Chapter Six

Fey crouched in a midnight-dark alley on the waterfront of Nantes and waited until the last of the footfalls died. Safe. For a short while. In the morning, Darce would come looking for his little beggar, the wicked iron buckle of his belt flashing in the morning light.

No, that was wrong. Darce would never come looking for anyone again. Darce was dead.

Fey cringed, remembering how that buckle had gleamed in the lantern light as Darce had swung it. Sniffling back sobs, Fey reached back to rub one of the many welts that belt had raised. Uncertain whether the sticky substance was sweat or blood, Fey sniffed it. Blood.

“Damn Darce’s rotten black heart to hell!” Fey muttered and angrily wiped away new tears. Who would have expected gold to be among the coins a stranger threw a beggar’s way?

Fey pulled the ragged shirt from the abused skin and shivered. Darce had not believed it. Darce had been certain that Fey had cut the purse of an aristocrat, something that Darce strictly forbade because theft was a hanging offense.

“Beg your livelihood, do not steal it!” Darce always warned the ragamuffin children he protected from the workhouse.

Fey was only one of many whom Andre Darce had tutored and then sent into the streets to beg from passersby. Each child kept one-fourth of whatever he begged. In exchange, Darce gave him a dry warm place to sleep, an evening meal, and protection from the workhouse and the other beggars who vied for key positions on the streets. They all feared Darce and left his brats alone. In spite of the occasional flare of Darce’s brutal temper that earned the offender bruises, Fey had had little to complain about.

The girls Darce kept did not fair as well. By the age of eleven, they spent most of their hours on the street after dark. The boys’ lives were the better part…until now.

“Base-born bastard off a pock-ridden whore!” Fey mumbled in Gaelic without conscious thought. Gaelic had been the language of Fey’s mother, but she had died when Fey was eight, and life in Brittany had taught the Irish child that French and Breton were better languages for begging in France. So, too, had Fey learned the value of new ways of dressing and acting, ways that no one had uncovered.

With dark hair cropped short and wearing breeches and a shirt, everyone who saw Fey assumed that they saw a young boy. That was not surprising. After four years of the masquerade, barring an incident or two when the call of nature had nearly given her away, Fey had ceased to think of herself as a girl.

Yet, the time of hiding was coming to an end. And then what? Life in the streets as one of Darce’s whores? No, not Darce’s whore. Darce was dead.

“Should have hid the gold,” Fey murmured. Instead, as always, Darce had been offered a fair share of it and Fey had lost it all. Every beggar in Nantes knew of the peculiar turn of mind that made Darce dangerous. ’Twas said a child was never seen again once he had crossed Darce. It had done Fey no good to protest that the gold was not stolen. Darce had not believed it.

When the buckle had first bitten into Fey’s skin, she had scarcely believed it. There had been beatings before, but not with a force that tore skin. When Fey realized that Darce would not stop but was bent on murder, she had done the only thing possible and pulled her dagger in defense.

Fey wrapped her thin arms about her bony knees, wishing she could shrink into a tiny speck and disappear before daylight. Yet, there was total resignation in the sigh she uttered. Right was useless. There was scarcely a sailor or pub owner who would not recognize her. It was one of the drawbacks to life with Darce. When they learned that Darce had been murdered, none of the townspeople would hide her. They would seek out Darce’s murderer, and when they did, Fey would die.

Fey gave short consideration to hiding aboard a ship but dismissed it. The worst time of her life—other than this night—had been during a short excursion aboard a ship where seasickness colored every memory of the voyage. No, even a slit throat was preferable to that tortured living death. So, she must wait to die, all because the foolish generosity of a well-to-do stranger had ended in death.

“Served the bastard right!” Fey continued as the desire for revenge flowed in warming pulses through her bruised body. If she ever found the stranger who had tricked her with gold, she would drive the sharp length of her blade through his liver, too.

Fey suddenly shot to her feet. If she was to die, she would not die easily or as a coward. She had perhaps five hours before daylight, time enough to find a new hole to hide in.

*

Killian felt more alive and less angry with the world as he and his companions followed a meandering street through the dockside of Nantes. It was nearly daybreak. The brandy humming in his veins would soon claim him in sleep. Only the promise of a clean, louse-free, goosedown mattress awaiting him at the Fitzgeralds kept him from dismounting and taking a bed in one of the boardinghouses they passed.

