A Rose in Splendor (41 page)

“You stopped me from freeing the lass,” Deirdre answered testily and pulled out of his arms. “You would have done nothing, nothing, had I not demanded it of you.”

“Merde!”
Killian turned and stalked away. There was no reasoning with her now.

“It might have been me twelve years ago!”

Killian turned back. So that was what had frightened her.

“She was helping to hide someone from the English,” Deirdre continued. “That’s why they hanged her.”

Killian shook his head as he came toward her. “You cannot possibly know that, Dee.”

Deirdre sidestepped him. “I know.” She bent and picked up the O’Neill skean, carefully wiping away the mud with a corner of her skirt.

Killian watched her a moment longer before giving up and going to where the two men had begun digging in the soggy ground. It had been a strange day. Deirdre was overwrought with fatigue and anxiety. Of course she would be terrified by the gruesome sight she had come upon so suddenly. Things would be better when they arrived at Liscarrol.

“They could scarcely be worse,” he muttered as the drizzle became a downpour.

*

The sun was setting when they rode into Kilronane, which lay in a valley between dark-shouldered hills. It had not taken long to bury the child’s body, but the rain had continued well into the afternoon, making travel hazardous and progress slow.

With disappointment Deirdre noted that the village was nothing more than a cluster of dark, mud-walled, thatch-roofed huts. She had hoped to find the welcoming bustle of a busy community.

At the entrance to the village stood the remains of what had once been a church, one of many such relics from the Cromwellian years. The dim light of sunset softened the contours of the old church, making the ruin seem romantic and mysterious. As they moved toward the center of town, the faint acrid odor of a peat fire carried on the wind gave the only evidence that the silent huts were inhabited.

“Dark doings,” the man riding alongside Deirdre muttered and drew his skean. Immediately his companion did likewise.

Killian reached over and grabbed the reins from Deirdre’s hands and drew her horse to a halt beside his. “I do not like the looks of this place.” He leaned toward her. “Stay here till I’ve roused someone. If we are attacked, ride straight back the way we came. I’ll catch up with you.”

“But I—” Deirdre began, only to have Killian move away.

“Stay with my wife,” he ordered softly and pointed at Sean. He signaled the other man to follow him.

Killian walked his horse through the lane that divided the houses into two irregular rows, pausing at the last. It was no better built than the others but it was larger and longer, and though he could not read the sign which hung above the door he surmised that it proclaimed it an inn. “Stay mounted,” he ordered his companion as he dismounted.

There was no answer to his first hard knock, but the hiss of a fire within was audible. “Open up!” he shouted. “We’re not the bloody English!” It was a risk but one he felt confident in taking. The people of the village were afraid. What had they to
fear but the English?

He heard the sound of bare feet scurrying across the earthen floor. The scrape of a bolt being lifted came next and then the rough-hewn door opened just enough to reveal a single eye. “Who are ye?”

“My name is MacShane and I’ve my wife with me,” Killian answered in the outlawed Gaelic tongue, though the question had been put to him in English. “We seek lodging for the night.”

He saw the bright eye move curiously from his face to his boots and back. “Ye’ve the look of an Englishman,” came the answer, again in English.

“Would English dogs not demand rather than request their lodgings?” Killian asked in Gaelic and touched his coat pocket. “I’ve a coin or two for your effort.” He heard whispers before the door was reluctantly dragged open.

A gaunt old man stood in the doorway, his back bowed by years of hard labor and his face permanently reddened by the sun. His shaggy hair was uncombed and a rope held his breeches about his waist. He was poor and dirty but the light of defiance shone vividly in his eyes. “There’ll be nothing here befitting the likes of ye…sir.” The last, deferential word seemed to have been dragged from him.

Killian looked past the man to the glow of the turf fire in the center of the home, around which a ragged woman and four children crouched. Smoke from the fire had gathered in the rafters where it curled in thin bluish white eddies. No wonder he had thought the village deserted. There were no chimneys.

