Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) (12 page)

“Look out you clumsy ox!" an irritated voice barked an arm's length from Maryssa's petticoats.

Marisa’s laughter died, her gaze darting to where two girls sat ensconced at the flower-ringed base of the boulder.

Deirdre Kilcannon jerked the hem of her petticoat from beneath the toe of Tade's boot. She glared up at Maryssa and Tade from beside a girl as gold and tawny as a prowling cat and half again as sly.

Maryssa peered but an instant into the girl's amber eyes, then turned her gaze quickly away, stunned to see resentment lurking beneath the long gold lashes.

"Look at what you've done, you disgusting beast!" Deirdre blustered at Tade. Clambering to her feet, she jabbed a finger at a smudge of dirt marring the sky-shaded calico of her gown. “It is the least you could do to watch where you place those great hulking boots of yours."

He grinned at his sister. "A thousand pardons, fair maid," he said. "But the sweetness of your voice and your gentle disposition so blinded me I didn't notice your furbelows were spread out halfway to Derry.''

"I doubt you'd have noticed if the pits of hell had opened up before you, the way you were making such a spectacle of yourself," Deirdre huffed. She cast a disparaging glance at Maryssa.

Maryssa swallowed, the joy that had kissed the bright afternoon vanishing. Guiltily, she attempted to ease away from Tade, but he only tightened his warm fingers on her waist, pulling her closer into the protective circle of his arm.

“Perhaps I was making a spectacle of myself," Tade said. “It’s a trait that seems to run in our family." His fingers swept soothing circles over the soft fabric shielding Maryssa's ribs. "But all in all it’s fortunate I nearly killed myself upon your skirts as you are the very person I was seeking. I was certain you'd like a chance to thank Maryssa here for all she did.”

"Thank her?" Deirdre's lips snapped taut. Her eyes shot daggers at Maryssa. "I am forever in your debt, Miss Wylder. Your footman managed to return the gown I loaned you so badly stained it will be fit for nothing but the rag bag."

"I'm sorry," Maryssa stammered, her cheeks flaming. "I'll see that you get another."

"Damn it, Deirdre." Tade took a menacing step toward her, the warmth of his arm falling away from Maryssa's waist. "If it weren't for Maryssa you'd probably be wrapped in a winding sheet instead of blathering about some blasted dress!"

"Tade's right, Dee." The voice was sweet as honeyed acid as the girl at Deirdre's side swept gracefully to her feet. "I know I shall be eternally grateful to Miss Wylder." One slender hand trailed a proprietary path down Tade's arm, stopping to toy with a button at his wrist. Maryssa fought the urge to slap the girl's fingers away, amazed at the sudden, fierce delight she took in imagining the shock that would round those slanted amber eyes.

The girl fluttered her lashes at Tade. "If anything had happened to you—any of you—I don't know what I would have done!" she cooed. “It was truly courageous of Miss Wylder to distract the soldiers. Why, think of how awkward it might have proved had she been discovered, what with Colonel Rath being such a close friend of her papa's."

"If Rath had thought her involved, she would have been in Rookescommon prison with the rest of us," Tade hissed under his breath, pulling his arm from the girl's grasp.

Red lips dipped into a seductive pout. "Aye, and wouldn't it have been terrible for Bainbridge Wylder's daughter to suffer so." The girl's words pierced a lull in the voices filling the clearing, the high-pitched tones reverberating through the trees.

"Sheena!" Tade gritted the warning from between clenched teeth, instinctively stepping in front of Maryssa as though to shield her, but it was as if the very sound of Bainbridge Wylder's name held the power to blanket the clearing with a smothering fog. A murmur rippled through the crowd, as quietly menacing as the prickling hairs at the back of a mastiff's neck. Maryssa shrank inside herself as the eyes that had been trained upon her with a kind of negligent indulgence clouded with suspicion and a very real loathing.

Yet, oddly, greater misery jolted through her at the memory of the golden-curled girl smoothing her hand across the muscles of Tade's forearm with the aura of a crowned princess beside her consort. Sheena, Tade had called her. The name the dark-eyed peasant girl had linked with Tade's own. Sheena O'Toole.

Warm and rein-hardened, Tade's fingers closed on Maryssa's elbow, but she drew away from him, a sudden sick feeling clenching in her stomach. She wanted to fly scratching into Sheena O'Toole's smug face, but Maryssa only raised her chin in aching defiance, feeling the eyes of every person in the clearing boring into her.

