A Rose in Splendor (13 page)

No matter, she preferred a man of greater breadth and width, like Darragh or Conall. Even in the saddle, she
judged that he was not as tall as her brothers. Indifferent in height and thin, that was what he was.

Well, perhaps not thin; the stranger was sinewy. In fact, what little she had seen of him was rather nicely formed: long thighs, broad shoulders, and a flat belly behind the butt of his pistol. He was arrogant, self-assured, and…and…and quite the most magnificent man she had ever encountered.

When Deirdre realized that her thoughts had once more circled back to ones of admiration, she could not help but laugh at herself. She had been dazzled, that’s what she had been, and was too proud to admit it.

With a sniff of self-disgust she rubbed the end of her nose to dislodge a fleck of mud that Lachtna’s hooves had kicked up. It was just as well that she had not revealed who she was. She looked like a rude country girl in her oldest gown.

When she glanced back over her shoulder the stranger was gone, vanished. Yet, an image remained with her of the tall, black-haired, blue-eyed Irishman.

Out of nowhere, a sudden chilling breeze sped across the meadow, lifting the edge of her skirts and raising goosebumps on her skin.

She shook her head, dismissing the disquieting shiver that traveled through her. He was a man, only that, and not a very polite one.

All at once she remembered her bet with Darragh. If she did not return soon, she would lose.

With a slap on the horse’s rump, she cried, “Go, Lachtna! Go!” and they galloped off toward home.

*

When she reached the north lawn of the house, Deirdre saw her brothers standing on the drive, Conall’s red head easily discernible in the sunlight. She did not slow Lachtna until she was upon them, and then she slid from the horse’s back with a crow of triumph.

“I did it! I won!” she cried breathlessly, tossing the reins to Darragh

Instead of the chiding she expected, Darragh’s eyes grew round at the sight of her. “Dee, what happened? Were you tossed?”

She looked down. Her skirts were muddy and damp. She could feel the sweat running in rivulets down her back and between her breasts, pasting her bodice to her skin. She looked anything but ladylike, and she had never felt more alive. During her convent years she had been allowed to ride only sidesaddle on a pony within the nunnery walls.

With a grimy hand she pushed back the strand of hair sticking to her brow and smiled widely. “You did not say I could not exert myself in the effort to win, and that I’ve done.”

Darragh shook his head. “You’ve ridden without a saddle, and Lachtna’s not accustomed to that. You could have been killed!”

Deirdre shrugged, vaguely annoyed by his tone. “Once you’d have applauded me, now you scold me.”

“Now, Dee,” Conall inserted on his brother’s behalf. “You know we’re proud of you. Allow a brother to show a proper concern for his sister.”

Deirdre knew that none of the men under Conall’s command had ever heard so conciliatory a tone from him. Even so, it was Darragh who had scolded her and it was from him that she wanted an apology. Turning away, she began stroking the long smooth column of Lachtna’s neck. “’Tis a fine, beauteous horse. I cannot remember a faster ride. I wonder how I should spend my twenty francs.”

“Only half that sum,” Darragh protested. “And how am I to know you kept the course, with no one watching?”

Deirdre looked up. “Calling me a liar, are you?”

“Never that,” Conall broke in. “’Tis just that there’s no way of telling whether or no you kept the course.”

“I did more than that. I rode astride, without boots. Darragh owes me double the bet!” Deirdre added with a glint in her eye.

“Now that I did not agree to,” Darragh answered, drawing her note from his pocket. “You did not give me a
chance to say yea or nae. Ten francs, ’tis all I bet, and the loss of that is not yet proved.”

“Cheat!” Deirdre declared in frank disgust. “Give me the reins and you’ll see who won!”

“Whoa, lass.” Conall grabbed his sister about the waist when she would have tried to remount. “There’ll be a rematch in the morning when Lachtna’s rested and Darragh’s temper has cooled.”

“There’s naught the matter with my temper,” Darragh answered, but his face was flushed.

“Nae, there’s nothing wrong with his temper, ’tis stinginess ailing him,” Deirdre taunted.

