At the Queen's Summons (26 page)

Despite his haggard appearance, he still looked every inch the chieftain, fierce and strong and unconquered, yet oddly reluctant, as if he played a role for which he was ill suited.

“Aidan,” she said softly.

He looked up at her. She saw the terrible rage and reckless defiance burning in the bluer-than-blue centers of his eyes. In that instant she understood, saw his torment as if he had laid it all out before her. He considered himself a dead man now. Getting himself killed in the siege would be a mere formality.

“Please,” she said, stepping into the glade. “Please don't do this. Find another way, Aidan. I beg you.”

“Find another way.” His harsh, drink-roughened tone mocked her. “What would you suggest? Marrying a Sassenach to keep the peace? Or murdering one when she becomes a burden?”

She caught her breath to keep in the horror. “You blame yourself, don't you?” Her voice shook. “Revelin said you would.”

“Revelin is seldom wrong.”

The anguish she heard in his voice touched her. At his core, Aidan O Donoghue was a kind and decent man with too many responsibilities and too few choices. She dropped to her knees beside him and sat back on her heels.

She picked up the flask and touched it to her lips. It was still warm from his mouth, and she tilted it back and
drank deeply, watching him from beneath her lashes. He stared back, looking skeptical. The strong drink lit a bonfire in her stomach, but she would not allow herself to gag or even flinch.

As calmly as she could, she set down the flask.

“Well?” he asked.

“That would put a plowhorse under.”

He favored her with a quick, bitten-off laugh, and then the shadows fell over him again.

“It was not your fault,” Pippa insisted. “Not your father's death, nor even Felicity's. Both were victims of their own hatred.”

He stared at the carved stone cross. A Gaelic inscription was etched at the bottom.

“I wish to God I could believe you.” He took a long, comfort-seeking pull on the flask and wiped his sleeve across his mouth. He looked debauched, hopeless, remote.

Pippa had never seen him like this, and she did not know how to reach him. He was so bitter and tense that she feared he would explode at any moment. “Your mother was called Máire,” she said, her finger tracing the letters and whorls carved into the stone. “Is this her name here?”

“Aye.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Ah, another happy subject.” He drank again, then flung the flask onto the grass. The sharp fumes of poteen made her eyes smart. “Supposedly she was unfaithful to my father, and I am half Sassenach. At least that is what my mother confessed while my father was beating her for the last time.”

Shaken, she put her hand lightly, tentatively, on his forearm. His muscles were coiled. “A woman in torment
will say anything. Revelin said that Ronan was a hateful and hated man.”

She drew a deep breath for courage and finally said what she had come to say. “If you take these men to storm the castle, you will be acting just like him. Is that what you want? To become your father?”

He snatched his arm away and glared at her. “You don't know what you're talking about.”

She wanted to shrink from his anger but forced herself to stay there, pinned by his glare. “I do, my lord. You told me yourself. Ronan O Donoghue offered up men's lives without regard to the widows and orphans they would leave behind. If you so desperately need something to feel guilty about, then feel guilty about that. Not about your father keeling over in a fit of pique or Felicity taking her own life.”

He moved so quickly that she did not even have time to cry out. Grasping her by the shoulders, he hauled her to her feet. His fingers bit into her.

“Enough,” he said through his teeth. “I'll hear no more. These affairs are none of your concern. Begone now, and leave me to do what I must do.”

She stared down at his fingers. “You said you cared about me. Is this how you show it?”

He muttered something anguished and Irish, then let her go. It was all there in his face, the determination, the desolation, the cornered look of a man who had run out of choices. “Pippa—”

She wrenched herself away and fled.

 

He had decided to take the castle at dawn. By now, Richard de Lacey would have gotten word that an army was gathering, but there had been no time for reinforcements to arrive.

Ross Castle was reputed to be impregnable, and perhaps it was. But not to Aidan. He had personally overseen the design of its defenses. With luck, he and his men would cross the narrow causeway unchallenged and make it at least as far as the guardroom before engaging the enemy.

The fog-laden chill of dawn settled into his bones. He kept hearing Pippa's voice.
Is that what you want? To become your father?

Hard questions. Things no one else dared to ask him. Things he dared not answer. Couldn't she see he had no choice?

