by Susan Wiggs
“No.” He returned to the table and poured heather beer into cups for each of them. “If O Mahoney doesn’t return by daybreak, I’ll send someone after him.”
“Where is our guest?” Iago asked. “Is her sickness passed?”
“She went to walk out in the fields.” Aidan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Would that I could ease her melancholy.”
“Can you?” asked Donal Og.
“Yes and no.” Aidan drew out the letter the contessa had pressed into his hand at their parting. “The symbols on the back of Pippa’s brooch are from the Russian language. The contessa found someone to translate the words. ‘Blood, vows and honor.’” He shivered, remembering Pippa’s story of the dying Gypsy woman.
Donal Og stroked his beard. “Someone’s motto?”
“It is the motto of a clan called Romanov, far across the seas. They are associated with a family we know well.” He took a sip of ale. “The de Lacey family.”
Iago and Donal Og exchanged a glance. “Richard de Lacey?”
Aidan set down his cup. “He could be her brother.”
“Diablo!” whispered Iago. Donal Og gave a low whistle.
Aidan had worked it all out from the information gathered by the contessa. Years earlier, plague had stricken the de Lacey household, and Oliver de Lacey was not expected to live. His wife, fearing their only child would fall ill, too, had sent their tiny daughter on a voyage to the kingdom of Muscovy to stay with the kin of her grandmother.
“The ship was lost,” Aidan told his listeners. “No survivors were found.”
“You think there was a survivor,” Donal Og said.
“And that her name is Pippa,” Iago added.
He felt that odd lift of nervousness in his gut. “Philippa,” he said. “The lost child was named Philippa.”
Iago stroked his chin. “It is Pippa. It has to be.”
“Imagine.” Donal Og quaffed his ale in one swallow. “The ragamuffin’s got noble blood. Have you told her yet?”
“No!” Aidan stood and prowled through the musty hall. “You’re to say nothing. Nothing.”
“But it’s her family. Her heart’s desire. Surely, coz, it’s a grand and wanton cruelty to withhold the information.”
“Call me cruel, then,” he snapped. “I’ll say nothing until I am absolutely certain.”
“It all fits,” Iago said. “She looks like Richard—the hair of gold, the brilliant smile, the lack of reverence for her betters—”
“You didn’t notice that until I told you what I learned,” Aidan pointed out. “I don’t want her hurt. You say what insufferable snobs the English nobles were. The de Laceys accepted their loss more than two decades ago. What if they do not want the old wound reopened? What if they are ashamed that their daughter lived as a common street performer, a thief?”
Donal Og nodded, understanding dawning on his face. “What if they call her a pretender who stole that brooch?”
“Or what if,” Iago chimed in, “they decide to accept her, only to learn she is an outlaw for helping the O Donoghue Mór escape London Tower?”
Aidan looked from one to the other. “Now you see why I hesitate.”
Iago walked to the window and seated himself in the embrasure, where weak sunlight trickled over him. “Ah, why do we bother so with this toilsome life?”
Donal Og snorted. “Is there another choice?”
Iago turned and gripped the edge of the embrasure. “Upon my soul, there is.”
Donal Og made a heart-thumping gesture with his hand on his chest. “The islands in the great western sea of the Caribbees.” He mimicked Iago’s round-voweled accent and musical timbre. “Where the sun shines all day, where food falls from the trees, where the water is warm enough to swim in naked.”
“It is all true, you large Irish ogre. Ah, I am the first to admit there are a few problems—”
“Slavery, disease, the Inquisition—”
“But a man can live free if he is smart enough. There are uninhabited islands by the thousands. A man can make what he wants of his life. With whom he wants.”
“Ah, Serafina!” Donal Og pretended to swoon.
“No wonder you have no woman.” Iago curled his lip in a sneer. “You have the mind of a jackass. No, that is an insult to the jackass. The mind of a brick of peat.”
“A brick of peat has no mind,” Donal Og roared.
