The Maiden of Ireland

“Aye.” Wesley had just made the decision. With a stab of loss he realized he no longer needed to seduce Caitlin MacBride in order to coax secrets from her. “If I manage to give Hammersmith the slip, I’ll take a ship to England.”

“The sooner the better,” muttered Rafferty. Turning his back on Wesley, he said to Magheen, “The fiddler’s playing a reel, agradh.”

She gave him a beautiful, false smile. “Why, thank you for telling me so. I was just thinking, our English guest might like to learn the steps.”

Wesley found himself pulled into the center of the dancers. Magheen danced like a shadow on a breeze, light and graceful, conscious that the movements of her willowy body attracted every male eye in the yard. Although she smiled up at Wesley, her gaze kept straying to Logan Rafferty.

Wesley was curiously unresponsive to the lovely woman on his arm. Again and again his attention strayed to the golden-skinned girl who stood with her father and Logan Rafferty by the table.

“It’s generous of you,” said Wesley, “to give an Englishman this dance when your husband’s obviously such a great lord.”

“My husband’s a great fool,” she retorted. “I’m using you to show him so.”

Wesley could not suppress a grin. “All men should find themselves so used.” The pattern of the reel brought them near the table. Like a she-wolf guarding her cubs, Caitlin watched their every move. Feigning casual interest, he remarked, “Rafferty must be a busy man, times being what they are.”

“Aye. He expects me to sit and warm the hearthstones while he—oh!” Magheen lurched against Wesley. He whipped a glance over his shoulder in time to see Caitlin drawing back the foot she had stuck in her sister’s path.

The deliberate interruption convinced Wesley that he had guessed correctly about Rafferty.

When they passed the table a second time, the lord of Brocach reached out and grasped Magheen’s arm. “Get some manners on you, wife,” he ordered.

Magheen tossed her head. “I’ll not be your sometimes wife, Logan Rafferty. ’tis a full partner I’ll be or none at all.”

His spine stiffened. The people nearby hushed, the better to hear the quarrel.

“I came here to make a bargain,” said Logan. To Wesley’s surprise, he addressed not Magheen or Seamus, but Caitlin. “I’ve decided to reduce the dowry, out of the goodness of my heart.”

Magheen’s face blossomed into a smile that might have set the mountains to singing.

“The betrothal papers specified twelve healthy cows,” said Rafferty. “You offered one bullock as a token of good faith. I’ll take that, and call us even.”

While the onlookers gasped, Magheen buried her face in her slim white hands. Seamus hid behind the wide rim of his mug. Caitlin closed her eyes, nostrils thinning as she tried for patience and lost the battle.

“You picked the wrong time to let reason come on that great fat head of yours, Logan,” she burst out. In one swift movement she picked up her untouched wooden trencher of beef and thumped it down on the table in front of him. “There’s your bullock, and welcome to it!” Leaping up from the table, she stormed across the yard and disappeared up a crumbling flight of stairs to the wall walk.

* * *

Christ have mercy, Caitlin seethed, her bare feet clapping against age-worn flagstones. “Will nothing go right with me these days?”

She had arranged a brilliant marriage for her sister only to have the two fighting like Roundheads and Irishmen. She had cast a spell for her lover and had conjured a renegade Englishman. And to cap all her woes, Hammersmith was on the march again.

She paused at a wide break in the wall. Her gaze traveled down the sheer drop of Traitor’s Leap, where the sea hurled white-bearded breakers at the pointed rocks. Back in the Tudor queen’s time, a member of the MacBride sept had tried to adopt English policies. His efforts had driven him to this spot; his guilt had hurled him over.

Her thoughts circled round and round like a flock of gulls after a fishing boat, and came to rest on John Wesley Hawkins. She should feel relieved that he had decided to go. And yet a hidden voice in her heart whispered that he must stay, for there was unfinished business between them.

“I’d been wondering why you wouldn’t touch your meal,” said a smooth, golden voice.

She spun around. There stood Hawkins, smiling that heart-catching smile, transfixing her, backing her against the rough crenellated wall.

“I take it that roasting the bullock wasn’t your idea,” he added.

“My father’s.” She swung back to look over the wall. Waves exploded against the shore but farther out, the waters lay dark and calm. How many times had she stood here, gazing at the flat empty line of the horizon, seeking a glimpse of a tall ship coming toward her, bearing her heart’s desire?

“It’s a good harbor,” Hawkins said.

He stood very close to her, so close that her shoulder grew warm. “Yes.” She took a step away from him. The natural harbor had a narrow entrance leading to a deep, horseshoe-shaped cove.

“Cromwell is determined to have Clonmuir in Hammersmith’s control, isn’t he? So he can have a port of his own, a port capable of accommodating deep-draught vessels.”

“Yes,” she said again. “That’s why we’re so determined to hold it for our own.”

“Cromwell’s army exceeds the entire population of Ireland,” said Hawkins. “He has enough men and guns to lay waste to every stone of Clonmuir. How will you stop him?”

“We’ll—” She clamped her mouth shut. How careless this disarming man made her. “You’d be surprised, Hawkins, what a few deeply committed warriors can accomplish.”

“No,” he said with an odd, wistful shimmer in his shadow-colored eyes. “No, I wouldn’t be surprised. And you’re to call me Wesley.”

“It’s such an English-sounding name.”

“That it is, Caitlin MacBride. A man can’t change what he is.”

How true, she thought. It was that very truth that had led her, again and again, to forgive her father’s follies. If she and Hawkins had been other than they were, they might have been friends.

“Tell me about Logan Rafferty and your sister.” He had moved closer again, a brush of heat against her arm.

She knew she should retreat, or better yet, push him away. Yet the commanding beauty of his face, the obvious ease with which he held himself, kept her in a thrall of curiosity. She knew she shouldn’t confess the turmoils of Clonmuir to an English stranger, but where was the harm in it? She had no confidant save Tom Gandy, and her steward’s habit of speaking in riddles was more vexing than satisfying. Despite Hawkins’s intimidating good looks and blatantly English character, something about him put her at ease. Just looking into his eyes gave her a feeling of peace, like the rocking motion of a boat on a calm sea.

“Logan comes from an old and industrious clan,” she explained, “although he’s taken on some English ways. That should please you.”

“So far, nothing about the man has pleased me.”

Caitlin held back a smile. “He should have chosen a wife of higher rank but...well, you’ve seen Magheen.”

“She’s very pretty.”

A tiny ache flared in Caitlin’s chest. Pretty was a word that could never apply to her. Tall and gawky, wild of hair, her face made up of harsh lines, she was not one to escape men’s attention. But it was not the soft, poetic devotion of smitten swains. Instead she commanded soldiers who had no choice.

Images of Hawkins dancing with Magheen harried her thoughts. He had moved with animal fluidity, a perfect foil for Magheen’s winsome grace. In looks, Hawkins was her masculine equal. She wondered why he wasn’t paying court to her now instead of pursuing Caitlin.

“Magheen’s not merely pretty,” she said. “She’s bright and amusing and wise in...important ways. She’s had many suitors, but would settle for no less than Logan. But nothing is simple. Because of her lower station, he demanded a large dowry. I tried to hide the sum from Magheen.”

“I take it she found out.”

“She did, and it burned her pride.” Reluctant amusement tugged at the corners of Caitlin’s mouth.

“So what did she do about it?”

“She refused to share his bed until he reduced his demands.”