And so he did hold the Catholics answerable for his helpless state, and encouraged by his wife and mother, plotted a revenge he would never be able to carry out against the Catholics in general, against his half-brother, Kieran, and against Fortune, for he reasoned, had she never come to Ulster, none of this would have ever happened. It was all their fault.
No one came to visit Sir William and his family. The servants gave notice but for a few. He was condemned, it seemed, to spend the rest of his days at Mallow Court with only his mother and his wife for civilized company. Sir William Devers took to drinking anything that would free him from his pain and his boredom.
At Maguire's Ford Autumn Leslie, born on All Hallows' Eve, the Samhein celebration of the ancient Celtic races, thrived. Jasmine knew instinctively that this was absolutely her last baby, and so she nursed her daughter devotedly, declining a wetnurse. Fortune adored the baby, and spent much of her time with Autumn and their mother.
"She is so sweet," Fortune sighed. "I should so like a little girl like her… one day. I know this is not the right time, Mama."
"If Kieran goes alone to the New World," Jasmine suggested, "perhaps you should be with child then. That way I could be with you when the child was born. Then when it is safe for you to join your husband, the baby will be old enough to travel with you, but wait until we return to England before you make that decision."
Fortune sighed again. She wanted a normal life like her mother and her sister, India, had. A home, a husband, babies, and peace. Why could she not have these things? But she knew the answer to her own unspoken questions. She had married a man whose faith was not acceptable. They would have to make a new life in a place where his faith and hers were acceptable. But when? Why must it all take so long? She cuddled her baby sister closely, marveling that everything about Autumn was so perfect. Her dark hair with its faint auburn tints, her eyes which were beginning to hold distinct glints of green even at two months of age when she was baptized by the Reverend Samuel Steen, her half-sister, and brother, Adam, standing as her godparents.
Christmas and Twelfth Night had come and gone. The winter had set in hard. Maguire's Ford was quiet, and there was no longer any threat of violence from Lisnaskea, the excesses of the previous October having drained all choler from them. To Kieran's delight there were several families who had decided that they would like to go with him and Fortune to the New World, including young Bruce Morgan. They saw the opportunities available to them there despite the dangers involved. The older folk, of course, could not find it in their hearts to leave Ulster. They had always survived somehow, and would continue to do so, they reasoned.
January gave way to February, and then February gave way to March. The green hillsides were dotted with the white coats of the lambs born the month before. The duke began to make plans to leave Maguire's Ford for Scotland. They would depart the estate the fifteenth day of May, the day after Adam Leslie's fifteenth birthday. The two Leslie sons had settled quite well into Maguire's Ford. The Reverend Steen had been engaged as their tutor. The king's patent was expected before they departed, and Jasmine had already had the estate boundaries redrawn, dividing the land equally between the two boys. When Duncan turned sixteen in another four years, a house would be built for him on a site he had already chosen.
March departed, and halfway through April the royal warrant arrived, transferring Maguire's Ford from Lady Jasmine Leslie, the duchess of Glenkirk, to her sons, Adam and Duncan Leslie. Each boy was gifted with a peerage from the king since their father was a duke. Adam became Baron Leslie of Erne Rock. Duncan became Baron Leslie of Dinsmore, which meant from the hillfort, the site of his future dwelling. A copy of the document was posted publicly in the village square, and Kieran took the second copy to Mallow Court to show his half-brother and his stepmother.
Jane Devers, looking worn, greeted him sourly. "You were told not to come here again," she snapped at him as he entered the house.
"It will be my last visit, madame, I promise you. Where is William? Take me to him, and fetch your daughter-in-law too."
Jane Leslie brought her stepson to the rear parlor of the house where he found William Devers seated in a padded chair.
"Kieran!" William's voice was almost welcoming.
"I am sorry to intrude unannounced upon you, Willy," Kieran said, "but I feared you wouldn't see me if I sent ahead. I have brought you a copy of the royal patent for Maguire's Ford." He handed the document to the younger man. "You will note it transfers ownership of the estate, which is to be divided equally between Adam and Duncan Leslie, now Sir Adam and Sir Duncan. There can no longer be any doubt as to the disposition of Erne Rock and its lands. They are in the hands of two Protestant milords whose tutor is Reverend Steen."
