The Maid of Ireland

by Susan Wiggs

  His eyebrows clashed in concern. “Are you ill?”

  “In the way of a swallow put in a cage, perhaps,” she said.

  He subjected her to a long, probing stare that traveled from her face to her breasts to her belly. “Could it be—”

  She thrust up her chin. “I presume I’m all tricked out like this because you’re taking me to see the murderer, Cromwell.”

  “In time.” Wesley started along a path to the left. MacKenzie scudded watchfully in their wake. “And it would behoove you to refrain from calling him a murderer.”

  “You’re right. It’s too good a word for the devil.”

  “If you want to get back to Clonmuir, you’ll keep your opinions to yourself and show respect.” His voice dropped, and she heard real fear in his tone. “I mean that, by God. You risk both our necks with your tart tongue.” He took her hand, rubbed her chilled fingers. “So cold.”

  “England is a cold country, even in summer.”

  A look of revelation passed over his face. “You’re afraid, aren’t you?”

  “Of course I’m afraid, you great lout. What Irishwoman would not be afraid of Oliver Cromwell?”

  “It’s a side of you I’ve not seen before, not even when I abducted you, not even in the heat of battle.”

  “When I can meet a man on a battlefield and pit my speed and my wiles against him, I have no reason to fear. In an honest battle, God’s will prevails. But I’m not used to battles of words, waged by cheaters and traitors.”

  “Just remember, I’m on your side. I want to protect you, and then I want you to go free.”

  She sensed excitement in him and wondered what he was about. “Do you, Wesley?”

  No, he thought with a lurch of his heart. I want to hold you and keep you always. I want to bring you and Laura together.

  But he could not speak of Laura yet. He was too close to getting her back to risk a confession now. Later, when Laura was safe in his arms and the confrontation with Oliver Cromwell was behind them, he could tell all to Caitlin.

  And probably lose her for good.

  They entered the privy chamber. Perfect. His timing was perfect. The scene he had orchestrated so carefully was about to unfold. God forgive my cruelty, he thought.

  No, he told himself. He would not feel guilty for grinding Caitlin’s dreams to dust. She needed to see the truth, to see that her ideal image of the Spaniard was false.

  His hand brushed the dress sword that rode at his hip. If Caitlin’s grandee dared to harm her, Wesley would take great pleasure in running the bastard through.

  A shiver passed over Caitlin as she studied the men and women in the crowded room. Gowned officials, resembling crows in their black winglike cloaks and with their shiny dark eyes, stood deep in conversation. Other groups spoke in foreign tongues. Ambassadors, she realized.

  Her nerves thrummed, and her gaze sharpened on a knot of dark-haired men near a marble hearth, chafing their hands near the flames. The beautifully coiffed and oiled hair, the glittering costumes, set them apart from the drab-robed English. One man held himself tall and straight, his head cocked slightly as he listened to his stocky companion.

  Alonso.

  Joy washed over her, as sweet and pure as sunshine. She stood riveted by the sight of him. Yet at the same time she felt Wesley tensing beside her.

  Her memories of Alonso paled beside the reality. Four years had broadened his shoulders, added maturity and wisdom to his handsome features.

  A sense of unreality gripped her. So close. After years of anxious waiting and unbearable yearning, she stood mere steps away from realizing her long-cherished dream.

  She pressed her fists to her breastbone, felt the pounding of her heart. How would he react when he learned she had wed another? He would understand, she told herself. He would help her find a way out of the mess with Hawkins. With a guilty thrill, she prayed Alonso would not hesitate to express his jubilation at seeing her again. The one chaste kiss they had shared had sustained her for years. But now she knew the meaning of passion. Like it or not, Hawkins had given her that.

  Closing her eyes, she envisioned coming together with Alonso, mouths pressing hard, bodies straining for completion.... Her eyes flew open and filled with tears. For the man in her vision had not been Alonso, but—

  “Caitlin.”

  She turned at the sound of her husband’s voice.

  Hawkins. Damn him. He had invaded her fantasies. His frank, rough affection had overrun her dreams of Alonso as the English had razed Ireland’s forests.

