Chapter Twenty

Colin took one lunging step toward Caddell and the English guards stepped forward grasping their swords.

“Hold.” Caddell shot to his feet. “Hold, all of you. There’ll be no bloodshed this day.”

Colin felt his own breath go hot. He looked around at the circle of guards, tense and waiting. “All of you,” he said, “leave us.”

His own men eyed the English. With a nod from Caddell, the English guards drew back out of the circle of the fire. Colin’s men followed. Colin waited until they were well out of earshot while a hot coal of fury banked inside him. What a puppet master, this Englishman was, playing with Maura’s fate so cavalierly. It infuriated him that he still didn’t understand the Englishman’s intentions.

“Which daughter,” Colin asked darkly, “would you consign to an Irishman?”

The Englishman fluttered his white hand toward Maura. “Your fiery hostage, of course.”

Colin had suspected so, but Caddell had many daughters, and before Colin spoke his mind he wanted the offer to be clear.

“I should cut you down where you stand for offering me insult. I know Maura is not your daughter.”

Something flickered in those eyes—surprise perhaps, but this man was hard to read. “It’s true,” he conceded. “She is not my daughter by blood.”

“I am not the only man who knows this.”

“Perhaps.” Caddell shrugged. “But in public I have declared her my own child, multiple times, to many highborn people. I have installed her in my household, dressed her, fed her, and introduced her to noble guests. And I have come here, publicly, with great circumstance, to pay a hefty ransom for her freedom.”

“Your own family thinks she’s your whore.”

“People will think what they will.” Caddell’s face shuddered. “But I am William Caddell, the Baron of Shrule. I have declared her my daughter. Tell me, MacEgan: Who would dare naysay me?”

“And the dower you will give her? Is it to be nothing more than the castle I already own?”

“More lands than that.”

“So you will take land from your own vassals and give it to me? Take land from your true daughters, and your only son?”

“My son will inherit all these lands, along with the conflict that goes with it.” Caddell sank a thumb into his belt. “So yes, Colin MacEgan. Yes, I will trade land for peace in my time, in order to preserve it in his. It’s a price I’m willing to pay to stop the bloodshed.”

Colin’s heart pounded in his ears, a pounding of thwarted fury, a pounding of disbelief. He and Lord William stared at each other across the blue snapping haze of the fire and, for a moment, Colin began to think the man was speaking the truth.

Colin said, “I don’t trust you.”

“You have reason.”

“This is another of your ruses.”

“I won’t deny that I have been planning this for quite some time.”

“You will have me married to Maura, and once the vows are made, you’ll deny her, and you’ll deny me all your promises.”

“If I do that, I’ll find myself in a war again, except this time you’ll be ensconced in that castle,” he said, pointing toward the stone keep on the hill, “almost impossible to dislodge, if you keep it better guarded than my faithful, though negligent, servant.”

He planned that, too—he let me seize this castle. The insight bounced off his mind, too impossible to believe.

“Why now?” Colin asked. “You could have made peace with Brendan at any time, married him to any one of your six daughters.”

“Now you go too far.”

The Englishman’s voice went dark, and Colin felt a flicker of understanding. The Caddells could trace their history back to the sister of William the Conqueror. William’s father was a third cousin once removed to King Edward I. Caddell was too proud to give up a daughter to a mere Irishman. Which explained the ruse with Maura.

“It would have been useless to make this offer to Brendan, in any case,” the Englishman continued. “Brendan is a bitter-ender, like your father before him. He would accept no half-measures. He would die on his sword first.”

True, Colin thought, and it bothered him that the Englishman knew his enemy so very well.

“In fact, I expected to see your cousin here.” Caddell glanced over his shoulder to scan the Irishmen watching from afar. “I expected to see him propped up, the power behind your throne. Has the old goat finally gone the way of us all?”

“I am The MacEgan now.” For the first time since he’d arrived at the MacEgan settlement, the words came to him without hesitation, without shame, and without any doubt.

“That will make this negotiation easier.” The Englishman combed his fingers through the point of his beard. “I suspect you are very different from your cousin. You want peace.”

“You don’t know what I want.”

“I can think of no other reason why you left Ireland ten years ago and played the part of a traveling minstrel for so long.”

