“Neville!” he called in a tone that brought Robin running. “Come and care for the girl while I dig a grave.”
“I won’t touch her, Rev,” Robin answered, defiance making his complexion ruddy once more. “I’m sorry, but I’ve done all I can in good conscience.” He shrugged apologetically. “’Tis a sorry business but I wash my hands of it.”
“You will either obey me or it’s two graves I’ll be digging
this day,” Revelin answered, so angry that his perfect English failed him and the lilting tongue of his youth set the measure of his speech.
“The choice is yours,” he continued after a pause. “But consider: death is final. So, you will kneel in the grass and hold the girl with care for the precious thing she is. You will do this or, so help me, you will bury the woman, which is the least she deserves.”
Robin drew off his black velvet bag hat before kneeling in the grass. If he gave a thought to the stains he was likely to incur, he kept the misgiving to himself. “Hand her to me, Rev. I’ve no stomach for the undertaker’s part.”
Meghan was vividly aware of the gentle strength of the arms from which she was passed. Then the softness of a velvet doublet replaced the feel of smooth leather against her cheek, and the faint, incongruous smells of nutmeg and horse filled her nose. She wanted to protest but she no longer seemed capable of even the simplest speech. She was so very tired. Closing her eyes, she gave up trying to think.
With a spade he found among the ruins of the hut, Revelin dug a grave. The work was painfully slow but he did not think of that. For the first time, the full realization of his promise to the old woman came to him. He had taken on the fosterage of a young girl. That special duty, peculiarly Irish, made him more than her legal guardian; she had become a part of his family. Yet, what did he know of girls and their needs? His interest in the lasses had come about as he reached the age of lust. Well, there was no doubt in his mind, he would have to return to Dublin and then ride to Kilkenny to ask help of his family.
Amusement quivered in his chest despite his somber task. The old woman had warned him that he would be taking a great deal of trouble on himself by accepting the responsibility. She had not lied.
Nearly an hour later, Revelin stood with his arms crossed
before his chest while Meghan, on her knees, murmured prayers over the grave of her aunt. A steady downpour had replaced the earlier mist and he noticed that she shivered in the cold damp. Finally he bent and, taking her by the shoulders, raised her to her feet. “’Tis enough, lass. I have no wish to lose you to a chill. We must go now.”
A crystal-clear image of the stranger’s face, strained with the effort of his work, filled Meghan’s gaze, then she slid gratefully into the cool darkness of unconsciousness.
“Praise be, it’s done,” Revelin muttered as he scooped her up into his arms. “And the child did not make a scene.”
Robin looked at the ghostly pale face lying slack against Revelin’s sleeve and said gently, “’Tis hard to be full-tongued in a swoon, Rev.”
Revelin blinked back the rain that had gathered at his brow and grinned at his companion. “She’s a good lass, Sir Robin, whatever you may believe. She cut me free from the reeds and pulled me to safety, and her only half my weight. She’s got more heart than most men of my acquaintance.”
Robin gave his friend a curious look. There was an unsteadiness in his voice that had nothing to do with the back-breaking work he had just accomplished. Once more Robin looked down at the young face cradled in his friend’s arm. Tiny, bruised, and bloody, she possessed little he could see to interest a man. And yet, he reasoned thoughtfully as Revelin carried her to their horses, there was some connection between the two that would bear watching. So far, his tour of Ireland had been exceedingly tedious. That seemed about to change.
“The journey begins to have great promise,” he murmured to himself as he swung into his saddle.
Chapter Five
The fingers of John Reade’s right hand beat out a rapid tattoo on his thigh. His lids had drooped, his glare of rage reduced to two slits of silver.
“God’s blood!” he roared suddenly, overturning his chair as he came to his feet. “You’ve the nerve to come before me and say you and Butler have set the countryside to rout for the sake of a slattern and her bastard? Is the tender morsel Revelin’s slut? Well? Speak or be damned!”
