"I’d rather drown in a bog than settle for the life you offered me, Murchertach O’Toole," she muttered to herself, glaring resentfully at her former suitor.
"What was that?" he demanded, facing her. He crossed his brawny arms over his chest, clearly reveling in his role as her father’s successor, the clan’s new chieftain.
"I said I’d die before I’d disgrace my father’s memory," Triona answered.
"Wisely spoken. Then I’ll hear no more dissent when I say that you will honor Fineen’s last wish and accept Ronan O’Byrne, chieftain of the Glenmalure O’Byrnes, as your guardian and protector."
So the two men had been conspiring against her, she seethed, certain now that Murchertach had been waiting for the chance to wield his newfound power over her and had finally found it in Ronan. Well, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
"Your fine speech wasn’t needed, cousin," she said icily. "I’ve already decided to accept the O’Byrne’s offer to ride with him and his men on their raids. A far more enticing prospect than embroidering shirts or warming some loutish chieftain’s bed, wouldn’t you say?" She ignored Murchertach’s vehement oath and shot a glance at Ronan. "That is, if your offer still stands."
Ronan wondered if Murchertach’s face could possibly turn any redder, and for a brief moment admired her for so easily quelling the man’s smugness. "Aye, the offer stands."
"Then the matter’s settled. Now if the two of you don’t mind, I’ll return to my father. Alone."
Ronan heard the telling catch in her voice, but it didn’t match the look of pure disdain she threw at him as she shouldered her bowcase and stalked back into the hall. Or had it been directed at Murchertach? He couldn’t be sure.
All he was sure of was that she was accompanying him of her own free will. At least that would buy him a temporary reprieve from her hotheaded temper until they reached Glenmalure.
Or so he hoped . . .
Chapter 3
"JUST BECAUSE I’VE agreed to join you on your raids doesn’t mean that I have to like you, O’Byrne. I don’t."
Taking his eyes from the rugged line of mountains to the south, Ronan glanced at the young woman riding bareback beside him.
So Triona had deigned to speak to him at last. She hadn’t uttered a word to him since she’d accepted his offer two days ago. With Fineen’s burial behind them, Ronan’s stronghold only another hour’s ride away, he had begun to think she would remain stubbornly silent for the entire journey. He might have preferred that she had.
"And just because my father forgave you doesn’t mean that I’ll ever forget what you did to Conor," Triona continued.
"That makes two of us," Ronan muttered to himself, frowning now as Triona’s gangly gray wolfhound went crashing into the underbrush after a snowy-tailed rabbit. "You’d do well to keep that unruly beast of yours under control. He could startle the horses."
His terse advice was greeted by an indignant glare. "Conn isn’t unruly! I’ll have you know I trained him from a pup. He’s obedient and loyal and would come back with a single command if I wanted him to. But I’d rather let him run. If you O’Byrnes raid as often as I’ve heard, Conn and I will have little time for hunting once we reach your stronghold."
More aptly put, Triona, you’ll have no time for hunting, Ronan vowed silently, his gaze falling to the sleek white cat stretched across her lap.
He hadn’t expected Triona to meet him at the stockade gate with a menagerie in tow. But then he hadn’t expected her to possess a majestically powerful bay stallion any man would be proud to own either. Another surprise. It amazed him now that the copper-eyed feline held no interest in the hooded falcon perched on Triona’s shoulder, but it did hiss and spit when Conn came bounding from the trees, his red tongue lolling.
"Aye, that’s my Conn! Conn the Hundred Fighter!"
As Triona leaned over to pat the huge wiry-haired animal, Ronan realized he was staring at her again, a creamy glimpse of flesh revealed when her shirt pulled free of her trousers. But what jammed his breath was her smile, as open and radiant as the delight dancing in her eyes, and the sound of her laughter when Conn licked her hand. Soft and supple, and husky enough to stir any man’s senses . . .
"What are you looking at, O’Byrne?"
Slowly expelling his breath, Ronan met Triona’s wary gaze. She wasn’t smiling any longer, though it hardly mattered. She could be sticking out her tongue at him and grimacing and she’d still be one of the loveliest women he’d ever seen.
