Irish Lady (8 page)

When Siobhan, with her apple cheeks and full curves, brushed against my husband and offered him her lips, and when he took them as if it were the most natural thing in the world and when his hands cupped the cheeks of her voluptuous backside, I knew what it was to feel the bloodlust rise within me. My fingers itched to claw her eyes and mark her cheeks, and surely if I'd been skilled at the dirk, Rory O'Donnell would no longer be a man.

But I was my mother's daughter and did none of those things. Instead, I looked away and pretended not to see what he did with Siobhan, with Jane, with Mary and Fiona and countless others who lived under his protection and mine in that unholy castle by the River Eske. I suffered my humiliation in silence until the day a messenger came from Tyrone, bearing gifts from my mother and a note from my father.

Send
your
husband
with
your
blessing, little Nuala. Ireland has need of its warriors. Pray that your womb be fertile lest Tirconnaill be left without an heir.

It was then that I realized how long Rory and I had played at this game and what I must do to end it, or the heir to Tirconnaill would be no son of mine. The gypsy woman helped me, as I had helped her when her children had no bread. She told me how to please, where to touch with lips and tongue and slow, seeking fingers. I planned it well, wine, fresh sheets, fragrant candles, perfume. I would be willing, seductive, mature, never revealing what I knew of the women who had shared my husband's bed and the ache it brought to my heart.

All would have gone as it should if Rory had come at his usual time, but he was very late. He smelled of spirits and women and the rage I'd cultivated was something he'd never seen before.

“Good night, Nuala,” he said.

“Is it?” My voice sounded odd even to my own ears but such was Rory's bout with the drink that I wondered if he would notice.

“Are you well, my love?”

“Quite well.”

He stepped backward and tripped over a footstool. Struggling to regain his footing, he stood and swayed on his feet. “Since you are well, I'll leave you to sleep,” he said.

“Sleep?” I walked across the room and stood before him, hands on my hips. “You expect me to sleep while my husband turns from me and ruts with half my household?”

I felt very small and alone standing there in my white sleeping gown, spewing venomous accusations as if I were an angel condemning Lucifer to a fiery hell. I wondered what he would say to defend himself.

“Do you deny it?” I demanded.

His smile was tender. “Surely not half the household, Nuala.”

“Do not jest, Rory. An unfaithful husband is a sin.”

My cheeks were cold and I felt my lower lip tremble. I looked down at the floor. When would he see that it was more than anger that moved me? I was hurt, deeply hurt. For what had Rory made his wild impetuous ride across the moors to claim me as his bride?

I had done much for Tirconnaill in one short year. Dun Na Ghal was no longer a fortress. It was a palace fit for an earl, with candles of the finest wax, food set for a king's table, an abbey where daily mass was offered, and a library where books in four languages could be read. Every peasant who worked the fields had woolen blankets and meat three times a week. I knew when a tenant needed a new roof, when to administer justice between feuding neighbors, which fields should be tilled and which should be left fallow. For the first time, disease had passed us over and no infants were buried in the castle graveyard.

The peasants called me a miracle, beloved to all in Dun Na Ghal, from the lowliest serf to Rory's father, the O'Donnell himself. They said I was goodness and beauty and wisdom and yet I was fifteen years old, a married woman and still a maiden.

He reached for my hands. “I am not your husband yet, Nuala, and therefore I have not been unfaithful.”

I would have spoken, but he held his fingers against my mouth and spoke for me. “And you are not a wife.”

Then I looked at him. Everything I hoped and felt I willed him to see in my eyes. “I wish to be,” I whispered. “I have waited long enough.”

I had waited more than long enough, but still he did not speak. “Why did you come to Tyrone to ask for me, Rory, if it is not me you want? Kieran would have served you just as well.”

“I did want you,” he protested, holding my hands tightly in his. “I do want you. By God, Nuala, I want you so much my heart aches.”

“Then, why—”

He groaned. And then the words came, stilted and awkward, but from his heart. “I have never known anyone like you. You have wisdom beyond your years. There is nothing I can give you. How can you want me, Nuala, a man so far beneath your touch?”

