The Maiden of Ireland

The men of Clonmuir told him they were fishermen and farmers, shepherds and sawyers.

Wesley thought they were lying.

They thought he was lying.

“Our visitor’s got a thirst on him,” Conn O’Donnell announced with a wolfish grin.

To Wesley’s surprise and pleasure, it was Caitlin herself who held out a mug. Their fingers brushed as he took it. The contact sent a shock of heat through him. He sought her eyes to see if she, too, had felt the quick fire.

Her momentary look of confusion told him she had. She drew her hand away, tossing her head as if to shake away the spell. “Drink your poteen, Mr. Hawkins.”

He sniffed suspiciously at the contents of the mug. “Poteen, is it?”

Taking a mug of her own, she dropped to the bench beside him. An almost-smile flirted with her lips. “It’s not usually fatal to drink the poteen.”

Still Wesley hesitated. “What’s it made of?”

“’Tisn’t polite to be asking,” she retorted, taking a slow sip from her cup. Her lips came away moist and shiny. “Just barley roasted over slow-burning peat and distilled. Savor it well, Mr. Hawkins, for you English have burned the barley fields since we brewed this last batch of courage.”

Goaded by the reminder and by the gleam in her eyes, Wesley lifted his mug and drank deeply.

The liquid shot down his gullet and exploded in his gut. A fire roared over the path the poteen had taken. Tears sizzled in his eyes. An army of leprechauns bearing torches paraded through his veins. “Barley, you say?” he rasped.

“Aye.” All innocence, Caitlin took a careful second sip. “Also pig meal, treacle and a bit of soap to give it body.”

Wesley quickly learned the art of judicious sipping. Avoiding questions, he took supper in the hall, then retired with a cup of tame ale to the hearth. The meal of stale bread and something gray and soupy he dared not inquire about cavorted with the poteen in his stomach. He thought longingly of the sumptuous suppers he had enjoyed with England’s underground Catholics and royalists. White-skinned ladies had delighted in teaching Laura her table manners. His former life had been fraught with danger, but he had known occasional comforts.

As the men spoke of an upcoming feast, Wesley expected Caitlin to withdraw to the women’s corner. But she stayed at the central hearth, staring from time to time into the glowing heart of the turf fire as if she saw something there that no one else could see. Wesley wondered what visions lurked behind those fierce, sad eyes. Someday he would ask her.

* * *

“What are you looking at, seonin?” asked Rory. He and Wesley stood in a thatch-roofed outbuilding at Clonmuir. Rory held a broken cartwheel in one hand and a vise in the other.

“Your arm,” said Wesley, eyeing the intimidating bulge of muscle beneath Rory’s tan hide. Lord, they grew men big and tough in these Irish parts. He wore a broad silver armlet engraved with Celtic knots. From elbow to shoulder ran a long, shiny scar. “How did you hurt yourself?”

Rory tried to work a stave around the wheel. The iron hoop slipped. Patiently he set it back in place. “I cut it while sharpening a plowshare.”

And my mother’s the Holy Roman Empress, thought Wesley, propping his elbow on a stone jutting from the rough wall. It was a sword cut if he’d ever seen one, and he had seen plenty, some on his own body. He must remember to ask Titus Hammersmith if he recalled wounding one of the warriors of the Fianna.

Rory Breslin was certainly big enough to make a formidable fighting man. But Wesley doubted he could be their fabled leader. Though strong as a bullock, Rory was also as simple as one of the shaggy beasts that used to graze over the hills of Ireland. He didn’t possess the guile to lead men into battle and out so successfully, time and time again.

“Why don’t you drive a nail into the stave to hold it while you secure the other end?” Wesley suggested.

Rory’s thick eyebrows lifted eloquently. “I’ll not be needing your English advice.”

“I wonder,” Wesley said carefully, “why you and the men aren’t out fishing. It appears Clonmuir could use the food.”

“Because the Sassenach burned our fleet,” Rory snapped. “Every vessel’s gone save a curragh and the leaky hooker.”

Hearing the pain in the big man’s voice, Wesley flinched. “I don’t hold with such practices.”

Rory gave a dissatisfied grunt and went back to his work.

“Why aren’t you at prayers with the rest of them?” Wesley inquired.

“You ask a lot of questions, English.”

“Very well, I’ll leave you to your chores.” Wesley stepped toward the door.

“Wait a minute. I’m supposed to be—” Rory broke off.

