“You know so much, Alexandra,” he said. “Latin, and elephants, and all such stuff as to be found in books. I feel like a child beside you.”
Alex stared up at him, moved by the admission. “Everyone has to learn,” she said. “I knew no more than you, once.”
“When you were playing at nines with your governess?” he asked, smiling.
“Come, let’s do some letters.”
He pushed his hair back, and his face acquired that look of fierce concentration that she so loved. During his recuperation she had seen it many times as he had fielded his reading lessons. He sat cross-legged next to her now as she dipped the quill and scrawled a line on the paper.
“What is that you write?”
“You must see if you can decipher it.” She held the paper under his nose.
He snatched it from her hand and continued to stare down at it. “A pair,” he finally announced, looking at her for confirmation.
“Very good. And the rest?”
“Of.”
“Yes. A pair of what?”
“St,” he said, putting the first two letters of the next word together uncertainly. “Stay?”
She pointed at the sky.
“Star,” he said.
She nodded. “You know the next word.”
“Cross,” he said, proud of himself.
“Crossed. A pair of star-crossed what?”
“Love. A pair of star-crossed love? What is that, a riddle? It makes no sense.” He threw the sheet of paper on the ground.
“A pair of star-crossed lovers. That’s what we are, and what we may remain,” she said sadly.
“What does it mean?” he asked. She saw she had his full attention now.
“Lovers at cross purposes, lovers with an unfavorable conjunction of planets. A pair of lovers whom the fates conspire to separate.”
“Is that how you see us?” he asked quietly.
“Am I wrong?”
He couldn’t argue. He picked up the paper and stared down at the words. “Is this your phrase?”
Alex shook her head. “It’s a line from a play by Mr. William Shakespeare. I saw it at the Globe Theatre on Bankside last year, in the open air, as the reassembled playhouse was not yet finished.”
“What play?”
“The Tragical History of Romeo and Juliet. It’s an old Italian tale that Mr. Shakespeare took and adapted for his theatrical. The story concerns the children of two enemies who meet and fall in love and suffer for their passion.”
“And how does it end?” he asked warily, as if he already knew the answer.
“Badly.”
He crumpled the paper and tossed the ball into the trees. Then, as if in response to what she’d said, he pulled the blanket back and drew her, naked, into his arms. When she shivered in the night air, he covered her body with his own.
“Alex, will you stay with me?” he asked, kissing her hair.
“Of course I’ll stay with you. What do you mean?”
“Here, in Ireland.”
“Yes, yes. Why not?”
“You have no desire to go home, to England?”
“Oh, darling, my home is with you.”
When he made love to her again, she matched his ardor with her own.
* * * *
The heat of the sun on her face awakened Alex in the morning. She opened her eyes to see Burke sitting on the ground a few feet away, fully dressed and watching her.
“Time to go?” she asked, stretching.
He nodded, handing her the rumpled clothes she had discarded.
She donned them, and they headed back to the camp, holding hands in companionable silence.
Rory was waiting for them at the end of the path. Alex could tell by his expression that something had happened.
“We’ve heard from the castle,” he said to Burke in Gaelic. “They’re ready to make the trade for Aidan.”
Chapter 6
Alas, my love, you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously...
—“Greensleeves,” old English air
Burke’s expression didn’t change, but Alex felt him release her hand slowly, as if he were coming to a reluctant but imperative decision.
“What is it?” she asked, glancing from him to Rory and then back again.
“Go inside the tent, Alex,” Burke said quietly, nodding toward the camp.
“What about you?” she said, not liking his tone.
“I’ll join you when I can.”
Alex hesitated.
“Do as I say,” Burke added more sharply. Reluctantly she left him, glancing over her shoulder.
“What are you going to do?” Rory asked Burke with his usual directness once Alex was out of earshot.
“Why the devil did it take them so long to respond?” Burke countered, thrusting his hands through his hair.
Rory sighed. “There’s a faction among the English who wanted Aidan hung as an example to us. They prevented the ransom demands from reaching Cummings. He only found out recently, when one of them confessed. Once he heard that Alex was alive, he sent a message demanding the exchange, but it took some time to reach us. You know they haven’t been able to locate the camp and—”
He stopped his explanation when he noticed that Burke was barely listening. The question had been rhetorical. To him, the whys and wherefores of the delay were immaterial now. What mattered was his offer of the trade, and that his integrity demanded he honor it—even now, when it was the last thing on earth he wanted.
“Do the men know?” he asked Rory, looking around at the huddled groups conversing in low tones, certain individuals glancing over at him furtively. At the very edge of the clearing, Deirdre stood watching the scene as her brother saddled their horses.
“Some of them heard Carberry’s messenger talking to me,” Rory replied. “We were speaking English, of course, but Neary and Flavin can understand enough phrases to make out what was being said. I’m sure the word has spread.” He waited a moment and then added, “They want Aidan back.”
“As do I,” Burke snapped. “Are they worrying I’ll keep my English doxy in place of him?”
Rory didn’t answer.
