The Highwayman (13 page)

“No. My skin is prone to purple, it was ever so.”

“Truly?” he said, looking down at her anxiously.

She reached up to touch his face. “Truly. No woman could have a sweeter lover to claim her maidenhead. Till the end of my life I’ll remember this spring night and be grateful that you took me with such special care.”

He was silent, wondering what the uncertain future would hold for both of them.

Alex traced the outline of his bicep with her finger. “Your body is beautiful,” she said. “Like a statue.”

“I’ve seen some statues, my lady,” he said. “They don’t come ribbed with scars.”

“I don’t mean the scars.”

He grunted.

“I mean the sinews, the way they play beneath the skin.”

“All men are made the same, Alex,” he said. “You’ve only just seen me.”

Alex didn’t answer. He could never see through a woman’s eyes, as she did, see that the way a man stood or moved, or turned his head, could single him out from other men and stop the breath in the throat.

“When you were away I thought you never would come back,” she said softly.

He caressed her bare shoulder, making no reply.

“Did you reap the reward of your trip?” she asked.

“You might think so,” he said. “Scanlon is dead.”

“Did you kill him?” she asked, aghast.

“We had a contest,” he said shortly. “It was fair.”

“A contest?”

“To settle our differences. It was Scanlon who tipped the raid to the castle when I was hurt. And I owed him for you. I should have killed him back then. He was a blight on the whole countryside and surely no loss to the world.”

“Did you see Tyrone?”

“I did.”

“Kevin?”

“Aye?”

“This trouble between our two countries, why is it your life’s work? Why are you so driven by it?”

“Someone should be driven by it.”

“But what is it you want for your efforts?”

“Home rule for Ireland, to govern ourselves without the interference of your queen.”

“Will you get it?” she asked, sitting up and drawing the blanket around her.

“I believe that it is coming closer.”

Alex looked at him.

“Your friend Lord Essex is bungling his mission,” Burke said. “He attacked the rebels in Leinster and Munster first, instead of taking on Tyrone as your queen ordered, and is already down by five thousand men. His ranks are being decimated by desertions and disease. Instead of putting down the pockets of rebellion, he’s in the midst of a rout.”

“Why so?”

“His timing is bad, for a start,” Burke said. “Spring is not the season for an Irish campaign. Our roads are cow paths in good weather, and the rains have turned them into ditches, hampering his passage. We are used to the conditions here and can still move while he is stalled. We skirmish from the trees and fens, and the English don’t know where to look for hidden enemies. Essex has lost a goodly portion of his force and accomplished nothing. He gets angry letters from your queen with every boat from England.”

“How do you know these things?”

“Tyrone’s spies are very well informed.”

“And of course you were involved in all of it while you were gone,” she said lightly.

He looked down at her.

“Well, how did you get this?” she asked, tracing the line of a vicious welt, obviously newly acquired from a knife, which ran the length of his sculpted thigh.

He didn’t answer.

“So then why haven’t they attacked our camp?” she asked, changing tactics.

He smiled slightly at her use of “they” and “our,” and shrugged. “Mayhap they cannot find it.”

This seemed possible. She doubted she could find it herself if necessary, and she certainly had not been able to find her way
out of
it when she’d tried. “What will happen?”

“Tyrone wants a truce on our terms, and it seems that Essex may be forced to give it to him. Gloriana’s gilded boy is failing at his task. What think you of your uncle’s mentor now?”

He had read her mind. If Essex fell, Philip Cummings would not be far behind him.

“I brought you a gift,” he said abruptly, changing the subject as he stood and pulled on his pants.

“A gift!” Alex was delighted.

He retrieved a leather pouch from his pile of clothes and handed it to her. She tore it open like a greedy child.

“Paper!” she exclaimed. It was used, of course, the foolscap blank on only one side. There was also a slightly bent quill with a squib of ink.

“Wherever did you get this?”

“There is a monastery on the road to Armagh. I stopped and asked for writing necessaries and made a donation for their trouble.”

“You did that for me?”

“For my lessons,” he replied, grinning as he rejoined her on the blanket.

She turned over a sheet of the foolscap and examined it.

“What is that writing?” Burke asked.

“Introibo ad altare dei, ad deum qui laetificat juventutem meam,
” she read aloud.

“Well?”

“It’s Latin, the first part of the mass. It must have been written by a monk, an apprentice scribe, maybe, for the practice.”

Burke, who’d not been in a church since childhood when his mother had taken him to the castle chapel, would not have recognized it. “That seems fitting, for a monastery,” he said. “Can you read Latin well?”

“Church Latin, like this, and some classical.”

“You know so much, Alexandra,” he said. “Latin, and elephants, and all such stuff as to be found in books. I feel like a child beside you.”

Alex stared up at him, moved by the admission. “Everyone has to learn,” she said. “I knew no more than you, once.”

“When you were playing at nines with your governess?” he asked, smiling.

“Come, let’s do some letters.”

He pushed his hair back, and his face acquired that look of fierce concentration that she so loved. During his recuperation she had seen it many times as he had fielded his reading lessons. He sat cross-legged next to her now as she dipped the quill and scrawled a line on the paper.

“What is that you write?”

“You must see if you can decipher it.” She held the paper under his nose.

He snatched it from her hand and continued to stare down at it. “A pair,” he finally announced, looking at her for confirmation.