"Your bird," he lied, feeling distinctly uncomfortable and beginning to wish his new charge had been ugly as a hound. "Fine creature."
"Aye, so he is," Triona agreed, although she wasn’t wholly convinced that Ronan had been staring at her falcon. Gripping the reins with one hand, she quickly tucked in her rust-colored shirt, a hot blush firing her cheeks when Ronan pointedly looked away.
Damn if she hadn’t caught him watching her more than once during the past few days! she fumed, realizing just where his attention had been drawn. She had tried to avoid him, this unwanted guardian of hers, but that had been impossible in the somewhat cramped hall of Imaal. And then at her father’s burial, when Ronan had stood right next to her, so close that their fingertips had brushed
"Does your cat share as illustrious a name as Conn the Hundred Fighter?"
Triona met Ronan’s eyes, feeling suddenly a bit too warm. "Of course she does!" she snapped, wishing that she had kept her mouth shut for the entire journey as she had planned. As far as she was concerned, she and Ronan had nothing more to discuss than raiding. Furthermore, as soon as their vengeance was won, she, Aud and her pets would be on their way. Not home to Imaal, where Murchertach now ruled, but someplace else. Just where, though, she wasn’t yet sure.
"Well?"
Triona sighed with exasperation but decided to humor Ronan’s attempt at conversation. If she satisfied his curiosity, maybe then he would leave her alone.
"This is Maeve" —she gave the drowsy cat a fond stroke— "and the falcon you were so admiring is Ferdiad."
For a fleeting instant Triona imagined she saw the barest hint of a smile on Ronan’s face. But when he turned back to the mountain path, his striking features were as serious as ever. "Maeve the Warrior-Queen and her Connaught champion Ferdiad, friend and yet enemy of the mighty hero Cuchulain."
"Aye, and don’t forget Laeg, here." Triona proudly patted her stallion’s glistening reddish-brown neck. "He’s as stouthearted as they come. I knew his name should be Laeg the moment I first rode him."
"Cuchulain’s stalwart charioteer, courageous and true. So you’ve named all your pets after Eire’s ancient heroes. You must know your legends well."
"As should any good Irishman."
"Aye, and she can sing them well, too, Lord! Triona has a lovely voice," added Aud, close behind them.
"Aud!" Triona twisted around and gave her maid a quelling look, but the spare middle-aged woman simply nudged her spotted pony into a faster walk until they were riding three abreast.
Pleased to hear that Triona possessed at least one maidenly virtue, Ronan asked, "A lovely voice you say?"
"Oh, aye, Lord, as lilting as a lark," declared Aud, clearly eager to converse now that Triona had broken her silence. So eager in fact, that she leaned closer to Ronan, her large brown eyes animated and appearing even rounder in her small beak-nosed face. "Do you have a harpist?"
"Enough, Aud," Triona groused. She pulled up on the reins and fell back in front of the four O’Byrne clansmen who trailed them, the winding mountain path only wide enough for two horses. "I’m sure the O’Byrne doesn’t want to hear all of this—"
"Nonsense," Ronan interrupted, hoping to discover if there were more worthy womanly qualities to his reluctant charge than met the eye. "As your guardian, everything about you is of interest to me. Allow the good woman to speak." He turned back to Aud. "Aye, I’ve a harpist, one of the finest in Wicklow."
"He’d have to be one of the finest to m
atch my sweeting’s fair music," Aud chatted on proudly, listing the ancient legends that Triona could recite in song: the tale of the Red Branch Knights, Deirdre of the Sorrows, the Children of Lir and so many more.
"Jesu, Mary and Joseph," muttered Triona as she fell back even farther, embarrassed. Yet she should be used to such talk by now, and she knew her irrepressible maid meant no harm. Loyal to the bone, Aud had doted upon her since she was a wee babe. But Aud was also a meddler, forever hoping that somewhere there was a man Triona might accept . . .
"Little chance of that," Triona breathed to herself, watching as Conn playfully lunged in and out of the trees. She doubted there was a man alive who’d take her just as she was
"So Murchertach wasn’t the first man that Triona spurned."
