The Maid of Ireland (16 page)

Like an awakening dreamer, Hawkins shook his head. Amazement shone on his face, and he sent Caitlin a lopsided grin. “That was easier than I’d expected.”

A feeling of relief gentled the rhythm of her heart. So, he was back to his jaunty English ways. The mist seemed to have lifted from his eyes. He sat the stallion with ease now. Man and horse moved as one, muscular thighs wrapped around muscular hide, and the unmistakable anticipation of speed evident in Hawkins’s face. He held his wrists loose and easy, his back supple, ready to bend with the motion.

Ah, Logan, thought Caitlin, you’re in for it now.

“Easy?” she said. “The beast tossed you off like a load of seaweed.”

The smile lingered about his lips. “Did he now?” Reaching down, he snatched her hand. “A kiss for luck, then?”

She flushed at the thought of kissing him. She snatched her hand away. “Remember your parole.”

“And remember the wager.” His easy grin was full of promises she could not fathom. The certainty in his tone made her shiver—not with fear or cold, but with a feeling she dared not put a name to.

Logan galloped up and slid his horse to a halt. “Ready, Englishman?”

“To give you a mouthful of my dust?” asked Hawkins. “Certainly.”

Caitlin stepped aside, her back to the press of excited onlookers. The Irish took horse racing seriously. And when the race pitted Irish against English, and the stakes determined the fate of the beauteous Magheen, the contest took on the importance of a high holiday.

Tom Gandy lifted an alderwood staff. “Take your marks,” he shouted. “You’ll go to the church and back.”

Hawkins’s gaze focused on the distant steeple. Logan’s knees tensed. The staff sliced through the air. “Go!”

Both horses shot forward in an explosion of speed. Sand sprayed over Caitlin. Dragging strands of windblown hair from her eyes, she knew what the outcome would be. The black’s gallop sang in a rhythm as inevitable and unfaltering as a heartbeat. The chase to the steeple belonged to him and him alone.

Hawkins rode with far more style and grace than one would expect from a Roundhead horse soldier. He bent low over the black’s straining neck, his ruddy hair bright against the ebony hide. Over the thud of hooves, Caitlin heard Hawkins let out a wild yelp of sheer exuberance. The mare had the great unfailing heart of the Irish-bred horse and strove to the last inch of her ability. But Caitlin knew, as she had known from the moment Hawkins had bewitched the stallion into obedience, that all the mare’s efforts would be in vain.

Magic flowed in the black, born of centuries of breeding for beauty and speed. The sight of him in full gallop brought forth thoughts of the mysterious land that spawned the extraordinary breed, and still more thoughts of the man who had given him to her.

“He’s going to break and run!” bellowed Rory.

Hawkins reached the church ahead of Rafferty. Horse and rider disappeared behind the bleached stone building.

“The treacherous devil!” Rory raked Caitlin with his furious eyes. “See how it is with the
Sassenach!
”

She pressed her hands to her chest as if to keep the heart from being torn out of her. Mother Mary, why had she trusted him? Why—

Hawkins appeared on the other side of the church. He doffed an imaginary hat to his sputtering opponent, then galloped back to the gate. Logan made a valiant final effort, but finished four lengths behind Hawkins.

Indecision held the spectators silent and still. If they cheered Hawkins, would it seem disloyal to the Irish lord? Yet if they hissed at the winner, would it seem disloyal to the MacBride?

Only Tom Gandy let loose with sheer exuberance. “A grand, fine show!” He grinned at Caitlin and danced a little jig. “Now, what do you suppose our guest will have as his forfeit?”

She watched breathlessly as Hawkins and Logan trotted their horses to the strand where they would let the mounts walk off the tension of the race. The sea rushed up to meet them on the sandy beach.

They were so alike, the Irish lord and the English soldier. Both more handsome than any man had a right to be. Both powerful and forceful. They might have been friends had they found themselves on the same side of a conflict. Ireland might have a chance if they were allies.

