Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) (36 page)

"Do you remember, cousin, the last time you attended a ball at my side?" Ascot's breath ghosted across her neck, sending a shudder down Maryssa's spine. "The night you dared inform Lord Newley that anyone who lusted after the suffering of a child—even, as I recall, a child accused of witchcraft—was more a monster than anything that could be spawned of hell itself?"

Maryssa's gaze leaped to his face, her mouth set in challenge. "Nay, Sir Ascot, your memory does not serve you well," she observed with acid sweetness. "I told Lord Newley that he was a monster for wagering on how long it would take the flames to devour a child. It was you I accused of being a beast more vicious than any that could be spawned of the devil."

Dallywoulde's sneer cracked into an ugly scowl, his eyes narrowing to slits. "Tell me, madam, opposed as you are to the pleasures of the stake and the block, what was it that lured you to that yard in Rookescommon prison before we left that accursed island?"

Maryssa flinched, her gaze snapping up to meet his, the hungry, vengeful expression on his spectral features making her shield her silk-veiled stomach with her hand.

"Milady?" his voice was thin, sharp, rife with veiled menace.

"I... it is none of your concern."

"None of my concern why my betrothed was wielding a pistol aimed at a papist's heart?" He bent close, his cold hand bruising her wrist. "Certainly even you could not be fool enough to think I'd forgotten your trespasses? Aye, or"—his lips curled into an ugly smirk—"forgiven them. I assure you that once we're wed—"

"Surely milady could wring forgiveness out of a stone if she had need to." The voice was deep, lilting, yet harshened with a chill cynicism that catapulted Maryssa's heart to her toes. She spun away from Sir Ascot's masked features, a giant fist clenching about her lungs as her gaze locked on a black silken hood, the glow from the chandeliers overhead glinting silver upon the embroidered outline of a falcon's sharp talons.

She strangled the cry that rose in her throat, terror driving deep into her breast, coupled with a devastating joy as eyes pierced her through slits in the hood, burning eyes as green as a Donegal glen, yet hard, so hard they tore at her soul.
Tade
, her heart screamed, pulses thundered.
Oh, God, Tade.
But she could scarcely breathe, scarcely think, held as she was by their fierce emerald light.

A laugh grated from Sir Ascot's fleshless lips, the sound cutting through Maryssa's shock, sending dread rushing through her veins. "Well carried out, Sir Falcon," Ascot sneered, his fingers plucking at the folds of Tade's mantle. "All you need to complete the costume is a noose about your neck."

She saw the corner of Tade's mouth crook in a mockery of his once-lightsome grin. "The rope has not been woven that will set the Black Falcon of Donegal to dangling beneath a gibbet. Do you not agree, milady?"

Maryssa felt the blood drain from her face, her fingers instinctively reaching out, catching Tade's gauntleted hand. "I—I heard tell of the brigand when I was in Ireland," she struggled to keep the tremor out of her voice. "I can only say I am most glad he is across the sea in Ireland."

"I'll wager you are." There was menace in Tade's voice, silken danger, but Maryssa knew she'd accept whatever his fury would deal her if she could just draw him away from Sir Ascot's cunning gaze.

Her eyes slanted a hasty glance at Ascot, her fingers trembling upon Tade's hand as she saw the calculating light that had entered Dallywoulde's soulless eyes.

"You are acquainted, sir, with my betrothed?" Dallywoulde said.

She saw Tade's cloaked shoulders stiffen, his mouth twist, bitter beneath the edge of his hood. "We met once, sir, but I know her not at all." The words were a small, sharp dagger in Maryssa's heart, and as that implacable green gaze tore away from hers, regarding the masked Sir Ascot, raw horror bolted through her, fear that Tade had not come seeking her at all, but rather to wreak his vengeance upon the man who had murdered his brother. If Tade knew who her betrothed was, if he knew the man whose betrothal was being celebrated here this night . . .

Desperately she raked through her memories, clinging to the knowledge that with Tade she had never named Dallywoulde as the man who was to wed her, had only spoken of some nebulous cousin to whom she had been promised. But the banns had been announced, and the journals had proclaimed the match. Tade only had to ask a few questions of the guests to discover the full horror of her betrayal. Yet the hatred in his green eyes seemed fixed solely upon her, while another emotion—anger, perhaps—was evident in his regard of Dallywoulde's crimson-masked face.

