Maryssa felt suddenly cold, the breeze sweeping up the side of the valley weaving beneath the shadowy folds of her hood. A fist seemed to tighten in her stomach, her fingers trembling as her eyes swept the ragged worshipers, the stone altar, the hard face of the man beside her.
"The soldiers," she said, her voice scarcely a whisper. "They fear the wilds because of you?"
"Nay,” Tade said, slipping the knot of the soft leather pouch that never left his waist. "Because of a phantom their own guilt has created—a rider, fools claim, who wears a cape that can turn him to mist, and a hood of black and silver marked by a falcon with its talons spread." Tade took her hand, but she could scarce feel his fingers, her own were so numb. He turned her soft palm upward and carefully emptied the contents of the leather pouch into her cupped hand.
She felt something cool and smooth slide into her fingers, but she dared not look at it.
"You asked for all that I am, Maura. Everything. No dark shadows hidden. And I'm giving it to you. Now."
Slowly, so slowly, Maryssa dragged her gaze down over the folds of his mantle, past the brown hands that had taught her to love and laugh, then across her own slender fingers to where a fine gold chain pooled against her skin.
She stared at the familiar curves of a swan's golden throat, arched gracefully over delicately wrought wings. The pendant that had belonged to the mother she had never known. The chain that had been snapped from her throat by a silk-masked brigand with eyes of emerald fire.
The necklet seemed to swim before her eyes, but instead of the horror and revulsion she had expected to feel in the event of such a revelation, she felt only the hollow sorrow of a knight's lady sending him off to do battle. A battle of honor, for what was noblest in men. In that instant she hated the brutes such as Quentin Rath and her own father, who had forced a man such as Tade to rove the highroads—not to seek a fortune cut from the purses of innocents but rather to shield those who had nothing to protect them but the few rags their conquerors had left them.
Shame for the nation that had bred her and for the father who had shown her only scorn surged through her, and it was all she could do to meet Tade's eyes.
She did not know what she had expected to find there, in those dark-fringed depths—hate for her and all her kind, or the savage arrogance that had glinted from the slits in his hood that long-ago night at the inn. She only knew that the tender hopefulness, the solemn, gentle pleading for understanding that shone in his face stole away all words, leaving only the silent tears to slip down her cheeks.
"Maura, I never meant to dupe you. It is just that I feared putting you in danger." His eyes flicked to her hands, a dark flush tinting his cheekbones. "Aye, and in truth I feared, too, that I would lose you forever if you knew that the man who dared to love you was not only a landless Irishman but a common thief as well."
"Common!" Maryssa could feel the blaze in her own eyes. "Nay, Tade Kilcannon, you are far from common. You are not only kind but brave as well, and willing to cast away your own life for the safety of others. You are even good enough to put away your hatred for the man who wronged your family and to love that man's daughter.”
"Maura."He pulled her to his body with a force that drove the breath from her lungs, but Maryssa reveled in it, losing herself in the hard heat of his mouth as it plundered hers, claiming her with a fiery possession. His hands swept up, driving the folds of her hood back from her hair, to frame her face in his callused palms. "I was so damn scared you would hate me if you knew."
"Hate you?" A tiny laugh tore from her throat. "Before this moment, I never would have believed it possible that I could love you more deeply than I already did. But now. . .” She pushed herself up on her slippered toes, her lips brushing his with a reverence more binding than any vows. "I love you Tade, more than my life, more than—more than Devin's gentle God or my father's cruel one. No matter what the future holds, no one will ever steal away the place you hold within me."
Tade's eyes were tear-bright, and the firm lips that had brought her such ecstasy were quivering with emotion. "I want you for my wife. Want to fill you with my seed, my sons. I want to hold daughters with ebony curls in my arms and make love to you until no demon can haunt you."
Maryssa laid her fingers on his lips, her own tears flowing free. "Aye, love," she said. "I know." Her other hand tightened about the swan pendant. "You held this once as a secret remembrance of a terrified girl you scarcely knew." She raised her eyes to his, incredible strength and confidence springing from some well of love within her. “Wear it now, openly, as a token from a woman who would give you the world if it was in her grasp. A symbol that whatever the fates may bring, you'll ever be bound to me as husband in my heart."
