The Secret Rose

by Laura Parker

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Praise for The Rose Trilogy

  The Secret Rose

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  GLOSSARY

  The Rose Trilogy

  The Secret Rose

  By Laura Parker

  Copyright 2013 by Laura Parker

  Cover Copyright 2013 by Ginny Glass and Untreed Reads Publishing

  The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (Untreed Reads) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

  Previously published in print, 1987.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to the living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Also by Laura Parker and Untreed Reads Publishing

  Rose of the Mists (The Rose Trilogy, Book 1)

  A Rose in Splendor (The Rose Trilogy, Book 2)

  http://www.untreedreads.com

  THE WONDERFUL PLEASURES OF THE ROSE NOVELS...

  “Flows like a charming Gaelic folklore. Its freshness and sensitivity will keep the reader entranced and wanting more. Superexcellence in the field of historical romance! 5 stars!”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “Four stars—highest rating! Reads like a beautiful, romantic fairy tale.”

  —Romantic Times

  “Quite simply a treasure of reading delight.”

  —San Francisco Herald-Examiner

  The Secret Rose

  By Laura Parker

  This book is dedicated with love to my mother.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  The saying goes that reading about a place is the next best thing to being there. With the help of friends, I was able to “visit” Australia. Thanks to Laurie Smart, a delightful Australian native living in the U.S., who lent me books and shared her perception of her country with me. A very special “I couldn’t have done it without you!” salute to Pat Bradford, an American living in Melbourne, who provided me with wonderfully informative letters, maps, and books that made all the difference Thanks to Joe Strickland, who cared enough about the project to find an Australian link for me Thanks, mates!

  Sing of old Eire and the ancient ways:

  Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days.

  —To the Rose upon the Rood of Time

  W. B. Yeats

  Chapter One

  Liscarrol Castle, Western Cork: 1844

  A silver sickle of moon rocked itself to sleep on the slumped shoulders of Nowen Hill in the west. To the east, the golden-veiled sun rose beyond the hills, shining down upon the blue-white mists undulating through the valley. Through the incandescent light of early morning came the clear piping of an unseen blackbird, stirring other less eager creatures to their awakening.

  There was one who did not need the call to another day. Deep in the heart of the valley, not far from the lichen-scarred granite walls of the somber ruin known as Liscarrol Castle at the edge of the river Bandon, a girl squatted in the tall grass and waited until the cow herder had passed beyond the bridge.

  “I can so, if I wish it!” she whispered and stood up

  Ye cannae, ye foolish lass, came the reply in a boy’s rude country accents.

  Twelve-year-old Aisleen Meghan Deirdre Fitzgerald jutted out her chin and balanced a fist on each narrow hip. “I can, and I will!”

  Quick and agile as the mountain hare she startled from its hiding in the dew-cooled grass, Aisleen raced up the short embankment of the river. She wore no shoes, and her gown was too small and worn to offer much protection against the chill kiss of the mist. Yet she did not heed the damp nor the cold as she ran toward the distant slope of the hill beyond the river. Gorse bushes, their tough branches sprouted with golden buds, tugged at her sodden skirts. Rocks lying half-hidden in the boggy ground bruised her feet.

  She did not think of these things. She had made a bet that she could climb Slieve Host, the hill that had gained its name more than a century earlier when a priest had hidden there and had whispered Mass on the isolated slope of this western Cork hillside. Without pausing to catch her breath, she hurried on, allowing nothing to induce her to pause before she had accomplished the task.

  Not until she reached the very top did she stop. “I’ve done it! Did I not say I would?” she cried in breathless joy “I’ve conquered the mountain!”

  Aye, ye did, lass, came the answer as clearly as the blackbird’s song.

  Aisleen turned her face to the east and breathed deeply. There was so much to see and smell and feel. The spring morning…the odor of fresh drying grass…the rippling movement of the breeze…the startling warmth of the sun…the deep, cool shadows slinking down toward the valley to disappear until dusk brought them creeping back Below, in the valley, sunlight turned the surface of the Bandon into a thousand dark-gold mirrors. Above her head, the air and clouds streamed in an endless fascinating flow.

  This day is like no other, Aisleen thought. It is special, just as I am special.

  In her life, each day was different, unconnected to past or present, holding only a brimming magic of its own. The grass was greener, the stones sharper and grayer, the morning air sweeter and clearer than ever before. And if she missed it, the day would be gone, gone forever. That was why she could not sleep. Why could no one else see things as she did?

  Would ye be forgetting me, then?

  Aisleen smiled. “No, bouchal, I would not forget you. You are my very best friend.”

  Small praise that is, came the retort. Best friend, only friend. Could it be that ye’re feeling a wee bit sad, then, colleen?

  Aisleen shook her head. No, she must not be sad. How could she be sad on the best morning that ever was? There was in the air an excitement, a tremulous anticipation of momentous proportions. Something very important was about to happen; she could feel it tingling just under her skin.

