Stormfire

by Christine Monson

  "Starved. I could eat a well-salted sail."

  He grinned as he lit the lantern in the gathering darkness. "Well, you'd better enjoy the feasting while it lasts, because the fresh grub won't keep long. We'll shortly be dining on salt pork and hardtack." He handed her a mug and clicked it lightly with his own. "Slainte, Countess."

  "Slainte, Captain."

  The delicious food, the lantern light, the wind, and the gentle rock of the boat combined with lulling treachery. Catherine fell asleep in the middle of the most pleasant meal of her life.

  She was awakened by sunlight streaming through a porthole across her pillow. She stretched with a contented purr, eyes slitted against the light. She realized she was wearing nothing under the blanket, that Sean had undressed her. Strange, how she had come to trust him. His manner was almost brotherly, even if his eyes often warned his desire was on short tether, Gradually she had grown accustomed to his touch. Often she awoke to find his body intimately entwined with her own, as if a night of love had left him unwilling to part with her. Grown now unused to sleeping alone, she wished he were lying warm against her in her bunk rather than already moving about the deck.

  Donning shirt, sweater, and breeches, Catherine poked her head out of the aft hatch to feel the sun warm on her upturned face. The morning was fair as promised, the breeze light. Megan's topsides and brass mirrored the play of sun off water as she rocked at anchor. "Oh, what a gorgeous day," Catherine breathed, realizing how a bird must feel and wanting to turn inside out with song.

  Sean, splicing a rope near the bow, glanced up and noted her steady walk. His teeth flashed their startling white in his dark face. "Sleep well, Beauty?"

  "Like the proverbial stone." She grinned back, swinging the hair out of her face. "You're a passable wizard. Weather as ordered, I see." Her grin turned impish. "Your wand seems to be back in working order."

  He shot her a wicked look under his lashes. "For all I know, it's rusted away entirely."

  She lifted an ironic brow. "Surely it has more than earned its rest."

  "True," he observed slyly. "To rest in your willing warmth is a consummation devoutly to be wished."

  She flushed. His words had a seductive pull beneath their teasing surface. She should not have begun to fence with him.

  She sat on the deck and dangled her feet over the side, toes just clearing the water. Her wavering reflection blended with that of the hull, then was cut by a sheet- white gull that skimmed low, mewling over glittering azure water. Its head snapped down and came up with breakfast. Catherine trilled clearly after him as he flew off, wings occasionally taking a lazy beat toward the gray- blue shore.

  "Like it here, English?"

  "Very much, Irish." Her heels drummed against the hull. "Where are we going today?"

  "We'll explore the islands off Achill. We can reach them by afternoon if we get under way within the hour."

  She watched his long brown fingers deftly splice strands of rope together. "Is that complicated?"

  "No. Want to try it?"

  She crawled over to him on hands and knees and sat cross-legged beside him. He taught her the movements and showed her how to use the splicing awl, and with a bit of practice, she managed the maneuver almost as easily as he. Pleased by her quickness, Sean demonstrated some basic knots. His pupil paid sharp attention; her wits had been her sole defense in the past months. Finally, he let her help run up the sails before he weighed anchor.

  By noon they were roaming the out islands, scattered like a school of gray whales across the glitter of the blue, sunlit Atlantic. A few scrub junipers, limbs twisted landward by merciless Atlantic winds, struggled in the worn rocks. To these inhospitable islands and others like them from Inishmurray to the Dingle Peninsula on the world's edge, Christian monks had fled from the barbarian hordes after the fall of Rome. Here, the monks practiced asceticism, copied manuscripts, and wrought art objects in gold. To survive, they fought the Celts from the mainland and later the Norse from the sea. All that remained of those ancient battles against oblivion were crumbling watchtowers and hivelike cairns. Here, was loneliness. Resistance. A scream of faith.

  The next day, well south of the Achills, Catherine and Sean stood like pinpoints atop the grand escarpments on the windward side of the largest of the craggy Aran Islands. The island was a monstrous fortress against the sea, and as the weather had turned foul for the day, giant waves assaulted the cliffs in legions. Geysering spray wet their faces three hundred feet above the boiling water as the stormy Atlantic tried to smash the island out of its path into Galway Bay. Billowing clouds of mist swirled about the base of the dripping cliffs and wind howled through the rocks. Standing behind her, Sean held her closely as they faced the sea, their dark heads capped and jacket collars turned up against the penetrating cold. "Frightened?" he questioned against her ear.

