A Rose in Splendor

by Laura Parker

  “Only half that sum,” Darragh protested. “And how am I to know you kept the course, with no one watching?”

  Deirdre looked up. “Calling me a liar, are you?”

  “Never that,” Conall broke in. “’Tis just that there’s no way of telling whether or no you kept the course.”

  “I did more than that. I rode astride, without boots. Darragh owes me double the bet!” Deirdre added with a glint in her eye.

  “Now that I did not agree to,” Darragh answered, drawing her note from his pocket. “You did not give me a chance to say yea or nae. Ten francs, ’tis all I bet, and the loss of that is not yet proved.”

  “Cheat!” Deirdre declared in frank disgust. “Give me the reins and you’ll see who won!”

  “Whoa, lass.” Conall grabbed his sister about the waist when she would have tried to remount. “There’ll be a rematch in the morning when Lachtna’s rested and Darragh’s temper has cooled.”

  “There’s naught the matter with my temper,” Darragh answered, but his face was flushed.

  “Nae, there’s nothing wrong with his temper, ’tis stinginess ailing him,” Deirdre taunted.

  “Stingy is it? And me the one who brought you five pairs of silk stockings and a novel from Paris.”

  “Children, children,” Conall chided between chuckles, only to have his siblings turn on him and snap in unison, “Shut up, Conall!”

  “Perhaps I may be of service,” a man’s voice offered behind them. The three Fitzgeralds swung toward the rider in surprise, for they had not seen him approach.

  Deirdre gave a guilty start as she recognized the man. He had dismounted, and where his cloak gaped open she saw not only the pistol in his belt but also the gleam of silver from his sword scabbard. Pistols and swords were both signs of a gentleman; why had she not thought of that before?

  “The lass kept a murderous pace, you have my word on that. I followed her from the meadow near the stream and she never dismounted nor slowed her pace.”

  “MacShane!”

  Darragh strode forward to clasp the stranger in a bearlike hug. “MacShane, I should nae be surprised that you’ve appeared without a sound. ’Twas the same stealth that made the Spaniards believe you dealt in witchcraft.”

  Killian subjected himself to Darragh’s intimacy but he stuck out his hand to Conall before that brother could envelop him in an embrace.

  “Captain MacShane!” A grin split Conall’s face as he pumped the man’s hand. Then, giving in to greater sentiment, he clapped him soundly on the back. “Your visit has been eagerly anticipated.”

  Killian looked up at the great house before him and then back at his hosts. “Anticipated or dreaded, as one waits for death or the tax collector?”

  “The tax collector, of course,” Conall volunteered without hesitation. “Yet, the brigadier has sworn that you’ll be made welcome, be you the devil himself.”

  “I can imagine the devil would be more welcome,” Killian murmured as his gaze moved to Deirdre, who still stood by Lachtna.

  Conall followed his gaze, frowning as he took in his sister’s damp-streaked skirts and dirty bare feet. She looked like a street urchin. Then his eyes blazed as a thought struck him. “Och, well now, about the lass.” He bent to whisper in MacShane’s ear.

  Deirdre felt herself coloring as the whispery breath of her brother’s unheard words filtered toward her. She could not hear what Conall said, but the leap of life in MacShane’s blue eyes assured her that it was pure mischief.

  When Conall raised his head with a chuckle, MacShane stared at her, and the look in his piercing eyes set Deirdre’s blood racing. This was the famous MacShane, the man her brothers had told her tales about for the better part of a week. This was the man many believed to be in league with the devil, a murderous warrior without mercy or weakness. And he was looking at her with an intensity that she suspected he reserved for his foes.

  Her instinct for self-preservation made her take a hasty step back when he moved toward her, and she saw his black brows lower over his strangely light eyes. When he stood before her, he reached out and put a hand under her chin to lift her face to his.

  “I did not mean to frighten you in the meadow, lass. I’d not harm so lovely a creature.”

  Deirdre stared up at him, fascinated as much by his touch as his gaze. He was not at all what her brothers had led her to expect. He was daunting with his black garb and stern face, that was true, but he was not the battle-scarred ogre they had described.

  “You’re not ugly at all!” she blurted in surprise.