“Precisely,” said Iago.
As their conversation deteriorated into bickering, Aidan spied a movement on the slope leading down to the sea. A flash of gold, a flutter of brown skirts. For a moment he stood transfixed. The hills and the crashing sea were so vast. Pippa looked as vulnerable as an autumn leaf on the wind.
She found a sheep path leading down along a crumbling cliff. Below her, treacherous breakers bit at the shore. In one heart-seizing instant he remembered something else the contessa had told him about Oliver de Lacey.
In his youth, Wimberleigh had a reckless reputation. His moods swung from giddy to melancholy. Some—even his half brothers and sisters—swore he harbored an earnest wish to die.
Iago and Donal Og were too busy arguing to note how quickly Aidan left the hall.
A dark fascination with the sea drew Pippa. Now she felt strong enough to move close to the seething ocean, to witness the violence and drama of the battering waves.
She clambered down a path. The slope was pocked by large gray rocks around which grew clumps of grass and wildflowers. Ireland was surely the loveliest place she had ever seen. It was stark and wild and uncompromising—just like Aidan O Donoghue.
The path ended at a great cleft between two hills. Within the fissure, a fall of broken boulders and old driftwood tumbled into the roaring sea. She teetered on the edge, tasting the sharp salt air and feeling the wind rush over her like a great, sweeping, invisible caress. The boom of the waves exploding on the rocks below filled the air. Beads of spray touched her face and clung in her hair. Then, without warning, she was lost, swamped with memories. Uttering a low cry, she tumbled into the dream world inside her head.
Up and up and up she climbed, battling her way through the rushing water on each successive deck. She could no longer see Nurse nor hear her saying Hail Mary Hail Mary. The sailors were all gone. But for the dog, she was alone now.
She poked her head up through a square hatch and was out in the face-slapping rain with thunder shouting and a burning bolt of lightning turning night to day.
It stayed light only for an instant, but she saw the manin the striped shirt who had been shouting about battening hatches and shortening sail. He lay all tangled in thick rope. His face was gray, his lips were black, and his eyes were wide-open like the eyes of the stag head that hung in Papa’s hunting lodge.
She clung to a ladder while the dog scrabbled and lurched on long, skinny legs. The boat began to tilt and groan, riding up one side of a wave that was bigger than a mountain. Higher and higher they went, like the forward arc of her garden swing. The big boat hovered at the peak and seemed to freeze there, waiting, before it fell over.
Down and down and down, barrels crashing everywhere, toppling one against the other like ninepins. The lightning flashed again. In the distance a shape rose out of the sea like a great rock or perhaps one of the towers in the palace where her godmother lived.
She wished she could remember the name of her godmother, because she surely needed help now. But all she could recall was that the lady had blazing red hair, mean black eyes and a loud, bossy voice. Everyone called her Your Majesty.
Then she lost all thought. A big wooden barrel broke loose and rushed straight at her as if someone had hurled it—
The breath left her in a whoosh as she was flung to the ground. She had no voice to scream as a hard body covered her and pinned her against the grassy turf.
At last she regained her breath. “Jesus Christ on a frigging crutch!” she yelled. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The O Donoghue Mór had his body press
ed to hers. She could feel his heart beating rapidly against her chest. Somehow that pleased her. He had run all the way to see her.
“Well?” she asked, sounding more annoyed than she felt. She was still slightly dazed by the—What was it? A vision? A waking dream? A true memory? Then the images faded and dispersed.
Aidan lifted himself by bracing his hands on the grass on each side of her. This was, she realized with a heated thrill, the time-honored pose of lovers. She had seen it depicted in a book of disgusting sonnets Dove had stolen from a St. Paul’s bookseller.
The wind caught at Aidan’s ebony hair, and sunlight glinted in the single beaded strand. Ah, he was Ireland, in all its pain and splendor; like the land, he was rugged and beautiful, untamed and untameable. She had the most indecent urge to run her fingers through his hair.
