Seducing the Spy

by Sandra Madden

  “Thomas attacked me.” Deirdre’s tousled black waves bounced about her shoulders. Her left cheek bore a smudge of dirt, and one sleeve of her lovely blue gown had been ripped.

  “Merciful Mary!”

  “He heard me. When I followed him into the stable, I tripped over the handle of a pitch fork left lying on the floor,” she explained breathlessly.

  “Did he hurt ye?”

  “Nay. Nay.”

  “Thank goodness for that.” Meggie wrapped an arm around the girl’s shoulder. “Come, you shall drink some mead and calm yourself.”

  But Deirdre refused to move. Wild-eyed, her gaze met Meggie’s. “Did ye not hear me? The bard is in league with the awful boy.”

  “Nay. ’Tis impossible.” Meggie felt certain that Deirdre’s experience had frightened the wits from her, The girl simply did not know what she was saying. After such an alarming encounter, it was understandable that she made no sense.

  “I saw them whispering together” Deirdre insisted. “I lingered behind a stall after they thought I had left.”

  Meggie flicked a dismissive wrist. “That does not mean anything. Did you hear what they said?”

  “Nay. But why would they whisper?”

  “Deirdre, do not ask me why a man does anything,” Meggie replied, ignoring the chill of foreboding, the icy needles and pins that crawled beneath her skin. “How did you escape?”

  “The bard forced Thomas to release me.”

  Meggie heaved a sigh of relief. “You see. Why would Colm free you if he were in league with the English?”

  For a moment, Deirdre appeared at a loss. “To pull the wool over our eyes,” she said at last.

  “Deirdre, when we are agitated, our imaginations often run amuck. I understand, truly.”

  “Why should they whisper if they had nothing to hide?”

  Deirdre asked a reasonable question. Meggie answered with the first explanation that came to mind. Not necessarily an acceptable answer. “Perhaps the bard was gently inquiring about the boy’s health.”

  “Meggie!” Deirdre wailed in frustration.

  Meggie smiled. “The English are not feeling well, you know.”

  “They were talking so softly no one could hear them. I tried.”

  “I expect the bard warned the boy to stay away from ye.”

  Midnight waves whipped into her face as Deirdre shook her head. “I think your feeling for the bard clouds your mind.”

  “I have no feelings for Colm,” Meggie said coolly. Certainly none that she would share with her young helper.

  “I have seen how ye look at him, how your gaze follows him. You may deny your feelings, but you cannot hide them from another woman.”

  “Deirdre, ye are still a girl; your eyes deceive you. As I have already noted, your imagination runs amuck.”

  “I am a girl in age only ... In my heart I am a woman.”

  “Let us take your womanly self to my chamber. Ye will stay with me this night. Seamus and Bernadette will guard us. Along with my musket, dagger, and the bard sleeping across the corridor, I am certain we will not be in any further danger this eve.”

  “The bard will not protect us from the English. He is one of them.”

  Obviously, the girl had taken leave of her senses. Meggie refused to consider Deirdre’s groundless accusations. She pushed them out of her mind. “If that is so, never fear,” she soothed. “I shall keep my musket at the ready.”

  But Meggie did not sleep. She listened for the footsteps of the bard. They came soon after she blew out the candles. His steps were strong now. Although he carried the walking stick, he no longer needed the support of the staff.

  Unbidden, Deirdre’s fears crept into Meggie’s ruminations. This time she could not push them away; they weighed heavily on her mind. Colm could not be a spy for the English. An Irishman would never resort to spying for the English. But was it possible…could Colm actually be an Englishman?

  Nay! ’Twas a ridiculous thought. The poet spoke as she did, enjoyed her grandfather’s stories, even going so far as to encourage them. He relished the plain Irish meals served at Dochas and dressed like every Irishman, appearing comfortable and more attractive than most in his garments. Oh, so much more attractive than most.

