Kitabı oku: «Lord Of The Isle»
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Excerpt
Dear Reader
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
Book 1 The Heir of Dungannon
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Book 2 The Earl of Tyrone
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Book 3 The O’Neill
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Epilogue
Copyright
“May I have my knife back?”
Morgana asked as she fastened the belt buckle at her waist.
Hugh swung his eyes back to the woman. Her intense gaze was leveled at his waist, where her blade rested in the same sheath as his dirk.
“Until I know you better, Morgana of Kildare, I think the blade best rest where it is. I applaud your skill with it. One man of six dispatched to his Maker, three others wounded. You are a dangerous woman.”
“A desperate woman, sir,” she challenged him without compunction. “I would feel far safer if the blade rested in my own sheath.”
Hugh leaned over her, deliberately sliding his hand under her skirt to find the sheath neatly buckled below her left knee. His eyes met hers. “You will be safe in my care without it.”
The rhythm of Morgana’s heart arrested. She knew exactly what he was telling her—he was the one in control….
Dear Reader,
Elizabeth Mayne’s first book, All That Matters, was released during our annual March Madness promotion in 1995, and recently won a RITA Award nomination from the Romance Writers of America. This month’s Lord of the Isle is a classic Elizabethan tale about an Irish nobleman who unwittingly falls in love with an Irish rebel from an outlawed family. We hope you enjoy it.
The Return of Chase Cordell is a Western from Linda Castle, who is fast becoming one of our most popular authors. It’s a poignant love story about a war hero with amnesia who rediscovers a forgotten passion for his young bride. Gayle Wilson, who is also a RITA Award nominee, is back with Raven’s Vow, a haunting Regency novel about a marriage of convenience between an American investor and an English heiress.
Our fourth title for the month is Ana Seymour’s sequel to Gabriel’s Lady, Lucky Bride, the delightful story of a ranch hand who joins forces with his beautiful boss to save her land from a dangerous con man.
Whatever your taste in reading, we hope you’ll enjoy all of these terrific stories. Please keep a lookout for all four titles.
Sincerely,
Tracy Farrell
Senior Editor
Please address questions and book requests to:
Harlequin Reader Service
U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269
Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3
Lord of the Isle
Elizabeth Mayne
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ELIZABETH MAYNE
is a native San Antonian, who knew by the age of eleven how to spin a good yarn according to every teacher she ever faced. She’s spent the past twenty years making up for all her transgressions on the opposite side of the teacher’s desk, and the past five working exclusively with troubled children. She particularly loves an ethnic hero, and married one of her own twenty years ago. But it wasn’t until their youngest, a daughter, was two years old that life calmed down enough for this writer to fulfill the dream she’d always had of becoming a novelist.
Emma Frances Merritt
1940 - 1995
The mentor every young writer should have.
Book 1 The Heir of Dungannon
“Old Days! The wild geese are flighting, Head to the storm as they faced it before!
For where there are Irish there’s loving and fighting, And when we stop either, it’s Ireland no more!”
“The Irish Guards” Rudyard Kipling
Chapter One
Ireland May 1575
Finn mac Cool named the moodiest river in Ireland Abhainn Mor, the great dark water. The subtle nuance of meaning inherent in Gaelic was lost in the translation to its English equivalent—Blackwater. To Queen Elizabeth and all the lackey governors, generals and deputies she sent to rule Ireland, the name Blackwater meant border.
Beyond its treacherous currents lay the heart of Ulster. That fierce, clannish northern frontier of deep glens, forest-covered mountains and impregnable sea cliffs had withstood English subjugation since the Norman Conquest. Ulster’s marly earth had spawned generations of heroic men; giants of yore, saints of mystic faith, warriors of lasting renown and women of great heart.
Legend linked the Abhainn Mor’s ravines, currents and swift rapids to the humor of the ri ruirech Ui Neill, the king of kings of the clan O’Neill. As night fell on the fifth day of May in the year of our Lord 1575, the deluge of a cold spring downpour exposed the river at its most dangerous.
Rushing waters scourged the ravine at Benburg so ferociously, the Abhainn Mor broke free of its ancient bed, and threatened to score a new path across Ireland. The angry crash of the flood deafened all near it to the crack of thunder and the whiptail shriek of a banshee wind.
Were legend to be taken as truth, the black temper of the river matched the mood of the heir of Dungannon. Mounted on his favorite charger, Boru, a dun beast eighteen hands tall, Her Majesty’s favorite earl, Hugh O’Neill, watched as seven English soldiers rode out of Benburg, hot on the trail of another victim.
Queen Elizabeth would have been sorely distressed by the earl of Tyrone’s raiment. Lord Hugh wore not the elegant clothes of an English courtier. Instead, her man dressed as the elements decreed any Irishman should dress, in plaid and leathers that were oblivious of the rain pouring down upon him and his horse.
Hugh’s young face reflected displeasure with the scene in the glen before him. By private agreement between him and Elizabeth, all of Ulster was his to administer, and included in his right of pit and gallows. Redcoats had no business entering or patroling the razed wilderness of the late martyr Shane O’Neill.
Clan O’Neill had laid barren every scrap of fertile earth within two leagues of the bridge and Shane’s empty castle atop nearby Owen Maugh. Such was their tribute to Shane following his murder on the Benburg bridge seven years ago. Most O’Neill kinsmen swore that Shane’s headless spirit haunted the bridge, seeking revenge. Hugh knew of no facts proving or disproving their opinion.
Hugh took out his telescope, twisting the brass tubes into focus on the winding road leading from the village to the bridge.
The soldiers’ prey outdistanced them, on a swift and surefooted palfrey Hugh did not recognize. The rider’s cloak billowed out, obscuring most of the lead horse’s markings and flying tail. Hugh trained his glass on the soldiers instead, seeking to identify one particular man.
Night closed her hands over the flooding Abhainn Mor, concealing a dozen kerns of clan O’Neill. The clansmen blended into their lofty perches in the wych elms above the rushing water. Wrapped in green-and-brown plaids, they awaited a decision from young Hugh to proceed or retreat back to Dungannon.
From the oldest, whose age was counted by the score, down to the youngest, a boy just past his ninth winter, all kept their ears open, listening intently for the keening wail of the O’Neill’s banshee, Maoveen. As every clan had its hereditary officials, marshall of forces, master of horse, keeper of treasure, poets, inaugurator and deposer, so too they had a banshee, a spirit whose dreadful scream portended death. Hence Maoveen’s cry would warn each kinsman of the imminent approach of Shane O’Neill, were he to appear on the bridge seeking ghostly vengeance.
