“Faelan.” At the last moment, Roddy could not bear that coldness. He stopped and looked back, his eyes a bright, icy flame in the stone hall. “What about the free-quarters?”
For a moment his hand tightened on the doorframe. “Worried about your investment in the place?” he asked dryly. “Well, I shall do my best for you, my love.”
A sudden panic took her, for the inflexible note in his voice. “What? What will you do?”
He laughed. The sound vibrated from the walls and the floors and had no trace of humor in it. “’Tis simple enough. I have only to prove that every living man in this barony is loyal to the Crown.”
That night, there was no sleep for anyone. Torches burned up and down the glen, and the ominous glow of red lit the drifting mist far below where the army was camped. The windows of the great house shone as they had on the night of the fairy ball, and dark figures passed in and out the wide door—figures bearing long, wicked wooden staffs with curved and sharpened metal points.
In the dining room, next to Roddy’s shining mahogany table, the pikes lay piled against the wall in a bristling forest. Earnest leaned over a rude map, his head supported by a weary hand on his brow, marking caches and making count, while Fachtnan O’Sullivan and his father and brother dispatched ragged couriers to every corner of the district.
Two local clergymen stood beneath a borrowed holy cross that had been hastily tacked to the wall: a Catholic priest and the elderly rector—the same who’d so narrowly missed murder by Geoffrey’s men. As each cottier surrendered his arms, he repeated after Faelan a solemn oath of loyalty to the King, which O’Sullivan translated to Irish if necessary, and then a mark or a signature went down, duly witnessed and recorded.
It was the magistrate who should have accepted the oaths. But the magistrate lay dead, thrown from his horse onto the stones before the great house.
Martha bustled in and out, keeping the sweet tea flowing for the men who trudged in with their offerings of illicit arms—pikes and guns forged or stolen over years of misery under Willis and Mullane and the others like them, who’d drained the life from the land at a distance, safe in their comfortable houses in Cork or Dublin or even London, never questioning what was done in their names as long as the rents came due. Decades of oppression, of hate and rebellious dreams.
But now it was a kind of love that made them give up the weapons; it was the hope of better lives that Faelan had brought, and the certain knowledge that his ruin would be their own.
Some, lacking hidden arms, came with a chicken or a meager bag of oats, in a befuddled attempt to appease these higher powers that suddenly threatened. It was the only time that night Roddy saw Faelan’s temper. He shouted at the confused cottiers that they’d do better to hide what they owned in the farthest hills than bring it to him. Then he sent them out to do it, and to gather all the cattle they could find and drive the beasts through the dark to the wild mountain fells where soldiers might not go.
After that, he sat down heavily, and made Martha cry by snarling that she could take her damned pastries away and choke on them. Roddy smoothed over that by giving the maid a hug, and leaving the plate near his elbow. Ten minutes later, she tapped a snuffling Martha on the shoulder, pointing to the platter where only crumbs were left.
A contingent of small farmers had come and gone, and after their contribution was counted, Earnest swore. “Six hundred fifty-three pikes, twenty-two pistols, and five muskets. That’s the last of the villages. There’s only these two northern valleys left to go.” He tapped the map and shook his head. “We’ve outdone the bastards by twice on the pikes, but where in God’s sweet heaven did Roberts come by a figure of four thousand guns?”
Faelan did not answer. He only sat back in the carved French chair and stared at the half-finished ceiling with a bleakness that made Roddy want to cry.
Geoffrey. Oh, damn you, Geoffrey. You and your guns.
It was near three in the morning, and the flow of arms had become a trickle. Roddy had been aware of Geoffrey since dark, concealed outside the dining-room windows and waiting for a chance to catch his friend alone. Roddy had found no opportunity to contact him. He was growing dangerously impatient. He’d been thwarted all day and night by the crowd of strangers that surrounded Faelan. So now, when her husband stood up and walked to the door, Roddy rushed after.
She grabbed his arm before he reached the entry. “Where are you going?”
