by Susan Wiggs
His fingers trailed up and down her arm, the motion at once soothing and unsettling. She clutched her shawl around her shoulders.
“You’re afraid,” he said, the amazement of sudden revelation lighting his face. “I never thought I’d find the one thing you fear.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said.
“You’ve never been kissed before, have you?”
She looked beyond him, her vision blurring as memories swept over her. Ah, she’d been kissed. Once. Alonso had kissed her once. He had held both her hands lightly, as if they were fragile crystal. She recalled his handsome face, dark and tender, the tumble of inky hair over his noble brow, the sculpted bow of his mouth. Their lips had met lightly, two butterflies colliding by accident and then winging away.
Caitlin MacBride had lived for four years on that too-brief moment.
“I’ve been kissed before,” she said crisply.
One side of his mouth lifted in a half smile. “We’ll see about that, love.”
He caught her against him. Echoes of the enchantment that had graced their first meeting sang through her mind. A mystical bond tugged her toward him, a bond as inevitable as the pull between the moon and the tide.
His arms closed her against him, bands of strength keeping her in, keeping the world out. She became aware of her breasts against his chest and the scent of wind, horse, and man that clung to him. The steady thud of his heart pulsed against her.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that one simple cry would bring a troop of warriors down upon Hawkins. One simple cry would set her free. One simple cry would rob her of the wonder she felt in his embrace.
“All right,” she said. “The MacBride keeps her promises.”
The Englishman’s kiss began with a smile. The smile of a gentle sorcerer, the smile that called to the very heart of her. His lips touched her forehead at the hairline and tingled down to her cheekbone. She tried to turn her head away but he caught her chin with his thumb and forefinger and held her still. His caressing kisses danced over her face, as light as the rain in springtime. The wild, fey believer inside her blazed to life. Let him, said a voice from another world. Just for now, do not fight him.
His mouth grazed hers. It felt nothing like a butterfly’s wing. The warm breeze of his breath tasted sharp and smoky with the essence of the usquebaugh he had drunk earlier. He pressed more insistently, sharing the moist secrets of his mouth.
Wonder grew up like a magic forest around her. The people on the strand, even the sea at her back and the sand beneath her feet, floated away in a tide of sensations too new and too baffling to name. She stood alone with John Wesley Hawkins at the very center of the world. An ache started in her neck, for she had bent it back, but she welcomed the discomfort as proof of the vibrant life surging through her.
The endless kiss freed the yearnings she had kept bridled for years. She no longer remembered who she was. She had been put on this earth for the sole purpose of drowning in the arms of this Englishman.
True to his word, Hawkins moved his tongue tantalizingly in the channel between her lips. She opened for him, felt the tender plunge of his tongue and the vibrations of the sound he made in his throat. His hands slid up her sides and hooked her beneath the arms, hauling her ever closer while his thumbs made circles beneath her breasts. She felt suddenly and unaccountably soft, sweetly heavy. Womanly.
A heated drowsiness slid through her veins. With tentative curiosity, she put out her tongue, gliding it into the warm home of his mouth. He sucked at it in a rhythm that matched the long pulsebeats of their hearts.
Caitlin rose giddily, a leaf on an updraft of warm air, turning, reaching, beckoned by the diffuse golden light behind her closed eyes. She clutched at him, filling her hands with the artistry of his masculine form. She needed something badly, something that was as vital to her as the air she breathed. Hawkins, with his deft hands and narcotic kisses, dangled fulfillment like a glittering jewel before her. Closer, she wanted to be closer still, with nothing between them save their own heated flesh.
The pressure of his mouth eased. He drew away, holding her at arm’s length.
He filled her vision, broad shoulders and shaggy head framed by the crags and cliffs of Connemara. He had a look of astonished delight on his face, while dangerous banked fires smoldered in his eyes.
Still gripping her shoulders, he stepped back and said, “Look me in the eye, Caitlin MacBride, and tell me you’ve been kissed before.”