"It might shock you to know, Miss O'Toole, just how much a Wylder can suffer," Maryssa managed in a voice that quavered.

The girl smiled up at her, venom-sweet. "It might shock you, Miss Wylder, to know just how much suffering your father has caused."

They heard the clacking of clog soles striking the rocks that were strewn among the grasses, and then the rustling folds of pink satin swirled into view as Christabel Marlow swept to Maryssa's side. Looping one dimpled arm about Maryssa's waist, Christabel shot Sheena a killing glare.

"Since you seem so concerned about suffering at present, Miss O'Toole, perhaps it would be best if you and Deirdre took your seats on the other side of the field. As you well know, I always watch from the top of this boulder, and one can never tell when my clog might slip and bruise a most embarrassing part of someone's anatomy." Christabel gestured to the field, which was now full of men wielding hurleys. "It seems that, except for Tade, the men wait ready to play. Go settle yourselves."

Deirdre bristled, brows dipping low over her freckle-spattered nose. "But we were here first.”

"Perhaps it would be better at the other side, Dee," Sheena sniffed, puckering her face into a mask of blatant disapproval. "The air around here has grown distinctly unpleasant."

"As have certain dispositions," Christabel said, fixing Deirdre with a reproachful stare.

Thrusting out her lip like a belligerent child, Deirdre spun away, flouncing with the seething Sheena to a point across the clearing as far distant from Christabel and Maryssa as possible.

Clenching her fingers, Maryssa watched the girls' heads bob together, their unintelligible whisperings punctuated with nasty snickers as each sneaked glances back toward the boulder where Maryssa and Christabel stood.

Maryssa lifted her chin, what measure of budding confidence Christabel had managed to give her vanishing in the wake of Deirdre's cutting words and Sheena's waspishness.

"I swear, Tade," Christabel hissed under her breath. "If you marry that vicious hellcat you deserve to have your hide sliced to ribbons."

Maryssa felt a stab of some unnameable emotion twist in her stomach at the fleeting image Christabel's words evoked . . . Tade's long limbs entangled with Sheena's, her hair tumbling in disarray across his naked chest, the curled strands glistening like beaten gold in the light of a guttering candle. The defiant curve frozen on Maryssa's mouth wilted.

"I'd make any wench a poor husband at present, wouldn't you agree?" There was the slightest hint of brooding underlying Tade's voice as his eyes followed his sister's stiff back. Maryssa glanced at his face, then away, surprised at the veiling that hid the emotions that had played upon his face. He seemed to mentally shake himself, then turned to Maryssa, eyes crystal green with concern. A hint of a cajoling smile touched his lips as he sketched her a bow. "Would milady allow me to settle her upon her throne before the match begins?" he asked, feigning the solemn eagerness of a court swain.

Maryssa turned her own eyes to his, struggling valiantly to keep the tears from flooding her lashes. "Th-thank you," she murmured in a cracked voice.

Tade's own lips softened into an expression of such tenderness that her eyes stung. As though she were wrought of fine porcelain, Tade's hands spanned her waist, sweeping her up to set her atop the huge stone. "There, Maura," he said softly, the very name a caress.

Reaching up to her cheek, he brushed back a tendril of dark hair that had escaped its bands of green ribbons and ivory pins. Hand straying to the wisp of silk woven through her hair, Tade grasped the ribbon’s edge in strong, bronzed fingers, tugging it gently. Slowly, it slipped free, curling through the sable strands like the fingers of the breeze. "For luck," Tade whispered, pressing the bit of silk to his lips. The sight of his mouth pressed against the ribbon still warm from her hair sent a shiver of heat skittering up Maryssa's spine.

"Luck!" Christabel's mutter of disgust filtered through the haze of sensation engulfing Maryssa. She looked down to see her friend's blue eyes still scowling at Sheena O'Toole. "The man’ll need a blasted cudgel."

Tade chuckled, swooping Christabel up so abruptly the hem of her gown swished up past dainty azure garters. Her rump smacked down beside Maryssa, barely cushioned by layers of thick petticoats. A ripe oath parted Christabel's dainty lips, stunning Maryssa, but the rest of the delicate beauty's grousing was lost in a cry from the field.

"Quit yer blatherin' an' get out here, Kilcannon, or we'll be startin' wi'out ye!" A stocky man with a shock of walnut-colored hair bellowed. With a wide grin, Tade spun around and saluted the man.