Love and a fierce sense of protectiveness toward this bold man and the people he sheltered, flowed through her as she reached around Tade's neck to fasten the clasp of the thin gold chain with fingers that trembled. The swan lay in the bronzed hollow of his throat, glistening against the warmth of his skin.
She raised eyes shimmering with tears, full of the emotion that seemed about to burst her heart, and the love that shone from Tade Kilcannon's face seared deep.
"I have no—no token to give you," he said in a choked voice. "Except this vow." His eyes pierced hers. "One day you'll be my wife, Maryssa Wylder. Mine. For nothing—not the laws of men or of God himself—will keep me from binding you to me. I swear it on my mother's grave."
He started to seal his promise with his lips, but suddenly it was as though a tempest in all its fury had whirled down upon them. "Your mother's grave," a voice snarled. "I vow you're not fit to spit upon it!"
Maryssa cried out in shock, her stomach plummeting to her toes at the hate-filled tones as Tade wheeled toward the man who stood but an arm's length away. She could feel his muscles jerk whip-taut, like those of a warrior readying for battle, the pallor of his face attesting to the fact that Tade, too, had been oblivious to the sudden silence that had fallen upon the hollow, unaware of the crunch of boots charging toward the place where they stood. Maryssa saw Tade's jaw set hard, proud, and defiant as his eyes swept the sea of hostile faces closing in on them, his gaze locking with the murderous glare of Kane Kilcannon. But for the first time she saw beneath the proud earl's rage and fury to the pain that weighed upon his heart.
"Mr. Kilcannon," Maryssa began, fighting to stay the storm lashing between father and son. "I—forgive me if I disturbed your worship. Tade was but—"
"But placing every man, woman, and child who dared come here in danger?" Kane snarled. "Dragging the daughter of English Wylder here, to the one place that was safe?"
"Da.” Tade's voice was hard and cold, a warning as he grasped Maryssa's hand in his own. “Don't say things you'll later regret."
"Regret?" the earl blazed. "The one thing I regret is having a son who would cast to the devil a man's courage, a man's honor. You're my son—my heir. These people are yours to protect, to defend, and you throw them into danger to amuse some English woman you've been rutting with?"
"Damn it, Father—" Tade's eyes flashed deadly fire. A fiercer anger than Maryssa had ever seen now burned in their depths.
"Damn you to hell!" The bellow of rage was rife with a desperation and helplessness that tore at Maryssa's heart as Kane Kilcannon's features contorted into a mask of torment. "Don't you dare defend her to me!" One powerful fist knotted. Maryssa screamed a warning, fighting to break Tade's grip on her arm and leap between the two men. She caught a glimpse of Devin running through the crowd, but they were both too late. Kane's fist arced in a savage path toward Tade's jaw, and the hard knuckles connected with a sickening thud. Tade's head snapped back with the force of the blow. He staggered a step back, his own fist flashing ready, then freezing in midair.
Someone in the crowd shouted. A baby set up a wail. But Maryssa saw only the white imprint of Kane Kilcannon's hand on Tade's skin and the thin trickle of blood dripping from the hard line of Tade's mouth. Yet even that phy
sical evidence of the rift between father and son filled her with less horror than did the raw hatred that flashed between them.
"Kane! For the love of God!" Rachel's cry of distress mingled with a harsh-spoken "Hold!" as Maryssa stumbled backward. She felt a hand flash out to steady her and knew it as Devin's when he propelled her out of the path of the angry men. In her stead he stormed between them, his slender body seeming but a reed trapped in the joining of two raging rivers.
"Stop it, Da!" Devin's voice cut clear and strong through the rumbling of the crowd.
The bitterness that twisted Tade's mouth tore at Maryssa's heart. "You might as well spare your breath, Dev," he said, turning his glare upon his father. "You've ever been ready to strike me, have you not, Da? To wreak your punishment on me for the sin of being a failure as your son? Fine, then, take your fill of it if you have half as much courage as you have hate."
