Maryssa pressed her arms to her breasts, suddenly aware of the dusky circles of her nipples just visible through the delicate fabric, aware of the candlelight gilding every curve of her body.
The stirring of the ribbon ties of her night rail made her look up. He had moved so swiftly, so silently, she had not known he was upon her until the faint roughness of his fingertips touched the satin at the hollow of her throat. His knuckles lay warm against her, brushing ever so softly against the delicate arch of her collarbone beneath its meager icing of lace. She watched, enchanted, while he drew the wisp of blue ribbon through his fingers, his lips parting as if somehow savoring the feel of it.
Maryssa wanted to flee the honeyed sensations that rippled from his flesh into hers, sensations that meant nothing to Tade, but everything to her. Her gaze leaped away from the strong, tanned fingers, and sought some way to escape, but the bookshelf and the closeness of Tade's body cut her off from the rest of the room, holding her captive between the fantasy world carved in rosewood, and the man, more intriguing than any dream could be.
As if he foresaw her decision to dodge from his grasp, he captured her face in his hands, threading his fingers past her temples into the sable waves of her hair. When his eyes again found hers they were serious, dark with questions. "Maura, why?"
Maryssa swallowed, the fanning of his warm breath against her lips stealing all thought from her head. "Wh-why what?"
"Why did you lie? To Rath? The soldiers?"
"I couldn't . . . I don't know why."
"Yes, you do. I watched your face. A dozen fears darted through your eyes. I was sure you were going to tell them. Then—"
"Then you almost got yourself killed by reaching for your knife! What were you planning to do? Fend off a score of soldiers with only one blade?"
"I was going to grab Rath. Hold the dagger to his throat until Dev and the rest of the family had time to escape."
"You wouldn't have gotten within ten paces of Rath! There were at least five soldiers between you and the colonel. One of them would have run you through before you'd taken a step."
"Why should that matter? To you?" The green eyes narrowed until they seemed to delve into her very soul.
"I have a terrible aversion to the sight of blood," Maryssa flung back, oddly wounded by the faint edge of suspicion in his voice.
Tade started to speak, but she raised her face defiantly. "I don't know why I lied. I only knew I couldn't bear to watch them drag Devin away with all of you wreathed about. You had been so kind. Rachel, Devin, all of you. When it came time to answer, I just couldn't betray you.”
"But Rath almost sent his troops up the ladder. If he had—“
"I'd be awaiting trial for treason." Surprise streaked across Tade's face at her words. Maryssa's lips quivered, and she hated herself for showing how much his doubt upset her. "Did you think that, being a woman, I was too feebleminded to know that?"
"No. Maura, don't." Tade's fingers feathered over her mouth, as if to sweep the sadness away, but the soft, sweet Irish name lilting from his tongue wrenched her heart like the plaintive strains of a ballad. "I never meant to hurt you," he said softly. "It's just that you're everything I was raised to hate. You're English, heiress to all of this. Nightwylde..." His gaze trailed over the huge bedstead, the intricately plastered ceiling, the rich carpets, and Maryssa detected a strange sort of longing in the curve of his mouth. Her chin tilted just a little as she tried to read the meaning of the wistfulness, the tinge of bitterness touching his features.
His gaze caught hers, and he released her, the barest hint of red touching his cheekbones. He turned, running his fingers over the dusty volumes on the shelf. Though Maryssa couldn't see his expression, his hands were reverent, almost loving as they withdrew a copy of the Iliad. He thumbed through the pages, then stopped. Maryssa listened, stunned, as classical Greek phrases, fired by the blind poet's genius, flowed from Tade's lips. His faint Irish lilt tore at her soul with a beauty that awed her as he lamented the destruction of Troy, watching the death of a kingdom, because a man had dared take the woman he loved.
Marisa gasped in pleasure, and Tade stopped in mid-sentence, looking up to give her a sheepish smile.
"We don't get many books hereabouts. If Devin were here he'd probably flay me for massacring the Greek language."
"No. It was perfect. I never knew it could sound that way." Maryssa swallowed hard, so moved mere words were too clumsy to explain the feelings rushing through her. "Where did you learn Greek?"
"In a cave near Penderleigh crag."