He glanced at Conall and Darragh, who rode ahead of him. Darragh dozed as his horse walked a familiar path. Their loquaciousness had been drowned by spirits and for that Killian was grateful. The Fitzgerald brothers shared one of the more lamentable qualities of their countrymen: they loved the sound of their own voices. For hours he had been subjected to story after story until it was all he could do to keep from deserting their company and the tavern. To ease his frustration, he had drunk far more than he was accustomed to doing.

Killian smiled in the darkness. He felt a fluid ease in his body and mind that was all too rare. Spirits usually left him in the mood to sermonize. Well, he had done his sermonizing that morning, on the streets of Nantes. The young scoundrel had no doubt accounted himself blessed to have earned five gold francs for nothing more than a thrashing.

What a fool he had made of himself. He had tossed away the coins without glancing at them. Five gold francs! That would teach him to act in the heat of righteous anger. “A costly lesson, to be sure,” he murmured.

The clip-clop of their horses’ hooves made the only sound on the street as Killian momentarily closed his eyes. Immediately the image of gray-green eyes and bright wheat-ripe hair stirred behind his lids. The thought of her stirred him more deeply than he had expected. She was lovely, like a rare marsh orchid sprouted suddenly in the midst of a bog. The fact that her beauty was marred by a wandering mind made him unaccountably sad.

Yet, he was too experienced in the ways of the world to wish her different. Had she her full wits, doubtless the lass would trade on her good looks. If guile were added to that loveliness, she would be a hardened flirt, an aspiring courtesan worthy of a king. It was just as well that her feeble mind kept her from knowing the power she might possess over men. Perhaps it was God’s grace given to a lovely fragile spirit. Still, it was bitter to contemplate.

Suddenly there was a movement across his path. It might have been nothing more than a cat’s paws on the sandy lane, but then again…Killian reined in his horse as the others went on ahead.

A shadow moved, ejected from the gloom of a doorway with unexpected speed. It was much too thick and brief to seem human, but Killian did not wait to find out whether it was a ghost or his imagination. His right hand reached for his pistol as his left hand shot out to grasp at the wind. He did not encounter empty air. His fingers closed hard and tight on a small fist flashing a blade. The fist twisted in his. Killian held tight, muttering a curse as the blade pricked him in the arm.

Bending from the saddle, he expected to face the man who had dared to attack him, but when he looked down into the gloom he saw nothing. If not for struggling hard within his grip he would have doubted that anything had happened, for the Fitzgerald brothers were riding ahead, the only sounds in the lane made by their horses.

“Damn!” Killian felt the blade prick him again, this time in the thigh. In anger he wrenched up his prize and found himself dangling a boy by the arm. For the second time this day he had been accosted by a child. He tucked his pistol back into his pocket and with his free hand jerked the knife from the boy with a vicious twist.

The boy yelped but Killian was too angry to care. He stuck his face close to the child’s and said in French, “What a place is this, that children plague men!”

“Let go of me, ye great stinking whoreson!” came back the tear-choked reply in Gaelic. The boy kicked and twisted as he dangled by his captured arm.

It was too dark to see, but a feeling of recognition stole over Killian. Throwing a leg over his saddle, he dismounted without releasing the child. Then, looking back down the lane, he spotted a lantern’s glow at the far end. Without saying a word, he dragged the boy toward it.

“Wait! Where are ye taking me? Stop! Peste! Merde!” the child cried, only to be silenced by a box to the ear.

“Yell again and I’ll choke you and have done with,” Killian answered in Gaelic. Immediately the boy ceased struggling.

The lantern was posted at the corner near the entrance to a pub. A couple stood within its glow but they were occupied in an embrace and did not give heed to the man and boy who came toward them.

“You, ratling, who are you?” Killian muttered as he swung the boy around to face him.

Recognition was swift. Even with the mud and fake pox boils washed off, he knew it was the beggar boy he had met that morning. Now a smooth child’s face looked up at him, marred only by a mutinous anger in the large, luminous dark eyes.

“You!” Killian spat as fresh anger surged through him. “Did you not steal enough of my gold this morning?”

