“Wheest,” came a harsh whisper. “Do nae wake her.”
Aiden turned to see the source of the warning. A slender man with dark hair and green eyes was staring at him. He was standing near the door, arms crossed over his chest.
“She finally succumbed to exhaustion late last night. ’Tis the first time she has slept in days.”
Aiden’s eyes darted about the room, looking for his sword or any weapon with which he might need to defend himself. The man laughed softly.
“Your sword be against the wall next to you, but you will have no need of it. You are safe. My name is Jean Luc, second in command to Lachlan MacAllistair, laird and chief of clan MacAllistair, and father to the lass sleeping beside you.” He bowed low, but never took his gaze away from Aiden.
Aiden tried to get his eyes and ears to focus more clearly, but his head felt foggy, filled with cobwebs and shattered flashes of memory.
“You will feel better soon enough, young man. But if you wake her up, I shall run a dirk through your heart, do you understand?”
’Twas not nearly as menacing a threat as Aiden supposed he meant it to be.
“Where am I?” He asked, his throat scratchy and dry.
Jean Luc smiled before taking the chair next to the bed. “Ye are in Allistair Castle.”
Allistair Castle. “Her father,” he scratched out. “He has accepted her?” His chest began to feel heavy, dreading the answer.
“Yes, he has.”
Aiden looked away, unwilling to share his pain with anyone. If Lachlan was indeed Rianna’s father, then what need did she have of him? A former assassin with no means to support her. Now she had the home she had always dreamt of.
Jean Luc leaned in, his voice low, firm. “She loves ye. Only once has she left your side, and that was last night, and only long enough to bathe.”
What did it matter? There was nothing he could offer her, other than his undying love. Love was not enough to stave off the pangs of hunger or keep out the harsh winter winds.
“Lachlan will give you a home here as well. Of this, there is no doubt,” Jean Luc informed him.
Aiden refused to look at the man. Aye, she loved him and he her. While the offer of a home was tempting, in his heart, he knew he did not belong here. If his former masters were ever to discover where he was, they would unleash a reign of terror and hell unlike any the MacAllistairs had ever seen. Nay, he could not stay here, could not put any of them at risk. Especially not Rianna.
Jean Luc studied him for a long moment. Aiden could feel his hard glare almost boring into his skull.
“Her father knows of your past and he cares not of it. Neither do I. We offer you the same protection we offer Valeriana.”
Valeriana? Aiden turned his head slowly, confusion knitted in his brow.
“Allow me to tell you a story …
* * *
The midnight hour had come and gone before Rianna woke. She had slept so soundly and for such a great length of time that Aiden began to worry she had become ill.
He lay on his side facing her, taking great pleasure in simply watching her sleep. Dark locks lay this way and that, her creamy skin tinged gold from the light the fire, looking like an angel sent down from the heavens. Though the healer who had visited him earlier assured him she was well, simply exhausted from her own worry over him, he still fretted over her wellbeing.
Whilst she slept, he thought about everything Jean Luc had told him. He felt certain the man had not left out a single detail about Rianna’s birthright, her past, or his own thoughts on her future. What surprised him most, however, was the message he’d relayed on Lachlan MacAllistair’s behalf.
So relieved was he that when she finally opened her eyes, he nearly wept.
“So ye’re back amongst the livin’,” he asked playfully, unwilling to allow her to see the depths of his own despair or relief at seeing her bright green eyes once again.
Rianna was not afraid to allow her own feelings to show. She shot up in the bed, her eyes wide with astonished relief. “Ye’re awake,” she said as if she were unable yet to quite believe it.
“Aye, I am,” he said as he rolled to his back, grinning from ear to ear. Unable to contain her joy, she flung herself against his chest, her head buried in the pillow. “Och! Aiden!” she exclaimed. “I was so worried ye’d ne’er wake.”
Pain shot from his injured side and arm. He sucked in a deep breath and groaned.