“Keeping an eye on me,” Wesley said with a breezy grin. “Don’t blame you a bit, my friend. Seems you’ve ample cause to distrust an Englishman.” He gazed out the doorway. Beyond the walls lay the tiny village of thatched huts clustered shoulder-to-shoulder around the church, bleached white by the wind. Behind them the land rose up, hills scored by deep clefts and clad in budding heather.

No one had invited Wesley to prayers. They assumed that he, like most Englishmen, protested the Catholic faith.

They had no priest to sing mass. He wanted to ask where the cleric had gone, but wasn’t certain they knew. Admitting he was Catholic and had studied at Douai would have wrung some sympathy from the Irish, but Wesley held silent. Something sinister was happening to the priests of Ireland; all he needed was an overzealous bounty hunter after him.

The church bell clanged with the dissonance of aged iron. A few minutes later, Caitlin MacBride and her entourage streamed up the road toward the stronghold.

The sight of her struck Wesley with a fresh bolt of yearning. His hand gripped the door frame, and his eyes devoured her. She wore a clean kirtle and apron. Her loose blouse and skirt molded a form similar to those he had heard described in the confessions of notorious skirt chasers. Suddenly he felt every minute of his three years of self-imposed celibacy.

She walked beside an exceedingly pretty girl with sleek blond hair and pale skin. He remembered her from the night before; she had been sulking in the women’s corner.

“Who is that with Caitlin?” he asked Rory.

“’Tis Magheen, Caitlin’s younger sister.”

“So there are two MacBride sisters.”

“Magheen’s not a MacBride any longer. She wed not long ago.” Rory scowled in disapproval. “She came back home because Caitlin failed to make good on the dowry.”

Wesley eyed the voluptuous younger sister, a blooming Irish rose who lacked the savage appeal of Caitlin. “What man would turn such a beauty out?”

“You’ll see.” Rory returned to his chore.

And Wesley did see, later, at the feast. People swarmed to Clonmuir from the countryside. They came on foot or crammed into carts, or by sea in pucans and curraghs—large, loud families who brayed greetings to one another and ate and drank as if the meal laid out on tables in the yard were their last—or their first in many days.

A high whistle pierced the noise. Heads turned toward the main gate. A large man on a handsome mare came clattering through, followed by two sturdy-looking retainers. He wore a long tunic woven of heather wool and studded with polished stones. His mane of black hair flowed around a face fashioned of strong, clean lines and draped with a long, braided beard.

The quintessential Irish lord, thought Wesley as the man dropped lithely to the ground, tossed his reins to a boy, and strode toward Caitlin and Magheen. He might have ridden off the tongue of a gifted bard.

Putting down his mug of ale, Wesley moved closer to the lord’s table to await the approach. Above his white beard, braided with brass bells for the occasion, Seamus MacBride’s face was florid, his eyes sparkling, and his mood blissful from drink.

Caitlin sat beside him, silent and watchful, her plate of spit-roasted beef untouched.

“Logan Rafferty!” Seamus spread his arms. “’Tis well come you are to our feast!”

Rafferty aimed a thunderous glare at Magheen. She moved closer to Caitlin and peeked demurely at him from beneath her long golden lashes.

Logan tossed back his inky hair. “And while the lot of you makes merry, Hammersmith is on the move again.”

“Hist!” said Caitlin, her amber eyes wide and fierce. In rapid Gaelic she added, “Have a care with that tongue of yours, a chara. We’ve an English visitor.”

Wesley stood with one hip propped on the table edge and an easy smile on his face. Inside, he seethed like the Atlantic in a gale. Surely this arrogant lord was the leader of the Fianna. Why else would Caitlin have been so quick to silence him? And who else would know the plans of Titus Hammersmith? For that matter, why had Hammersmith decided to go on the offensive so quickly? Damn the murdering Roundhead! Only a week ago they had agreed he would wait for a report from Wesley.

Rafferty subjected Wesley to a long perusal punctuated by flaring nostrils and glowering black eyes. “English, you say?”

“John Wesley Hawkins.” He lifted his mug. “My friends call me Wesley.”

“My inferiors call me Logan Rafferty, lord of Brocach.”

“I’ll do my best to remember that.” Wesley pulled himself to his full height. The two men stood as equals, eye to eye, each broad of shoulder and narrow of hip.

“What do you intend doing with yourself, Hawkins?” Rafferty demanded.