  He gave her a gentle push in the direction of the Spaniards. “Go and greet him.” His voice was soft, but edged by irony. “It’s what you’ve been waiting for, isn’t it?”

  She hesitated. What could be his purpose in bringing her here deliberately? She decided it was not important. Smoothing her hands over the bony structure of her farthingale, she tossed Wesley a defiant look and started forward.

  “Excuse me.”

  The four gentlemen turned to her. She was unprepared for the appreciation that lit their faces. Each smiled. Each allowed his gaze to stroke her from head to toe.

  Perhaps this English frippery had a purpose, after all.

  Braving a rush of bashfulness, she smiled directly at Alonso. Although his gaze devoured her, no recognition flickered in his eyes. With courtly stiffness, he took her hand and bowed over it. “A pleasure beyond compare, I assure you, señorita.”

  The lucid thoughts streaming through Caitlin’s mind surprised her. When Wesley touched her, she could not think at all. “Alonso,” she whispered. “Don’t you know me?”

  His eyes narrowed. They were smaller than she remembered. Darker. “No, señorita. Should I?”

  She stepped back, her hand going out behind her, reaching against her will for support.

  For Wesley. But he stood several feet away, watching, his face unreadable.

  Cheeks flaming, Caitlin ignored the curious stares of the other Spaniards. “Alonso, it’s Caitlin MacBride of Clonmuir. For the love of God, do you not remember?”

  His face changed. A hardness came over his features.

  Questions roared through her mind. Had Alonso already learned of her marriage? Did he understand why she had been forced to break faith with him?

  Yes. He must. True love knew no jealousy. True love was the essence of pure understanding, unconditional forgiveness. There had never been a love so pure as the one she and Alonso had pledged to one another that day high on the crags of Connemara.

  And yet...what was it she had felt, in the dark when Wesley was deep inside her, and their very souls seemed to mate?

  Animal passion, she insisted stubbornly. Not the soft, dreamlike emotions she felt for Alonso.

  He cleared his throat. A delicate sound. A sound of polite discomfiture. “I did not expect to see you here, señorita.” He bowed to his companions and said something in Spanish. Then he led her out to the long green courtyard and stopped in the shade of an ornamental yew tree.

  “Alonso.” His name came on a rush of breath. “I’ve waited so long and fought so hard. There’s so much to discuss.”

  He seemed not to hear her. Furtive hunger shadowed his eyes. “Dios, but you have become a beauty!” he exclaimed.

  With a cry of joy, she flung her arms around his neck.

  With an oath of fury, Wesley strode across the green toward them. Caitlin jumped back. Her heart thumped at the deadly expression on her husband’s face. Fury boiled in his eyes and blazed across his features. As he came forward, his hand went to the hilt of his dress sword.

  “Here, sir,” Alonso snapped out. “Who are you?”

  “Your worst enemy,” Wesley said without slackening his pace.

  “Wesley, no!” Caitlin stepped in front of Alonso.

  He stopped walking. Huge and powerful, he had the look of a man who had never lost a battle. His sword sliced from its sheath. “Step aside, Caitlin,” he said. “Or is your lover in the habit of using a woman
as a shield?”

  “Never!” Alonso pushed past Caitlin. His own bright blade glittered in the sun. He stepped forward and sketched a neat challenge in the air with his sword tip. “I refuse no invitation from an English commoner.”

  “You’ll wish you had, you Spanish bastard.” Wesley lunged with his sword arm extended.

  Their crossed blades made a metallic whine.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Caitlin shouted, knowing even as she spoke that they would ignore her. They were two furious champions, each intent on victory. Alonso fought with the agile precision of a well-schooled swordsman. Wesley battled with the unearthly strength and dogged will that slapped formal training in the face. In an odd way, they were well matched: Alonso’s crafty quickness against Wesley’s raw fury.

  Alonso extended himself in a perfectly executed lunge. Wesley leapt back, bumping into a stone bench behind him. Undaunted, he made a grand backward jump and mounted the bench. He took full advantage of the added height, his wrath blazing in the face of Alonso’s icy composure.

  Alonso’s close-playing wrist sought entrance to Wesley’s broad-reaching defense. The Spaniard fenced magnificently, cold as steel, his eyes blank and pitiless. In contrast, Wesley flamed with passion.

