The Virgin's Spy (23 page)

“Why? What was the point of bringing me here only to let me go?”

“Two reasons. First, you had to admit your true identity to Ailis to get here. I imagine that did not go over so well. I don't mind confessing I relish the thought of her taking out all that wild Irish anger on you rather than me.”

Liadan was looking at him, confused. Maisie seemed as impassive as always. “And second?” Stephen ground out. He'd have to tell the girls the truth on the way back to Cahir. He did not relish having Liadan's contempt turned toward him. He could not predict Maisie's reaction.

“Second,” Dane repeated thoughtfully. “Well, I'll make you a deal on the second. You want to leave, there's a horse. Go with my blessing.”

“Or?”

“Stay.”

Again Stephen asked, “Why?”

“You stay here willingly, and return to England where you belong. Report to Walsingham and your queen and put Ireland behind you forever.”

Dane moved in closer, fingering the hilt of the dagger in his belt. “But if you return to Cahir, then I send word to the English court that their favourite son has turned traitor. ‘Gone native,' I believe the phrase is. You're not the first. It's a flaw the weak-minded are prone to, sympathizing with the enemy. I don't suppose it's a flaw your queen—or your father—will forgive.”

Stephen's head spun. It was all too easy to imagine the black picture Dane painted. No, Elizabeth would not forgive. He knew her well enough to know ingratitude hurt her more than any other sin. And his father? Stephen tried to picture his father here—and came up blank. Dominic Courtenay did not belong to the murkiness of Ireland. In his father's eyes, loyalty was a matter of black and white.

But it wasn't. Because Liadan and Maisie were looking at him, and behind him, at Cahir, was a woman he had wronged.
Never take what is not freely offered,
his father had counseled,
and then only if you are certain you will not leave pain behind. That is poor payment for any woman.

He had already repaid Ailis in pain.

“You should stay,” Maisie said evenly. “I will make sure she understands.”

Whether she meant Liadan or Ailis, he didn't know. And he didn't have a chance to figure it out before Dane continued.

“One more thing.” Dane pulled his dagger free, a deceptively fine blade twelve inches long, honed to a wicked edge. “A message for Ailis and her clan—a reminder, if you like, that I cannot be blackmailed.”

Without a word, without a warning, Dane seized Liadan around the shoulder and pulled her close. The blade went through her throat like the softest cheese. Dane was soaked in a spray of his daughter's blood, then let her limp body drop to the ground.

There was a roaring in Stephen's ears and the smell of blood assaulted his senses. At the edges of his vision ghosts crowded in, hungry to pull him back into their maelstrom of pain, Harrington and Roisin and the screams of girls in the blackest night…

But it was daylight and there was only one small, dead girl. Maisie dropped to her knees, making a keening noise that broke through Stephen's shock. He lunged for Dane.

And was brought up short by a guard with a loaded crossbow. But it was not pointed at him—it was pointed at Maisie.

“You promised to let them go!” Stephen shouted.

“I promised Ailis the return of her daughter. I did not specify in what condition. You have two minutes to decide,” Dane added, casual despite the blood on his hands and clothes. “Take Ailis her daughter and you may have the Scots girl living. Or return to England and have one more dead girl on your conscience.” He raised his hand at the bowman, ready to signal and let fly the bolt that would kill Maisie.

Stephen couldn't get her to move. He crouched, speaking low and urgent in her ear. “We have to go, Maisie, listen to me, we've got to go now…” a refrain that went on and on and did absolutely nothing to reach her.

“One minute,” Dane said.

Stephen grabbed her by the shoulders, silently apologizing for his roughness, and pulled her to her feet. “Mariota,” he said in as commanding a voice as he could manage. “Get on the horse.”

It at least stopped her keening. He practically shoved her onto the larger of the horses. He couldn't mount that one on his own with a burden. They could rearrange themselves as needed once they were away from Blackcastle.