Absurd. Logan Rafferty was determined to have Magheen at the price he demanded, and John Wesley Hawkins was an English invader. Neither cared a dram for the security of Ireland.

Hawkins rode to Caitlin’s side and dropped to the sand with a quiet thud. Handing the reins to Brigid, he took a step toward Caitlin.

She looked anywhere but at him. She noticed the bellowslike heaving of the black’s sides, the sleekness of its hide in the noonday sun, the sharp imprints of its hooves in the sand. The crowd pressed close, their unspoken curiosity pounding louder than the surf. A rook sang out as it swirled through the crags.

His rough, cold hand grasped her chin. Her heart jolted as she gazed into his moss-gray eyes.

“You owe me a forfeit,” he said. The breeze plucked at strands of his hair, curling them against his windburned cheeks.

She jerked her head away. “Just what is it you want?”

“I’ll have a kiss from you.”

The breath left her chest in a rush. Inhaling slowly, she drew in the cold salt air. “That’s your forfeit?”

“I declare to my soul, this is getting interesting,” whispered Aileen Breslin.

“It’s an outrage,” Rory snapped.

Caitlin challenged her prisoner with a furious stare. “I’d rather kiss a natterjack.”

“You’ll have to settle for me instead.”

In truth the request was modest enough. Yet her nerves rattled like dried reeds in the breeze. “Why?”

His laughter flowed like warm mead from a crystal goblet. “Do you really have to ask?”

“I’m asking.”

“Because I want to know if the MacBride tastes like a woman, or a warrior.”

Her face heated. “That’s absurd.”

“It’s my request and my prerogative to be as absurd as I please. You knew the stakes. Will you have it said that the MacBride breaks her word?”

Her patience snapped. She wanted nothing more than to have done with the affair and be off about her duties. The spoils of the last raid needed to be tallied and stored. And Magheen was no doubt girding herself for a major row.

Placing her hands against the wall of his chest, she lifted up on tiptoe and brushed her lips over his cheek. “There’s your forfeit, Mr. Hawkins.”

She pivoted and marched away, praying all the while that people would think the color came to her cheeks from the bite of the wind, not from embarrassment.

His large hand clamped down on her shoulder, and he pulled her around to face him. “You call that a kiss?”

“And what would you be calling it?” she flung at him.

“I’ve found more pleasure having corn pecked by a chicken from the palm of my hand.”

In spite of herself, she burst out laughing. “The English have strange tastes.”

Sounds of mirth drifted from the gathered crowd. Some tried to sidle closer. Tom Gandy made a shooing motion and kept them back.

“Caitlin.” Hawkins touched her cheek. “That wasn’t quite what I had in mind.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she burst out, “do you not see how silly you’re being?”

“It’s only silly if you continue to shy from me like a maiden. You’re the MacBride. You’ve done worse than kiss an Englishman.” His hands held her fast at the arms, and he bent to whisper in her ear. “I won the forfeit.” His breath caressed the curve of her ear. “I want to feel the fullness of your lips with my own. I want to slide them open with my tongue and taste the sweetness of your mouth. I want to feel your body pressed to—”

Summoning the last of her composure, she said, “You’ve made your point.”

His hands lifted to her shoulders. “Well? I’m waiting.”

She suppressed a shiver. Kissing in the manner he shamelessly described was so...so intimate. It was surrendering a part of herself she held close and inviolable. “No,” she said.

His fingers trailed up and down her arm, the motion at once soothing and unsettling. She clutched her shawl around her shoulders.

“You’re afraid,” he said, the amazement of sudden revelation lighting his face. “I never thought I’d find the one thing you fear.”

“I’m not afraid,” she said.

“You’ve never been kissed before, have you?”

She looked beyond him, her vision blurring as memories swept over her. Ah, she’d been kissed. Once. Alonso had kissed her once. He had held both her hands lightly, as if they were fragile crystal. She recalled his handsome face, dark and tender, the tumble of inky hair over his noble brow, the sculpted bow of his mouth. Their lips had met lightly, two butterflies colliding by accident and then winging away.

