“Only English troops?” Diarmid asked. “He’s been known to use gallowglass.”
“Maisie didn’t get any indication of gallowglass in hold. And there won’t be,” Ailis said decisively. “Not for this fight. It will be Irish against English.”
“Are you certain?”
“I know Dane. This is a matter of pride. He wants to grind us beneath his boots—and only English boots will do.”
Diarmid looked unconvinced but did not dispute the matter. There was a more critical point to make. “Even if it’s only his men, Dane will have more troops than we can muster. Unless you”—he nodded at Maisie—“managed to poison their food and water, we cannot match them in numbers.”
“I thought about it.” Maisie said it so matter-of-factly it was impossible to tell if she was serious. “But at the time, I had no reason to suppose we would not be released unharmed. It seemed silly to provoke matters. Besides, if there’s anything well-guarded at Blackcastle, it’s the food and drink stores. Dane knows he’s always at risk of being cut off for a time. He can withstand a siege for some weeks at least.”
“We will not lay siege,” Ailis said flatly. “Sieges are for cold calculation, not vengeance. Liadan will not rest in peace until Dane is dead. We must draw him out for that.”
“Of course he’ll be drawn!” Diarmid shouted. “He can sweep through whatever men we can muster. How will that help Liadan rest?”
Ailis felt her mouth smile and knew it was as cold in appearance as it felt. “Dane will not use gallowglass…but we will.”
“With what money? We have barely enough to feed the household through this winter. We have nothing to sell except ourselves—and even if we could, we cannot deduct one man of us from this fight.”
“Then it’s a good thing Finian married a rich girl,” Maisie said.
In the silence that fell, hope warred with disbelief on Diarmid’s face. He spoke directly to Maisie. “But your dowry money was not great, and most of it has been spent feeding us this far.”
“That was only the dowry money you knew about,” Maisie replied calmly. “I am not a rich girl so much as I am a merchant’s girl. My brother thought he bought me off cheaply. That’s because he undervalues relationships. I have a loyal faction in my grandfather’s company, and my own factor in Dublin. My dowry money was twice what was reported to you—the remainder has been invested for me. One of those investments is a private company of European mercenaries.”
This time the silence was absolute. Ailis might have laughed, if there was any laughter left to her in this world. The men were staring at Maisie as though they’d never seen her before—and so they hadn’t. Till now she had been thought of in the same space as Liadan, young and cheerful, meant to be cosseted and otherwise ignored.
What fools they had all been.
Diarmid was the first to recover. “A company large enough to make a difference?”
“Two hundred, half of them mounted. Including their own cooks, physician, and engineer.”
“Where are they?”
“Dublin. Since the spring. Broken into smaller units to guard my business interests in shipping. The English authorities could hardly refuse us that, seeing as they cannot be trusted to guard their own interests.”
Diarmid laughed. “Can they get out of Dublin?”
Maisie merely looked at him with withering contempt. “They are already on their way here. Once again, in small units and as quietly as possible. A few will head here—the rest will be just within reach until the last minute. We don’t want to tip our hand.”
“ ‘Our’ hand?” Diarmid asked bluntly. “What benefit do you derive from this?”
When Maisie spoke, it was with a voice of fire and threat. “You think vengeance is solely an Irish virtue? I rode back to Cahir with Liadan’s blood on my hands and in my hair. I will have vengeance for that.”
Ailis took charge once more. “So we are agreed to accept the offer of mercenaries?” She waited for each of them to assent. “There is one condition—Stephen Courtenay will command the mercenary company.”
She expected a fight. But again, perhaps her grief was useful to remind them that she was only a woman and of course would act from her emotions. In any case, only Diarmid spoke. “Is this your condition? Or hers?” He jerked his head at Maisie.
“It is ours, and it is absolute.”
Even a proud Irishman could swallow the distasteful when necessary. If using one Englishman would allow them to destroy Dane, so be it.
The meeting broke up, and only Maisie lingered. “Will you tell him?”
