"Nay!" Sheena spun to Deirdre, clutching at her skirts, glaring from behind the girl like a crazed, cornered animal.
Dee's face went white, and Tade could see her shrink away from Sheena.
"You have to listen!" Sheena cried. “It was the Wylder bitch! Kill her, make her leave!"
"Get out, or I'll murder you where you stand!" Kane's eyes were cold, so cold.
Tade started toward Sheena, intending to drag her out of the cottage, out of his sight, his father's, and his sister's, out of the reach of his own black fury. But the instant Sheena saw him pacing toward her she shrieked. With a crazed sob, she turned, snatching up her soiled skirts, and ran from the room as if possessed by ghosts she alone could see.
Everyone in the silent cottage gaped, stunned, as her ravaged form vanished into the twilight.
Tade never knew how long they all stood frozen, struck dumb by the pain Sheena's confession had loosed in them. But at last he sagged down onto a bench, burying his face in one hand. “It was my fault,” he whispered, his voice jagged-edged. "Devin's death, and all the others. She betrayed them in some cursed attempt to entrap me."
He heard Maryssa hastening toward him, sinking to kneel at his feet, but before she could utter the comforting words he knew she was about to say, another hand, huge and brawny, thick with calluses, clamped hard upon his shoulder.
"Nay, lad." His father's voice was rough with grief, anger, and despair, but the gruff tones were bracing, aye, and more loving than he had ever heard them. "If it was anyone's doing, it was mine—shoving the girl at you, making it known throughout Donegal that O'Toole's daughter was my choice for you. The wench was sick, aye, warped in her heart, thinking of nothing but her own grasping hands. But she'll never show her face again among the people she betrayed. She'll be outcast—nay, worse than that, despised—for as long as she lives." There was a grim resolve in Kane's face when he spoke again to his son. "Tade, what happened at Christ's Wound, to Devin,” the earl's voice broke, “and to the others, was none of your doing."
Tade's hand knotted into a fist as the gentle warmth of Maryssa's arms linked about his legs. The sight of Deirdre's loving face, and the sound of his father's voice ripped free the words that threatened to burst open his chest. With an oath he slammed his fist into his thigh. "Damn her. I should have—should have seen—known that she was desperate. That she would go to any lengths to—"
"And when, pray tell, were you to see her twisted plot? When you were battling to keep Devin hidden away, or when you were riding the highroads, protecting the very people the O'Toole witch willfully sent to their death?”
Tade's gaze flashed up to his father's, and he was stunned to see the earl's craggy face streaked with tears, the warrior's eyes glinting with a fierce pride, aye, and regret.
Tade felt Maryssa's fingers curl around his hand, and his own closed around hers. "Da, you—you know?"
"That my son—the heir Kilcannon—is the most feared rebel in all Ireland? The man who has crushed the Sassenachs' death grip on a hundred different innocents and taken back a measure of the coin King George's soldiers have been draining from us for so long? Aye. I know it now, Tade, though—stubborn fool that I was—I was too blind to see it before."
"I would have told you when first I rode, but I feared to endanger you, or Rachel and the babes. I thought it was better—"
"To allow your thick-skulled father to batter you with his pride? When Deirdre returned from Derry and told Rachel and me all that had happened, I had just clawed my way back from the fever that had set in my wound. I tried to drag myself to a horse, ride to find you, aid you. But I fainted like some court belle before I could reach the blasted beast's saddle."
"He didn't awake for another week," Deirdre said gently, leaning her tear-damp cheek against her father's shoulder. "And after that, we nearly had to bind him to the bed to keep him from riding after you."
"I was afraid, Tade," Kane Kilcannon gritted. "So damned afraid that you'd die before I was able to see you, lad. Tell you—"
Tade raised his face up to his father's hard features, felt the hot splash of one of the earl's tears upon his own skin.
"Before God, I love you, lad," Kane said. "And I—I take more pride in you than any sire that lives in Eire."
"Da . . ." Tade pushed himself up from the bench, scarcely reaching his feet before Kane Kilcannon's brawny arms caught him in a crushing embrace. Tade shut his eyes, the pain of a thousand rages and bitter, wounding words melting in the wake of his father's choked declaration. God, it had been so long—so long since they had done anything but tear at each other, so long since Tade had felt in the earl anything but contempt and disappointment.
