A Rose in Splendor

by Laura Parker

  Killian turned away and began pacing the room. He did not know the answer. Or perhaps he did. Perhaps he had never really believed Lord Fitzgerald capable of such treachery. And yet, had the man confessed his guilt just now, Killian would have done nothing. It no longer mattered

  Perhaps it had never really, mattered. So why had he come to Nantes? Was it because the invitation had come at a moment when he had broken with his past and knew not where to seek his future?

  He stopped before the mantel and gazed up at the gilt-framed portrait of a lady. She was black-haired, her green eyes tilted up at the corner, and about her red mouth played the most provocative smile he had ever seen. It was not Deirdre, and yet there was something familiar in those wanton features. His gaze lingered on the red mouth, imagining it as Deirdre’s, and he felt a familiar but rare stirring in his loins.

  “’Tis Deirdre’s mother,” Lord Fitzgerald offered in the silence. “Lady Grainne was the second of me wives.”

  “A beautiful woman.”

  “A woman the like of her is better dreamed of than attained,” the older man answered heavily.

  “Do you dream, my lord?”

  The question surprised Lord Fitzgerald. “No more, nor less than most.”

  “Have you never had a dream come again and again, plaguing your nights until wakefulness is preferable to dreamful sleep?”

  Lord Fitzgerald looked up sharply, his voice roughened by an odd emotion as he said, “Dreams are for bairns.”

  “Have you not dreamt of the day you will return to Ireland?”

  “’Twas all that kept me alive those first years here in France,” Lord Fitzgerald answered guardedly. “But a man of sense learns to give up useless dreams.”

  “Aye,” Killian echoed softly. So he had told himself over and over for eleven years. But Lord Fitzgerald was wrong. Senseless dreams held a power more persuasive than reason.

  “I have a dream that haunts me. Liscarrol was the place where I first dreamed it.”

  The thud against the paneled wall behind him made Killian turn from the portrait to Lord Fitzgerald, who still sat behind his desk. “Did I startle you, my lord?”

  His thoughts distracted by the sound that had come from the gallery beyond the library wall, Lord Fitzgerald did not answer immediately. Were they being spied upon? “I do not know what ye mean,” he muttered finally.

  “Do you not? Then you are fortunate.” Killian turned back to the portrait but his thoughts were full of the lady’s daughter. Was this Deirdre as she might be if love came her way? Or was it his imagination again playing tricks on him? When he had first set eyes on Deirdre he had thought her a figment of his dreamworld come to life. Now he saw her in a portrait that only vaguely resembled her. Perhaps it was that he wanted the answer to his dream to be found here.

  Killian turned and walked forward to stand before Lord Fitzgerald once more. “I have one question more. The day I came to Liscarrol and hid in the stables there was a lass there, a young girl with hair the color of flax. Who was she?”

  Lord Fitzgerald felt as if his collar had suddenly tightened. “There was none but ye when I found ye. Me sergeant put ye in the priest hole. When we came to fetch ye, ye were babbling, out of yer mind with pain and fever. Ye must have dreamed her. Fever will do that to a man.”

  Killian was silent. He risked a great deal in exposing himself to this man’s ridicule, yet he knew he was not a lunatic. He had seen and talked with a real person.

  “Why should I lie?” Lord Fitzgerald asked a little desperately.

  “I do not know,” Killian said slowly. “I’m a man who believes what he can see and touch. I saw the lass. I touched her. She bore a rose birthmark, here, on her shoulder.”

  Lord Fitzgerald’s heart thudded heavily in his breast. “I saw no lass.”

  Killian saw a tremor of anxiety in Lord Fitzgerald’s face and knew that the man lied. “If you will not help me, then I must seek my answers elsewhere.”

  Lord Fitzgerald said nothing as MacShane turned and left the room. What could he say—that he knew the answer to Killian’s dreams because his own daughter had had a part in them?

  “Nae!” he muttered low, but an old fear crept into his mind, one that he could not thrust aside.