He turned to the silent, waiting men behind him. Dressed in traditional tunics and fur, barefoot and crudely armed, they exuded an anger honed by generations of subjugation. They wanted this fight, Aidan reminded himself. They were ready. More than ready.

Iago and Donal Og caught his eye and nodded to signal their flanking troops.

“God be with us all, then,” he said in clear Gaelic.

Donal Og winked. “And may we all get to heaven before the devil knows we're dead.”

Nervous laughter rippled through the assembly. Aidan turned and led the way to the stronghold. He expected to see scouts melting from their lookout posts and slinking back to warn de Lacey, but in the forest they met with nothing more fierce than a badger and a flock of birds.

His hopes rose as they crossed the natural causeway formed by the peninsula projecting out into the lake. The Sassenach host did not lift a finger to stop them.

When he found the main gate unbarred, he felt the first prickle of apprehension. He turned to Donal Og and whispered, “It's a trap.”

Donal Og nodded grimly. “Bound to be. Shall we go on?”

“Aye.” Aidan went first, despite offers from some of the men. He wanted to prove himself different from his father.

They crossed the inner courtyard and entered the guardroom. The dim, unsteady light revealed six hulking shapes stationed at the windows and stairwells. He braced himself for a fight but quickly surmised that something was wrong.

He motioned for the men behind him to stop and entered the guardroom alone. Good Virgin Mary, were the guards dead?

A long, blubbering snore filled the air.

He nearly came out of his skin. When he realized what the situation was, he blew out a sigh of relief. “See that they're disarmed,” he said to his men.

“My lord,” someone said in an incredulous whisper, “they've already been disarmed.”

“Their hands and feet are bound,” Iago noted.

Beyond the guardroom, they climbed the stairs. At each separate landing, they found a sleeping Englishman. It was uncanny, as if the
sidhe
had cast a spell over the entire household.

By the time they had reached the great hall, Aidan had begun to believe victory was in his grasp.

But from the landing of the staircase, he heard voices and froze. He cocked his head to listen.

“All right, then,” said a sweet, feminine voice, “what about this one?”

Revelin's distinctive silvery chuckle wafted on the foggy air. “Not quite, my dear. I believe you are surrounded.”

“Oh, geld and splay you—” She broke off as Aidan stepped into the room, followed by Donal Og, Iago and the first troop of men. She stood and grinned at him, and it was the sweetest smile he had ever seen. “Welcome, Your Eminence,” she said.

He strode to the table, where a
fidchell
gaming board had been set out. “What in God's name is going on here?”

Revelin stroked his long white beard. “Well, my lord, it looks as if the young lady is about to surrender her key pegs and lose the game.”

“I mean
here.
” Exasperated, he gestured at the men strewn about the room.

“Ah, them.” Revelin dipped his head in a sage nod. “We drugged them.”

“We did,” Pippa confirmed. She pointed to a stack of shortswords and shields and stabbing daggers at the base of the dais. “We put their weapons here. Does that suit you?”

“We also sent the strongbox of Ross Castle to the coast for safekeeping.” Shannon MacSweeney spoke from a corner of the room where she sat placidly doing needlework. “I had to tell them about the chest of gold, Aidan,” said his childhood friend. “I hope you don't mind.”

She stroked the golden hair of Richard de Lacey, who lay on a cushion beside her. “I hope he doesn't mind, either.”

For a moment, Aidan could not speak. When he found his voice, he said, “You drugged them.”

“That's right,” Pippa said.

“A bit of Tristram's knot in the poteen,” Revelin said. “Well, perhaps more than a bit.” He went back to studying the
fidchell
board.

“And also in the porridge and ale,” Pippa added. “And I'm quite afraid I added some to the wine and ale just for good measure. But you had better hurry up and defeat them or do whatever it is you do when you conquer a castle. Once they wake up, they are bound to be most unhappy fellows.”

Aidan walked over to the table. He stood very still, looking across at her, drinking in the sight of her face, all soft in the morning mist. He stared at her for so long that she blushed.

“You really should make haste, my lord.”

“I shall.” For the first time in more than a month, he smiled. It felt good to smile. “There is one thing I must do first.”

“What?”

“This.” He slid his arms around her and leaned down to place a long, lush kiss on her startled mouth. Ah, he had forgotten what she meant to him.

But never, not for a moment, had he forgotten how much he loved her.