  "Awed."

  When the weather slackened, the Megan turned again northward, keeping well out to sea. More sail tops, particularly Britain's, had cropped up in southern waters, and teaching Catherine to identify them had become a dangerous lesson. During the next two days the weather warmed. Catherine spent the hottest hours sunning on the fore- deek. She undressed in the cabin and stayed out of Sean's aright as much as possible when unclothed. He reciprocated by not watching her.

  They spoke little, other than exchanges during lessons in seamanship. Bit by bit he explained how sea and winds affected a vessel's course and behavior, how certain signs could be read for clear sailing directions, which cloud formations portended storms and how much violence they indicated. She learned to stay well clear of the precipitous shores whose high, rocky formations confused and troubled the sea winds, sometimes becalming a ship until it was helpless to avoid the rocks.

  Catherine was a likely shipmate, not as strong as a boy, but willing and quick—and utterly fearless. She learned to clamber up the mast above the briskest seas and once crawled out on the lunging bowsprit while under sail to unsnag a line before Sean could reach it. His rebuke was sharp but he was proud and she knew it. She wanted to match him on his own terms, in his own element; and at sea, he was at home as he was nowhere else on earth. She came to understand the source of his pride in his heritage and slowly realized he was showing her his soul, its wildness and freedom, in the coast he had roamed since boyhood. His spirit, like the lonely, windswept sea, was ever-restless, ever-changing, sometimes howling down to savage the unyielding land, then caressing it with a lulling embrace, inevitably wearing away its resistance. He was asking her to become part of him, without reservations, without ties that would inevitably be wrenched apart, leaving her battered on the rocks and him lonelier and wilder than before.

  When Sean was restless, he was inclined to stay at the helm until the moon sheared the water in a quicksilver streak and glittering stars scattered their ancient runes across the black sky. Catherine stayed with him, curled against his shoulder. Usually he was silent, but sometimes he would tell her the Gaelic names of the stars and point out their positions, or recount in his melodic lilt the old legends, repeating the refrains in Gaelic to let her hear their strange, lovely music.

  In a few days Megan's white sail skimmed like a tiny paper dart under awesome Malin Head at Ireland's norther- most tip. "Nothing's beyond this, lass, but the fogbound Hebrides and Faeroes."

  "We cannot go on?" she asked with a note of desperation. "Is there nowhere?"

  For a moment he said nothing, then, "There's Lough Swilly just east of Malin." The tiller shifted in his hands and Megan winged on toward the mouth of a fjordlike inlet.

  Swilly was a wide sheet of water blocked from the reach of Atlantic gusts by sheltering heather-shrouded Fanad Head, and the range of the Devil's Backbone. Foyle, she knew from the maps in the study, was Swilly's sister lake, only a few miles east. And at the heart of Foyle lay the garrison city of Londonderry, hardly a safe spot for a man with a hostage.

  After a while Culhane pointed to the eastern bank, where a misty summit
rose some eight hundred feet from the water. Its cap was crowned by the ruins erf a great concentric stone fortress. "The Grianon of Ailech. It was built by Niall's sons Eogan and Conal over fourteen hundred years ago."

  "Niall . . . O'Neill: he was the founder of your line, wasn't he? The first high king of Ireland."

  "Aye. He was ri eireanne, King of the Irish. O'Neill is among the oldest dynastic names in Europe, and Niall's son, Donell, was first to bear it. Donegall, or Dun na nGall, means Fort of the Strangers, possibly after the Grianon."

  They anchored below the fort; then Sean let Catherine row the dinghy into shore. They spent the hazy afternoon climbing the fortress and exploring the ruins as he recounted the bloody history of the O'Neills. If his ancestors weren't fighting to subelue other Irish chiefs to their standard, they were feuding among themselves, brother slaughtering brother. When she heard that, in the sixteenth century, Shane, younger son of Conn Bahach, first earl of Tyrone, had murdered his illegitimate brother, Matthew, with the cooperation of the man's traitorous troops, a chill ran through her that had nothing to do with the wind sweeping across the Devil's Backbone. Why did a fear creep darkly about the edges of her mind? Why should she want to shield Culhane? He was true to his line. A Prince of Death.