Hating Dane and Ireland and God and himself most of all, Stephen draped Liadan's limp body unceremoniously over his shoulder. Despite his anger with God, he prayed fervently that he could mount without dropping her. No way in hell was he letting Dane or one of his men touch her.

He managed, just, and when mounted subsequently managed to shift Liadan so she lay cradled before him with her head in the crook of one arm. Kicking his horse into movement, he was glad to see Maisie aware enough to follow.

As they went through the outer gate, Stephen heard Dane call, “Tell Ailis and her clan that the English will have Ireland. If we have to kill every last Irish native to do it.”

It was a ride Maisie would never remember clearly. The world itself seemed flat, as though pressed from the leaves of a book. The only thing not black or white or gray was the blood on her hands and dress and even on the ends of her long braids that had slipped over her shoulder. She knew they rode and stopped and rode again. Stephen forced bread down her throat, and cheap wine that made her sputter. At one stop he wrapped Liadan's body in the cloak she silently offered him. Neither of them spoke a word.

Diarmid and several of his men were waiting for them three miles outside Cahir. Maisie heard the hisses of shock and kept her eyes fixed on the horizon. She would not let herself be caught by anyone else's sorrow.

But she could not avoid hearing Stephen's sharp voice. “Don't touch her.”

Then she did look, where Diarmid and Stephen faced each other on horseback. The Irishman was quick enough to recognize the fanatic resolve in the Englishman's expression and did not force the issue. To fight over Liadan's corpse would be a final insult.

They rode in procession together. No one seemed eager to carry the news ahead of them to Cahir.

Even without being warned, Ailis was waiting for them. She must have had men watching from the walls. With the distance she could not yet be certain…she would have counted the riders…but Maisie was practically the same size as Liadan, and suddenly Maisie reached up and pulled off her hood. Let the watery sunlight catch the gleam of her white-blonde hair so Ailis would have the slightest moment of preparation…

She didn't know why she thought that might help. There was no preparation that could matter. When they were still a hundred yards away, Ailis came running straight at Stephen. The riders pulled up and Diarmid swung down to put his arm around Ailis, which she immediately shook off. Maisie wanted to look away from her awful, stark face as Ailis realized…but she wouldn't. The least she could do was bear witness.

This time, Stephen did not protest when Diarmid reached for Liadan. Gently, he let her down into the other man's arms. Ailis threw herself at them both so they ended on the ground, the mother stretched over her child, the peculiarly Gaelic keening that Maisie herself had produced earlier coming now from Ailis.

One of the other men helped Maisie down. She didn't know what to do. Stephen seemed in the same dilemma. He took a hesitant step toward Ailis and stopped.

This was a moment for clan only. Neither of them were wanted—or even noticed. So Maisie did the only thing she could think of to express her compassion. She walked away.

Without thinking, she ended in Liadan's chamber, where she had spent so much time. It was dreadfully, devastatingly empty. Everything was just as it had been that last night—was it only the night before last?—when Dane strode into the chamber and demanded they get up and get dressed quick and quiet. Maisie stared at the bed, the crumpled linens waiting for Liadan to return, and could not bear it.

She simply sat down where she was on the floor. There was a shoulder-height chest next to her and she leaned her head against it and began making tactical calculations in her head.

It might have been an hour later, or two, or only ten minutes when she felt something cold touch her face and she blinked herself back into her body. Stephen knelt before her, washing the blood and dirt from her cheeks. Then he moved to her hands, where the blood had cracked and dried and soaked so far into her skin Maisie would carry it with her always.

That was when she began to weep.

After seeing to the horses—not only Dane's, but those Diarmid and his men had ridden—Stephen did not know what to do. He could trace the rise and fall of the women's wailing and wanted to shut his ears or run away. Barring that, he expected to be secured in the chains left empty by Dane, but it seemed even the men of Clan Kavanaugh were lost in grief for a time. He could have left then, if he'd wanted.