“If you mean to thank me in the same manner,” Revelin said, “you'll find yourself highly unappreciated.”

Aidan straightened, his eyes never leaving Pippa's face. “I'll save my kisses for her, if it's all the same to you.”

The tension among the men dissolved into loud guffaws. Donal Og beat his chest like a warrior of yore. “Come, lads!” he bellowed. “Let us make short work of the prisoners before they awaken and make us sweat for our victory!”

W
e had a most perturbing report from Richard in Ireland. It seems he and his forces were compelled—by means he did not explain in his letters—to abandon Ross Castle and retreat to Killarney. Even more disconcerting is the news that he has fallen in love with an Irishwoman and means to marry her before the ban on Irish and English unions takes effect. Imagine! My Richard, a bridegroom.

I fear his duty to England will dim his joy. He has called for reinforcements, but Oliver says more men are unlikely to be sent, as the queen's forces are already taxed to their limit.

However, Oliver himself is quite capable of raising an army and a fleet of ships as well, for the Muscovy Company has grown unimaginably rich on the trading begun by Oliver's father.

Perhaps a voyage to Ireland would allow us to investigate the truth of the mysterious message we received that dredged up such a sweet, aching wealth of memories.

For now, I shall put aside my cares. The delightful
contessa is coming to Blackrose Priory for another visit. She is always full of the most deliciously shocking gossip.

—Lark de Lacey,
Countess of Wimberleigh

“W
ill you marry me?”

Aidan looked up from the document he was studying. The bewilderment on his face disheartened Pippa, but she forced herself to stand calmly in the middle of the counting office, waiting for his answer.

He gave her a soft, distracted smile, his eyes hazy with distant thoughts. “I'm sorry. I didn't hear you correctly. I thought you just asked me to marry you.”

“I did.”

His eyebrows shot up. “You did?”

“I did.”

The eyebrows descended in a frown. “Oh.” With his thumb, he curled the corner of the letter on the desk, then frowned and turned the document facedown.

An awkward silence stretched out between them while the afternoon sunlight, streaming through a narrow window, painted lazy patterns on the stone floor.

Fool, she called herself. All her life she had lived in dread of rejection, so much so that she had learned to shield herself from any kind of intimacy. Now here she
was inviting the ultimate rebuff—from the one person who could wound her the most deeply.

It was too late to retract her question, so she took refuge in a cocky pose, with hands on hips and a challenging lift of her chin. “Well? Will you?”

“Will I marry you?” He tasted the question as if it were some exotic drink. How maddeningly attractive he looked this afternoon. Three weeks after signing terms of surrender with Richard de Lacey, the O Donoghue Mór seemed a new man, hale and assured, lord of his domain.

Richard and his army had withdrawn to the northern shores of Lough Leane, near Killarney. Aidan was home now, truly home for the first time since she had known him, and he looked at ease.

Also puzzled, as he sat with his elbows resting on the table, fingers forming a steeple. “Forgive me, but isn't it the usual way for the man to ask the woman?”

“I don't know anything about the usual way. I only know my way.” She tossed her head as if his reply did not truly matter. “I know that marriage is a grave business, and for a chieftain to wed an outsider is unheard of, but—”

“How do you know these things?”

“Revelin told me.”

“Ah. Revelin the all-wise. What else did he tell you?”

“That you would say yes.” She was so embarrassed, she could barely choke out the words.

He rose slowly, with a predator's grace, and moved past the writing table. “Revelin misunderstands.”

Through sheer force of will, she kept herself from melting of shame. She summoned a sparkling smile and winked at him, pretending the whole thing had been a joke. “Of course,” she said briskly. “The whole idea is quite preposterous. You are absolutely right to refuse—”

“I adore you with all my heart,” he said softly.

She let out an involuntary sigh. His declaration sent warmth rushing through her, raising a flush on her skin and lifting her hopes until breathing became painful.

“And I cannot marry you,” he continued. “Not now. Perhaps not ever.”

Her heart turned to stone in her chest. The old torment stormed through her, the all-too-familiar feeling of abandonment. It was the numbness that had come over her when she had stood on a windswept strand in England while they buried old Mab; it was the freezing sense of isolation she had experienced each time a troupe of players melted apart; it was the forced aloofness she cultivated even in the teeming yard of St. Paul's.