He paused thoughtfully as his gaze switched to the knife he had wrested from the child. When he looked once more on the cherub-sweet face twisted now in pain and fear, his eyes were wintry.

“Did the gleam of gold whet your appetite for more? God! What a greedy little savage you are. You did not count on being caught, did you? Well, I hope you’ll remember what you got for your trouble this morning, for I mean to give you again a generous measure of the same!”

The boy’s dark eyes did not even blink as Killian raised his hand. If anything, they seemed to welcome the expected violence. The child did not plead or beg. There were no false tears or sobs. Killian’s hand halted in mid-stroke.

“Well, have you nothing to say for yourself?”

The boy did not move or speak.

Killian took in once more the soft contours of the child’s face, almost too pretty to be a boy’s, and then the emaciated body. Only then did he notice the shredded shirt and the suspicious dark stickiness seeping through the tatters.

He spun the boy about and swore under his breath at the sight of the many vicious bloody welts visible through the ruined shirt. “Who did this to you?”

“Darce.”

The boy said the name as though Killian should know it. “Why did Darce do this?”

For a moment, naked fear blazed through the boy’s composure. Killian was familiar with the many faces of fear and realized that the child was near blind panic. Then the expression changed and the childish features hardened into a mask of violence. “Because of ye!”

Despite the fact that he held the dagger and had the child in a viselike grip that precluded his doing any harm, Killian’s blood chilled. The rage in those childish eyes was mature beyond reckoning.

“Your master or father, or whatever the fiend’s connection, beat you half to death because of me, bouchal? Raumach!”

“MacShane! We thought we’d lost you!”

Killian looked up in annoyance to find Darragh and Conall riding toward him. In the last moments, he had forgotten their existence.

“What have you there?” Conall peered down at the two people under the lantern. “A lad, is it? Did he throw himself under your horse’s hooves? ’Tis an old trick to gain your sympathy. Do not be taken in.” He drew his pistol and aimed it at the boy, but he was so drunk that the barrel wavered back and forth until it came to point at Killian’s chest. “Away, rascal, afore I end your miserable life!”

“I’ll thank you to put that away before you blow my head off,” Killian said coolly. “I can handle one wee bairn with murder in his heart.” He shook the boy roughly by the collar as he tried to twist free. “Not so fast, bouchal. What’s your name?”

Fey hesitated. From the moment she had launched herself at the tall stranger, nothing had gone as she had planned. Chance and outrageous luck had brought her to the tavern where the three Irish nobles were drinking. At first she was not certain that this was the same man who had thrashed her and then given her money. Then she saw the man’s eyes, the bright piercing blue depths, and knew that he was.

As she had waited, hiding in a corner and listening, her desire for revenge had changed into the more practical one of theft. With money, she could buy passage on a coach out of Nantes. He had money. She would take some of it. But nothing had gone as she had planned and now she was trapped.

Fey gazed up into the angry face hovering above her and suddenly felt very much a child in an adult world. There was violence in that face but no cruelty. Perhaps it was the man’s eyes, Fey never reasoned it out. She knew only that the child inside her responded to the mixture of rage and pity and sympathy that lurked in those blazing light eyes. That, and the lilting Irish brogue that flowed from the man.

“Oh, sir, have pity!” Fey flung herself against the man’s chest and dug her broken-nailed fingers into his arms. “Save me! Please save me! They’ll kill me, they will!”

It was a ploy and Killian recognized it as such, yet the child’s bloody back was proof enough that he told only a partial lie. And the sobs racking the thin body were genuine. Against his better judgment he put an arm about those frail shoulders and heard himself say, “I don’t believe this performance, but ’tis late and I’m more drunk than I prefer to be. Until I’m of a better frame of mind and can sort this out, you will come with me.”

Fey did not protest when she was picked up and carried back to the man’s horse. Her battered skin burned like hot coals, and her anger dissolved into fear as she remembered Darce’s throat washed in a scarlet flood. If she went with the stranger, at least she would be in a place where Darce’s friends were not likely to search.

Killian felt the child’s shiver and an unwanted tenderness blossomed in his chest. He held no illusions about the ruffian’s being a good child or a pleasant one, but the accusation that he was in some way to blame for the welts on the child’s back had made it impossible for him simply to walk away.