  He leapt down from the bench. By main force he battled Alonso backward across the greensward, where a crowd had quickly gathered. Alonso made an ill-timed thrust. Wesley caught the blade with the edge of his. They came together, swords crossed, chests heaving, muscles trembling, with deadly effort.

  “Tell me, my friend,” said Wesley, panting hard, “do you make it a practice to seduce other men’s wives?”

  For a split second, Alonso’s cold composure vanished. His jaw dropped. His grip on the hilt faltered.

  Wesley’s booted foot came up. In a ploy that would appall any master swordsman, he stomped on Alonso’s foot.

  The Spaniard cried out. Wesley plucked the sword from his hand and flung the blade away. With the same motion, he whipped his point to Alonso’s throat.

  “Wesley!” Caitlin rushed forward. “I beg you, don’t—”

  “He won’t,” said Alonso in a shaky voice. His eyes flooded with relief as he looked past Wesley’s shoulder.

  Swords drawn, Alonso’s companions raced toward them. Two women wearing lacy black shawls hurried in their wake. The plump younger one carried a baby on her hip.

  “Release me,” said Alonso, “or my men will run you through like a sausage on a stick.”

  Wesley hesitated for a heartbeat, then lowered his sword. The heat of madness cooled; his anger turned in on himself. He should have exercised more self-control. He should not have surrendered to the rage that had gripped him on seeing Caitlin fling herself at the Spaniard.

  The younger woman clung to Alonso and spoke in rapid Spanish, making sure he wasn’t injured. In moments, Caitlin would know the truth. Wesley hated the dark satisfaction that crept over him. “I’m sure Mrs. Hawkins would be delighted to make your acquaintance,” he said to the woman.

  Alonso gave a hiss of anger as he looked from the Spanish woman to Caitlin. He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, then snapped a practiced bow. “Doña Maria,” he stated. “And this is little Federico. My wife and son.”

  Wesley would have traded his sword arm to spare Caitlin the pain he saw so clearly in her eyes. The amber jewels seemed to splinter like shards of sunlight. The color dropped from her face. Her hands clenched into fists.

  But she was still the MacBride. She recovered in scant seconds. Like a queen bestowing royal favors, she nodded at her Spanish swain’s wife, then swept back toward the palace.

  Sheathing his sword, Wesley hurried after her. “I’m sorry. But you had to know.”

  She gave a bitter laugh. “You English bastard. You planned this. Is it your mission in life to hurt me, make me miserable? Do you take pleasure in my pain?”

  “You have to feel the hurt before you can start to heal.”

  “Oh, spare me.” She tossed her head and quickened her stride. “Don’t we have an appointment with Oliver Cromwell?”

  Thirteen

  A long, stark corridor lined with menacing-looking pikemen opened to the equally stark privy chamber. There, at a polished table in front of a hanging that bore the arms of the Protectorate, sat Oliver Cromwell.

  Caitlin stopped walking. Her face and lips paled, making her eyes appear vividly gold. Wesley tried to guess what she was feeling as she faced the man responsible for laying waste to her homeland and outlawing her faith. His legions burned crops and pillaged towns. They abducted women and children and sent them away in bondage. They hanged rebels, butchered livestock and stole horses. They razed castles and ripped families apart.

  And here he sat, holding court like a monarch. His badly barbered hair, red-brown streaked with iron, framed a face that, Wesley realized, had aged years in mere months. Peering beneath the studied cruelty of that face, he saw a man who had lost his grandchild and whose favorite daughter lay dying.

  “Mr. Hawkins, come in, and bring your companion.” Cromwell gestured amiably. “You, too, Mr. Thurloe.” Clad in severe Puritan black, John Thurloe entered through a side doorway.

  Wesley placed his hand in the middle of Caitlin’s back. “Courage, darling,” he murmured under his breath.

  She stiffened at his touch. Her anger over the meeting with the Spaniard burned Wesley like a glowing iron.

  A retainer brought wine. The servant discreetly sipped from a cup, swirling the liquid in his mouth before swallowing and handing it with a nod to the Lord Protector. So, Cromwell worried about poisoning.

