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Celtic Rogues ~ the series
AS ENGLISH CONQUERORS SET THE EMERALD ISLE AFLAME, THESE HEROES WILL FIGHT FOR IRELAND… AND FOR THE WOMEN THEY LOVE.
I’ve always adored Irish heroes and the legends that weave through the breathtaking landscape of the Emerald Isle. When I return to this home of my heart, I spend time perched on the ledge of the castle ruins I describe in Stealing Heaven and HER MAGIC TOUCH, a fairy-kissed place called Rathinaine.
I’ve always sensed the stories in the stones. Echoes of the men and women who fought for Irish freedom when the English outlawed the religion of the native Irish and made it impossible for them to buy property, pursue a profession or educate their children.
As I wrote the Celtic Rogues series, I asked myself what happens in a land where a man must break the law to meet his family’s most basic human needs? He can turn his back on his heritage to survive. He can surrender to poverty and degradation, or he can choose to defy the conquerors and risk execution, imprisonment or deportation. Each of my Celtic Rogues must choose what path to take. But it is one thing for a lone hero to sacrifice himself in a blaze of glory. Will he dare to risk the woman who wins his heart? In a land filled with such turmoil, perhaps the most dangerous choice anyone can make is to fall in love and risk dreams of forever in Ireland’s struggles to be free.
In addition to STEALING HEAVEN, there are four more books in the series—each stands alone. Each is part of my love song to Ireland.
CELTIC ROGUES ~ THE SERIES
BLACK FALCON’S LADY by Kimberly Cates: (1718)
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Shy English heiress, Maryssa Wylder, is exiled to the wilds of Donegal when she defies her heartless father. In a land where supposed “‘savages”’ are eager to slit any English throat, she encounters The Black Falcon, an Irish highwayman who curses everyone with the name of Wylder—and holds the key to her heart. Tade Kilcannon is the closest thing the embattled Irish have to a prince. Heir to a proud Irish Catholic family dispossessed by the English, he rides as the Black Falcon, bedeviling the English and protecting the Irish. To love Maryssa is to betray all he believes, yet even an outlaw must follow his heart.
THE BLACK FALCON’S CHRISTMAS (1720) a Celtic Rogues Novella
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When English heiress Maryssa Wylder defied her father to wed an Irish patriot raider known as the Black Falcon, she thought she was ready for life as Tade Kilcannon’s wife and the mother of their son. But nothing her governesses taught her prepared her for tending a baby or being part of his large, boisterous family—a family that can’t forget she is the daughter of their greatest enemy.
Tade Kilcannon knows Maryssa is struggling after sacrificing a life of wealth and privilege for their great love. When he learns that her joyless father forbade celebrating Christmas, he dons the Black Falcon’s mask one last time to fight for their happily ever after. Can he give Maryssa a Christmas miracle?
HER MAGIC TOUCH by Kimberly Cates: (1808)
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A Desperate Magic: On Beltane eve, Mary Fallon Delaney steals to a castle ruin where her mother’s allegedly magical brooch has been hidden all these years, waiting for the right moment to summon “Ciaran of the Mist,” a mythical Celtic warrior promised to appear at the hour of Ireland’s greatest need. A legend to be sure, but Fallon is willing to try anything to save Ireland from the marauding English. When she waits for the moonlight to work its magic with the brooch, a naked stranger stumbles out of the mist and she stares in disbelief.
A mysterious stranger: As much as he insists he is no Celtic warrior from the fairy realm, this mad Irish beauty insists on calling him Ciaran. He knows nothing of his life before he stumbled out of the mist, his head gashed, and he has no intention of getting swept up in the clash between the Irish and the English. However, when Ciaran encounters the villainous Captain Lionel Redmayne, who is fascinated by Fallon, Ciaran finds himself caught up in Fallon’s world of rebellion, wishing he could be the hero she longs for.