"You learned Greek in a cave?"
"Greek, Latin, enough knowledge to put even your highbrow Englishmen to shame. My da risked all he owned to send us there. The magistrate would have confiscated the cottage and every scrap of any worth inside it if we had been discovered. And Da would have been thrown into prison with the rest of the felons. You see, it's against the law for us dangerous Irish Catholics to hold school. The Sassenach wager that if they keep us ignorant we'll stop fighting. For a hundred years we've battled the chains they've put on our lands. Now they want to put their shackles on our minds."
Maryssa felt a smile tremble at the corner of her mouth. "It seems the more they try to take learning from you, the more you crave it."
"Aye." Tade gently closed the book. "I used to plague my schoolmaster to distraction," he said. "While his other charges were plodding through their ciphering, I was off with the Argonauts capturing the Golden Fleece. Many's the time Master Dugan—" Dark-lashed lids dropped low over his eyes, not quite hiding the stab of pain shadowed beneath them.
"Your schoolmaster? It was he who taught you to read that way?"
"Aye."
Maryssa flinched at Tade's sharp-edged reply as he turned abruptly and slid the volume onto the shelf as though filling the gap in the neat row of books would close out some vision lurking behind them. He hesitated, the pain Maryssa had detected fading into a distant look, tender and musing. "But first it was my mother who made me love books. She used to let me play with hers. Build castles. Dev and I liked to fancy she was Maeve, the warrior queen, and she would sit in her chair for hours, a gold paper crown on her head, while we set our toy soldiers to battle for her favor.''
"She must have loved to watch you," Maryssa said softly, imagining Tade as an impish boy sprawled with a cherub-faced Devin at the feet of their adoring young mother.
"She did. I can still see her laughing, popping sweetmeats into our mouths from the silver bowl on her lap. Swirling around the ballroom in satin, gold as her hair."
Maryssa tried to keep the shock from her eyes, attempting to reconcile gold satin and silver plate with rawboned Rachel Kilcannon and the humble cottage in the mountains. Within Tade's words were echoes of Rachel's claim in the cottage bedchamber that Kane had been tending his kerns, his people... Maryssa found the image of both the rugged-faced Kane and this delicate picture of Tade's mother disturbing, yet somehow wrenchingly right. "What happened to her?"
Tade's face angled toward Maryssa, and despite the sorrow touching his mouth, his eyes were hooded for the first time, their clear depths fraught with secrets, guarded, as he watched her. "She died in childbed two weeks before my fourth Saint's Day. I didn't know it then, but she had been letting go of life for a long time. Dying one dream at a time."
Maryssa reached out to touch him, hesitated, then let her fingertips drift like the most fragile of snowflakes over his sleeve. "Dreams can be dangerous things," she said as the warmth of his skin melted into hers. "But still, I envy you."
"Envy me?" His eyes swept the elegant room scornfully. "And I suppose you'd be so envious of the orphans at the workhouse that you'd battle them scratch-and-fire for a place in their louse-ridden beds."
"If they've known the love of their mother, even for a little while, yes. I have no memory of mine." She turned away from him, suddenly aware that his eyes probed too deeply.
"Your mother died?"
"Aye." Marys
sa shook back her curls, trying to affect a carelessness she did not feel. "When I was but a babe." She could feel Tade's silence reaching out to her. She swallowed, her voice dropping. "So, you see, I do envy you. Every touch, every sweetmeat, every game."
"Maura, I'm sorry." His hands cupped her shoulders, gently forcing her to look at him. She pulled away and crossed the room to stand with her back to him, the compassion in his face making her reckless. She raked her fingers back through the heavy waves of her hair, pulling the mass upward, then shaking it out.
"When I was little I used to make believe that my father had lied. That my mother yet lived and was coming back for me. Once I even tried to send. . .” She gave a sad little laugh. "There was a stream that ran through Carradown, the estate where I grew up. The gardener used to claim it ran clear to the king of France's privy chair. I thought if I could send a message to my mother, if she knew how much I needed her, she might come for me.” There was a soft sound of boot soles on the carpet behind her, and Tade's hand feathered over her curls. She wanted to lean back into the comfort his body offered, seek solace in the feel of his heartbeat, the warmth of his skin, but she dared not close the tiny space between them for fear that he would ease away from her, taking away the wonder of actually sharing her feelings with another human being.