  The O'Neills had been stubborn fighters and audacious leaders. Hugh, the last O'Neill and greatest earl of Tyrone, had carried on an incredible war of guile and blood resisting the English, even recruiting the aid of Philip of Spain. An ill-timed rebellion mounted by the Irish and Spanish alliance against his advice, coupled with delay in rallying the rest of Ireland, proved fatal. The ensuing Flight of the Earls to the continent had dispersed the O'Neills, although the Clandeboy branch fought the Cromwellians viciously to reestablish Owen Rede, the O'Neill heir in exile. They gave Cromwell his worst defeat in Ireland, but were eventually crushed, their leader executed outright for his stubborn defense despite his honorable surrender. And then it was over. Until now.

  After lunch, as the two wandered the cloud-shadowed heath at the summit, they found an ancient stone cross with four arcs framing a wheel-like base. Catherine knelt and crossed herself. Culhane waited, his own ties with faith long since severed. He could not know she prayed for him.

  The Megan remained anchored under the fortress for that night. Catherine was already lying in her bunk when Sean came to bed. From her silence during their brief supper, he knew she was thinking Shelan would be the next anchorage if they sailed through the following night.

  When he stripped off his clothing, his male nakedness in the close cabin quickened Catherine's pulse. By the wavering glow of the lantern, his deeply tanned skin was a smooth, dark gold; his lithe, lean symmetry like a beautiful satyr's. Knowing his body would be warm to the touch, she wanted to trace the line of his slim flank, of his hard belly and lower, to feel the slow rise of his desire, the tremor of his flesh. Between her thighs. Moving inside her. Desire coiled in her loins and struck with a piercing force. She turned her head swiftly away, lying rigid until he slid beneath his covers.

  Furious at the lust that held her, she heard the pages of a book turn and silently cursed him. If he would only extinguish the lantern and let her hide in sheltering darkness, she could exorcise the thought of him lying within a whisper's reach. Could quell this serpent whose fangs pumped sweet poison into the blood.

  Still the pages turned, and finally her tension exploded. "Please put out the light! It's shining in my face."

  His eyes narrowed at her sharpness. "Is it? Those wide, dark pupils don't suggest an overdose of light. Still, if my inattention annoys you . . . ?"

  The mocking, appraising insinuation dampened her desire and allowed her to retrace her wits. "Of course not. Why should it?" she answered coldly. "Only it's been a long day and I'm tired. . . . What are you reading?" Briefly, he held up the binding for her to see. "John Donne. My guess would have been Machiavelli."

  "An apt choice. 'I laugh, and my laughter is not within me; I burn, and the burning is not seen outside,' " he quoted lightly. She snorted. "Why the sudden bitchiness, Kit? I'm no more eager than you to end the cruise."

  "I know," she answered dully, staring up at the cabin roof, "but you'll take me back. Back to shrivel under your ambition. The Prince and his English Whore in Residence. Is that relic up there on the hill what you've been fighting for?" She rose on an elbow and looked at him. "Ireland held in the grip of the bloody fist of Ulster? The O'Neill resurrected from a line of royal killers? Would you have me bear your sons? Sons to smash and kill and rule?"

  Sean whitened in anger. "Would you rather breed a brace of Bourbons! They've not been butchers quite as long as the O'Neills, I'll admit, but they've admirable aptitude."

  "What are you talking about?" she asked in angry puzzlement.

  "Angoulême, petite. Go back to Papa and see how long it takes you to find that whelp in your bed!"

  "Louis? You cannot be serious! I'm not of royal blood . . ."

  "Ah, but le grand Monsieur Artois says you'll do as a concubine. Don't underestimate your gamine charm, chérie. Little Louis wants to fuck you and Artois intends to keep him happy. Of course, they assume you're a virgin. Angoulême has paid your doting papa a stiff price for the right to wave your nonexistent scrap of virtue from his royal standard."

  Her eyes flashed fire. "You're obscene. And you're lying."

