Wild Angel (4 page)

Chapter 3

"JUST BECAUSE I’VE agreed to join you on your
raids
doesn’t
mean that I have to like you, O’Byrne. I
don’t."

Taking his eyes from the rugged line of mountains to
the south, Ronan glanced at the young woman riding bareback beside him.

So Triona had deigned to speak to him at last. She hadn’t
uttered a word to him since she’d accepted his offer two days ago. With Fineen’s
burial behind them, Ronan’s stronghold only another hour’s ride away, he had
begun to think she would remain stubbornly silent for the entire journey. He
might have preferred that she had.

"And just because my father forgave you doesn’t
mean that I’ll ever forget what you did to Conor," Triona continued.

"That makes two of us," Ronan muttered to
himself, frowning now as Triona’s gangly gray wolfhound went crashing into the
underbrush after a snowy-tailed rabbit. "You’d do well to keep that unruly
beast of yours under control. He could startle the horses."

His terse advice was greeted by an indignant glare. "Conn
isn’t unruly! I’ll have you know I trained him from a pup. He’s obedient and
loyal and would come back with a single command if I wanted him to. But I’d
rather let him run. If you O’Byrnes raid as often as I’ve heard, Conn and I
will have little time for hunting once we reach your stronghold."

More aptly put, Triona, you’ll have
no
time for hunting, Ronan vowed
silently, his gaze falling to the sleek white cat stretched across her lap.

He hadn’t expected Triona to meet him at the stockade
gate with a menagerie in tow. But then he hadn’t expected her to possess a
majestically powerful bay stallion any man would be proud to own either.
Another surprise. It amazed him now that the copper-eyed feline held no
interest in the hooded falcon perched on Triona’s shoulder, but it did hiss and
spit when Conn came bounding from the trees, his red tongue lolling.

"Aye, that’s my Conn! Conn the Hundred
Fighter
!"

As Triona leaned over to pat the huge wiry-haired
animal, Ronan realized he was staring at her again, a creamy glimpse of flesh
revealed when her shirt pulled free of her trousers. But what jammed his breath
was her smile, as open and radiant as the delight dancing in her eyes, and the
sound of her laughter when Conn licked her hand. Soft and supple, and husky
enough to stir any man’s senses . . .

"What are you looking at, O’Byrne?"

Slowly expelling his breath, Ronan met Triona’s wary
gaze. She wasn’t smiling any longer, though it hardly mattered. She could be
sticking out her tongue at him and grimacing and she’d still be one of the
loveliest women he’d ever seen.

"Your bird," he lied, feeling distinctly
uncomfortable and beginning to wish his new charge
had
been ugly as a hound. "Fine creature."

"Aye, so he is," Triona agreed, although she
wasn’t wholly convinced that Ronan had been staring at her falcon. Gripping the
reins with one hand, she quickly tucked in her rust-colored shirt, a hot blush
firing her cheeks when Ronan pointedly looked away.

Damn if she hadn’t caught him watching her more than
once during the past few days!
she
fumed, realizing
just where his attention had been drawn. She had tried to avoid him, this
unwanted guardian of hers, but that had been impossible in the somewhat cramped
hall of Imaal. And then at her father’s burial, when Ronan had stood right next
to her, so close that their fingertips had brushed

"Does your cat share as illustrious a name as Conn
the Hundred Fighter?"

Triona met Ronan’s eyes, feeling suddenly a bit too
warm. "Of course she does!" she snapped, wishing that she had kept
her mouth shut for the entire journey as she had planned. As far as she was
concerned, she and Ronan had nothing more to discuss than raiding. Furthermore,
as soon as their vengeance was won, she,
Aud
and her
pets would be on their way. Not home to Imaal, where Murchertach now ruled, but
someplace else. Just where, though, she wasn’t yet sure.

"Well?"

Triona sighed with exasperation but decided to humor
Ronan’s attempt at conversation. If she satisfied his curiosity, maybe then he
would leave her alone.

"This is Maeve" —she gave the drowsy cat a
fond stroke— "and the falcon you were so admiring is Ferdiad."

