It was a pity to disturb them, but Ailis didn’t hesitate. Nor did she try to dismiss the Scots girl—she was fairly certain Liadan would insist on Maisie staying with her. Most nights, Maisie even slept in Liadan’s chamber.
Her daughter looked up. “Is it time?” she asked simply.
“Only if you are ready.”
As she’d predicted, Liadan looked to Maisie. “Will you come with me?”
“Of course, pet.”
“Not you, Mother.” Liadan’s self-possession was so complete it took Ailis a moment to formulate a response. She could not deny that she was nearly as proud of the girl as she was dismayed by her order.
“Are you sure, Liadan?”
“It’s better,” she said, for all the world like a woman grown and tested rather than a girl just turned twelve. In the flickering light, the set of Liadan’s mouth was very like Dane’s. “You said I might have guards?”
“As many as you choose.”
“I want Stephen. Just Stephen.”
Ailis nodded. “I will fetch him for you, and meet you both outside the prison chamber.”
Well, she thought wryly, if I don’t decide to keep Stephen around after all this, Liadan might insist upon it. Ailis tried to ignore the thought that her daughter preferred a Scots girl and an Englishman to her own mother.
—
Stephen pretended to absorb himself in poring over Ailis’s map of Ireland in the Great Hall—one marked with her careful notes about manpower and allegiances. Mostly it was to try and take his mind off Oliver Dane. He didn’t know what he was going to do about that looming disaster.
Then, of a sudden, the disaster was no longer looming but imminent.
Ailis swept in and said, without preamble, “I need you to see Dane with my daughter.”
He straightened, trying to keep the panic from showing in his movements. “You’re letting Liadan in?”
“She has the right. I told her to take whomever she wished. She asked for Maisie—and you.”
Only long years of practice at control kept Stephen from cracking. How the hell was he going to get out of this? The answer was that he couldn’t, not without raising suspicion.
Then how to ensure that Dane didn’t expose him?
As he assented to Ailis’s request and followed her to the top-floor interior chamber—reinforced on the inside with stone walls and not a single window—Stephen thought frantically.
Liadan and Maisie were waiting outside Dane’s prison door, with Diarmid scowling behind them. For just a moment Stephen forgot his own dilemma in the face of a twelve-year-old’s bravery. Liadan’s usual high spirits were subdued. She stood with hands crossed demurely against her yellow skirts.
The only thing Stephen had been able come up with was a matter-of-fact request to see Dane by himself. “Let me go in alone first,” he said to Ailis and Diarmid with forced ease. “No doubt he’s been well threatened, but as a fellow countryman, I might know a trick or two to ensure his politeness.”
Please say yes, Stephen prayed, heart so thunderous he feared Liadan and Maisie heard it from where they stood. Maisie studied him with a curious expression.
“Very well,” Ailis agreed abruptly. “Go ahead and vent your own displeasure at Dane beforehand. I want to ensure Liadan is not disturbed.”
“Of course.”
Diarmid unbolted the door, shooting Stephen a look of such loathing it might have shaken him if he wasn’t already halfway to not breathing. Stephen pulled the door firmly shut behind him and hoped the thickness of the wood would keep them from being heard. He thought they were safe to talk—as long as neither of them shouted.
Dane had been beaten, but not so badly as Stephen himself had been in Ireland. Twice. The man sat with head bowed—possibly dozing—but even so it was possible to see the bruising and cuts along the side of his cheek and jaw. Then his head jerked up and he blinked several times before he recognized Stephen.
“What the hell—” Dane began.
“Keep your mouth shut.” Stephen displayed the dagger he’d been allowed to carry for the last week. “Your life is hanging in the balance, and if you tip it, I’ll be the one to silence you.”
“They can’t afford to kill me.”
“She doesn’t care.”
Dane furrowed his brow. “Ailis? She won’t—”
“Don’t say her name!” Stephen knew it was a mistake to give Dane anything to work with, but he couldn’t help himself.