“So much fury, John,” Robin commented amicably, only to have the front of his doublet seized in one of John’s broad hands.
“Cease that prattle or I’ll have your tongue for supper!”
Robin looked up at John’s flushed face and smiled lazily. “Say it again, Reade, I beg you.”
The needle-sharp prick of a stiletto just below his seventh rib startled John. A second, more-deliberate jab loosened his hold on the smaller man’s clothing.
“God rot you!” he exclaimed, recoiling.
“Better, much better,” Robin commented pleasantly and turned the blade away. “As I was saying, the chit may own the most seductive pair of eyes this side of perdition, but as to Revelin’s interest, I cannot say.”
Robin looked down at the jeweled handle of his weapon, fingering the tourmaline set in the hilt. He had not relished this interview with Reade. Revelin was better at intimidation and therefore less likely to be forced to draw a blade of any sort; but Revelin had asked it of him, and it seemed easier than spending a hour closeted with the girl. A tingle of alarm passed through him. It was still difficult for Robin to believe that he had actually held her in his arms.
John eyed Robin’s slight frame and did not attempt to hide his contempt. “Which chieftain and what number of his
kerne
should we expect? God knows we’ve little enough with which to defend ourselves.”
Robin’s laugh was just short of a giggle. “I should not count on more than a score of cowherders armed with staffs and rakes, no army certainly. Of course, there were a few with stones. They’re quite stout hurlers. I’d as lief not be in the forefront of the confrontation.”
“Do you speak the truth? There were no signs of a clan’s business in the deed?”
Robin smiled. “They were peasants. No doubt the milk curdled, and they thought the women had cursed their cows.”
John’s lids flickered. “Do not speak to me of curses. What did the girl have to say for herself?”
“You are free to converse with her yourself, if you know the Irish tongue. My own poor talents are limited to French with a smattering of Greek and Latin.
Bon chance, mon vieux
.”
Not wanting John to corner him again, Robin turned and walked away.
John stared menacingly at Robin’s back, then abruptly struck off in a direction away from camp. Too often his temper had snatched from him the gains he sought when they were within
hand’s reach. Six months in the Tower, watching the filth and damp run and puddle in the low spots of his dismal cell, had quite convinced him that patience was a virtue deserving more of his attention.
“Someday,
Master
Robin,” he murmured, “your noble parentage will not protect you. Then you will answer for each and every insult.”
Nothing during the past weeks had galled him as much as the company of Sir Robin Neville. He was a courtier without a buccaneer’s heart, a mincing prancing poet whose only toil was rhyming verse and tallying his tailor’s bills. In times gone by a knight or nobleman had retained his place by battle deeds and soldierly service to his lord. Now, stripped of their private armies, England’s nobles rested upon their wealth and maneuvered through privilege, innuendo, and flirtation. Men like himself had to scheme and steal every opportunity to better themselves, and it sat like cold mutton in his gut to realize that he must defer to a spoiled coxcomb.
“Reade?”
Drawn from his dark thoughts, John looked around to find Richard Atholl trailing him. He paused and beckoned, hoping that Atholl would prove more forthcoming than Neville had been. “Sir Richard. Tell me what you make of Butler’s strange conduct.”
A faint blush of pleasure colored Sir Richard’s cheeks. Too often his opinion was shunned. “I have stood upon this past hour considering the matter and I believe there’s more to it than has come to light.”
The corners of John’s black mustache lifted at the man’s words. “Do you, Parson? Very clever. I wonder that the queen saw need of my small talents as a tactician when you are so perspicacious a leader.”
Sir Richard offered the thinnest of smiles. “Indeed. Perhaps our sovereign perceived that the Tower is not the only place suitable for a man of your peculiar skills.”
Once, such an insult had caused John to kill a man. Now, while anger coiled like a snake in his belly, a corner of his mind perceived a discontent in Atholl. Shared complaints might prove enlightening.