Ailis had not seen Stephen since he’d lowered her daughter’s body down from his horse a week ago. She wasn’t looking forward to seeing him now. “You can do it if you like.”
“He needs to see you.” Maisie hesitated, then added, “I think you will find him a compassionate listener. You should talk to him.”
“About what?” My blindness, my failure, my damned pride for which Liadan paid…
“You both need absolution,” Maisie said gently. “I think you will understand each other.”
Maisie left her then, and Ailis stood alone. Could Stephen absolve her? Did she want him to? He had sins of his own to count, sins against her as well as the clan…
But at the very least, he would have to be told about the mercenary force and Maisie’s requirement that he lead it. She would begin there and see what happened.
—
Stephen’s second imprisonment at the hands of Clan Kavanaugh was an entirely different experience than the first. Diarmid chained him, for one thing. No one ever talked to him, for another. But mostly, the hell of it all was inside his own skull. Rather than planning and practicing his cover, preparing to worm his way into the trust of a household he didn’t know, Stephen was mired in a familiar guilt. It was similar to the torture he’d passed through in the months after the prisoners’ slaughter. This time, though, there was no alcohol to dull it. Perhaps that was a good thing—but it didn’t feel like it in the darkest hours of the night.
As a ghost, Liadan was even more effective than Roisin had been. The child was a constant memory both waking and sleeping: her swift footsteps, her lightning smile, her ever-present curiosity and straightforward manner of speaking. The world was a poorer place without her in it, and if Stephen had hated Oliver Dane on Roisin’s behalf, he now loathed the man with an intensity that curdled his stomach.
He didn’t much care what the Kavanaughs did to him, just so long as they took out Dane first.
When the door opened, he expected the unsmiling Diarmid or one of the two guards who brought him food daily. But it was Ailis.
Stephen jerked to his feet, brought up short by the chains he’d forgotten he wore. He noted the pallor, the hollows carved in her cheeks, the dark rings around her eyes that spoke of sleepless nights and agonized days. All he wanted was to put his arms around her and pretend he could ease the grief.
Instead, he did the only thing he could. He apologized. “I am so sorry. I have failed you.”
“By not delivering my daughter as you promised? Or by lying to me in the first place?”
“For all of it. This is my fault.”
For a minute she looked as though she meant to agree, but then the edges of her face crumpled and she looked nearly as vulnerable in her distress as Liadan ever had. Stephen felt as though he were seeing Ailis as she might have looked when Dane had so casually used her in Kilmallock. He bit down hard on the surge of rage. This wasn’t about him.
“Oh, Stephen, there is fault and enough to go around. I have hardly had time to count your sins—my own are too pressing.”
“You have no fault here.”
“I have every fault! I command here, Stephen. My voice gives the orders. Father Byrne was my most loyal supporter for years. He might have argued with me—rarely—but he would not have acted against me. Not in secret.”
“Father Byrne let Dane go because Peter Martin came to him with
a plan.” Stephen felt a stirring of unease. From far away, he thought he could see where Ailis was going, and he didn’t want her to go there. He didn’t want her to say it.
“Yes, Peter Martin acted for English interests. Father Byrne only ever acted in my interest. He let Dane go because I told him to.”
“What?”
“He came to me with Martin’s plan. I nearly threw Martin into another cell to rot alongside Dane when I found out—but then I considered that if Dane escaped, I could hunt him down on the road and kill him in the dark. That would be legitimate. So I told Byrne to go along with the plan.”
“Why not tell someone?”
“Because you were both right! But I didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t want to back down. My pride…that was what killed my daughter. I should have known Dane would always win.”
“Not always, Ailis. Dane cannot win the coming fight. Liadan will be avenged.”
Ailis must have read his longing to touch her, for she came forward and unlocked his chains. The same chains from which Dane had been freed ten days ago. But once freed, Stephen was afraid to move. Afraid to do or say the wrong thing.
Ailis moved for him. She had never kissed him like this—desperate, hungry, as though trying to lose herself in him. The only thing to do was respond in kind. Until she began to untie his lacings.