"But Maguire is still there," William said, "isn't he?" His tone was now sour.
"Aye, and he will be until he dies," Kieran said. "He causes no trouble, and he's a genius with the horses, Willy. He is needed."
"He's a Catholic," came the stubborn reply.
"His masters aren't. Do not trifle with Glenkirk's boys, Willy. Scotland is not that far away, and James Leslie will kill you."
"I'd be better off dead," William Devers replied bitterly. "I cannot feel anything below my waist, Kieran. The physician says the child Emily Anne will shortly have is the only child we will ever have. What if it is not a son? I sit here all day long with only Mama and my wife for company. Their cheerfulness and their nobility sicken me. The physician informs me, other than the fact I am dead in my legs and my manhood, I am as healthy as a horse and shall live a long life. Are you pleased to hear that, brother? I shall probably outlive you."
"I am sorry, Willy, but the truth is you have no one to blame for your situation but yourself. Oh, the Lisnaskea Protestants gladly followed you once you, your mother, and the late Dundas had fired them up, but afterward they deserted you. Seeing you reminds them of what they did to their neighbors and friends just because they followed Catholicism. And each time they see you, they are reminded of what you did to our half-sister, Aine Fitzgerald. I am truly sorry for you, Willy. Yet I cannot help but think you got exactly what you deserved."
"You weep for a whore's brat, but not for your own brother!" he snarled. "I'm glad our father died else he might have given you back your inheritance, you bastard!"
"I wouldn't have had it, Willy. Ulster is a place of sorrow for me. I do not belong here. You may have Mallow Court for yourself, and your heirs, and good luck to you, little brother."
"What is it you want?" Jane Devers and her daughter-in-law entered the room. The voice was Emily Anne's. She was very full with her child, and Kieran wondered if it was a son, or a daughter, and if he would ever learn that fact. The child looked ready to be born.
"Good day, madame," Kieran said pleasantly, and he bowed to her. "I have brought a copy of the royal patent with its seal for Maguire's Ford so you may see the legal and official transfer of the estate from my mother-in-law to her two younger Leslie sons is complete." He took the document from William's hands, and passed it to Emily Anne and Lady Jane. "When you have properly perused it, I shall take it back. I have also come to bid you farewell. My wife, the Leslies, and I will be departing for Scotland in mid-May. It is unlikely that I shall ever return to Ulster."
The two women read the warrant carefully, finally returning it to Kieran.
"She was not lying, Lady Jasmine, when she said she was giving Maguire's Ford to her sons," Jane Devers said, sounding surprised.
"No," he replied, "she was not lying." Then, there being nothing else left for him to say to any of them, he kissed the women's hands, shook his brother's reluctant hand, and departed his childhood home for the last time. At the crest of the hill he turned to look at it a final time. He would not see it ever again.
***
At the end of April word was brought to Kieran that his sister-in-law had prematurely delivered a female child who would be christened Emily Jane. The child was healthy, and the mo
ther had survived her ordeal with courage. Kieran Devers sent the niece he was unlikely to ever see a small silver spoon and cup. He had sent to Belfast for the items several months ago, and they had only recently come.
"Poor William," Fortune observed. "But at least they have a child. Do you think it is time for us to have one, sir? We must try harder, I fear. You have neglected me shamefully these past weeks." Fortune was soaking in the large oaken tub before the fireplace. The tub took up much of the room that the bed did not.
He chuckled at her, stripping his own clothing off as he prepared to join her. She was adorably tempting, her red hair piled atop her head, her cheeks rosy with the heat of the bath. "We must take a fine tub like this to the New World," he said with a grin. "I am willing to give up much to find a land where we may live in peace, free of prejudice, but I do not intend giving up our baths, madame."