“Stingy is it? And me the one who brought you five pairs of silk stockings and a novel from Paris.”

“Children, children,” Conall chided between chuckles, only to have his siblings turn on him and snap in unison, “Shut up, Conall!”

“Perhaps I may be of service,” a man’s voice offered behind them. The three Fitzgeralds swung toward the rider in surprise, for they had not seen him approach.

Deirdre gave a guilty start as she recognized the man. He had dismounted, and where his cloak gaped open she saw not only the pistol in his belt but also the gleam of silver from his sword scabbard. Pistols and swords were both signs of a gentleman; why had she not thought of that before?

“The lass kept a murderous pace, you have my word on that. I followed her from the meadow near the stream and she never dismounted nor slowed her pace.”

“MacShane!”

Darragh strode forward to clasp the stranger in a bearlike hug. “MacShane, I should nae be surprised that you’ve appeared without a sound. ’Twas the same stealth that made the Spaniards believe you dealt in witchcraft.”

Killian subjected himself to Darragh’s intimacy but he stuck out his hand to Conall before that brother could envelop him in an embrace.

“Captain MacShane!” A grin split Conall’s face as he pumped the man’s hand. Then, giving in to greater sentiment, he clapped him soundly on the back. “Your visit has been eagerly anticipated.”

Killian looked up at the great house before him and then back at his hosts. “Anticipated or dreaded, as one waits for death or the tax collector?”

“The tax collector, of course,” Conall volunteered without hesitation. “Yet, the brigadier has sworn that you’ll be made welcome, be you the devil himself.”

“I can imagine the devil would be more welcome,” Killian murmured as his gaze moved to Deirdre, who still stood by Lachtna.

Conall followed his gaze, frowning as he took in his sister’s damp-streaked skirts and dirty bare feet. She looked like a street urchin. Then his eyes blazed as a thought struck him. “Och, well now, about the lass.” He bent to whisper in MacShane’s ear.

Deirdre felt herself coloring as the whispery breath of her brother’s unheard words filtered toward her. She could not hear what Conall said, but the leap of life in MacShane’s blue eyes assured her that it was pure mischief.

When Conall raised his head with a chuckle, MacShane stared at her, and the look in his piercing eyes set Deirdre’s blood racing. This was the famous MacShane, the man her brothers had told her tales about for the better part of a week. This was the man many believed to be in league with the devil, a murderous warrior without mercy or weakness. And he was looking at her with an intensity that she suspected he reserved for his foes.

Her instinct for self-preservation made her take a hasty step back when he moved toward her, and she saw his black brows lower over his strangely light eyes. When he stood before her, he reached out and put a hand under her chin to lift her face to his.

“I did not mean to frighten you in the meadow, lass. I’d not harm so lovely a creature.”

Deirdre stared up at him, fascinated as much by his touch as his gaze. He was not at all what her brothers had led her to expect. He was daunting with his black garb and stern face, that was true, but he was not the battle-scarred ogre they had described.

“You’re not ugly at all!” she blurted in surprise.

The frank wonder in her voice pierced Killian in an unguarded place. The stable master’s daughter, Conall had informed him. His guess had been correct. What he had not guessed from his meeting with her, and what Conall had added, was that she was
slow-witted
.

His gaze moved over her bright golden hair wildly tangled in corkscrews. And her eyes. Had he ever seen eyes so fine? A forest of gold-tipped lashes surrounded eyes so green a gray they reminded him of the misty waters of a lough. Aye, she was very like the face in his dream. Such waste of beauty, he thought with a surge of anger against nature’s cruel joke.

Deirdre watched his expression darken and alarm sped through her.

Killian’s hand fell to his side as he saw fear reflected on those misty-emerald depths. “Tell her I mean her no harm,” he said to Darragh. “Is she so dimwitted that she cannot understand even that?”

Dimwitted
?
Deirdre’s eyes narrowed as she spied the gleam of mischief in her brother’s eyes. She took a step toward Conall. “You told the man my wits wander?”

“Now, Dee. A stable hand’s feeble-minded daughter, that’s how you look,” Conall replied before laughter got the better of him.