"P-please, Sir Rogue," she said, turning to Tade, frantic to draw him away from the danger she saw brewing. "I do not know you in your masquerade guise, but it would be diverting to attempt to discover your identity during a minuet."

"Diverting?" Take said, bitter. "Nothing would please me more than to divert you, milady."

"Are you not too weary to expend yourself upon the dance floor, beloved?" Sir Ascot's eye glinted warning. "I vow, your eyes seem a trifle glazed, and your hands . . . do they not tremble?"

Maryssa stilled her fingers where they lay upon Tade's and battled to force a smile to her stiff lips. “It is—is the mystery of the masking," she said. "And, perhaps, I confess, a cup too many of ratafia. It will do me much good, I think, to take a turn about the floor, if Monsieur Black Falcon is willing."

"When, pray tell, did my willingness ever come before your desires, milady?"

Her fingers gouged deep into Tade's leather-veiled wrist in warning, and she felt an urge to slap him for his reckless words as she saw Dallywoulde's eyes turn frigid, his lips whitening.

"Go then, cousin, against my wishes," Sir Ascot said, fingering the hilt of the dress sword that hung at his side. “It will not be long before the ring upon your finger will compel you to be wise."

A dangerous glint sparked emerald in Tade's eyes; the muscles beneath Maryssa's fingers were tense, straining. "One could hardly accuse Miss Wylder of being wise," Tade said, shooting Sir Ascot a derisive glance. Maryssa's heart caught in her throat as the two men's gazes clashed, fire to ice. In desperation, she tugged at Tade's cloak-draped arm, fighting to draw him away from what, she sensed in an instant, would flare into a war past reason.

"Please," she begged under her breath. "They—the music is about to begin. Please."

For long seconds fraught with insolence and daring, Tade held the Englishman's gaze until the first strains of the violin moved him to turn to Maryssa and sweep her a mocking bow. "Your pardon, sir," he flung out to Dallywoulde with an arrogant sneer. “It would be unforgivable to disappoint such a lovely partner."

Maryssa was nearly sick with relief as his hand curved beneath her elbow, propelling her out into the midst of the dancers. The eyes that had been turned upon her with curiosity before now gaped through the hundreds of masks with varying degrees of intrigue, envy, and approval, all the women in the room appraising the magnificent spread of Tade's shoulders beneath his cloak, the unmistakable animal grace in a walk that was purely masculine, sensual.

But the simpering belles were not close enough to the dashing "highwayman" to see the emotions that seethed in his eyes. Aye, Maryssa thought, panic fluttering in her breast, if they had been able to espy the tempest roiling beneath the slits in that black hood, even the most man-hungering among them would have fled the ballroom.

She stumbled to a halt, only Tade's hand on her arm saving her from smashing into the back of a stout matron in a purple domino as they entered the line of dancers. The strains of the minuet drifted across the floor, and the guests began to float about the wide expanse of marble to the dulcet melody. Maryssa's feet felt wooden, all sensation centered at the point where Tade Kilcannon's hand held hers. His touch was achingly familiar, his fingers warm even through the black leather gauntlet. But the way his hand held hers was devastatingly impersonal, stiff, as though he could barely stomach being forced to touch her. The fleeting joy she had felt when she first saw him—the tiny stirring of hope that he had softened, that he now understood why she had been compelled to slip the potion into his ale—had vanished, leaving a slow-burning anger at the suspicion that he might well have stormed all the way from Donegal to do nothing but rail at her. Aye, and in his eagerness to lambaste her he had thrown himself into greater peril than he could ever imagine.

"Tade, are you crazed?" she snapped beneath the tones of the music. "Coming here like this, dressed as the Falcon? It is insanity!"

"Nay, milady, insanity is what I was in the grips of the night I let you bed me at the Hangman's Fool."

Shame and guilt fired her cheeks as visions of the last time they had made love flashed across her memory—Tade's hands frantic upon her while her mouth rained kisses on his naked flesh. Her gaze flashed up to where his mouth slashed in an unyielding line beneath the shadow of his three-cornered hat, his eyes giving her no quarter as he forced her into the patterns of the dance.

The laugh that grated across his lips was harsh, hard. "Come now, Maura, no need to play the blushing innocent. It was quite an admirable seduction for one so lacking in experience. And we both know I've been party to enough
affaires de coeur
to judge."

