A Rose in Splendor (44 page)

He crouched down beside her. She was young and heartachingly beautiful. At her brow frizzy curls had formed, glowing amber in the firelight. They stirred with her every breath, dancing firelight along their shimmering coils. He reached out to stroke the golden fall from her crown to the dark damp ends that touched the floor, and
strands curled about his fingers and clung like seaweed. “I think,
mo cuishle
,
that you are very angry with me.”

“No.” Deirdre shook her head slightly. She did not look up from the fire, nor did she move away when his hand moved to stroke from hip to knee the length of her thigh outlined by the wool of her cape. She was weary and still a little frightened by what had happened.

“Then you will forgive me?” Killian whispered, leaning close to place the words into her ear with kisses. He felt the trembling of her thigh under his hand and smiled. He might not have a courtier’s understanding of ladies but he did know how to reach the woman in Deirdre. “
Madilse
,
of the sweet thighs. How I have missed you.”

Deirdre closed her eyes. “I have missed you, too.”

Heat wound its way down into his loins as his hand continued its gentle stroking. He had been harsh with her too often in the last days. He wanted to bring her gentleness and pleasure. “Do you forgive me?” he repeated.

Deirdre moved her head slightly and he was not certain whether the gesture was a shake or a nod. His caressing began again, his hand gliding up the gentle curve of her thigh, slipping up, over and under the full, ripe curve of a buttock. “We are wed a full month,
mo cuishle
,
yet when I touch you I cannot believe that you are mine. I cannot remember your touch, that you have lain beside me, beneath me. I forget the taste of you, the feel of your flesh enclosing mine. Tell me,
madilse
,
the source of your magic that each time is like the first.”

Deirdre trembled inside as his hands moved to lift her cloak back from her breasts and laid it out on the damp floor. She thought of the dry shelter of the stable as he pressed her back until she lay on her woolen cloak. She remembered the sweet grassy smell of aging hay as the odor of rot and mildew stirred in the air about her.

And then she ceased to think of anything but Killian.

She breathed in the pleasant musky odor of his skin as he pressed her body down under his. She touched his black silky hair, threading her fingers through the smoothness. She felt first his hot breath on her cheeks and then the warm pleasant taste of his lips on hers.

It had been too long, she thought as she helped him shed his clothing. It had been less than a week and yet a lifetime. He was right. This passion between them did not have an ending. It fed on itself; each time it brought with it both a momentary satiation and the pangs of a new hunger of anticipation.

Beginning and end
,
that is what he is for me
,
she thought as he slid deep within her.
We are one
.
Inseparable
.
The arguments and harsh words
,
they mean nothing
.
They cannot divide us
.
The years could not keep us apart
,
nor distance or circumstance
.
We were pledged long ago
.
Here
,
at Liscarrol
.
We are one now
.
We will be together always
.
Always
.

*

Killian awakened to the unpleasant sensation of water trickling across his shoulders. He turned from his side to his back, but another cold wet drop struck him on the shoulder and slid across the slope of his chest to drip into his armpit. He opened his eyes.

It was dark. The fire had died. He reached for Deirdre but she eluded his touch. Stretching forward, he groped for her until he was neatly flat on his belly. She was gone.

He was on his feet in one agile movement. “Deirdre?” he called softly. He found his breeches with a foot and pulled them on. His boots were nearby.

“Deirdre!”

The darkness was stifling but as his eyes adjusted he realized that the night beyond the broken doors and windows was brighter. He found his pistol, tucked it into his belt, and headed toward the light, drawn by it as he suspected Deirdre had been.

The rain had ceased. A hard, brilliant disk of moon shone in stark white contrast to the last of the black clouds streaming past it. He looked around the still yard bathed in a milky-white glow.

“Deirdre!” Silence answered him. He hurried toward the stable because that was where she had gone earlier in
the day. When he stood framed in the stable doorway he thought he saw movement at the back. “Deirdre?”

Deirdre turned to face him, saw him outlined in sharp contrast to the night, but she did not answer. She recognized the shape of his torso, the hard shoulders and broad chest, the set of his head, the swirl of long black hair hanging free…but she no longer trusted her sight.

She had been dreaming again. The dream had awakened her and drawn her here; away from Killian’s side. Now she understood her confusion of the evening before. Brigid had been right. The rider had been a specter, a vision she had first experienced here, in this stable, just before Killian MacShane had come into her life. It had invaded her dreams for years, always awakening her in fear. It had come to her the evening before, more real than dreams should be. Was this the dream again?

“Deirdre?”

“What do you want of me?” she asked softly. Brigid had warned her to be careful, that danger lay ahead. Was this the danger? Or was it madness? “Who are you?”

Killian could not see her but he heard the plaintive cry underlying her words. “I am no vision,
mo cuishle
.
Come and kiss me and you will know it.”

Deirdre took a reluctant step toward him. “You will disappear,” she said accusingly.

“Nae, lass, I will not,” Killian answered.

Deirdre moved forward silently on bare feet. She had not dressed completely, for most of her clothing was still wet. When she stepped into a slat of moonlight, she heard his gasp of surprise to find her clothed only in his shirt. That gasp of manly interest convinced her as nothing else could have that this was Killian. He was real.

She launched herself at him and found the solid warm muscles of his chest and shoulders with her hands. He lifted her by the waist as his mouth swooped down on hers.

“You are real!” she exclaimed in laughter bordering on tears.

“More dreams, Dee?”

“No, no dreams,” she whispered and kissed him again.

She did not want to think of what the last hours had portended. For now she wanted only to be held close by the man she loved.

She saw them too late. They appeared suddenly in the eerie moonlit yard, half a dozen hulking shadows. Before she could gather breath to scream, the shadows were upon them, wielding skeans and
sgains
.

