Revelin looked up into her lovely face, a touch of amusement in his expression. “Have you been taking lessons at my uncle’s knee on the management of Sir Revelin Butler?”
Alison blushed a deep pink. “Certainly not! The earl and I have never discussed marriage. It would not be seemly without the official sanction of an engagement.” Her lashes lowered over her eyes, their red-gold tangle having proved to be a great distraction to any number of courtiers. Revelin was aware only that he was about to make to her in Dublin the speech he should have made weeks ago in London.
“What if there were no engagement, formal or otherwise, Alison? What if it suddenly came to a man that his ordering of his future had been without substance, that he was missing an elemental portion, without which his life would be simply milling out?”
Alison’s lashes fluttered upward. “Do you mean a life without love?”
Revelin’s brows rose. “I do not think I quite understand that word. Once I thought I did. Once I thought it was what I feel when I gaze into your eyes as I do now, that this feeling of contentment and goodwill must be love.”
Alison’s gray eyes clouded. “But something has made you doubt that?”
“Aye,” Revelin said softly, the wistful tone in his voice surprising even to himself.
“Is she really such a beauty?” Alison questioned calmly.
Revelin’s gaze focused on her. “Who?”
“Her name is Meghan, is it not?”
“Thomas told you, damn him!” Revelin turned away from her. “He had no right! Did he think me too much a coward to fight my own battles?”
Alison reached out to him but did not touch him. “Nay, Rev, your uncle was gravely concerned for you. When you returned to us from Ireland you were so distant, so ready to go back and leave those of us at court to our own devices. I am not such a ninny that I cannot guess what snares a young man’s fancy. If it is not war, then it must be a woman.”
She smiled as he turned back to her. “I have been long at
court, Rev, and I have seen the very hour when a man first thinks of straying from his present love. Sometimes, his thoughts are no more revealing than a change in the pattern of his hose from clocks to ivy. It does not matter the change, it is only a signal of the inner turmoil. The signs were there in you long before you left London last spring. Your uncle thought that an adventure in Ireland would cure your restlessness, give you direction. I told him you might only fall in love.” Her smile saddened. “I thought I could win you back from any mortal, but they tell me she is a witch.”
“How well versed you are, Lady Alison. My uncle has been grooming both of us, it seems, like a matched pair of bays for his stable. Oh no, we are to be part of his dynasty,
Buitiler a baudh!
Yet I cannot wish him well in this present matter. I am a Butler myself, and I am partial to my own victories.”
“Lud!” Alison exclaimed lightly and sat back, flicking open her fan. “Am I to be rejected, jilted, in favor of a Gaelic lass? My reputation at court will be in shreds.” She looked up at him over the lace-edged fan. “I don’t think I should like that.”
The practiced skill with which she executed the flirtatious actions could not conceal from Revelin’s watchful gaze the hurt behind the clear gray of her gaze. Alison was a product of the court, accustomed to bantering and fencing with rapier-sharp words. For all that, she was also young, a maiden, and new to the intrigues and vagaries of romance. He could not find it in his heart to hurt her more than necessary.
He took one of her small, elegantly manicured hands in his, absently comparing it to Meghan’s lightly callused palms. “We have been friends since childhood, Alison, and the affection I have for you will never alter.” A spasm crossed Alison’s face but she did not look away from him. “We will always love each other but we are capable of feeling more. I was not aware of that until three short months ago, when a shy, untutored lass dived into a stagnant pool and saved my life.”
He smiled kindly. “You would think her rude and ignorant,
Alison, for, in truth, she as little resembles you as the sun the moon.”
“Yet you’ve grown fond of the moon while the sun shone so favorably upon you?”
Revelin shook his head. “’Tis not like that. When it happens to you, you will understand.”