He caught a glimpse of Deirdre's freckled face, her nose red with weeping, as she snuffled into her sleeve, saw the old earl draw her into the encompassing warmth of his embrace. But despite the renewal of the security and family love that had always shielded Tate, that had been his strength through a thousand different trials and fears, even now he felt an aching emptiness in his arms, in his heart.
His gaze swept to where Maryssa sat curled up before the glowing fire, her knees drawn up against the swell of their child, her eyes filled with such longing and loneliness that his throat constricted with the pain of it. Always she had watched the love showered upon others, as if she were separated from life by some cruel enchanted window, unable to reach in and touch the security, feel its warmth around her.
But no more, Tade vowed in his heart. No more. Even the newfound understanding and acceptance of his father was not worth so much as a tear from those luminous blue-gold eyes.
Easing out of the earl's embrace, Tade turned to her, saw her mouth curve into a smile so vulnerable it tore at his heart.
He reached out his hand and clasped hers, willing the warmth of his love, the strength of it, to banish her sorrows as he drew her gently to her feet. "Da," he said, wrapping one arm about her thickening waist. "I've brought Maryssa home to regain her strength and to rest here at the cottage until our babe is born and grows strong enough to journey someplace where we can carve out a new life."
The lines about Kane Kilcannon's mouth deepened, and Tade could feel Maryssa tense against him, saw her chin lift in a wrenching defiance.
The earl's gaze drifted down to Maryssa's protruding stomach, his voice rough, yet tempered with gentleness. "So, girl," he said. "You are to bear the next heir Kilcannon."
"Aye." Maryssa was stunned by the fierce pride she took in that knowledge, a wellspring of strength deep within her banishing all traces of the weariness that had ground her down during the endless weeks of travel.
Deirdre turned her face up to her father's, her voice pleading. “Da, it was Maryssa who freed Tade from Newgate and saved him from falling into the trap at Rookescommon."
Kane raked his hand through his hair, his lips twisting in a wry grimace. "You've regaled me with tales of the girl's courage since the day you rode in from Derry." Kane's hand fell to his side, his voice gentling. “It is not the first time I have owed a Wylder woman a life debt."
Confusion stirred in Maryssa and she felt it in Tade as well. "A life debt?"
The earl reached out to catch Maryssa's chin in his fingers, his eyes searching her face. "Aye, girl. You have the look of Mary Wylder about you. I saw it that first night when you turned Rath's wolves aside. It is the same delicate face, so fragile, so sweet, it scarce seems strong enough to bear the curses of life. But the eyes . . ." He gave a mirthless chuckle and let his hand fall away.
"You—you knew my mother?"
"Aye. When last I saw her, she was flinging an ink pot at Bainbridge Wylder's head. Lady Deirdre, Tade's mother, had died only days before, and you were but a babe in Mary's arms. Your father was no longer willing to hold Nightwylde in trust for me and my sons. He wanted it for himself, and the legal title to it was already his. He had ordered his servants to pack the clothes and other items that my lads and I would need, and he called in a score of Sasse
nach soldiers to convince me, should I or any of my loyal kerns prove troublesome. He full intended to drive us from Nightwylde and give Mary and you the wealth the lands would bring. But your mother would have none of it."
Raw emotion streaked across Kane's features. "She loved my lady wife, and Devin and Tade as well, and she vowed that she'd not live in a castle stolen from motherless babes. When your father refused to listen to her pleas and cast my sons and me out, Mary wrapped you in a blanket and ran away from Bainbridge, heading, I'd wager, for Derry."
Drawn by the tale of the mother she could not remember, Maryssa dared to take a step toward the daunting earl of Nightwylde. "But what happened?"
"They found her two days later, dead, at the foot of a crag. The horse had fallen, and Mary had broken her neck. But you. . .” Kane turned his eyes to Maryssa. “By some miracle you had tumbled into a bed of wild azaleas soft enough to save you from much harm."
"Then that is why my father has always looked upon me with nothing but loathing? Because I live while my mother died?”
