Black Falcon's Lady

  Dallywoulde's eyes narrowed. "A woman," he said, fingering the gold cross dangling from his watch chain. "No one can be more vicious than a woman, Colonel Rath. Aye, and no beast of prey proves more eager than a member of the gentler sex to sink its fangs into another."

  Rath started to bark a command to a sleepy-eyed footman, but Dallywoulde's harsh voice cut him off.

  "Nay, good Colonel." The knight's lips snaked over his teeth. "This time there will be none of your bungling."

  Rath blanched, his cheeks puffing with outrage, but Dallywoulde plunged on, scenting the kill. "You have emptied a sizable purse into bringing me here to flush out the vermin that beset your lands. It is time I began to ply my craft." Dallywoulde turned and strode to where his mantle hung. "This papist informer," he said, swirling the gray folds about him, “she'll betray to us even more than she suspects. She'll betray her own mother before I have done with her."

  Dallywoulde drew the mantle closed about his skeletal form, sensing the fascinated fear emanating from the colonel and his servant—the same sinister fear he had engendered in scores of secret Catholics—and in the changeable eyes of Maryssa Wylder. He gloried in it, reveled in the terror he could spawn. He threw back his head, and rare, grating laughter echoed through the corridor as he stepped into the night.

  Chapter 17

  Posted as sentry, Tade stared down into the valley at Christ's Wound, his throat raw from the two dozen leathern jacks of ale he had drained the night before, his eyes burning with bitterness. The spirits of Samhain were banished. The demons had been cast back into their hell, and the bonfires' brands lay cold, ground to ashes beneath the cart wheels that had rumbled through the crossroads. But even here, with the November sun blessing the hidden glen and the ragged crowd of faithful who had come to attend the All Hallows Day mass, Tade could find no peace. He doubted he would ever know peace again, tormented as he was by the memory of haunted eyes flecked with sea green, sapphire, and gold.

  "Damn her!" he swore beneath his breath, his eyes stinging with hurt and betrayal. "Damn her to the same hell she consigned our love to, condemned me to. It was her choice to leave me, her choice to turn coward and run."

  Yet, even as he cursed the day he had placed his heart in Maryssa Wylder's hands, he felt a horrible emptiness, as though his heart had been ripped from his chest, leaving only a barren wasteland—a wasteland filled with memories of sable hair spilling over breasts the hue of alabaster, of a tremulous mouth tipping up in a smile, and of laughter, such wondrous laughter, all the sweeter because he had been the first to draw it from her.

  His gaze blurred, casting the bowed heads of the worshipers, Devin's earnest face, even the mass rock with its crude wooden crucifix, into a haze of pain. The first. Aye, he had been the first to make Maryssa laugh, to romp with her and tumble her in sweet meadow grass, to lie with her beneath the coverlets and coax cries of ecstasy from her. And in bringing these wonders to her he had felt a greater joy than he'd ever known, a passion so fierce, so consuming, that he had been willing to sacrifice all he loved—the wild lands, his family, aye, even his honor, to carry her away with him.

  "But she turned coward," Tade growled under his breath. "A coward, who dared skulk about in the bushes, mating with me like a furtive creature of night, but lacked the courage to throw off the veils of secrecy, to declare our love before all, and to cleave to me as my wife."

  Why should she take a landless wretch to husband when she was already betrothed? a voice mocked inside him. Betrothed to a velvet-bellied popinjay with perfumes and silver to shower down upon her.

  Talons seemed to claw at Tade's belly, twisting and tearing as he shut his eyes against the remembrance of this last, most agonizing betrayal of his love. During that long-ago night, when he had woven garlands of roses to bring Maryssa joy, when he had drawn her into the fairy world he had formed for her as a gift of love, she had belonged to another man. Pledged to wed since she lay in her swaddling clothes, she had claimed the union was a matter of properties to be joined, wealth to be gained. Well, damn it, Tade Kilcannon had no wealth to offer her except the pistol jammed into his belt. The lands that had been his to inherit were now in Bainbridge Wylder's thieving hands.

  A bitter laugh tore at Tade. What a sick, twisted irony it was that the lands he should rightfully have inherited were to bind the woman he loved to another. Aye, the very stones his ancestors' kerns had hewn would be Maryssa Wylder's marriage portion; the lands in whose defense his father and grandfather had spilled their blood would be her dowry.