His eyes quickly scanned the rest of the smoky interior. Along the opposite wall, long boards propped up by whiskey barrels at either end provided a bar. He looked back at the proprietor. “This is an inn. You are bound to give shelter to those who enter.”

The smaller man bobbed his head once but his eyes were cautious.

Killian understood the man’s apprehension. “Perhaps I should have said you should give shelter to those who can afford it.” He took two coins from his pocket and held them out. “Will this buy four meals and two beds?”

The man’s face altered so quickly that Killian nearly laughed. Money kept its virtue, whoever its owner. The innkeeper might detest him but his coins were welcome.

“’Tis the Blessed Virgin brought ye, I’m thinking. Certain I am that ye’re nae an Englishman to be parting with yer gold so freely,” the man declared, grinning. “If it be true that there’s a Mac before ye’re name, ye’ve come to the right place and I’ll gladly offer ye
didean
.”

“The name is MacShane,” Killian reiterated.

“Cuan O’Dineen is me name. ’Tis of nae use to me but to give the English cause to string me up beside the rest of the poor sodden bastards.”

“The English have hanged men of your village?” Killian questioned quickly.

Cuan’s gaze once more became suspicious but after a moment’s reflection relaxed. “Saw the lot, did ye, coming in from the east?”

Killian nodded.

“Well then, enough said. Bring yer lady wife in. ’Tis a cool night.”

Killian hesitated. Deirdre had sobered quickly from her hysteria but she was pale and frightened. If there was to be talk of the hangings, he would rather she not hear it. “Why were the men hanged?”

“’Twas but a single man they came to hang,” Cuan said grimly. “O’Donovan is his name. If ever a man was born to hang, ’twas him.”

“I do not know the name; should I?” Killian questioned casually as the innkeeper pocketed the coins. But he did know the name. O’Donovan was the man the duchesse had sent him to find.

“Were ye a Munsterman ye would,” Cuan answered. “Where do ye come from then?”

Danger glittered in Killian’s gaze. “What does it matter? A man’s travels do not denote his heart and home.”

Cuan eyed him suspiciously. “Aye, but a man cannae be too distrustful these days. ’Twould not be revealing much to tell ye what ye could learn in any village between Bantry and Cork. O’Donovan’s hunted by the English.”

“He’s a smuggler?”

Cuan grinned. “Were it only that, there’s many an Englishman who would make him as safe as a babe in arms.”

Killian filed that bit of information away. It might prove very useful later. “Then he must plague the English soldiery.”

“That he does,” Cuan agreed reluctantly. He looked toward his wife, who had not moved from her crouched
position by the fire. “There’s too many rumors about,” he grumbled. “Bring in yer lady.”

Killian pressed him. “Is one of the men hanging from the gallows oak O’Donovan? Were the others those who sought to protect him?”

Cuan’s pale eyes lit up. “Protect O’Donovan? God rot their black hearts! ’Twas the English method of flushing him out. They swore they’d hang one man an hour until he showed himself, but they do not know O’Donovan if they thought he’d save another man’s life with his own.”

Killian thought back briefly to the dead man and a shudder passed through him. “Were they all of your village?”

“Nae. The English had captured a few of them on the road while chasing O’Donovan. ’Tis no secret Kilronane is his home. They took two of our lads when they came looking for him.”

“Why the child?”

Cuan’s gaze slipped from his. “Do nae speak of her! Ye’ve a lady wife chilling in the night. Fetch her in.”

“I am not that thin-blooded,” Deirdre answered from the doorway. “Do continue your explanation. I, too, would know why the lass died when able-bodied men such as yourself were there as witness.”

Cuan gaped at the aristocratic-sounding lady in his doorway. Backlit by the dying light of day, she appeared in a golden halo that shone brightly through her hair. “’Twas naught to be done for the lass. She showed an English soldier the sharp edge of her blade. Cut his wrist. He fair bled to death.”