Caitlin MacBride had lived for four years on that too-brief moment.

“I’ve been kissed before,” she said crisply.

One side of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “We’ll see about that, love.”

He caught her against him. Echoes of the enchantment that had graced their first meeting sang through her mind. A mystical bond tugged her toward him, a bond as inevitable as the pull between the moon and the tide.

His arms closed her against him, bands of strength keeping her in, keeping the world out. She became aware of her breasts against his chest and the scent of wind, horse, and man that clung to him. The steady thud of his heart pulsed against her.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that one simple cry would bring a troop of warriors down upon Hawkins. One simple cry would set her free. One simple cry would rob her of the wonder she felt in his embrace.

“All right,” she said. “The MacBride keeps her promises.”

The Englishman’s kiss began with a smile. The smile of a gentle sorcerer, the smile that called to the very heart of her. His lips touched her forehead at the hairline and tingled down to her cheekbone. She tried to turn her head away but he caught her chin with his thumb and forefinger and held her still. His caressing kisses danced over her face, as light as the rain in springtime. The wild, fey believer inside her blazed to life.
Let him,
said a voice from another world.
Just for now, do not fight him.

His mouth grazed hers. It felt nothing like a butterfly’s wing. The warm breeze of his breath tasted sharp and smoky with the essence of the usquebaugh he had drunk earlier. He pressed more insistently, sharing the moist secrets of his mouth.

Wonder grew up like a magic forest around her. The people on the strand, even the sea at her back and the sand beneath her feet, floated away in a tide of sensations too new and too baffling to name. She stood alone with John Wesley Hawkins at the very center of the world. An ache started in her neck, for she had bent it back, but she welcomed the discomfort as proof of the vibrant life surging through her.

The endless kiss freed the yearnings she had kept bridled for years. She no longer remembered who she was. She had been put on this earth for the sole purpose of drowning in the arms of this Englishman.

True to his word, Hawkins moved his tongue tantalizingly in the channel between her lips. She opened for him, felt the tender plunge of his tongue and the vibrations of the sound he made in his throat. His hands slid up her sides and hooked her beneath the arms, hauling her ever closer while his thumbs made circles beneath her breasts. She felt suddenly and unaccountably soft, sweetly heavy. Womanly.

A heated drowsiness slid through her veins. With tentative curiosity, she put out her tongue, gliding it into the warm home of his mouth. He sucked at it in a rhythm that matched the long pulsebeats of their hearts.

Caitlin rose giddily, a leaf on an updraft of warm air, turning, reaching, beckoned by the diffuse golden light behind her closed eyes. She clutched at him, filling her hands with the artistry of his masculine form. She needed something badly, something that was as vital to her as the air she breathed. Hawkins, with his deft hands and narcotic kisses, dangled fulfillment like a glittering jewel before her. Closer, she wanted to be closer still, with nothing between them save their own heated flesh.

The pressure of his mouth eased. He drew away, holding her at arm’s length.

He filled her vision, broad shoulders and shaggy head framed by the crags and cliffs of Connemara. He had a look of astonished delight on his face, while dangerous banked fires smoldered in his eyes.

Still gripping her shoulders, he stepped back and said, “Look me in the eye, Caitlin MacBride, and tell me you’ve been kissed before.”

Eight

I
n the next week, Magheen sulked more than ever and bossed the servants unmercifully. Rory Breslin wished aloud that Rafferty had won the wager and carried off both Magheen and the Englishman. Darrin Mudge complained that Jimeen O’Shea had stolen one of his pregnant ewes. Jimeen countered by setting fire to Mudge’s booley hut. More refugees arrived, a group of old men and young children who reported in dire tones that their womenfolk had been carried off by the Roundheads.

And through all the turmoil and all the arguments pushed the memory of the Englishman’s kiss.

Indecent, Caitlin told herself.

Incredible,
said the fairy devil inside her.

I would go to confession if Father Tully hadn’t disappeared.

You’d not confess the passion you felt during that kiss even under torture.