  That was why she had called on bouchal to share the anticipation with her. He was the best friend one could have, and nothing and no one could keep them apart, not even her father.

  Aisleen frowned as she thought of her father. He would not allow her to play with the children of the cottagers. He said the Fitzgeralds were too good to mix with commoners, but she suspected that he forbade her to have friends as a punishment. From a very early age, she had known that her father disliked her and that she could do nothing to please him. But he could not stop her from seeing bouchal, who had been a part of her life for as long as she could remember. No one else knew of or saw or heard him. That was because he was not real.

  “Race you to the altar stone!” she cried suddenly and, muddy heels flying, ran up over the shoulder of the hill to the place w
here a wide, flat-topped boulder lay on its side.

  “I won! I won!” she crowed, jumping up and down until she was tired.

  Ye’ve a sad lack of sportsmanship, bouchal taunted. But then, ’tis to be expected, ye being but a poor wee bit of a lass.

  “I’m not a poor wee lass! I’m the last of a proud and ancient line. Me ancestors were kings!” Aisleen replied.

  So ye’ve said. And so much the worse ye are for that, came his sour retort.

  “Go away!” she snapped and turned her back on the place where she imagined he stood.

  And leave a deeshy lass the likes of ye muttering to herself?

  Aisleen swirled about. She could see him clearly in her mind’s eye: his patched knee britches and knotted rope belt, his long legs and arms streaked with grass stains and mud, and his thatch of black hair half-hidden beneath his wool cap. He was older and a head taller than she was—at least be would be if he were real—with a ready grin and clever hands that fashioned for her toys from twigs and bracelets from wild flowers.

  She had named him bouchal, the Gaelic word for “boy.” He was always full of adventures and escapades. One of the things she liked best about him was that he never seemed sad, or lonely, or afraid. They did not talk about her da nor her ma. In fact, many times her parents seemed far less real than bouchal as she lived and played in a world all her own.

  She turned and climbed up on the altar stone and flung herself back until she lay flat gazing up at the sky.

  “Today I will be Queen of Beltane. Make a crown of May Day flowers for me, bouchal!” Even as she said it, she closed her eyes to wait.

  Insects hummed in the grass beneath her, too faint to be heard until every other sound was hushed. With each breath and heartbeat, the sounds quickened until she was no longer attached to the earth but floated softly, lazily above her own flesh.

  She became a cloud…shining as sunlight…rippling with the breeze…smooth as the amber river…rich with fragrances of earth and grasses…within the moment of the morning…pierced with the aching, sweet sadness on the cusps of the fading moon.

  Ye’ve mud on yer face. The jeer struck the moment as clean and deadly a blow as a sword’s edge.

  Aisleen sat up, a frown riding her brow as she scrubbed at the dried spot on her cheek. “You’re a beast! All men are beasts!”

  A beast am I, and me thinking that ye cared for me!

  Laughter trembled about her: goading, taunting boyish laughter. She looked about for something to throw at her imaginary jester, but when she looked down the impulse was forgotten. Laced about her wrist was a delicate bracelet of fairy foxglove. She did not remember picking them nor fashioning them into a rope. A special day, indeed.

  Well, will ye nae say thank ye?

  Aisleen touched one of the deep pink flowers. “I wish you were real!” she said suddenly.

  He was silent for a moment, the air vibrating about her as shimmers of his ethereal presence. But I am real, he answered at last. As real as ye want.

  Aisleen bit her lip. No, she would not think about what she wanted. In moments of solitude like this, she could pretend that she had all she needed. “You’re real to me, bouchal, as real as can be.”

  She reached into the pocket of the apron she wore. “I brought buttered bread. Come and share with me.” Soon the milking of the cows would be finished, and the cow herder would be leading his cattle back to the fields, and she would be expected in the kitchen for her porridge. She made a face. “I hate porridge!”

  So do I.

  “One day we will be grown and rich and we shall have cream and strawberries, and oatcakes and rhubarb and ginger jam—”

  And ham.

  “And ham, every morning for breakfast.”

  And cocoa.

  “And cocoa,” Aisleen amended. One day she would have everything she wanted.

  *

  Nuala Murray, the cook at Liscarrol Castle, clucked her tongue when she saw the muddy, grass-stained young lady of the house. “Wirra! Would ye be looking at the sight ye are!”

  Then she glanced up at the girl’s face, and her jaw went slack. Dirty she was, and mud-stained, but nothing could dim the brilliance of Aisleen’s smile or her red hair. Backlit by the sunlight streaming in the doorway, it shone like polished copper.

  Nuala still believed in the old ways, and one look at the Fitzgeralds’ daughter was enough to reaffirm her belief that the lass was blessed by the fairy host. Everyone knew that bright red hair was a gift of favor from the Daoine sidhe. “Why, lass, ye’ll be looking as if ye’ve swallowed a spoonful of sunshine!”

  Aisleen giggled, for she felt as if it were true. “I’ve been to the very top of Slieve Host.”

  “I would nae be telling that tale abroad,” Nuala answered in a lowered voice. “There’s those about who would nae care to hear it.”