Realizing her error, she sat up. “I’ve hurt ye,” she said, filled with guilt.
“Do nae fash over it, lass,” he said with a wince. “’Tis naught but a scratch. And I’d be willin’ to walk through the fires of hell to feel ye against me once again.”
Uncertain, she sat still as she carefully studied his face.
“Please, rest with me, let me hold ye close,” he said.
Carefully, as if he might break or fall back into a deep sleep, she settled herself in beside him. He wrapped his uninjured arm around her and held her close.
“We have much to talk about lass,” he whispered softly against her silky hair.
He felt her stiffen, but she moved naught a muscle.
“Much has transpired betwixt us these past many days,” he said softly. “Some of it I would prefer ne’er to repeat again.”
He could feel she was holding her breath. Most likely in dread, afraid of what he was about to say. Were the circumstances different, had he not very nearly died, he might have toyed with her for a moment, allowing her to fret and think the worst. Nay, the moment was to important to spend on jests and sarcasm.
“With all that I am, Rianna MacAllistair, I love ye. When I am with ye, I feel whole again. Ye somehow have the power to cast out all my demons. Just bein’ in yer presence, I get this overwhelmin’ sense of bein’ home.”
He resisted the urge to chuckle at the sound of her expelling the breath she’d been holding. Gently, he caressed her arm with his fingertips, in featherlight circles. “I can only hope that ye could some day feel the same about me.”
Slowly, she sat up, her expression questioning his soundness of mind. “Are ye daft? I have nae left yer side fer days. I prayed o’er ye, cleaned yer wounds, changed yer bandages, and worried myself sick o’er ye! How can ye—”
Smiling devilishly, he did not give her time to finish her tirade. Wrapping a hand around her neck, he pulled her in and kissed her soundly. He imagined he could live to be five hundred years old and never tire of hearing her indrawn breath when he kissed her. Would never grow weary of how warm and sweet her lips tasted.
Before things could get out of hand, he pulled away slightly to look into her eyes. “Yer father left a message for me. An order, really. One I fear I cannae ignore.”
Confused, she could only stare at him mutely.
“If I refuse, he has promised to have me drawn and quartered, my head set on a pike, and the rest of me set afire and burned to ashes so that he might trample through them on horseback.”
Stunned and terrified, Rianna said, “We must away this place at once then!”
Aiden chuckled softly as he played with a long tendril of her hair. “Would ye nae like to hear what the order is first, before ye go plannin’ our escape?”
From her fearful expression he knew her imagination was running rampant. “What?” she asked breathlessly.
“I am to marry ye.”
Confusion turned to astonishment before turning to relief. “Ye are?”
“Aye,” he said with a nod. “I am. Jean Luc had the banns posted earlier, while ye were sleepin’.”
Slowly, she backed away from him, her lips pursed into a thin line. “’Twas kind of ye to ask me first,” she said sharply. “Why do men think they can simply order a woman to do their biddin’ without any regard for their opinion on the matter? And ye? Ye are wantin’ to marry me only because ye fear for yer life?”
“Aye, I do. But nae because I fear what yer father will do to me,” he said in a soft yet serious tone. “
Rianna MacAllistair, I love ye and want to spend the rest of my life with ye. I fear that if ye say nay, I shall be forever doomed to walk this earth alone, with a broken heart, my soul left barren, ne’er to feel a moment of peace or joy e’er again.”
Tears brimmed in her eyes. “Aye,” she whispered. “I shall marry ye.”
