Irish Lady

by Jeanette Baker

  Through the rearview mirror, she saw a young woman with black, short-cropped hair cross the street and enter the park. Her long, denim-clad legs covered the distance to the car in smooth, efficient strides. After a cursory glance at Michael, she motioned for Meghann to roll down the window. “Step outside,” she ordered in a curt, authoritative voice. “Bring your bag with you.”

  Meghann did as she was told. The woman climbed into the car and turned the key, gunning the engine. It sputtered, hesitated, and caught. “There’s a blue Saab waiting for you by the monastery,” she said. “Leave it in the dropoff lot at Shannon.”

  “How will I know where to find you?”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  “Wait.” Meghann called after the moving car. “Will you be the one caring for him?”

  Without answering, the woman rolled up the window and drove out of the park, leaving Meghann staring helplessly down the road after the disappearing car.

  She stood there for a long time, reliving the events of the past six hours, unable to muster the energy to move. Fatigue washed over her. Her hand reached for her brooch. The smooth gold felt unusually warm. A solitary curlew circled and called overhead. The wind rose and lifted the hair from her cheeks. Just ahead loomed the castle walls. Soft insistent whispers urged her toward the portcullis gate.

  Summoning the last reserves of her strength, she walked to the entrance, paid her fee, and passed through the gate of Donegal Castle. The pamphlet was brief. The castle had originally belonged to the O’Donnells. After the Flight of the Earls in 1607 it had fallen into the hands of an English family, the Burkes.

  The gardens were completely empty. To the right, a twisting staircase beckoned. Ducking her head, she made her way up the narrow steps to a large refurbished chamber that was once the Great Hall. A massive oak table set with trenchers and goblets dominated the room. Somehow, Meghann knew this wasn’t what she had come for. Continuing up the stairs, she bypassed several smaller rooms until she came to the end of the hall. Disappointed, she turned back. There was nothing of Ireland or the O’Donnells in this refinished, glossy-coated mansion.

  Absorbed in her own thoughts, she almost missed it, the sharp turn where none was before, the roughly hewn walls, the narrow, low-ceilinged hall, the glow of a hot peat fire, the leap and gutter of torches throwing light on a laden banquet table and rush-strewn floor. Meghann had the childish urge to rub her eyes. Something was wrong with her. Shadows moved along the walls and then, assuming shape and dimension, stepped away, taking their places on the low benches. Warm laughter, slurred voices, and odors, pungent and human, filled her senses.

  The hearth dominated an entire wall, a blazing fire throwing arcs of light across the room. Caught in a ruddy beam, silhouetted against its glow, a man dressed in period costume was fingering the same instrument that Meghann had watched Nuala O’Donnell play earlier that morning.

  Her heartbeat drummed in her ears. It had to be a reenactment, and yet she was the only audience. The players, caught up in their drink-induced camaraderie, seemed unaware of her presence. Meghann found a stool in the shadows and sat down, her eyes on the musician and the small crowd that took their places around him.

  His voice was rich and clear and soon the only sounds in the chamber were his words and the lilting notes of his music. Meghann closed her eyes and listened. The man was very skilled. Her breathing quickened as he sang of a mighty castle, secret glens, silver lakes, and the treasures found to the east in the O’Neill kingdom of Tyrone.

  She must have dozed off because she no longer felt tired. The music had stopped and a man stood before her. Not really a man, she decided after looking more closely, but a boy, barely out of his teens, with hair so light it fell like spun silver to his shoulders and eyes as hard and blue as winter ice. He was very tall and lean, and the sun-darkened arms and chest exposed at the neck and wrists of his rough linen shirt showed the promise of powerful muscle. Fur trimmed his boots, and the leather scabbard at his waist carried the deadly, winking gleam of steel. The clothes and hair were sixteenth century, but even if she hadn’t known that, she would never have believed that this incredible young man standing before her was English.

  Meghann swallowed and would have spoken, but before the words could come he spoke instead, but not to her. She did not exist for him. Intrigued, she sat back and waited, her own reality suspended for one timeless, inescapable moment.

  “Sing to me again of Nuala O’Neill,” the boy demanded.