  Of late, when his dark eyes looked into hers, Meggie felt as if he were touching her innermost soul, reading what was in her mind and understanding what was written in her heart. Her knees would suddenly feel only as firm as the moss Cook used to thicken soup. She could not hold a thought, riveted to wherever she stood as a numbing warmth swirled through her. With one long look, the bard could set her body to tingling.

  Colm had been about to recite a poem before the English arrived. With or without the aid of his muse, only an Irish bard could compose wondrous stories and sonnets. Although he had fretted that the muse had left him as the result of his wound, he had composed a poem for Niall to woo Meggie. If only she could have heard it!

  If Meggie was the sort of women who cried, she would have reason to shed a thousand tears on this night. Dochas could be in danger if she allowed her attraction for Colm to blind her. She would want to die if she lost Dochas. With a heavy heart, Meggie resolved to watch more carefully and be on guard. The truth struck with a mighty force. If she discovered Colm was, indeed, an English spy, she would want to die. But she would not cry.

  In the dark came a whisper. “Meggie, we must find Niall and share our suspicions about the bard.”

  Chapter Ten

  The arduous journey from the Duke of Doneval’s Highland castle to the Thatchers’ Inn in Cotswold came to an end on the twenty-fifth day of September in the Year of Our Lord 1598. None too soon.

  Donald’s traveling companion, Sally Pickering, arrived at their destination in a fair state of exhaustion. Her age, well over six and sixty years, and her weight, quite a bit over two hundred pounds, made the long journey especially difficult for the older woman.

  While the duke was tired, restless excitement roiled in his belly and poured through his veins like bubbling cider.

  As his coach pulled into the courtyard of the quaint stone inn known as Buckthorn, Donald peered through the window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the one he had traveled all this way to see. But it was the innkeeper, his wife, and a young girl who ran to greet Donald’s coach.

  The innkeeper was a middle-aged man with a glistening bald dome and a thick-barreled middle. In contrast, his legs were no wider than the spindles of a spinning wheel. The unfortunate shape caused the man’s tights to sag. But his smile was wide and his cheeks rosy.

  He swept a deft bow as he opened the coach door. “Welcome to Buckthorn Inn, Your Grace.”

  “Thank you.” Donald smiled and nodded to the woman and girl as he stepped down from the coach.

  “I am George Thatcher, and I will do my best to see that you enjoy your time at Buckthorn. May I inquire as to how long will you be staying?”

  “At the moment I am not certain.”

  The duke looked over his shoulder to be certain that Sally was being helped. What he assumed to be the innkeeper’s wife and daughter assisted Sally from the coach.

  “We shall make you comfortable as long as you like.”

  Donald surveyed his surroundings, grateful to find the land and property, where his son was raised, well taken care of and pleasant. Nestled in foothills north of York, the rolling countryside presented a canvas of resplendent greenery. Constructed of local stone, the neat, two-storied inn boasted window boxes below every window, blooming with bright red primrose and poppies.

  But Donald was too impatient to be taken with the scenery or the inn for that matter. “My name is Donald Cameron, Duke of Doneval. This is Sally Pickering, who is in my employ.”

  George Thatcher bowed; his wife and the young girl dropped into a polite curtsy.

  “Your Grace, my wife Bess and Mary, the youngest of our daughters. We are not often privileged to lodge guests from the Highlands. We shall prepare our finest r
ooms while my wife serves refreshments.”

  “My thanks, we are in need of refreshment.”

  Tapping down his increasing excitement in order to attend to Sally proved increasingly difficult for Donald. The large woman waddled slowly behind. The pain of her gout grew worse day by day.

  As Donald followed the bald-headed fellow into Buckthorn, his gaze darted about, searching for the one he had come to see.

  Thatcher led them to a sunny table in a room filled with roughly hewn long tables and crudely carved chairs and stools.

  “May I fetch you ale, Your Grace?”

  “Aye. And a tankard for Sally as well.”

  He watched to see if there was any sign of recognition on the innkeeper’s face when he looked at Sally, but George Thatcher kept his eyes on Donald.

