The Irish Duchess (26 page)

Of course, her marriage to a duke gave them even more reason for hope and gaiety. They thought she would bring them riches and power.

Colin and the Widow Blackthorn arrived at the same as one of the orphans crossed the kitchen cat the wrong way. As the scratched child wept, the other children scampered about underfoot, searching for their runaway kitty. The village women drove Fiona and the orphans out of the kitchen and into the arms of Mrs. Blackthorn.

The children scattered, but the widow insisted on finding Fiona a suitable gown in the castle’s wardrobes. Resigned to chaos, still in a frenzy of confusion, Fiona marched upstairs.

They uncovered trunks of moldering material and moth-eaten, outdated garments, and finally retrieved an elegant emerald velvet that was still salvageable. Letting the widow force her into the heavy gown with its ancient train so she could pin and tuck for alterations, Fiona stewed over the decision she must make. Bolt, or trust the duke to take care of himself—and marry him.

From the window of her second story chamber she watched the men ride out, free as birds to go where they would. Trapped in the heavy gown, pinned to her stool while the widow kneeled at her feet, Fiona felt like a medieval lady watching her knights ride to war, leaving her alone with the thankless tasks of the household.

She despised housekeeping. She couldn’t cook. She knew nothing of ordering servants, as evidenced by their bullying her out of the kitchen. When Fiona finally escaped the widow’s ironclad hold to order the Great Hall cleaned for the company, she discovered the enormous chamber already filled with an army of laborers scrubbing and ripping down tattered tapestries. She was useless in her own home. How would she ever fit into the duke’s well-ordered life?

Events were proceeding at a comet’s pace. How could she
think
like this?

The men had taken the horses, so she had no escape there. It didn’t matter. Each time she attempted to leave the castle, someone came between her and the door with another inane question or task for her to do. Fiona suspected a conspiracy.

Everyone had decided for her. How could they be so foolish as to think she could be a proper duchess?

They didn’t care if Neville had the proper wife. Only
she
cared about Neville’s future.

She had to trust Neville as much as she trusted herself. These last days had proved that marriage wasn’t as simple as she’d expected. But it might be more wonderful than she’d thought.

As the afternoon waned and the priest arrived, giddy excitement and anticipation raced through the gloomy corridors and empty chambers. The village hadn’t seen a priest in months. Through the general scurry for hot baths and Sunday clothes, Fiona had a devil of a time getting the poor man fed before he was forced into duty in the confessional.

Teeth clenched against nervousness, Fiona fought her own inner battle on the subject of religion. When they’d planned to marry in Neville’s Anglican chapel, she’d known Neville would never accept her religion as his own, so she’d seen no sense in belaboring the topic. But a priest now... She took a deep breath for courage. A local priest was likely to raise a holy stink about an Englishman, much less an Anglican.

She avoided the man, hoping she could postpone the sermon he would read her about the purgatory she would face should she raise her children outside the church. She had already decided she would suffer the better part of hell right here on earth with this marriage, so what was a little purgatory? She just prayed the men would return before she suffered the brunt of the priest’s wrath.

But the wretches had set the hornet’s nest swarming and run for cover, leaving her to deal with the results.

Just as she snatched a few bites from the kitchen for her evening meal, the priest sent for her. With the dragging gait of one sentenced to eternal damnation, Fiona approached the antechamber the priest had commandeered for his confessional.

Twenty-five

Neville had known frustration, disappointment, and fear in the past, but nothing to compare with his towering vexation with the smug, black-robed, crow of a priest.

Who refused to marry them.

Unable to strike a priest, he needed to beat his fists into yielding flesh at Jackson’s boxing salon. Failing that, a sweaty round of fencing with an unshielded point might suffice.

He’d always vented his inner furies by such means before, gaining the release needed to maintain his public composure. He had no such outlet here, and more reason for rage than usual.

Like his very real terror that Fiona had run away again because of this self-righteous vulture.

Neville glared at the priest, and something popped inside his head. “Get out of my sight,” he said, fury washing away his awareness of his words. “You have no idea what you’ve done,” he shouted. “I’ve never laid hand on a man of the cloth before, but if you don’t leave
instantly
, I’ll not be responsible for my actions.”