Their silence spoke more loudly in Hugh’s ears than the rumbling thunder. His kerns—or more rightly, Matthew, the baron of Dungannon’s kerns—waited to see if the heir to Dungannon could come up to scratch. Not a man among them trusted a kinsman raised and educated in England.
Hugh believed his position as leader of this patrol served as a test. Hugh’s avowed interest in taking revenge upon the man who had murdered Shane O’Neill conveniently matched each kern’s desire to spill English blood.
“It’s Kelly,” Hugh announced after some study.
“Aye. It’s him.” Loghran O’Toole sounded more like a wintering bear snoring than a man speaking. “I hear Maoveen whispering the traitor’s name behind the wind.”
Hugh cut his mentor a cold glance, saying, “Don’t feed me that nonsense about banshees. Where’s Rory? That’s not his horse the soldiers are after. Do you stop squinting your eyes against the rain and listening for bloody hungry banshees, you will realize that.”
Loghran took exception to that criticism, but said nothing to rebut it. Despite a score and ten years’ span between their ages, his eyes were as sharp as young Hugh’s.
Down at the crossroad, a musket exploded. A cloud of smoke rose briefly from behind Saint Patrick’s high cross. It dissipated quickly, driven to earth by the pouring rain. A lagging redcoat crashed to the ground, unseated by the accuracy of an O’Neill musketeer. Loghran had found Brian. With increasing satisfaction, he assumed Rory had reived the mount, leading the merry chase into Hugh’s well-planned trap.
Rory was to lure the soldiers to Tyrone. Brian’s task at the high cross was to pick off any stragglers, any who attempted to turn back to Benburg once the trap was sprung.
“Perfect shot!” Hugh praised Brian’s skill. “I couldn’t have done better myself.”
The carefully crafted brass tubes snapped closed between Hugh’s broad, blunt fingered hands. He put two to his mouth, emitting a sharp, short whistle, alerting the kerns in the wych elms to get ready.
The kerns knew what to do once the English crossed the river. Hugh had been over his plan time and again before they settled like kestrels high in the trees. Even Hugh’s discerning eyes had trouble locating each man amid the camouflaging foliage. It remained to be seen if the kerns would do as Hugh had ordered and wait till the exact moment the redcoats rode underneath them before dropping onto the unsuspecting soldiers’ heads.
Shortly, Hugh surmised with grim satisfaction, this simple altercation would be over. Then Hugh O’Neill would detain as his prisoner one Irish traitor, James Kelly, captain of Her Majesty’s musketeers.
Hugh planned to take James Kelly to the stone of clan O’Neill and sit in judgment over his trial by ordeal. A coward’s death was a fitting end for the man whom all said beheaded the last leader of the O’Neills, Shane the Proud.
Compounding his sins, the Judas named Kelly had sold Shane O’Neill’s head to the crown’s lord deputy for a paltry bag of silver coin. The degradation of Shane’s tarred head, staked on a pole outside Dublin Castle’s northwest gate for all to see, had sealed Kelly’s fate.
When James Kelly’s own head stood on a pike above the sacred stone of clan O’Neill, young Hugh, heir of Matthew, the baron of Dungannon, and hostage of Her Majesty Elizabeth Tudor of England for fifteen long and lost years, would finally be vindicated.
When he had avenged the murder of his uncle, Hugh’s honor would be restored and all that was due to him by birth returned. Blood for blood, and an eye for an eye. Then, and only then, could Hugh claim his birthright and assume the righteous and honorable title the O’Neill.
His carefully planned ambush at Benburg bridge awaited one last event; the English soldiers must all cross the bridge. Hugh raised his right hand as the foremost rider charged out of the woods and into view on the flood-swept verge below the bridge. Two redcoats bore down hard on the lone rider, to prevent him reaching the bridge and escaping into wild Tyrone. It was going to be close.
Hugh urged the rider to more speed and followed with a curse on Kelly’s wily ways. Well-mounted Englishmen knew how to ride. Kelly’s red-coated soldiers were no exception to that rule.
“Damn my eyes,” Hugh cursed out loud. “That’s not Rory, O’Toole! I told you that wasn’t his horse. What’s going on here?”
Hugh knew horses as well as any man in Ireland. That fleet-legged mare in the lead was an Arabian palfrey. No other breed ran with such nimble grace and speed. When the rider’s cloak caught on the wind again, Hugh spied something he didn’t like seeing at this moment in his life at all.
A woman’s petticoats fluttered over gartered knees.
The mounted soldiers bore down on the palfrey, shortening the gap. Neither man was Hugh’s quarry, Kelly. Hugh delayed his last signal, his hand clenched, but raised and visible to his men. The English must cross the bridge. His gut tightened. His simple plan to capture Kelly was about to be compromised.
Rory was supposed to lead the English into the trap. But Rory wasn’t on the Arabian galloping toward the bridge.
Hugh spied the man he wanted in the second pack of redcoats, fifty yards behind the leaders.
At the same instant he saw his quarry, the gap closed. One lout sprang from his saddle and took the woman to ground on the muddy verge below the river. The palfrey bolted onto the bridge, then reared, frightened by the turbulent, raging, muddy water flooding over the structure.
Hugh ground his teeth. A curse issued from his throat. His breath locked inside his chest. This was not what he’d planned. A woman’s scream pierced the wet air, matched by a shriek from the terrified horse.
Without a rider guiding it, the palfrey toppled off the bridge, into the flood, and careened downstream. It fought mightily to regain its footing and swim across the Abhainn Mor.
Kelly reined in his mount, ten feet shy of the bridge. His evil laugh echoed across the water as he dismounted. Redcoats and brown horses surrounded the unlucky woman. Hugh didn’t need to see inside the closing circle to know the woman’s immediate fate. The sounds of imminent rape were testament enough.
The valuable Arabian struggled to gain footing on the west bank. Art Macmurrough darted out of hiding and plunged into the river, snaring the trailing reins and taking charge of the beast. Hugh growled a shout, enraged that the man had dared break his given orders. His shout died between grinding teeth as he told himself not to be surprised.
That impulsive act by a battle-tested Irish soldier spoke to all that was wrong with Ireland and to why Hugh’s homeland remained in a perpetual state of domination by English overlords. Celtic soldiers, unlike their English counterparts, followed their commander’s orders to the letter only when the whim suited them.
Incensed, Hugh reached for his sword. Something dark and dangerous pushed him perilously close to slicing his own man in half.
Damning his Irish for their fatal caprices, Hugh dug gold spurs into Boru’s sides, galloping out from under the shelter of the wych elms on the bluff above the ravine. His purpose was obvious. He was going after Kelly alone.