“Do you often attack unsuspecting females?” she asked. “Is this some Irish ritual?”
“I thought you were getting too close to the edge. I wanted to stop you before you fell.”
“Or jumped?” she asked. “By my troth, Your Highness, why would I do such a thing as that?”
“You would not?”
“That is the act of a madwoman or a coward. Why would I want to die? Life is hard. Sometimes life hurts. But it’s all so blessedly interesting that I should not like to miss any of it.”
He chuckled and then laughed outright. There was something deliciously intimate about the way his body vibrated against hers. She pressed her fists into the grass to keep from winding her arms around his neck. Part of her longed to give in to impulse, but another part held back, resisting, wary.
“Are you going to remove yourself sometime between now and eventide?”
“I have not decided. You are very soft in certain places.”
He placed his lips close to her ear. With a warm gust of breath, he said one of the sweetest things she had ever heard. “It is a rare thing indeed for a man to feel so perfectly comforted by a woman.”
She forced herself to scowl. “I know what you are doing.”
“Getting ready to kiss you?” His mouth hovered above hers.
Lord, but she wanted to draw his taste inside her. She used all of her willpower to say, “I don’t think you should.”
He lowered his mouth and then, quite deliberately leaving her hunger unsated, he turned his head to nuzzle her neck.
“Why not?” he whispered.
“You’re trying to make me forget how vexed I am with you.”
“Vexed? Why?”
She was stunned. “Because, you arrogant stuffed doublet, you gave me no choice. Do you think I wanted to come here? Wanted to be dragged along on that horrid ship for an endless sea voyage?” She scrambled out from under him and sat back on her heels.
“I thought you wanted to help me,” he said. “As I helped you, once upon a time.”
“That was once upon a time. All I wanted,” she said, “was the chance to earn the queen’s favor.” To her shame, her voice cracked. “The queen was going to help me find my family. I broke you out of the damned Tower! All I wanted was for you to end your hunger strike, and you wouldn’t give me that.”
“I could not,” he said. “I had to stay firm.”
“You could have given in just so the queen would reward me.”
“And if the escape had failed?”
She had no answer, so she scowled at him.
“Pippa,” he said, “if it means that much to you, we can claim I forced you to come along as hostage.”
“That,” she said, “would not be so far from the truth.”
“We could arrange for you to be rescued by the English.”
The idea of being taken in by strangers was repellent to her, but she could not let him see the truth. She drew herself up and said. “Ha! You’ll not be rid of me that easily, my lord.”
Aidan saw that she was close to shattering. Pippa, sturdy survivor of the London underworld, was about to be driven to weeping by the only man who cared about her.
He wanted to touch her again, to gather her to his chest, but touching was dangerous. His blood was still on fire from their embrace. He might not be able to stop himself a second time.
“Tell me more of this reward, a gradh,” he said, brushing a curl away from her temple.
“The queen made me an offer. If I persuaded you to eat, she’d help me. All you could think of was your fast, and your honor—your stupid, precious honor.”
The lash of anger was sudden, unexpected. “You and the queen made a bargain? That’s why you wanted me to eat?” As quickly as the fury had seized him, it fled. So she had made a bargain, using him as leverage. It was no worse than what he had done.
“Ah, Christ.” He grabbed her and pulled her against his chest. “I didn’t know.”
“She was going to summon all the noblewomen of the realm, get an army of clerks to search the records.” She clutched at the front of his shirt. “Nothing would have come of it. I know you’re thinking that. But it was my only chance. And now it is gone.”
“You should have explained it all,” he said. “Nay, it would have made no difference. I would not have compromised myself even to give you your most cherished wish. The true cost would have been exacted from the people of this district.”
She blew out a disgusted breath. “I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if something terrible happened here.”
He ground his teeth together to keep himself silent. He knew in the very marrow of his bones that she was Philippa de Lacey.