“He’s coming with us, then?” Darragh questioned, too filled with ale to have understood anything of the last moments.

“Aye.” Killian climbed into the saddle with the boy in his arms. A moment later, he swung the cloak from his shoulders and tucked it about the child as he would have swaddled a babe. “Lie still, bouchal, or I’ll tie you across my horse’s flanks.”

“Me name’s Fey,” she offered in a tiny voice. “Fey? What sort of name is that for an Irishman?” Fey did not answer but huddled deeper in the warm folds of the cloak as the man urged his horse forward. She was safe for the moment. Perhaps her luck was changing, but she was cautious by nature and her secret was better kept until she knew this man better.

*

“What will you do with the bairn?” Conall asked when they had dismounted before the Fitzgerald residence.

“The stable will do well enough for the likes of him,” Darragh offered.

“I’d rather the lad were where I could keep an eye on him,” Killian answered as he scooped the sleeping child from his saddle.

“You mean to tuck the brat in your bed covers?” Conall shook his head in amazement, then groaned as the effects of the liquor reeled through his bram. “I’d as soon sleep with a wolf cub.”

“If he’ll not conduct himself civilly, I’ve a length of rope that will secure him to a bedpost until morning. Good night.”

By the time Killian had climbed the stairs to his room, he knew that the child in his arms was no longer asleep. His dead weight had lightened into a tense bundle of expectancy. He did not blame the child. They were strangers and neither of them trusted the other.

Killian dropped his bundle into a chair and stood back, folding his arms across his chest as the child struggled to disentangle himself from the cloak. Finally the dark head emerged.

Fey’s eyes widened as they took in and valued every inch of the large, lavishly furnished room. She had heard that some men lived like kings, but until this moment she had never guessed what that phrase meant. Now, confronted by silk tapestries and bed curtains, fancy carpets from the East, and lavish furnishings, she could only gape. “Is all this yers?”

Killian followed the child’s greedy gaze to the silver-and-gold cigar box on the table nearest the chair. “As it happens, none of it is, and I’ll thank you not to touch a single item in the room. I’m certain you claim thievery as well as beggary as an accomplishment.” He pulled the child’s weapon from his belt and turned it over in his hand. “I will not concede to you the appellation of murderer, for you do it so poorly, bouchal.”

Despite the man’s bantering tone, Fey blanched at the mention of murder. In fact, she had accomplished that act with surprising ease.

Killian studied the small boy wrapped in his cloak and remembered that this was a child, after all, and in obvious need of some sort of mothering. “Are you hungry?”

Fey’s head shot up. “A pint of ale would nae come amiss!”

“Ha! You gave yourself away then, I’d say. You’re an Irishman—uh, Fey. Fey, what sort of name is that?”

Fey lowered her head, the long sweep of her dark lashes brushing her cheeks. “Me mother was thought to be a bit queer in the head. When I was born, she claimed ’twas a fairy’s trick, for she never lay with any man. ’Twas the work of fairies, the gift of this fey creature in me bed.’ That’s what they told me she said just before she died. The Fey part stuck.”

Laughter, coming unexpectedly from the sober-faced man, startled Fey.

“So, you’re a changeling,” Killian said when his laughter subsided. “Well, ’tis a good tale, not the best I’ve heard, mind, but a good tale. So tell me, Fey, where do you live?”

Fey lowered her head. “Nowhere.”

“Come, everyone lives somewhere. The gutter? The sewer? A brothel, perhaps. Nae, you’re yet young for some vices, but I dare swear that will change.” Killian looked about, the dampening effects of the brandy beginning to supersede his interest in the foundling. “’Tis late, bouchal. Sit quietly in that chair while I stretch out for a short while.” He turned toward the bed and then looked back over his shoulder, his gaze hard. “You’ll not run away?”

Fey shook her head.

“Nor steal a thing?”

Again, the head shake of denial.

Killian shook his own head. It was the height of madness to trust the child. A few quick strides brought him to his door, where he turned the key in the latch and then pocketed it. When he had discarded his boots, jacket, and vest, he lay back on the inviting softness of the feather tick and fell instantly asleep.

Fey watched the sleeping man for several minutes before curiosity brought her to his bedside.