Loghran O’Toole immediately rode forward, physically barring Hugh’s path with his war-horse. “‘Tis not our quarrel. Bide a while yet, my lord. Give Rory and Brian a chance to make up ground. All is not yet lost.”
“Get out of my way, O’Toole,” Hugh growled, his voice laden with malice. “Had my orders been followed to the letter, that woman wouldn’t be there. I’ll not stand idle while Kelly takes his sport before my very eyes.”
“You will,” Loghran said, challengingly. “It’s my sacred duty, sworn on the deathbed of your grandfather, Conn O’Neill, to see that no English blade carelessly takes your life. Give our men time to recover. Brian and Rory won’t let you down. Think of the woman as—” Loghran injected a twist of gallows humor into his voice “—a minor diversion.”
Hugh was not amused. He unsheathed his sword.
“My lord, I didn’t bring you safely through fifteen years of English hell so you could risk all for a skirt. Stay, else I’ll call the men and order you returned to Dungannon. Trussed if necessary.”
“Get out of my way.” Hugh’s sword cut through the rain. Another wretched scream pierced the tumultuous dusk. The point of Hugh’s steel pressed into the boiled leather carapace molded to Loghran’s chest. The younger man’s voice softened to a dangerous snarl. “You know what Kelly’s men will do to a woman. We’ve seen their handiwork before.”
“Aye. More than that, I know what he will do to you, should he be lucky enough to get his hands on another O’Neill. Heed my words. Stay to this side of the Abhainn Mor.”
“To the devil with your counsel. I’m in command here.” Hugh drew back on the reins. Boru reared, flashing mighty hooves at the horse and warrior that blocked the worn path to the bridge. “Listen to me, old friend—cross me and you lose your head. Move! That’s an order. Defy me at your own peril.”
“My lord.” Loghran tried one more time, unwilling to let Hugh face unnecessary danger. “The fate of one lone woman cannot alter Ireland’s destiny in the same way that your fate does. She is not your quarrel. Think you of the united Ireland of our dreams. You know as well as I that the wench is likely naught more than an abbess who cut and ran with a soldier’s purse.”
“She may be Mary Magdalene, herself. On Tyrone land, we will bloody well protect all women from English abuse.”
Hugh O’Neill touched his gold spurs to Boru’s sides once more. The stallion charged.
O’Toole yielded ground, wheeling his horse around full circle. With deep regret, he unsheathed his sword and followed, hard on the young earl of Tyrone’s heels, down the cliffside, to the flooded bridge crossing the Abhainn Mor.
Chapter Two
Morgana Fitzgerald drove one strong knee into the groin of the soldier attacking her. By the time his womanish howl split the drenched air, she had her blade in hand. With well-practiced efficiency, she slashed the dagger across his throat. He fell to his knees, clutching his throat and his cods, his scream now a dying gurgle.
Morgana bounded to her feet, balanced and ready. She was winded from the fall from her horse, but not terrified, as Kelly wanted her to be. The cut man’s death rattle proved that English soldiers were not made of the steel Lord Deputy Sidney, the governor of Ireland, and his cruel and bloodthirsty adjutant, James Kelly, would have all Ireland believe they were.
She regretted her one reflexive scream, which might have made these soldiers think she were frightened. She knew from experience to act as though she were the one in control. To do anything less would give away her only chance to keep the upper hand.
Unfortunately, she had screamed. Any woman would, when being rudely and deliberately tumbled her off her horse.
Morgana Fitzgerald didn’t have the luxury of pretending she was any woman. If that were the case, Sidney’s soldiers wouldn’t be following her. The second soldier stalked her as she circled the fallen man, edging her way to the bridge.
When she tried to run for it, he darted in front of her, blocking her path. Her knife was no match for the sword in his hand. He feinted at her with it, driving her back as the rest of the English arrived. James Kelly laughed as he dismounted.
In two heartbeats, four men surrounded Morgana, boxing her in, the river at her back. Morgana made a quick search of their crude circle, reading their true purpose in their eyes. Cold-blooded and deadly Geraldine anger calmed and fueled her now. She’d not be raped by a pack of English whoresons without killing two or three of them first.
The one with the drawn sword danced slightly away from the bridge, opening a wider gap in the circle, as he sheathed his weapon. He eyed her nine inches of razor-sharp steel caustically. “Here, now, Lady Morgan, there’s no call for that. We only wanted a little sport.”
“You’ll not take it with me, cur,” Morgana fired back, maddened far beyond mere insult at their game of cat and mouse. These men all knew who she was and why Kelly was after her. They were lower than the scum beneath London sewer rats.
One of them was responsible for poisoning Morgana’s six-year-old brother Maurice. For that, she would gladly kill all five of them. She had arrived in Benburg innocently unaware of the trap that waited there for her. Kelly and his men had been swilling whiskey at the only inn in Benburg all afternoon, idly waiting for Morgana to arrive. The men she’d hired to protect her on her journey north had been slaughtered in a matter of minutes.
She had been so caught up in her secret negotiations with Bishop Moye she hadn’t noticed there was a traitor in her midst. She had also mistakenly thought that Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Armagh had been untouched by the English order to seize and close all of Ireland’s churches. There was no sanctuary to be gained by fleeing to a church. She’d not make that mistake again, either. From here out, Morgana would trust no one, only herself.
The traitor in Morgana’s escort no longer mattered. The carriage yard at the Kittie Waicke Inn was littered with the bodies of every man Morgana had hired to protect her on her dangerous mission north to Dunluce. Their throats were slit as wide as the dying soldier at John Kelly’s feet.
Kelly bent to revive his man and drew back, appalled. “Sweet suffering Jesus,” he groaned, shocked so deeply he crossed himself. “The bitch has killed Rayburn!”
“You expected less of me, Kelly?” Morgana snarled. “You know perfectly well that anything you do to a Fitzgerald will come back to haunt you. Shall I repeat for these fools the curse Eleanor Fitzgerald laid on your head?”
Captain James Kelly’s mouth twisted cruelly as he straightened. “Save your witch’s curses, and your breath, Lady Morgan. You’ll come with us quietly now. No more of your games and escapades.”
A cold laugh slipped from Morgana’s throat as she brandished her blade. “Don’t count on it.”
“Ah, Morgan, Morgan, don’t tempt me to teach you the lesson I’ve got in mind. Lord Grey cares little about what condition you arrive in when I return you to Dublin.” Kelly wagged his exceedingly dark eyebrows, which stood out in stark contrast against his distinguished head of silver. “Fight me, Morgan O’Malley, and I’ll allow my men to take their pleasure of you, after I’ve taught you a woman’s proper submission to English authority. Now, give me that damned knife. Prove that you’ve had some upbringing, by bending your knee properly to me.”