Deirdre remained framed in the doorway. “Surely there is more?”

Cuan muttered a curse but saw the look in MacShane’s eye and did not turn his back on the lady. “She were a bastard, one of O’Donovan’s. She thought they’d hang her Da.”

“Why did you not speak up for her?” Deirdre persisted, a sharp edge in her voice.

“Risk me life for the likes of her?” Cuan lifted his hand toward his family “I’d me own to think of.”

Deirdre lifted her eyes to Killian’s. “I will not stay in the house of a coward.”

“Coward, is it? Coward!” Cuan cried, anger making him brave as he advanced on her.

Deirdre was not afraid of the little man. She drew her skean and held it so that the jewels in the hilt caught the fading light and glowed as warmly as if they had a life of their own. “You do not recognize me, old man, but you will remember a time when this village and all those within twenty leagues belonged by my family. I’m a Fitzgerald and I have come home to claim what is mine. The lass has been cut down and buried. Find yourself a priest and ask for mercy for your cowardice. Then go and erect a stone for the child at the mount near the oak.”

Cuan stared open-mouthed as Deirdre turned and walked back out into the twilight “That be yer lady wife?” he asked after a moment.

“Aye, I fear so,” Killian answered grimly as he followed Deirdre out the door.

“Why did you do that?” he demanded when he caught up with her. “You’ve been unforgivably reckless in proclaiming your lineage and Catholicism to a stranger.”

Deirdre turned to him. “You cannot expect me to sleep beneath the roof of a man who allowed that child to die.”

Killian stared at her without pity. “Then know that there’s not a roof within five leagues that will satisfy you.”

Deirdre looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “How could they, Killian? How could they be so afraid?”

“They are not to blame entirely,” he answered, and then despite his anger he slipped an arm about her. “They have nothing with which to fight back. A man needs daring and strong nerves to play a winning hand these days.”

Deirdre wrapped her arms about his neck as he lifted her into the saddle. “Then we must be very cunning.”

“Aye, like a wolf,” Killian answered heavily. “There’s the ruins of the church. Shall we bed down there?”

Deirdre nodded, too heartsick to care where they spent the night. Tomorrow they would reach Liscarrol and the culmination of twelve years of longing.

Chapter Eighteen

Deirdre rode toward the crest of the hill with an odd kind of excitement beating high in her chest. She had waited for this day for so long that she could hardly believe it had arrived. Much of the surrounding countryside was different from her memories as an eight-year-old, but it did not matter. She recognized the pale green tinge in the western sky just above the shoulders of the Shehy Mountains and knew that Liscarrol lay in the valley just beyond the rise.

There was an eagerness in her face that drew Killian’s gaze to her again and again as they slowly climbed to the summit. In the soft morning light, the pale gold of her skin matched the shining crispness of her hair, which she had left uncovered under the rare near-cloudless sky. She was the embodiment of all that was young and unspoiled and vulnerable. His heart went out to her in hopes that she would not be too disappointed in the sight that lay ahead. He could not warn her not to expect too much. It would only spoil her happiness that he did not share her expectant
joy.

When she glanced at him and flushed in surprise to find him gazing back at her, Killian smiled. He had been
warned in Cork that Liscarrol had been without a caretaker for most of the last twelve years. He had even been able to learn that the cousin left in charge had been elected first to the Dublin Parliament and then appointed a position in London. Liscarrol was isolated away from the main traffic lanes and therefore was of little use or interest to the English. No doubt, neglect had made it uninhabitable.

He suppressed a sigh. Ireland was a land of the disinherited and the supplanted. He had come only because of Deirdre. Yet, when he looked at her as he did now, a tender, fierce love gripped him. He loved her.

More than she loves me
.

He pushed aside the thought. He had known that from the moment she begged him to bring her here. When the time came that she found bitter disappointment and tears replacing her joy, he would be there to comfort her, and that should be enough.