Finally, he remembered that there was at least one person in Cahir as alone as he was this night. He found Maisie sitting on the stone-flagged floor next to Liadan's bed, knees hugged to her chest, still wearing the gown soaked with the child's blood. He didn't know what to do. Looking desperately around the chamber, he saw the washing bowl with water that had no doubt been sitting there since they'd vanished. He grabbed a piece of cloth and the bowl and set it next to Maisie on the floor. He could at least clean her face.

The moment he touched her, he realized she'd had no idea he was there. He was almost sorry to have broken the balance that had kept her quiet, for almost at once her shoulders began to shake. Helplessly, Stephen put an arm around her narrow shoulders and then the sobs began in earnest.

He could remember his mother holding Kit as he'd sobbed, sometimes in sorrow, other times in rage. Kit had always been extravagant in his emotions. Just like his mother had back then, Stephen curved over Maisie protectively and she ended half on his shoulder, half in his lap, as Liadan herself might have done. Stephen's own throat was so tight he could hardly swallow.

When the storm had gentled a bit, he realized there were words with her tears. She kept saying something. To him. “You called me Mariota.”

She must have said it three or four times before Stephen heard and interpreted it correctly. He didn't know what to say. She looked up at him, her eyes enormous from weeping, and said, “No one has called me Mariota since my grandfather died.”

Then, like the practical-minded Scots girl she was, she straightened away and Stephen dropped his hands. He still didn't know what to say.

Maisie solved that issue. “I know who you are.”

“I suppose Dane gave you all the hints you needed.”

“No, I meant I knew it before. From almost the first day we met.”

Stephen blinked. “What are you, given to second sight?”

“I met your brother last summer at Kilkenny. His was not a face one forgets.”

“Yes, I know,” Stephen said wryly. “But Kit and I are nothing alike.”

“The coloring, no. But the bones of your face are the same. And your expressions. You both wrinkle the corner of your eyes when you're being polite against your nature, and your jawline twitches when you're displeased. There's something about the way you both speak and carry yourselves…I was sure.”

“And then you corroborated.” Stephen let out a breath that was half laugh, half admiration. “I was warned there were questions about my present location coming from the merchant communities in London. I thought it was Mary Stuart looking for me. It was you.”

“It's what merchants do,” she said listlessly. “Hoard information like squirrels. For our own benefit.”

“Rather like a spy.”

“But you're not really a spy, are you? Not in the way you were meant to be. You might have come to the Kavanaughs for information, but you stayed for Ailis.”

How had such a slip of girl so easily seen into the heart of him? Trying to deflect his uneasiness, Stephen said, “It doesn't much matter now. I'm damned either way. No doubt Dane already has messengers flying to England to tell the queen I'm a traitor. But they'll have to stand in line behind Ailis to get at me. I don't imagine she'll be satisfied with anything but my head.”

“Then I would say your imagination is not very good where women are concerned.”

“They're going to lock me up, Maisie.”

“I know it as well as you do, and yet you came back to Cahir. Don't worry. I may not be able to defuse their anger at your initial lies, but I will be able to clear you of any involvement in…” She waved her hand around the crumpled, deserted chamber. “Any of this.”

“Don't worry about me,” Stephen said grimly.

“I'm not. Ailis won't kill you. She needs you. And I need you, too—because while I was at Blackcastle, I gathered quite a lot of information that will be useful when it comes time to attack. Men don't expect much from women, especially not young women. They let us see rather more than they should have. I've already begun calculations on the number of men Dane has on hand, the quality of their weapons and food stores, and what Clan Kavanaugh will need to beat them.”

Stephen blinked. He seemed to have forgotten how to speak. Finally he managed to croak, “What?”

“It's what I do, remember? There is more to me than anyone in Ireland has guessed—including Oliver Dane.”

Stephen realized his mouth was hanging open, so he shut it. But he couldn't stop staring at this girl with her cascade of silver-gilt hair so bright it gleamed in the shadows of the dark chamber. Like her own moon.

A verse from the Old Testament came into his head:
Fair as the sun, clear as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners
.

“Stephen?” Maisie peered up at him, a crease of determination between her eyes. “It's going to be all right in the end.”