  Would Tade, then, in years hence, be forced to watch her driving in her fine carriage up to Nightwylde's gates and alight there upon the arm of the man who was her husband?

  A curse breached his lips, the oath so savage that he heard Greenan O'Toole's grunt of disapproval and caught the censure in the golden eyes so like the man's eldest daughter's. Tade's gaze flashed away from the glowering older man, fleetingly aware of the absence of Sheena's tawny head from among the O'Toole brood. His mouth set, grim. It was a relief to him that the chit was not there to turn her injured pout upon him, to gaze at him with infuriating reproach, as though he had played her foul. That would be all he needed to drive him past sanity.

  Pain twisted in Tade's throat, misery that would not be denied. If affairs had gone as planned last night, he would be holding Maryssa in his arms now, her body so warm and soft, her cheek pressed trustingly to his shoulder. Her eyes would be shining up at him as though he were some hero of legend come real.

  But that could never be. It was only a misty fantasy, as unrealistic as the tales his mother had spun for him in her castle room a lifetime ago. From the first he had known that his love for Maryssa was impossible, and he had defied the fates, God, aye, even his father to grasp at a dream. But like the warriors in the bards' ancient tales, he had been left with nothing except his honor, his quest, and the keen edge of his sword.

  His fingers tightened on the butt of the pistol secreted beneath the folds of his mantle, and his gaze swept out toward Nightwylde. Nay, he thought. Even if Maryssa did return to Ireland in some distant future, it was likely that the Black Falcon would have taken the penny road to heaven by then, having failed to rob the gallows of its due.

  His eyes swept the crowd below, espying the O'Donnel twins, Ryan Moynihan, and the three O'Byrne brothers in the midst of their families. All but four of Tade's rebel band knelt on the ground in prayer, their knives and pistols tucked beneath their threadbare clothes.

  Tade clenched his teeth. They had lost three men in the raid that had freed Muldowny, and since then the Sassenach soldiers had been hot for vengeance against those who had made them look like fools. How long would it be before the English wolves snapped the jaws of some trap shut, to rid them of the Falcon forever? How long before some miscalculation threw the rebels into the Sassenachs' grasp? Tade's fists knotted, his gaze shifting away from the men who had entrusted him with their lives.

  A blur of movement in the distance made him curse, as he recognized Greenan O'Toole's gray mare cantering toward the rise, Sheena astride its sway back. But his irritation vanished as his eyes narrowed against the sun, fighting to block out the sharp spikes of brightness that obscured the hillside to the west with splashes of color—vivid color that stung his eyes, the crimson of fresh-spilt blood.

  A sick, knifing sensation drove itself into Tade's gut as the hill seemed to move, rushing forward amid flashes of black, bay, and roan. “Sweet mother of God,” Tade hissed, as the forms snapped into sharp focus. He caught a fleeting glimpse of Sheena wheeling her mount around, assumed that she had been riding to warn the tiny congregation and knew she was too late. Aye, too late, as his own warning would come. Tade bolted toward the valley, sliding down the hillside as fear surged through him, horrified at what his mind's wanderings had allowed to come upon the quiet glen.

  "Raid!" His voice shattered the sound of Devin's gentle Latin. "Flee, for God's sake, it is a raid!"

  Never in
his life would Tade forget the faces that turned up to him, pale, terrified, frozen for an instant with a horror too great to comprehend. He saw Devin grab up the crucifix, his voice, resonant with authority, urging the people to scatter, run.

  Gun barrels glinted in the hands of the O'Donnels and the O'Byrnes. Ryan Moynihan dashed with them to shield the retreating crowd as the vale, so tranquil but a heartbeat before, erupted into madness. Mothers scooped up babes, fathers fought to herd their families toward what safety might be found in the rocky countryside. Strong arms locked about the aged, the crippled, and the young.

  Tade caught a glimpse of Rachel among the sea of humanity, struggling vainly to cling to Tom and Brody, while Kane Kilcannon forged ahead, his arms weighted with a wriggling, sobbing Katie and tiny baby Ryan. Even through the screams of fear, Tade could hear his father's gruff voice shouting encouragement to Shane and Deirdre, could see Kane battling to shore up the courage of the little ones.

