The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(70)

The corner of his eye twitched. She had learned to read those twitches of his. They usually meant he was more moved than he cared to admit. Englishmen, she mused. So painfully polite and reserved.

But this particular Englishman was also painfully honest. “There is nothing in the world I want more,” he said simply. “But perhaps we can also talk. When the business with Dane is over. There are things I would say to you before…”

Her eyebrows shot up in amusement at his fumbling. “Before bedding me? Talk was not quite what I had in mind—but I suppose I can endure the conversation for anticipation of what will follow.”

Stephen looked away—odd, since it was usually she who broke contact between them. She almost asked him why. Then she saw his chin come up and his body straighten in alert. “Riders,” he said.

Instantly, she swung her gaze to where he looked across the river and saw, as he did, the outlines of men and the dust they kicked up on the road. She held unnaturally still, straining to catch details…

Ailis was the first to be certain. And why not? She had spent a lifetime watching the riders of Clan Kavanaugh. “It’s Diarmid,” she said, surprised that her voice sounded so flat. Normal. As though this were nothing more than another raid. “And I count the same number of men he rode out with. Doesn’t look as though we lost anyone.”

There was, however, one additional rider. Kept in the middle of her horsemen, riding upright but, Ailis wagered, with hands tied and reins in the control of one of her own men. They had got him. Oliver Dane.

Stephen had seen the same things. “Go and meet them,” he said urgently. “I’ll ride back and alert the castle.”

“Come with me,” she said. “I thought that’s why we rode out.”

“That is why I brought you out. This is for you, Ailis. This is all your clever doing. I came in rather late to the Dane vendetta—all I need to know is that he is punished. I don’t need to do it myself. Not the way you do.”

She tried to read his face but failed. As for herself, she felt as though every bone in her body was ready to leap through her skin in anticipation of facing her enemy. What other man would give her this gift?

If she could have reached him for a kiss, she would have. Instead, she blazed a smile of triumph and said, “Tell Father Byrne to have the chains ready.”

Stephen turned his horse and was gone. Ailis took a moment to steady her hands, trembling on the reins, then set off to meet her men.

Diarmid hailed her, his expressive face plainly glad to see her alone. He must have marked the rider at her side in the distance and guessed it was Stephen. “No difficulty?” she called as she approached.

“None. Worked just as you said. Killed one of his men in the fight, brought him in.”

“Let me through,” Ailis commanded.

Her men obeyed, and Ailis and her mount picked their way through the guards until she was facing Oliver Dane for the first time in twelve years.

He had aged, naturally, but the figure was the same. Rough-hewn and suspicious, the brown hair salted with gray and the deep-set eyes surrounded by more lines. Ailis felt an instinctive flood of revulsion and, disturbingly, terror. She swallowed it down. He can’t touch me, he can’t hurt me, I have all the power now…

Astonishingly, Dane smiled. The same mocking expression she had seen from him a hundred times. “Little Ailis.” His voice had not changed at all, gravelly and deep with contempt threaded through it. “You’ve grown up even more marvelous than I expected.”

One of her guards moved to strike him, but Ailis raised a hand of restraint. She did not need to be protected. “As I recall, you are not overfond of grown women. You like them young.”

“So much more pliable,” Dane agreed. “Like you. Never a complaint, never a word but what I taught you—and such an apt pupil. How many men have had cause to thank me these last years for my well-tutored concubine?”

This time she did not restrain her men. He was struck from both sides before Ailis called them off. “You should know Irish women better,” she said conversationally to the bruised but stubbornly upright Dane. “We may hold our tongues, but only to plot more creatively. Vengeance is best served cold…and I’ve had many wintry years to hone mine.”

She jerked her horse around and moved to the front with Diarmid. “Let’s go.”

It had begun.

—

With Oliver Dane at Cahir, the very air of the castle felt aflame. It was as though each person in it moved with a keyed up awareness of what was at stake. It could not have been easy for Ailis to allow her personal secret to be aired; Stephen heard only the edges of whispers, but he knew it was all over the household that here was the man who had fathered Liadan.

He had expected to feel, at the least, nervous—not to say frantic—at the knowledge that a man who could so easily unmask him lay within the castle walls. But calm had settled over him as he’d watched Ailis’s men returning with their prisoner. All had gone according to plan. The only thing he had to do was stay out of Dane’s way—which shouldn’t be a problem considering the man was locked up. Not in a dungeon or even belowground, for Father Byrne had insisted he be kept with at least the barest courtesies of a prisoner held for ransom. Only Byrne himself and Ailis held a key to the windowless chamber where Dane was confined.