Slowly, understanding spread on Dane’s face. Along with a leer that twisted his mouth. “Ah, so you took my advice on Irish women. Good choice. Ailis was a concubine worth cultivating. But skilled enough to sway the upright English lordling from the path of duty?” Dane whistled. “I’m a better teacher than I thought.”
“If you ever want to leave this place alive, you will shut your mouth and listen. My name is Stephen Wyatt. We have never met. Remember that, and I’ll see to it that you keep your filthy life.”
Not for your sake, but for hers. Stephen could not let Ailis destroy herself by killing Dane.
The man was not stupid. He assessed correctly—more or less—Stephen’s implication. “Walsingham?” Dane whistled. “So you’ve gained Clan Kavanaugh’s trust in order to betray them. How cold-blooded of you.”
“Don’t get in my way.”
“Then get me out of here.”
“I’m working on it.”
Dane leaned as far forward as he could in chains and snarled, “If they drag me out of here to die, then the last thing I’ll do is make sure you go with me.”
Stephen didn’t flinch. “I’m supposed to be warning you to watch your words with Ailis’s daughter. I’m bringing her in now. The moment you even look as though you’ll insult her, I will kill you myself.”
With a laugh, Dane sat back. “I shall be the proper English gentleman to his bastard daughter.”
Stephen had reached for the door when Dane added, “If my men had not intervened outside Kilkenny last year, you might have had an Irish bastard of your own by now. I heard tell there was a woman in your tent that night.”
Everything went red. From somewhere, Stephen heard screams. He didn’t realize he had moved until his eyes cleared and he was standing over Dane with the dagger pointed at his chest.
With deliberate care, he turned the dagger in his hand and struck Dane on the jaw with its hilt. Not hard enough to knock him out, but it might have loosened a tooth or two.
Then he strode across the room and opened the door. He nodded once to Ailis, then said to Liadan, “Are you certain?”
Eerily like her mother, the child didn’t even deign to answer, but swept past him into the prison chamber. Maisie followed, and Stephen closed the door behind the three of them.
From the moment she entered, Liadan controlled the room. She studied Dane like he was a species of wildlife. “Where are you from?” she finally asked abruptly, in flawless English.
“Templemore. I live at Blackcastle.”
“I mean in England. You were not born here.”
“No.” He looked about to add an insult, but refrained, possibly because of the fresh pain blossoming through his jaw. “I’m from Yorkshire. Another forbidding landscape that shapes all who live there.”
“Why did you come to Ireland?”
“For the opportunity. I had no inheritance, no skills except soldiering, and Ireland is a place where a man can carve out his own future.”
“You are not married?”
“Tried it once. She died in childbed with the brat and there didn’t seem any point in continuing on that path. What I’ve earned here is for me. No one left me anything—why should I breed merely to pass on my own hard work?”
“But you did,” Liadan said, as calmly as though she were twenty years older. “Breed, I mean.”
His mouth twisted. “You don’t count.”
Maisie laid a hand on Liadan’s narrow shoulder, but in truth the girl had not recoiled. Stephen was filled w
ith admiration for her. “I’m afraid,” she told the man who could only be counted her father in the most basic sense, “that it is you who do not count. Not at Cahir. We are Irish here, and you are nothing but an interloper.”
She turned away and said to Stephen, “I’m finished.”
Only when Liadan passed him did Stephen see the fine tremble beneath her skin. He expected her to reach for her mother upon release, but it was Maisie who put her arm around Liadan’s shoulder and murmured soft words to her as they walked away.
“Well?” Ailis asked him.
With a glance at Diarmid, hovering menacingly, Stephen said, “Let’s walk.”
They had not been wholly alone since Dane’s arrival. His body, finely honed to every move and glimpse of her, urged him to sweep her into a quiet chamber and on into his arms.
But it was his mind that would keep him alive. And keep Ailis from a catastrophic mistake.