Alison regarded him steadily but her eyes began to fill. “How can you be so certain that it has not already happened to me, Rev? Do you think yourself the keeper of love’s secret delights? Do you not know what I feel when I look at you? Have you not felt me tremble in your arms, watched my adoring eyes follow where—”
“Alison!” Revelin warned. “You must not say these things. You will regret it and hate me for allowing the humiliation.”
Alison rose slowly to her feet, her hands gripping his with unsuspected strength. “I am not ashamed of loving you. I will never be ashamed of that. If this black-haired witch has bewitched you, then I will wait until the spell wears through. I know you too well, Revelin Butler. What you feel is gratitude, pity, and a sense of responsibility toward the lass.” She looked away at last. “I hear she is tolerably fair of face despite a disfiguring mark.”
Revelin smiled. “She is beautiful, mark and all. It is like a rose newly budded.”
“And you were like a bee to her nectar,” Alison replied bitterly and lifted her eyes to his once more. “Oh, I know you’ve bedded her or rolled her in the grass of some shady glen. I do not care to see the glory of it reflected in your face, Rev. It makes me hate her…and you.”
“Hate me, if you must,” Revelin answered gently. “I have betrayed your trust. But, if you can, remember that I was guilty of nothing more than ignorance. I did not know I could love with the intensity I now feel. She will never outshine your beauty or usurp your place in my heart. But I must go to her, find her, and bring her safely back. I love her.”
Alison bit her lip, her expression becoming peevish. “How do you know she has not fled to safety or even been spared by the intervention of another? Was Sir Robin Neville not with her?”
For the first time since reading the letter a glimmer of hope flickered within Revelin. “You’re right, of course! Robin would have protected Meghan. Why did I not think of it? They could at this very moment be on their way to Dublin.”
“Or elsewhere,” Alison murmured.
“What do you mean?” Revelin questioned in puzzlement.
Alison shrugged one slender shoulder and freed herself from Revelin’s clasp. She was losing him, she knew, so why not tell him the truth? “Last evening, after we dined at the castle, I chanced to sit with Sir Sidney for a quarter of an hour. He was most talkative, particularly about your foster daughter.” She looked pointedly at Revelin. “That is, after I told him I was aware of the child. He apologized for his misunderstanding of the situation between you and thought me most generous to take in an Irish waif practically on my wedding day. He warned me that the task would not be all to my liking, though he hoped that Sir Robin would do the right thing. After all, the lass is of noble lineage.”
Revelin’s mouth tightened. “It seems my entire life is the subject of common gossip these days. I am not to blame if Sir Sidney sees evil in innocence. Sir Robin was asked by me to look after Meghan while I was away. If the court gossips wish to misconstrue their relationship, it does not overly concern me.”
“Does Sir Robin’s behavior concern you?” Casting caution to the winds, Alison continued, “Sir Sidney has it on good authority that Meghan O’Neill is with child.”
Revelin’s jaw fell, then a great smile spread over his face, which he tried unsuccessfully to tame. “I—I am so sorry, Alison, that you had to hear of it. But you must know that I was unaware”
Alison turned her back on him, unable to bear the shining pride in his face. “You had best be prepared for another shock. Sir Sidney heard from a reliable source that the child is Sir Robin’s.”
Revelin laughed. “Sir Sidney would say that to spare you, my dear. He is a gentleman, after all, when he wishes to remember it.”
Alison turned on him so quickly that her skirts danced out and knocked over a bric-a-brac table but they ignored it. “Are you so arrogant a fool that you cannot hear me? Sir Sidney was told that Meghan is his mistress by Sir Robin himself!”
Revelin stilled, his face losing all animation. “You lie to me!”
The hushed, brittle words struck Alison like shards of glass and she flinched under the tone. “Rev!” she whispered and came to throw her arms about him. “I did not mean to hurt you. I thought, I hoped, that the knowledge would break the spell this she-devil has woven about you.”