  The frank wonder in her voice pierced Killian in an unguarded place. The stable master’s daughter, Conall had informed him. His guess had been correct. What he had not guessed from his meeting with her, and what Conall had added, was that she was slow-witted.

  His gaze moved over her bright golden hair wildly tangled in corkscrews. And her eyes. Had he ever seen eyes so fine? A forest of gold-tipped lashes surrounded eyes so green a gray they reminded him of the misty waters of a lough. Aye, she was very like the face in his dream. Such waste of beauty, he thought with a surge of anger against nature’s cruel joke.

  Deirdre watched his expression darken and alarm sped through her.

  Killian’s hand fell to his side as he saw fear reflected on those misty-emerald depths. “Tell her I mean her no harm,” he said to Darragh. “Is she so dimwitted that she cannot understand even that?”

  Dimwitted? Deirdre’s eyes narrowed as she spied the gleam of mischief in her brother’s eyes. She took a step toward Conall. “You told the man my wits wander?”

  “Now, Dee. A stable hand’s feeble-minded daughter, that’s how you look,” Conall replied before laughter got the better of him.

  “Conall!” she scolded, and then raised her arms as if she would embrace him.

  She smiled at him so sweetly that Conall knew something was about to happen but he could not puzzle it out before she balled her fists into small hard knots and struck him hard on both ears.

  Caught off guard by the unexpected blow, he yelped like a schoolboy as Darragh’s unsympathetic laughter rang in his ears.

  Without a glance at the man called MacShane, Deirdre grabbed her skirts and fled toward the house on bare feet.

  “Am I to understand that the lass is related to you?” MacShane inserted quietly into Darragh’s laughter and Conall’s muttered curses.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Darragh murmured, deciding not to spoil his brother’s jest.

  “Aye, the she-devil’s name is Deirdre,” Conall added. “Though for the life of me I cannot understand why she is not named Faolan, for at times she is more like a wolf cub than a lass.”

  “Welcome to Nantes, MacShane,” Darragh said, mirth twitching his lips. “You’ll nae be bored in the Fitzgerald household.”

  “No, I do not think I will,” Killian murmured as he gazed at the door through which Deirdre had fled.

  *

  “Idiot! Dolt! Fool!” Deirdre slammed the door and marched to the center of her bedroom. How could Conall have played such a nasty trick on her? And she—she had had no better sense than to walk right into the baited trap.

  She turned to look at herself in the mirror above her mantel and the reflection confirmed her worst fears. Bedraggled and mud-smeared, her hair tumbling about her shoulders like the remains of a haystack after a high wind, she was every inch a lamentable picture.

  “You’re a sight, lass, and make no mistake about it,” Brigid offered from her chair by the window where she sat hemming a gown.

  “You’ll never guess what Conall and Darragh have done to me.”

  “Aye, I know. I saw it all from this window. And that ashamed I am that ye allowed them to best ye, and with company watching,” Brigid answered sourly.

  “Then you did not see the last. I knocked the wind out of Conall. Calling me a dim-wit, I should have—”

  The ridiculous scene her words painted made her put a hand against her mouth to still
the laughter that threatened to erupt. She had been acutely embarrassed before a guest. She had every right to be angry. Yet, the specter of herself planting a fist on either side of Conall’s head would not fade, and amusement got the better of her.

  “We have given our visitor a rare picture of ourselves as rag-mannered, brawling nobles,” she said when her laughter subsided.

  “Aye, the Fitzgeralds always were ones to prefer a dog-and-pony show to proper genteel pursuits,” Brigid said as she came forward to help Deirdre out of her dirty clothing.

  “Did you see him, the one they call MacShane?”

  “Aye,” Brigid mumbled.

  Deirdre shrugged elegantly. “He’s not at all what I expected. For a fierce warrior the likes of which Darragh and Conall described, I thought he would be taller and broader, with a dozen wicked scars.”

  “Handsome is as handsome does,” Brigid replied obliquely.

  Deirdre closed her eyes the better to recall the details of his strong, hard face. “I suppose he’s pleasant enough for a woman’s tastes. Black hair, blue eyes, ’tis a combination I’m partial to myself.” Strangely, she felt a trembling inside her. Blue eyes. Black hair. Why should those words seem fateful? She could think of no reason. “He stares. His eyes seem to see through a body.” She shook her head. “I do not believe I like his stare.”