Maryssa flinched as Kane gave a cry of fury, but Devin's hand dug deep into his father's bulging arm, holding him with astonishing strength. The holy man's mild eyes glinted with sorrow and pain tainted with blade-sharp indignation. "Enough, both of you! This is no highroad suited for a brawl! It is a place of God."
“It is a place for the heir Kilcannon to be dallying with his English witch, more like!" someone in the crowd dared.
"Well, I vow we'd best leave the glen to those a-trysting, then, if this is any example of the reverence with which you treat the saying of mass," Devin blazed, his challenging gaze sweeping the faces about him.
The grumblings of the ragged parishioners died to a murmur, and the eyes that had been boldly glaring at Maryssa were now fixed upon the ground, the cheeks of most flushing pink at Devin's reproof. "Look at you, all of you!" he went on. "Aye, and most especially you, Da! Charging up here with your hate, casting it like stones at a woman who has done nothing to you." The mutterings of the crowd rose, the catlike face of Sheena O'Toole peeking out from the rest, dripping hatred.
"Done nothing to us? This woman is the daughter of the man who stole your father's lands!" she sniffed.
Devin wheeled on the girl, his face deathly white. "The English have left us but little. They've taken our lands, our churches, the food from our mouths, but by God, don't let them take our common decency! I know Maryssa Wylder, and I would stake my life on my trust in her."
"You may well be called on to meet that wager," the earl snarled, "at the point of the hoodman's knife! If she leads the Sassenach hounds to this mountain, sets Rath upon us."
"Maryssa has proven her loyalties where Rath is concerned," Tade said between gritted teeth.
"I hate Rath's cruelties as much as any of you do!" Maryssa choked out. "I would never harm you."
"Harm us?" Kane Kilcannon's lip curled in raw hatred. "You've done more than harm us, my fine English lady. You've ripped one son from my heart, aye, and you may well send the other to the gallows. And I hope to God you burn in hell for it beside your traitor father!"
Sick horror twisted inside Maryssa's belly as she saw Tade lunge toward his father, his face taut with black fury.
"Nay, Tade!" she shrilled, diving toward him, but before she could reach him, Tade froze, his muscles standing out like bands of steel.
Seconds seemed to stretch into eternity, every person in the valley strung to the snapping point of tension. Tade's eyes glinted like splintered emeralds. "You needn't consign only Maryssa to hell, Da," he said. "You'll not rest happy until all of us—Dev, Rachel, the little ones, aye, and myself—burn there with you."
He straightened, his eyes seeking out Rachel's tormented, tear-streaked face. "I'll have my things out of the loft before you reach the cottage," he said softly.
"Tade! Tade, no!" Rachel pleaded, clasping his wrist.
"Let him go!" At the sound of Kane's harsh voice the brood of Kilcannons, from wee Katie to little Ryan, crumpled into wails, the older lads battling their tears behind pathetic, torn faces.
"Da, you can't hurl Tade out." Deirdre stumbled to her father, her copper hair streaming about a face suddenly childlike. "You can't!"
“It is long past time I left, Dee," Tade comforted softly, pausing to touch his sister's tear-streaked cheek.
"Nay! Tade! Me wants Tade!" Katie's piteous shrieks rose above the others.
"I'll bring you a present when next I visit, Katie darling,” he said through a throat thick with pain. “Perhaps a sugar swan." Tade straightened, and Maryssa could see it was as though his soul were being wrenched from him, but he turned to her, offering his hand. Nay, Maryssa thought, her heart rending. He was not offering only his hand. He was offering her his life and all the love he had known.
She stared at the long bronzed fingers, unable to take them, to rob him of a birthright far more treasured than any castle built of stone. But he only curved one arm about her waist and led her through the silent crowd. With each step he took, Maryssa could feel pieces of his life shattering—memories of the past, friends long cherished, a family who had been his heart's blood until this day.
Mothers tugged their children out of her path as though she were marked with the lesions of a leper while their menfolk raked Tade's tall, proud shoulders with the scorn reserved for the foulest Judas.
Maryssa cast but one glance over her shoulder as Tade led her away, her eyes catching the pain on Rachel Kilcannon's face, the loathing darkening Sheena O'Toole's sharp features.
