Virginia Henley (2 page)

“Encyclopedia,” she corrected.

Sean hooted with laughter, exposing white teeth. “You’ve swallowed that, all right, English.”

“My name is Emerald FitzGerald Montague. I’m half
Irish!”
she insisted passionately. The sun had dried her cotton shift and the tendrils of dark hair about her face were beginning to turn back into a cloud of smoke.

Sean laughed with genuine amusement. “Better not let your father hear you say that.”

It was as if a dark shadow crossed her face. “You know my father?” She shuddered slightly without even knowing she had done so.

Know him? He’s been my father’s partner in crime since before I was born. Our sires are inextricably bound together, not only by marriage, but by an unholy alliance of smuggling, theft, piracy, and every other type of chicanery from bribery to treason.

“Are you afraid of him?”

“He terrifies me,” she confessed, then added a solemn justification. “It’s not just me, he terrifies my brother, Johnny, even more.”

The admission touched a soft spot of compassion deep within. How in the name of God the Father, God the Son,
and God the Holy Ghost had William Montague ever sired this exquisite elfin creature? Though she was eager to confide in him, Sean was on his guard. This was the daughter of Montague, an English aristocrat, and therefore natural-born enemy of the Irish. Though the O’Tooles and the Montagues had dealt together on a continuous basis for twenty years, it was for profit alone. Sean knew instinctively the two men couldn’t stomach each other.

“But my mother’s an angel. She protects us from his wrath. He gets so angry, he turns purple in the face. That’s when she takes him upstairs to soothe him. She must cast some sort of an Irish spell over him, for when they come down he’s always appeased.”

Sean could only imagine the acts the beautiful young Amber FitzGerald must perform to protect her children. “You cannot appease a tyrant,” he said with disgust.

“He
is
a tyrant. He will never allow her to go back to Ireland for a visit, but she did manage to beguile him into letting us come to Anglesey for the early summer, while he conducts Admiralty business in Liverpool. It’s only a couple of hours away. The house is wondrous; it has a lookout tower. My mother spends hours there looking across to her beloved Emerald Isle, watching the ships. How far is it?”

“Dublin is straight across from here, maybe fifty or sixty miles … we sailed it in record time today.”

“Are you here on Admiralty business?”

We’re here on monkey bloody business
, he thought. “Business, yes,” he conceded. He wondered if she knew about the smugglers’ caves that lay beneath the big house. He hoped not, for her own safety. He glanced toward the house, up on the cliff. Amber must know about the illegal cargoes. From her lookout tower she must see the ships come and go.

His brother, Joseph, had made the last run to Anglesey, while Sean had gone to Liverpool. Today, both their backs
had been needed to hump the heavy contraband, and a cooler head than Joseph’s was necessary to outwit the customs men. When they were done unloading one cargo and replacing it with another, Joseph had suggested that Sean look about the island. “Take your time. The crew has worked so hard, I think we should let them have an hour’s swim before we embark for home. Spring is hot as summer here.”

A finger of suspicion stabbed into Sean’s solar plexus. What the hellfire was Joseph doing while the lads swam and he explored the island? Sean sat up quickly. “Is your father expected today?”

“No, heaven be praised. If he were I wouldn’t dare be playing at the cave, and Mother wouldn’t be singing and adorning herself in her silken robe.”

Sean’s suspicion hardened into certainty. Joseph must have met Amber on a run to Anglesey when her husband was away. Joseph was his elder by two years, but he hadn’t the goddamn brains he was born with. Sean shot to his feet and started to run. Perhaps he’d be in time to prevent damage being done.

“Where are you going?” Emerald cried in dismay.

“To put out a bloody fire,” he called back over his shoulder.

Emerald laughed. He said the most amusing things. This really was a magical place where wishes came true. Her prince had appeared and he was Irish.
Exactly as he should be
, she told herself.
One perfect day he will come in his big ship and we will sail off to Ireland where we shall live happily ever after.
Emerald dipped her toes into the sea and shivered deliciously.