Revelin did not return her embrace as she buried her face in his sleeve, but neither did he push her away. He was too full of conflicting emotions. In the beginning he had told himself that Meghan would get over him, that when she was much in the company of other men she would find his attentions not so singular or unusual. She would fall out of love with him and, in time, find a man to marry.
“What rubbish!” he muttered to himself. In truth he had never wanted to be free of her. But this feeling of love for her had come too swiftly, too unexpectedly, and had complicated his well-ordered life. It had happened in a space of moment when he had thought himself dead and opened his eyes to find instead that he had been saved by a black-haired slip of a lass with a rose as her talisman. She had clung to him from the first. If he had been wiser or more brave, he would have bound her to him and let the world be damned. But he had dallied, trying to untangle the skein that was his life, and while doing so had lost her.
“I must go to Kilkenny,” he said quietly and stepped back from Alison.
She released him, wiping tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands like a small child. “Why? Do you not believe me?”
Revelin looked down at her and retrieved a handkerchief from his sleeve to offer her. “Meghan is in trouble. Whatever she has done, it is my fault. I cannot abandon her now.” His lips turned up in a travesty of a smile. “She is my foster child.”
*
Southern Kilkenny: Late August 1569
The cries of a distant battle did not stir Meghan from the makeshift bed where she had collapsed an hour earlier after a night tending wounded soldiers.
Perhaps they will all die this time and leave me with no torn limbs to bind,
she thought wearily.
Behind her closed lids, a stream of blood tripped and ran like a brook through the gentle valleys of Kilkenny. It was worse than any vision she had had. This was real, the dying and wounding; the slaughter and pillage followed them like a plague wherever they went. Carew’s forces had marched their hostages to Clogrennan Castle and by deceit entered Sir Edmund’s home and killed all servants present, the women and children as well as the garrison soldiers.
Meghan sat up with a shudder as the roar of battle neared. A child had begun to cry somewhere nearby. In the dawn misted by the heavy dew she could just discern the silhouette of Lady Mary bending over her youngest, a girl of three. A moment later Sir Piers joined her, the chains linking his arms and feet clinking as he knelt down and raised his daughter up onto his shoulder, where she quieted immediately.
Meghan slumped back against the tree trunk. Of all the harrowing moments of the last three weeks, there was one shining moment. It had occurred that first day. When she had
been revived after learning of Colin’s death, she had expected to be John Reade’s prisoner. Instead, she was hovered over by Lady Mary and Sir Piers. It was Sir Piers who had told her what had happened, and his eyes were bright with a new respect for her that she had seen once before, in Turlough O’Neill’s gaze.
Colin MacDonald’s men had barred Reade’s way when he demanded her as payment for his part in the battle of Kilkenny. The
bonaghts
had drawn their swords against Carew’s orders and threatened to kill their leader before turning Meghan over to him. They told how she had cursed them for their part in the sack of the castle, but had sworn to remove the curse if they protected the Butlers from further harm.
Their readiness to face death had won her a reprieve; and even now, though she could not see him, she knew that somewhere nearby a
bonaght
stood over her. Many had died in subsequent battles as they marched from Kilkenny Town to Clogrennan, but her protectors had not even been badly wounded, and that fact had drawn others to her side until now the Butlers boasted more than two dozen loyal protectors. Meghan knew that if not for fear of the children’s being caught in the crossfire, Sir Piers and Sir Edward, along with Sir Edmund, who had finally been captured a few days earlier, would have chanced a revolt within the camp using these
bonaghts.
Meghan shut her eyes. She was filthy and hungry and thirsty and very afraid for the tiny scrap of life that grew within her. It happened then, the soft faint fluttering like the movement of a butterfly’s wings within her lower belly. She held her breath, but the sensation was too slight for her to comprehend fully. It
had happened the day before, more quickly. It was life that stirred within her, life that Revelin had put there and that she was determined to protect.
Sir Piers came toward her when at last his child was soothed, and Meghan watched him with sympathy, for his gait was made awkward by the short length of chain linking his ankles.