She thought she had prepared herself for the hurt, but she had underestimated its strength. If his words had been blows, they would have killed; they were that lethal.

Turning away, wanting to get out before he saw her pain, she managed to mumble, “I see.” There would be no quick recovery for her this time, no blithe laughter to hide her tears.

He stood to bar her from leaving and reached for her hands. “Nay, my love, you do not see. Come here.” He led her out a low doorway and up a short spiral of stairs, then through a tower door. They emerged onto the west section of the wall walk. It was a perfect day, the sun soft upon the treetops and the lake reflecting a clear blue sky.

“Look well upon the beauty,” he said, standing behind her and speaking intimately into her ear. “Who knows when you shall see its like again? It is too lovely, too piercing, to last.”

She was not sure if he meant this kingdom or the feelings between them. “Why do you say that?”

“Because we won't be left alone here, to live and love
and make bairns and do all the things ordinary people dream of doing.”

Her hopes began to sink beneath the weight of his logic. “You mean Richard will return.”

She felt his broad shoulders stiffen as if preparing to bear a great burden. “With reinforcements. And he won't stop at taking Ross Castle. He'll have to take me as well.”

“No,” she said. “Could you not just come to terms with him? Why should he need you as a prisoner?”

“If it were only Richard, I would not worry. For all that he's a Sassenach, he has acted with honor.” Aidan turned her in his arms so that she faced him. “Felicity has a powerful family.”

The mention of Aidan's late wife sent a dark chill rippling over Pippa's skin. She clung to his arms, feeling suddenly sick and dizzy. “Her father continues to insist you killed his daughter, doesn't he?”

Aidan nodded, and his thoughts strayed to the letter lying on his desk. “He will not rest until he sees me hanged.”

The chill deepened to an icy sting. She wanted to clap her hands over her ears, to close her eyes, to make the feeling of dread go away.

But Aidan was right. It would not go away. A man had lost his daughter. How could he rest until he felt justice had been served?

“I still want to marry you,” she whispered.

Aidan smiled sadly and touched his lips to her brow. “Perhaps today you do.”

“I think I wanted to the first moment I saw you. So don't try to tell me this feeling will fade away.”

He seemed to have to work to keep his embrace gentle; she sensed a strained tension in him. “If you have
even a fraction of the desire I feel for you, then your wish is understandable.”

“It is more than mere desire,” she insisted. “It is like wanting to find my family, only stronger than that. One thing I have come to realize is that if I have you, I don't need them. It is probably impossible to find out the truth anyway.”

“But if you were to learn who they are?” His voice sounded taut, the words forced.

“I might be curious about them. But I don't care anymore. I don't wish to know.”

He closed his eyes, and a look of torment shadowed his face. Yet when he opened his eyes, he was smiling. “My sweet, entirely adorable colleen,” he said, lowering his mouth to kiss her, “is there anything you won't say?”

“I think not.” She shuddered as his tongue flicked out to taste her lips. “Not to you.” His kiss deepened, and she felt the love and desire flowing so richly through her blood that she moaned with the urgent pleasure of it. She was shaking when he pulled back. “You know,” she whispered, “I'm certain there are worse reasons to marry than rampant lust.”

“I'm certain you're right,” he said, some of the old laughter creeping into his voice. But then, as he studied her upturned face, he sobered. “Sweetheart, you need a reliable husband, not someone who is likely to end at the gibbet.”

She clenched her hands into fists and struck his chest. “Don't talk like that!”

“But what if I were to be seized by Constable Browne?” he persisted. “What would you do then?”

She forced a laugh. “I suppose, my lord, I would be a rather wealthy widow.”

He laughed, too, and bent his head again to kiss her. Just before their lips met, she fancied she saw a flash of
crazed desperation in his eyes. But when his warm mouth covered hers, she forgot all about their macabre conversation.

 

I suppose, my lord, I would be a rather wealthy widow.
Her words, though spoken in jest, clung in Aidan's mind like a burr in a horse's mane.

Late at night, when all the household lay at rest, he climbed to the topmost point of Ross Castle, where he could brace his foot on the wall and look out across the moonlit lake to the far mountains.

How simple life had been for his forebears, he reflected. Simple and brutal. A chieftain ruled the domain for as far as he could see.