Darce had taught her to judge a man at a glance, for in a moment’s hesitation an opportunity could be lost. There was a streak of perversity in this man; she had seen it at work twice this day. It showed itself in his face. His gaze was hard, uncompromising, ruthless…but not cruel. The high forehead and straight nose were those of a thoughtful, educated man. Darce said that when a man took time to think, he lost an opportunity for action, but it did not seem overly to hamper this man.

When she came to the mouth Fey grinned. Softened now in sleep, it betrayed a man of sensitivity and deep feeling, things that he kept hidden from the world in his waking hours. She did not fault him for that.

Satisfied by the inventory, Fey moved on to other things. Where it spread upon the pillow, the man’s black hair shone in the candle’s faint light. Fey picked up a strand. The cool smooth tress slipped easily through her admiring fingers. Men were not the only things Darce had taught her how to judge. She knew the quality of silk and laces and many other items of contraband. This gentleman’s head of hair was of the very best quality and would fetch an excellent price on the wig market.

Fey banished the thought. She doubted the man would sell his hair. He was a gentleman. As for stealing it…

Fey looked about until she spied her skean sticking out of the man’s waistband. With a thief s touch she slipped it free. Then, with a last guilty look at the blue-black head of hair, she tucked the skean inside her waistband. She would not steal from the man who, perhaps, had saved her life.

Fey turned away from the bed, her eyes seeking a window. If she kept to the country lanes and traveled by dark, she would escape.

The window opened with little noise, and a stiff sea breeze greeted Fey as she climbed out onto the ledge. The second-story perch did not faze her. She pulled the window shut behind herself and, grasping with fingers and toes a perch in the house’s stone facade, began a slow descent. In less than a minute her feet touched the ground.

She was turning away from the house when the distinct aroma of toast and cinnamon reached her. She paused in mid-stride as her empty stomach twisted in hunger. How long had it been since she had eaten? At least a day. Darce had not given her a chance to consume her only meal of the day.

Almost against her will, Fey retraced her steps until she spied a candle’s glow behind the shrubbery to her right. Squatting, she peered through a crack in the window and down into a kitchen. Not a yard from where she crouched lay three thick slices of toast topped with sugar and cinnamon. From a steaming cup nearby, the rich dark smell of cocoa arose.

Fey clutched the windowsill, near swooning with delight as her mouth watered in anticipation. A quick look confirmed that no one was about. Ten seconds, that was all it would take to steal the bread. The cocoa, alas, would have to be left behind.

The basement window was much more shallow than those of the upper stories, but Fey was small and adept at fitting herself into small places. She squeezed through the opening and landed, catlike, on her feet. The bread was in her hand, its buttery surface slicking her fingers with a warm golden drizzle, and then the taste of cinnamon tingled her tongue.

“Did I forget my manners, or did you forget yours, young sir?”

The hand that fell on Fey’s shoulder carried the weight of capture. Fey flung the toast away, a sob of regret catching in her throat as she whipped out her skean and turned to face the discoverer.

“Well, that’s a fine way to treat my breakfast,” Deirdre said in a voice that did not betray the fear that flooded through her at the sight of the weapon. She deliberately looked away from it. “I suppose that piece was a bit overly brown. But this one is perfect.” She picked up a piece of toast and held it out to the ragamuffin child before her. “Would you care to sample it?”

Fey did not move, too astonished by the young woman to say or do anything. Dressed in a white gown, her head wreathed in the halo glow from the candle sconce on the wall behind her, the lady appeared as ethereal as an angel. The flame struck golden sparks in the masses of hair falling over her shoulders. And her voice—was there any other tongue for an angel to speak but Gaelic?

Deirdre wet her lips, prepared to begin again, for surprise had prompted her to speak Gaelic when, of course, the child was surely a Breton. “You are lost? I see that you are hurt. Would you like a cup of cocoa?”

Fey slowly shook her head, surprised that the angel would change languages. She very much wanted her to be an Irish angel, if angel she was. Perhaps she was the angel of judgment sent to hear a confession of her sin of murder.

“I killed a man,” Fey said in Gaelic, the words tumbling out of their own volition. “He tried to kill me but I drew me skean and slit his throat.”