"You're the image of Mary, girl. And, most likely, whenever he looked at you, it was her face he saw, pleading with him, begging him to listen to her on that last awful night."
Maryssa felt her throat tighten, the earl's words giving her the first true image of the mother who had always been elusive, as if woven of mist in her dreams. She loosed herself from Tade's grasp, holding her breath as she stepped toward the broad-shouldered form of Tade's father. "Thank you," she said quietly, her fingers drifting, breeze-soft, to the earl's burly arm.
Kane's thick brows swept low over keen eyes, but Maryssa did not draw back. "For what, girl?"
"For giving me a mother—a mother to hold, love, even if it is only within my heart. My father never . . ." The words trailed off as her bittersweet joy was eclipsed by haunting images of Bainbridge Wylder's face on the evening of the masquerade, spewing forth the hatred and guilt that had all but destroyed her life. Had it not been for an emerald-eyed rogue . . .
"And so Bainbridge robbed you, too, did he, child?" Kane Kilcannon's callused finger traced a path down her cheek. "If your father but knew, in all his stealing and grasping, how much—how cursed much—he himself has lost."
* * *
The lawn folds of Deirdre's nightgown fell about Maryssa's freshly scrubbed body in soft waves, the pristine white fabric carrying the scent of wild sweet herbs dried in the summer sun. Maryssa reveled in its warmth, the waves of her still-damp hair drying silken against her back. Despite her weariness, the travel grime had chafed her skin until she had fairly leaped into the steaming bath Deirdre had prepared for her. And the hour she had spent half dozing in the tin tub had soothed her. Deirdre's shyly whispered confidences about her Phelan as she gently worked soap through Maryssa's mahogany curls had seemed to sponge away the horror of the flight from London, the horror of Dallywoulde's death, along with the mud and grit.
Maryssa leaned her elbows on the windowsill of the tiny loft room and gazed out through the sparkling glass pane at the cottage yard. Rain had begun to fall, that soft, sweet rain she had only witnessed here in Ireland, the tiny droplets blessing the ground below. It was as though the sky wept, not tears of sorrow, but rather tears of love, as if the heavens felt the pain and grief of those below and sought gently to give comfort.
Aye, and she could feel that comfort stealing over her like some tangible thing, like the delicate fingers of a mother's caress. A sense of peace wove itself about the wooden bedstead tucked beneath the slanting roof and curled around the scarred applewood chest.
The creak of the loft ladder made her turn, her gaze fastening upon the cherry-bright curtain that divided the loft into two rooms. But before the calico parted, she knew who it would reveal. Her lips parted in a smile as Tade entered, his face scraped free of its stubble of beard, his half-open shirt clinging to skin still damp from his own bath. But the peace she had felt only moments before had eluded him; the bronzed planes of his face were still marked by the ravages of sorrow.
"I wanted to see that you were settled," he said, moving to the bed with a stride achingly devoid of his usual cocksure aura. "I know it is far from what you are used to." His hand smoothed the worn quilt, the pillows fat with goose down.
"Aye. It is far from what I'm used to, and I refuse to endure it." Maryssa came up behind him, her arms encircling his taut waist. "I've spent the past weeks curled up in your embrace, my head cuddled against your shoulder. It would be cruel to expect me to make common goose down and quilts suffice."
He turned, but instead of the hint of a smile she had hoped to coax to his lips, his face was somber, torn with sadness and a stark uncertainty that made a lump swell in her throat.
"Maura," he said, his voice so soft she scarcely heard him, "do you know, love, that I've never even told you how much joy I take in the knowledge that you carry my babe? I want to give both of you everything—a house dripping with comforts, a thousand silken gowns, gold-wheeled carriages. But even after we leave here and sail to America, I do not know whether I'll be able to give you more than you see here." His mouth twisted, one hand knotting against his thigh.
"You'll be giving me a home built by your own hands, Tade, and that will be the greatest gift you could ever offer me besides the babe I carry."
"The babe I threatened to take from you?" His voice cracked, his eyes drifting shut. "Sweet God, when I think of what I did . . . Said . . ."