It’s Alonso, Caitlin insisted. The kiss made me forget Alonso, who made me feel like a madonna.

Painted icons never have any fun,
countered the fairy devil.
Hawkins makes you feel like a woman.

“Don’t be kindling me, you great mutton-wit!” Tom Gandy’s angry shout carried across the hall to Caitlin.

Sighing in exasperation, she went to the round table to see what Rory and Tom were arguing about this time.

“Look now, you wee schemer.” Rory jabbed a finger at Gandy’s chest. “And what is it you think you would be up to entirely, using my stout turf cart to be after the dulse?”

Gandy thrust the finger away. “’Tis a high wonder, Rory Breslin, if you are not the dumbest creature God ever put breath into. The dulse is edible and we can gather it right off the fine wide strand.”

Rory made a terrible face. “The weed stinks, imp, and I’ll not have it in my—”

“Hush, both of you. I’m weary of the yammering!” Caitlin burst out. “Rory, you’ll let Tom use your cart and thank God for food the English can’t take from us.” She threw aside her shawl, stormed out of the hall, and marched to the stables.

“Come along,” she said to the black. “We’ll have a grand long ride, just the two of us.”

But as she led him across the yard, she felt his gait falter and heard a soft thud. One horseshoe lay like an inverted smile in the dirt.

“Blast,” muttered Caitlin. She started to call out for Liam the smith. Then she remembered his arm, still healing from the break he’d taken the night they had captured Hawkins.

Her luck had gone bad that night, and showed no signs of improving.

She considered summoning Rory. But his heavy hand with the hammer could damage the hoof. She bent and retrieved the shoe. “On with you,
a stor,
” she said. “I’ll do the job myself.”

“With my help,” said the resonant English voice that sounded in her dreams, yet never failed to startle her.

She glared at Hawkins. With his Irish garb and piratical smile, he looked indecently handsome. “And what would you be knowing about the fine art of shoeing a horse?”

“Enough of the smith’s craft.”

“Smithing is serious business. Sure didn’t the smith refuse to make the nails used at the Crucifixion?”

He tucked his thumbs into his wide, thick belt. “Then who made them?”

“Why, ’twas the lowly tinker, and isn’t misfortune on the tinker ever since and the smith a respected artisan?”

“Then I’m in good company,” he declared.

“I’d not risk letting a treacherous Englishman lay hands on my horse. One false blow of the hammer and you’d ruin him.”

His big hand stroked the black’s smooth cheek. “Does he balk at my touch?” The animal stood still, in calm acceptance. Ever since the race, the black had—to Caitlin’s great annoyance—taken to Hawkins. “I don’t know where this animal came from or why he’s here, but I suspect there’s not another like him in the world. God’s truth, if I feared any chance of my damaging him, I’d cut off my hand.”

The urge to believe him nagged at her, but she said, “Your hand, your head, Englishman. It doesn’t matter. None of your parts are worth the sum of this horse.”

“I value a good horse as much as you do.”

“Come along, then. You may as well earn your keep.” She led the black to the forge barn and looped the reins around a stone post outside.

Hawkins stepped inside. Flails and scythes hung on the wall along with an array of horseshoes. Caitlin selected one, laying it on a bench. “This is already forged for the black. Liam always keeps some in supply.”

Hawkins placed it on the anvil. “I’ll shoe him hot,” he remarked, “for a better fit.”

“Where did you learn that?”

He picked up a set of bellows and pumped them at the embers. “In the west of England—during my cavalier days.”

She pressed back against the stone wall of the building. “You were a cavalier?”

“Aye.”

“But you’re with the Roundheads now.”

“Aye.”

“Why?”

He gave her a slow, lazy smile designed to conceal the hooded look in his eyes. “Because Cromwell is Lord Protector of England now, and he has ordered me to stand with the Commonwealth.”

She came away from the wall, planting herself inches from him. “Just like that, you’d abandon your loyalty to the Stuart prince?”