I’m here to take your head off, thought Wesley. Aloud, he said, “I’m for Galway tomorrow.”

Rafferty hooked his thumbs into the band of his trews. “Galway, is it?”

“Aye.” Wesley had just made the decision. With a stab of loss he realized he no longer needed to seduce Caitlin MacBride in order to coax secrets from her. “If I manage to give Hammersmith the slip, I’ll take a ship to England.”

“The sooner the better,” muttered Rafferty. Turning his back on Wesley, he said to Magheen, “The fiddler’s playing a reel, agradh.”

She gave him a beautiful, false smile. “Why, thank you for telling me so. I was just thinking, our English guest might like to learn the steps.”

Wesley found himself pulled into the center of the dancers. Magheen danced like a shadow on a breeze, light and graceful, conscious that the movements of her willowy body attracted every male eye in the yard. Although she smiled up at Wesley, her gaze kept straying to Logan Rafferty.

Wesley was curiously unresponsive to the lovely woman on his arm. Again and again his attention strayed to the golden-skinned girl who stood with her father and Logan Rafferty by the table.

“It’s generous of you,” said Wesley, “to give an Englishman this dance when your husband’s obviously such a great lord.”

“My husband’s a great fool,” she retorted. “I’m using you to show him so.”

Wesley could not suppress a grin. “All men should find themselves so used.” The pattern of the reel brought them near the table. Like a she-wolf guarding her cubs, Caitlin watched their every move. Feigning casual interest, he remarked, “Rafferty must be a busy man, times being what they are.”

“Aye. He expects me to sit and warm the hearthstones while he—oh!” Magheen lurched against Wesley. He whipped a glance over his shoulder in time to see Caitlin drawing back the foot she had stuck in her sister’s path.

The deliberate interruption convinced Wesley that he had guessed correctly about Rafferty.

When they passed the table a second time, the lord of Brocach reached out and grasped Magheen’s arm. “Get some manners on you, wife,” he ordered.

Magheen tossed her head. “I’ll not be your sometimes wife, Logan Rafferty. ’tis a full partner I’ll be or none at all.”

His spine stiffened. The people nearby hushed, the better to hear the quarrel.

“I came here to make a bargain,” said Logan. To Wesley’s surprise, he addressed not Magheen or Seamus, but Caitlin. “I’ve decided to reduce the dowry, out of the goodness of my heart.”

Magheen’s face blossomed into a smile that might have set the mountains to singing.

“The betrothal papers specified twelve healthy cows,” said Rafferty. “You offered one bullock as a token of good faith. I’ll take that, and call us even.”

While the onlookers gasped, Magheen buried her face in her slim white hands. Seamus hid behind the wide rim of his mug. Caitlin closed her eyes, nostrils thinning as she tried for patience and lost the battle.

“You picked the wrong time to let reason come on that great fat head of yours, Logan,” she burst out. In one swift movement she picked up her untouched wooden trencher of beef and thumped it down on the table in front of him. “There’s your bullock, and welcome to it!” Leaping up from the table, she stormed across the yard and disappeared up a crumbling flight of stairs to the wall walk.

* * *

Christ have mercy, Caitlin seethed, her bare feet clapping against age-worn flagstones. “Will nothing go right with me these days?”

She had arranged a brilliant marriage for her sister only to have the two fighting like Roundheads and Irishmen. She had cast a spell for her lover and had conjured a renegade Englishman. And to cap all her woes, Hammersmith was on the march again.

She paused at a wide break in the wall. Her gaze traveled down the sheer drop of Traitor’s Leap, where the sea hurled white-bearded breakers at the pointed rocks. Back in the Tudor queen’s time, a member of the MacBride sept had tried to adopt English policies. His efforts had driven him to this spot; his guilt had hurled him over.

Her thoughts circled round and round like a flock of gulls after a fishing boat, and came to rest on John Wesley Hawkins. She should feel relieved that he had decided to go. And yet a hidden voice in her heart whispered that he must stay, for there was unfinished business between them.

“I’d been wondering why you wouldn’t touch your meal,” said a smooth, golden voice.

She spun around. There stood Hawkins, smiling that heart-catching smile, transfixing her, backing her against the rough crenellated wall.

“I take it that roasting the bullock wasn’t your idea,” he added.