My eyes widened and for a long moment I stared, doubting my own ears. Then I smiled and stepped close to him again. The top of my head came to the middle of his chest, but I stood on my toes and pulled his head down to brush my lips against his. “You are a fool,” I whispered against his mouth. “There is a great deal I know nothing about and which only you can teach me.” And then I uttered the words that I had kept in my heart during that long year in Tirconnaill. “I love you, Rory O'Donnell. I love you so much that I can no longer bear it.”

Somehow, I was in his arms and he was kissing me as if he had never kissed anyone before. I was small and he was not, but we fit together as if we were made for one another. When he touched my breasts, my waist, the inside of my thighs, I knew a pleasure that I had never imagined. He took me slowly, with gentle caresses and a saintly patience that seemed new to him, but then never before had Rory set out to seduce his own wife.

And when it was time, when he'd tasted every inch of my skin, when he'd whispered words of love and need against my throat, when my back arched and the heat flowed within me, when I laughed and cried and laughed again, when he was so far inside me that I saw the gates of heaven, the life force filled him and he held back no longer. I clung to him as the raging tide rocked us, moving from his body to mine and back again until we swirled in a maelstrom of color and heat and passion and, strangest of all, humility.

This was what I'd waited for, yearned for, dared my father's rage for, this union of body and spirit and mind and heart. Never again would my soul be my own.

Meghann lifted her head and smiled dreamily at Michael. “That was beautiful. You're a marvelous storyteller.”

He waved aside her praise. “History has a way of rounding out a tale.”

“History doesn't turn a phrase or color it alive the way you do. I can see Nuala and her Rory just as clearly as if they stood before us.” She hesitated.

“Go on.”

“It's nothing.”

“You were about t' say something, Meghann. Say it.”

“It's just that you're a born politician, Michael, one of the inner circle. How did you let yourself get into this mess?”

“Isn't that what I have you for, t' figure out the answer t' that question?” His voice was flippant, guarded, completely removed from his earlier eloquence.

Meghann chewed her bottom lip. “You're not disclosing enough for me to find anything. It's almost as if—” She stopped.

The silence extended beyond normal limits. “Say it, Meggie,” he said impatiently. “There isn't anything y' haven't already said.”

There was a great deal she hadn't said, nor would she. Meeting his gaze directly, she asked, “You do want to be cleared of this murder charge, don't you, Michael?”

“What an odd question.”

“You haven't answered it.”

He leaned his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes as if the entire conversation wearied him.

Meghann saw the way the skin stretched across the bones of his face, and her throat tightened. Why wouldn't he answer? “Michael?” she whispered across the space of silence that cloaked them.

“I'm awake, Meggie,” he said slowly, “and I'm trying very hard t' give you the answer y' want. The truth is I just don't care. I don't seem t' care about anything anymore.”

Her heart hurt. There was no other way to explain it. It was a pain as physical as if her chest had caved in and squeezed the arteries dry. Nothing that she knew of Michael's life, not his affiliation with the IRA, not his years in the Maze, not this absurd murder charge, terrified her as much as this uncharacteristic apathy that held him in its grip.

“You're still not feeling well,” she said bracingly. “You'll see. When your strength comes back you'll feel differently.”

“Perhaps.” He didn't lift his head.

She stood. “I'll fix you something to eat. The lamb chops look wonderful and there's a microwave. I'll defrost them and we'll have a meal in no time.” She paused and rested her hand on his shoulder. “Would you like a drink before dinner?”

He shook his head.

“Please, Michael.” She could hear the desperation in her voice. “There are calories in alcohol”

“Let it be, Meggie. Why did y' have to come? I was fine on my own.”

“You really are the most ungrateful person I've ever known,” she snapped. “You couldn't manage one day by yourself. What would you eat? How would you wash clothes or shop?”

He lifted his head and stared at her. “I managed quite well before you came.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Y' heard me well enough.”

She must have misunderstood. “Someone was supposed to be with you.”

“No one has been here except me.”

She sank down on the couch beside him, allowing the full, horrific meaning of the words to sweep through her. Michael, emaciated, unable to stand upright for more than a minute. Michael, dehydrated and near death, left alone to fend for himself in a house with stairs for nearly ten days. “Something is wrong,” she said out loud and turned her head to look at him.

“Y' always were a bright lass.”

“Stop it.” Her eyes were wide and gold in the pale oval of her face. “Stop joking. You must know what this means.”

“I know what it means.”