  Tade called out to Devin, seeing his light hair farther ahead in the crowd, the crucifix still clutched in his hand. "Damn it, Dev, run!" Tade cried, desperation sending fire through his muscles as he surged forward. He turned, yanking the pistol from his belt as the wave of soldiers crested the hill. A dozen weapons blazed, spitting death into the ragged crowd as the horsemen charged down on them.

  With a cry of rage, Tade leveled his own pistol at the raiders' leader in a desperate hope that if he could down the stout Rath, the troops would fall into confusion. He felt the powder flare to life as he pulled the trigger, saw the blaze of orange, and Rath's hands closing over his belly.

  But there was scarce time to feel even the feral rush of pleasure in killing the man who had tormented the Catholics for so long. For even as Rath tumbled from his mount, Tade's eyes locked on another man, a man who was bearing down on the crowd like a rider from the Apocalypse. Tade stared at the figure but an instant, yet in that moment the rider's face burned itself indelibly into his mind—fanatical eyes, fleshless lips taut over sharp teeth, and a face, so thin, so evil, it seemed to have been spawned by the Dark Reaper himself.

  Then suddenly a cry of pain from the rear of the retreating crowd drew Tade's gaze to tumbling copper curls and a tangle of skirts. Deirdre. Sick horror wrenched his soul as he saw Rachel stumble to Dee's side, saw his sister struggle to gain her feet.

  "Rachel, nay!" Tade shouted, racing toward them, dodging pistol fire and the wounded who had fallen. "I'll get her!"

  Scarce pausing in his flight, Tade snatched up his sister, her cry of pain tearing at him as his hand closed over the hot flow of blood from her shoulder. He gritted his teeth, burying Deirdre's sobs of terror in his chest as he ran into the wild lands that would prove their only hope—praying that the others whom he loved had been spared the soldiers' wrath as well.

  * * *

  Tade bit the edge of muslin, rending his bedding into strips with which to bind the wounds of the soldier's victims. The cave that had been Devin's haven seemed now a scene wrought from the Last Judgment—masses of the damned clawing hopelessly at stone, writhing in pain, cowering in terror, or worse still, staring at the wall with faces blank of all emotion, devoid of all hope.

  They had been straggling in for the past hour, some scarcely able to crawl, others nearly hysterical as they searched for their loved ones in the crowded cave. Tade yanked at the cloth savagely, gritting his teeth against the most horrible sounds of all . . . that of mothers crying for their children and of little ones, their faces stiff with fear, sobbing for parents who would never come again. He glanced at the cave opening once more, tortured by his own fear of loss. The Kilcannon family had been among the first to reach the cave. Rachel and the little ones had spread out the coverlets to form beds for the injured; Kane had barked orders to the men as they arrived.

  Tade had seen the scarlet stain on his father's side the moment the earl had charged into the cave and had hastened to him, meaning to bare the wound and tend it. But the earl had roared at him to aid the others first. Tade's fears for his father's life had eased, and he had turned to help the others, certain that his father's wound must be but a trifling one. Yet as he labored over the slashes and bullet wounds left by the Sassenach onslaught, the absence of one Kilcannon grew increasingly terrifying—Devin's golden head and solemn, gentle face were nowhere to be seen.

  Tade's gaze flashed back to the bandaging, and he gritted his teeth. The last survivors of the massacre in the glen were still making their way toward the cave, winding through the wild lands like terrified deer as they tried to evade the patrols the soldiers had doubtless formed to sweep up any who had escaped. Devin had to be among them somewhere, aiding those who had been hurt, shepherding them toward safety. Yet with each moment that his slender form failed to darken the cave's entryway, the coil of dread tightened in Tade's belly.

  He started, his gaze leaping to the figure beside him as a shaky, pale hand grabbed the bandage from his fingers, his gaze fixing upon the strained countenance of Deirdre. A score of freckles stood out stark against her chalky skin and her mouth was set in resolve as she turned to wrap up little Andrew MacGary's wounded leg.

  "Dee, I told you to lie down," Tade snapped, snatching the bandages away from her. "That shoulder could well get putrid, or break open and start to bleed again."

  “It is only a scrape," Deirdre shot back, but the tremor in her voice betrayed the fire Tade knew must burn in the fresh wound. "There are scarce enough to aid the others, and someone has to.”