Deirdre took a backward step. The Fitzgerald house was not isolated, and they often had wanderers at their door begging for food. Occasionally a thief would break into the larder. The sight of the small beaten child had won her heart instantly, but the talk of murder frightened her. If the child was mad, Deirdre was in danger.

“Who did you kill, child?”

Fey shook her head, tears threatening her. She felt her courage dissolving like salt in warm water. “I did nae mean to kill him. Only he kept hitting me, again and again, and I knew he would kill me!”

The last came out in a wail of regret, and then sobs shook her thin shoulders as the blade fell from her hand and clattered across the stone floor.

Deirdre picked up the weapon and placed it on a nearby shelf. She did not move toward the child but waited patiently until the hard sobbing eased. When the child raised his head from the crook of his arm, the enormous brown eyes awash with tears that stared back at Deirdre were the most beautiful that she had ever seen.

“Why, you’re pretty enough to be a lass!” she exclaimed in surprise.

Fey’s chin lifted. “In a pig’s eye!”

Deirdre smiled. This was no lunatic but a very frightened child. “I suppose you’re a highwayman in the making. What is your name, brigand?”

Fey did not answer immediately. The lady had moved away from the candlelight, and though she was quite pretty, the effect of an angel was diminished. Her face was very pale with fright and there was a smear of cocoa at each corner of her mouth. “Who are ye? Will ye set the servants on me? Will they string me up?”

“So many questions,” Deirdre answered mildly. “Will you not help me finish my breakfast? I have a bargain with Cook that I may make toast and cocoa as long as I am gone from her kitchen by first light, and I distinctly heard the cock crow just now.” She reached for another slice of toast and offered it. This time Fey grabbed it and stuffed it into her mouth.

Deirdre moved purposefully to the pot on the fire and poured cocoa into another cup “This will help the crumbs go down. I always think cocoa is the very best way to clear the throat, do you not agree?”

Fey looked at the dark surface of the cocoa as if staring, into witch’s brew. She had smelled it in taverns on occasion and watched the gentry sip delicately at it in the yards of coaching houses, but in all her life she had never had a cup of cocoa for her own.

Guessing the child’s thoughts, Deirdre lifted her own cup and blew lightly across the surface. She took a tentative sip and smiled at the troubled dark eyes watching her.

Fey needed no further encouragement. If she was to hang for murder, she would die with the memory of a full cup of cocoa in her middle.

As the child drank, Deirdre pondered what she should do. She was certain that if she left the room, her young thief would vanish. Perhaps she should simply sit with him and wait for a member of the household staff to find them. If she called for help, the boy might panic and hurt himself or someone else.

“Did you climb in the window? Clever lad,” she murmured and rose to close the escape.

As she reached the latch, a shadow slipped past the open window followed by the sound of boots. She rose up on her toes and saw a man standing with his arms on his hips staring up at the second floor of the house.

“MacShane!” she whispered in horror and slammed the window. There was one man whose leniency she could not count upon. He was known to be a terror, unforgiving, without mercy. Conall had told her so.

The sound of the closing window drew Killian’s attention to the lower part of the house. At last, he spied the telltale slit of light pouring from the basement window, and immediately he suspected what had happened.

Only moments after he had fallen asleep a guilty conscience began to plague his peace. He had not even looked after the boy’s wounds. When he finally awakened to an empty room he was not surprised. What had he done, after all, to win the boy’s trust? Even his horse had been led to a dry stall, rubbed down, and given water and a pail of oats by a conscientious groom. So, of course, Fey had gone in search of food and found a kitchen window off the latch.

He rejected the idea of following Fey’s sewer-rat entrance into the kitchen. He was much too big, and the child would likely escape while he tried to wriggle through the small window. He went back inside and, following his nose, found the kitchen stairs. The sound of voices surprised him as he reached the doorway. If Fey had been caught, Killian would have to apologize to the Fitzgeralds for bringing a thief into their home. His expression grim, he stepped into the kitchen.

“But that sounds like marvelous fun, Fey! Perhaps one day you will show me how it’s done. Will you have another piece of toast before Cook comes in? I—”

Fey shot to her feet beside Deirdre, her eyes trained on the doorway. With a calm that belied her racing heart, Deirdre rose to her feet, her gaze steady on Fey. “Now, whoever it is, you’re not to worry. This is my home. No one will hurt you.”