  The bard strummed his lute and stared into the fire. “You’ve heard enough of the glories of Tyrone,” he grumbled. “Your father will have my hide if he hears more.”

  “Come, Ruidarch,” he coaxed him. “Father sleeps. ’Tis I you must entertain.”

  “Nay, Rory. ’Tis Kieran you will wed. I will sing to you of Kieran O’Neill.”

  Cursing, the boy spat into the rushes. “The taste of ale coats my mouth. I never chose to wed Kieran O’Neill.”

  “There now, Rory,” the bard soothed him. “Those who are born to the nobility rarely take part in the choosing of their brides. Your troth was plighted the moment she was born, an earl’s first son to marry an earl’s first daughter.”

  “They tell me she is lovely, with a quiet beauty like the coming of a silver dawn, but even were she born with the face of legends, I would not take her. My soul burns for a lass called Nuala.”

  The old man nodded. “They say Nuala is most fair, beyond the fairness of mortal women,” he mused. “Beggars leave the castle gates of Tyrone with bread in their bellies and coppers in their palms. But I know you better than yourself, lad. ’Tis not compassion you desire in a woman, nor is it accomplishment.” He leaned forward, his instrument forgotten. “What is it that makes you seek out the O’Neill’s second daughter before all others?”

  Rory clenched his fists. Ruidarch was all he had ever known of a mother and a better father than his own. If he could not unburden his heart to him, he could do so to no one. “She is of Brian Boru’s seed,” he said. “Her courage in the teeth of her father’s submission to Elizabeth and her loyalty to her mother’s people are the stuff of legends. Kingdoms are lost for the lack of those qualities in the bloodlines of our noble houses. I want Nuala O’Neill for the children she will give me.” He stood. “I will go to Tyrone and I will bring her home as my bride or I will bring back no one.”

  The old man’s gasp was like heady wine to the brash, unschooled heir of Tirconnaill.

  *

  Nuala O’Neill, Tyrone, 1588

  My sister was sixteen summers to my fourteen, but she was still a timid fool. Watching her sob into the bed linens, I felt only contempt for her plight. “Why didn’t you tell him from the beginning?” I asked. “Father is not a cruel man. He would have welcomed a daughter with a vocation.”

  Kieran shook her head. “I could not. He always meant me for Tirconnaill. I’ve known since I could understand the words.”

  “You might have tried,” I said reasonably. “’Tis no small thing to have a daughter enter a convent.”

  “I am not you, Nuala,” Kieran muttered. “Father does not grant my wishes.”

  Flipping my braid back over my shoulder, I stood and looked down at the mewling woman who called me sister. “Men do not care for tears, Kieran, and our father is every inch a man. It would serve you well to remember that.”

  Kieran lifted her tear-swollen face to look at me. “Do you fear anything, little sister?”

  I shrugged and considered her question. In truth, there was very little in life to fear. Born of the union between the Earl of Tyrone and an Irish princess of Munster, I was allowed my lead from the time I was a wee lass. From the kitchens to the stables to the Great Hall, I listened and learned until the smallest detail of my father’s castle was as commonplace to me as the tales I learned in my mother’s solar. It was she, a woman of Brian Boru’s line, who taught me the power of language, the art of courtly politics, the value of loyalty, and the terrib
le, unalterable price of a woman’s honor.

  To uphold her honor, Kieran was forced to a troth she had no wish to keep. That same honor silenced my mother’s tongue when she would have spoken on her behalf, and it was honor that sent me to the glen on that mad, diabolic flight across marshy bogs and moss-wet stones to face the man who would be my sister’s husband.

  Until that night of ghost-touched mist and leaves faerie-painted with moonglow and ash, I had no knowledge of Rory O’Donnell, only of the plan I would unfold before him. I remember wondering how I would know him, and then, when at last he stood before me, I feared that I might never forget him.

  Honor had no place that night in the netherworld glen nor in the words that passed between us, only a wanting and a slow, sweet ache that began deep in my core, swelling and spreading until it burned with piercing clarity as if to proclaim to all of Tyrone that Kieran O’Neill would become a nun after all.