  It had been a long time since he had thought of the days following their flight from Liscarrol. The trying voyage from Cork to Calais had become a nightmare once Deirdre fell ill. She dreamed constantly, crying out for the black-haired lad she had saved from the English. He was her gift from the fairies, she had said. She would have him or die.

  Lord Fitzgerald sighed, feeling every one of his fifty years. He had refused to have MacShane brought up to her for fear that if the lad died Deirdre would go mad. Even so, the dreams had worsened, making her feverish, until even Brigid had despaired of her life. Once they reached Calais, even the local priests had shied from the seven-year-old lass who called upon the powers of the otherworld to produce the boy. They said she was possessed.

  The hair lifted on his neck as the memories assailed him. He was a God-fearing man if not a pious one, and the powers of the otherworld lay heavy on his conscience. Desperation had driven him to relent his stricture against magic, but it was Brigid who resorted to her beanfeasa charms to protect his daughter.

  The witch-stone had done its trick and it was then that he knew that Deirdre’s dreams were not holy things. They were the work of spirits, of fairies, of the otherworld.

  He leaned forward, his eyes riveted on the portrait he hated but could not destroy. “Ah, Grainne, ye cursed me with a burden over which I’ve nae power!”

  In a moment of passion one summer’s day so long ago he scarcely remembered it he had abandoned himself to forbidden love, and Deirdre, her body and spirit tainted by the mark of the otherworld, was the result.

  He had married Lady Grainne Butler to save her from censure, but he had disliked from the first her wild talk of spells and magic and the changeling child to which she hoped to give birth. Once pregnant, she had no longer any desire for him. She cared only for the child in her womb, a female child, she declared, who would bear the mark of her legendary ancestress Meghan O’Neill Butler.

  He had almost been glad to lose Grainne in childbirth, for he considered her talk to have stemmed from madness and feared her influence over the babe. But for one thing, his world would have returned to normal. Just as Grainne had predicted, Deirdre was born with the bloodred rose birthmark of her ancestor, the mark of the otherworld.

  Few knew of it. The mark was well hidden. Brigid was the only one who knew the full story of the legend of the rose birthmark, but he would not allow her to speak of it to him. There had been no indication that Deirdre was anything but a normal child until the incident involving MacShane.

  Afterward, he had wanted nothing to do with the magic that had saved his daughter’s life, yet he had believed Brigid when she told him that France was an alien place to which Gaelic spirits would not travel. Deirdre had overcome the spell of madness, and under Brigid’s watchful care she had grown into womanhood untroubled by dreams.

  “Brigid!” Lord Fitzgerald murmured. He must warn Brigid before MacShane questioned her. Deirdre must be kept away from MacShane. If she was not, he might reawaken Deirdre’s nightmares and bring her to ruin and madness.

  Lord Fitzgerald clasped his hands together and bowed his head. “Lord, I’ve done me best to shield me daughter from the pull of the spirits. I will nae lose her now!”

  *

  The sun was warm on her bare head but Deirdre did not mind. The feel of her mount’s long, elegantly shaped muscles bunching and relaxing beneath her made her wish the ride would last forever. The breeze stroked her hair free of its confining pins and tugged back her riding skirt until the white ruffles of her petticoats were visible about her ankles. The salty tang of the sea, present whenever the wind was from the southwest, stung her nostrils and slicked her cheeks. In the distance, flashing silver-gold between the tall reeds, was t
he river Loire. The river was as close as she could come to the sea on a moment’s notice and the sea was where she longed to be, for beyond it lay Ireland, and Liscarrol.

  She dismounted from her sidesaddle perch in the shadow of a tree. Lifting her skirts, she began to walk across the grass to the riverbank.

  Sunlight dazzled her eyes, turning the water’s surface into a multi-faceted mirror. As she neared the bank the thick blanket of grass tapered off into short tufts, coarse and bleached at the tips by sun and water. Here and there wild flowers of pink and red and blue clung tenaciously to the tips of windblown stalks. She paused to collect a few of them, braiding their stems together until she had made a ringlet of wildflowers, which she slipped on her wrist.

