?” she murmured.

As he stared at her, hearing the name she called, it all fell into place. William’s face contorted with rage at the destruction of all the plans he had so carefully laid down. This filthy Irish whore had ruined his life! Not only had she been putting horns on him, but she had rutted with the man he had chosen to marry his daughter; the man he had just plotted to make the Earl of Kildare! It was as if the Irish were in a conspiracy against him. From the moment he had laid eyes on Amber FitzGerald, he had been cursed!

A bloodred tide of passionate hatred engulfed him until insanity took possession of his brain. He gripped Amber by the scruff of her neck and rubbed her face in the semen her lover had left upon the sheet. “You filthy Irish whore,” he ground out, “fucking with another Irish pig in
my
bed! I’ll kill you,” he vowed.

Montague snatched his riding crop from the bedchamber cupboard where it always lay ready. The fear he saw in her eyes fueled his need to punish her for the sins she had committed against him. He lashed out at her violently, savagely, taking perverse pleasure in her screams. When she tried to protect her breasts with her hands, he lashed out at her face. Her arms came up to shield her face and head, so Montague slashed at her body, over and over again.

Amber managed to roll from the bed to the floor, but there was no escaping his insane fury as he suddenly began to kick her. Amber’s screams subsided into moans; her silence did not come until she lost consciousness.

“Get back to Ireland where you belong; you’ll never see your children again.” Montague gave her one last vicious
kick before he spat upon her, and left the chamber. Then he took out his keys and locked the door.

The full spate of his fury had by no means been spent. “John!” he roared at the top of his lungs. “Emerald!” he shouted, cursing aloud because he did not know their whereabouts. It incensed him that he had not been able to control his wife. In fact, the entire household was out of his control. Montague vowed he would immediately remedy that situation and went outside to search for them, calling their names in a voice that brooked no disobedience.

    
D
own at the crystal cave Emerald heard the summons. A sense of foreboding came to her when she heard her father’s voice. It was filled with fury and she knew someone would have to bear the brunt of his anger. Suddenly, she was afraid. Earlier, she had seen Joseph O’Toole’s ship on the horizon and had put as much distance between herself and the house as she could. Anger at her mother’s shockingly wanton behavior almost consumed her. Now, however, that anger paled beside the fear she felt.

Her father wasn’t supposed to come until tomorrow. What if he had caught her mother in the arms of Joseph O’Toole? Emerald picked up her towel and started toward the house with lagging steps, her heart beating so furiously, it almost deafened her. When she came in sight of the jetty, she was relieved to see that O’Toole’s schooner had departed and that her father’s ship was the only one in evidence.

    
W
illiam Montague saw his daughter before she saw him. He couldn’t believe his eyes at her appearance. She wore only a damp shift that shamelessly exposed her body for the entire world to see. Her long dark hair hung down her back in wet strands and her limbs were entirely bare. She looked like a tinker’s brat … she looked Irish!

Emerald saw him striding toward her, brandishing his riding crop, his face purple with wrath. When he raised the whip, her feet became rooted to the path.

“Get in the house! Get some clothes on! Have you no shame! Is this how you’ve been allowed to run about the island?”

Further incensed at Emerald’s failure to move, he screamed, “Now! Do you hear me, girl?”

His words galvanized her into motion. As she ran past him toward the house, he lashed out at her bare legs. She swallowed a scream and flew toward the house, panic beating wild wings inside her breast. She ran upstairs to her chamber, but she knew there was no escape from him and his terrible wrath. She heard his inexorable step upon the stairs and suddenly the terror she felt for her mother drowned the fear she felt for herself. She dragged on a dry petticoat and gown with hands that shook as if she were palsied. When his menacing presence filled her doorway, she swallowed another scream and whispered, “Where’s Mother?”

She watched in horror as he was gripped by a spasm of uncontrolled rage. “Never dare to utter her name again! The Whore of Babylon has gone! Run off with her filthy Irish lover! She is dead to me! Get aboard the ship, we are leaving immediately.”

“Wh-where’s Johnny?” she dared.

“I’ll find him!”

When Montague lurched from the doorway and she heard his footsteps thudding down the stairs, she sagged to the bed. He had found out about her mother and Joseph O’Toole! What had happened in this house while she’d been hiding at the crystal cave? Surely her mother would never leave her and Johnny, she loved them far too much, didn’t she?

Emerald began to cry softly.
It’s my fault she’s gone. I
wouldn’t come near her, I looked at her with such loathing, she thought I didn’t love her anymore.
How could her mother have run off with O’Toole? How could she choose him over her children?

With great trepidation in her heart she crept from her room and climbed the stairs to the next floor, up to the wing where her mother’s chamber was located. She turned the knob and found the door locked. “Mother?” she cried softly, her mouth against the door.

There was no reply save silence. Had he killed her? She knelt down to the keyhole, saw only the rumpled, unmade bed, and got slowly to her feet. No. There was no one there. Emerald could barely believe it, but her father, in his rage, must have been telling the truth.

Emerald heard activity below and silently fled back to her own chamber. She gathered her belongings and placed them in a small wicker trunk. She pulled up her gown to examine the red welts on her legs left behind by her father’s whip. They were puffy and swollen. Her mother would know exactly which herb would take away the pain, except of course her mother wasn’t there.

Emerald covered her legs with stockings, slipped on her shoes, and stole a glance at the mirror. Her hair was half dry now, its natural curl springing into hundreds of tiny spirals. She took a final look about her chamber. She had been happy here where she had enjoyed the freedom of sand and sea and sunshine. Happy, that is, until that fateful day she had gone to Ireland. That was the day her world turned to ashes.
Damn you, Mother, damn you for being Irish!

Emerald carried her trunk downstairs and saw the crew of the
Swallow
carrying the boxes from the entrance hall down to the ship. A cold hand seemed to clutch at her throat as she heard her father’s voice, ranting and raving at Johnny as they came from the direction of the stables. When she saw her brother she was appalled; her father had used his riding
crop on Johnny’s face, splitting the skin across his cheekbone. He was so pale, she thought he might faint.

“Emerald,” he croaked when he saw her.

“You will never call your sister by that ridiculous name again! Vulgar Irish fancy! I’ll have none of it, do you hear me? From now on she will be plain Emma, a decent
English
name!” He looked at his daughter with loathing. “Get that ugly Irish hair covered, while you’re at it!”

“Oh, Johnny, you’re bleeding,” she whispered.

“His name is
John;
I’ll make a man of him if it kills him.” His eyes narrowed dangerously. “If I find out the two of you conspired with your Irish whore of a mother so she could deceive me, I’ll kill you both!”