“It didn’t happen ‘just like that.’” Heat roared from the furnace, and ashes plumed to the hole in the roof. He set aside the bellows, took hold of the hem of his tunic, and peeled the garment over his head and down his arms. “Believe me, my loyalty to Cromwell runs no deeper than the scars on my back.”

Stripped to the waist and gilded by firelight, he made a picture she saw only when she closed her eyes during one of Gandy’s hero tales. He grinned, pleased by her scrutiny. “You make a hard job easy. No wonder men follow you into battle.” He turned to rummage in the box for tools. “I’ll need to forge new nails.”

“Make them slender,” she said. “I’ll have no split hooves.”

He thrust a nail rod into the fire. While it heated, he turned to her. “God, Cait, you are lovely as the sunset.”

She huffed in disbelief. Her fingernails were chipped from helping the fishermen patch the curragh. Hours ago, she had braided her hair, but most of the tawny strands had escaped to swirl in disarray about her face. Bits of tar smudged her apron, and the hem of her kirtle sagged.

“Blarney,” she said. “If your English ladies fall for such praise, more fool they.”

He moved closer. She started to step back, but stopped herself. No. She would not give him the satisfaction of intimidating her.

“You wanted to humiliate me in front of my people.”

“Perhaps it was a way to get them to view you as a woman, with a woman’s needs, instead of simply their chieftain, the settler of their arguments and the hand that feeds them.”

“I know what you see,” she retorted. “You see an Irishwoman whose home and lands you mean to plunder for Cromwell.”

He winced. “I see a woman. A passionate, desirable woman. I cannot call you beautiful, nor pretty, nor comely.”

Caitlin hated herself for the lump of disappointment that dropped like yesterday’s porridge in her stomach. “No, and I’m not after asking you to.”

“You are all of those things, Caitlin,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “And yet you are none of them.”

“Now you
are
talking blarney.”

“No, but I’m at a loss. I’m usually glib with words. I know how to say things to women and I know how they’ll respond. But you’re different. Beauty is a pruned rose blooming on a trellis. Pretty to look at, but ordinary. And you are not ordinary.” He moved his shoulders. Mounds of muscle swelled and relaxed with the motion.

“Words cannot give shape to you.” He reached out and pulled her against him. She felt his smooth skin warmed by the fire, the undulation of muscles surrounding her, protecting her. The strange feeling passed like a warm breeze through her. No one ever protected Caitlin MacBride.

He bent to whisper in her ear. “Let my tongue not stumble over words, Caitlin. With you, my eloquence is one of hands caressing, like so...lips touching, like so...”

She stood unmoving while his mouth came down and savored hers with a lingering tenderness as if he were sampling a rare fruit. She became burningly aware of the texture of his lips, the varying pressure on her mouth, the slope of his neck and the raw silk of his hair twined through her fingers.

Only then did she realize she was clinging to him, offering herself with a wantonness that both shamed and enthralled her. With an effort of will, she lowered her hands, pressed them to the heated expanse of his chest, and stepped back.

“Your eloquence is wasted on me,” she lied. Her lips felt moist and bruised, her body curiously alive, sensitive and on edge. “It’s wrong. Dishonorable.”

He took her by the shoulders, the gentle pressure of his hands unnerving her. “Men and women search for a lifetime to find what we’ve found together, to feel what we feel for each other. Here we have our destiny dropped upon us like a stroke of fate, and you say it’s dishonorable. No, my love, praise all your Irish saints, for it’s a miracle.”

She turned away, wrapping her arms around her middle. He had to be mistaken. It was Alonso she wanted, Alonso who commanded her heart. She had to stay true to him, had to resist her enemy’s sweet embraces and false words of fate and destiny.

“It’ll be a high miracle if you can shoe the horse,” she said.

With his brows raised in challenge, Hawkins drew on a pair of thick leather gloves and set to work making nails. He took a rod of iron and drew it out with strokes of the hammer. Breaking off several nails with a header, he tossed the finished ones into the forge trough. Hissing steam permeated the air.