A sacrifice foretold: But whatever his identity, Ciaran knows how the story will end. He will walk into the mist alone—unless the passion he finds in Fallon’s arms is strong enough to ransom him from the secrets locked in his past. Yet does Fallon have the courage to love an all too flawed mortal when she’s spent a lifetime in love with a dream?
BRIAR ROSE by Kimberly Cates: (1810)
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A fairy-kissed Irish healer: Rhiannon Fitzgerald has no memories of her heritage, only her father’s claim that fairies bestowed her gift for healing. Traveling the Irish countryside alone, she cares for any wounded creature in her path. When she stumbles across a half-dead English officer amid the standing stones of Ballyaroon, she senses the turmoil in him—and the danger.
An English rogue beyond hope: Shot in the standing stones above the ruins, Captain Lionel Redmayne expects to wake in hell for his numerous sins. But when he regains consciousness in a gypsy caravan under the care of a winsome Irish woman and her motley pack of animals he is impressed with the devil’s resourcefulness. Dumping the meticulous Captain into such chaos is far more torturous than flames.
A chance at redemption: Rhiannon knows there is no place for a free-spirited gypsy in Redmayne’s rigid military world. Redmayne worries that Rhiannon will pay the ultimate price for his sins when his enemies stalk her for daring to help him. And though he wants nothing more than to allow this Irish beauty to lead him from the dark and twisted maze of secrets that imprison his heart, he fears that the only way to save her is to let her go. Or is it possible that a little chaos is exactly what Lionel Redmayne needs to save him from a cunning foe who stalks him still?
LILY FAIR by Kimberly Cates: (Medieval)
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In an Ireland divided between druid mystics and the faith of St. Patrick…
A dark prophecy: It was foretold that Caitlin of the Lilies would one day destroy the Irish chieftain Conn, who sends her to be raised in a far-off convent. Caitlin trustingly awaits the bridegroom Conn has promised her—and at last a handsome warrior arrives to escort her home. Cailtin wonders if this proud, silent man is to be her husband, until she awakens to find him looming over her, his sword at her throat.
A knight errant: Niall of the Seven Betrayals has sworn fealty to Conn, the chieftain who promised Niall a final quest that will win him honor. When Conn orders him to escort Caitlin of the Lilies home, Niall resents being charged with such a mundane task, not suspecting that the crafty Conn has carefully honed him into the perfect weapon to do the unspeakable.
A test of loyalties: When Nial
l attempts to carry out his mission, the defiant Caitlin makes him question everything he believes. He faces an unimaginable dilemma. Kill the innocent maid who trusts herself to his protection or betray his king and have all hope of regaining his honor snatched away—along with his life.
Excerpt from
Black Falcon’s Lady
Ireland 1718
The Donegal hills lay dark secrets, the mists drifting toward the full moon whispering of rebellion, torment, and wars centuries old. The screams of the innocents felled by Cromwell’s fiery sword seventy years before echoed upon the wind with the long-stilled clash of Irish blades crushed under the heel of Protestant William of Orange forty years after. The same winds carried with them the keening of a nation whose faith even now lay bleeding beneath laws designed to cut from Ireland’s heart the Catholic religion, which the beleaguered isle had cherished over a thousand years.
Yet despite the agonies of souls long dead, despite the shattered lives of those who still struggled to wrest a livelihood from beneath the British stranglehold, the spirits of the mountains seemed to accept nothing but courage. The very peaks demanded that all who dwelt on the stark lands defy their conquerers until even the night sounds held menace. The sky itself seemed an embattled warrior, poised to drive its death-blow between its enemy’s ribs.
But to Maryssa Wylder, huddled on the seat of the coach winding along the treacherous Donegal road, it was as though an Irish blade pressed against her own slender throat, cutting with another blade, far more terrifying to the young Englishwoman than the mountains that crowded in all around her. For in an hour’s time she would be at the mercy of her father.