"You sent your mother a message?" He prodded gently.
"I thought I did. I stole a little cannikin from the kitchen, put a note inside it, and set it afloat down the stream. I watched the road every day, waiting for her to come. But of course she never did." Maryssa closed her eyes, arching her head back. "I hated her then, Tade. And she lay dead."
"No." Rough-edged with emotion, his denial caressed her, soothed her. "You just hurt. I don't think you even know what hate is." His hands drew her back against him, turning her so slowly it seemed as though she were moving in a dream. The face that had been so rakishly handsome with its devilish grin now held all the solemn beauty of a pagan god, his eyes blazing with emotions she had painted onto the faces of a dozen treasured heroes.
Her breath caught in her throat as his head dipped nearer, the intensity radiating from his taut body touching her before the first tentative brush of flesh upon flesh. He hesitated, bare heartbeats that seemed to stretch into forever, his gaze gently drifting to her mouth. Then he touched her, lips firm and warm as satin ghosting across her temples, the fragile curve of her eyelid, her delicate nose. Warm and moist, he brushed, just brushed, his mouth across hers in a kiss of such aching sweetness Maryssa's eyes filled with tears.
He lifted his mouth from hers, and Maryssa felt the faint roughness of his fingertips skimming her cheeks, gathering the droplets clinging to her lashes.
"Maura, you're so sweet. So soft," he murmured. "By Saint Michael, I feel I might crush you if I . . ." He buried his hands in her hair, his mouth taking hers with barely leashed hunger, urgent, yet gentle, as though he half expected she would bolt at his touch. Surprise shot through Maryssa at the first sweep of his tongue on her mouth, shock changing to raw pleasure as her lips parted and he slipped inside, stroking the rim of her teeth, before he delved for the deeper secrets within.
She whimpered as his tongue caressed her, wooed her, feeding fires that sluiced through her like melting honey. He crushed her against his chest, the brass buttons on his waistcoat pressing into the soft mounds of her breasts, his heart hammering against hers until she could feel the throbbing pulses in every fiber of her being. Lean and hard, his legs burned her through her night rail, the thin cloth doing nothing to hide every sinew and swell of muscle.
Of their own volition Maryssa's hands smoothed up the bronze cords of his neck, slipping back to tangle in the rough satin of his hair and tug the thick waves free of their leather thong. Her tongue met Tade's, timidly at first, then more boldly, the pleasure-sound vibrating low in his throat, sending jolts of flame flicking through her stomach and thighs.
"Maryssa," he groaned into her mouth. "So sweet." The hard heat of his palm coasted up her waist, and she felt it take in her breast as though it were a priceless treasure. She pulled back just a whisper, the shattering sensation of delight seeming too great to bear, but Tade's arm clamped around her, forcing her back into his caress with an urgency that stunned her.
"Maura, let me." Tremors shook Maryssa's body as his thumb skimmed the dusky peak of her nipple through the fabric, his other hand slipping free the ribbons that held her night rail in place. His lips seared a path to the base of her throat, the feel of his mouth moving on her skin filling Maryssa with a wonder such as she'd never known.
"Tade." She whispered his name, flinging her head back to allow him better access to the sweet mysteries he sought. The ties fell open beneath his fingers, and his mouth trailed down to where the delicate swell began, his hand easing away the thin veiling to capture the creamy flesh within.
"So lovely. Perfect." He guided her back until she felt the feather bed against her thighs, then gently tipped her into its welcoming softness.
Then he was beside her, his tongue seeking the crest of her breast in a tender fervor that spiraled ecstasy into her center. The tiny cry that breached her lips made him break the sweet contact, pull away to look down at her, eyes heavy with desire. His jaw clenched, and she could sense he had torn himself away because he thought her cry was a plea for him to stop. "Moving too fast," he rasped. "But you . . . God, I want you—"
"Tade." His name was barely a breath upon her lips as she reached trembling fingers to trace the firm, perfectly molded lips, his aristocratic nose, the hard curve of his jaw. "Tade, please," she quavered. "I need . . ." She pulled his face down to her, closing her eyes in exquisite pleasure as his lips closed over the hardened bud of her nipple, taking what she offered.