“There’s no blood on your dagger, so I presume he minded his tongue with Liadan,” she said.
“As well as he’s able. Liadan was impressive. She has all your sense of self. I think it startled him.”
“Good.”
Stephen put his hand lightly on her arm, and she stopped. They were in an empty corridor, no one else to be heard or seen. “Ailis,” he said softly, “you have to let him go. Hurt him as much as you like. Hell, I’ll help you build a rack to put him on! But then send to the Earl of Ormond with ransom demands. Make it outrageous—so much that the English cannot hope to pay without sending to London first. Hold Dane and make his life miserable while you wait. And then take England’s money, and let Dane go knowing that your enemies have paid for your next five years of fighting.”
She pulled away, her predatory eyes blazing. “Do you know what I hate most about Englishmen? It is not your arrogance, that self-righteous sense of superiority. It is not even your cruelty, for we can be just as cruel. It is that you’re so damned reasonable! Yes, reason says I should ransom Dane. Reason says I need the money. Reason says I should not risk English reprisals for killing him.
“But I am not reasonable. I am Irish, and a woman wronged. How often does a woman get the chance to answer the crimes against her? I have that chance—and I will not forsake it.”
She took his head between her hands, harder than affection would dictate. “If you love me, you will not ask it of me.”
Then she was gone, in a whirl of skirts and fury, and Stephen was left to wonder which principle he would land on: loyalty or love.
From behind him, footsteps sounded quick and soft. He jerked around and swore when he saw Peter Martin. How much had the man heard?
Enough, it seemed. “How are we going to get Dane out of here?” Martin asked.
Stephen had been waiting for this. Martin had kept away from him the last three days, which at least had given him time to consider his response. “I’m not risking my place here for Oliver Dane.”
“Isn’t this the very reason you’re here—to protect England’s interests?”
The two of them were speaking so softly it was barely words on their breath. “Dane doesn’t matter,” Stephen countered. “Not compared to the Spanish soldiers fighting with the Earl of Desmond. Dane threatens only this household—Desmond threatens all of England’s interests in southern Ireland.”
“And how much intelligence have you sent to Walsingham about Desmond’s actions?” Martin asked shrewdly.
“I don’t report to you.”
“So you won’t help me?”
“You want Dane released, find a way yourself.” Stephen could not afford to be attached to it, even if he knew it was wise. He was not prepared to give up his place in this household.
He and Martin parted without further words. Stephen braced himself for the storm that would follow when the spy either spirited Dane away or got caught in the act. He hoped not the latter—Martin might not keep his mouth shut if he were taken. But he told himself there was nothing more he could do.
The wait was not long. Just hours later, Stephen was awakened before dawn to the news that Oliver Dane had vanished.
And so had Liadan and Maisie.
—
Ailis had not expected to sleep at all that night. So when Diarmid woke her in the dark, it took precious minutes for what he was saying to penetrate her foggy mind. When she understood that not only was Oliver Dane gone, but the guard set outside his cell had his throat cut, Ailis came painfully awake. While Diarmid roused the men, Ailis went straight to Liadan’s chamber, driven by an instinct she was afraid to name.
The bed was empty, the linens thrown back as though in haste, and on the floor before the fireplace lay Father Byrne. Ailis knelt, but hardly needed to check. Like the guard, the priest’s throat had been cut nearly to the spine. Tossed on his limp body were the keys to Oliver Dane’s chains.
Within three minutes the household was roused and searching. Ailis forced herself to wait in the Great Hall, terrified that at any moment someone would bring her word of her daughter’s death. She paced the hall, afraid to stop moving because if she did, what she felt would break upon her, and she did not have time to give way to emotion. She would use it, instead, take all her rage and panic and distill it into a weapon with which to scorch her enemies. Wherever they might be.
The first to come was Stephen. He strode straight to her as though to take her in his arms, but Ailis could not allow any weakness. She stopped him with a statement. “Father Byrne is dead.”
“Was it Byrne who released Dane?”