  “Sure’n he should have them eyes put right out, seeing as how Mistress Fitzgerald doesn’t approve,” Brigid replied.

  “I did not say I do not approve, precisely,” Deirdre countered. “Perhaps ’tis not so much that I do not like his eyes as that they disturb me. ’Tis like looking at a reflection of oneself bared of all pretense and comeliness.” She shivered delicately. “’Twas like the feeling I had as a child, you remember, when I thought the fairies visited me.”

  Brigid’s expression sharpened. “There’s magic in the man?”

  “Magic? Oh no.” Deirdre looked away from her nurse’s sharp eyes. She was betraying far too much interest in the man. “’Tis only that MacShane wields a very pointed gaze. I wonder that he carries a sword. Surely he can carve his victims at will with that razor-sharp stare!” She laughed, pleased with her joke.

  “Is he man enough to carve up a plump partridge named Miss Deirdre Fitzgerald, that’s worry enough for me.”

  Deirdre stepped out of her gown as it fell to her ankles. “You need not worry. After our introduction, I doubt he will ever think of me as anything other than a dirty, spoiled child.”

  “If ’tis so, then shame on ye,” Brigid replied. She bent down and picked up the discarded gown, shaking her head as she spied a rip in the hem. “A lad likes his lass to have a bit of sparkle in her, and ye’ve given him nothing to set his heart upon.”

  “Perhaps he’d prefer this display.” Deirdre pirouetted about the room, her petticoats lifting in a swirl to show slim ankles, strong shapely calves, and the neat indentation of dimpled knees.

  Brigid clucked her tongue in disapproval.

  Deirdre flung herself across her bed and rolled onto her back, tucking her arms behind her head. “Oh, Brigid, do not pout. I have no designs on the forbidding MacShane. Conall said he was once bound for the Church. Perhaps he keeps his priestly vows.”

  Brigid did not reply. She had seen no more of Killian MacShane than a second-story window would allow, but that was enough to convince her that he was not a man much given to thwarting his desires. A tall man with powerful shoulders, he had stood in the Fitzgerald yard and appraised the house as though he had come to purchase it.

  “He’s come for something, and that’s a fact!” she muttered.

  *

  Deirdre glanced about the dining hall in disappointment. “What do you mean? Did you drive him away, Da?”

  “Aye, I might have, had he dared show his face to me,” Lord Fitzgerald grumbled from his place at the head of the table. “Yer brothers, like scared rabbits, hied off with MacShane before I got a look at him.” He eyed his daughter suspiciously. “Is that a new gown?”

  Deirdre touched the lace at the neckline of her new rose-silk gown and said, “This? Da, you never remember which you’ve seen and which you haven’t.”

  Lord Fitzgerald nodded absently. It was true that he never paid much attention to his daughter’s gowns. What he paid attention to was the modiste’s bill. “Well, ’tis a very pretty picture ye make, lass, and sorry I am there’s none to see it.”

  Deirdre took her place at the table feeling defeated in a battle she had not fully realized she was waging. “Where did Conall and Darragh take him? ’Tis like them to prevent me from amending my wretched impression of the morning.”

  “They’ve gone to Nantes, whoring, nae doubt,” Lord Fitzgerald grumbled. “I do not expect them before morning.”

  Lady Elva smiled at her stepdaughter. “There’ll be another, better time to make a good impression.”

  “MacShane’s no man to impress, now or ever,” Lord Fitzgerald said. “I’ll nae have his like eyeing me daughter. Ye’re to keep to yer room when he’s about.”

  “Da!” Deirdre looked from her father to her stepmother and back. “Is the man so much a brute that you fear he will snatch me out from under the nose of a Fitzgerald man? If ’tis so, I’d best wed an army, and quickly, for there’s no protection to be had under this roof.”

  Lord Fitzgerald snorted. “Ye best be wed to yer supper before yer tongue snatches it from ye.”

  Deirdre picked up her fork. Her father’s mood was unalterable where MacShane was concerned. It made her all the more determined to learn what it was about the man that he mistrusted and feared.