“I’d kiss the devil’s arse first, you whoreson. We’re in Ulster now. I have it on good authority that the only law here is that enforced by the man called the O’Neill. Begone, John Kelly.”
“Nice try.” He sneered. “But wrong, very, very wrong. There is no man called the O’Neill these days, my dear.”
At Morgana’s look of suspicion, he continued, relishing taunting her in return for her stinging insults. “I personally saw to the destruction of Shane O’Neill several years back. Believe me, clan O’Neill rues the day James Kelly came home to Ireland for good.”
“No.” Morgana shook her head, refusing to believe him.
“Why, my dear Morgan, who do you think it was that severed Shane O’Neill’s head from his body? Or presented it to Lord Grey to display on a stake outside Dublin’s castle walls?”
“Truly—” Morgana shuddered “—I have no interest in knowing the answer to that question.”
“Ah…” Kelly sighed elaborately. “So you would profess no interest in politics beyond the Pale, hmm? But we both know differently, don’t we? I’m the only man alive with the balls to confront an O’Neill. Just as I’m the one who will bring you to heel.” His head twisted on bull-like shoulders, and his eyes beaded inside narrowed lids.
He spun around so quickly for such a big and heavy man that Morgana failed to see the blow coming. His fist struck her in the face, knocking her to the ground. Her head reeled with a vile explosion of pain. Blood filled her nose and mouth.
While she was down, Kelly stamped his left boot at her right arm, trying to kick her knife from her hand.
But she was faster than him, and trained well enough in hand-to-hand combat to wield a knife with either hand. He jumped clumsily back, not quick enough to avoid the cutting path of her blade. She cut his red coat to the hem and gouged a cut in his thigh before he stumbled out of her range. Morgana bounded back to her feet, dazed but in control of her knife.
One of his men came at her from behind. A pair of crushing, heavy arms swept around her waist, dragging her off her feet. That man, too, paid the price of getting too close.
The soldier screamed as he clutched at his face, his eye bloody and bulging from its socket. Kelly kicked at her again. Morgana caught his heel and jerked his foot with all the force she had, toppling him onto his backside in the mud.
“Bitch!” Kelly shouted, grabbing her skirts. “I’ll teach you to raise your filthy Irish hands against an Englishman!”
“Bugger yourself. I’m more English than you’ll ever be. My Norman ancestors conquered Ireland while yours were filthy, naked Celtic peasants rutting in peat bogs.”
“Augh!” Kelly grunted as he got back on his clumsy feet. He charged her like a raging bull, then caught himself up short, dodging another vicious swipe from her dagger. Morgana swept the blade back and forth with both hands, daring any of them to come close again.
Kelly caught the hem of his coat, briefly examining the gash underneath it and the trickle of blood running down to his knee. “Oh, you’re going to pay for that, bitch.”
“Come, you murdering whoreson,” Morgana taunted him. “Come, let my steel kiss you again.”
He motioned to the other men to get closer to her, but none seemed inclined to be cut. The fool who had lost his eye shouted like a castrated bull and charged her. She slapped her wet cloak into his injured face and let him go rushing past. Wet wool shrouded and blinded him as he slipped and crashed to the muddy ground.
Morgana saw her chance to escape then, and bolted for the bridge. She hiked her skirts clear of her strong feet. She slashed the hand of a soldier trying to catch her, and leaped over the man struggling to unwind his head from her cloak.
Despite Morgana’s deep-seated fear of water, she ran for the bridge, praying the water rushing over its sunken planks wasn’t as deep and treacherous as it looked.
At the brink of the raging flood, she choked, unable to plunge into what her mind perceived as certain death—water, deep and bottomlessly malevolent water. Morgana’s terror at being captured by Kelly paled against her fear of drowning.
A third blow drove Morgana to her knees. Kelly hammered the hilt of his drawn sword into her neck. He fell upon her, flattening her, wrenching her blade from her fist.
She fought to breathe, crushed by Kelly’s weight. Cruel fingers dug into her hair, lifting her face from the mud, bending her neck against the agonizing pains still rippling across her shoulders. Astraddle her back, he stuck her own blade against her throat and rubbed the knuckle of his thumb against the soft flesh under her jaw.
His breath fanned her ear as he clucked his tongue. “Now then, my little fighting Amazon, I have you at my mercy.”
A large knuckle raked across the path the blade would take slitting her throat. He thrust his wet tongue inside her ear and ground his hips suggestively across her bottom. His fingers tightened on her hair, pulling harder to make her bow up from the ground. He laughed cruelly as he licked the sensitive flesh behind her ear. Then he slowly brought the point of the blade against her throat and turned it down. The dagger slipped between her breasts, severing the lacing of the embroidered stomacher covering her gown.
Taut linen was no match for well-honed steel. Powerless, Morgana pressed her hands into the mud, arched way back by his painful pull on her hair. She grit her teeth as he cut her gown and kirtle down to where her belly made contact with the earth.
“Well, well, well, boys, look at this,” Kelly called. “Who would think an Amazon would have such big and pretty titties? Look at them well now, my good.men, because they’re going to get all soiled and dirty. Are you listening, Lady Morgan? I’m going to take you first on your face. An animal like you will probably like that.”
Morgana clawed desperate fingers in the mud, searching for a rock or a stone that could be wrenched free, anything to use as a weapon. The mud rendered nothing. She twisted, balancing precariously on one hand, using her fingernails to scratch at him. He jerked his face out of range, tipping her blade under her right breast.
“Ah, ah, ah, Morgana. Mind those claws of yours. Else my hand slips and severs this lovely mound clean away from your ribs. Think what a curiosity you’ll be in your cage outside Dublin Castle then, hmm?
“Why, you’ll be the governor’s prize attraction, the Irish savage with one tit—another Celtic freak of nature, rivaling the cyclopes of ancient Greece.”
Morgana stiffened, sickened by the touch of his filthy fingers. His two uninjured men dared to come close. Spittle was clotted on their panting lips.
Kelly jerked Morgana’s face toward them, commanding, “Look, Morgan le Fay. They all want to shove their pricks in you. And they will, soon, my little Irish witch. Soon. Then I’ll have the pleasure of watching you grunt and heave to satisfy their lust. Think you I won’t have my revenge for the merry chase you’ve led me from Dublin?”
Morgana’s fingers itched to snatch her grandfather’s Celtic dagger from Kelly’s hand and skewer him with it. Soured whiskey breath fanned her face. White rage at his effrontery in threatening her with her own blade flooded through her. She would show Kelly no mercy when the tables turned.
He twisted her head more, bringing his foul-smelling mouth closer to her lips. She jerked her head away. “No!”