“And got his throat cut for his mercy. A typically English gesture.”
The line of Stephen’s jaw tightened. “Is anyone else gone?” he asked abruptly.
“Besides my daughter? Only Maisie. Must I now suspect that quiet girl of collaborating with the English to kidnap my daughter?”
“Of course not. I’m relieved Maisie’s with her.”
“With her where?” Ailis cried. “How did they get outside the walls?”
Diarmid entered at that moment with the answer. “They got out through the postern gate. They must have crossed the river.”
“In what? We leave no boats outside the walls. Are you telling me Father Byrne went so far as to provide a boat for him?”
“Maybe not Byrne,” Diarmid said bluntly. “Peter Martin is missing as well.”
“Martin?” Her bewilderment swiftly hardened into outrage. “Bastard! Why couldn’t he just stay out of it?”
Fury swirled with her terror, so that Ailis didn’t know which way to turn. Before she could decide, a weeping Bridey pushed her way into the hall. “A note,” the old nurse wailed. “Dropped in the wee girl’s bedding.” Bridey held out the note she couldn’t read, then scuttled away.
Ailis moved faster than Diarmid and snatched it before he could. It was Dane’s writing, she knew it at once. It had been scrawled on one of Liadan’s translation sheets.
I will release her, but only to one negotiator. Send Lord Somerset to me, and you may have your bastard back.
After her first, silent, read, she repeated it aloud. Diarmid looked as confused as she was. “Somerset?” he said. “Must be English, but why would Dane involve someone we’ve never heard of? And it will take days—weeks—to get word to England and back.”
“Liadan can’t stay with him for weeks,” Ailis insisted, a little of her desperation leaking through. Surely Dane wasn’t so depraved as to use his own daughter? He was doing this to frighten her, to force her to comply…
“It won’t be weeks.” It was Stephen who spoke, his voice oddly blank. “It’s not even a day’s ride to Templemore. You can have Liadan back in less than two days.”
She looked at him in surprise, and then concern. He had gone dead white, so that the black of his hair and the warm hazel of his eyes stood out like warning beacons. But warning of what? She had never seen Stephen look so remote, or so stern.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “Do you know this Lord Somerset? Is he in Ir
eland already?”
When Stephen swallowed, she could actually see the movement in his throat, he was so tightly wound. Then he answered, and everything went still. “My name is not Stephen Wyatt. It’s Stephen Courtenay…the Earl of Somerset.”
There was a hiss, then Diarmid lunged at Stephen, dagger drawn. “Stop!” Ailis commanded wildly.
“He’s a traitor!”
“Diarmid, stop it. Leave us alone.”
“Not a chance. He’s just waiting to kill you.”
“If he wanted to kill me, he’d have done so long before now.” She felt unbelievably, icily calm. Stephen did not look away from her gaze. “Search him, Diarmid, then leave us be.”
Diarmid was rougher than he needed to be in the search, for Stephen wore only a shirt and hose, and every line of the body she knew so well could be easily traced. The dagger she’d allowed him was removed by Diarmid, then he backhanded Stephen across the face with a cracking blow that made her wince.
“Out,” she ordered Diarmid. “And keep your mouth shut. We cannot afford the household in more of a panic.”
Then it was just the two of them.
“Why Wyatt?” she asked, softly, circling him where he stood straight and tall.
If he was surprised by the question, he did not show it. English reticence was written all over him. “My grandfather’s name.”
“So, you are not a gentleman’s bastard with a Roman Catholic mother.”
“I am not.”
She stopped and stared at him, then shook her head, everything she knew about the English nobility coming to her as she sought for it. “No, you are Stephen Courtenay. Courtenay,” she spat. “Earl of Somerset and oldest son of the Duke of Exeter. When your father dies, you will inherit the richest dukedom in England.”
He said nothing.
Prowling around him again, as though he were a zoological exhibit, she mused aloud. “Just how well do you know the English queen?”
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