Faelan half turned, and the candlelight glistened off a trace of perspiration that had trailed down his left temple and his jaw. “Pardon me,” he said, with exaggerated courtesy, “but you may have noticed that our accommodations lack a water closet.”
“Oh.” Roddy let go of his arm. She stared at him a moment, frozen with desperation, and then realized that Martha had gone back to the kitchen for more pastries. “You mustn’t go that way,” Roddy exclaimed, and then added meaningfully, “Martha just went out.”
He accepted that without comment, turning back to sit down again.
Roddy said suddenly, “I’m going, too. While she’s still there.”
Faelan had already pulled the map toward him; he nodded absently and joined the conversation among Earnest and the clergymen about how best to take advantage of daylight when it came.
Roddy wet her lips, focusing on each man in turn to see that he was fully occupied, and then slipped out into the hall and through the front door.
Outside, she hurried down the stairs and skirted the house through the faint mist, keeping close to the windows. Geoffrey heard her approach, and she felt his sudden panic as he realized the unknown figure in the half-light was heading directly toward him. Just as he was preparing to scramble back into the undergrowth and run, she stopped.
Geoffrey waited. She dared not call his name, and so she began to hum, and then sing softly. It was a song he would know, the old, haunting love song that Geoffrey himself had taught her long ago:
Ah la, then he came to his true love’s window,
He knelt down low upon a stone,
And through the glass he whispered softly,
Are you asleep, love, are you alone?
I am your lover, do not discover,
But rise up, darling, and let me in,
For I am tired of my long night’s journey,
And likewise, love, I’m wet to the skin.
She did not have to sing the last lines, the sad stanzas of parting between a girl and her ghostly lover, come across years and miles for one night. Geoffrey relaxed, recognizing her voice and the message in the song. He did not retreat when she moved closer, but waited until they were both lost in the shadows to reach out and grab her arm and pull her against him.
“Poppet,” he whispered, right into her ear. “I need Faelan.”
Aye, Roddy thought, and I won’t let you have him.
“The stable,” she said, beneath her breath.
She felt his hard exhalation of relief, and did not correct his mistaken assumption that it was Faelan who would be waiting in the stable. She pulled away without speaking again and moved out into the luminous shaft from the nearest column of light. She looked up. Faelan stood there, outlined against the candlelight behind.
He gave no sign that he saw her. But she was sure that he must—the dewy air reflected and compounded the cool glow from the window, turning it into a shimmering prism that held her at its center. She bowed her head, pretending to straighten her skirt, and took up her song again. In a voice too soft to reveal the pounding of her heart, she sang:
When that night, it nearly was ended,
And the early cocks, they began to crow,
We kissed, we kissed, and alas we parted,
Sayin’ good-bye, darlin’, now I must go.
As she reached the end of it, she was saved from having to linger further by the arrival of a straggling party of dairymen. The shadow from the window moved and disappeared, and the group inside roused themselves from exhaustion to start the ritual of oaths
and weapon counting again.
Roddy slipped away.
The stable had many noises in the dark. There was the wind, ever present in the eaves, and a hundred small rustlings of mice and straw. An owl lived in the tree outside: Roddy had often drifted to sleep with his low mourning note in her ear, mingling with the deep, steady rhythm of Faelan’s breath in her hair.
She heard Geoffrey scramble up in the straw as she entered.
“Faelan,” he said in a low voice. “By the saints, I thought I’d never have a chance at you.”
“It’s not Faelan.” Roddy moved into the thick, hay-scented darkness. “It’s me.”
There was a hiss of straw as he stumbled toward her. He came up against her and took a step back. “Ah—poppet. I can’t see a damned thing in here. I nearly blacked my eye on a pitchfork. Where’s Faelan?”
“He isn’t coming.”
She felt Geoffrey’s quick surge of annoyance, but he kept his voice soft. “I need to talk to him—can’t you get him away?”
“No. I came to tell you—he doesn’t know you’re here, and he isn’t going to find out.”