"Oh no, Lord, there’ve been plenty of others."
"Aud!" Wondering how the conversation had jumped from the legends of Eire to such a personal topic, Triona realized with growing irritation that she should have been listening to her maid more carefully. "That’s enough talk about me!"
"But the O’Byrne was merely asking—"
"Too many questions!" Triona scowled at Ronan as she kicked Laeg forward, forcing Aud to shift places with her, the startled maid now riding behind. "If he must know anything else, then he can ask me himself."
"There is something," said Ronan, noting the inborn grace in Triona’s gesture as she shoved an unruly shock of bright copper hair from her face. "Why have you rejected every suitor?"
"Didn’t like them."
The truculent tilt of her chin told Ronan that the subject was a touchy one but he persisted, puzzled by her answer. "Nothing more than that?"
"She shot two of them with her arrows!" Aud interjected as if she couldn’t help herself. "Such fine-looking young men, too, and of good family. One in the leg and the other—"
"I grazed him in the shoulder," Triona finished tightly.
"You shot them?" Frowning to himself, Ronan remembered with discomfort how close he had come to being skewered by one of her arrows. "Did they overstep their bounds? Touch you? Insult you?"
"No, just wouldn’t leave me in peace."
"So you shot them."
"I said grazed, O’Byrne. It wasn’t my intent to maim them. Their wounds were barely scratches. It was just enough to make them go away."
Ronan studied her, amazed. "And your father didn’t object?"
"Why should he? He respected my judgment."
Now he’d heard just about enough, Ronan thought angrily, exasperated by her flippant answers. Not one of his men was half as wild. Her weapons had to go. And speaking of weapons . . .
"How did you come to be so skilled with the bow?" he asked, Triona immediately granting him a look of pure irritation.
"Have you wax in your ears, O’Byrne? I already told you, my father taught me."
"But surely that is an unusual thing for a man to allow his daughter, chieftain or no."
"Mayhap, but it seemed to give him the balm he needed after losing his only son. He had always loved to shoot targets with Conor, to hunt, to fish." Triona noted that Ronan’s expression had darkened, his grip on the reins very tight, but she continued on. "I hoped it might cheer him—if I learned to shoot, and it did. By the time my mother saw how good I’d become, it was too late."
"Too late?"
"Aye. I never had to embroider another stitch, or bother learning about household things for that matter, and my father never forced me. He would have lost his best hunting companion, he always said."
Ronan made no comment to this last bit, his tight-lipped silence vexing Triona.
"Well, since we’re asking questions of each other, what about you?" she demanded, her own curiosity getting the better of her. "You said you have no wife and no children, yet surely a renowned chieftain such as yourself has been offered many a pleasing bride."
"I’ve no time for marriage," came his gruff answer as he looked away.
"But if you don’t mind me saying so, Lord, ‘tis a shame, is what it is," Aud interjected in disbelief. "A fine handsome man like you."
"Handsome, aye, but I’d wager that stern expression you seem to favor has frightened away more than one maiden," Triona muttered loud enough for Ronan to hear. "If you think I’m not as I used to be, O’Byrne, neither are you. I remember you always laughing, always smiling and telling tales. I remember the serving girls fighting over which one would wait upon you, and how you would pull them onto your lap and kiss—"
"Then you were up far too late for your young age," Ronan cut her off, his stone gray eyes locking with hers. "People change, Triona. Enough said."
She stared back, momentarily silenced by the vehemence of his voice and the haunted cast to his eyes. Strangely he looked younger at that moment, as if the years had been stripped away, and she dropped her gaze at the sudden tugging in her chest, her breath stilled in her throat.
The sensation reminded her of when she used to watch him from a knothole in the kitchen, her father’s hall resounding with merriment. When she used to watch Ronan’s face, thinking him the most handsome of men with his midnight brows, lean, strong features and that devil-may-care smile. When she used to watch him kiss those giggling girls . . . knowing she shouldn’t be there and yet unable to tear herself away, wishing that one day when she was older, Ronan O’Byrne might be kissing her—
"I said look to your mount, Triona. The path is steep here."