Burke stood with his hands on his hips, gazing into the distance. The shadows under his eyes reflected his sleepless night and the dread of this moment, which he had almost convinced himself would never come.
“Send a message back that we’ll make the trade at dawn tomorrow at the castle gates,” he said finally.
“To give yourself another night with her?” Rory asked, but without bitterness.
“To give me time to explain it to her. And I want it to happen in daylight. Less chance of a trick.”
Rory turned to go.
“And Rory? Take the message yourself. And make it clear that if Carberry has any ideas about getting clever I’ll kill the girl on the spot.”
Rory stared at him.
“Say it just as I have,” Burke directed him gruffly.
“But Kevin—”
“Be off with you now.” Burke strode past him briskly into the tent.
Alex looked up as he came in, and the expression on his face made her heart jump into her throat. “What’s happened?” she whispered. “Tell me.”
“Rory heard from your uncle while we were gone. He wants to make the trade for Aidan.”
“And?”
“I’ve set the time for tomorrow morning at dawn.”
Alex felt as if he had punched her. “You don’t mean you’re going through with it?” she finally managed to say.
“I can do no other,” he replied, staring at a point in the middle of her forehead, refusing to meet her eyes.
Alex was stunned into silence. And in the silence her anger grew, like a sleeping animal uncoiling and gathering strength to spring.
“What do you mean?” she finally burst out, standing and facing him, her fists clenching and unclenching as if she might strike him. “Tell them you’ve changed your min
d, tell them they’ve accepted too late, tell them anything!”
Burke was silent as her furious words rained on him.
“You’re actually planning to hand me over to them like some plaything which no longer amuses you?”
“Alex, listen to me,” he began.
“Are you going to tell me that I’ve misunderstood, that you have no intention of giving me back?”
He looked away.
“I see,” she said quietly. She began to pace. “You knew this all along, didn’t you? You returned from your trip to parade that woman under my nose, knowing that this deal had been fixed. You went with me last night anyway, to have your amusement before the chance for it was gone, and all along my replacement was here, waiting for my imminent departure.”
It wasn’t true, it wasn’t fair, but she was past the point where he could reason with her.
“I’ll come back later and—” he started to say, but she cut him off in midsentence.
“Don’t bother. I have no desire to see you again before I have to. When you come for me in the morning I’ll be ready.”
He stared at her a long moment and then walked through the tent flap as abruptly as he’d arrived.
Alex sank to the floor, covering her face with her hands. She felt too numb to cry and resolved then and there that she would not. If Burke could hand her over to her uncle with a stone face and nary a loving word, then she could act the same way.
She was awake the night through, but Burke did not come to the tent to attempt another conversation. When dawn began to streak the sky, she washed her face in the pot of cold water Burke kept in the tent, tidied her hair with her hands, and changed into a clean tunic of Rory’s. She stepped through the flap into a chilly, misty morning and saw that Rory and Burke were dressed and ready, waiting for her.
Rory was untethering two horses from a tree, Burke’s sorrel and his own dappled gray. Burke watched her progress toward them and then mounted his horse. He took the reins from Rory and extended his hand down to Alex.
Alex had no choice but to grasp his hand. He hauled her onto the horse in front of him, where she sat turned into the hollow of his shoulder, her legs draped over one side of the horse. As they trotted slowly out of the camp, Rory falling in behind them, the men emerged from their tents to see them pass, watching their departure in silence.
The trip through the woods was agony for Alex. Burke’s physical closeness made the fact that they would soon be parting even more poignant. She closed her eyes and savored the pressure of his arms around her, trying to remember it forever. The rising sun filtered through the trees, dappling the leaves and creating shafts of light that pierced through the foliage to the ground. No one said a word until they were within sight of the castle and could make out the trio on horseback waiting there, the last wisps of the lifting fog swirling about them.
Alex turned to look up at Burke, but his gaze was trained ahead, on the men.
“That’s Aidan,” Rory confirmed behind them, and Alex looked at the man in the middle, between Lord Carberry and her uncle. He was as big as Burke, but slightly heavier and darker, his wavy hair the color of roasted chestnuts.
“Come up by me,” Burke said to Rory.
They came to a halt about fifty feet away from the three men. Aidan was dressed plainly, like his brother, but Carberry was outfitted in dandyish fashion, with a purple doublet and hose and a matching cap trimmed with gold thread perched on his graying hair. Alex’s uncle wore his usual sober clothing, but cut from the finest materials. His fingers were heavy with rings, and the Cummings ancestral sword was sheathed at his side.
There was a long silence.
“Well, Burke,” Carberry finally said, his voice ringing out in the early morning stillness, “is this how you repay my wife’s kindness to your mother?”
“My mother was your wife’s chambermaid, for which service she was paid, not well, but very meanly,” Burke replied. “And that was the end of it.”
Carberry shook his head. “You always were an arrogant pup, and you have grown into a most noisome man. You spent time under my roof, you were my sainted daughter’s childhood friend. Well, she is gone to God”—he crossed himself— “and so much the better to avoid what you’ve become. Have you no memory of those days?
Have you forgotten entirely the regard of my family for yours?”