“What?” The annoyance changed to exasperation. He caught her arm and shook her. “Roddy, believe me, this is no game. I’ve got to have his help—”
“No!” She steadied herself against him in the dark. “I saw you this morning. You were there, when Willis accused Faelan. He can’t take that risk, helping you. You have to stay away from him.”
His hand tightened around her upper arm. “But you haven’t told him I’m here? Roddy, you must. Aye, there’s some risk, but I know Faelan. He won’t think anything of that.”
“Of course he won’t,” Roddy snapped. “That’s why I want you away from here.”
“But, Roddy—”
She shoved at him, angry and desperate. It was not so much that Geoffrey cared nothing for his friend’s welfare; it was rather that he had an unshakable faith in Faelan’s ability to handle any scrape. As if Faelan were somehow above human weakness, unable to make a mistake that might kill him.
“Geoffrey,” she said between her teeth. “If you go near my husband, I will turn you in myself.”
It was the only leverage she could think of. He took the threat in the light of a childish tantrum, but Roddy didn’t allow him to open his mouth and say so.
“I swear to God, I will,” she hissed. “If you think I won’t see you hang for your stupid rebellion before I’ll let you endanger Faelan, you mistake me at your peril.”
It was bluff, pure bluff, for she could never have done it, but the words and her tone of voice finally sank in. For all her life, Geoffrey had thought of her as “poppet,” as a child, a female: soft and submissive and not very bright. She suddenly dropped into a new category: a woman, who would grasp at any weapon to protect her man.
He might not respect her methods, but he developed a sudden and healthy respect for her resolution.
“All right,” he said slowly. “I won’t mistake you.”
Chapter 20
Six hundred fifty-three pikes, twenty-two pistols, and five guns were not enough.
Nothing would have been enough, except the full shipment of Geoffrey’s smuggled muskets.
Rain swept the great house in showers, throwing drops with a spattering sound against those windows that had panes, and puddling on the stone floor beneath those that didn’t. The fireplace in the dining room leaked. There was a shiny dark spot on the marble hearth where a warm fire should have been.
But the smoke that drifted in with the drizzle was not the comforting, clinging smell of peat. The damp breeze carried a heavy, peculiar odor: the pungent scent of burning grain.
Faelan sat before the empty hearth. His face was a mask. He gave no sign of hearing the intermittent pop of pistol fire that heralded the systematic slaughter of his imported Frisian cattle.
Five days had passed since the army had come. At first the soldiers had only taken excess: poultry and potatoes and livestock enough to feed themselves royally. But as each day passed without the guns, Roberts had unleashed his men a little more, until by now they were angry, and impatient for results. They had taken all they could consume and more—far more—and the free-quarters had become free destruction.
Faelan’s imported stores bore the brunt of their fury. Still gathered and awaiting distribution according to his careful plans, the cattle and seed wheat and commodities he’d brought for exchange in a moneyless economy were too easy to reach. It was more entertaining and far less trouble to burn sacks of grain piled high in a thatch-roofed barn that to search out the small huts in the mountains and seize a few year-old potatoes. And the soldiers did not stop with stores. The plows were broken up, the half-finished pier burned to the waterline. Even the lime and saltpeter Faelan had bought for the fields was carted away and dumped into the sea.
The oaths of loyalty had been futile. As long as the guns were withheld, Roberts said, he’d accept no false professions of good faith.
Roddy sat at the table with Earnest and smelled the smoke and listened to the guns and watched her husband stare at nothing until she could bear it no longer. “I’m going to take a walk,” she announced.
Earnest roused instantly from his gloomy reflections. “I’ll go with you.”
The last thing she wanted was Earnest’s company, with his eternal pressuring at her to leave Ireland with him. Beyond that, she had her other reason to be alone: Geoffrey, who had proved himself every bit as troublesome as she’d feared.