“Very good. And the rest?”

“Of.”

“Yes. A pair of what?”

“St,” he said, putting the first two letters of the next word together uncertainly. “Stay?”

She pointed at the sky.

“Star,” he said.

She nodded. “You know the next word.”

“Cross,” he said, proud of himself.

“Crossed. A pair of star-crossed what?”

“Love. A pair of star-crossed love? What is that, a riddle? It makes no sense.” He threw the sheet of paper on the ground.

“A pair of star-crossed lovers. That’s what we are, and what we may remain,” she said sadly.

“What does it mean?” he asked. She saw she had his full attention now.

“Lovers at cross purposes, lovers with an unfavorable conjunction of planets. A pair of lovers whom the fates conspire to separate.”

“Is that how you see us?” he asked quietly.

“Am I wrong?”

He couldn’t argue. He picked up the paper and stared down at the words. “Is this your phrase?”

Alex shook her head. “It’s a line from a play by Mr. William Shakespeare. I saw it at the Globe Theatre on Bankside last year, in the open air, as the reassembled playhouse was not yet finished.”

“What play?”

“The Tragical History of Romeo and Juliet.
It’s an old Italian tale that Mr. Shakespeare took and adapted for his theatrical. The story concerns the children of two enemies who meet and fall in love and suffer for their passion.”

“And how does it end?” he asked warily, as if he already knew the answer.

“Badly.”

He crumpled the paper and tossed the ball into the trees. Then, as if in response to what she’d said, he pulled the blanket back and drew her, naked, into his arms. When she shivered in the night air, he covered her body with his own.

“Alex, will you stay with me?” he asked, kissing her hair.

“Of course I’ll stay with you. What do you mean?”

“Here, in Ireland.”

“Yes, yes. Why not?”

“You have no desire to go home, to England?”

“Oh, darling, my home is with you.”

When he made love to her again, she matched his ardor with her own.

* * * *

The heat of the sun on her face awakened Alex in the morning. She opened her eyes to see Burke sitting on the ground a few feet away, fully dressed and watching her.

“Time to go?” she asked, stretching.

He nodded, handing her the rumpled clothes she had discarded.

She donned them, and they headed back to the camp, holding hands in companionable silence.

Rory was waiting for them at the end of the path.
Alex
could tell by his expression that something had happened.

“We’ve heard from the castle,” he said to Burke in Gaelic. “They’re ready to make the trade for Aidan.”

Chapter 6

Alas, my love, you do me wrong

To cast me off discourteously...

—“Greensleeves,” old English air

Burke’s expression didn’t change,
but Alex felt him release her hand slowly, as if he were coming to a reluctant but imperative decision.

“What is it?” she asked, glancing from him to Rory and then back again.

“Go inside the tent, Alex,” Burke said quietly, nodding toward the camp.

“What about you?” she said, not liking his tone.

“I’ll join you when I can.”

Alex hesitated.

“Do as I say,” Burke added more sharply. Reluctantly she left him, glancing over her shoulder.

“What are you going to do?” Rory asked Burke with his usual directness once Alex was out of earshot.

“Why the devil did it take them so long to respond?” Burke countered, thrusting his hands through his hair.

Rory sighed. “There’s a faction among the English who wanted Aidan hung as an example to us. They prevented the ransom demands from reaching Cummings. He only found out recently, when one of them confessed. Once he heard that Alex was alive, he sent a message demanding the exchange, but it took some time to reach us. You know they haven’t been able to locate the camp and—”

He stopped his explanation when he noticed that Burke was barely listening. The question had been rhetorical. To him, the whys and wherefores of the delay were immaterial now. What mattered was his offer of the trade, and that his integrity demanded he honor it—even now, when it was the last thing on earth he wanted.

“Do the men know?” he asked Rory, looking around at the huddled groups conversing in low tones, certain individuals glancing over at him furtively. At the very edge of the clearing, Deirdre stood watching the scene as her brother saddled their horses.

“Some of them heard Carberry’s messenger talking to me,” Rory replied. “We were speaking English, of course, but Neary and Flavin can understand enough phrases to make out what was being said. I’m sure the word has spread.” He waited a moment and then added, “They want Aidan back.”

“As do I,” Burke snapped. “Are they worrying I’ll keep my English doxy in place of him?”

Rory didn’t answer.

Burke stood with his hands on his hips, gazing into the distance. The shadows under his eyes reflected his sleepless night and the dread of this moment, which he had almost convinced himself would never come.

“Send a message back that we’ll make the trade at dawn tomorrow at the castle gates,” he said finally.

“To give yourself another night with her?” Rory asked, but without bitterness.

“To give me time to explain it to her. And I want it to happen in daylight. Less chance of a trick.”

Rory turned to go.

“And Rory? Take the message yourself. And make it clear that if Carberry has any ideas about getting clever I’ll kill the girl on the spot.”

Rory stared at him.

“Say it just as I have,” Burke directed him gruffly.

“But Kevin—”

“Be off with you now.” Burke strode past him briskly into the tent.

Alex looked up as he came in, and the expression on his face made her heart jump into her throat. “What’s happened?” she whispered. “Tell me.”

“Rory heard from your uncle while we were gone. He wants to make the trade for Aidan.”

“And?”