Eight
In the next week, Magheen sulked more than ever and bossed the servants unmercifully. Rory Breslin wished aloud that Rafferty had won the wager and carried off both Magheen and the Englishman. Darrin Mudge complained that Jimeen O’Shea had stolen one of his pregnant ewes. Jimeen countered by setting fire to Mudge’s booley hut. More refugees arrived, a group of old men and young children who reported in dire tones that their womenfolk had been carried off by the Roundheads.
And through all the turmoil and all the arguments pushed the memory of the Englishman’s kiss.
Indecent, Caitlin told herself.
Incredible, said the fairy devil inside her.
I would go to confession if Father Tully hadn’t disappeared.
You’d not confess the passion you felt during that kiss even under torture.
It’s Alonso, Caitlin insisted. The kiss made me forget Alonso, who made me feel like a madonna.
Painted icons never have any fun, countered the fairy devil. Hawkins makes you feel like a woman.
“Don’t be kindling me, you great mutton-wit!” Tom Gandy’s angry shout carried across the hall to Caitlin.
Sighing in exasperation, she went to the round table to see what Rory and Tom were arguing about this time.
“Look now, you wee schemer.” Rory jabbed a finger at Gandy’s chest. “And what is it you think you would be up to entirely, using my stout turf cart to be after the dulse?”
Gandy thrust the finger away. “’Tis a high wonder, Rory Breslin, if you are not the dumbest creature God ever put breath into. The dulse is edible and we can gather it right off the fine wide strand.”
Rory made a terrible face. “The weed stinks, imp, and I’ll not have it in my—”
“Hush, both of you. I’m weary of the yammering!” Caitlin burst out. “Rory, you’ll let Tom use your cart and thank God for food the English can’t take from us.” She threw aside her shawl, stormed out of the hall, and marched to the stables.
“Come along,” she said to the black. “We’ll have a grand long ride, just the two of us.”
But as she led him across the yard, she felt his gait falter and heard a soft thud. One horseshoe lay like an inverted smile in the dirt.
“Blast,” muttered Caitlin. She started to call out for Liam the smith. Then she remembered his arm, still healing from the break he’d taken the night they had captured Hawkins.
Her luck had gone bad that night, and showed no signs of improving.
She considered summoning Rory. But his heavy hand with the hammer could damage the hoof. She bent and retrieved the shoe. “On with you, a stor,” she said. “I’ll do the job myself.”
“With my help,” said the resonant English voice that sounded in her dreams, yet never failed to startle her.
She glared at Hawkins. With his Irish garb and piratical smile, he looked indecently handsome. “And what would you be knowing about the fine art of shoeing a horse?”
“Enough of the smith’s craft.”
“Smithing is serious business. Sure didn’t the smith refuse to make the nails used at the Crucifixion?”
He tucked his thumbs into his wide, thick belt. “Then who made them?”
“Why, ’twas the lowly tinker, and isn’t misfortune on the tinker ever since and the smith a respected artisan?”
“Then I’m in good company,” he declared.
“I’d not risk letting a treacherous Englishman lay hands on my horse. One false blow of the hammer and you’d ru
in him.”
His big hand stroked the black’s smooth cheek. “Does he balk at my touch?” The animal stood still, in calm acceptance. Ever since the race, the black had—to Caitlin’s great annoyance—taken to Hawkins. “I don’t know where this animal came from or why he’s here, but I suspect there’s not another like him in the world. God’s truth, if I feared any chance of my damaging him, I’d cut off my hand.”
The urge to believe him nagged at her, but she said, “Your hand, your head, Englishman. It doesn’t matter. None of your parts are worth the sum of this horse.”
“I value a good horse as much as you do.”
“Come along, then. You may as well earn your keep.” She led the black to the forge barn and looped the reins around a stone post outside.
Hawkins stepped inside. Flails and scythes hung on the wall along with an array of horseshoes. Caitlin selected one, laying it on a bench. “This is already forged for the black. Liam always keeps some in supply.”