    
A
mber FitzGerald, too, shivered deliciously as Joseph O’Toole dipped her toes into his mouth and sucked on them
playfully. They lay sprawled in the big bed, resting from their wild gyrations.

“Greedy boy,” she purred, “would you eat me, then?”

His Kerry-blue eyes darkened intensely. “I’ll eat you,” he vowed, moving his dark head between her creamy thighs.

Amber moaned. “I dreamed of you last night, Joseph.”

“Then you’re as greedy as I am.”

“Is it any wonder, after eighteen years of a loveless marriage?”

Joseph, with his hot mouth against her pretty cunny, demanded, “Tell me again I’m your first lover!”

“’Tis true. He’s so jealous and suspicious, he guards me like a dragon; watches me like a hawk.”

“Old Montague looks more like a vulture than a hawk.”

Amber shuddered, and this time not from Joseph’s beautiful mouth. Montague
was
a vulture who devoured her, body and soul. But before he devoured her, he punished her. Punished her for being beautiful, punished her for being young, punished her for being
Irish.

Her intense words, filled with loathing for her aristocratic English husband, made Joseph’s cock turn to marble. It delighted him to cuckold the evil old bull. The pair of horns suited him. Montague fucked the English, fucked the Irish, and any other nation that made him money. So this was payback; it was fucking Montague. But Joseph forgot all about the man as he covered Amber’s luscious body with his own. She was so lovely, so in need, and so very, very ripe.

As her lover thrust his hard young body into hers, Amber tried to make it last as long as she could. For all she knew, this loving might have to last her a lifetime. But Joseph was too young and virile to draw it out. He was plunging fast and furious, then his neck arched back as he delivered three savage thrusts before he exploded. Amber gave herself up to the commands of his young body. As her woman’s center
convulsed, erupted, then pulsated, she dug her fingers and toes into his back and cried, “Joe, Joe, Joe!”

    
S
ean, about to burst through the bedchamber door, heard that cry and knew he was too late. The damage had been done. There was nothing he could do except leave them undisturbed while they enjoyed their last throes of passion. He wanted to beat the stuffing out of Joseph for the risky thing he’d done, but the young woman’s cries of pleasure were so heart-scalding, he could tell such ecstatic moments were few and far between. What harm? What harm in her seeking a moment’s joy in a lifetime of servitude?

He quit the house and walked out onto the long stone jetty where the
Half Moon
was docked. When the crew saw him, they came aboard. They were all related through marriage. All nephews, uncles, or second, third, and fourth cousins. Sean’s maternal grandfather was Edward FitzGerald, Earl of Kildare. He had been one of twenty-three offspring. Three generations of FitzGeralds made up an entire clan in their own right. Most of the males crewed the O’Tooles’ fleet of merchant ships.

“Danny, Davie, you two lads come below. We’ll just check the cargo.” Command came easy to Sean O’Toole. He’d been groomed to take over the family shipping business since he was twelve. His father, Shamus, said Sean’s temperament was more suited to handling men than Joseph’s, because Sean ruled them with humor. He could almost always defuse a touchy situation with his natural charm and wit. Joseph was being groomed for Irish politics, which called for different skills.

Shamus O’Toole had one of the craftiest minds in Ireland. To avoid the penal laws, he’d registered them all as Protestants, though they were no such thing. Greystones, his magnificent Georgian home, was known as “Castle Lies.” The reasons for the name were numerous, not the least of which
was the Catholic Mass celebrated in its chapel every morning that God sent. The one piece of advice Shamus always impressed upon his sons was:
Always do what’s expedient and ye’ll never go far wrong!

    
B
elowdecks, Sean tested the ropes that secured the brandy casks, then directed the lads to cover them with the barrels of herring they’d used on the voyage over to conceal the casks of smoky Irish whisky. Drink was the foremost vice of the eighteenth century, God be praised. The O’Tooles had made one fortune smuggling out illegal Irish whisky, and another fortune smuggling in illegal French brandy to satisfy the insatiable demands of the wealthy Anglo-Irish who ruled the land, or thought they did.