Now the Sassenach had come, preserving the brutality, heightening it, creating complications for which Ireland was unprepared. The Irish would lose much of themselves in this war; Munster was in pieces, and even the great rebel Earl of Desmond had been driven into the misty mountains of Slieve Mish.

Aidan thought of the flurry of furious letters, warrants and proclamations he had received since making peace with Richard. He could not say how long he could keep the force of Constable Browne's fury at bay—a month? Half a year? He knew only that they would come for him; it was the way of the Sassenach.

So there it was. Felicity had won. She had defeated him.

Except on one matter.

A soft, heartfelt smile unfurled on his lips as the night wind lifted his hair. She had not managed to destroy his love for Pippa.

His clenched fist came down hard on the top of the wall. He noticed a smear of blood but felt no pain, only a deep, quiet exultation as he came to his decision.

Aye, he would marry Pippa. He would steal joy from the jaws of despair. And secretly, without her knowledge, he would prepare her for a future without him.

I suppose, my lord, I would be a rather wealthy widow.

“And so you shall be, my beloved,” he whispered to the quiet night. “So you shall be.”

 

They were married by Revelin of Innisfallen. The canon beamed as he held out his book for Aidan's offering of silver for the Arrha; his voice rang with triumph as he blessed the knotwork wedding ring of the O Donoghue.

During the celebratory mass that followed, Pippa sat in wide-eyed awe. The sacred mysteries intrigued her. She wondered why the Reformers found such things as Latin prayers and songs, clouds of incense, and unshakable faith so threatening. The little windy chapel of Ross Castle hardly dripped with decadent riches, and Rome seemed several worlds away. The people gathered here exuded a simple piety that was bound to change the mind of any Reformer.

Or perhaps not any. To her dying day, Felicity Browne O Donoghue had dedicated herself to converting these people to the Reformed faith. More stubborn than their mistress, the people of Ross had resisted, driving her to unbearable frustration. What a foolish waste, Pippa thought. God was God, no matter what church a person worshipped in, no matter how prayers were offered.

Even as memories of Felicity chilled her, a small, evil exultation nudged into her mind. Pippa was here, wed to the man she adored, because Felicity had taken her own life.

Filled with guilt, Pippa stole a glance at Aidan. He knelt with his head bent. His raven hair fell forward, the
single beaded strand catching a glow from the candlelight. His face looked strong and intense, curiously determined, and so beautiful it made her heart ache.

She was stricken by a terrible fear. What in God's name was she doing? She, a common street urchin, marrying an Irish chieftain. It was madness.
Madness.

She must have made some subtle sound or movement of distress, for he closed his hand around hers and caught her eyes. “
Pax vobiscum,
” he said, echoing the words Revelin had just spoken.

She closed her eyes and swayed toward him. Aye, peace. It settled around her like a golden mantle, enveloping her, comforting, healing her. All her life, she had sought the peace of knowing she was loved. Aidan O Donoghue was giving that to her. The magnitude of his gift struck her, and a tear seeped out from beneath her eyelashes.

With a touch as light as a moth's wing, he brushed away the tear. She opened her eyes to see him looking at her with an intensity that stole her breath.

“Those had best be tears of happiness,” he whispered.

“So you should hope, or it is going to be a very long night,” she whispered back, trying to lighten the moment and resisting the urge to sniffle loudly. “I am now your wife. What more could I want?”

His smile held such promise that a wave of shivers slid over her. “That,” he said, bending to secretly trace the shape of her ear with his tongue, “is something we will explore tonight.”

 

The maids spoke in rapid Gaelic, but their broad winks and friendly tweaks and pats delivered a universal message of good-humored bawdiness. Pippa realized that even for the older married women, there was something
inherently exciting about readying a new bride for her husband.

With much giggling and sighing, they stripped her naked and bathed her in warm spring water steeped in fragrant herbs. One girl explained, in a dense brogue, that morning dew had been added to the bathwater in order to keep her skin beautiful. Pippa luxuriated; baths were still a novelty to her and the gentle care of womenfolk even newer yet. Sibheal, the local midwife, had strong, capable, cosseting hands. With wry laughter, she told of assisting the birth of the O Donoghue Mór, pantomiming hilariously the prodigious size—in all aspects—of the future chieftain.