“Aye, a woman’s nature. She smites with one hand and offers a sweetmeat with the other. But, we were discussing Butler. Did he explain his absence?”
Sir Richard’s expression soured at the memory of being snubbed by the pair of younger men. “There was some mumbling with Neville to which I was not privy. Yet, Butler did mention the owing of a debt.”
John’s gaze narrowed. “Debt? What sort of debt? Were there others with Butler when you found him? Did he make secret his whereabouts? Dissemble when pressed?”
The barrage of words surprised Sir Richard. John’s bombastic temper rarely revealed his true concerns. So he, too, was worried about Butler’s long, unexplained absence. But that was no excuse for rudeness. Disapproval stiffened Sir Richard’s thin face. “You have a way of dramatizing situations which smacks of the theatrical.”
John clenched his fists. The fact that his bastard birth was the result of a liaison between a London actress and a West Country squire was no secret, but no one dared to speak of it to his face. Atholl needed a lesson in kind.
“I know my own tales, Sir Richard. Lest we continue under false flags, allow me to apprise you of my knowledge of your provenance.”
Sir Richard’s lids flickered, and John loosened his hands and smiled slightly. Yes, this was the way, so much better than the physical release he desired.
“To begin, you were born the third son of a drunkard sot, a laird of little consequence. ’Twas your Presbyterian mother who bound you for the clergy, and there you would have rotted in poverty had not your father and two brothers had the ill luck to drown one squally day, opening the path for you to inherit the title.”
The trough of a smile deepened beneath John’s generous mustache. “The pulpit lost a shade of its charm when placed beside the gleam of a laird’s gold, hey? Oh, how pious you seek to appear when you mewl at others who, unlike yourself, are honest enough to say, ‘God may damn me, so long as I have my own here and now!’”
Sir Richard’s fair complexion mottled as he said righteously, “‘As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets which have been since the world began: That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us.’”
“Hate?” John voiced in amazement. “Not so, Sir Richard. For is it not said, ‘nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest’? Aye, I know the Good Book as well as many and more than some. Your piety does not impress me, but your interest in our mutual companion does.” His voice became conciliatory, although his expression of challenge did not alter a whit. “Enough of threats. When made between friends they are so much moldy hay.”
John resumed his walk and Atholl followed. After a moment he inserted the first needle of doubt under the Scotsman’s skin. “This Irishman Butler is a thorn in my side. I ask myself, is his allegiance to the queen but a ruse? Did Her Majesty send me to spy on the fellow? God’s breath! Such assignments little match my ability. I would rather…” He caught himself. He had nearly overplayed his part.
Sir Richard gazed at John, his affront diverted by his own ponderings. “I have wondered at this journey myself. A military man, a man of God, a fop, and the earl of Ormond’s favorite nephew, a strange assortment, indeed.”
John remained silent. For his part, he would scarcely have refused any offer that freed him from his cell. Yet, the command to map the Irish countryside was no job for a man of his worth. The Butler whelp was a fair hand at drawing. Still, his production of maps grew steadily less, and a man had to wonder if there were reasons for the ebbing of work other than the lack of visibility caused by the mists. Butler was an Irishman.
Though the family was Anglo-Irish, his father had married a daughter of a clan chieftain against the dictates of English law. One never knew where one’s loyalties would come to roost until swords were drawn.
“Did Butler possess a single sketch when you met him on the road?”
Sir Richard shook his head. “He said nothing of maps. Butler’s dog led them to that chance encounter with the women. I refused to follow, of course. While I abhor violence,” he shuddered, “I did not see cause to interfere in matters we know nothing of. ’Twas Butler who insisted that the girl be brought into camp. The sooner we’re rid of her, the better.”
John smirked. Though he had seen a little of the girl as Butler carried her into camp, her slim legs and tangled cloud of black hair had attracted him.
“Perhaps her company will prove a distraction. Who is to say that she will not be eager to show her gratitude to us?” John’s gusty laughter underscored the lustful gleam in his eyes.