The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(15)
“Yes,” Pelham said curtly. Stephen had the impression that the Lord Justice resented having Dane here, perhaps because the man had greater experience in Ireland even though Pelham outranked him. When the fighting ended, Pelham would answer for the results to the queen, while Dane remained in Ireland and expanded his own lands as a result of the English troops sacrificed here.
Stephen cleared his throat. “Where will we be positioned?” he asked neutrally, as though addressing both of them. It was the kind of tactic he’d learned, not from his plainspoken father, but from his more politically subtle mother.
“My men will form the first landing parties,” Pelham answered. “Once we’ve established a hold on the island, they can be relieved or reinforced as needed. Captain Dane, your men will pour across when the walls begin to collapse. Lord Somerset, your force will guard the perimeters to ensure no one comes at us from behind.”
Dane’s next question surprised with its apparent randomness. “No sign of any Kavanaughs coming to fight?”
“From Carlow Castle?” Pelham asked with slight surprise. “No. Just like the Earl of Desmond, they’re keeping their peace and sitting it out as long as they can manage. Finian Kavanaugh’s no fool—he’s arranged to get himself married tomorrow as a reasonable excuse not to commit to anything just now.”
“Hoping for new heirs?” Dane’s neutrality seemed forced. It was the first time Stephen had ever heard him sound stiff, and he wondered what interest Dane had in the Kavanaughs.
“Seems likely. The only heir he has now is a niece who refuses to marry. The new bride is young enough—and rich. A Sinclair from Edinburgh. We’ll have to keep an eye on Kavanaugh, see if his wife’s money seems primed to outfit a force of gallowglass.”
As Stephen walked away to prepare his men to move out, his mind spun with possibilities. For Finian Kavanaugh was a name he knew, one dropped to him in a letter from London. And any name dropped by Francis Walsingham, however apparently casual, was a name to look out for.
—
The wedding of Finian Kavanaugh and Mariota Sinclair occurred beneath lowering skies that occasionally spit rain and, even more occasionally, let through fitful hints of sun. But the party was as raucous as if the weather were perfect, for the Irish had never given much account to the skies. One took pleasure when one could in this world, and did not wait for the world to return the favour.
Ailis Kavanaugh, Finian’s niece and, through a long toll of death and misfortune, her uncle’s only heir, helped make ready the bride. Not that there was much to it—the Scots girl was as straightforward in her dress as in her speech, and seemed to survey the world from a vantage of perfect equanimity. An unexpected quality in a girl of only fifteen; odder still in this staunch Protestant foreigner being married off to an Irish clan chief more than four times her age. Maisie, as she had cheerfully told all to address her, might have been only a fool, of course—but Ailis, who was not a fool, had caught the sparks of steel in both her mind and her spirit in the three days she’d been here. A girl, perhaps, but the woman would be one to reckon with. As was Ailis herself.
“Will I do?” Maisie asked her intended’s niece, nearly ten years older than herself, and stood with unusual stillness while Ailis studied her. Most people squirmed when Ailis studied them. It was a talent of which she was proud.
Maisie was quite a bit shorter than Ailis, just above five feet, and nearly as slim as a boy. Wide cheekbones and a strong chin, her eyes the gray-blue of the winter seas. Her only truly beautiful feature was her hair, a unique shade like silver gilt, which fell straight nearly to her waist. Her dress was blue silk, its fineness owing more to its weight and colour than any decoration. But then, Maisie came from the wealthiest trading family in Edinburgh—she knew how to judge her audience. She was being married for her money, but she would acknowledge it discreetly, not flaunt it in front of the proud Irish Catholics who would consider her, at best, a necessary evil.
And so Ailis had been prepared to consider her. But to her surprise, she had found that there were aspects of Maisie Sinclair she almost liked.
“You will do very well,” she declared, and Maisie lit up in a smile that combined surpassing sweetness with a healthy dose of mischief.
“I want to look just like you when I’m married!” The exuberant cry came from Ailis’s daughter, an eleven-year-old who would have thrown her arms around her new-claimed friend if Ailis had not stopped her.
Maisie laughed. “I’m afraid there’s not much hope of that,” she told the child. “And all the better for you, Liadan. You are the very image of your mother, and any woman in the world would sell her soul to look like either of you.”
“But you don’t have a soul.”
“Liadan!” Ailis exclaimed. “What a wicked thing to say.”
“It’s what Bridey said,” Liadan insisted, not at all repressed. “Bridey said Protestants haven’t souls like us.”
“Bridey is a superstitious old woman,” Ailis snapped.
“Never fret,” Maisie intervened, and there was an impish hint to her smile as she summoned Liadan to hold her hands. “Protestants may lack many things in the eyes of Catholics, child, but souls we have. Besides, I was educated in France at a convent. I have heard enough Catholic prayers to work some sort of grace even on my Protestant soul.”