* THE END *
Books by Suzan Tisdale
The Clan MacDougall Series
Laiden’s Daughter
Findley’s Lass
Wee William’s Woman
McKenna’s Honor
The Clan Graham Series
Rowan’s Lady
Frederick’s Queen
The Clan McDunnah Series
Caelen’s Wife – Book One: A Murmur of Providence
Caelen’s Wife – Book Two: A Whisper of Fate
Caelen’s Wife – Book Three: A Breath of Promise
Moirra’s Heart Series
Stealing Moirra’s Heart
Saving Moirra’s Heart
The King’s Courtesan
Isle of the Blessed
Breath from the Sea
Part Three
Ever My Love—The Lore of the Lucius Ring
by
Eliza Knight
Prologue
Execution Dock, London
July 4, 1600
Dressed as a common Londoner, as were two from her crew, Lady Antónia Burke, Captain of the pirate ship, Lady Hook, stood amongst the other revelers at Execution Dock. The infamous spot where pirates were hung was situated on the Thames River, which stunk of rot and garbage in the summer sun.
Shouting obscenities from the back of a barred wagon were the members of her crew who’d been arrested by the bloody English captain in her Majesty’s devil-trained Navy. All six of them. They shook their fists, faces swollen, bruised from where the guards had hit them, heads shaved, and torn clothes dirt-smudged.
Onlookers raged at the barred brigands, tossing rotten vegetables and muck. Shouting their own lines of obscenities. Men and women of all ages, even children. An execution was a sideshow, perhaps the most exciting thing to happen in their mundane, bedraggled lives.
Antónia wanted to grab every one of them by their ears like her grandmother used to do to her and drag them back to their hovels, locking them in the dark until their thirst for blood waned.
Her men had been brought to the dock at low tide, for their execution, where their hung bodies would dangle for the remainder of the day. Not bloody going to happen. Antónia glowered at the nooses already knotted and waiting. Her men would not dangle today. She was going to help them escape and she’d like to take a few lives of the bastard yeoman standing guard. However, that would interfere with her plans and, so, she’d have to save her revenge for another time.
Though if she was being fair, she’d pardon the English captain and his disciples, for they were only following orders and laws they thought reasonable. Alas, Antónia wasn’t going to be fair. Not today, or tomorrow. She was a pirate by blood and she did not make exceptions for fools.
In fact, if she ever came across the bloody captain again, she’d be hard pressed not to pull out her blunderbuss and put a bullet between his eyes.
Antónia tucked her hat lower, shielding her eyes. She’d ashed her hair that morning to hide the red luster of its color and tucked it into a nondescript lace bonnet with a gray feather. Damn her Irish roots for giving her away when she wanted to be discreet. Her two men, who stood behind her, stooped to hide their Viking-Scots height—they, too, were cursed with an appearance that was hard to miss.
She glanced back at them, giving a slight nod. All their plans would soon be underway and this day would either end in death or victory.
Just before dawn, she’d approached the dock, examining the scaffold and happened to come across a man who had death in his eyes. An executioner, though he’d not admit it without his cap on to hide his face. One wayward soul could always tell another. She’d asked the man if he was the sort to end a life, could he be bribed with Spanish coin to look the other way.
He’d told her, politely of course, to bugger off, though his eyes had said something different, and an imperceptible nod had been all the permission she’d needed to accidently drop a leather pouch full of Spanish gold doubloons near the foot of the scaffold. Inside the pouch, she’d tucked a strip of parchment that read simply: Look the other way when we release the Irish. – Her Grace, the Queen of Pirates.
Of course, she’d used her grandmother’s name, but all the same, one did such things when needing to save their crew from certain death.
Now, Antónia saw that man, standing there, his eyes as stormy gray as they’d been that morning, met hers, and again that imperceptible nod. She returned the gesture. Thank the sea gods for Spanish gold.
A man approaching the scaffold caught her attention and she bit down hard on her lip to keep from shouting her anger at the man who’d brought them into this mess. The English captain.
He was more handsome than she remembered in his crisp and starched white linen shirt, blue doublet with gold buttons, white breeches, and shiny black boots. His sword gleamed at his hip, and beneath his captain’s cap, his hair was dark as night—not powdered or wigged like most men of his ilk.
A silent rebellion? If she didn’t despise him, she might have respected that. But she did despise him, so he could take his lustrous hair and shove it up his arse.
