Their uniformed bodies blocked Maryssa's view of the gallows, only Captain Langworth's outraged shout telling the people what had transpired on the wooden scaffold. "They've killed the cursed bastard!" he bellowed.
A sob of relief and sorrow rose from Maryssa, waves of dizziness threatening to claim her as her stomach roiled from the stench of gunpowder and blood. But the hands digging painfully into her arms, shoving her back through the crowd, kept her from sinking to her knees, divesting her of the shimmering comfort of unconsciousness that lured her with its promise of surcease.
"So they've killed the papist devil," Dallywoulde snarled in her ear as he yanked her toward the gate. "Cheated God out of seeing his justice done. Yet we both know that, but for me, it would have been you who buried the ball in Kilcannon's chest, do we not, my betrothed?"
Maryssa fought to steady her wobbly legs, her eyes spitting defiance as she raised them to the frigid, fanatical gaze that had always filled her with terror. "Take your hands off me."
"I think not, madam." Dallywoulde's lips curled back malevolently from his teeth. "Not until you enlighten me as to why a weak-bellied coward like you would be trying to spill blood at an execution site."
Maryssa clenched her teeth to keep from retching, her lands knotting into fists as she glared at him in defiance. ''There was nothing going on at Nightwylde." A hint of Tade's silky sneer crept into her voice. "I thought to seek a bit of diversion."
"Ah, I'd wager there has been much 'going on' at Nightwylde beneath your father's nose, cousin," Dallywoulde purred, motioning for the guard to allow them to pass. “Imagine how stunned I was when Captain Langworth informed me of my betrothed's efforts in the behalf of 'justice,' when he told me that she had gained entry to Devin Kilcannon's cell and had spent time alone with the papist scum." Maryssa paled, stumbling. Dallywoulde yanked her around to face his piercing gaze. "Tell me, cousin, what would drive an Englishwoman—a Protestant—to risk death or imprisonment on some Catholic scum's account? Could it be that our martyr, Father Devin, forgot his vows? Perhaps he cast his chastity to the winds and bedded you.”
Maryssa's hand flashed out, cracking with all the force she possessed into that sneering, savage mouth, rage at this monster's defilement of Devin's goodness dashing away all but the need to lash out. She heard Dallywoulde's startled grunt, took feral joy in the sight of the blood that streamed from his nose. But in a heartbeat that joy changed to terror as Dallywoulde's hand knotted in her hair, pulling her head upward, jerking her face close to his own. Pain shot through Maryssa's scalp, panic clenching about her chest as she struggled to break free.
But Ascot held her effortlessly, as though his thin muscles were honed of rapiers' blades. "Witch!" he hissed. "Sinful witch, you'll suffer just punishment for that, I swear it. Aye and for whatever other shameful secret drove you to take up that pistol."
“Turn me over to your guards, then," Maryssa challenged battling the fear that threatened to overwhelm her. "See what punishment befalls the daughter of Bainbridge Wylder."
"Daughter, bah!" Dallywoulde spat. "You are naught but a vehicle through which good Uncle Bainbridge will dispose of his vast lands. Nay, madam, I'll not cast you to Langworth's dogs, though that would be little more than you deserve. I am a man of infinite patience when closing for the kill."
He let go of her hair and dragged his sharp nails down over the curve of her cheek. "I'll wait but a little while to wreak my vengeance upon you. Make you suffer all the more. Within the week Uncle Bainbridge will send you to England to wed me, and then . . ." The eagerness in his eyes chilled Maryssa. "Then I vow I'll cleanse you of your sins."
Maryssa shuddered as Ascot licked the saliva pooling a the corners of his lips, his eyes filled with promises of pain that would be worse than the twisting and tearing of the body—an agony of the spirit.
Her hand strayed down to cup the flat plane of her stomach is if to shelter Tade's child from Dallywoulde's horrible promises. An aching emptiness filled her.
"I'll never be your wife," she said, her gaze meeting his, defiant, strong.
But the laughter that rolled from between those thin lips pierced the numbness Devin's death had wreaked within her, filled her instead with sick dread and terror for the infant she sheltered in her womb, as Ascot bent close. “Oh, aye, my sweet cousin, you'll wed me. You shall know what it means to suffer beneath a godly man's hands. I swear to you. Even if my beloved uncle and I are forced to drag you to the altar in chains."