Pain jolted through Maryssa."Tade, I—," she started to explain, then stopped, knowing that nothing she could say would drive the scorn from those eyes. Yet she had done the right thing—would do it again if fate allowed her to play the scene over. Her chin tilted up in shaky defiance.

"Very wise, my love, to keep your lies to yourself," Tade said. “It would be a waste of breath, now that the veils of love have been ripped from my eyes. Of course, considering the myriad betrayals you wreaked, I had thought that you might feel some anguish over Devin's death. But,” his gaze swept the marble moldings, the chandeliers dripping with hundreds of candles, the richness of her gown, “it is evident you've not been wasting away with either grief or guilt."

Maryssa clenched her teeth, hurt and indignation welling up inside her. "I've grieved for Devin," she said. "Aye, and I've mourned what I lost that night when I— I eased you into sleep."

Tade's acid laugh seared her, making her snatch up her fragile defenses, drawing them about the raw pain that clung to her heart.

"God's feet, milady, you've learned to speak most prettily. 'Eased me to sleep,' did you, like a mother loving her babe? Only it was no lullaby you spun for me, was it? Nay, it was a drug slipped into my drink, then urged upon me with the wiles of a body dressed in harlot's garb. When I think of the joy I felt when first I saw you in that doorway . . . When I think of how I made love to you, flung myself into the jaws of your trap, it turns my stomach."

The tears Maryssa thought had dried up forever stung at the back of her lids, but she turned her gaze back up to Tade's, struggling to keep the anguish from her voice. "You put yourself to a deal of trouble to inform me how reprehensible you think me. Now that I can carry that wonderful gift through the rest of my life, I think it would be good for you to leave."

"Leave?" Tade snorted derisively. "You'd like that, would you not? To have me just vanish from your gilded palace, vanish from your life like some infernal hero in a book you've had done with? But you'll not be quit of me so easily, Miss Wylder, now that you've taken my brother and tried to rob me of my—"

Tade stopped, his hard eyes catching the eager light in a nearby dandy's face as the spindle-shanked man nearly fell over his portly dance partner in an effort to discern what was said.

Maryssa could see the effort it required of Tade to crush whatever words he had been about to rake her with, and the stark emotion and fury that twisted his mouth terrified her. A gale was stirring within those emerald eyes, a storm past wisdom and reason. Enraged as he was, he’d not care much longer if the whole ballroom was listening.

Maryssa's gaze jumped to where Ascot stood engaged in conversation with the hateful Lord Newley. If she could just maneuver Tade off of the floor, maybe to the terrace doors on either side of the room, she could get him to the relative safety of the chill winter night beyond. There, away from quizzing glasses and ears sharp with curiosity, she could draw Tade's wrath down upon herself, let him spend his fury, then storm out of her life, satisfied by the knowledge that he had exacted whatever pain he seemed to think he owed her.

The patterns of the dance brought them close to a beckoning doorway, and Maryssa's hand tightened upon Tade's. "No doubt you have much you'd like to say to me," she said, trying to keep the hurt from edging her voice. "And after you've gone to such trouble to come and rage at me, I'd not want to deprive you of the satisfaction."

"The king's whole army couldn't deprive me of this satisfaction, milady."

The silken threat made Maryssa's knees quiver, but she jutted her chin out belligerently. "Fine. Does your pride demand that you publicly humiliate me, or would you deign to seek privacy upon the terrace?"

His gaze flicked to where her costume swept low over bared shoulders, and she saw his mouth open, as if to object, but in an instant he gritted his teeth. "Milady's pleasure is my own." Sketching her a bow, he led her from the line of dancers to the doorway beyond.

Hazarding a glance back at Dallywoulde's powdered head, Maryssa skittered behind the shield of dancers and darted out the doorway.

The chill air nipped at her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. But the terrace, sheltered as it was in the lee of Carradown's walls and bordered by a row of pillars tangled with vines, protected any who walked there from the full force of winter's kiss.

She heard the terrace door click shut behind her and stood silent, her back toward Tade as she waited for his rage to be unleashed. But he said nothing, only the weight of his gaze pressing down upon her.

She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering, vowing she'd not be the first to break the suffocating silence or reveal how deeply the chill cut her, but a betraying shiver shook her shoulders. A curse tore itself from Tade's mouth, and in an instant she felt something flow about her exposed shoulders. Tears stung her eyes as Tade's cloak enfolded her. The garment was still warm from his body, and the fabric that had draped his broad shoulders was scented of wind and recklessness and despair.