“My father’s.” She swung back to look over the wall. Waves exploded against the shore but farther out, the waters lay dark and calm. How many times had she stood here, gazing at the flat empty line of the horizon, seeking a glimpse of a tall ship coming toward her, bearing her heart’s desire?

“It’s a good harbor,” Hawkins said.

He stood very close to her, so close that her shoulder grew warm. “Yes.” She took a step away from him. The natural harbor had a narrow entrance leading to a deep, horseshoe-shaped cove.

“Cromwell is determined to have Clonmuir in Hammersmith’s control, isn’t he? So he can have a port of his own, a port capable of accommodating deep-draught vessels.”

“Yes,” she said again. “That’s why we’re so determined to hold it for our own.”

“Cromwell’s army exceeds the entire population of Ireland,” said Hawkins. “He has enough men and guns to lay waste to every stone of Clonmuir. How will you stop him?”

“We’ll—” She clamped her mouth shut. How careless this disarming man made her. “You’d be surprised, Hawkins, what a few deeply committed warriors can accomplish.”

“No,” he said with an odd, wistful shimmer in his shadow-colored eyes. “No, I wouldn’t be surprised. And you’re to call me Wesley.”

“It’s such an English-sounding name.”

“That it is, Caitlin MacBride. A man can’t change what he is.”

How true, she thought. It was that very truth that had led her, again and again, to forgive her father’s follies. If she and Hawkins had been other than they were, they might have been friends.

“Tell me about Logan Rafferty and your sister.” He had moved closer again, a brush of heat against her arm.

She knew she should retreat, or better yet, push him away. Yet the commanding beauty of his face, the obvious ease with which he held himself, kept her in a thrall of curiosity. She knew she shouldn’t confess the turmoils of Clonmuir to an English stranger, but where was the harm in it? She had no confidant save Tom Gandy, and her steward’s habit of speaking in riddles was more vexing than satisfying. Despite Hawkins’s intimidating good looks and blatantly English character, something about him put her at ease. Just looking into his eyes gave her a feeling of peace, like the rocking motion of a boat on a calm sea.

“Logan comes from an old and industrious clan,” she explained, “although he’s taken on some English ways. That should please you.”

“So far, nothing about the man has pleased me.”

Caitlin held back a smile. “He should have chosen a wife of higher rank but...well, you’ve seen Magheen.”

“She’s very pretty.”

A tiny ache flared in Caitlin’s chest. Pretty was a word that could never apply to her. Tall and gawky, wild of hair, her face made up of harsh lines, she was not one to escape men’s attention. But it was not the soft, poetic devotion of smitten swains. Instead she commanded soldiers who had no choice.

Images of Hawkins dancing with Magheen harried her thoughts. He had moved with animal fluidity, a perfect foil for Magheen’s winsome grace. In looks, Hawkins was her masculine equal. She wondered why he wasn’t paying court to her now instead of pursuing Caitlin.

“Magheen’s not merely pretty,” she said. “She’s bright and amusing and wise in...important ways. She’s had many suitors, but would settle for no less than Logan. But nothing is simple. Because of her lower station, he demanded a large dowry. I tried to hide the sum from Magheen.”

“I take it she found out.”

“She did, and it burned her pride.” Reluctant amusement tugged at the corners of Caitlin’s mouth.

“So what did she do about it?”

“She refused to share his bed until he reduced his demands.”

“Ah. Your little sister has some of your defiance in her.”

Caitlin erected a wall of defense around her emotions. “We’ve been without a mother for six years. You’ve seen...our father. We don’t have the luxury of behaving like conventional ladies.” She sighed. “The matter might have been settled this very day. Logan would have had a live bullock, not one turning over a cookfire.”

“Your father’s doing?”

“Aye. So now I must find another means to appease Logan.”

His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “You? You alone, Caitlin?”

“Aye.”

“It’s a heavy burden for a young girl.” His large hand came up. Like the brush of a feather, it coasted along her jawline.

Caitlin was so surprised by his touch that for a moment she stood unmoving, hearing the crash of the sea and the dull thud of blood in her ears. Her skin tingled where his rough knuckles caressed her. Pulled by a force woven of longing, loneliness, and magic, she leaned toward him, staring at his strange English-made shirt and the thick belt he wore at his waist. St. George’s cross was stamped into the leather.

The patron saint of England brought her to her senses. She drew back quickly. “You mustn’t touch me.”

Very slowly, he lowered his hand. “You need to be touched, Caitlin MacBride. You need it very badly.”