She must think. She couldn't think. Dear God, why couldn't she think?
Dear
God, dear God, dear God.
The phrase repeated itself over and over in her brain. She pressed her hands, open-palmed and hard, against her mouth and rocked back and forth on the couch. The pressure brought back a measure of reality. “What are we going to do?” she asked when she could manage the words.

Again he shrugged, that fluid masculine lifting of the shoulders that no loss of flesh or muscle could completely destroy. “There isn't anything to do.”

“We've got to get away from here. It isn't safe.”

“Don't panic on me, Meggie, and don't jump t' conclusions.” He sounded like the old Michael, completely confident, completely in charge. “This place is as safe as any. We're in the Republic. You're an English barrister. No one would dare harm us.”

“Are you insane, Michael? They killed Mountbatten and Killingsworth. For God's sake, they nearly killed Margaret Thatcher. Do you really think they care that I'm a barrister?”

“Aye,” he said evenly, “I do.”

“How can you possibly know that?”

The lines of his cheeks and jaw were very pronounced beneath the drawn tightness of his skin. “Don't ask a question if you can't take hearing the answer.”

“I can take the answer.”

He sighed and looked away. “At one time informers were a problem for us. It was decided that the fewer people who knew about a target, the more likely an operation was t' be successful. I wouldn't worry about our safety, Meggie. It's likely that the decision was made to involve no one else. There are fewer questions this way and fewer witnesses when I go to trial. It changes nothing for us.”

“Of course it does.” She reached out to grasp his shoulders, to shake him into reason. The shirt was soft under her hands, a contrast to the hard line of bone beneath the wool. “You never agreed to this, Michael. Tell me you didn't agree to become some sort of Irish martyr sacrificing yourself for a noble cause.”

“All right, Meghann. I'll tell y' anything you want.”

“But is it the truth?” She had never been so frustrated. “Please, tell me the truth. You owe me that.”

He stared at her, as if understanding her fear for the first time. “I suppose I do,” he said softly. Prying her hands from his shoulders, he held them between his own. “The truth is I never volunteered for this. I had no idea there was t' be an assassination attempt on James Killingsworth's life. I wasn't a part of it, and I know of no one who was. I speak from experience, Meghann. The Irish Republican Army does not set out to harm women and children. When it happens, and it does far too often because they are a civilian force and many times their war is waged against civilians, they deeply regret it. Not only because of the loss of life but because it looks very bad. The danger you feel has nothing t' do with fearing for your life. I believe y' already know that.”

Perhaps he didn't understand. She moistened her lips and placed her palms against his cheeks. “They mean to kill you, Michael. Don't you understand? They want you to take responsibility for this murder. That's why there isn't anyone else here. That's why they don't care about keeping you alive.”

His hands came up to cover hers. “We don't know that. Besides, everyone dies eventually, Meggie. I never expected a long life. I don't mind if it means something.”

“But it won't.” Tears burned beneath her eyelids, and when they streaked down her cheeks she didn't brush them away. “What good could it possibly do to have the world think you killed a man who had your party's best interests at heart? James Killingsworth was a fair man. To kill him is to set our political situation back to where it was twenty-five years ago. There won't be any sympathy for nationalists if one of their leaders is convicted of this murder.”

“Careful, Meggie. Are y' with us now?”

She dropped her hands and stood, rubbing her cheeks dry. “Now you're being ridiculous. I'm going for a walk. I can't think properly when I'm around you.”

He watched her grab her coat and muffler before walking out the door. “There is that, at least,” he muttered under his breath before stretching his legs and closing his eyes once again.

Meghann cursed under her breath and strode head down along the hard, damp shoreline of Donegal Bay. The shadowy ruins of an ancient monastery hovered on the hillside above. It was bitterly cold. Icy winds whipped the seawater into a spray that stung her cheeks and left the taste of salt on her lips. Caught up in her own private battle, competing against the roar of the waves, she railed against the randomness of fate and her own desperate fear. She argued with herself, hammering and shaping her logic as if she were in the privacy of her London office.

“The Crown needs a scapegoat for Killingsworth's murder, and the sooner the better,” she muttered, her words drowned by the keening of the wind. “Negotiations with Northern Ireland have come to a standstill. What better way to terrify everyone into returning to the bargaining table than to assassinate a powerful political figure? But why Killingsworth? He was the only legitimate politician willing to deal with Sinn Fein.”

