A Rose in Splendor (26 page)

“Such passion,
acushla
,”
he answered with amusement roughening his voice. “And who would fight this battle with me?”

“All Irish lads with heart in them. The Irish Brigade!”

This time his laughter had a sting in it. “Lass, you’re not such a fool as to believe that the Wild Geese desire defeat at the hands of the English? The Irish are tired of defeat. We go where we may win wars.”

“Do not speak for the others,” she answered heatedly. “Are you a coward, then, that you dare not face the possibility of defeat?”

“Perhaps,” he answered quietly.

“Then you’re not a true Irishman!”

“Hush, lass. We are not so far from the house that our voices would not bring the curious.”

He held out a hand to her. In spite of her anger, she took it and allowed him to drag her back into the shadows beside him. “Better,” he said.

Her eyes were growing accustomed to the dark and she saw as he gazed down at her the silver-white moonlight captured in his eyes. She shivered as his arm grazed her naked shoulder. He was no longer shadow but warm skin and firm muscle.

“Are you afraid,
acushla
?”

“Why do you call me ‘darling’?” she whispered, almost afraid of her own voice.

“Do you not like it? Faith, but you’re a hard one to please.” Silent mirth shook his shoulders, brushing him
against her once more, and she gasped at the touch of his elbow upon the tip of her breast.

He stilled. “You should go back to the house.”

“Why?”

“If you do not know the answer to that, lass, then you most definitely should go in.”

She knew the answer, but the desire to provoke him made her brave. “Because you might kiss me again?”

His silence was electric.

Deirdre pulled away, ashamed of her reckless words. What a foolish, ill-chosen thing to say. The strong fingers which captured her wrist startled her.

“Do not go yet. Stay a bit with me.”

His arms came about her as she turned back to him, his hands finding her waist as her cheek sought the pillow of his chest. “Aye, ’tis better like this,” he whispered against her hair as his hand came up to lightly stroke her curls.

His gentleness astonished her. Before, there had been only harsh words between them. Had the reminder of a single kiss wrought this change in him?

“You are small,
acushla
,
no more than a child.”

“That is not true,” Deirdre whispered. The tremulous excitement in her had no part of childish fancy. “I am a woman.”

“A woman does not protest a man’s flattery,” he answered. “A woman smiles prettily and is smug in the knowledge that a man finds her winsomeness lovely.”

“Then I am smug,” she murmured shyly against his shirtfront. Beneath her cheek his heartbeat was slow and steady, while inside her chest her own thumped a lively rhythm worthy of a jig. “How is it you know so much of women, captain, when ’tis said that the ‘Avenging Angel’ has little use for womenfolk?”

She felt him tense and immediately regretted the words, but his voice was quiet as he said, “Who told you of my battle name? Ah, your brothers, though I wonder that they spoke of my prowess—or lack—in more delicate matters.”

She turned her face into his chest but he would not let her hide there. He took her chin in his hand and raised it, bending deliberately to set his lips on hers.

It was a kiss so unlike the first that she felt no alarm, only a sense of inevitability and joy. Little more than an hour earlier she had been shocked by his touch. Now the warm sweetness of his lips persuaded her that there was much in this difficult, contrary man that could not be simply or easily discovered. And, that she wanted to discover it all.

Almost reluctantly his mouth lifted from hers, hovering a moment as the tip of his tongue lightly stroked the shape of her upper lip.

“It seems we’ve done this before…but this is not why you followed me,
acushla
,
is it?”

Deirdre stood a moment with her chin propped by his thumbs and her cheeks cradled in his fingers. No, this was not why she had followed him. She wanted to know the truth about their first meeting.

“You are shivering.” His hands left her face to touch her shoulders and then travel down over her back to her hips. “
Acushla
,
you’re all but naked!”

The shock in his voice made her skin burn where his hands touched her, their heat branding her through the thin barrier of her shift. She tried to break free but he brought her tight against him once more.

“What a clumsy fool you are, Killian MacShane!” he murmured and bent to kiss the top of her head. “Are you angry with me, lass?”

Deirdre shook her head, too confused by his nearness to understand her feelings.

Without completely releasing her, he slipped off his coat and wrapped her in it. His warmth, trapped within the velvet folds, surrounded her and Deirdre accepted it gratefully.

When he bent and picked her up she was startled. “What are you doing?”

“Taking you back inside.”

“No! No, you mustn’t do that,” she whispered. “We must talk, now, where no one will hear us.”

He held her a moment longer and she saw that the hard lines of his serious face were in place again. “It must be very important to you.”

“It is,” she whispered.

“Then we will talk.”

“Put me down.”

MacShane hesitated, as if he would not comply, but then he lowered her to the ground.

When her feet touched the path she held on to his shoulders to steady herself. The solid warmth of his body was amazingly comforting and she wished suddenly that she had not asked to be freed.

She was glad for the gloom of night because it hid her chagrin. “I know where we may talk. There is a hunting lodge at the end of this path. No one will find us there.”

He did not speak, but she sensed a change in him, as if he doubted the propriety of her suggestion. Rushed with expectancy, Deirdre pulled on his hands. “Come! Please!” He followed her.

The night was cool, but in the breeze lingered the warmth of the day perfumed with the odor of lavender, roses, and honeysuckle. Overhead a bat swooped, the flap of its leathery wings a sudden sound in the silence. They crossed a small wooden bridge and then a field toward a small house which had once offered hospitality to hunting parties or shelter from the rain to a rider. She had not been there in years but knew that it was neatly maintained as part of the de Quentin estates.

The night seemed to beckon them, Deirdre thought. The moon itself laid out their path in a broad white avenue of light that ran in a straight line to the place they sought.