  The air smelled of warm grass and the faint odor of fish. Birds cried in the distance, the sounds rising and falling as they swooped toward the water and away. Far out on the glistening surface of the broad river bright-hulled fishing vessels bobbed beneath their wings of canvas. All about her in the near-silence of the warm summer day was peace and solitude. Yet, inside, her thoughts tumbled and tripped over one another. Only away from the house, with no one to disturb her, could she consider the many questions that her eavesdropping had brought to mind.

  The shouting between her father and MacShane had been easily heard. She doubted that anyone in the house was in ignorance of the angry words that had passed between them. The talk of dreams, however, had been in lower, more secretive tones.

  MacShane had spoken of a dream he had had at Liscarrol. It had so astonished her that she had caught the toe of her slipper and struck her shoulder against the dividing wall.

  In horror, she had listened to the noise reverberate through the tiny room. Surely her father had guessed that someone was listening in the secret chamber. Guilt had sent her scurrying for her riding clothes and a swift mount. To have been caught eavesdropping would have been bad enough. If MacShane had accompanied her father, she would have fainted in mortification.

  Standing now in the full sunlight, feeling its warmth, she could dismiss MacShane’s accusation that her father had sold him to the French as a galley slave. Her father would never ever do anything so traitorous and cruel. Yet, her father was wary of MacShane; she had heard caution in every word he had spoken. What could he have to fear from the man?

  “If only I had heard more,” she murmured.

  One thought circled round and round in her mind, casting shadows of unease with each wing beat. MacShane had been at Liscarrol. When?

  The faint rapping at her temples was a long time making itself felt. It stole over her as softly and silently as the clouds above spreading thin cool fingers before the blaze of the sun, dimming its beauty and heat. Gradually sunlight faded into the golden haze of a cloud-banked sky. The river’s brilliant surface dulled, glazed brown and green with purple undertones, like some rare dark opal.

  Anticipation shivered through her, and she looked back across the distance to where her horse stood cropping grass beneath a tree. The gentle, insistent drumming at her temples increased, throbbing just at the edge of pain.

  It was then that she caught sight of a man lying in the grass.

  He lay propped on one elbow, his coat discarded on the grass and his long legs stretched out before him. The breeze rippled in his long black hair, feathering it over the shoulders of his shirt. His head was turned toward the river and his profile revealed the strong somber face of Killian MacShane.

  He had not seen her, she knew, or he would not expose himself so casually to her regard. Always before she had had to endure his harsh scrutiny as she looked upon him. Now, lost in his own reverie, he seemed completely accessible, the quietude of the day reflected in the supple ease of his body. There was something frankly sensual in his easy, relaxed pose, a compelling grace that drew her toward him.

  As she neared, he picked up and began nibbling a long blade of grass. The bow of his smile deepened and then split, revealing the even rows of his teeth. She was startled to feel that smile blossom inside herself, unfolding upon some hidden warmth that until now had lain undiscovered within her. When he turned his head to find her standing over him there was no amazement in his face.

  “My lady,” he said and extended a hand to her.

  She heard his words as if from afar. The day suddenly gusted cooler, and haze gathered on the surface of the river as though it were dawn, not midday. She extended her hand to him, pleasantly shocked by the firm warmth of his fingers closing over hers.

  “I expected you,” he said softly.

  She blushed, remembering her part as spy an hour earlier. “I did not follow you.”

  “I know,” he answered, exerting pressure on her arm to pull her down beside him. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “How did you know where to find me? I do not usually come this way.”

  He did not answer, merely smiled at her in a way that fed the fragile blossom inside her. When he pulled her down beside him, she did not resist. When he released her, she instantly missed the warmth and strength of his touch.

  To her surprise, the grass was slick with dew, its texture unusually luxuriant beneath her hands as she spread her skirts to cover her ankles. It was springy and supple, the rich deep green of springtime.

  “Why do you frown, acushla?”

  Deirdre raised her eyes to his face, struck once more by the beauty of his eyes. They were clear and vivid blue against the golden skin stretched tightly over his cheekbones. He smiled at her, and because the smile would not be denied, she smiled back. “Do you always wear black?”