Hawkins placed it on the anvil. “I’ll shoe him hot,” he remarked, “for a better fit.”
“Where did you learn that?”
He picked up a set of bellows and pumped them at the embers. “In the west of England—during my cavalier days.”
She pressed back against the stone wall of the building. “You were a cavalier?”
“Aye.”
“But you’re with the Roundheads now.”
“Aye.”
“Why?”
He gave her a slow, lazy smile designed to conceal the hooded look in his eyes. “Because Cromwell is Lord Protector of England now, and he has ordered me to stand with the Commonwealth.”
She came away from the wall, planting herself inches from him. “Just like that, you’d abandon your loyalty to the Stuart prince?”
“It didn’t happen ‘just like that.’” Heat roared from the furnace, and ashes plumed to the hole in the roof. He set aside the bellows, took hold of the hem of his tunic, and peeled the garment over his head and down his arms. “Believe me, my loyalty to Cromwell runs no deeper than the scars on my back.”
Stripped to the waist and gilded by firelight, he made a picture she saw only when she closed her eyes during one of Gandy’s hero tales. He grinned, pleased by her scrutiny. “You make a hard job easy. No wonder men follow you into battle.” He turned to rummage in the box for tools. “I’ll need to forge new nails.”
“Make them slender,” she said. “I’ll have no split hooves.”
He thrust a nail rod into the fire. While it heated, he turned to her. “God, Cait, you are lovely as the sunset.”
She huffed in disbelief. Her fingernails were chipped from helping the fishermen patch the curragh. Hours ago, she had braided her hair, but most of the tawny strands had escaped to swirl in disarray about her face. Bits of tar smudged her apron, and the hem of her kirtle sagged.
“Blarney,” she said. “If your English ladies fall for such praise, more fool they.”
He moved closer. She started to step back, but stopped herself. No. She would not give him the satisfaction of intimidating her.
“You wanted to humiliate me in front of my people.”
“Perhaps it was a way to get them to view you as a woman, with a woman’s needs, instead of simply their chieftain, the settler of their arguments and the hand that feeds them.”
“I know what you see,” she retorted. “You see an Irishwoman whose home and lands you mean to plunder for Cromwell.”
He winced. “I see a woman. A passionate, desirable woman. I cannot call you beautiful, nor pretty, nor comely.”
Caitlin hated herself for the lump of disappointment that dropped like yesterday’s porridge in her stomach. “No, and I’m not after asking you to.”
“You are all of those things, Caitlin,” he went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “And yet you are none of them.”
“Now you are talking blarney.”
“No, but I’m at a loss. I’m usually glib with words. I know how to say things to women and I know how they’ll respond. But you’re different. Beauty is a pruned rose blooming on a trellis. Pretty to look at, but ordinary. And you are not ordinary.” He moved his shoulders. Mounds of muscle swelled and relaxed with the motion.
“Words cannot give shape to you.” He reached out and pulled her against him. She felt his smooth skin warmed by the fire, the undulation of muscles surrounding her, protecting her. The strange feeling passed like a warm breeze through her. No one ever protected Caitlin MacBride.
He bent to whisper in her ear. “Let my tongue not stumble over words, Caitlin. With you, my eloquence is one of hands caressing, like so...lips touching, like so...”
She stood unmoving while his mouth came down and savored hers with a lingering tenderness as if he were sampling a rare fruit. She became burningly aware of the texture of his lips, the varying pressure on her mouth, the slope of his neck and the raw silk of his hair twined through her fingers.
Only then did she realize she was clinging to him, offering herself with a wantonness that both shamed and enthralled her. With an effort of will, she lowered her hands, pressed them to the heated expanse of his chest, and stepped back.
“Your eloquence is wasted on me,” she lied. Her lips felt moist and bruised, her body curiously alive, sensitive and on edge. “It’s wrong. Dishonorable.”