Instead of telling her, he forced himself to think matters through. The lofty de Laceys might reject her, which would be more painful than never knowing.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair. “Somehow I’ll get you back to England. You’ll be blameless, I swear it.”
She pulled back to look up at him. “If all of your eloquent speeches were solid gold, I should be a wealthy woman indeed.”
He stood and helped her to her feet. “I never promised I would be good for you.”
The breeze tousled her curls, which by now had grown nearly to her shoulders. “You were good to me. Never doubt it.”
He took her hand, and they started up the hill together. If someone had told him that one day his best friend in the world would be a Protestant Sassenach street waif, he would have laughed them out of his presence.
Yet the most unlikely of circumstances had come true.
At the top of the hill, O Mahoney met them. His face pinched and white, the scout sat upon a lathered Connemara-bred mount.
“What news?” Aidan asked. “Have you been to Ross Castle?”
“I have seen it.” O Mahoney glanced at Pippa and switched to Gaelic. “Ill news. The ramparts are flying English colors.”
By the time the party rode into Aidan’s district, Pippa had ceased complaining. She was still terrified of riding on horseback, but all her protests fell on deaf ears.
The sharp sea air gave way to the rich green scents of woodland and pasture. The forest thickened, and in some places, branches and debris lay across the path.
“Tis plashing,” Donal Og explained, gesturing at a heap of broken trees. “The Irish damage the paths through the woods to slow the advance of the Sassenach.”
She shivered. This war was real here, imminent. Not just some vague idea murmured about at court. The trees soared to the sky, the trunks like massive pillars, the leaves a translucent canopy. Velvet moss grew on the forest floor. Sunlight, filtered through the leafy awning, glowed with a verdant luminescence. A hush hung in the fecund air.
No wonder the Irish believed in enchantment. Only magic could have created a place so holy and silent. It was like standing in a cathedral; the star-shaped leaves, shot through by sunlight, were glass panes in the most glorious of windows.
“It was a fine, grand place to be a boy, long ago,” Donal Og said, kneeing his mount to draw abreast of Pippa.
“This is where you and Aidan played?” She thought it extr
aordinary for a person to have ties to a particular spot on earth. That was an alien notion to her.
“Playing? Nay, it was all serious business. I was always the bigger lad, but he was the braver and the better thinker, though if you tell him I said so, I’ll damn you for a liar.”
“Your secret is safe with me.” She pictured them, one dark, one fair, darting through greenwood groves or leaping across one of the many burbling springs or hiding in the cleft of a rock.
“No wonder London seemed so strange to you,” she said. “This is a place apart. A wild, magical world.”
“Like all magic, it has its perils.” Donal Og clicked to his horse and trotted to the fore to fall in step with Aidan.
They had reached the edge of the forest. The shadowy woods opened out like a set of lofty doors flung wide. With a cry of wonder, Pippa shaded her eyes. The forested hills surrounded a misty blue-and-green valley. Lakes dotted the landscape, and here and there little rock-bound bits of tillage hugged the shores.
Very far away, on a jut of land pushing out into the largest of the lakes, stood a castle. The massive tower was built of light-colored stone, surrounded by lofty battlements near the top. Small, defensive windows pierced the walls and ramparts.
High atop the tower flapped the banner of England.
“That is Ross Castle,” she said.
“Aye, it is.” Aidan’s voice sounded strained.
They rode the rest of the way in silence. Aidan’s one hundred soldiers were already encamped on the shores of the middle lake, awaiting orders.
The main tower of the castle shone like alabaster, the foundations formed by a great upheaval of ancient rock. A narrow neck of land led to an imposing gate with an arching guardhouse. The iron teeth of the raised portcullis gave the menacing look of an evil grin.
A guard stepped out to challenge them. “Halt, while I summon the master.”
Aidan barely glanced at the guard. He rode straight on through the arched gate while the Englishman spluttered and gesticulated wildly. “Attack!” he called. “Invasion! The barbaric hordes are upon us!”