He pulled his mouth away from the soft mound, thrusting his tongue deep into the welcoming sweetness of her mouth. His tongue soothed, circled, worshiped, his hand tunneling under her rump to pull the gentle rise of her stomach full against the hardness swelling between his thighs. He parried and plundered, branding as his own that which no man had tasted. Maryssa buried herself in him, in the feel of him, the taste of him—reckless, dangerous, incredibly sweet.
Almost desperately, she sought the neckcloth at his throat, tearing it open with hands that trembled. Tade's breath hissed through his teeth as her fingertips brushed his chest, her hands curling in the crisp hairs roughening the muscled plane.
"Maura. I have to—" His mouth ravaged hers as he rolled her beneath him on the soft bed, devouring her lips with a raging hunger that should have frightened her but only served to drive the wild passions roiling through her veins higher, ever higher.
She whimpered, digging her fingers in the satin-sheathed steel of his shoulders and the bulging muscles of arms, rigid with need. His palms swept up, catching her chin to mold her lips into his kiss. As his fingers tightened on the fragile curve, Maryssa cried out, pain knifing through her jaw.
"What the—" Tade yanked his head back, the night air chilling her, deprived of the heat of his touch. She tried vainly to recapture his mouth with hers, her passion-drugged senses craving still more of the magic he worked upon her flesh. But Tade tore away from her, bolting upright to snatch one of the tapers from the candle holder beside the bed and thrust it near her cheek. Gentle fingers probed the swelling. She saw his eyes widen, then narrow, glinting with menacing fury. "What the hell happened to your face?"
The dream world he had spun around her shattered, and Maryssa struggled up from the tumbled feather bed, fear at Tade's anger and shock at her own wanton behavior firing her cheeks as she tugged her night rail over her exposed breasts. Her gaze fastened on the carpet.
"Damn it, tell me who did this. I swear to God, I'll—" A sudden noise in the hall outside made the threat freeze on Tade's lips. Every muscle in his body snapped wire-taut and alert, his eyes so savage they seemed to burn through the wood panel of the door.
"Tade, what—"
"Quiet!"
&nbs
p; Maryssa flinched at the whispered command, then her stomach plummeted to her toes as she heard purposeful strides bearing down on her room. Blood drained from her face in a dizzying rush as a gruff voice some distance away barked out an order. "Father!" she croaked.
Her eyes, wide and frightened, found Tade's, and she could see the realization of the truth dawn in his face. Raw fury darkened his eyes until they glittered like shattered emeralds. "It was him. Wylder. He did this to you!"
Tade wheeled toward the door, the waves of hair tangling loose about his rage-taut face giving him the primal, savage look of a Celtic warrior hurling himself into battle. A stab of fear pierced Maryssa as he reached for the door latch. She threw herself in front of him, blocking his path. "No, Tade," she pleaded, clutching his fists. "You cannot.”
"The devil I can't! I'll break every bone in that bastard's body."
"The castle is alive with servants! They'd see you dead before you could land so much as a blow! I’m begging you. Leave this alone! He's my father!" Desperately she groped for some way, any way to stop Tade as she saw the deadly purpose harden in his face. He yanked his hands free, his palms slamming into the heavy panel. "Bolted!" Tade spun around. "That bastard locked you in.”
A thud in the hall outside, followed by a savage curse tore a sob from Maryssa's throat, the memory of her father's face when he had heard the name Kilcannon filling her with terror, not for herself, but for the bold, angry man before her. "Tade, if they find you with me, they might link me to Devin's escape, arrest me for aiding a criminal.”
"Damn it, they'd never dare.” His eyes flicked from the door to her face, and she could see him waver. Tears spilled down her cheeks, shaking fingers reaching up to touch his granite jaw.
"Tade! Oh, God, Tade, please go!"
His own hands tangled in her hair, and she could see the raw emotion in his eyes. "All right, damn it. For you. Maura, if you ever need me—” He yanked the loosened neckcloth from his throat and shoved it into her hand. “If you ever need me, send this to the cottage. I'll come, if I have to ride through hell itself." His mouth came down on hers with savage intensity.
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