* * *
Tade wheeled to face his sister, nearly losing what little balance he had gained as his eyes locked on Deirdre's face. “He's dead!" Tade cried out. “I let them torture him.”
"Nay." Dee rushed to his side, her hands closing around his arm, steadying him, as tears coursed down her cheeks. “He didn't suffer. Revelin Neylan shot Dev before they could—could hurt him."
"Neylan? Where—"
"He—he was cut down by the Sassenachs, Tade. They said here were three hundred of them waiting. If you had gone—"
"If I had gone, Rev Neylan would be alive!" Tade jerked his arm from her grasp, wanting to drive his fist into something, anything, shatter the wooden shutters, feel flesh split beneath his blade. "Sweet Savior, I should've taken those bullets,” Tade gritted. "Dev was my brother! Mine."
"He was my brother, too!" The anguish in Deirdre's voice yanked Tade's gaze back to her face. Her mouth was twisted with torment, her hair a tangle of fire about her waxen cheeks. “But I'm glad it was not you who cast away your life at Rookescommon! I couldn't help Devin, but you . . . to lose you both . . ."
Her words seemed to drive spikes deep into Tade's fogged mind, jarring memories of the night before—the chamber door flung wide, Maryssa and Deirdre framed in its opening.
"You." Tade felt a fist crush his heart. "You knew that she was going to seduce and drug me—knew that Sassenach bitch was going to do.”
"Don't call her that!" Deirdre blazed. "Don't you ever call her that! She saved your life. Gave Devin peace before he died. He begged her to stop you, and he told us where to obtain the potion to—"
"Damn him! He had no right!”
"Aye, he did, Tade!" Deirdre shouted. "God knows he did not have much when he faced those soldiers, but he did have the right to die knowing that the brother he loved wouldn't fling his life to the same wolves. He had the right to believe that you would live to guard Rachel and the babes, to comfort Da. Aye, and to be father to your own child!"
Bitterness and rage ripped through Tade, his fist lashing out, knocking a platter from the scarred oaken table. "Aye, and did Dev think I'd ever soil myself with love again? Did he think I would take another woman when I've seen that love leads to lies and betrayal? God's wounds, Maryssa Wylder duped me into abandoning my brother!”
"She saved the man who is father to her babe!"
The blood drained from Tade’s face. "Babe? What the hell?"
"Aye, babe!" Deirdre spat back at him. "That 'heartless bitch' who saved your life is carrying your child."
Emotions roiled inside Tade, grief, pain, joy, hate, as his mind whirled with images of a tiny pink face, eyes innocent of lies, a mouth a delicate and fragile as the bud of a wild rose. A babe. Hi babe nested in Maura's womb. It was impossible, wondrous, devastating.
"Where is she?" The demand carried more anger than inquiry.
For the first time Deirdre's eyes faltered away from his face, her hands knotting in her skirts. "I—I do not know. Just before dawn she came to me, asked me to stay with you until—until the drug's power palled. Then she left."
"Left? When the hell is she coming back?"
"I don't think she is. Ever."
"Damn it, Dee!" Tade caught her wrist, jerking he around. "Where did she go?"
"I don't know!" Deirdre cried, her eyes pooling with tears "She said—said you'd hate her once you woke! That you'd never forgive her for giving you the drug. I told her I would give it to you, but she wouldn't let me. She said you'd need
your family to help you heal after Devin died. She said you'd hate her."
"Hate her?" Rage blazed white-hot within him. "Why the hell would I hate her? She lay with me when she was betrothed to another man, lied to me, drugged me, cheated my brother out of a chance to live, and now—now she's taken my child—my babe—and run away. Damn her!" He drove his boot into the wall with a savagery that cracked the rotted wood.
"Tade!" Deirdre's alarmed voice fed the fires of his rage. He faced her, his jaw knotting with fury.
"Nay, Dee. Maryssa Wylder stole my brother, broke my pride, but God damn her to hell, she'll not take my babe!" He hated himself for the catching of a sob beneath his fury. "She'll not bear my babe in some cursed Sassenach mansion to live among the swine who murdered Dev!"