Fortune giggled. "Thank heavens we are not Puritans. I hear they consider bathing a great sin of the flesh. Some of the gentlemen I have met at court are not pleasant to be near. Get in gently, Kieran, else you'll splash water on the floor."
He waggled his thick black eyebrows at her as he slid effortlessly into the tub. "Did you not know, madame, I am part silky?"
"What is a silky?" she asked, curious.
"A man who can take the shape of a seal. Or perhaps a seal who can take the shape of a man. Or so the legends go."
"Ahh," she said, and she reached beneath the water with her hand to tease him. "And just when do you become a seal, sir? And if you become a seal, how shall we ever conceive a child?"
He felt himself hardening as her provocative words taunted him, and the brush of her nipples on his chest inflamed his desires. "Would you like to see how a silky mates?" he goaded her wickedly. He turned her about, and cupped her breasts in his hands, his thumbs tantalizing the hard little nipples. Fondling her he nuzzled at her, nipping at her earlobes, and the nape of her neck. "The silky," he said, "exhibits dominance over his mate."
"Does he?" Fortune returned, grinding her buttocks suggestively into his groin. "Just how does he do this, sir?"
He didn't answer. Instead his arm encircled her waist, drawing them even closer. A hand slipped beneath the water to find the little jewel of her womanhood which he teased unmercifully.
"Silkies don't have those, or such naughty fingers," she gasped.
"But their human mates do," he reasoned. He was afire with his lust, and he knew she was too. The oaken tub was wide enough for what he wanted to do, and so he bent her forward until her face was almost touching the surface of the water. Then grasping her hips in his big hands he slipped into her female passage in a manner in which he had not previously taken her.
Fortune gasped, surprised, and would have fallen into the water face first had he not been holding her. He began to move with a slow, almost stately rhythm within her, his long, thick manhood stroking the walls of her sensitive passage, stoking the fires of her own hunger for him. She caught the cadence of his movements almost immediately, and moved with him. Her head was spinning with the pleasure he was affording her. Her breath was coming in short, hard pants that sent ripples across the water before her face.
"This," he ground out in her ear, "is how the silky mates! He covers his female's body with his own, and takes her." He thrust deeper, and Fortune murmured with her open delight.
"Ahhh, Kieran, yes!" she encouraged him, wiggling her bottom into him. His own breath in her ear was hot, and fast.
"Oh, witch, you have unmanned me, and I am not yet satisfied!" he complained to her. His juices had burst forth, but he was still hard, and filled with a hungry lust. He withdrew from her, and exited the tub, pulling her behind him. Flinging her upon their bed he entered her once again, thrusting, thrusting, thrusting, until Fortune was desperately stuffing her fist in her mouth to stifle her cries.
The room was cold, yet she was burning up. If he could not get enough of her, she could not get enough of him now. Wrapping her long legs about him she drew him closer, her teeth sinking into his muscled shoulder, her nails raking the flesh of his back. "More, damn it! More!" she commanded him, and he complied, pushing himself as far as he could into her eager body. She screamed softly as their possession of each other became so intense she thought she was dying, would die from the extreme excess of pleasure she was now experiencing. The world dissolved behind her eyes, shattering into an explosion of color, and then she was soaring, soaring. As quickly she was falling into the sweet darkness that arose to claim them both from their excesses.
When she was in control of herself again some minutes passed. She became aware that he was bathing her gently with the love cloths. She watched him through half-closed eyes. "I have taught you well," she murmured softly.
He looked at her, his eyes dark with unconcealed passion. "Now, 'tis I who wants more, Fortune." He knelt over her, and taking his manhood in his hand, he rubbed it against her lips. Back and forth, back and forth, and then her little tongue shot from between those tempting lips, and began to lick at him. "Yes, my poppet, that's it," he encouraged her as his manhood began to tingle in anticipation. She opened her mouth now, not protesting at all as he guided himself in, and sighed deeply when she began to nurse upon him, at first tentatively, and then more strongly. "Ah, God, Fortune, 'tis sweet." He began to harden and swell until he more than filled her dainty mouth. Slowly he withdrew himself from the hot, wet cavity.