She considered Ian Paisley's group but couldn't formulate a serious argument. It was too obvious. This time County Antrim's loyalists seemed to be in the clear. A thought, still hazy and half-formed, took shape in her mind, a thought so terrifying, so incredible that it had no place in the forefront of her brain, where rational ideas evolved. She pushed it away and started over. “There are plenty of conservative MP's in Ireland,” she said out loud. “Why haven't the Provisionals gone after one of them? Why would—”

She stumbled and bumped against something hard. “I'm terribly sorry,” she began, reaching out to steady what was most definitely a human form.

Before she could touch her, the woman stepped back. “My fault,” she apologized, “I wasn't watching where I was going.”

Meghann stared. She had seen that face before, green eyes and pixie features framed by striking red hair. The woman smiled, and a vague image clicked in her memory. It was the girl who had showed her the back roads into the Republic, away from British patrols. Meghann frowned. But it couldn't be. This woman was older by twenty years, possibly more. Perhaps she was a relative. “Do you live around here?” she asked casually.

“Not anymore,” the woman replied. “I'm just visiting, and you?”

Meghann improvised. “My husband and I are renting a cottage on the edge of the bay. He's recovering from an illness.”

The woman nodded and turned to face the sea. Meghann noted her long wool skirt and the old-fashioned shawl wrapped around her body. The silence lengthened, but Meghann felt no awkwardness. There was something oddly comforting about someone who had the ability to stand so utterly still without speaking. “Who are you?” she asked at last. It was a question she wouldn't ordinarily ask under the circumstances, but somehow she knew her curiosity wouldn't be held against her.

The woman turned, fixing her green gaze on Meghann's face. “My name is Nuala,” she said simply.

Meghann's throat went dry. Michael's words, filed away in the recesses of her brain, floated to the forefront.
Nuala
O'Donnell of Tirconnaill has been dead for nearly four hundred years.
Sanity returned. She swallowed several times before speaking. “I suppose Nuala is a common name in these parts.”

The woman nodded. “'Tis so.”

There it was again, that old-fashioned speech pattern no longer used outside the western isles. But she claimed to be from Donegal. Meghann couldn't stop herself. She had to know. “Two weeks ago I met a girl who looked very much like you. Her name was Nuala O'Donnell.”

Nuala smiled. “That is hardly unusual. There have been O'Donnells in Donegal since the days of Brian Boru.”

“But, Nuala O'Donnell?”

“As you said, Nuala is a common name.” She tilted her head. “Is something troubling you, Meghann?”

Meghann couldn't begin to explain why she couldn't stop the words pouring out of her, dangerous words, revealing words of Michael's identity and her role in his escape, words she would never have considered sharing with anyone outside the confessional, and since she hadn't stepped inside a Catholic church since leaving Belfast fifteen years before, that event wasn't likely.

When she finished speaking, she sank to the sand and stared out at the bay, aghast at her shocking disclosures. What had come over her? She was a barrister, for heaven's sake, professionally trained to keep her mouth shut, her ears open, and her face expressionless. What must this woman think of her? More importantly, how could she have risked Michael's life so carelessly? Squeezing her eyes shut, she wrapped her arms around her knees, hid her burning face and prayed for Nuala O'Donnell to disappear into the mist.

Gentle fingers sifted through her hair and a voice, low and comforting, reached her ears. “Poor lass. Nothing is ever as dark as it seems. Take your time and everything will come about. There is no need for haste.”

“I don't know what came over me,” Meghann mumbled. “I didn't mean to burden you. Please, don't concern yourself about any of it.”

The voice was more definite now. “I shall help you.” She sat down in the sand beside Meghann. “It was my intention all along, but I had a different course in mind. For now, I believe you should concentrate on healing your young man, his body and his spirit. Later, we shall work on your problem with, what did you say it was called, Sinn Fein?
We
Ourselves
I believe it means in English. What an odd name for a revolutionary society.”

Meghann lifted her head in astonishment and stared at Nuala. How could anyone live in such isolation that she had never heard of the nationalist party? “Why don't you know about Sinn Fein, and why am I telling you everything I know?”

The woman's eyes widened, filling her small face. “I already told you. I am Nuala O'Donnell of Tirconnaill.”