“Conall!” she scolded, and then raised her arms as if she would embrace him.

She smiled at him so sweetly that Conall knew something was about to happen but he could not puzzle it out before she balled her fists into small hard knots and struck him hard on both ears.

Caught off guard by the unexpected blow, he yelped like a schoolboy as Darragh’s unsympathetic laughter rang in his ears.

Without a glance at the man called MacShane, Deirdre grabbed her skirts and fled toward the house on bare feet.

“Am I to understand that the lass is related to you?” MacShane inserted quietly into Darragh’s laughter and Conall’s muttered curses.

“In a manner of speaking,” Darragh murmured, deciding not to spoil his brother’s jest.

“Aye, the she-devil’s name is Deirdre,” Conall added. “Though for the life of me I cannot understand why she is not named
Faolan
,
for at times she is more like a wolf cub than a lass.”

“Welcome to Nantes, MacShane,” Darragh said, mirth twitching his lips. “You’ll nae be bored in the Fitzgerald household.”

“No, I do not think I will,” Killian murmured as he gazed at the door through which Deirdre had fled.

*

“Idiot! Dolt! Fool!” Deirdre slammed the door and marched to the center of her bedroom. How could Conall have played such a nasty trick on her? And she—she had had no better sense than to walk right into the baited trap.

She turned to look at herself in the mirror above her mantel and the reflection confirmed her worst fears. Bedraggled and mud-smeared, her hair tumbling about her shoulders like the remains of a haystack after a high wind, she was every inch a lamentable picture.

“You’re a sight, lass, and make no mistake about it,” Brigid offered from her chair by the window where she sat hemming a gown.

“You’ll never guess what Conall and Darragh have done to me.”

“Aye, I know. I saw it all from this window. And that ashamed I am that ye allowed them to best ye, and with company watching,” Brigid answered sourly.

“Then you did not see the last. I knocked the wind out of Conall. Calling me a dim-wit, I should have—”

The ridiculous scene her words painted made her put a hand against her mouth to still the laughter that threatened to erupt. She had been acutely embarrassed before a guest. She had every right to be angry. Yet, the specter of herself planting a fist on either side of Conall’s head would not fade, and amusement got the better of her.

“We have given our visitor a rare picture of ourselves as rag-mannered, brawling nobles,” she said when her laughter subsided.

“Aye, the Fitzgeralds always were ones to prefer a dog-and-pony show to proper genteel pursuits,” Brigid said as she came forward to help Deirdre out of her dirty clothing.

“Did you see him, the one they call MacShane?”

“Aye,” Brigid mumbled.

Deirdre shrugged elegantly. “He’s not at all what I expected. For a fierce warrior the likes of which Darragh and Conall described, I thought he would be taller and broader, with a dozen wicked scars.”

“Handsome is as handsome does,” Brigid replied obliquely.

Deirdre closed her eyes the better to recall the details of his strong, hard face. “I suppose he’s pleasant enough for a woman’s tastes. Black hair, blue eyes, ’tis a combination I’m partial to myself.” Strangely, she felt a trembling inside her. Blue eyes. Black hair. Why should those words seem fateful? She could think of no reason. “He stares. His eyes seem to see through a body.” She shook her head. “I do not believe I like his stare.”

“Sure’n he should have them eyes put right out, seeing as how Mistress Fitzgerald doesn’t approve,” Brigid replied.

“I did not say I do not approve, precisely,” Deirdre countered. “Perhaps ’tis not so much that I do not like his eyes as that they disturb me. ’Tis like looking at a reflection of oneself bared of all pretense and comeliness.” She shivered delicately. “’Twas like the feeling I had as a child, you remember, when I thought the fairies visited me.”

Brigid’s expression sharpened. “There’s magic in the man?”

“Magic? Oh no.” Deirdre looked away from her nurse’s sharp eyes. She was betraying far too much interest in the man. “’Tis only that MacShane wields a very pointed gaze. I wonder that he carries a sword. Surely he can carve his victims at will with that razor-sharp stare!” She laughed, pleased with her joke.