  They had camped on the northern side of the glen, nearly two leagues from the castle gates, two men and Kieran’s betrothed, the man they called Rory O’Donnell. I walked carefully around the horses to be sure they alerted no one to my presence and settled behind a boulder to watch as they conversed by the fire. I wanted to speak with O’Donnell alone, to sense the measure of the man he was. Finally, after an interminable time, he stood and stretched, bidding his companions good night. Again I waited while the men settled into sleep, silent lumps beneath woolen blankets on the nettle-soft ground.

  Cautiously, I approached him, crawling the last few paces on my hands and knees. Then I crossed my legs beneath me and willed him to feel my gaze and wake.

  The man slept soundly on his bed of nettles. Inching my toe forward, I prodded his shoulder. Still he slept like the dead. Frustrated, I grew bolder. Leaning over him, I brushed his face with the end of my braid. And then in the space of a heartbeat it happened. Hurting hands gripped my shoulders, flipped me over and threw me to the ground. When I could breathe again, my wind came in deep uneven gasps.

  “What do you want?” he demanded, holding me down with a grip of steel.

  The weight of his body crushed the speech from mine. I opened my mouth to tell him but the words refused to come. Somehow I managed to communicate my discomfort for he moved slightly, keeping his hands on my wrists. I breathed again and found my voice. “Why do you camp here in the glen when the castle is so near?”

  “’Tis rude to come to the O’Neill at night after the gates are closed.” His hands tightened and he grinned. “If you seek to rob me, lass, I tell you now, ’tis not your sport. You are too loud.”

  The man was insolent. I struggled to a sitting position and he released me. “I have no need of money, sir. I am a daughter of the castle.”

  He frowned. “You are Red Hugh’s daughter?”

  “Aye.”

  He reached out and gripped my chin, forcing me to look at him. “’Tis too dark,” he muttered, “I cannot see your face.”

  His fingers on my flesh and his face so close to mine unnerved me. “The fire is out,” I whispered, wondering what it was about this man that sent the shivers down my spine.

  “Aye,” he whispered back, “but the sunrise will come.”

  Alarmed, I came to my senses. “I cannot stay the night with you. My maid will miss me. I came only to bring a message.”

  His hand moved across my face, a hard callused hand, testing the shape of my nose and the bones beneath my cheeks. “What message do you have for me, fair Nuala?”

  “’Tis from my sister, Kieran. She has the calling and does not wish for marriage.” I swallowed. What I had come to say was not as easy as I had imagined it to be. Still my mind was the same as it had been when I left the castle, and I was not one to dissemble. The worst he could say was nay. I lifted my chin bravely. “I thought, that is, I hoped you would have me instead.”

  I had no idea what it was that caused the laughter to rise from his chest and spill out into the night. But it did. And before I could ask what humor he found in my words, he was no longer laughing. For the first time, I learned that the lips of a man tasted like cool rain and clean wind and the promise of something warm and wild and uniquely different from anything I’d ever known.

  Later, much later, when I could think again, I heard his words, unsteady and muffled against my hair. “I would be honored to take you, lass. ’Tis what I intended all along.”

  Six

  Completely oblivious to everything but her own fatigue, Meghann dropped the Saab at Shannon Airport, purchased her ticket for the brief flight home and hailed a taxi to her London town house. All she wanted was sleep. Mechanically, she greeted Mrs. Hartwell, refused her offer of tea and went straight to the bedroom, where she collapsed in the large four-poster for fourteen hours of uninterrupted sleep.

  All that week she was careful to make regular appearances at the office, to inform her new associate of the details of her most pressing cases and to lunch with Cecil at least twice. It was not that difficult to hint at family difficulties, and although it was embarrassing to listen to his sincerely sympathetic condolences, she wrote them off as a necessary liability. It was not so easy to disregard the guilt that nagged at her conscience for deceiving him.

  Meghann meticulously scanned the newspapers, but to her surprise no mention was made of a successful escape from the Maze. For some reason, British authorities wanted to keep this one quiet, and British Broadcasting was cooperating.