Grief ripped through Tade again, as if Maryssa's betrayal and Devin's death had gouged out all within him except devastation and rage. Even now, with Devin dead, with Tade's love shattered, she chained him, kept him from satisfying his searing need to bury his sword in Ascot Dallywoulde's belly. Bitterness raked Tade. He did not even dare wait long enough to send Dev's murderer to the devil. He had to flush Maryssa from her sanctuary before she flung herself into marriage with her cursed cousin. The son or daughter of the heir Kilcannon would not be raised by some Sassenach bastard who was even now most likely ensconced in his perfumed London salon, dipping snuff from a jeweled box.
Battling to steady his wobbly legs, Tade stalked to where his cloak lay draped across a squat-legged stool.
"Tade, where are you going?" Deirdre asked tremulously.
"To hell," he grated. "But I full intend to drag Maryssa Wylder with me."
It was past midnight of the second day when he reined Curran to a halt in front of Nightwylde and flung himself from his saddle to crash wide the doors. But the ornate entryway beyond lay dark as a vacant tomb, the single candle borne in the quaking footman's hand casting a haunting glow over the carved ceilings.
"Where is she?" Tade bit out, glaring until the gangly youth nearly dropped his taper.
"Wh-where is who, sir?"
"Miss Wylder. Curse it, I—"
"She and the master, aye, and their guest departed for England yesterday"
"Where were they bound for? What estate?"
"I—I do not know. They left in such haste that Master Wylder didn't say. He owns lands sprinkled over half of England."
Tade spat a vicious oath. So Maura had turned coward yet again and had fled to her gilded Sassenach tower. His mouth was set, grim. Nay, if she barred herself in the king's own treasure house she'd not escape him. He'd drag her out of her hiding, secure the safety of his babe, and after . . . Dallywoulde's face rose in his mind. Tade's mouth slashed into a feral snarl as he spun, almost trampling upon a wee gray puff staring up at him with intrepid blue eyes.
Odysseus.
A shaft of pain and bitterness slashed through him at the memory of the night he had given Maryssa the little beast, and the secret of the Falcon as well. He clenched his teeth. Nay, there would be no more trinkets for Miss Wylder, no more tenderness from a besotted fool. Instead, she would taste of his own pain and rage.
Tade bolted down the stone steps and hurled himself back into his stallion's saddle.
England. He pressed his heels into Curran's sides. He'd reach those cursed shores before the week passed, and then . . . then he'd find Maryssa Wylder, find his unborn babe, and crush the blood-hungry beast who had taken Devin's life.
Chapter 21
Maryssa dug through the tiny mound of trinkets on the dressing table, the waning January sun glinting through the window of her chamber at Carradown casting sparkles of crimson, emerald, and blue diamond fire across the walls. The only three jewels her meager store of ornaments had to offer lay piled upon a square of gray cloth that held, as well, her silver-backed brush and one bent shilling.
One shilling, Maryssa thought grimly. It was blessed little to keep her and her unborn babe from starvation until she could find a way to sell her few treasures to the moneylenders and book passage to somewhere, anywhere, far away from Ascot Dallywoulde's grasp. But the shilling would be enough to support her until she sold the jewels. It would have to be enough.
She clenched her teeth against the pain that shot up her finger as the pin upon an onyx mourning brooch dug deep. One of Tade's curses rose to her lips, and she shut her eyes, but the tears that had once flowed so easily had dried up during the eternity of hours, days, and weeks that she had spent as a prisoner in this hateful room.
A prisoner of her supposed future husband. A prisoner of her father.
She placed the chunk of onyx on the cloth, gathered the frayed fabric into a little bundle, and knotted the ends. They had managed to hold her captive during the six weeks since they had dragged her off of the ship at Liverpool. They had trapped her between them during the jouncing coach ride through the countryside. And from the moment they had breached Carradown's door, they had held her in this gilded cell with nothing but the coarsest of food to eat and nothing but the dull winter moors to stare at three stories below.