“Good, Lady Morgan, fight me.” His fingers tightened, painfully ripping hair from her head, forcing her head far enough back that she could see his gray eyes darken with cruel pleasure.
“There’s nothing I like better than a woman who struggles as hard as she can against being taken.”
Bent as she was, she couldn’t see where he poked the point of her blade. But she felt it. And she felt the knife score her flesh as he drew it between her breasts. It came to rest pressed into the hollow of her throat.
“Come on, my sweet, fight me.” He taunted her with cold-blooded malice. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out, so he ran his thumb back down the line he’d cut, smearing her blood. His eyes gleamed diabolically as he put his thumb in his mouth and sucked it. “Ah, but I do like the taste of a woman’s blood.”
“Whoreson!” Morgana grabbed a fistful of mud and threw it in his face.
Blinded, Kelly screamed, stabbed at her. She was ready, driving her fist backward, smashing his nose, using his momentum to topple him off her. He swore viciously, blinded by the mud in his eyes, losing control. “Grab her!”
Morgana wrested her blade from his slackened hand, rolling free as she stabbed at him with all her might.
“You bitch! Get her, damn you cowards!”
“You’re the coward, Kelly!” Morgana sank her blade into his neck with all the force she could muster. His men fell on her then, wrestling to get control of the knife.
Kelly knelt in the mud, clutching his shoulder, chest heaving. He recovered enough to make a fist and strike her in the face.
“Hold her down, you damned whoresons! She’ll think twice about fighting more when I get done with her.”
This time, Morgana’s struggles achieved nothing. Her knife was pried from her fingers and cast aside. Waves of nauseating pain in her temples met up with the horrible ache radiating from her neck into her shoulders and arms. None of that was going to abate very quickly.
She had to think, to calm, to hold back the panic rising inside her. The last and final rule of Grace O’Malley’s thorough training in the rigorous art of self-defense swam in Morgana’s desperate brain. According to Ireland’s famed female pirate when rape was inevitable, one must submit. Accept the pain. Retreat. Think only to the future. Plan your revenge. Convince yourself to live, just to taste that revenge.
Morgana Fitzgerald had no choice but to live. Sudden death was not an option. Sean Fitzgerald’s life depended upon her finishing her journey to Dunluce. She had to live through this. Sean depended upon her! She clung to that thought as James Kelly straddled her. She clung to Grace O’Malley’s rules of survival, but she could not accept rape, not at any price.
She bucked and twisted, nearly freeing her muddy hands from the grips of the soldier who held them. Kelly drew back his fist. She jerked her head to the side, taking the blow intended for her face on her ear instead. That was a blessing.
Her ears rang so fiercely from the blow, she couldn’t decipher the crudities spoken as Kelly yanked on her skirts, trying to free the cloth from under his own weight. She nearly gave vent to her outrage when his coarse hands groped at her knees.
“God damn it all, help me spread her legs,” Kelly commanded. “Orson, keep her damned hands out of my way.”
Rain beat a steady drum on the earth. The chill of it striking her face made Morgana lift her cheek from the mud. There was daylight enough that she could see the trees on the other side of the Abhainn Mor.
Severing all connection with her body, she looked for Ariel, willing her horse to come back for her. Her heart thudded hard, bringing her back to the gruesome present. Kelly’s harsh hands pawed at her breasts. The one called Orson twisted her wrists, nearly breaking her arms.
She bit down hard on her lips, vowing not to scream. She wouldn’t beg or cry. They were all talking fast, collective hands on her body, twisting and crushing her limbs, laughing at their rude jests. She shuddered when she heard the leather of Kelly’s belt whip free of his buckle. Every man crowed over the size of Kelly’s manhood, praising its hardness and envying him the right to be the first to abuse her.
Morgana shut out their voices by chanting an ancient prayer, invoking the spirit of Gerait Og Fitzgerald. She occluded Kelly’s face from her sight by staring into the haunted wych elms engulfed by that fearful raging river.
Not a one of them saw what she did.
A warrior swathed in green and brown rode out from the wych elms on the opposite bank. Morgana blinked, clearing her vision. Surely the preternatural creature was no more real than the Little People. Oh, but she wanted him to be real!
Desperately she chanted the ancient prayer invoking the phantom. She inveigled him with the spirit of her grandfather, Gerait Og Fitzgerald, the greatest and most powerful wizard to ever draw breath in Ireland.
Amid the rocks, trees and rain, Morgana’s savior galloped forth, imbued with her thirst for vengeance and her soul-deep hatred. A warrior at one with the spectacular panorama of wind-torn branches, storm-filled sky and spuming white water breaking free of the river bed.
Save me, Gerait Og, she prayed with all her heart and soul. Stop Kelly!
She could bear all that had happened thus far, but not rape. Her spirit would surely die if such a repulsive, evil man made his body one with hers.
Her warrior pressed through the flood riding a dun horse. A fiendish war cry reverberated from his throat, mingling with Erin’s howling wind. The specter’s tartan molded around his torso, detailing his size and exposing brawny, hard-hewn banded arms. Lightning flashed off his upraised sword. War plaits streamed from his temples, as if to flee from the fierce visage under his helm.
Morgana lifted her head from the mud and spat in James Kelly’s face. She let free a high, wild laugh of triumph.
“You are dead, James Kelly!” she shouted, believing in the magic of the witchcraft handed down to her from generations of ancestors more powerful than she. “Look to the river, cur! See you the revenge of the Fitzgeralds!”
“God and Saint George,” whispered a soldier.
“J-J-Jesus Mariah! It’s Shane O’Neill! The ghost that haunts the bridge!” Orson bawled.
Her attackers released their grip at once.
Kelly scrambled off her on all fours, crawling and clawing at the ground for the sword belt that he’d cast beyond Morgana’s reach to torment and break her. He shouted frantic curses and babbled frenetic orders. His cowardly soldiers bolted, howling as they ran for horses. “Jesus save us! It’s the ghost of Shane O’Neill!”
Shane O’Neill, indeed! Delighted, Morgana pushed herself up from the mud, snatching Gerait Og’s blade back into her hands. She brought it to her lips and kissed the amber jewel embedded in the hilt, then staggered painfully onto her feet.
A wild notion made her kick James Kelly viciously in his pimpled arse. He slipped and sprawled facedown in the mud, his belly covering his sword. That made her choke with glee. She tried to find the strength to kick him in his ugly dangling cods. Much as she wanted to deliver that last indignity before he died, she hadn’t the strength to do it. Her weakened energy went into fueling her mad, ecstatic laughter.
Morgana sobered the instant her gaze returned to the warrior. Burning eyes were fixed on her, not Kelly. Her gown hung loose from her shoulders, rent from throat to hem.