  It was a forward question, one too personal for a lady to ask a gentleman, but he seemed not to mind. “’Tis a noble color.”

  “’Tis no color at all,” she answered. A portion of her mind recoiled at her breach of manners, but another part, the part that was in control, urged her on. “Black is the absence of all color.”

  “A philosopher, acushla? If black is not a color, then what color is a moonless night? What color is your deepest fear? What color is the soul of a man who has lost all he loves best?”

  “You are in mourning?”

  “Aye.”

  She looked for any sign of sorrow or sadness in his face but she could not see past the quiet intensity of his gaze. “Did you lose someone very dear to you, your wife, perhaps?”

  “That question is unworthy of you, acushla,” he answered.

  She looked away, faintly annoyed by the amusement in his tone. In the distance, on the river, mist now obscured all. Even as she watched, the tops of the trees on the opposite bank disappeared and mist rose to form ragged peaks like those of the tumbled granite mountains of west Munster. The drumming inside her head which had abated when MacShane touched her returned.

  A shudder passed through her and she looked quickly away. “Black is the symbol of bitterness, emptiness, coldness,” she challenged.

  “As a child had you no liking for licorice? Does not blackness fill every unlit place? Is not the warmth of burning coals stronger than that of the flame?”

  He had bested her with her own words and she knew it. “You have the better of me, sir. I stand corrected.”

  His laughter startled her. She never expected so rich or powerful a voice of mirth from this man. The years fell away from his face, and the lines of tiredness and bitterness and sadness disappeared. When he looked at her again, there was nowhere to look but straight into the cerulean fire of his disarming gaze.

  “I thought you were a dream, all these years a dream,” she confided shyly.

  “I was,” he said, rising from his elbow to sit. His words were low and deep, the lilting brogue recalling another time and place. When he reached out a hand to touch her, she knew she should draw back; but there was no place to go, no other place she wished to be but here, with him. He gathered a windblown curl into his palm and crushed it, smiling as it sprang back and jumped from his hand.

  He was so close that she could see the pulse beating at hi
s temple and the few silky black hairs that rose above the open collar of his shirt. His hands moved to her shoulders and his palms were warm, the only warmth in a day gone suddenly gray and damp. Behind his black head the sky was pewter. A faint drizzle had begun. Droplets trembled in his hair and clung to the long curve of his ebony lashes.

  “It’s raining,” she whispered in surprise.

  “Nae, lass, ’tis only a soft kiss of the old sod,” he answered. His gaze lowered at last from hers and fastened on her mouth.

  “I have dreamed of you,” Deirdre heard herself say and wondered if the words were true.

  “I, too, have dreamed,” he answered. “I dreamed of a winsome lass with unruly golden curls and sea-green eyes. She was a wise and brave and strong woman who saved my life.”

  Deirdre shook her head. “I am not the lady of your dream.”

  Disappointment flickered in his eyes. “Are you not, lass?”

  The drumming in her head doubled in intensity and Deirdre sighed in pain. “I do not know,” she said, shaking her head from side to side. “I cannot remember.” Yet, she did know, not why or how, but that she had been there in his dream.

  “Shh, acushla, do not weep,” he said softly, drawing her closer until his cheek rested against hers. “I did not mean to make you cry.”

  Deirdre drew back from him. “Why, why have you come here?”

  He grew very still and suddenly she was frightened. She had asked a question to which she did not want the answer. She looked down. “No, do not tell me.”

  He lifted her chin until she was forced to look once again into his eyes and read the answer that she both feared and desired.

  She knew that he would kiss her. She drew a quick breath, tried to make her mouth less tremulous than it was…and failed.

  She failed, too, to prepare herself for the feel of his mouth on hers, the warm hunger and sweet fire of a kiss unlike any she had ever known.

  The kiss deepened and the drum of pain within her was replaced by the thunderous pounding of her heart. He tasted of green grass, and she shivered deep inside to the languorous stroke of his heat-drenched tongue across her lips.