The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(50)

Maisie continued with more recent news. “The Kavanaughs continue to operate against those English left in Munster, primarily from Blackcastle. Ailis is the recognized strategist. The Earl of Desmond has trusted them in large part to hold the west while he and his men push against the coasts and the Pale.”

He knew Maisie so well that he caught the slight undercurrent of reluctance in her recital. “What else?”

She did not look at him as she answered. “Diarmid and Ailis have children. A two-year-old son and one-year-old daughter.”

Behind Stephen’s closed eyes images swam. Ailis leaning in to kiss him, black hair against her bare shoulders. Diarmid backhanding the English spy across the face in disgust. Ailis’s daughter, Liadan—inquisitive and generous and clever and brave and young. So very, very young.

And dead.

He felt hands against his, gently tugging, and he allowed Maisie to pull them away from his face. She knelt at his feet, her usually neutral expression wiped away by a distress equal to his.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry you came back here. I’m sorry I didn’t do more to stop it. I’m sorry you have to be reminded of what you’ve lost. Stephen, I’m so dreadfully sorry.”

He said nothing; her rare vulnerability had touched another chord in him. A memory of an awful night. They had ridden miles, the two of them, carrying Liadan’s little, broken body back to her mother. Stephen had found Maisie later that evening, weeping alone on the floor for a girl she had loved like her own. Her hair had been loose, a flood of silver-gilt fairness that lit up the darkness as surely as her irrepressibly brilliant mind.

And just like that, as Stephen recalled that night of sorrows, something deep within his soul clicked and tumbled loose.

For three years he had been celibate in mind as well as body. Ailis had broken his heart as thoroughly as he had ruined her life. After Ailis, Stephen would not take thoughtless comfort any longer, and a banished and disinherited nobleman was hardly a good catch on the marriage market. If he’d cared to contemplate marriage.

Maisie had been the perfect harbor. A relationship entirely intellectual that revived his interest in the world without encroaching on any of the painful memories of physical desire. For three years she had not been entirely real.

But in this moment there was nothing more real in the world than this girl—woman—so near to him that he could see the beat of blood beneath the fragile skin of her throat. Stephen had a nearly overwhelming urge to press his lips to that spot.

He sat back so hastily that Maisie almost fell over. He caught her and, apologizing, raised them both to standing. In that position he had to look quite a ways down to see her face. Her hands were still in his.

She looked wary. “If you would like to write to Ailis, I could find a way to get a letter to her.”

Ailis had momentarily fled his mind. “That would be disastrous,” he said, with less melancholy than he’d felt a moment before. “The best I can offer Ailis is to stay well away from her. We both understood that when we parted.”

She withdrew her hands and he let his own drop, feeling foolish and oddly lonely.

“Mariota.” It was the name he almost always called her, ever since he’d had to use it to break through her despair and save her life. She’d told him then that no one except her grandfather had ever called her Mariota.

Stephen didn’t feel much like her grandfather tonight.

He cleared his throat and tried again, aware that he should retreat and clear his head, not frighten the poor, unsuspecting woman with incoherent babbling. “You do not have to worry about me. In this, the queen was quite right—though I probably won’t tell her so. I needed to return to Ireland. I think you did, too. And I think we will both be the better for it once we are allowed to leave here and return to our lives.”

Her expression had settled into wry forbearance. “As to that, I have had word from London that our company may depart Dublin on or after November fifteenth. At least, that is when we will cease to be paid, and I have no interest in remaining here voluntarily. Have you?”

He shook his head. He had no interest in being anywhere that Maisie wasn’t. But how could he possibly tell her that? She considered him a friend, a trusted employee, almost a brother. He would simply have to learn to swallow down this sudden impulse to throw himself at her feet and declare his love.





24 October 1585


Julien,

The princess heads south soon in advance of her meeting with the queen. She does not require me for counsel at Kenilworth—not while she has Kit, Pippa, and Matthew—so I may as well come home.

Lucette



P.S. That sounds dreadfully cold and awkward, doesn’t it? I’m sorry. I do want to see you. I want to see you so badly I have a hard time thinking straight. It’s a little irritating, actually. When have people ever had to repeat themselves to me? When have I not been the quickest mind in the conversation? Never, that’s when. But now I do spend all day distracted and all night restless. I have lost the trick of sleeping alone.

Am I still your Lucie mine?





29 October 1585


If you have to ask, then I have failed you. Lucie mine—my heart, my love, my light—wherever you are is home. I will count the hours until we are together again.