Killian saw the horror on Deirdre’s face too late to dodge the blow that stunned him. His knees buckled even as he reached for his pistol. His fingers numbed and the pistol fell, useless, to the ground a moment before he sprawled face-down at Deirdre’s feet.

“You killed him! You killed him!” Deirdre screamed as she dropped to her knees beside Killian, but the two men grabbed her by the arms and lifted her back.

“Let me go! Let me go, you sneaking
aulauns
!”
She twisted and jerked, but she was pinned between them.

She glanced from one to the other, but they wore hats and their faces were blackened by soot, and she knew she would not recognize them again. She began to tremble but not in fear for herself. Killian lay absolutely still at her feet. “I do not know you but I will, you
mac mallachtans
!”

“Ach, now, colleen, there’s nae need to be abusing us with such talk,” one of the men answered. “We’ve nae murdered yer man. Get him, lads.”

Two of the men bent and lifted Killian until he sagged like wet wash between them. His head rolled on his neck and a low moan escaped.

“There,” the leader said. “He’ll come to nae harm, providing he has the right answers to give us.”

“Where are you taking him?” Deirdre cried as they dragged Killian from the stable.

The leader turned, his teeth gleaming in the moonlight as he smiled at her. “Fear not,
ceanabhan
.
We’ve orders nae to harm him…or ye, more’s the pity. Ye’ve a sweet look about ye, and a man being a man could nae wish it otherwise.”

He came toward her until the smell of onions and ale from his warm breath assailed her. “Ye’d nae be doing yer lad harm by offering his captor a
pogue
.”

Deirdre drew back from him as far as her pinned arms would allow. “’Tis a
polthogue
I’d be offering ye, were me arms free!” she answered.

“There’s an answer for ye, Cuan!” said the man on her right.

“Shut up, ye great lout!” The leader took Deirdre’s chin between his calloused thumb and forefinger. “If ye care for yer man’s life, ye’ll have heard nothing,
nothing
!”

Deirdre bared her teeth. “I know the direction of the house you keep and the name you use, Cuan O’Dineen!”

Cuan regarded Deirdre steadily. “Ye’ve brave words but no brave arm to protect ye, Lady Fitzgerald, if that in truth be yer name. Only we do nae fear the name any longer, and ye may as well learn it now as later.”

As he dragged her chin forward to grind his lips against hers, Deirdre braced herself on her left foot and brought her right knee up sharply, the way Conall had taught her, and slammed it up between his legs.

Cuan fell with a strangled cry of pain, and in their surprise, Deirdre’s captors loosened their hold. She twisted and jerked, gaining her freedom. She flung herself into the dark space where Killian’s pistol lay unseen. Her hand closed over the butt as the scuffle of men’s footsteps sounded beside her and she rolled onto her back and lifted the pistol with both hands. “Stand back or I’ll shoot!”

The men paused, their shapes black silhouettes against the moonlit doorway. “Step back! Into the doorway!” she ordered as she rose to her knees.

“Now, lass, ye would nae want to point that at a man,” she heard Cuan say, but his two companions did not seem so certain and they did as she asked.

“If a man of you comes near me again, I will put a hole in him,” Deirdre said, gaining her feet.

“If ye murder one of us, the rest will hang yer lad.”

Deirdre did not doubt him. They had dragged Killian away. She could not expect them to release her husband unharmed if she shot one of them.

“Ye’d best keep quiet, lass.” Cuan straightened a little but kept one hand covering his groin. He pulled his forelock and then gave a defiant laugh. “I will say this, ye Fitzgeralds always were quick on yer feet.” He turned and limped out into the night with his silent companions.

Deirdre stood irresolutely, the pistol wavering in her hands. She had lost. Killian was gone and the men with him. What could she do? She knew not a soul in the valley. Even if she had, she could not be certain who was friend and who was foe.

Even as she thought of them, she heard the pair of horses she and Killian had ridden gallop away, urged on by the cries of the men who had accosted them. She was trapped in a burned-out hulk of a castle. She was alone. All she could do was wait.

Carefully she uncocked the hammer and lowered the pistol. When the last of the voices died away in the distance, she walked quietly back into the gray stone fortress of Liscarrol.

Chapter Nineteen

“Faith! That’s a fine ugly look to give a man what’s saved yer life!”

Killian sucked in a quick angry breath as the filthy blindfold and gag was ripped from his face. As he worked saliva into his dry mouth, he looked up at his captor. The man was huge and as shaggy as the native cattle which still roamed the countryside. Long hair, tufted eyebrows, mustache, and beard all flowed together in a wild matted tangle of fiery red. Tufts of orangy hair sprouted on the ridges of his shoulders, which were bared to the chill by a sleeveless leather waistcoat, and a heavier, darker mat of hair crested his chest and rode the curve of his gut where the waistcoat gaped open for lack of buttons. A wide leather belt kept a brace of pistols snug against his belly and held up breeches black with grease and wear. In his right hand was the skean with which he had cut Killian’s bindings.

Killian looked down and carefully spat to one side.

“There ye are, lads, a gentleman, this one!” the giant of a man declared. He thumped Killian hard on the shoulder. “What will ye be saying for yerself, gent?”

“I give my name freely to any man who asks it, but not
to those who hold a dagger at my throat,” he replied in a voice that sought neither to antagonize nor to assuage.

“Ye show little fear for a lad within an arm’s length of losing his life.”

Killian looked about. He was in a stand of trees, probably the patch of forest he had seen from the minstrel gallery of Liscarrol. The man standing over him was the only one made visible by the small campfire but he could hear the breathing of others. His gaze swung back to the huge man. “Where’s the lass?”