The priest didn’t budge.

Michael returned from checking with the servants and stepped between them, raising his eyebrows at Neville’s spate of words. “She’s still here. I’ve had one of the women check. Eamon’s found another bottle of whiskey. Go join him while I talk with the good father.”

“I don’t want him near Fiona again,” Neville insisted. “Now I see why we’ve resisted the Catholic reform bill all these years. They’re no more than a lot of narrow-minded pagan savages...”

Michael twisted his arm and shoved him in the direction of the library.

Instinctively, Neville raised his fists and swung, careless of his target or his reasoning. No one had shoved him since he’d come into his dukedom, and he’d had all he could take for one day.

Michael caught his fist in one hand, shoved harder, and blocked the second blow aimed at his stomach. “Stop it, Your Grace. It’s not me you want to hit. Fiona’s fine. She’s as furious as you are, and if you proposed to run off to Gretna, she’d no doubt accept, if just to get even with the priest. It’s a wonder his skin hasn’t been flayed from his back by the lash of her tongue. It will take me a bit, but we’ll have the wedding if you’ll let me talk to the father. Go on with you now. Eamon will drain the bottle before we get there.”

Robbed of his fight, Neville growled, scowled at the priest, and stalked off to the library. He had no quarrel with the drunken Eamon, but he tried to summon one. He needed something to hit, and with the priest removed from his reach, the Irishman seemed fair game.

“Got away again, has she?” Eamon asked caustically as Neville entered.

“Not this time, no thanks to you and your kind. The blithering priest refused his blessing. He won’t marry us. And the damned vicar hasn’t shown up yet.” Neville poured a large measure of the golden liquor into a glass.

“Surprise that,” Eamon replied lazily. “Imagine an Anglican priest roaming these parts. It’ll be a wonder if he keeps his head attached long enough to get here.”

Neville heaved the glass, whiskey and all, at the Irishman’s head. It smashed into a thousand tiny splinters and sparkling drops against the paneled wall. “I’d see the lying lot of you hanged and left out to dry. See if I let Michael persuade me to your charity again.” He headed out of the room.

“I see the cat’s let loose of your tongue,” Eamon called tauntingly as Neville walked out. “Do you think our Fiona will still take pity on your poor cracked head and marry you anyway?”

Michael caught Neville stalking the corridors, throwing open doors left and right in search of Fiona. “She’s locked herself in her room but the Widow Blackthorn is with her. The staff knows Fiona’s ways. They’ll not let her fling herself from a window or climb to the parapets at a time like this.”

Neville clenched his fists, trying to disguise his frustration. He didn’t want the widow sleeping with her. That was
his
prerogative.

As if reading his mind, Michael frowned and walked toward the library. “There’ll be none of that until after the ceremony, your worship.”

Neville could see where Fiona had learned disrespect. With nowhere else to go, he followed Michael. “Will there be a ceremony?” he demanded.

Michael threw him a hooded look as he opened the library door. “Your speech seems to have made a remarkable recovery.”

Now that the realization that he could talk sank in, Neville calmed to some extent. He could use his wits and tongue instead of his fists. He could go to Fiona whole. “Want to hit me over the head again?” he mocked.

“Yes,” Michael answered bluntly, pouring a glass of whiskey from the nearly empty bottle, scarcely giving Eamon’s drunken sprawl a second glance. “I’ve a plan to get the rebels talking to me. It will work much better if you’re still an addled idiot instead of a threat.”

“Thank you.” Neville threw back a swallow of the liquor, relishing the raw burn sliding down his throat. Perhaps Eamon had the right idea after all. Drunkenness had a certain appeal. “First, tell me what you’ve done to the priest. Then tell me your plan.”

“I’ve bribed the priest, of course. That’s all he was after. There’s not a clergyman in the country who can’t find use for a few extra coins for his flock. Although it cost me a good deal more than usual to soothe his umbrage after Fiona called him a bilious boil on the face of the earth. I think you owe the priest for your bride’s new loyalty.”