When Joseph finally came aboard, the crew needed no orders to weigh anchor and hoist sail. Before he reached the cabin, where Sean was falsifying bills of lading, the vessel had slipped from the stone jetty and into the mouth of the strait that opened into the Irish Sea.

“Sorry I didn’t get around to the papers, but you’re far better at it than I am.”

Sean drawled, “You’ve been dipping your quill, but not in ink.”

Joseph bristled instantly. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Sean’s pewter eyes looked directly into his brother’s and held his defiant gaze. “Exactly what you think it means.” Sean’s eyes dropped to the neck of Joseph’s unlaced shirt. “You’ve bite marks on your throat.”

As his fair skin flushed a telltale pink, Joseph laughed. “A maid up at the house couldn’t keep her hands off me.”

Sean’s eyes locked with his brother’s once more. “Lie all you want to yourself, Joseph, but never make the foolish mistake of lying to me. How the hell can I cover your back
if I don’t know what you’re up to?” Sean looked at his brother in amused exasperation.

“If you saw her, you’d understand.”

“I don’t need to see her. She’s a FitzGerald lass, and that says it all.” Sean sighed and gathered up the papers. “What’s done is done and can’t be undone, but next time you’re tempted, think what Montague will do if he finds out. At the Admiralty he has a network of spies at his disposal, and servants’ tongues never stop wagging.”

Joseph swallowed hard, imagining castration. Then, with typical bravado, he laughed. “I’m not afraid of that old swine!”

Then you should be
, thought Sean,
for the man has no soul
He masked the fear he felt for his brother and clapped him on the shoulder. “You thoughtless young devil, my concern isn’t for you, it’s for Amber FitzGerald.”

    
W
hen the O’Toole merchantman sailed into Dublin harbor, which was supposedly owned lock, stock, and barrel by the English and ruled by the British Admiralty, Sean made short work of getting the cargo through customs. He swung back over the rails with the falsified papers in his hand. “Take that worried look off your face, Joseph. The customs man was in Montague’s pocket. For the price of a jar of ale he offered to sell me his musket and throw in his sister, to boot,” Sean joked.

As the
Half Moon
headed toward Greystones’s own harbor, just north of Dublin, Joseph said, “Father will be pleased with this day’s work.”

“Aye,” said Sean, “but he’ll never let on. I’ll lay you a gold sovereign the first words out of his mouth will be:
‘Where the hellfire have you two young devils been?’”

“W
here the hellfire have you two young devils bin?” Shamus O’Toole demanded. “You should have bin here two hours back.”

“Why, what happened?” Sean asked with a straight face.

Joseph laughed and so did Paddy Burke, Shamus O’Toole’s steward, who was privy to everything that went on at Greystones.

Shamus gave Paddy a quelling glance. “Don’t encourage the young devils.”

“Aren’t you going to ask how it went, Father?” Joseph grinned.

“No need. Yer both so bloody pleased with yerselves, ye look like bantam cocks.” Shamus’s twinkling glance roved over the faces of the grinning crew. There were so many FitzGeralds, he didn’t attempt to tell them apart. “You lads have done a good job. Mr. Burke will assign another crew to do the unloadin’. Get yerselves up to the kitchen an’ tell Mary Malone to feed ye.”

Greystones had the best cook in County Dublin, bar none. With a whoop of joy the FitzGeralds jostled each other to see who could race to the kitchen door first.

“Not you two young devils.” Their father’s voice stopped Sean and Joseph in midstride. “Well, somebody has to supervise the unloadin’. Need I remind ye what idle sods the FitzGeralds are?”

As their father and Mr. Burke departed, Joseph said dryly, “He’s more pleased with us than I ever expected!”

Sean grinned. “It’s just his way of emphasizing we should see our operation through to its conclusion.”

Joseph stretched tired muscles, thinking they’d had enough exercise for one day. “We’ll not see our beds this side of midnight.”