He took her by the shoulders, the gentle pressure of his hands unnerving her. “Men and women search for a lifetime to find what we’ve found together, to feel what we feel for each other. Here we have our destiny dropped upon us like a stroke of fate, and you say it’s dishonorable. No, my love, praise all your Irish saints, for it’s a miracle.”
She turned away, wrapping her arms around her middle. He had to be mistaken. It was Alonso she wanted, Alonso who commanded her heart. She had to stay true to him, had to resist her enemy’s sweet embraces and false words of fate and destiny.
“It’ll be a high miracle if you can shoe the horse,” she said.
With his brows raised in challenge, Hawkins drew on a pair of thick leather gloves and set to work making nails. He took a rod of iron and drew it out with strokes of the hammer. Breaking off several nails with a header, he tossed the finished ones into the forge trough. Hissing steam permeated the air.
Caitlin regarded him through the diffuse mist. Steam softened the lines of his face and torso, while fire glow and shadows cavorted over his glistening flesh. His hair fell in a ruddy mane about his face and neck. He resembled an image from a dream, as warm and vibrant as sunshine.
He stopped working and smiled at her. “What are you thinking that makes you look at me so?”
“I’m thinking I’d best do something about you soon.”
“Are you open to suggestions?” Setting aside an iron chisel, he brushed her cheek. The glove glided, hot and rough, on her skin.
She pushed his hand aside. “Not of that sort.”
“Ah.” He leaned against the bench and crossed his ankles, his booted toe pointing at the earthen floor. “The way I see it, you have few options. You can’t send me back to Hammersmith. I’d reveal your identity as the chieftain of the Fianna. You can’t set me free to wander, for you can’t trust me not to sell your secret to the highest bidder.”
“True,” she said. “Perhaps I should have given you to Logan.”
“That would have been a mistake. In the first place, I don’t appreciate being cast in the role of a bride’s dowry. In the second place, I’m smarter than Logan, and I’d be compelled to escape.”
“You gave your parole.”
“To you, Cait.” His gloved hand came up again and brushed a tendril of hair from her brow. “Only you. Because I respect you, I’m bound by my word.”
“Are you saying you don’t respect Logan Rafferty?”
“No more than I respect a man-eating shark. Do you respect him?”
“He’s an Irish lord, and my superior.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
She hesitated. Logan was arrogant and presumptuous. But he was also her brother-in-law who had Magheen in agony with love for him. “Aye,” she said softly. “I respect him.”
“Then why haven’t you told him about the Fianna?”
“Surely you can guess.”
“I’d rather hear your answer.”
“Logan has his own ideas on how to deal with the English, and they happen to differ with mine. The success of the Fianna cuts at his pride. If he knew of my involvement, he’d put a stop to our activities.”
“How have you managed to hide it from him?”
“The same way we hide it from everyone else. We strike swiftly and cleanly, like a storm in the night. Logan believes it’s the work of exiled soldiers from Connaught. He has no reason to question me.”
Finger by finger, Wesley plucked off the gloves. “Do you worry about Magheen telling him?”
She smiled. “For the present, Magheen wouldn’t toss him a rope if he were drowning. And you seem to view my sister as most men do, as a pretty ornament with no more depth than a soup trencher. I know better. Magheen is a MacBride and loyal to me.”
He picked up his tunic and pulled it back on.
Caitlin breathed a sigh of relief, for the sight of his bare chest scattered her thoughts and chipped away at her resolve.
“Then that narrows the choices to two,” he concluded, the white fabric muffling his voice.
“And what might those choices be?”
His head emerged from the neckline, his hair gloriously ruffled. He was a fine lion of a man. Not for the first time, she wished his sympathies lay with the Irish rather than Cromwell.
“You can either kill me. Or marry me,” he said.
His suggestion slammed into her with the force of a blow. She reeled back. “No!”
He bent and began fishing nails out of the bucket. “No to what?”
“To both choices. I will neither kill you in cold blood, nor marry an Englishman.”
“I’m relieved by the former, but you’ll have to explain the latter. Why won’t you marry me?”