  Two pewter tankards of ale were brought straightaway by an older, stern-faced lass who appeared to be near past her prime. Next came dark cheese and crusty bread, served by the innkeeper’s wife.

  “Will there be anything else?” she asked. “My husband is carrying your cases to your rooms.”

  “Your husband?”

  “Aye. The girls are not strong enough.”

  But what of the son? Had they come to the wrong place? Donald shot a questioning glance to Sally, who only hiked her white wisps of eyebrows and gave a listless shrug of her shoulders.

  The duke turned back to Bess Thatcher. “Do you recall having met my traveling companion, Sally?”

  Bess looked to Sally. The crevices in her brow deepened as she inclined her head and studied the large, huffing woman.

  “It was some years back,” he added helpfully.

  “I... I am not certain. There is a vague ... There is something familiar about her. I do not know.”

  “Sally guided me here. Perhaps your husband will remember her. Fetch him.”

  Sally clicked her tongue and confessed with resignation, “I have gained some pounds since I was here last. Over twenty years ago, it was.”

  The spinster lass left standing by the table gasped, “I remember you.”

  Before Donald could question her, she ran off crying for her father.

  “Well, at least we are in the proper inn,” he said. “Hopefully.”

  Donald dared not let himself think anything untoward had happened to his son. His only son. A boy he had never known but was now two and twenty years old.

  The duke’s impatience would no longer allow him to sit still. He stood and immediately began to pace. With his hands behind his back, he silently counted his steps.

  George Thatcher returned in quick, harried steps. He stared at Sally, whose smile seemed out of proportion, too small between her round, flushed cheeks. “Do I know you?”

  “Sally brought an infant to you,” Donald told him. “A boy.”

  Thatcher spun on Donald. “And you have come to take him from us?”

  The duke stiffened. His heart seemed to have frozen mid-beat.

  “If you have come to take him from us, you are too late,” the innkeeper grumbled.

  “Too late?” Donald’s pulse raced like a madman’s. “What do you mean?”

  “Cameron is gone.” The rosy-cheeked man scowled at Donald as if he were to blame for the loss. “He bought a commission in the queen’s army.”

  “My son serves the queen?”

  “Your son?” The innkeeper’s voice was barely audible.

  Donald placed a hand on the man’s back. “My story is not easy to tell. My ... wife,” Donald refused to call Anne his mistress, “my wife, who died only months ago, bore me two children. And I never knew. Do not ask me how I came to be ignorant about the birth of my own children. I did not question my wife when I should have, and she purposefully hid them from me.”

  George Thatcher’s narrowed frown reflected puzzlement, disbelief, and fear.

  “Soon after they were born, my ... wife gave our children to other couples. I have a daughter and a son,” Donald explained. “I wish to claim them as my own.”

  “You think Cameron belongs to you?”

  “He is a young man now. I doubt he belongs to any man save himself.”

  “Have you proof of what you say?”

  Donald drew himself up and introduced himself once again. “I am Donald Cameron, Duke of Doneval. This is Sally Pickering, who at the behest of my ... wife, gave our son to you. My son.”

  Tears streamed down the cheeks of the innkeeper’s wife.

  “The conditions you were given for having the babe were that you call him Cameron and see that he wore a particular ring at all times.”

  The color had drained from George Thatcher’s cheeks as he lowered his head.

  Donald sank to the bench. “I do not wish to wound you, and I know it is a very strange story. Yet, you must understand my need to meet my son.”

  To Donald’s relief, Sally pierced the suddenly silent room with her own explanation.

  “My mistress feared for her children. She had relatives who might have killed them if their existence was known. She did not mean to wound or deprive the duke of his heirs.”

  George raised his head. “Relatives who would kill them?”

  “Mad men. Madness ran in the family,” Sally assured the couple. Her assertion was not far from the truth.

  All of the Thatchers’ daughters had now gathered round the table. They stared at the duke and Sally in various states of belief and disbelief.

  “Where is my son? Would you be so kind as to tell me where I may find my son?”