“It is forgotten, Tade, and I thought in the weeks that we rode for Ireland you had forgotten it, too." Maryssa reached up to soothe away the lines of self-loathing carved deep in his face. "You were half crazed with grief over Devin. You trusted me, and I—"
"Nay, Maura. There is nothing on God's earth that can excuse what I said to you—what I meant to do. But when Deirdre told me about you, about the babe, rage was like a flame inside me. I did not whom I struck out at, whom my fury consumed as long as I felt some sort of power over my own fate again." He raked his hand through his hair, turning to face her. "When Devin died and you left me, it was as if—as if I'd lost my soul, or cast it to the devil. I didn't want to hear anything but my own fury, didn't want to feel anything but betrayal, because to face the truth, that Dev was beyond my power to save, shattered all the beliefs and certainties I had about myself. Sometimes I think I was fool enough to start believing the tales the people wove about the Falcon. I almost believed that I could spin magic.
"But I can't, Maura. I can't sweep away all the hateful things I said to you, can't banish the grief, the guilt, I feel over Devin's fate."
"Devin didn't expect magic from you, Tade, or miracles. He wanted you to live, be happy, not torture yourself over things that are beyond your power. His last words to Deirdre and me were laced with his love for you." Maryssa stroked back an unruly wave of hair that tumbled over Tade's pale brow, smoothing her hand down one side of his face, willing the force of her love to ease away his pain and guilt.
"He always—always loved me," Tade said. "He loved everyone above himself. I used to bait him mercilessly, calling him a coward, without ever truly saying it. But it was far easier for me to ride across the countryside with my pistols roaring than it was for him to wait in silence for his death, not stooping to violence like lesser men even when his own life lay in peril."
"He died bravely," Maryssa said, tears threatening to choke her. "He was so gallant. You would have—would have been so proud. Even when they led him to the gallows he was gentle, loving. He saw me there, Tade, and he smiled."
Tade nodded, his voice raspy with sorrow. “I am glad that you were there for him, Maura. That he didn't—didn't die in that hideous crowd, alone." She saw tears well over Tade's thick lashes, and she reached out, her fingers tangling in his dark hair.
"Nay, Tade," she said with a fierce certainty that stunned her. "Even after the bullet struck him, Devin was not alone."
Tade swallowed as her words and the strength shining in her eyes swept in to warm the chill t
hat still grasped his heart. The beauty of her face, turned so trustingly to his, filled him with love and a savage, healing pain. It was as though, in her eyes, he could see the gold hair of his brother, see the solemn blue eyes, untouched by a brutal world, sheltered in the haven of a faith beyond all reason.
Tade's fingers drifted up over Maryssa's features, his heart filling with a love so deep it shattered something deep inside him, freeing him from the agony of self-doubt, the chains of grief that had bound him since Devin's death.
"Maura," he whispered in a choked voice. "Maura, I love you."
She breathed a wordless reply, rife with love and joy, as she strained to capture his lips with hers, but Tade's hands closed gently about her arms, holding her but a whisper away from his own body.
"Twice before I've asked you to wed me," he said, his gaze searching her face. "Once with the wild recklessness of a boy, once with the bitterness of a man wearied of living." He fought to steady his voice, drowning in the wonder of her loving gaze. "Now I ask you again. I beg you with all that I am to be my wife. Let me be father to our child. Husband to you. Let me cherish you, protect you, fill your nights with splendor, your days with laughter. Let me, Maura."
"I love you, Tade. Love you." The cry that burst from her was brimming with wonder and promise as she broke free of his grasp and hurled herself against his chest. Her arms twined about his neck, and he could taste the salt of her tears. "Aye, I'll marry you, my tender rogue." She kissed him, her lips hungering, sweet upon his mouth, then pulled away, laughing. "But we'd best make haste, milord Black Falcon," she teased, "lest your son be trailing after us to the altar."
No merriment curved Tade's lips, his brows suddenly lowering in concern. "Damn," he muttered. "I had forgot."
"Forgot? Your own son? I can't imagine how, since he's kicked you full in the stomach three times during our kiss."
"Nay, Maura. The altar. Church. Whatever. I want to make you my wife. Now. Before the sun sets again, but no priest would dare wed us, what with the law." His gaze flicked away; the pain of Devin's murder still fresh.
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