"I'll be happy to annihilate you as soon as I fetch my hurling sticks, Diarmit!" he called. Eyes the exact shade of Maryssa's ribbon flashed her a wink as Tade plopped onto the ground, levering off first one gleaming boot, then the other. His fingertips skimmed the sky-blue embroidered stockings down lean muscled calves, revealing flesh the color of burnt honey and dusted with dark hair. Maryssa felt an odd lightness in her stomach as she stared at one well-shaped foot.

Tade wriggled his toes, and Maryssa's eyes leaped to his face, the flush heating her cheeks not merely from embarrassment. Hastily she dragged her gaze away from that tempting glimpse of flesh, forcing herself to look out across the rocky field where the other players awaited, their feet bared as well. Maryssa winced inwardly as she thought of trouncing about that stone-starred expanse with nothing to shield the naked soles of her feet.

"You get accustomed to having your feet sliced to bits." The laughter in Tade's voice drew her gaze back to his face as he retrieved her ribbon from its nest of grass beside his boots.

"I think I'd rather not."

Her hesitant reply drew a burst of ringing laughter from Tade, the sound muffled against the silk of her ribbon as Tade bound the narrow length of silk around one bicep, clamping the ribbon's end in his white, even teeth to pull the knot tight.

Springing to his feet, he tossed them each a kiss, then swung toward the broad expanse of clearing.

He loped to its midst with careless grace, muscles rippling beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, the green ribbon waving jauntily in the wind. And even the hostile aura of the crowd had little power to dull the tingling Maryssa felt within her breast as he swept up his hurley, smoothing his palm across it as lovingly as if it were a woman.

"Maryssa.” Christabel touched her arm, nodding toward the field. “You've just made half of Donegal cross-eyed with envy. Nearly every maiden for twenty miles would wear sackcloth on Tuesdays just to have Tade Kilcannon speak to them, let alone wear their token."

"He must have enough ribbons to fill his whole cottage, then," Maryssa said, disappointment stealing over her.

"Nay. I've never once seen him accept one. Until now." Christabel laughed. "But don't expect your Galahad to sweep about doing knightly combat. Hurling puts me more in mind of a band of warring ruffians than a jousting tourney—oh, look!" Christabel cried, pointing to the meadow as the loud smack of wood upon leather echoed through the clearing.

Maryssa gaped, fascinated and terrified as the rock-strewn turf seemed to erupt in a frenzy of slashing sticks. Thick, sinewed arms wielded the hurleys’ curved blades with the deadly accuracy of infidels' scimitars, the wooden sticks driving a small leather ball through the air with blinding speed. And at the center of the murderous melee was Tade, his dark hair whipping in the breeze, mouth taut with concentration. Lithe as a great cat, he sprang and dived catching the ball upon the ashen blade with a dancer-like grace that seemed at odds with the mayhem all around him.

The other players seemed but blundering manikins beside him, the opposing team laboring desperately to keep the horsehide-covered sphere out of his reach, his own teammates trying to feed the ball to within range of his hurling stick. The only man on the field who seemed able to match him was so short he was nearly lost to sight amid the towering Irishmen. Yet that seemed the very key to the wiry Reeve Marlow's skill.

The two battled for what felt like an eternity, first one, then the other stealing control of the ball, but neither man able to break free of the other. Reeve's hair tumbled in a ragged mass about his reddening face, while the thin lawn of Tade's shirt clung damply to the Irishman's broad chest, the planes of his face limned with a glistening of sweat.

For just an instant it seemed Tade's eyes jumped away from the ball. Maryssa felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth as Reeve's sandy head ducked beneath Tade's outstretched arm, hurling the ball high off his blade with a dexterity that delighted Maryssa.

Christabel squealed, shrieking encouragement with all the delicacy of a street urchin as her husband dashed with the ball toward the end of the clearing. Whoops rang from the team opposing Tade's as Reeve ran toward what appeared to be the goal, but before Reeve could hurl the ball over the crossbar, Tade broke free of the other men as well. He bolted after Reeve, Tade's long strides ludicrous in comparison to the pumping of his opponent's short legs.

Maryssa saw the muscles of Tade's thighs bunch beneath his thin doeskin breeches as he sprang toward the ball, but just as his feet left the ground Reeve slammed to a halt. His foot shot out, hooking Tade's bare ankle. With an oath, Tade crashed to the ground, skidding across the turf on his shirt-front while Reeve merrily hurled the ball over the goal.