“Ailis, stop. You’re not thinking.”
“For the first time in days! I don’t want to think, Stephen. I want to forget.”
“This isn’t the way.” He felt himself a hypocrite even as he said it. Everything in him was shouting for her. He was shaking so hard it took force of will to hold himself apart. But the last time he’d let his desires dictate, Roisin had died.
“What is the way, Stephen? To lie your way into my bed? To make me believe that, just maybe, there was one Englishman in the world who didn’t deserve an excruciating death? You owe me. This is my payment.”
He would have had to hurt her to stop it—and he didn’t want to do either one. It was hard to tell which of them was more desperate. It broke Stephen’s heart to see how thin she was as he removed skirts and shift, her collarbone and hip bones sharp beneath his hands. He laid her down gently on the pallet (clean, at least), and Ailis pulled him with her. There were tears mixed with gasps, and Stephen was fairly confident that, for a few moments at least, her grief was swamped by her body’s joy.
She slept for an hour after, and Stephen watched her breathe. He imagined sleep had been hard to come by for her and hoped the pain of waking would be tempered rather than worsened by what had passed. He had no idea what would come next. Ailis might easily chain him up once more, or put him on trial. But he had an idea of his own, and when she finally stirred, he put it to her while her defenses were still low.
“You should hold me for ransom,” he said bluntly. “You will need money to take down Dane. Take it from the English.”
“What if your queen is not minded to pay to get you back? She is notoriously tightfisted, and if she’s heard some version from Dane of your betrayal? Elizabeth won’t fund her own soldiers in Ireland—she won’t make the mistake of funding mine.”
“The queen doesn’t come into it. You said it yourself—I’m heir to the wealthiest dukedom in England. My own lands of Somerset could bear a significant ransom, and I do not think my father would balk overly at paying in of himself. Set your terms, Ailis, and let me make what amends are possible.”
“I don’t deny the thought of using English gold to pay troops to destroy Dane is enticing…but it’s not needed. Maisie has anticipated us both. The girl secretly held back half her dowry and invested it through her own business factor. Her investments include a European-trained mercenary force. They are already making their way to Cahir to join us in attacking Blackcastle.”
Stephen stared at her blankly, then was seized by a desire to laugh. All those letters Maisie had written and received? He’d thought them nothing but the everyday outpourings of a young girl far from home. She had completely and thoroughly surprised him, and he thought his sisters would be impatient with him because of it. Hadn’t he lived surrounded by clever women? And here he’d fallen into the simplest of errors—assuming that because she was young and female and not strikingly beautiful, that Maisie must also be useless.
“Well done, Mariota,” he murmured admiringly. “I’m glad of it, Ailis. You are planning to attack, then?”
She stirred and sat up, hair falling over her shoulders to veil her breasts. “We are planning to attack. Maisie has demanded you command the mercenaries and I have agreed.”
“Why?”
“Because I think the story you told me about Dane killing an Irish girl you cared for is more or less true. One can feign desire and friendship and love…but I’ve never found anyone who can effectively feign hatred. You hate him. And I need a commander in the field who hates him for his own sake and not merely for Liadan. It will make you reckless.”
“You make me reckless,” he whispered. When he kissed her, he could taste a desire equal to his and felt a ridiculously male pride that he’d succeeded in teaching her pleasure.
As she pulled him down, her body finally warm beneath his hands, Ailis whispered back, “I will break your heart, Englishman.”
Stephen didn’t care.
Dominic Courtenay had to be forcibly persuaded not to go to Ireland after his son. Kit had the distinct impression the queen threatened him to prevent it, though he couldn’t imagine with what. Whatever their conversation, Dominic had refrained from sailing, though he’d ridden to Bristol with Kit and twenty-four of his own handpicked soldiers.
“You brought Stephen back once,” Dominic told him grimly. “Do it again, son.”