  “He is a most polite young man,” Lady Elva offered into the silence of the meal. When Deirdre glanced at her in surprise, she added, “He was most solicitous in offering his sympathies upon learning of the weakened wits of my daughter.”

  “Wirra! The lad’s mad!” Lord Fitzgerald answered.

  Deirdre hid her smile with a spoonful of soup. So, MacShane had learned the truth, or part of it. The summer was beginning to show promise. MacShane might not be an ogre, but two minutes in his company had convinced her that he would not be an easy man to know…and there was nothing she liked so much as a challenge.

  Chapter Six

  Fey crouched in a midnight-dark alley on the waterfront of Nantes and waited until the last of the footfalls died. Safe. For a short while. In the morning, Darce would come looking for his little beggar, the wicked iron buckle of his belt flashing in the morning light.

  No, that was wrong. Darce would never come looking for anyone again. Darce was dead.

  Fey cringed, remembering how that buckle had gleamed in the lantern light as Darce had swung it. Sniffling back sobs, Fey reached back to rub one of the many welts that belt had raised. Uncertain whether the sticky substance was sweat or blood, Fey sniffed it. Blood.

  “Damn Darce’s rotten black heart to hell!” Fey muttered and angrily wiped away new tears. Who would have expected gold to be among the coins a stranger threw a beggar’s way?

  Fey pulled the ragged shirt from the abused skin and shivered. Darce had not believed it. Darce had been certain that Fey had cut the purse of an aristocrat, something that Darce strictly forbade because theft was a hanging offense.

  “Beg your livelihood, do not steal it!” Darce always warned the ragamuffin children he protected from the workhouse.

  Fey was only one of many whom Andre Darce had tutored and then sent into the streets to beg from passersby. Each child kept one-fourth of whatever he begged. In exchange, Darce gave him a dry warm place to sleep, an evening meal, and protection from the workhouse and the other beggars who vied for key positions on the streets. They all feared Darce and left his brats alone. In spite of the occasional flare of Darce’s brutal temper that earned the offender bruises, Fey had had little to complain about.

  The girls Darce kept did not fair as well. By the age of eleven, they spent most of their hours on the street after dark. The boys’ lives were the better
part…until now.

  “Base-born bastard off a pock-ridden whore!” Fey mumbled in Gaelic without conscious thought. Gaelic had been the language of Fey’s mother, but she had died when Fey was eight, and life in Brittany had taught the Irish child that French and Breton were better languages for begging in France. So, too, had Fey learned the value of new ways of dressing and acting, ways that no one had uncovered.

  With dark hair cropped short and wearing breeches and a shirt, everyone who saw Fey assumed that they saw a young boy. That was not surprising. After four years of the masquerade, barring an incident or two when the call of nature had nearly given her away, Fey had ceased to think of herself as a girl.

  Yet, the time of hiding was coming to an end. And then what? Life in the streets as one of Darce’s whores? No, not Darce’s whore. Darce was dead.

  “Should have hid the gold,” Fey murmured. Instead, as always, Darce had been offered a fair share of it and Fey had lost it all. Every beggar in Nantes knew of the peculiar turn of mind that made Darce dangerous. ’Twas said a child was never seen again once he had crossed Darce. It had done Fey no good to protest that the gold was not stolen. Darce had not believed it.

  When the buckle had first bitten into Fey’s skin, she had scarcely believed it. There had been beatings before, but not with a force that tore skin. When Fey realized that Darce would not stop but was bent on murder, she had done the only thing possible and pulled her dagger in defense.

  Fey wrapped her thin arms about her bony knees, wishing she could shrink into a tiny speck and disappear before daylight. Yet, there was total resignation in the sigh she uttered. Right was useless. There was scarcely a sailor or pub owner who would not recognize her. It was one of the drawbacks to life with Darce. When they learned that Darce had been murdered, none of the townspeople would hide her. They would seek out Darce’s murderer, and when they did, Fey would die.

  Fey gave short consideration to hiding aboard a ship but dismissed it. The worst time of her life—other than this night—had been during a short excursion aboard a ship where seasickness colored every memory of the voyage. No, even a slit throat was preferable to that tortured living death. So, she must wait to die, all because the foolish generosity of a well-to-do stranger had ended in death.