“I would not lie to the lad. There’s more than one who would find thievery a hanging offense.”

Deirdre whirled about at the voice. “MacShane!” she whispered in undisguised alarm. As if a specter from her worst nightmare, he stood in the doorway, black hair loose about his angry, tight face. He had removed his jacket and, she noted inconsequently, his black shirt was open at the throat.

Killian’s gaze moved from Fey to the golden-haired girl who stood beside the boy. It seemed that Fey had found a coconspirator. Despite his anger, it was not dislike that made his gaze linger on her for a moment. Each time she caught him unprepared, surprising him by her resemblance to his dream. Yet, she was real and all too innocent to know in what danger she stood. “You should know better, lass, than to allow thieves to steal from your father. As for the lad, he’ll answer to me.”

“He’s yours?” Deirdre asked wondrously.

“In a manner of speaking,” Killian answered. “He’s a black-hearted wretch with no scruples and no manners; but when I’m finished with him, he’ll think better of stealing so much as a nap.”

Deirdre blanched, remembering the vicious welts on the boy’s back. She drew in a quick angry breath and said to Fey, “You must believe me, he’ll never lay a hand on you again!”

She looked up at Killian. “I have heard of you, sir, yet it did not prepare me for your vicious nature. To batter a child so that—that his body bleeds—” She broke off, astonished by the rage pouring through her veins.

Killian listened to her in disbelief and exasperation. Evidently, anger loosened her tongue and chased away her vacant stare. Perhaps she was not as backward as people believed, only shy and skittish. “Go fetch your father, lass, and have him bring with him a whip from the stable.”

A lifetime of chicanery had taught Fey the value of playing upon the pity of others. Her small hand fastened itself about Deirdre’s. “Don’t let him beat me, miss!”

Killian’s mocking gaze met Fey’s sly look. “Your cozening days are finished. The lass won’t save you.”

Deirdre swallowed the lump of pity that rose in her throat. The child was clearly frightened out of his wits. “He’s no thief. I gave him the cocoa and bread.”

Killian raised his eyes to the girl, noting how absurdly lovely she looked in her rumpled bedclothes. The thought annoyed him. This was none of her business. She should still be abed. “Stand aside, lass.”

As he took a step toward them, Deirdre thrust Fey behind her. Where had she put the boy’s skean? She spied it above the cupboard. Too late, she realized that MacShane’s gaze had followed hers. He reached for the weapon and pocketed it.

Frantic, Deirdre reached for the bread knife that lay on the table and raised it menacingly. “Stay back! You’ve beaten the lad enough. Have you no mercy?”

Killian paused, taken aback by her words. “You cannot think—? I did not beat the boy! Damnation! Ask him. Ratling, who beat you?”

Fey considered her answer. The lady, silly wench that she was, was prepared to believe any evil of the man. Yet, the lady was an unknown quantity. Her bravery might not last. The man, at least, had proven himself to be fair as well as wrathful. Fey flashed a cherubic smile at the tall angry man. “Ye did nae beat me, but I’d nae give a sou for the future.”

Deirdre looked down at the boy, her eyes searching the young face. “You need not be afraid to tell me what really happened. He will not beat you again. My father is Lord Fitzgerald, and he will have MacShane whipped from the door if I ask it.”

Killian went cold inside. No one had ever dared threaten him quite like that in his life. Whip him from the door? Did she think she defended an innocent?

He took a step toward her, his face tight with anger. “The lad’s name is Fey. I plucked him from the dockside of Nantes a few hours ago. He had drawn his skean and was displaying a curious desire to slip his steel between my ribs. I have yet to ascertain why, but I shall.”

He advanced another step. “But for my foolish sympathy for a beaten ratling, he would not be here now. I offered him the comfort of my room for the night. He has repaid my hospitality by stealing away and breaking into the kitchen.”

The third step brought him within arm’s length of Deirdre, and he saw that his method was effective, for her eyes were wider than he would have believed possible. “I had Conall Fitzgerald’s permission to bring the lad here, but I now believe that his advice of putting a pistol ball through the lad’s head might have been the better answer!”