Her brain locked on to a truth. Her grandfather’s supernatural powers summoned only demons. Years of strict convent teachings had drummed that fact into Morgana’s head. This bloodthirsty, berserk Irish war god running circles around her with lust in his terrible eyes wasn’t coming for Kelly. He was coming for her.
The conundrum of those thoughts brought more mad laughter surging from her lips. All demons, spirits, powers and dominions demanded a high price for their aid. A supreme irony struck her. What could she possibly offer her war god for a sacrifice? Her virginity? Hardly. She was a widowed woman.
At that ludicrous thought, Morgana laughed. She was truly a witch, as all in Dublin called her—Morgan le Fay! Tears squeezed from her eyes as she threw her arms wide and spun in a slow dance, chanting, “Kill them, kill them! Slay them all for me and I am yours!”
A soldier screamed, “Shane O’Neill!” as the warrior’s sword cleaved his head from his body. Morgana stopped dancing. Could her vision-god be the ghost of the murdered Shane O’Neill?
And why not? She laughed again. Shane O’Neill had died on the bridge at Benburg. How very Irish of him to haunt the very spot where he’d died!
Her humor left her then.
Another warrior—a giant of the ilk of the legendary Finn mac Cool—appeared. The giant’s hair gleamed curiously white. Adorned with Pictish blue war paint, he bore no other trace of humanity.
Lightning bolts flashed from their gleaming swords. Mud churned up from the hooves of their charging war-horses.
The Abhainn Mor erupted. Warrior after warrior spewed forth from the bridge.
Each was more ferocious than the last. Heads sprouted helms and horns. Targes grew spikes. All bore swords and dangerous dirks on their belts, while brandishing halberds, pikes, lochaber axes, tridents or wicked spiked maces.
James Kelly staggered to his feet, hitching his breeches to his waist to cover himself. His sword hung limp in his hand. He turned tail, and spying Morgana, ran behind her to hide himself while he fastened his breeches.
Morgana dragged her ruined gown onto her shoulders and clutched its pieces closed over her breasts. Past that, she had lost all ability to move or breathe. Every muscle in her body was locked rigid. Rape at the hands of the English was the least of her worries now.
Her dabblings in her grandfather’s witchcraft had come full circle. As the good nuns at Saint Mary de Hogges’s Abbey had predicted, the devils had come for Morgana’s wicked, unrepentant soul. She lacked the ability to dredge up the words of confession or the sense to list her many varied and too-often-repeated wicked sins.
“Sweet Saint Brigit, save me!” she whispered.
For the first time in Morgana’s tumultuous life, the sights before her overwhelmed her mind. She fainted dead away at James Kelly’s feet.
Chapter Three
No redcoat escaped Hugh O’Neill’s retribution. In short order, five curs fell under the stroke of Hugh’s sword. Only Kelly remained alive, his heart still beating, as Hugh dismounted from Boru and tossed the war-horse’s reins to his young nephew, Owen Roe.
“What farce be this, O’Neill?” Kelly demanded. He hid his fear behind a mask of sarcasm—that of a bureaucrat accustomed to wielding threats against lesser men than he. “Think you this some London stage, and you a hero of some play, wherein you ravish the maiden yourself?”
Hugh’s cold smile sent Kelly staggering backward. He came up short, pinned to the point of Kermit Blackbeard’s sword.
“Your sarcasm ill suits you, Kelly,” Hugh crooned. He handed Loghran his sword to clean the blood from it. James Kelly and Hugh O’Neill went way back, fifteen long years, to Hugh’s first days at the court of Elizabeth Regina. Kelly had been the bully of the queen’s court then, just as he was the bully of Ireland now.
The soldiers were dead, but not the traitor. Hugh stepped around the broken body of the woman, drew back his fist and let it fly into James Kelly’s face, dropping him like a stone at the feet of Shamus Fitz and Donald the Fair.
“Truss him and tie a rope around his neck. If he doesn’t wake up, I’ll drag him by his throat to the stone of O’Neill.”
Hugh turned his back to the traitorous Kelly as he stripped off his gauntlets. He flicked a cold glance to the kerns milling all over the vale, examining the soldiers Hugh had dispatched. Before a one of them had so much as lifted a finger, Hugh had lopped off three heads and gutted a fourth.
Stoic Loghran O’Toole’s only participation in the melée had been to make certain Kelly remained Hugh’s prisoner.
A deep silence settled over the kerns as young Hugh O’Neill turned to face them.
“Macmurrough!” Hugh shouted. “Present yourself!”
At one time, Art Macmurrough had been a general under Shane the Proud, in command of a division of five hundred foot soldiers. He commanded no one now. Bereft of the heart of their leadership, the army of O’Neills had not marched anywhere since Shane’s death. The old soldier came forward reluctantly.
“So your admiration for fine horseflesh exceeds your attention to duty, does it, Art?” Hugh asked in a controlled voice, though the angry edge was there. Every living soul near Benburg bridge heard it.
“My lord,” Macmurrough answered in a voice as aged by the years as Loghran’s, “’twas a fine mare. I couldn’t let it drown in the river. Not a horse like that.”
“So you gave my position away, then, for a piece of horseflesh? Good thinking, man. What if this had been the justiciar, Lord Grey’s, vanguard, bringing siege to Dungannon’s abbey? Did you turn your back on Shane as you just turned your back on me? Did you leave Shane vulnerable? Here at this bridge? Send him alone to his slaughter the last time the English tried to bring Tyrone to its knees?”
“Nay, Lord Hugh. I didn’t.” Macmurrough’s grizzled face broke out in sweat. “It was winter then. You were in England. I was at Tullaghoge. Shane ordered all of us to stand down for Epiphany.”
Seeing that Lord Hugh did not believe him, Macmurrough fell to his knees, his empty hands up, beseeching Hugh’s forgiveness. “My lord, I swear to you on the souls of my five sons, we knew nothing of the attack before it happened. I loved Shane. He was my heart, my blood brother. I’d have given my life for his, if I could have done. I swear on my sainted mother’s soul, I’ll never fail you again, O’Neill. I’ll carry out every command you give me, trusting you as Abraham trusted God. Hail, Hugh O’Neill!”
The kern’s hands clasped Hugh’s. He kissed Hugh’s battered knuckles and the signet ring of his earldom. Donald the Fair strode forward and extended his sword to Hugh, hilt first, as he, also, dropped to his knee in salute.
“I, too, am your man, O’Neill. My soul and my sword lie in your hand, to command as you will.”