“My quarrel is not with your lost ladies, but with you,” Burke replied.
“Alexandra, are you well?” Philip Cummings called out to her, ignoring this frosty exchange.
“Yes,” she replied.
“You’ve not been harmed?”
She felt Burke stiffen behind her. “No,” she said. “I’ve not been harmed.”
“Let her down,” Cummings ordered Burke.
“When my brother’s by my side.”
Carberry and Cummings exchanged glances. This testy meeting could erupt into dangerous hostility at any moment; it behooved them to cooperate. Cummings nodded at Carberry, who unsheathed his knife and leaned over to Aidan, slicing through the rope binding his hands. Aidan nudged his horse and it trotted forward until he brought it around to stand next to Burke.
“A bheil thu math?” Burke asked him. Are you all right?
“Tha,” Aidan replied. I am.
“I’ll take my niece now,” Cummings announced.
Burke jumped off his horse, held his hand up to Alex, and lifted her to the ground. For just an instant, his hands lingered on her waist, and Alex wanted to fling her arms around his neck and beg for him to keep her. But the moment passed and she turned away, glancing briefly at Rory before facing her uncle.
“Come here,” he said, and she obeyed, taking up her position next to his horse.
“I trust I’ll see no more of you,” Carberry said contemptuously to Burke.
“You’ll see no more of me when you’ve left Ireland to the Irish,” Burke replied. He looked at Alex a final time, his eyes very blue in the morning sunlight. Then he kicked his horse and galloped for the trees, his brother and Rory following him.
Alex watched them until they had disappeared completely into the forest.
* * * *
Alex stared down from her tower room at the moat below, the brackish water ruffled by the evening breeze. Sentries patrolled the entrance to the drawbridge, which was down now to receive a contingent of riders. At their head she spotted Lord Essex, his magnificent apparel bedraggled and stained from travel; even from such a distance she could see the dried mud clinging to his clothes and boots. She studied the scene for a moment and then turned away with a sigh. Both she and the queen’s favorite had come to grief in Ireland.
Once she’d had time to think about it, she knew she could not blame Burke for what he had done. He had behaved according to his own code of ethics, which was as strict in its way as the lord privy seal’s. He had made an offer to his enemy, and when it was accepted he had no choice but to go through with his part of the bargain. He simply could not make his feelings for her more important. An English gentleman would have done the same.
Alex heard the rattle of a key in the lock and braced herself for another interview with her uncle.
He was preceded into the tower room by one of Carberry’s servants, who deposited a tray on the serving table near the fire and then scurried out again. Philip Cummings waited until the woman was gone, his hands clasped behind his back in an attitude of forbearance, and then turned to confront Alex when the door closed.
“Well?” he said. “Have you anything more to say?”
Alex looked at him in silence.
“I find it incredible that you could spend such a length of time in the company of that rabble and then have nothing to report about the experience.”
“Uncle, would you have me invent some horrifying tale of abuse that you can use for political purposes? As I’ve already told you, I was well treated, I came to no harm, and now I’m back with you. There’s little else to say.”
His anno
yance with her was apparent. “I hope you understand that all this befell you simply because you defied the rules set out for where you could walk about the grounds.”
“I understand that.”
“I was humiliated before Carberry and Lord Essex,” he said, beginning a familiar diatribe. He went on to describe his humiliation in detail, but she wasn’t listening. Rather, she was staring out the window once more at the scene below. The drawbridge was now being raised.
Her view was obstructed when her uncle stepped in front of her and slammed the shutters closed.
“I’ll thank you for your attention,” he snapped. “You don’t seem to realize fully the position your extraordinary behavior has resulted in for me. We’ve lost a valuable hostage because of you, one that we might have used to better purpose.”
“Then why did you redeem me?” she asked.
He pursed his lips, not answering.
“Oh, it’s not necessary to reply,” she said. “I know how strongly you feel your responsibility concerning me.”
“And thankful you should be for my family feeling, else you would still be languishing among those ruffians, little girl.”
“They’re not ruffians,” she said, trying to suppress her anger.
He stared at her, astonished. “That Burke is no better than a highwayman! It’s well known that he and his men ambush travelers to the castle and rob them, cutting their purses and stripping their horses.”
“He practices robbery on occasion to arm his men, to free their country.”
“He practices robbery to line his pockets! His spurious patriotism is an excuse for brigandry of the worst sort.”
Alex had seen firsthand how humbly the rebels lived and was tempted to protest, but she realized that perpetuating this argument would only enrage Cummings further and reveal to him where her true feelings lay.
“I can’t believe you would defend that gang of hooligans to me,” he said.
“I was not defending them,” Alex replied, now sorry she had spoken, “merely stating a truth. If they were as bad as you say, I’d be dead or worse, and well you know it.”
His eyes narrowed. “Alexandra, you have always baffled me, but never more than at this moment. You were spared in order to trade you for that bandit’s brother, and for no other reason. I hope you harbor no romantic ideas about their treasonous rebellion against their lawful queen, and ours.”
The Highwayman Page 10