"W-what?" Flustered both by the turn of her thoughts as well as not hearing Ronan’s warning the first time, she tightened her grip on the reins, preventing Laeg from dancing sideways. As they began to descend a sharp hill, the green wooded beauty of Glenmalure stretching out before them, Triona was grateful that she had the rocky path to occupy her attention until she regained her composure. A composure she resolved not to lose again.
"We’ll be there soon," Ronan announced, taking the lead when the path once more grew level.
Gathering Maeve under one arm, Triona urged Laeg into a trot and caught up with Ronan; from his surprised expression, she guessed that he had expected her to stay behind with Aud. The command in his eyes told her that he wanted her to do just that, which she ignored.
His clansmen seemed to obey him without question, and she imagined she would, too, once they were out on a raid. Granted, she could see why Ronan had won such successes against the Normans given the unswerving obedience and loyalty of his men. But right now she had something important to discuss with him. She determinedly rode a little ahead of him, then declared over her shoulder, "I’ve the perfect plan to avenge my father."
"We’ll talk of it later."
"Later?" Stunned, Triona yanked up on the reins and waited until his glossy black stallion was even with hers. "What do you mean, later? My father lies cold in his grave, dead by Norman hands, and . . . and you’re saying that I must wait to discuss our plans for vengeance?"
Ronan passed her without answering, which infuriated Triona. Once again she caught up with him, her voice growing shrill as she persisted.
"But we know who those men were! The Normans who attacked my father bore the de Roche crest, a three-headed dragon! That accursed baron of Naas might well have been among them when my father strayed onto de Roche land—"
"De Roche land?" Ronan interrupted, his harsh tone clearly meant to rebuke her. "You mean stolen land, O’Byrne land and Fineen, as my kinsman, had every right to be hunting upon it! And if your father’s men hadn’t been hunting elsewhere, but had kept him within sight instead of stumbling upon his attackers after it was too late, the O’Toole would still be alive. Murchertach told me there were three Irish for every Norman. That’s why the yellow curs retreated without a fight. Three to one!"
"Aye, three to one," echoed Triona, the same sick feeling welling inside her that had plagued her since that day. Remorse, because like her clansmen she hadn’t been with her father when he had ridden after that wounded buck. And crushing despair, when she had seen the bloody gash a
cross his ribs, his right thigh slashed to the white bone, and guessed then that he would not survive . . .
"Enough, Triona, you cannot blame yourself," Ronan said grimly, her stricken expression cuing him to what she must be thinking. At once he found himself wishing he could be as charitable with himself, then he thrust his mind back to Triona. He had learned from Murchertach that she had accompanied her father on that fateful hunting trip, a harsh ordeal she would have been spared if not for Fineen’s misguided indulgence. "As I told you, we’ll talk of this later."
When she didn’t answer, simply hugging her white cat closer to her breast, Ronan almost regretted what was to come.
Almost.
The resentful look she shot at him only heightened his resolve.
Chapter 4
TRIONA HAD EXPECTED Ronan’s mountain stronghold to be as formidable as the man, and she was right.
They passed through two massive earthen ramparts before they reached the inner embankment, atop which was erected a timber palisade of stout red oak. As the final gates were opened for them, this last set so tall and heavy that eight strong men were needed for the task, she was certain that even if the Normans ever found this remote stockade they’d be hard-pressed to breach it.
"It’s just as I imagined, O’Byrne." Triona looked around her at the rugged peaks towering above the glen, the mighty Lugnaquilla rising to the southwest. "Considering the rebel’s price on your head, you couldn’t have found a safer haven."
That Ronan gave no reply didn’t concern Triona. From the set look on his face, she imagined he was already preoccupied with any number of the responsibilities that plagued an important chieftain.
As for herself, her thoughts were racing ahead to that first raid. Aye, she was good with weapons, but she’d never before ridden on such a venture. Her father and the Imaal O’Tooles had raided with other rebel clans in earlier days, but after Conor’s death, Fineen had kept to the Wicklow Mountains. So she knew little of harrying Normans. She would have to watch and learn quickly from Ronan and his men, the better that she’d be prepared when they finally faced her father’s murderers.
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