Her fingers dug into the squabs of the jouncing coach seat as the equipage lurched over another rut, the jarring spilling a wealth of mahogany curls over delicate features and eyes a blend of blue, green, and gold. Dashing the tumbled tresses away from her pale cheeks, she fought the urge to stuff her peacock-feather muff into her maid’s prattling mouth. For five months she had been subjected to the woman’s viperish tongue as though Maryssa were the servant and Celeste Ladonne a chatelaine. And for Maryssa the past weeks, closed in a ship’s belly or in the dim interior of a coach with the woman, had proved a torture worthy of Spain’s Inquisition.
“A devil’s moon,” Celeste whispered, her stubby fingers fluttering toward the Irish night sky, “a moon for raiding, plotting, brigands at prey. Rogues who would cut out your heart and serve it at feasting.”
Maryssa bit her lip, closing her eyes against Celeste’s bloodthirsty eagerness as the woman recounted yet another eerie tale of this strange, hostile land. Stories of mysteries, murders and spirits long dead who stalked the wild Donegal hills. Stories Maryssa wanted to block from her mind, holding her hands over her ears as she had as a child to shield herself when she could no longer bear her father’s tirades.
Father… Maryssa shivered, the maid’s chatter fading into the same vague background as the clack of the horses’ hooves in the wake of real terror far greater than any witch’s tale. What would Bainbridge Wylder say when he learned that she had been shunted back to him in disgrace, the cause of a scandal the whole of London was buzzing about? What would he do to her when he read the indignant letter Lady Dallywoulde had stuffed inside her trunk before packing her onto the first ship bound for Ireland?
Nay, Maryssa thought numbly, she’d had no choice but to act the way she had. No choice… Her fists clenched. She struggled to banish the dread that washed over her, fought to cling to her certainty that she had done the right thing.
Even before Maryssa had spoken, there in the crowded assembly room, she had known what the result of her folly would be—known that Sir Ascot Dallywoulde’s wrath and the scorn of all of their horrified peers would crash down upon her. But to save her soul, she could not have held her tongue that night with the loathsome knight or his despicable, comrade, Lord Newley.
Maryssa’s fingers crushed the edge of her muff as scenes from the party seemed to snag on the windswept branches of the scraggly trees whisking by. Images of richly embroidered cloth from India and bewigged dancers swirled across the floor of a chandelier-lit ballroom. Despite the enveloping darkness of the coach and the sick dread that lay like cold clay in the pit of her stomach, Maryssa’s teeth clenched even now as Dallywoulde and Newley’s sneering words raked across her memory. For an hour the two had pontificated on the necessity of crushing evil—evil, Maryssa thought with a chill—in the form of a honey-curled girl child with huge, frightened eyes.
It was too easy a death for the devil’s mistress, Ascot’s harsh voice had grated. The ballroom had seemed to tilt beneath Maryssa’s feet, the heat from the chandeliers shifting into rapacious flames consuming a wooden stake, the orange blaze devouring the screaming child bound in its agonizing embrace.
Maryssa had battled to block out the sound of Ascot’s preaching. But his voice had hammered within her brain until she could bear it no longer; some unseen thread of caution inside her had snapped. Acting before consequences could fully register in her mind, she had hastened up to the two men and the crowd of adoring fops gathered about them, and she had labeled both Dallywoulde and Newley that which they were—monsters, with souls hideous as Lucifer’s own.
A grim smile caught the corner of Maryssa’s mouth, pleasure cutting through her fear as she remembered the shock on the two men’s faces and the horrified expressions of those around them. Yet that horror had not been directed at the two noblemen gloating over an innocent child’s death, but rather toward Maryssa—a woman who had dared to interfere in the affairs of men, a woman who had dared to defy one of the most honored holy men in all England.