  Sean's temper unleashed. "Am I? Would you like to see the Lloyd's draft your father had cosigned by Angoulême, transferable to me for a gambling debt? It's your bill of sale. I haven't cashed it yet. Perverse of me, isn't it? Holding that draft makes me feel you're mine: bought and paid for."

  Sitting up, careless of the covers slipping to her waist, she lashed out at him, "Father's one of the richest men in England. He'd never sell me for a paltry wager!"

  "But he would for political gain, wouldn't he?" Seeing her eyes flicker, he pressed. John Enderly was the last real barrier between him and Catherine and he was determined to smash it. He had to have her. The sight of her half-naked, her black hair falling across high, taunting breasts turned his guts to a volcano. "Don't tell me Papa doesn't crave the favor of a man who might someday rule France. You know damned well he does. And he's no longer rich, Kit. He's near ruin. I did it to him. He had to race Numidian because he needed money; otherwise he wouldn't have required a cosigner to cover his losses when Mephisto won. All his accounts connected with his smuggling dealings have been in escrow for months."

  "Smuggling?" The Irishman's words came like a hail of arrows. Her eyes faltered in bewilderment and Culhane would have pitied her if he had wanted her less.

  "He's a thief, Kit. An urbane one. A good one. I know, because I'm a thief too. But I'm not a traitor, and he is. He's been selling arms to the French—"

  "Stop it! You're lying! You'd say anything . . . anything!" She was deathly pale under the tan.

  "Yes, I'd say anything. Do anything to beat you down. Down on your back and open to me. With nothing between us. No clothes, no country, no father! But I'm not lying and you know it. Only you've been cheating. You want me now as much as I want you." Culhane jerked away his covering and rose slowly from his bunk. "Do you think I haven't seen desire in a woman's eyes before? Yours are full of it. You know what I am. And you want me. You want me inside you, like the beat of your heart. Kit. . ."

  "Stop it!" she sobbed. "Don't touch me! I cannot . . . don't you see? It would be like dying." Her resistance foundered in a gold-flecked green ocean and she wildly seized at anything. "It's useless, Sean. I know! I know about your guns!" He hesitated, still crouched over her. "I've seen them. You care nothing for your own life or anyone else's! You'll push your people into a hopeless rebellion to serve your own ambition and they'll die! And you'll die more horribly than any of them if you're caught!"

  "For a woman who finds a killer's touch so distasteful, you sat around long enough hoping for a pat on the head from Papa! Adder-eyed Papa, up to his armpits in blood!"

  Catherine clawed at hi
m viciously and he caught her wrist, twisting until she gasped, then pushed her roughly down on the bunk. Lying atop her, he deliberately slid his body over hers as she sobbed and twisted. Holding her wrists, he bit her nipples with soft savagery until they were hard, begging peaks of desire and she whimpered. "Get used to it, Kit," he muttered hoarsely. "Tomorrow, the truce is over. It's time you saw some of your father's handiwork." Abruptly he released her. Sobbing into her pillow, she heard him pull on his clothes and go on deck. A half hour later, the Megan was under way.

  The next day was overcast, with threatening clouds on the western horizon. Jacket buttoned high, Catherine huddled near the bowsprit, as far away from the Irishman as she could get. Her last refuge was crumbling, Had he planned it all, even to this? The elements themselves had been his allies. The lazy, sunlit days; the soft, starlit nights. Like a fool, she had followed him, and now he'd burned the bridges home.

  Dully, she noticed the Megan was coming close to shore; too close unless Culhane planned to land. On the windswept heath above the roiky beach, a village lay scattered, its few buildings ruined and open to the sky. Their whitewash had worn away to patches of pale gray against blackened stones. She saw the place had been burned until only the rock remained. Kenlo. Inevitably the Megan had come home.

  Although she was cold, she turned her back to Culhane and without hesitation pulled off her boots and jacket. Intent on bringing the Megan in, he did not notice her movements until he saw her slim body arch outward in a clean dive toward the rocks. Hearing him call out as her head cleared the turbulent surface, she struck out strongly for shore nearly a hundred yards away. The wind whistled about her ears. The water, Gulf Stream current or not, was cold, with treacherous rocks that bristled under the offshore surf. She had gone overboard without thinking, only knowing she had to get away, hide. With nothing left to lose except the last shreds of respect for her father and herself. And her life.