For a fleeting instant Triona imagined she saw the
barest hint of a smile on Ronan’s face. But when he turned back to the mountain
path, his striking features were as serious as ever. "Maeve the
Warrior-Queen and her Connaught champion Ferdiad, friend and yet enemy of the
mighty hero Cuchulain."

"Aye, and don’t forget Laeg, here." Triona
proudly patted her stallion’s glistening reddish-brown neck. "He’s as
stouthearted as they come. I knew his name should be Laeg the moment I first
rode him."

"Cuchulain’s stalwart charioteer, courageous and
true. So you’ve named all your pets after Eire’s ancient heroes. You must know
your legends well."

"As should any good Irishman."

"
Aye,
and she can sing
them well, too, Lord! Triona has a lovely voice," added Aud, close behind
them.

"Aud!" Triona twisted around and gave her
maid a quelling look, but the spare middle-aged woman simply nudged her spotted
pony into a faster walk until they were riding three abreast.

Pleased to hear that Triona possessed at least one
maidenly virtue, Ronan asked, "A lovely voice you say?"

"Oh, aye, Lord, as lilting as a lark,"
declared Aud, clearly eager to converse now that Triona had broken her silence.
So eager in fact, that she leaned closer to Ronan, her large brown eyes
animated and appearing even rounder in her small beak-nosed face. "Do you
have a harpist?"

"Enough, Aud," Triona groused. She pulled up
on the reins and fell back in front of the four O’Byrne clansmen who trailed
them, the winding mountain path only wide enough for two horses. "I’m sure
the O’Byrne doesn’t want to hear all of this—"

"Nonsense," Ronan interrupted, hoping to
discover if there were more worthy womanly qualities to his reluctant charge
than met the eye. "As your guardian, everything about you is of interest
to me. Allow the good woman to speak." He turned back to Aud. "Aye, I’ve
a harpist, one of the finest in Wicklow."

"He’d have to be one of the finest to match my
sweeting’s fair music," Aud chatted on proudly, listing the ancient
legends that Triona could recite in song: the tale of the Red Branch Knights,
Deirdre of the Sorrows, the Children of Lir and so many more.

"Jesu,
Mary
and Joseph,"
muttered Triona as she fell back even farther, embarrassed. Yet she should be
used to such talk by now, and she knew her irrepressible maid meant no harm.
Loyal to the bone, Aud had doted upon her since she was a wee babe. But Aud was
also a meddler, forever hoping that somewhere there was a man Triona might
accept . . .

"Little chance of that," Triona breathed to
herself, watching as Conn playfully lunged in and out of the trees. She doubted
there was a man alive who’d take her just as she was

"So Murchertach wasn’t the first man that Triona
spurned."

"Oh no, Lord, there’ve been plenty of others."

"Aud!" Wondering how the conversation had
jumped from the legends of Eire to such a personal topic, Triona realized with
growing irritation that she should have been listening to her maid more
carefully. "That’s enough talk about me!"

"But the O’Byrne was merely asking—"

"Too many questions!" Triona scowled at Ronan
as she kicked Laeg forward, forcing Aud to shift places with her, the startled
maid now riding behind. "If he must know anything else, then he can ask me
himself."

"There is something," said Ronan, noting the
inborn grace in Triona’s gesture as she shoved an unruly shock of bright copper
hair from her face. "Why have you rejected every suitor?"

"Didn’t like them."

The truculent tilt of her chin told Ronan that the
subject was a touchy one but he persisted, puzzled by her answer. "Nothing
more than that?"

"She shot two of them with her arrows!" Aud
interjected as if she couldn’t help herself. "Such fine-looking young men,
too, and of good family. One in the leg and the other—"

"I grazed him in the shoulder," Triona
finished tightly.

"You shot them?" Frowning to himself, Ronan
remembered with discomfort how close he had come to being skewered by one of
her arrows. "Did they overstep their bounds? Touch you? Insult you?"

"No, just wouldn’t leave me in peace."

"So you shot them."

"I said grazed, O’Byrne. It wasn’t my intent to
maim them. Their wounds were barely scratches. It was just enough to make them
go away."

Ronan studied her, amazed. "And your father didn’t
object?"

"Why should he? He respected my judgment."

Now he’d heard just about enough, Ronan thought
angrily, exasperated by her flippant answers. Not one of his men was half as
wild. Her weapons had to go. And speaking of weapons . . .

