The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(56)
—
Only long experience of mimicking his father’s blank expression kept Stephen from flinching when Ailis pronounced Dane’s name.
It did not keep his mind from leaping into a whirlwind of shock and questions. Dane? Oliver Dane was Liadan’s father?
Bed an Irish girl—the right Irish girl—and you’ll never be contented with an Englishwoman again. Dane had spoken with perfect accuracy when choosing the word “girl”—Ailis had been but fourteen inside Carrigafoyle.
In that turmoil of thoughts, Stephen instinctively chose the right emotion to show—disgust. With a twist of her beautiful mouth, Ailis said, “I assume your expression means you’ve heard of him.”
“I have.” He forced his mind under his control, because just now he needed to think quickly and decisively. “It was under his orders that I was punished and Roisin killed.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Indeed? You did not say so before.”
“I did not think it mattered. It wasn’t Dane himself, you understand”—Stephen let the tiniest memory of that night outside Kilkenny leak into his voice—“but I’d met him. And I know it was by his orders that violence was done.”
She propped her chin in one hand, her eyes dark and liquid. “You sound as though you care for him almost as little as I do.”
“It cannot be compared. What he did to me, though abhorrent, is at least just excusable in the bounds of warfare. What he did to you—what he has done to other women and children—there is no excuse. I meant only to say that I will have very little trouble in helping you destroy him.”
“Good.” Ailis smiled, and Stephen thought dizzily that he would gladly agree to anything this woman wanted so long as it made her look at him like this.
His pulse beat loud and fast, and he was almost light-headed from this swift turnaround. God must be watching over him, to present this opportunity so neatly in his path. There was only one sticking point. However Ailis meant to trap Dane, Stephen could not allow himself to be seen. He wanted vengeance, but not at the cost of losing his place in this household. He wasn’t ready to leave. Not yet.
Fortunately, Ailis did not press for specific plans just then. Perhaps uncomfortable with how personal she’d allowed herself to be, she dismissed him a little abruptly and said they would talk more later. He sent in Father Byrne and Diarmid, as she’d asked him to, ignoring the baleful glare of the captain of the guards. Stephen had worked out the first week that the man was in love with Ailis. Picking a fight with Diarmid would not help.
Liadan called to him from where she and Maisie were playing chess at the end of a long trestle table previously set for dinner. “Maisie cheats!” she announced energetically, as she announced everything. “So it’s only fair that you help me.”
“I’m not really sure it’s possible to cheat at chess,” Stephen answered, swinging a leg over the bench so he straddled it next to the exuberant child. “Even if it is, I’ll be of no use to you. I’m no good at chess. That’s all my—”
He swallowed hard, almost choking back the damning word. That’s all my sister, he’d nearly said. But Stephen Wyatt did not have a sister. Could he really be so easily thrown by the smile of a beautiful woman and the promise of revenge on Oliver Dane?
Liadan didn’t seem to notice, but Maisie glanced at him curiously. “That’s all what?” she asked.
“That’s all my own fault,” he retorted, hoping he didn’t sound as shaken as he felt. “I could never concentrate long enough.”
“It’s not concentration so much as the ability to see the wider picture,” Maisie countered. “It’s all a matter of patterns and probabilities—rather like business.”
Liadan, impatient, cried, “It’s your move.”
With scarcely a glance at the board, Maisie moved a knight and took one of Liadan’s pawns. The pieces were pewter, not the ivory or marble or jewel-inlaid pieces Stephen was accustomed to seeing. He had dozens of memories of Lucette and his mother, playing each other mostly to spend time together, since Lucie had been able to beat everyone in the household by the time she was eight.
While Liadan pursed her rosebud lips in a mock ferocity of focus, Maisie said to Stephen, “Peter Martin is supposed to be back here in the next few days. I imagine he’ll be glad to see you on your feet and out of your locked room.”
“Do you think he’ll care? He did his Christian duty when he kept me from starving alone, but he has no other interest in me than that. It’s been eight weeks. He mightn’t even remember me.”
That was a mistake, he knew it the instant he spoke. For he would need to speak with Martin during his time in Cahir, to pass information both ways. Better to paint a picture of a man who would be very interested in his welfare.
Liadan jogged his arm with her elbow and asked, “Do you think this move is right?”
He looked at her small hand hovering over a rook, then shrugged. “I wasn’t lying, I’m useless when it comes to chess.” Shoving himself up from the table, he said as casually as he could manage, “I’m off to bed. Trying to keep up with the conversations of the women of this household is exhausting.”
He was off to bed, but not to sleep. Far into the night he lay awake veering in his mind between Oliver Dane, Peter Martin, and—most disturbingly—Ailis Kavanaugh. When Walsingham had proposed sending him to the Kavanaughs, he’d assumed it was to take advantage of a young woman in a precarious leadership position. He had planned to insinuate himself into her good graces, much as he had with Mary Stuart at Tutbury, but from the first he’d realized Ailis was a different matter. Not because—strangely enough—she was a hundred times warier than the Scots queen, and not because her hatred of Englishmen ran deep.