  Aisleen glanced back through the doorway to the castle which was her home. “He’s back, then?”

  “Aye, and Himself madder than a gelded bull by the sound of it.” Nuala shook her head as she described the mood of the master of Liscarrol. She cocked an arched brow at her daughter, Alvy, who was helping out with the morning baking. Alvy was simple and not very clean, but she had a comely figure. “Some people would do well to make themselves disappear altogether.”

  At the sound of her mother’s disapproving tone, Alvy looked up, well aware of what she hinted at. “He’s asked for her!” she said, and jerked her head at Aisleen. “Said she was to come right in to him.”

  Nuala snorted her disgust and then wiped her hands on the apron. “Well, that’s it, then. Come along, lass. Ye’ve a bit of tidying up to do before yer da sees ye.”

  Aisleen felt a funny plummeting within. Her da was home. He had been gone longer than usual, nearly two months this time. Was his imminent return the event that had set her blood rushing and her skin tingling before dawn? “Do ye think he’ll be happier now, what with his trip behind him?”

  “God knows I wish Himself struck blind with rejoicing, but the devil if I know what’s happened to him. He’s rushing about giving us all every great rock of English, ’til our ears are ringing with the sound of that devilish tongue.”

  “English is a very fine tongue for an educated person to speak,” Aisleen answered in Gaelic, the language she spoke when her father was not about. “But I do prefer our own.”

  “Aye, and ye should, being a true daughter of the sod,” Nuala replied as she began vigorously scrubbing the girl’s face with a damp cloth. “What’s to become of us when the place is gone, that’s what I’ll be asking? There now. Where’s yer ribbon, lass? Och, don’t I know. The coolyeens are dancing fair to a jig about yer head, and never a fire was ever so bright a red. Ochone! In ye go, and God bless!”

  *

  Aisleen stood rigidly before her father’s hide-bound chair in the Great Hall of Liscarrol Castle. Once it had been a fine room. Now it was moldy and nearly bare. Not even the peat fire glowing in the great hearth could alleviate the chill. Her father looked different from the way he had last she saw him, more tired and agitated. His black hair was more thickly streaked with white, and his usual ruddy complexion was strangely pale. He was not a heartening sight.

  “Well, daughter,” Quenton Fitzgerald began, “have ye nothing to say for yerself?”

  “No, sir,” she answered softly, her gaze warily upon his face.

  Her reply, given stiff-lipped and self-possessed, did nothing to improve Quenton’s ill temper. The mere sight of his daughter was often enough to provoke his anger, and never more so than in recent months. She was a reminder that nothing had gone right since the day he had inherited through marriage the Fitzgeralds’ ancestral home. Why, he had even changed his name to Fitzgerald so that his heirs would be Fitzgeralds, whose ancient bloodline reached back to Gaelic kings. He wanted sons, but what did he have to show for fifteen years of marriage? A single, useless lass.

  The midwife had proclaimed Aisleen’s birth a portent of good luck
. Then his wife told him of the legend that lay behind the rose-shaped birthmark on his newborn daughter’s tiny hip; When such a mark was borne by a member of her family, it was said the possessor had the power of creating miracles.

  On that day, he thought he had bested those who murmured behind his back that he was not good enough to be a Fitzgerald. Had he not produced from his loins the bearer of the Fitzgerald mark? It was to have been the beginning of a new age of prosperity for himself and his family. Yet Aisleen had done nothing to fulfill her promise. Her birth had marked the beginning of his ruin.

  With active dislike filtered through the haze of the generous portion of poteen he had consumed, Quenton eyed the cause of his unhappiness. Tall for her twelve years, with coltish legs and arms, Aisleen had none of the diminutive softness of the lady who was her mother, nor was she likely to achieve real beauty, he surmised. Her nose was short and turned up at the end, and her chin was too stubborn. She had missed her mother’s subtle coloring of gold and cream. Hair, eyebrows, lashes, and freckles: Aisleen’s coloring was the most striking shade of copper red. She had not even had the luck to inherit his own brilliant blue eyes. They, too, were an odd shade of golden brown shot with green. Nature had burdened him with a daughter as brilliantly hued as an exotic parrot, and as useless.

  A frown puckered Quenton’s forehead as he recalled that from the cradle she had not liked him, had cried when he held her and later balked at sitting on his knee. Perhaps even then she had sensed his aversion to her. She was more Fitzgerald than he, and the people of the countryside never allowed him to forget it, which was why he kept her hidden away. His jealousy was never long suppressed, and it grew with every day. If only he had a son, she would be left with nothing.

  “There’s no need to recount the matters between us,” he mused aloud. “I’ve given voice often enough to my opinion of ye.”

  Aisleen lifted her chin at her father’s tone. She hated these interviews. Nothing she ever said or did pleased him. He despised her. Why did he not simply leave her alone? The thoughts became words and escaped before she could prevent it “Nothing I have ever done pleases you. Why should today be any different?”