Fortune was trembling with her own desire now. What they had done had been incredibly exciting for her. She wondered if other women serviced their husbands in such a manner. Her breasts felt hard and aching, as if they would burst. Her pleasure place was already wet with her juices, and so filled with sensation it almost burned. She gasped when her husband slid down her body, and spreading her open brought her legs over his shoulders so he might service her as she had him. "Ohh yesssss!" she breathed, encouraging him. "Please!"
She was all musk and honey. Hot and slick, and so eager. Her little jewel was swollen and visibly throbbing. He touched it with the tip of his facile tongue, and she shrieked with its sensitivity. Now he played with it, flicking his tongue back and forth while she writhed and moaned with her rising pleasure until the first wave of her lust burst. It was then he entered her body, pushing slowly inside her as her legs wrapped about him once again. "Wanton, little witch," he taunted her, his love lance flashing back and forth with increasing speed. "I love you!" His lips found her, and he kissed her hungrily.
His mouth bruised hers but Fortune didn't care. Their passion was incredible, and unlike anything she had experienced with him before. "You are so randy, my husband," she told him. "I hope you will not change as the years go by. Ah! Ahh! Ahhhhhh!" The pleasure was rising, rising, rising, and then it burst again leaving her shaken with her joy and delight. "I love you too, my darling!" she told him as she yanked the coverlet over them.
They awoke again to the glowing light of a spring dawn coming soft, and faintly golden into their chamber. The fire had long since gone out, the great oak tub blocking whatever warmth it might have provided had it been ablaze. Fortune sneezed, and then she sneezed again. Her husband crawled, swearing softly, from the bed, going across the room to push the great oak tub from before the fireplace, but there was little room. He knelt, and poked among the coals, but their life had been long extinguished. Kieran sneezed.
"Merde!" He swore more volubly now. "I think I am catching an ague."
"I know I am," she responded. "Can't you get the fire going?"
"I'll have to go down to the hall and fetch some live coals, for these are dead." He sneezed a second and third time.
Fortune couldn't help herself. She chuckled aloud, and then as quickly explained to her aggrieved-looking spouse. "I think there is a lesson in this, Kieran. Do not make love wet, and then sleep in a damp bed on a chilly spring night. I think we had best get some clothing on, and then go down to the hall to get warm. The servants will take care of the chamber, and empty the tub for us, but
I could use some oat stir-about, and some hot mulled cider, sir."
"I concur," he said. Then a twinkle lit his eyes. "But 'twas a grand evening's entertainment we had, my lusty wife, was it not?"
Fortune laughed aloud.
***
April came to an end, and their time in Ulster was growing short. Kieran had gathered several Catholic families as well as individual men and women who were willing to leave their homeland and go to the New World. There were fourteen men. Most were farmers, but for Bruce Morgan, who had been his father's apprentice and was a good blacksmith. There was also a cooper, a tanner, a shoemaker, two weavers, two fishermen, and a female physician, Mistress Happeth Jones, who came from Enniskillen. She had been driven out by her Protestant neighbors who suggested she might be a witch. Before they might act on their assumption, Mistress Jones had packed her belongings and fled to Maguire's Ford. Mistress Jones had no declared faith, but she had heard that in Maguire's Ford there was more tolerance than in the rest of Ulster, and so she had come.
"Do you practice witchcraft?" Kieran asked her bluntly.
"Of course not," Mistress Jones answered him indignantly. She was a plump, sweet-faced woman with dark hair, rosy cheeks, and bright blue eyes that surveyed him with a level gaze. "The ignorant always try to explain what they cannot by crying witchery, sir. I am a physician as was my father who taught me. I am a healer, as was my mother, who had the touch. I have it also. My success in Enniskillen succeeded in arousing jealousy in the town's two other physicians, and its surgeon. 'Twas they who started the rumors. Not only was I a better doctor than they were, but I was a woman, and we all know that women are only good for bearing children and keeping a man's house," she finished with a twinkle in her eye.
"You have no husband?" he pressed her.
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