Deirdre’s mouth went dry as the man’s blast of anger scorched her, but she was not a Fitzgerald for nothing. She had been weaned on the blustering of men. “Why, then, did you not follow that admirable advice?”

Killian made a violent movement with his hand, and Deirdre flinched; but she did not put down the knife or release Fey. A grudging respect for her bravery moved within him, and then suspicion followed it.

“You are Lord Fitzgerald’s daughter, are you not?”

“I am,” she answered, and her voice surprised her with its composure. “And, I assure you, I’m as sound of mind as I am of limb.”

A familiarity with Darragh and Conall Fitzgerald made his complete understanding swift, and he reddened in spite of himself. He had been made the butt of one of their jokes. Lord Fitzgerald’s daughter was not weak-minded or slow. She must think him as simple and gullible as he had believed her to be.

A spark of impish mischief in Fey’s dark eyes warned Killian, and he reached out to grab him as the lad tried to dart past. Shaking him like a dusty rag, he said, “You’re a young devil with no pretense to manners.”

“Skelping him about is a certain method to rectify the matter, I’m sure,” Deirdre answered.

Killian looked up, annoyance replacing his chagrin. “Can you do better? And give me that damned knife before I slap you as well!”

Deirdre hesitated as his brilliant blue eyes bore down on her. Every instinct told her that this was defeat, but that very realization sparked her anger. How dare he, a stranger, enter her home and order her about! She would not yield her weapon to him. Instead she placed it gingerly back on the table beside the bread loaf. When she raised her eyes to his once more, she felt flushed with triumph. “You know nothing of children, ’tis plain to see.”

Killian resisted the urge to shake her as he had shaken Fey. “What do you suggest, m’lady?”

Deirdre folded her arms across her bosom, aware at last that she stood in her bedclothes. “I would begin by stripping the lad of those rags and bathing his back. You’d do as much for your horse.”

“My horse deserves it,” he muttered, though he had had the same thoughts moments earlier. “As for you, ratling, I’m of a mind to send to Nantes for the authorities.”

Having watched the battle of wits between the two with no more interest than for her chance to escape, Fey now perceived the wisdom of her choice. The lady might have courage on her side, but the man called MacShane had the power. Fey smiled a smile to do an angel proud. “I do nae care if ye beat me, sir, only do nae turn me over to the authorities. They’ll string me up, sir that they will, for nothing more than being a motherless hooligan Irishman!”

Killian mastered his inclination to smile and gave Fey another rough shake. “Beat you, can I? At my leisure? Unconditionally?”

Deirdre reached for the knife a second time but Killian’s hand shot out and captured her wrist. “As for you, Mistress Fitzgerald, I won’t strike you, though, by God, you’ve given me more than enough cause.”

“You’re hurting me,” Deirdre protested, but she did not try to twist free of the fingers wrapped around her wrist.

Killian released her, surprised that he had touched her. He had meant only to snatch the knife out from under her grasp. The sound of footsteps in the corridor outside the kitchen further disconcerted him.

When the Fitzgeralds’ cook walked into her domain she was brought up short by the sight of Lady Deirdre in her bedclothes confronting a tall black-haired man with a ruffian boy in his grip. Yielding to motherly instinct, she grabbed a chair and charged the stranger with a yowl of fury.

Killian stepped easily out of the woman’s path and plucked the chair from her grasp with a neat twist. The farcical elements of the moment were not lost on him. As the cook turned on him, her cap askew and her face a portrait of affront, he succumbed to the amusement that he had been holding at bay.

Deirdre stared in amazement as the masculine laughter filled the kitchen. With his head thrown back and his face split by a smile, MacShane’s hard features were transformed into handsomeness. When he looked down at her, it was as though another, younger man stood before her, his vivid blue eyes softened and warmed by a very human emotion. Without reasoning it out, she smiled back at him.

Killian sobered instantly, for the servants who had been following the cook thronged in the doorway, their faces avid with excitement. “You will excuse me, Mistress Fitzgerald. Bow to the lady, ratling, we’re off.”

After the most brief of nods to Deirdre, he turned and strode out, pushing Fey before him by the scruff of the neck.

“Whoever was that gentleman, m’lady?” Cook whispered.

“That was no gentleman, that was MacShane,” Deirdre answered, as nonplussed as the cook.