Antónia quickly ducked her face toward the ground; her hat shielded her gaze. When he glanced in her general direction, he’d not see her seething, nor did she risk the chance of him recognizing her despite the soot she’d smeared on her face and in her hair to appear inconspicuous.
The captain had no idea what was coming for him.
Waiting at a dock a half-mile north of this spot, was more of her crew, manning a barge large enough to fit them all but not large enough to draw attention.
One of the prison guards had been replaced by a man in her crew. He would be the one to cut the ropes at the right time. Three men near the wagon would overtake the driver and her crew, if they were smart, would hop back behind the barred cart and hold on for dear life as they rode off.
They would meet at the barge, hide them beneath blankets and row quietly from the Thames out to the Channel where her merchant ship awaited them at a small port in All-Hallows, a small village just at the mouth of the Thames that would take them out to sea.
If it all worked…
Which, it must!
For, if it did not, she would haunt the dreaded captain for the rest of his miserable days.
The captain climbed the scaffold, his height at least a head above the executioner, the muscle in his square jaw ticking. She did not remember him being so tall. So broad. Why did he have to be so fine-looking? The feminine side of her, despite her irritation at his gall to arrest her men—even if she and her crew had been in mid-plunder—enjoyed the sight of his fine physique, his ruggedly handsome face.
“The accused stand before you all, charged with piracy and assault on the queen’s property. They are sentenced to be hung until dead.” The captain stood tall as he spoke, listing the names of the men within the covered wagon. Then he signaled to the guard standing by the cart and that was Antónia’s cue.
She flicked the feather in her bonnet and the poor wench she’d paid to scream did so at blood-curdling levels. All in the crowd turned to look and that was when Antónia’s crew knocked the guards senseless and took hold of the horse drawn cart.
The queen’s men shouted. The captain bellowed.
Antónia smiled.
“Come, Sweeney, Tavish,” she said to the two guards behind her. “We must be away now.”
Slowly they turned and headed toward the quay, walking quickly, but not enough to draw attention, a half-mile down river to their newly acquired barge.
They reached the craft just as the cart did. Sweeney hacked at the lock with his axe and her men spilled out, along with two strangers
who immediately swore an oath to her. Into the barge they went, climbing beneath benches, blankets and a few into pine crates.
Tavish smacked the horses’ rumps and they took off back toward the city, hopefully leading the guards in a different direction.
Antónia and her men leapt over the rails. “Go, now! Row for your lives,” she hissed.
They pushed off the quay, eight of her crew rowed with all swift speed, knowing that if they were caught it was death for the lot of them.
Oh, but sweet satisfaction would be hers.
A lone rider, suited in white breeches and a blue doublet rode along the quay. Antónia doffed her cap and tossed it into the Thames.
“Until we meet again, dear Captain,” she whispered.
Chapter One
September 7, 1601
Greenwich Palace
Court of Queen Elizabeth
Lady Antónia was dressed in a most proper gown of emerald green, creamy lace at her cuffs and starched at her neck. Whalebone stays pinched her ribs. She’d not eaten since that morning and here it was now high noon. ’Twas hard to breathe and even harder to stand tall. She wasn’t used to wearing such formal clothing. Nay, indeed. She much preferred the loose pantaloons and doublet she wore aboard her ship. The ribbons and cap that kept her hair from her face instead of the tight knot and pins that held her fiery locks now.
If anyone had asked her the previous year when she’d be back in England, she’d not have guessed it would be this soon. Over a year had passed since she’d freed her men from certain death.
Greenwich Palace was unequivocally the most beautiful and ostentatious place she’d ever been. Her family’s castles in Ireland, where she sometimes graced them with her presence, were nothing compared to this. Terrifying towers truly. They were keeps, strongholds, meant for battle and to keep enemies from within. Greenwich looked as though it had been made for a sovereign’s comfort, for parties and plays.
Ever My Love: The Lore of the Lucius Ring (The Legend of the Theodosia Sword Book 2) Page 19