Loghran O’Toole’s eyes misted as he watched sword after sword being placed in Hugh’s strong hand as each kern knelt before Hugh O’Neill, giving him a solemn oath of fealty. Loghran had gone to England, gillie to the baron of Dungannon’s son, the only Irish influence in Hugh’s long sojourn at the queen’s court. It was abundantly clear to O’Toole that the queen of England’s court had failed to breed the Irish out of Hugh O’Neill.
Loghran’s heart swelled with pride, loving Hugh O’Neill as the son he would never have. Now, at five-and-twenty, his charge had all the qualities necessary to become the next O’Neill—leadership, intelligence, compassion, courage and fierce loyalty.
One by one, they all came, twelve men and one boy, pledging their lives and souls to Hugh’s hand. Hugh was stunned and humbled. Before tonight, not a one of them had trusted a kinsman raised in England as far as he could throw him.
These twelve were not all O’Neills. Numerous and varied kinsman, cadres and families made up Tyrone. The trust and loyalty of all the others remained to be gained by Hugh at some future date. But these twelve were Hugh’s men now, and Hugh belonged to them. It was a start.
Hugh turned to Macmurrough and bade him run down the soldiers’ scattered horses and transport all seven, and the Arabian mare, to Dungannon. He ordered Kermit to gather the dead soldiers’ weapons, and any wealth or valuables they carried on their persons. Bounty was forever the tribute of war. Whatever was gathered would be divided fairly, each to his own needs.
Donald the Fair and Shamus Fitz volunteered to bury the remains. Loghran O’Toole handed Hugh back his sword, cleaned. He took out his breviary, stole and rosary, saying he would recite the Te Deum over the bodies and consign their souls to God’s eternal judgment.
Satisfied that all was done that should be done, Hugh O’Neill unfastened his plaid from his shoulder and went to the woman’s body. As he opened the cloth to spread it over her and cover the gaps in her gown, it occurred to him that he might never know who she was.
That, he thought, would be a great pity. A woman with her courage should be remembered, immortalized in the bards’ songs and revered in the ages to come. Hugh closed his eyes, remembering the sight of her kicking Kelly in his naked arse, sending him sprawling facedown in the mud. She might have been murdered, but her spirit hadn’t been broken.
Bending his knee to the ground, Hugh gently pried her swollen, cold fingers from the handle of her knife. He tucked it inside the sheath holding his dirk for safe transport. Then Hugh gave her other hand and her neck a cursory examination for identifying jewels or ornaments. She wore none.
Rain had washed some dirt and blood from her damaged face. Matted curls clung to her cheek and clumped in the mud underneath her. He could not help looking at her full breasts. They were exquisitely shaped, heavy and firm, the kind of flesh that filled a man’s hands with pleasure and joy in the touching. Her soft white belly gleamed like fine porcelain beneath the mud smeared across it.
Before he covered her with the plaid, he thought to close her gown and return some dignity to her.
Her flesh was still very warm to the touch, resilient and supple as his knuckles passed over it to draw the rent cloth closed. She’d been wearing a stomacher over a rather finely woven linen kirtle. The laces of that close-fitted outer garment had been cut, though the buckramed garment itself was whole and could be relaced. He loosened the lacing of his doublet and pulled it free, thinking to thread the stomacher at least partway closed.
He had no sooner begun that difficult task than he felt that soft, malleable, womanly flesh move against the backs of his knuckles. Hugh jerked his hand back, stunned by the sensation of feeling a nipple pucker.
Her kirtle slid back off that plump mound of flesh. It was full dark. There was no moon. His sight was good. She’d looked dead to his eye from the distance, even this close a moment ago. He laid his palm over that breast, certain that a woman’s nipples should have no reaction to any touch after death occurred.
As he gently formed her pebbling nipple between his fingers, definitely feeling it react to his touch, he brought his right ear close to her open lips, cocked to catch any sound of actual breathing.
“My lord Hugh!” Owen Roe shouted. His bare feet made squishy sounds as he ran down from the river. “Shamus Fitz says we best cross the Abhainn Mor with all due haste. It will crest any moment now.”
“Be quiet!” Hugh scolded him. “I think the woman may be alive. Stand still and let me listen.”
He dropped his ear to her breastbone, listening for sound inside her throat. Positive that he heard something, Hugh slid his arm under the woman’s shoulders and lifted her. Her head dropped back on his arm, moist lips flexed open and parted. Both breasts spilled out of the kirtle, full and luscious and splendidly beautiful, lifting quite high as her lungs inflated with air.
“Splendor of God!” Owen gasped. He dropped to his knees, his eyes as perfectly round as the gold sovereigns minted at the Tower of London. “Please God, make her alive.”
Hugh shot the boy a quelling look and hastily spread his plaid where he should have some time ago. He felt the woman’s ribs contract, completing the cycle of breathing. Hugh spread his fingers across her exposed throat, easily finding a steady and even pulse. “She is alive.”
“What are we going to do with her?” Owen Roe wanted to know.
Hugh’s mouth twitched over the boy’s inclusive and decidedly possessive pronoun. “We are going to take her to Dungannon, do you fetch my horse to me.”
“But, my lord Hugh,” the boy said, confused, “do you dare to take her there? Doesn’t she have to be cast out by all the clans, now that she’s a whore for the English?”
Hugh blinked, so stunned by the nine-year-old’s assessment of Irish custom that he didn’t notice the woman had roused. His tone was severely reprimanding when he did speak. “She is the victim of a crime, nothing more. That doesn’t make a woman a whore, Owen Roe.”
“Shall I sing hallelujah that you’ve said that?” Morgana asked, her voice a rasp, as she took a firm hold upon the sodden cloth laid up to her throat.
Startled, Hugh jerked. The woman regained her strength all at once, twisting away from his supporting arm. “Milady,” Hugh sputtered, reflexively tightening his arm across her back, “Be careful.”
“Oh, I intend to be,” Morgana said with assurance. She tried to scoot away from him, seeking safety in distance, but failed to gain that advantage. Her head turned slowly right, then left as she tried to gain her bearings. Her last conscious thought returned—of fainting from the fear that she’d called forth a phalanx of demon warriors from the beyond.
Her eyes returned to Hugh, and her hand came up to stroke his cheek. “Are you real?”
“Real?” Hugh asked, confused by that question. Trembling fingers traced his jaw and splayed across his cheek. “Aye, I am real.”
“You’re not a ghost?” Morgana whispered. She swallowed hard. “Not the spirit of Shane O’Neill?”
“Nay, lady. Shane is dead. I am Hugh of the O’Neills.”
Morgana exhaled unsteadily. A touch of the mad irony that had gripped her before she fainted returned. Wryly she said, “Hugh of the O’Neills, then. Has anyone told you you look just like Shane?”
“Not that I can recall, they haven’t. Who are you?”