Shouldn’t it be the other way round? Kit wondered. He’d always thought of himself as the irresponsible one, the one more likely to need rescuing by the impatient, ever-dutiful oldest son. But these past two years had begun to teach him that people were more complicated than could fit in a few chosen words of description.
He had Julien with him this time, and was glad of it. His brother-in-law had ten years’ experience on him, and a physical presence that shouted competence and authority. Kit didn’t mind at all taking direction from Julien—probably because they hadn’t grown up together. Why were brothers so damned difficult? He almost asked that question aloud as they stood on deck watching the Irish coastline appear…before he remembered that Julien had killed his own brother.
Things could be worse.
But not much worse. Waterford was tense and hostile, refugees from Desmond’s vengeful attacks huddled against the city walls. The small English party left as soon as they landed, into a landscape much worse than any Kit had seen before. His previous time in Ireland had all been spent between Dublin and Kilkenny, the strongest holds of the English Pale, and he was shocked speechless by the emptiness. As though the English were determined to destroy every living thing in Ireland. The only thing in abundance were hares, run wild in a place without people.
The Earl of Ormond had sent a dozen of his own men and a guide to bring the English party to Templemore. When they saw the Rock of Cashel in the distance, their party skirting it to the northeast, Kit wished he could simply swoop in and pluck his brother away. He knew Cahir Castle was not far…but it might as well have been a hundred miles. With fewer than forty men, they could not threaten even the smallest of Irish holds. They would have to go to Templemore.
The Earl of Ormond himself was at Blackcastle. He met the party as they rode through the gates, and quickly pulled Kit and Julien away with him. When they were behind closed doors, Ormond turned on them a face like thunder. “Oliver Dane is the most hardheaded man in Ireland—and that’s saying something. He admits killing the Irish girl, but will not even consider negotiating.”
“What Irish girl?” Kit asked.
Ormond grunted. “I don’t suppose that was part of his report to England. He escaped the Kavanaughs with a child in tow—his child,
he admits freely. And then he killed her. Elizabeth has no love for the Irish, but even she would hesitate at one of her captains stabbing a child to death in cold blood.”
“Tell me from the beginning,” Kit ground out.
It was a sordid, disturbing story. Kit and Julien eyed each other when Ormond was finished, then the Frenchman said what they were both thinking. “A man like that isn’t going to want us to negotiate Stephen out of Irish hands.”
“No,” Ormond agreed. “He seems to have taken a distinct dislike to Stephen. Dane wants his blood.”
“Too bad. The queen wants Stephen alive,” Kit retorted. “She’s furious with him, and will no doubt punish him—but she sent me here to bring my brother back to England in one piece.”
Ormond sighed. “I don’t think negotiation is even a remote possibility. The Kavanaughs are preparing to move against Dane. It will be a disaster of the first order. I have no wish to raze their clan to the ground—we should be turning what English forces we have against Desmond, not wasting them in lesser squabbles. But if you want your brother, I suspect you’ll have to pluck him from the battlefield. Before Dane can get to him.”
“How many men do you have?”
“Not enough. Dane clearly wants the advantage to lay with his own men so he can do what he wants. I’ve got thirty here. With the thirty-five you marched in with…it will not be easy.”
“Since when are siblings easy?” Kit asked. But despite his light words, he felt hollow. Was it really going to come to this—he and Stephen on opposing sides of a battle? But if he didn’t fight, then nothing would keep Dane from killing Stephen.
Damn it, brother, Kit thought furiously. If this is about a woman, she had better have been well worth it. And if you really have gone over wholeheartedly to the Irish, then I hope Elizabeth claps you in prison until you come to your senses.
—
Once Stephen and Ailis emerged together from his cell, there was no repeat of their few, passionate hours. That was probably the only thing that saved Stephen’s life—Diarmid would gladly have killed him if he’d had to endure an obvious love affair. As it was, Diarmid barely tolerated him, and that was purely for vengeance’s sake. Ailis kept them apart—Diarmid was busy drilling his men while Stephen worked with Maisie’s mercenary company.
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