The Virgin's Spy (Tudor Legacy #2)(74)

“They can’t afford to kill me.”

“She doesn’t care.”

Dane furrowed his brow. “Ailis? She won’t—”

“Don’t say her name!” Stephen knew it was a mistake to give Dane anything to work with, but he couldn’t help himself.

Slowly, understanding spread on Dane’s face. Along with a leer that twisted his mouth. “Ah, so you took my advice on Irish women. Good choice. Ailis was a concubine worth cultivating. But skilled enough to sway the upright English lordling from the path of duty?” Dane whistled. “I’m a better teacher than I thought.”

“If you ever want to leave this place alive, you will shut your mouth and listen. My name is Stephen Wyatt. We have never met. Remember that, and I’ll see to it that you keep your filthy life.”

Not for your sake, but for hers. Stephen could not let Ailis destroy herself by killing Dane.

The man was not stupid. He assessed correctly—more or less—Stephen’s implication. “Walsingham?” Dane whistled. “So you’ve gained Clan Kavanaugh’s trust in order to betray them. How cold-blooded of you.”

“Don’t get in my way.”

“Then get me out of here.”

“I’m working on it.”

Dane leaned as far forward as he could in chains and snarled, “If they drag me out of here to die, then the last thing I’ll do is make sure you go with me.”

Stephen didn’t flinch. “I’m supposed to be warning you to watch your words with Ailis’s daughter. I’m bringing her in now. The moment you even look as though you’ll insult her, I will kill you myself.”

With a laugh, Dane sat back. “I shall be the proper English gentleman to his bastard daughter.”

Stephen had reached for the door when Dane added, “If my men had not intervened outside Kilkenny last year, you might have had an Irish bastard of your own by now. I heard tell there was a woman in your tent that night.”

Everything went red. From somewhere, Stephen heard screams. He didn’t realize he had moved until his eyes cleared and he was standing over Dane with the dagger pointed at his chest.

With deliberate care, he turned the dagger in his hand and struck Dane on the jaw with its hilt. Not hard enough to knock him out, but it might have loosened a tooth or two.

Then he strode across the room and opened the door. He nodded once to Ailis, then said to Liadan, “Are you certain?”

Eerily like her mother, the child didn’t even deign to answer, but swept past him into the prison chamber. Maisie followed, and Stephen closed the door behind the three of them.

From the moment she entered, Liadan controlled the room. She studied Dane like he was a species of wildlife. “Where are you from?” she finally asked abruptly, in flawless English.

“Templemore. I live at Blackcastle.”

“I mean in England. You were not born here.”

“No.” He looked about to add an insult, but refrained, possibly because of the fresh pain blossoming through his jaw. “I’m from Yorkshire. Another forbidding landscape that shapes all who live there.”

“Why did you come to Ireland?”

“For the opportunity. I had no inheritance, no skills except soldiering, and Ireland is a place where a man can carve out his own future.”

“You are not married?”

“Tried it once. She died in childbed with the brat and there didn’t seem any point in continuing on that path. What I’ve earned here is for me. No one left me anything—why should I breed merely to pass on my own hard work?”

“But you did,” Liadan said, as calmly as though she were twenty years older. “Breed, I mean.”

His mouth twisted. “You don’t count.”

Maisie laid a hand on Liadan’s narrow shoulder, but in truth the girl had not recoiled. Stephen was filled with admiration for her. “I’m afraid,” she told the man who could only be counted her father in the most basic sense, “that it is you who do not count. Not at Cahir. We are Irish here, and you are nothing but an interloper.”

She turned away and said to Stephen, “I’m finished.”

Only when Liadan passed him did Stephen see the fine tremble beneath her skin. He expected her to reach for her mother upon release, but it was Maisie who put her arm around Liadan’s shoulder and murmured soft words to her as they walked away.

“Well?” Ailis asked him.

With a glance at Diarmid, hovering menacingly, Stephen said, “Let’s walk.”

They had not been wholly alone since Dane’s arrival. His body, finely honed to every move and glimpse of her, urged him to sweep her into a quiet chamber and on into his arms.

But it was his mind that would keep him alive. And keep Ailis from a catastrophic mistake.

“There’s no blood on your dagger, so I presume he minded his tongue with Liadan,” she said.

“As well as he’s able. Liadan was impressive. She has all your sense of self. I think it startled him.”

“Good.”

Stephen put his hand lightly on her arm, and she stopped. They were in an empty corridor, no one else to be heard or seen. “Ailis,” he said softly, “you have to let him go. Hurt him as much as you like. Hell, I’ll help you build a rack to put him on! But then send to the Earl of Ormond with ransom demands. Make it outrageous—so much that the English cannot hope to pay without sending to London first. Hold Dane and make his life miserable while you wait. And then take England’s money, and let Dane go knowing that your enemies have paid for your next five years of fighting.”