When the small dwelling came into view at the edge of the forest, the aching hunger that had been in Deirdre’s blood since the moment of his kiss vanished. She held the hand of a stranger; a complicated, contrary, and lonely man.

To her surprise, the hard, warm hand in hers trembled slightly, and she knew that he was not as remote and indifferent as the rest of her family believed. She knew that if she asked him he would tell her the truth about their first meeting eleven years before. And, if Brigid was right, in that telling lay the answer to her future.

“Shall we go in?”

Chapter Eleven

Once inside, Deirdre moved away from MacShane, her path lit by moonlight filtered through the open door. Her bare feet, damp from the dew, left imprints on the wooden floor as she walked in. A huge table dominated the small enclosure and she walked over to it and pulled out one of the chairs. “Will you sit, captain?”

“I prefer to stand,” Killian answered in a faintly amused tone. Now that they were truly alone she chose to resort to more civilized behavior.

“’Tis a lovely night,” Deirdre said, endeavoring to bring something of ordinary conversation between them. She had his attention but she did not know where to begin.

“Aye, a fair night and a soft breeze and the smell of rain in the air. Now that we’ve covered that, should you not get on with your questions, lass, for ’tis weary I am of your reluctance.”

Deirdre turned to him. The moment of tenderness between them had passed. He lounged in the doorway with his arms crossed, the night’s light silvering his hair and honing his profile to razor sharpness, and she knew she dealt once more with the MacShane the world knew, a hard man, abrupt and distant. “I know that you once came to Liscarrol many years ago. I heard you and Da speak of it.”

“You listened at the keyhole,” Killian said without apparent surprise.

“Aye, in a manner of speaking. There’s a room behind the gallery tapestries that shares a wall with the library. I went there to listen.”

“The Fitzgeralds have an uncommon fondness for secret places,” he murmured. “So what did you hear, lass?”

“Enough that I wanted to learn more.”

“And have you?”

“Aye. Brigid told me this night that ’twas I who found you in the stable all those years ago,” Deirdre answered quietly.

Killian was suddenly alert. “What’s that you say?”

Deirdre shook her head. “I was ill for a time after we left Liscarrol, and my memory of those last days deserted me. I remember nothing, and yet it troubles me that I cannot remember. Do you not think it strange?”

“Perhaps,” Killian answered guardedly. “Perhaps your feelings are hurt that you’ve never been properly thanked by me?”

“Of course not!” Deirdre replied. “’Tis only that Da has never mentioned it, and I do not believe Conall and Darragh know anything about it.” She moved toward him, her hands lifted unconsciously in pleading. “Will you not tell me the full story?”

“Why?”

Deirdre stared up into his hard face. “Why not?”

Killian looked down at her and a shudder of desire traveled through him. He raised his hand to touch her face but did not do so. He had touched her once this night. He must not do so again. He was leaving in the morning. It was better to leave her in ignorance of his feelings. “If you listened to your father and me, you know as much as I,” he said finally.

“Was that all?”

Killian frowned. “What more should there be?”

“You spoke of fairies.”

“Did I now?” he answered in a hushed voice

Apprehension danced along Deirdre’s spine. “You spoke of a dream which haunts you.”

Killian was silent.

Deirdre looked away. It was difficult to put into words the feeling that had come over her when she heard his confession. “I, too, once dreamed. As a child I believed the fairies came to visit me. ’Tis a common belief for an Irish child. Brigid scolded me about my talk of fairies and dreams, but I think she enjoyed my wild tales.”

The chill of the night swept through the door, a brief gust that raised goosebumps on her skin, and she pulled MacShane’s coat tighter about herself.

“There was one dream, I do not remember it now, but it was more a nightmare. I remember that it made me cry.”

“What has this to do with me?”

“I do not know.” Deirdre shrugged. “I suppose I thought that a man of your experience and worldliness would not mention a dream to a stranger unless it meant a great deal to him.”

Killian was silent a long time. “You are not a fool, lass. Forgive me for ever having insulted you on that account.”

Deirdre moved toward him. “Then your dream was of great importance to you? Would you tell me, does it have something to do with me?”

He looked at her, thinking that she was never more beautiful. Here in the moonlight, she was the image of the fairy woman who haunted his dream and made him ache with longing. Were they the same? Almost, he could believe that they were.

“I will tell you what I remember of that day at Liscarrol. I remember a wee lass in a soiled gown with yellow curls tumbling down her back. She chased kittens in the hay. When she discovered me I was so frightened that I drew my pistol on her. But she was brave as well as fair. She did not scream nor run. She offered me protection as one of King James’s men.”

His voice, low and exceedingly sweet, seemed to move inside Deirdre and become a part of her, painting pictures in her mind of things that she had not recalled in eleven years.

“When your father came the lass went away,” he continued. “I wanted her to stay, to talk to me, to make me less afraid.” His voice was as dark and mysterious as the night. “When she looked at me, I did not fear dying. She had eyes the color of a mist-shrouded lough in the winter when it’s green, still depths hold nature quiet in expectation of spring. I would have died for her, killed for her, done anything to keep her with me!”

The violence of his words made Deirdre shiver; but the remembered feeling of love for the wounded stranger which had lain dormant so long burst full upon her, and she knew then the source of the dream at the riverbank. She had dreamed of this man, of the feel of his hands on her skin and his naked body pressed hot and heavy against hers. The desire had been with her from the moment she had seen him riding toward her, so familiar and yet unknown. “I remember,” she whispered.

Killian did not hear her. He was caught up in memories dark and painful. “I do not remember anything more until I awakened in a cave.”

“The priest hole,” Deirdre corrected. “I—I remember.” She turned to him with a smile of triumph. “I was there with you! After Da went away, I came to be with you. I was afraid that you would disappear because the fairies had brought you to me, and I had not been gracious about it.”