The way the Englishman phrased those words raised a niggling suspicion in his mind, a suspicion that took on a life of its own. Colin thought about the night Caddell discovered his so-called daughter. He thought about the swift capture of the MacEgan castle. He thought about the offer that Caddell was spreading before him.

He began to wonder at the extent of the ruse and the wily old fox who’d engineered it.

“Oh, yes, Colin MacEgan.” Caddell’s eyes glittered with triumph. “I have been expecting you for a very long time.”

***

Maura watched her false father and the man she loved lock forearms in a warrior’s handshake. She wondered how many cows a false daughter was worth. She wondered how many bulls were considered a good exchange. She wondered whether they took into account her temperament, how good a cook she was, the sturdiness of her hips or the health of her teeth. They did not seem to have bickered for long.

Then she closed her eyes and told herself not to be bitter. This situation was of her own making. She’d always known that Colin was a leader among men. From the very first day she’d seen him in Killeigh, fighting in the dirt, she’d assumed he was the head of the minstrel troupe. Yet she had come here yesterday foolishly expecting the Colin she’d known upon the roads—the irresponsible, irrepressible minstrel who had teased and seduced her into loving him. What she’d arrived to find was a more complicated man bowed under the burden of responsibility—a man who’d finally revealed his true self. A man who loved her, but had other demands upon him, far more important than one wayward orphaned girl.

In truth, she was not the same person, either. Her younger self of only months ago would have been scandalized by the heedless woman she had become in Colin’s bed last night. Yet she didn’t feel like she’d changed, not truly. She felt as though the person she had always been had now finally emerged.

At the sound of footsteps, she looked up and saw Colin striding straight toward her. She swallowed the lump that rose to her throat at the sight of him, long-legged, that loop of black hair falling over his brow, the nose that had been broken one too many times. She wouldn’t fool herself that they could go on as they had last night and not invite the risk of a child that he didn’t want born. She figured that he would set her aside somewhere, out of war and trouble, and likely out of his life. As he neared, she summoned every last ounce of strength she had so she wouldn’t shame herself by crying as he determined her fate.

Colin grasped her hand. “Come with me.”

He didn’t slack his stride, so she followed him up the slope that led to the walls of the castle. She grasped saplings to pull herself up and cursed the thin shoes that slipped upon the matting of leaves and old grass. She eyed the flex of Colin’s legs, envying his limberness and surefootedness, forcing herself not to remember all the other days she had followed him upon the roads, watching the wind sweep through the wildness of that black hair. She took comfort in the warmth of his hand as she followed him to the clearing before the castle where a cool wind rose up from Lough Corrib.

He released her and leaned back upon a rock, crossing his arms. A frown stitched his brow. If the whirling of thoughts could spin a spit, she thought, she could cook a goose with the thinking Colin was doing right now.

“So,” she said into the silence, grasping her annoyance as the only defense she had against tears. “What did he offer you for a false daughter? Sixty good milk cows and two bulls along with it? A half league of land by the edge of the sea? Another castle and a handful of coppers?”

“He offered me exactly what I wanted.” He stared up at the walls of Fahy, much in need of repair by the looks of the crenellations. “He offers me peace.”

“Peace.”

“I don’t know whether to think him senile, or to credit him for his genius.”

Maura pulled the edges of her mantle close. Hadn’t she been the one to tell him that Lord William wanted peace? “Is this a man’s strange way of admitting that a woman was right?”

He grinned at her. She looked away from that grin, as potent an arrow as any iron-tipped one. It didn’t matter that she’d been right, because it didn’t change anything. But Colin’s odd behavior, the eerie whistling of the wind rising from the Lough, the distant chatter of birds in the greenery, made her feel as jittery as a drop of water dancing upon grease.

“Maura.”

She knew the sound of that velvet voice, skittering across her nerve endings. She met his gaze and for a moment she couldn’t think at all. Her body fluxed with a rush of emotions too confusing, too complicated to sort from one another.

Then she blurted her worst fear. “You’re sending me back to him.”

“Yes.”

Her heart stopped. A ringing started in her ears. Her whole body went numb, from her scalp to her toes.

“But,” he added, “only for a short while.”

She must have swayed, for the sky moved above her head and the ground slipped beneath her feet and then, all of a sudden, Colin was there, seizing her hands and holding her still and staring down at her with those blue, blue eyes.