Morgana wet her lips. She took time to count the crumpled bodies of the queen’s soldiers and the number of Irish kerns milling around in the night shadows. She took a second deep breath, this one shuddering inside her lungs.
Shock was beginning to set in. Her mind wasn’t anywhere near as clear as it should be. Her fingers on his shaved cheek proved he was a man of flesh and blood, not an apparition. She swallowed, then said, “My name is Morgan.”
Hugh repeated her word. “Morgan?”
“Aye, Morgana,” she repeated, stopping herself from saying anything more clarifying.
“Morgana, then.” He grasped a trailing corner of his plaid and wiped at the mud on her face. “What great error on your part made you the prey of an English patrol this stormy night?”
He saw the whites of her eyes flash, but she made no move to stop his hand.
Morgana wasn’t looking at her savior so much as she was looking to see where her attackers were before she answered that loaded question. She noted that there was no one standing to contradict her.
“Truly, sir, I have no idea what their intentions were. Savagery, I suppose.” Her voice shook on her last words, and that much was no act on her part. “Are you certain we are not dead? Is this the afterlife?”
“No, I assure you it is not. You have not gone on to your reward.” A pair of distrustful and confused eyes looked everywhere but at Hugh O’Neill. She drew back from the casual, servicing touch of his hand as he mopped up her face. “By your language, I assume you are not of Tyrone.”
Morgana grimaced, recognizing her first mistake. “You’re right. I don’t speak Irish.”
“Then you are from the Pale, from Dublin, possibly?”
“Kildare,” Morgana corrected. She could not afford to say more.
“And what brings you to Ulster, Morgana of Kildare?”
“I am on pilgrimage to Dunluce.” Again, Morgana looked to the river, seeking Ariel. She exhaled a deep and tired sigh. “Now that I’ve lost my horse, I shall have to go back to Dublin and start all over.”
Hugh could see her distress. He stroked his fingers over her throat, soothing her as he would a frightened animal. “Nay, you haven’t lost your horse. It is safe on the other side of the Abhainn Mor. One of my men took pity on the beast and rescued it from the flood.”
“One did?” Morgana turned her face back to the man, her eyes wary. “Are you certain?”
“As certain as I am of my own name.”
“God and Mary be praised,” she whispered reverently. A great gush of relief over that news nearly caused Morgana to burst into tears. If Ariel had made it across the river, her saddle and bags intact, then all was not lost. Morgana could continue to Dunluce with nothing lost beyond the cost of her escort. Given any luck, she could hire more men. She could use some of her ready coins to have masses said for those she’d lost.
Hugh did not urge her to quiet. A woman’s tears after an ordeal were a good thing. He embraced her gently, waiting for the calm that would come soon enough.
“Tell me,” Hugh asked as he sat her up, mindful that she had injuries other than the ones he could see in the limited light. “Do you think you can stand or ride?”
“Possibly.” Morgana used her left hand to touch the back of her neck. She encountered mud, matted hair and excruciating pain. This wasn’t the time to start cataloging her injuries. She nodded in the direction of Kelly’s trussed body, easily distinguished from the others because of his silver-gray hair. “Is Kelly dead?”
“Not yet,” Hugh murmured. “By your question, I take it you are acquainted with him.”
“Enough to wish I wasn’t,” Morgana replied tartly. She busied her hands, making order of her clothing, and what she couldn’t order she wrapped securely under the sodden tartan to cover the gaps.
The curious boy kneeling at Hugh O’Neill’s side took off his own belt and offered it to her as a means to hold the plaid secure.
“That was kind of you, Owen. Now go and fetch my horse,” Hugh said, dismissing the boy.
“At once!” Owen popped to his feet, bowing deeply. Hugh thought the show of respect attributable more to the English lady’s breasts than to any sign of hero worship honoring Hugh.
“May I have my knife back?” Morgana asked as she fastened the belt buckle at her waist.
Hugh swung his eyes from the departing boy, back to the woman. Her intense gaze was leveled, pointed at his waist, where her blade rested in the same sheath as his dirk.
“Until I know you better, Morgana of Kildare, I think the blade had best rest where it is. I applaud your skill with it. One man of six dispatched to his Maker, three others wounded. My gut tells me that you are a dangerous woman.”
“A desperate woman, sir.” She challenged him without compunction, proving that she was no stranger to speaking her mind. “I would feel far safer if the blade rested in my own sheath.”
Hugh leaned over her, deliberately sliding his hand under her skirt to find the deadly dagger’s sheath, neatly buckled below her left knee. She was an Englishwoman from the Pale, and not to be trusted. His eyes met hers. “You will be safe in my care without it.”
The rhythm of Morgana’s heart arrested. Her breath caught in her throat. The flesh on the inside of her thighs quivered. The touch of his hand was intimate and warm. The implication of that sheath at her knee might have gone unsaid, but his proprietary attitude needed no more vouching for. She knew exactly what he was telling her—he was the one in control, not she.
Trying to take control of matters between them, Morgana grasped his wrist and removed his hand.
“I find, sir, my personal security never rests well in anyone’s hands but my own. I repeat, give me back my knife.”
“Not now, Morgana of Kildare. Not before we know who you are and what you are doing in Tyrone. Come, I will help you to stand.”
As Hugh assisted the woman back onto her feet, Kermit Blackbeard turned the contents of a filled water skin out on James Kelly’s head and chest. The moment the traitor roused from his stupor, Kermit kicked hard toes into Kelly’s ribs.
Kelly awoke spitting and cursing, shouting against the bonds restraining him. “God damn you, I’ll have your head for striking me!”
He sat up, blinking his eyes, and glared at the man assisting Morgana to her feet. “Untie me, O’Neill!”
“O’Neill!” Morgana gasped. She jerked against the young man whose kind arm gave her the support she needed to remain on her feet. “You’re the O’Neill?”
“Aye, lady, so he is,” Kermit Blackbeard assured her. He dug his fist into Kelly’s collar and hauled him onto his feet.
“Those are their words, not mine, lady,” Hugh crooned softly into the woman’s ear, to calm her.
“On your feet, man!” Shamus Fitz dug his heels into his mount’s ribs, putting hard tension on the rope tied between his saddle and Kelly’s fat neck. Kelly struggled, choking, his wild eyes searching for Hugh.
“O’Neill! Tell your men to desist! O’Neill!”
Morgana of Kildare reacted. Her hand shot out to snatch her blade from the sheath at the O’Neill’s waist. He stayed her hand, gripping her fingers firmly, adding a command to desist. “Nay, lady. This is my land, and he’s my prisoner, now. Unless you want to join Kelly in the ranks of the unwelcome, obey me.”
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