  Little Andrew looked up at them with sorrowful eyes, his tiny mouth puckering in a way that wrenched Tade's heart. "Dedra, hurts," he whimpered. “’Drew hurts."

  Tade saw tears glisten on Deirdre's lashes. Her mouth trembled. "I know, Andy love. Deirdre will fix it right up."' She knelt down beside the child, and Tade felt a twinge of sorrow as he saw the carefree impish face he had loved and tormented grown suddenly far older than her fifteen years. He put the bandages into her hand, his voice catching as he chided, "don't push yourself too hard, Dee. That was no scrape Rath dealt you, and you'll do no one any good if you're stricken with fever or exhaustion."

  She nodded, her tangled curls falling in a curtain about her face as she bent over the child. Tade pressed his fingers against his eyelids, remembering Deirdre's courage as he had cleansed the slash the pistol ball had cut into her flesh, remembering the rigid clenching of her jaw as she had insisted that he allow her to walk, claiming he'd need his strength later to tend to the victims of the raid.

  If there had been in Maryssa Wylder even a fragment of such bravery he'd be halfway to France by now, not buried here among filth, blood, and hopelessness. Tade drove his fist into the cave wall, feeling his skin split on the stone. You belong here, astride your stallion... Maryssa's tortured words echoed in his mind. With your silken hood and your pistols firing. What would become of these people if you were to run off with me?

  The pain in her words penetrated even the misery all around him, filling him with regret. How could he have been blind to her pain as he stood in the glow of the bonfires? He had been too deeply engulfed in his own feelings of anger and betrayal to hear what Maryssa had been truly saying to him. Perhaps she really was afraid of dashing off into the unknown. Perhaps she truly feared her father. But beneath her fears, in the depths of her changeable eyes, he had seen an understanding of his soul far deeper than any he had ever known.

  Tade glanced about the shadowy cave, seeing Rachel's bent head and his father's bare arms, stained red as he labored over Caitrin MacVee's shattered ankle. He knew now that he could never have abandoned them to this brutality. Not even for Maryssa. He could not have lived with himself had he done so.

  The sound of dragging footsteps nearing the cave's mouth drove Tade to wade through the huddled masses toward the shadowed opening, a wild hope gripping him, coupled with sick desperation.

  "T-Tade?"

  The quavery voice of young Brian MacGary made Tade stumble down the path and put his arm about the y
outh to support him. Thick, sticky blood clung to Tade's hand, and Brian uttered a guttural moan of pain as Tade's fingers brushed torn flesh.

  "Caitrin . . ." Brian choked out the name. "Is Caitrin MacVee here?”

  "Aye, she's inside," Tade said, bracing his body more firmly against the lad's sagging weight.

  "I couldn't find her. Looked for her. Oh, God, Tade, I went back and—" A sob tore its way out of the boy's throat.

  "Whist, now. She's been hurt, but she's alive and safe."

  But Brian seemed not to hear him as shudders racked his lean frame. "I went back, Tade," he sobbed. "Blood . . . there's so much blood."

  Tade's jaw clenched, his stomach churning. "Brian," he said in a bracing voice, grasping the boy by the arms, "when you went back or when you were fleeing the soldiers . . ." A knot rose in Tade's throat, nearly crushing the words, but he forced himself to go on. "Did you see Father Devin?"

  "Father Devin?" Brian's glassy eyes fixed on Tade's. "When I—I was running . . . when the soldiers came, I saw him—saw him run to Ma Bedelia . . ."

  Tade fought to keep himself from shaking the injured boy, battled the terror that writhed in his chest. "And then what did you see, Brian?"

  "The—old woman was so slow . . . so lame. Father Devin couldn't reach the wild lands before—before they fell upon him. I saw the man . . . the evil man . . . plunge his sword into Ma Bedelia and—"

  "Damn it, Brian, what happened to Devin!" Tade hated the harshness of his voice, hated the raw terror that surged through him.

  "I didn't . . . couldn't see. I ran. Oh, sweet Mother of God, Tade, there was so much blood!"

  Pain, fury, and hate raced through Tade's veins, turning him white-hot with rage. Blindly, he scooped Brian into his arms, stumbled back into the cave with the injured boy, and settled him on one of the makeshift pallets.

  Deirdre rushed over to him, her face stricken, as though somehow she knew.