“Maura, listen,” he said, speaking in a rush. “I was not born to be The MacEgan.”

“I know.”

“It is not my choice.”

“Family,” she stuttered, “imposes obligations.”

I thought you’d never send me back.

“If I asked you, right now,” he said, “to leave these lands, to go back on the road with me and live the life we choose—”

“You cannot.” She leaned forward to press her head against his chest. “You have responsibilities here. The fate of a clan depends on you.”

“But if the world were different,” he persisted, so close that she could feel his breath upon her hair, “and I asked you to leave with me—”

“But—”

“Right now, right this moment.” He tightened his grip on her hands. “Would you run away with me, Maura?”

A sharp, sweet ache speared through her. This is what she’d been hoping for when she’d come seeking him yesterday, leaving her so-called family’s house with her head full of silly dreams. She had come with a trill in her heart and joy in her mind, with no thought of anything but being with Colin, free to live the life of her dreams and love the man of her choice.

So why did she hesitate to speak her heart, even if he spoke folly? This was the face she would dream about in the months and years to come. Even if she found herself forced to wed the butcher’s boy—or take the veil—she would fall asleep each night envisaging a lanky minstrel with a crooked nose and eyes full of mirth. What harm was there in playing along, building impossible dreams?

She spoke around the lump rising in her throat. “Are you finally offering me marriage, Colin MacEgan?”

He didn’t laugh as she expected him to. He released her hands and then cupped her face, lifting her chin so he could look in her eyes.

He asked, “If I did, would you say yes?”

His face went blurry beyond her tears. How ironic that he would offer her a future, when the future between them was lost for sure. “It would be a poor wedding,” she whispered. “Done on a roadside by some traveling friar.”

“Fingar would play the harp.” He rubbed his thumbs across her cheeks. “And Matilda would supply the silks for your wedding dress.”

“Wouldn’t that be a sight.”

“The roadside would be filled with flowers.”

“Aye, that’s true.”

“But we could find a church that would take us,” he said, “if that’s your wish.”

“Padraig wouldn’t pass the threshold without raising up a hellish smoke. And someone has to steal the ring.”

“We could use this.”

Colin tapped the ring on her finger, the ring that had been tucked in her swaddling clothes.

His blue gaze settled on her with growing intensity. She realized he was waiting for an answer to an impossible question, an answer that must be glowing on her face. He pulled her into his arms. She pressed against his chest, feeling a buckle under his surcoat bite into her cheek. He held her so tightly that she found herself gasping that she couldn’t breathe, until finally he loosed her and laid a kiss upon her lips that stole the very last of her breath.

He said against her mouth, “I have another question for you.”

“Questions, questions.” She licked his lower lip. “Doesn’t a man have better things to do with his tongue?”

“I won’t be able to walk this slope if you keep talking like that,” he said. “And Caddell is waiting for my answer.”

At the sound of the name, she remembered herself. “Caddell is waiting?”

“As am I.”

She pulled away from him, searching his eyes, and then realized that this whole strange conversation had something to do with William Caddell and the ransom he’d come to pay.

“Colin,” she said, her voice breaking, “I’ve no stomach for japes.”

“It’s no jape. You will have to go back to Shrule with him, for appearance’s sake. But only until the marriage.”

“Marriage.”

His smile was slow. “I’ve been offered your hand, Maura. But I’ll only take it if you’ll agree to have me.”

She blinked at him, disbelieving. Her lips, fingertips, nose, went numb. She blurted, “It’s a trick.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I think he speaks the truth. I marry you, and there will be peace.”

Hope leapt in her breast, a treacherous thing. Could it be possible that Colin would be The MacEgan openly, without fear, the war and skirmishes over? And she—the foundling from Killeigh, a mere kitchen servant—become the Lady MacEgan, the mistress of the castle looming over them from above?

It was too odd, too impossible, too fantastic to imagine, a player’s midnight tale come to life.

He wiped a strand of hair off her brow to draw her attention. “You already told me you’d marry the minstrel. Would you marry the warrior as well?”

She traced the scruff of his jaw, the indentation of his chin, and then the sweep of his lower lip, whispering, “Aren’t the two men one and the same?