The hiding place she’d chosen for him, the remote cottage that had been MacLassar’s first home, had stood vacant for months. Long ago, Roddy had convinced Faelan to move the woman and her child to a better holding, where the widow had since become mildly famous as being favored by the sidhe because of the occasional small gifts that would appear in the night on the woman’s new hearth. These Roddy attributed to Faelan, for she could find no other donor through her talent.
The sidhe luck must have rubbed off on Geoffrey, too. It was certainly no natural aptitude for concealment that had kept him undiscovered. He would not stay put; he took a ramble every morning and evening through the hills, and Roddy could not convince him that he couldn’t build a smokeless fire. Someone had taught him the trick once, and he was certain that he had the way of it. As far as Roddy could tell, only the unfamiliar spread of smoke from the soldiers’ fire kept Geoffrey’s from instant detection.
“I’d rather go alone,” she said to Earnest. “I shall be back before supper.”
“Roddy—it’s not safe.” He automatically turned to Faelan for support. “You won’t let her go wandering about alone.”
Faelan looked sideways at her, a glance that puzzled Roddy, that seemed cynical and questioning at once. “I’ll go with you, if you like.”
Roddy wet her lips. His unexpected focus on her made her uncomfortable, burningly aware that she was hiding something from him. For days, it seemed that he had looked through her without even seeing her. All night, every night, he sat in this cold, spare room waiting for more arms and watching the countryside burn. It had been easy to pretend, easy to go to bed in the stable and then sneak out after dark to carry what food she could conceal to Geoffrey. It was as if her husband did not know whether she was there or gone. But now…
She picked up her cape of bright green baize and threw it across her shoulders with a deliberately casual move. “That’s isn’t necessary at all. I’d really rather go alone.”
Faelan rose. Roddy bowed her head, hiding the guilt she was certain shone clear in her eyes. She felt his light touch, and refused to look up as he traced her cheekbone and temple. Need struck her—a longing that made her throat close and her chest ache. She wanted to throw herself into his arms and cry for what the army was making of his dreams—of their dreams…for the future here had become hers, too. She wanted to confess her fears for Geoffrey, her hopeless inability to think of a way to get him safely out of the country. She wanted to lie again with her
husband on a blanket in the clean, sweet straw, too tired from honest work to make love, but not too tired to be close, to feel his arms around her and his skin warm against her back.
But her secret stood between them, and she was afraid to meet his eyes.
“I’d like to go,” he said softly.
“I don’t want you.” It was breathless, quickly spoken and ill considered. She stepped back away to avoid his touch.
From a safer distance, she dared to look up. If her words had hurt him, she could not tell it in his face. Only Earnest’s irritated confusion reached her, his bafflement and concern at what he saw of their marriage.
“Very well.” Faelan turned away to the window. His voice held a brittle precision. “Then go alone.”
“No!” Earnest’s chair made a scrape as he leaped to his feet. “I forbid it.”
Faelan looked back. Roddy saw it then, like a mirror breaking. The mask of control cracked and shattered; Faelan’s face went to violence and his body moved with savage grace—one moment Earnest was standing and the next he was sprawled back on the table. The blow took Roddy, too, made her stomach wrench and her knees stagger, and Faelan’s snarled words came to her through Earnest’s haze.
“You forbid it!” He jerked Earnest up by his coat. “You meddling bastard, you think I can’t protect what’s mine? You think there’s a damned thing you could do better?” He let go, and Earnest stumbled, clutching the table behind. “You don’t forbid anything here, my friend,” Faelan sneered. “You don’t open your mouth if I don’t like what you have to say, because I own everything you can see, and that includes your precious little sister, and if I choose to sit on my backside while they burn the place down around our ears, then you can go or you can stay, but you’ll damned well keep your mouth shut!”
Earnest found his feet. Roddy felt him gather himself, and thought for an instant that he would return the blow. He was almost of a size with Faelan, and no mean pugilist—it was surprise that had taken him down, not superior skill. But Earnest preferred finer weapons to his fists.
The Regency Romances Page 110