  “Do sit down,” invited Cromwell.

  “I prefer to stand,” said Wesley. “We should be able to conclude our business in a matter of minutes.”

  Cromwell glanced at a letter on the table in front of him. “I shall be the one to declare when—and if—our business is successfully concluded.”

  An ominous chill tiptoed up Wesley’s spine. “You demanded that I deliver the chieftain of the Fianna. And so I have.”

  Cromwell and Thurloe craned their necks to see beyond the doorway. “Where is the godless cur?” demanded the Lord Protector.

  Wesley slipped his arm around Caitlin’s shoulders. “You’re looking at her, sir.”

  A burst of harsh laughter exploded from Cromwell. “By the Almighty, Hawkins! I didn’t think even you would stoop so low.” His bright, cold eyes drifted over Caitlin. The blatant appreciation in his regard made Wesley itch to rip his face off.

  “He speaks the truth.” Caitlin’s voice rang clear and sweet as a harp in the cavernous room. At the sound of her liquid, Irish purr, Cromwell and Thurloe exchanged a glance. She added, “I am Caitlin MacBride.”

  Wesley started to add “Hawkins,” but Cromwell slapped his hands on the table and surged to his feet. “You’re the treacherous mistress of Clonmuir?”

  “Treachery is your specialty, not mine. I am also the MacBride, chief of my sept.”

  “You have led the Fianna on all its murderous raids?”

  Fierce hatred sharpened her features. “Aye, I admit it.”

  “How very interesting,” said Cromwell. He sighed and sat back down. Weariness carved vertical lines in his cheeks. “You realize that you face a penalty of death for breaking my laws.”

  Wesley felt a subtle trembling in her shoulders, but her voice was steady. “Sir, I cannot trespass against your laws because I did not submit to them.”

  Red patches mottled his cheeks. “All Ireland submits to me! Madam, your country will accept the law and order of my Protectorate.”

  “You brought no law and order to Ireland,” she snapped. “You brought only greedy settlers who bleed us dry, take our lands and charge us taxes. If that’s your brand of law and order, you can keep it. Don’t pollute Ireland with it.”

  Her loathing shone as pure and clean as a polished blade. Cromwell’s answering hatred was corrupt, sullied by ambition and intolerance. “Nevertheless, I rule Ireland�
��and you.”

  “The wench has a fiery tongue, to be sure,” said Thurloe. “But the Irish are born liars.”

  Caitlin glared at him. “And who—or what—might you be?”

  Thurloe’s nostrils thinned. He picked up a quill and dipped it in ink, making a notation at the bottom of a document. “Secretary of State to the Commonwealth.”

  She thrust up her chin. “Bully for you.”

  Cromwell addressed Wesley. “I presume you have proof.”

  “I witnessed the raid she led. So did a lieutenant named Edmund Ladyman.” Wesley produced Ladyman’s statement, notarized by Hammersmith. He gestured at the man who stood in the doorway. Clearly overawed by the Lord Protector, the Scotsman gave a sharp salute. “MacKenzie will attest to the authenticity of this.”

  Caitlin, who had looked death in the face a hundred times and laughed at it, twined her fingers together in fear.

  Cromwell added the document to his papers. “There will be a trial, of course. A mere formality given the evidence. And then—” Cromwell sighed “—I’m afraid the outcome is rather distasteful. But I must make an example of you. Other Irish rebels must learn the price of murdering the English.”

  He raised his hand to summon a guard.

  “Not so fast.” Wesley’s voice lashed like a black whip. “You gave your word in writing that if I brought you the leader of the Fianna, you’d not harm me or my kin.”

  “I fully intend to honor my word.”

  “Good. Then you must understand that you cannot harm Caitlin.”

  “Why the devil not?”

  “Because she’s my kin. I married her.”

  Thurloe dropped his quill and his jaw. Cromwell leapt up again. His wineglass fell to the floor and shattered, the red wine pooling like blood on the floor.

  Wesley placed yet another paper before the Lord Protector. “There it is, sir. The special license, the witnessed certificate. She is my legal wife and my kin.”

  “There can be no marriage between Irish and English.”

  “We married on the high seas. The union is legal.”