Neville wanted to chuckle, but he knew Fiona well. Once her temper cooled, she’d be back to questioning his safety, her purpose in his life, and whether the moon followed the sun.

“She could still murder him in his sleep and take the next ship to Boston,” he countered.

“As a precaution,” Michael continued, ignoring the comment, “I have men looking for the vicar. McGonigle’s probably holding him for hostage to get some of their own back. There’s none hereabouts happy to pay their tithes to the government church while their own goes begging, so you’ll understand their resentment.”

Neville supposed he could understand a lot of things if he put his mind to it, but his mind wasn’t on churches and priests and misbegotten Irish rebels right now. His thoughts were of a warm, soft woman and a tumble of auburn curls. He nearly groaned his need, and despised himself for it.

“All right, let’s hear the plan then.” With resignation, Neville dropped into a seat by the fire, prepared to wait out the long night before his nuptials by getting royally drunk.

***

The next day, still wound tighter than Effingham’s eccentric floor clock, Neville waited at the makeshift altar in the far end of the Great Hall, his head pounding more from an excess of whiskey than any blows.

Everyone in the whole blamed castle had conspired to keep him from Fiona all night and morning. For all he knew, she’d resorted to her grasshopper ways, and they planned to leave him standing at the altar like a bloody offering to their pagan gods.

Beside him, Michael balanced a prayer book on his finger and spun it around. The earl’s highly irreverent outlook on life applied equally to religion and government. Neville wished he could be a little more like him, but whereas Michael had spent nearly thirty years of his life wandering the world without a care to his name, Neville had spent those same years worrying first on how he would make a living, and then on how he could make a living not only for himself, but for the hundreds of tenants and servants he’d inherited. Somehow, in that mass of responsibilities, he’d lost any ability for careless impulse.

Someone produced a melodically angelic riff on a fiddle, and Neville’s back stiffened. A mouth organ joined the melody, and he held his breath. His gaze skipped over both the priest and the rescued vicar and fastened on the fairy-figure stepping through the far doorway.

Candlelight from the hundreds of wall sconces danced patterns of light and shadow over his bride’s pale features. The heavy velvet gown clung to a figure so slim, Neville feared a sudden draft would break her in two. A single emerald stone on a thick gold chain rested at her throat, drawing his attention to the expanse of creamy flesh swelling above her bodice.

Neville’s mouth went dry. He wanted to cover her up so no other greedy eyes but his could see her. At the same time, he nearly burst with pride that Fiona came to him and no other man.

She was finally close enough that he could see her eyes. They looked shadowed and worried, but they fastened on him as if he were the last bastion of sanity in a world gone mad. With a lump lodged in his throat, Neville reached out to take her hand. Her fingers were icy as she grasped his.

***

With the priest speaking in Latin and the vicar reading from the prayer book, the room could have been the Tower of Babylon for all Fiona knew. The dozens of candles on the altar and the wintry light angling through the high slots in the walls cast a holy aura over the scene. If the priest’s sonorous tones and the scent of incense were intended to impress the solemnity of the occasion upon her, she was suitably impressed. In fact, she was damned intimidated.

She took a deep breath to steady herself as she kneeled beside Neville at the makeshift altar to accept Communion. That the duke had endured this madness for her sake confirmed the decision she’d finally made. He was a good man, far better than most, one worth trusting, even if she wanted to rip out his hair for risking his life like this.

Perhaps
because
he was willing to risk his life for her.

Problems aplenty awaited them, but he was right. The strength of their characters and what they had between them might be enough. The infuriating priest had made her see clearly—she could not, would not hurt Neville anymore.

From beneath the lacy mantilla covering her hair, she glanced at the man who had claimed her hand and held it firmly now. The duke’s expression of complete certainty reassured her. He was the one getting the wrong end of the bargain, yet he didn’t express a single doubt. Perhaps the blow had addled his brain more than anyone knew.

Fiona’s heart danced a reel in her chest at the light in Neville’s eyes as he raised her up and held her with his intense gaze. Holy Mary, Mother of Christ, if he looked at her that way every day of their lives, he would not only have his herd of heirs, he would have her slavering at his feet.