Maryssa's lips twisted bitterly at the memory of that last evening at Nightwylde and of the expression on her father's face when Dallywoulde had dragged her into the chill study. She had vowed then that she would never wed Sir Ascot, never take to husband a man who thirsted for the sufferings of the innocent, but her father had scarcely seemed to hear her, his jowls swelling with indignation, anger, and a stunned surprise. Yet none of the emotions flashing across Bainbridge Wylder's face shocked Maryssa as greatly as the incongruous wisp of pain that had been in her father's dull eyes before he wheeled, turning his gaze away from her, to glare out the window.
"You'll buckle to your duty, damn you," he had spat through stiff lips. "Take as your husband the man I command you to. I'll not bear a cursed woman's defiance yet again, even if I needs must starve you into submission."
Maryssa's mouth compressed into a white line. They had all but starved her, driven her mad, locked alone in this room. Once a day her father had unbolted the door, his broad body blocking the opening, his mouth hard as stone as he demanded to know whether she would bow to his wishes. And after each refusal, the plate slipped in under Dallywoulde's watchful guard held an even more meager portion of coarse bread, a smaller portion of water. She had endured it as long as she could, until she had begun to fear for the new life growing inside her.
Then the morass of grief and listlessness, which had gripped her since the storm-tortured dawn when she had bidden good-bye to Tade Kilcannon, had shifted, giving way to anger and fierce resolve. Her fingers knotted in the white lawn of her chemise as she cast a fulminating glance at the heavy carved door. That evening when her father had entered the chamber, demanding she marry Sir Ascot, she had turned to him, seemingly broken, claiming that she would do whatever he wished if he would but give her something to eat and let her out of this solitary room.
It had been all she could do not to scream when confronted with the grim triumph on her father's features, all she could do not to fly into his face, scratching and clawing like an enraged hawk. Yet she had steeled every muscle in her body, hating him as he strode from the room, barring the door behind him.
He had dispatched to her a huge platter of beefsteak, green almond tarts, and pastries dripping with honey. And the next day he had hauled her to the dressmaker to be fitted out with a wedding gown and a costume for the masquerade ball that would serve to announce to all London society that the recalcitrant Miss Wylder had at last agreed to take the godly Sir Ascot in marriage.
Maryssa fought the urge to rend the delicate blue lace from the swan costume that hung now upon the cherrywood door of the armoire. Most likely even now her "caring" father was sitting below, observing the last preparations for the night's soiree, sloshing his finest brandywine into crystal goblets as he toasted the weak will of women with a gloating Sir Ascot. No doubt the two men were reveling in their triumph, Ascot drooling eagerly over the prosp
ect of at last gaining total power over the vast Wylder wealth, and the woman who had humiliated and defied him, and who loathed him as well.
Maryssa shuddered. It had nearly driven her insane . . . his silence over the prison affair, his eyes piercing her, his mouth so cursed smug, so eager, as he quelled her father's wrath at her disappearance on All Hallows night. He had told Bainbridge that as her future husband, he should have the right to crush her unruliness—aye, and he would take great pleasure in doing so when the time came.
Maryssa had felt the menace beneath his words, the cold appraisal of his eyes, aye, and the waiting. It was as if he were savoring the prospect of tearing her secrets from her, anticipating an unholy glee at the chance to wring from her restitution for her "sins." Waiting until she was completely in his power, his wife, to chasten as he chose.
She lifted her chin defiantly. Let Dallywoulde and her father glory in their coming triumph, let them spin their plans of combining estates, investing their wealth, and wresting her soul from her body. For before this night was past, their plans would be nothing but castles built of air.
Maryssa picked up the tiny bundle and walked to the tall, carved armoire; her fingers reached out, touching the magnificent garment she was to wear this night. Glistening white satin overskirts parted as gracefully as any gentle wave to reveal a lake-blue silk underskirt caught here and there with rosettes of snowy lace, while upon a wide shelf sat a headdress so cunningly wrought it would have delighted a princess royal. Ice-white feathers swept back in downy wings from the arched neck of a graceful swan mask, eyes of black jet glittering against the white as though they truly held life. It was the most beautiful costume Maryssa had ever owned, but, as she hastily stuffed the little pouch into the hem, which she had slit with her scissors earlier that day, she could think of nothing except the relief she would feel when the costume lay at the bottom of some distant gutter. For then the ordeal that faced her this night—eluding her ever-alert watchdogs, melting from the crowd of revelers into the darkness—would be over.