"How did you come to be so skilled with the bow?"
he asked, Triona immediately granting him a look of pure irritation.

"Have you wax in your ears, O’Byrne? I already
told you, my father taught me."

"But surely that is an unusual thing for a man to
allow his daughter, chieftain or no."

"Mayhap, but it seemed to give him the balm he
needed after losing his only son. He had always loved to shoot targets with
Conor, to hunt, to fish." Triona noted that Ronan’s expression had
darkened, his grip on the reins very tight, but she continued on. "I hoped
it might cheer him—if I learned to shoot, and it did. By the time my mother saw
how good I’d become, it was too late."

"Too late?"

"Aye. I never had to embroider another stitch, or
bother learning about household things for that matter, and my father never
forced me. He would have lost his best hunting companion, he always said."

Ronan made no comment to this last bit, his
tight-lipped silence vexing Triona.

"Well, since we’re asking questions of each other,
what about you?" she demanded, her own curiosity getting the better of
her. "You said you have no wife and no children, yet surely a renowned
chieftain such as yourself has been offered many a pleasing bride."

"I’ve no time for marriage,"
came
his gruff answer as he looked away.

"But if you don’t mind me saying so, Lord, ‘tis a
shame, is what it is," Aud interjected in disbelief. "A fine handsome
man like you."

"Handsome, aye, but I’d wager that stern
expression you seem to favor has frightened away more than one maiden,"
Triona muttered loud enough for Ronan to hear. "If you think I’m not as I
used to be, O’Byrne, neither are you. I remember you always laughing, always
smiling
and telling tales. I remember the serving girls
fighting over which one would wait upon you, and how you would pull them onto
your lap and kiss—"

"Then you were up far too late for your young age,"
Ronan cut her off, his stone gray eyes locking with hers. "People change,
Triona. Enough said."

She stared back, momentarily silenced by the vehemence
of his voice and the haunted cast to his eyes. Strangely he looked younger at
that moment, as if the years had been stripped away, and she dropped her gaze
at the sudden tugging in her chest, her breath stilled in her throat.

The sensation reminded her of when she used to watch
him from a knothole in the kitchen, her father’s hall resounding with
merriment. When she used to watch Ronan’s face, thinking him the most handsome
of men with his midnight brows, lean, strong features and that devil-may-care
smile. When she used to watch him kiss those giggling girls . . . knowing she
shouldn’t be there and yet unable to tear herself away, wishing that one day
when she was older, Ronan O’Byrne might be kissing her—

"I said look to your mount, Triona. The path is
steep here."

"W-what?" Flustered both by the turn of her
thoughts as well as not hearing Ronan’s warning the first time, she tightened
her grip on the reins, preventing Laeg from dancing sideways. As they began to
descend a sharp hill, the green wooded beauty of Glenmalure stretching out
before them, Triona was grateful that she had the rocky path to occupy her
attention until she regained her composure.
A composure
she resolved not to lose again.

"We’ll be there soon," Ronan announced,
taking the lead when the path once more grew level.

Gathering Maeve under one arm, Triona urged Laeg into a
trot and caught up with Ronan; from his surprised expression, she guessed that
he had expected her to stay behind with Aud. The command in his eyes told her
that he wanted her to do just that, which she ignored.

His clansmen seemed to obey him without question, and
she imagined she would, too, once they were out on a raid. Granted, she could
see why Ronan had won such successes against the Normans given the unswerving
obedience and loyalty of his men. But right now she had something important to
discuss with him. She determinedly rode a little ahead of him,
then
declared over her shoulder, "I’ve the perfect plan
to avenge my father."

"We’ll talk of it later."

"Later?" Stunned, Triona yanked up on the
reins and waited until his glossy black stallion was even with hers. "What
do you mean,
later?
My father lies
cold in his grave, dead by Norman hands, and . . . and you’re saying that I
must wait to discuss our plans for vengeance?"

Ronan passed her without answering, which infuriated
Triona. Once again she caught up with him, her voice growing shrill as she
persisted.

"But we know who those men were! The Normans who
attacked my father bore the de Roche crest, a three-headed dragon! That
accursed baron of Naas might well have been among them when my father strayed
onto de Roche land—"