Caitlin regarded him through the diffuse mist. Steam softened the lines of his face and torso, while fire glow and shadows cavorted over his glistening flesh. His hair fell in a ruddy mane about his face and neck. He resembled an image from a dream, as warm and vibrant as sunshine.

He stopped working and smiled at her. “What are you thinking that makes you look at me so?”

“I’m thinking I’d best do something about you soon.”

“Are you open to suggestions?” Setting aside an iron chisel, he brushed her cheek. The glove glided, hot and rough, on her skin.

She pushed his hand aside. “Not of that sort.”

“Ah.” He leaned against the bench and crossed his ankles, his booted toe pointing at the earthen floor. “The way I see it, you have few options. You can’t send me back to Hammersmith. I’d reveal your identity as the chieftain of the Fianna. You can’t set me free to wander, for you can’t trust me not to sell your secret to the highest bidder.”

“True,” she said. “Perhaps I should have given you to Logan.”

“That would have been a mistake. In the first place, I don’t appreciate being cast in the role of a bride’s dowry. In the second place, I’m smarter than Logan, and I’d be compelled to escape.”

“You gave your parole.”

“To you, Cait.” His gloved hand came up again and brushed a tendril of hair from her brow. “Only you. Because I respect you, I’m bound by my word.”

“Are you saying you don’t respect Logan Rafferty?”

“No more than I respect a man-eating shark. Do you respect him?”

“He’s an Irish lord, and my superior.”

“That doesn’t answer my question.”

She hesitated. Logan was arrogant and presumptuous. But he was also her brother-in-law who had Magheen in agony with love for him. “Aye,” she said softly. “I respect him.”

“Then why haven’t you told him about the Fianna?”

“Surely you can guess.”

“I’d rather hear your answer.”

“Logan has his own ideas on how to deal with the English, and they happen to differ with mine. The success of the Fianna cuts at his pride. If he knew of my involvement, he’d put a stop to our activities.”

“How have you managed to hide it from him?”

“The same way we hide it from everyone else. We strike swiftly and cleanly, like a storm in the night. Logan believes it’s the work of exiled soldiers from Connaught. He has no reason to question me.”

Finger by finger, Wesley plucked off the gloves. “Do you worry about Magheen telling him?”

She smiled. “For the present, Magheen wouldn’t toss him a rope if he were drowning. And you seem to view my sister as most men do, as a pretty ornament with no more depth than a soup trencher. I know better. Magheen is a MacBride and loyal to me.”

He picked up his tunic and pulled it back on.

Caitlin breathed a sigh of relief, for the sight of his bare chest scattered her thoughts and chipped away at her resolve.

“Then that narrows the choices to two,” he concluded, the white fabric muffling his voice.

“And what might those choices be?”

His head emerged from the neckline, his hair gloriously ruffled. He was a fine lion of a man. Not for the first time, she wished his sympathies lay with the Irish rather than Cromwell.

“You can either kill me. Or marry me,” he said.

His suggestion slammed into her with the force of a blow. She reeled back. “No!”

He bent and began fishing nails out of the bucket. “No to what?”

“To both choices. I will neither kill you in cold blood, nor marry an Englishman.”

“I’m relieved by the former, but you’ll have to explain the latter. Why won’t you marry me?”

“It isn’t obvious?”

An intoxicating smile slid across his face. “Not with the taste of you still fresh as the dew on my lips.”

She willed away the blush that heated her cheeks. “I would never marry a man whose aim is to subjugate Ireland, a man who knows I would fight to the death to keep my people free. Besides being
Sassenach,
you could be a—a criminal or an outlaw of some sort.”

Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, but the look was so quickly gone that she could not put a name to it.

“What sort of man would you marry, then?” asked Hawkins.

Leaning against the stone wall of the forge barn, she closed her eyes.

A Spanish nobleman as dark and beautiful as a song at midnight. A man who kept the true faith in his heart. A man who set her upon a pedestal and worshipped at her feet. A man who shared her desire to keep her people free.