She girded herself with denial. “Even if it were so, I would not need it from an Englishman.”

“Think again, my love. We’re easy with one another despite our differences. Remember our first meeting—the shock of it, the knowing? We could be good for each other.”

“And when, pray, has an Englishman ever been good for Ireland?”

A lazy grin spread over his face. “Even I know that, Caitlin. St. Patrick himself was English born, was he not?”

“But he had the heart of Eireann.”

“So might I, Caitlin MacBride. So might I.”

Ah, that voice. It could coax honey from an empty hive. She wondered at his cryptic words, at the look of yearning in his unusual eyes. Beating back the attraction that rose in her, she laughed suddenly. “You should be Irish, with that head of red hair and that gullet full of blarney, Mr. Hawkins.”

“Wesley.”

She stopped laughing. “Go down and enjoy the holiday while you may, Mr. Hawkins. You’ve chosen to leave tomorrow.” The words, spoken aloud, hurt her throat like the ache of tears.

He put his finger to his lips and then touched hers. “As you wish, Caitlin.” He ambled off along the wall walk and joined the throng in the yard.

The phantom brush of his fingers lingered like a tender kiss on her mouth. Caitlin faced back toward the sea. Just a few minutes ago her thoughts had fixed on Alonso. But like a high wind chasing the surf, Hawkins had scattered those thoughts. Worse, he had awakened the slumbering woman inside her—the woman who yearned, the woman who ached.

Dusting her hands on her apron, she scuttled the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. She had no time to be thinking of either man. If Logan was right about the movements of the Roundhead army, she had best be after sending Hawkins away.

* * *

The task proved harder than she had anticipated. Early the next morning they stood together at the head of the boreen, the skelped path that wound through the village and looped over the mist-draped hills to the southeast.

The rich colors of the rising sun mantled him, picking out pure gold highlights in his hair and softening the lines of his smile. She would always remember him this way, with his back to the sun and its rays fanning out around him.

“Seems we’ll not be seeing each other again,” she remarked, forcing lightness into her tone.

“So it seems.”

“Have a care, then, Mr. Hawkins, for Hammersmith doesn’t like to be kindled by des—” Appalled, she snapped her mouth shut. Mother Mary, why couldn’t she govern her tongue in the presence of this man?

“You speak as if you know him.”

“And what kind of fool would I be if I made no effort to know my enemy?” she retorted.

He stood very still, his eyes never leaving hers. “You are no fool, Caitlin MacBride. I could wish—” He stopped and drew a deep breath of the misty air. He seemed as reluctant as her to speak freely.

“Could wish what?”

“Just...have a care for yourself. Hammersmith is a powerful man. A dangerous man. If he gets close to Clonmuir, promise me you’ll flee.”

She laughed. “Flee? Not likely. Clonmuir is my home. I’d defend it until the last stone is torn from my dying hands.”

His mouth thinned in disapproval. “I was afraid of that.”

“Don’t fear for me. ’Tisn’t necessary.” She glanced at the angle of the sun. “You’d best be on your way.”

But he continued to stand still, gazing at her while larks and sparrows greeted the day. Against her will, she remembered that other parting, the tears that had flowed as freely from her eyes as the pledges that flowed from Alonso’s lips. Somehow, this tense, dry-eyed farewell hurt more.

“God, I don’t want to leave you,” Hawkins burst out.

Stricken by his vehemence, Caitlin dove for the haven of formality. “The blessings of God be on you, Mr. Hawkins. And may your way be strewn with luck.”

He lifted his arm, reaching for her but not touching her. Caitlin understood the unspoken question. He wanted her to take the next step, to come into his arms.

But with the self-control bred into her by generations of warriors, she stood her ground. For if she stepped into his arms now, she knew she would never leave.

Four

Footsore and grubby from the long trek to Galway, Wesley reflected glumly on his visit to Clonmuir. He had found no barbarous Irish rebels, but men dedicated to preserving their lands and their very lives from English invaders. Caitlin MacBride was not the uncivilized harpy Cromwell had warned him about, but a fascinating woman with a heart big enough to embrace all of Clonmuir and Irish refugees as well.

A heart big enough to believe the lies of John Wesley Hawkins. She had believed him when he’d told her he meant to sneak back to Galway and stow away on a ship. She had given him a sack of provisions from her meager stores. She had consecrated his journey with the poetry of an Irish blessing.