The coach slammed over a deep rut and Maryssa’s shoulder crashed into the inner wall, but she scarcely felt the bruising of her tender flesh. Holy? No, Sir Ascot had more the air of the dark angel, his eyes chill with a fanaticism that struck terror through Maryssa. He was a man who would crush anyone who dared oppose him and then take an unholy glee in watching their sufferings. And for the woman who had publicly humiliated him… for her there would be no mercy.
She shuddered at the memory of features contorted in fury, the cruel mouth a slash of hatred as his cold eyes pierced her with the promise of revenge. Icy fear trickled down Maryssa’s spine, mingling with a primitive instinct to flee. A desperate need and a hopeless one, for no matter how far she might attempt to run, she knew she would never escape either her father’s fury or Sir Ascot’s.
She possessed no skills, no money, and, Maryssa thought with a twinge of self-loathing, no courage. By the time spring burst into bloom at Carradown, Sir Ascot would have the power to exact from her whatever retribution he chose. For then he would be her husband.
Until that time she would face a prospect almost as terrifying—exile in this savage land, where she would be a prisoner until Sir Ascot chained her to him as wife.
She let her fearful gaze rove over the moonlit landscape, the night painting eerie shadows across the wilds. The very thought of Ireland, perilous and untamed, had always made Maryssa’s palms grow damp with sweat. The months her father spent attending to the estate in the wilds of Donegal were the only times Maryssa had been grateful, even glad, that Bainbridge Wylder had held her all but a prisoner on the grounds of Carradown, the land he held in England. Never once in all her nineteen years had she seen the castle at Nightwylde or the hills around it, which had been ground beneath the conquerer’s heel. But with each lurch of the wheels along the Irish roads, she drew nearer to stone turrets she had heard were mortared with Irishmen’s blood. Blood that could well be mingled with her own before the sun rose.
Her spine stiffened with the memory of a score of cruel lashes dealt by her father’s hand whenever she had displeased him. He had accorded the switch he used more care than he had ever given Maryssa, soaking the supple length of hickory in vinegar so that the lashes burned like raw fire while failing to leave any lasting marks. She shut her eyes, trying to blot out the memory of
that switch searing her bare legs.
He had not beaten her for years now, preferring to practice more subtle forms of torment instead. Yet she had never done anything more certain to draw his fury down upon her. She had not only defied the man he had chosen to be her husband, but she had endangered the alliance of Dallywoulde’s assets and Bainbridge Wylder’s vast wealth.
“Father, I had to say something,” Maryssa whispered, pretending to stare out the coach window as misery washed over her. “The child … the child died. And they were laughing. I didn’t mean to anger you.”
Didn’t mean to? A sick laugh rose in Maryssa’s throat. When had that ever mattered to Bainbridge Wylder? Even her appearance had never satisfied him, and he had railed at her, as if the very force of his displeasure could change the hue of her curls from mahogany to gold and make her odd eyes remain an insipid blue. As a girl she had spent hours before the silvered glass in her bedchamber, searching her features to discover the inherent flaw her father found so repulsive.
But she had only seen a silky mass of sable curls, thick, sooty lashes fringing wide, anxious eyes, their changeable depths sprinkled with flecks of sea blue, green, and gold. Her nose was small, her cheeks pale in a face that seemed to whisper of fairy wraiths—delicate, fragile—while her lips were the soft pink of the roses in the gardens of Carradown.
The year she’d turned seven, she had crept down to where Lucy, the stout kitchen wench, had been dying the season’s wool in huge iron kettles. When the old woman had been called away, Maryssa had dragged a chair up to the fireplace and tried to dip her hair into the bubbling dye. Even now, at nineteen, the memory of her father’s fury when he saw her ruined curls made Maryssa wince. And the tiny crescent scar the kettle rim had burned in one hand was a tangible reminder of a wound that had seared far deeper.
“—tails, Miss Maryssa. Miss Wylder.” Celeste’s affronted voice cut through Maryssa’s reverie, and she turned her guilty gaze to the woman who stared at her in disdain.
Lords of Ireland II Page 113