Yet even as Tade swung her onto her mare and spurred his own mount down the path they had trekked a lifetime ago, she could not banish the images from her mind. She held them with Tade's silence as the two horses made their way across the stony ground. Even the wind tangling through the wilds seemed to mourn as they neared the lands that had once been Tade's birthright.
And as the daunting stone walls of the castle rose before them, Nightwylde itself seemed to jeer at the fierce revenge it had exacted, not only from the usurpers who had raped the land but from the true heirs who had failed to hold it.
Maryssa's gaze swept the gray turrets that pierced the sky, making the heavens bleed broken dreams. "Tade," she whispered as he reined Curran to a halt in the shadows, "I can't let you cast aside your father and the rest of your family.''
His face tipped down toward hers, his eyes full of such solemn sorrow that tears welled up on her lashes.
"You're my family now, Maura. It is long since over between my father and me," he said. "I could never be the son he wanted, could never tell him I rode as the Falcon. To keep the family safe, I had to let them think I was naught but a heedless rake. And Da believed the worst so easily, Maura. The facade was all he ever saw. I needed him to sense who I was inside, to have faith that I could not be so shallow as to watch others suffer and do nothing but guzzle ale and play at catch-skirt."
His words were a knife twisting in her breast. "I know," she said brokenly.
"Maura, I need but a little time to think . . . to be alone. I—“
"Shh!" Maryssa reached out to where his fingers still clung to his reins, her voice quivering. “It is all right, Tade."
"Nay." Tade's gaze shifted to the stone gate. “It is not all right. It will never be all right for us in this place, this time. But my father's hate changes none of the vows I made to you. On All Hallows Eve I will come for you, take you to the celebration fires, aye, and farther still, if you dare."
Icy fingers seemed to creep beneath Maryssa's skin. "Nay! It is too dangerous for you to come to Nightwylde now. If any of your enemies should tell my father what happened in the glen . . . I'll steal away and meet you at the crossroads."
He opened his mouth as if to protest, then compressed his lips, his mouth a hard line. “It would end our plans right early if I were seen at the castle," he allowed. "Very well. I'll await you at the crossroads until midnight. If you've not been able to escape by then—"
"I'll be there, Tade. I vow it."
His emerald gaze seemed to pierce her, and in it she caught a glimmer of the fire and a shade of the hardness she had
seen in their green depths that night at the Devil's Grin. “Until All Hallows Eve, then." He reined his stallion in a circle, his mantle streaming out behind his broad shoulders like liquid midnight as he spurred Curran away.
Her eyes strained after him, his words, his promises, echoing within her. But as she watched the man she loved melting into mist, the faces of the peasants in the glen rose before her—their ragged forms helpless, with nothing but Tade's courage and wit to shield them.
"My rogue," she breathed on a sob, "my gallant rogue of the night." Despair seemed to clutch at her, but she clawed it away, tearing loose as well her hold on him. "Nay, not mine, Tade," she whispered. "No matter how much we both wish it." She closed eyes filled with tears.
On All Hallow’s Eve I will come for you… His voice seemed to breathe the promise on the wind. And he would come, Maryssa thought, clenching her fists in torment, but he would carry away with him nothing but his mantle of legend.
Chapter 15
Mist swept across the mountain, swirling in ghostly dances as twilight crept over the craggy earth. All Hallows Eve, the church called it, renaming the ancient druid celebration in an effort to banish the memory of pagan rites. Yet still it was Samhain in the hearts of the Irish, the night of evil pookas, cavorting with demons, the night when the dead walked again upon the earth. Tade shifted against the dark mouth of the cave, the stone on which he had been leaning for the past hour suddenly feeling cold against his back.
Samhain. From the time he was a lad, toddling about the bonfires the mountain folk built to drive away the devils, he had gloried in this night, so ripe for the pranks and jests he adored. He had dismissed the lurking mysteries and dangers that filled the others with fear. But tonight the crude shelter he had shared with Devin since the altercation at Christ's Wound seemed alive with menace. Neither the presence of Devin's robes, abandoned now upon the straw tick beside the cave wall, nor the crudely carved crucifix propped reverently near the bundle of Tade's possessions seemed to hold the power to banish the stirrings of evil born of this night.