  Pulling the zipper of her suitcase closed, she looked around to be sure she hadn’t forgotten anything. A wave of premature homesickness swept through her. Before Michael Devlin had stepped into her life again, her days had been so wonderfully predictable. Mrs. Hartwell’s tea and toast in the morning, the drive to her office in the expensive Jaguar Charles had purchased the year before his death, the whisper of soft cashmere against her skin, the chime of Waterford crystal, the bone china filling every cupboard, the gleam of fine silver, the scent of lemon polish on eighteenth-century furniture and the delicious wanton pleasure of purchasing anything she could ever want.

  Not that she had, of course. An unusual phenomenon had occurred once she found herself with the means to ignore anything so ignominious as a price tag. It seemed to Meghann that the ache of desire mysteriously evaporated. Since she was inherently frugal and her career took most of her time, she considered it a blessing. Still, she would miss the convenient elegance of her home and the redoubtable Mrs. Hartwell. Meghann couldn’t remember the last time she had cooked a meal or managed the laundry. With a sigh, she lifted her bag to her shoulder and walked past her Sèvres china vases and Queen Anne chairs, through the tasteful living room and out the door to her waiting taxi.

  Her drive to the beach cottage was not without incident. It was surprising that she found the place at all. The directions had been whispered over the phone, the voice muffled with something that made detection impossible. Not that it would have made a difference. Meghann was not a private investigator nor a police detective, and she knew no one actively involved in nationalist politics.

  She almost turned down the road that would have taken her in the opposite direction toward Ballybofey and British-occupied Ulster when something stopped her, an urge, no, something stronger than that, a force, compelling her to pause, pull over, and look at the map more carefully.

  While she was in the convenience store asking directions, a British patrol rolled by. Meghann felt the blood leave her hands. She watched as a car bearing an Armagh license plate was commandeered to the side of the road and the driver questioned. Shivering, she busied herself by examining the store’s inventory until the patrol moved on. The clerk looked at her curiously. “May I help y’, lass?” he asked.

  “Yes, please.” Hastily grabbing two pints of Guinness, a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, and a tin of tea, Meghann carried them to the counter, paid cash, and walked quickly to the car. After stowing her purchases in the backseat, she slid behind the wheel and turned the key. Her hands shook. Leaning her
forehead against the steering wheel, she took several deep, sustaining breaths before pulling out onto the road. An encounter with the British army and the inevitable questions for which she had no answer was something she wasn’t prepared to face.

  The man’s directions were flawless. Meghann drove to the back of a whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof and parked the car in a shed. Pulling the strap of her travel bag over her shoulder, she gathered the groceries and made her way across the long grass to the door. No one answered her knock.

  Shifting the bag to one arm, she fumbled with the latch, lifted it and pushed the door open. The room was empty but very warm. A peat fire glowed in the hearth. She noticed the dishwasher and immediately relaxed. A more thorough inspection revealed an electric can opener, a coffeemaker, a toaster oven, and a blender.

  She set the groceries on the table and walked into the living room. The cottage was two-storied, with a shining wooden floor stained honey-gold. Hand-painted birds had been painstakingly stenciled around floorboards, and large, multi-paned windows took full advantage of the light. The wood furniture, while not expensive, was old and sturdily built, and the sofa with its plump pillows looked comfortable. A cozy fire provided most of the warmth, but evidence of gas heat could be seen in the narrow pipes running along the ceiling. Fleece throws hung invitingly over the chairs, and scenes of fishermen hauling in their catches lined the walls.

  A stairway with a substantial guardrail twisted its way to the second floor. Michael would be at the top of those stairs. Michael with his caustic conversation, his fundamental chin, and that penetrating blue gaze that saw through all her layers without revealing anything at all of himself.

  Meghann squared her shoulders. This time it would be different. This time she would have weeks to find the answers to this maddeningly elusive case that made no sense at all. Fifteen years ago she would have sworn that Michael Devlin was no murderer. Now, she wasn’t so sure. Fifteen years in Belfast with no hope for anything better would lay their mark on a man. It was no accident that IRA men were heroes in the Falls, no accident that those who did time in Long Kesh and the Maze were welcomed back into the community, given respect, lodging, food, and what living there was to give, until the next time they were arrested. Paramilitaries learned their trade behind bars, and they learned it well. The Irish Republican Army was acknowledged the most thorough, the most efficient, and the most deadly guerrilla force in the entire world.