  “Cameron is in Ireland. He serves in Dublin, but we have not heard from him in many weeks.”

  “Which is not at all like him,” Bess added. “He has been sending messages regularly.”

  “We fear he may be dead,” George said in a soft, hoarse tone.

  The duke’s heart ceased to beat.

  * * * *

  Meggie could not sleep. Weary of tossing and turning, she rose and quietly slipped a clean, moss green Shinrone over her chemise. Taking up her musket and her brush, Meggie left the room. Neither the hounds nor Deirdre, asleep on the pallet by her bed, stirred.

  She meant to watch the sunrise. Just as watching a sunset always soothed her, likewise did the sun welcoming a new day. If she had not been mistaken about Declan and Niall, she would have ignored the doubts about Colm planted by Deirdre. But Meggie had been certain Declan would never take up arms, as certain as she had been that Niall would not prove himself a coward before their enemies ... boys at that. She had been wrong in both cases. Obviously, she possessed poor judgment when it came to men. What if she was wrong about Colm?

  She paused to look in on him, but all she could make out was his massive form on the bed. He filled the space, leaving little room for a woman to join him. When it came time, his marriage bed would have to be specially made to accommodate another, even if his bride be slender.

  Ach! Marriage. Turning away, she made her way carefully down the spiral staircase in the dim light. The bard had shown no interest in Meggie. Perhaps because he was an English spy as Deirdre claimed.

  Chills skipped down her spine.

  Nay, he could not be. He simply cared for more voluptuous women. Meggie’s pert, small breasts would not attract such a man.

  But with each passing day, the longing for a family of her own increased. The family that only marriage could give her. Ever since her mother and sister had died at sea, she had been alone. Her father suspected the English were responsible for the ship sinking, for the deaths of those closest to her heart.

  Meggie strolled out into the bailey and toward the low stone wall surrounding the turf house. A dampness edged the morning air, and the rich emerald green meadows glistened with dew. Ribbons of pale golden light sliced the gray and purple sky.

  First placing the musket and her silver-handled brush on top of the wall, she braced her arms and with a little jump swung herself onto the wall. There was no better spot for viewing nature’s splendid drama.

  If it had not
been for a childhood illness, the runny nose and painful cough that she frequently suffered from as a small lass, she would have been on the ship with her mother and sister.

  She had cried for days after being left behind. It had not helped to know she would make the journey from Cork to Dublin later with her father. Soon after Meggie had finally dried her tears came word that the ship had been lost at sea. She cried again. Tears of loss and despair fell like rain of those dark days. But it was the last time she’d cried. Never since.

  Gazing to the east, to the fiery tip of sun, she raised the brush to her hair and took long, languid strokes. Clearly, she must put her mind at rest by discovering the truth about the bard. And she must soon take a husband and end her yearning, her emptiness.

  “So this is where you disappeared.”

  Meggie started at the sound of the voice beside her. Deep in reverie, she had not heard Colm approach. “I came to watch the sunrise.”

  “Alone? With English soldiers about?”

  “I suspect they will not be early risers this morn.” She allowed herself a small, smug smile. “The boys need their sleep.”

  His wondrous mouth turned down as his dark brows gathered in a scolding frown. “Ye cannot know that for certain. You are fortunate that I heard you leave.”

  “Aye?”

  “I came after you fearing you might put yourself in harm’s way.”

  “I brought my musket.”

  “As you are a sharp shot, I feel relieved.”

  “You came after me to offer your protection?”

  Colm cannot possibly be a spy. He is much too intelligent, too sensitive, to be English.

  “If protecting you is possible for a mere mortal man.”

  But then again, he might well be. The bard possesses the glib tongue of the English.

  “Ye mock me at every turn,” she said.

  “Only because I find it amusing to match wits with ye.”

  Nay. Nay. Any man possessing the bard’s magnificent grin could be a spy. When he laughs the crevices at the corner of his eyes deepen, his eyes sparkle.

  Her mouth went dry.

  “Should I be flattered that I amuse ye?” she asked in a breathless rasp.