Чтение онлайн

“That’s the spirit.” Hugh’s eyes twinkled as he gave her his arm. He didn’t doubt for a moment that his elder sisters would have a fit when they saw this woman enter the great hall on his arm. But neither Susana nor Rachel would dare to cross him in his own house.

Morgana held her chin high, laid her hand on his arm and marched up the steps at Hugh’s side. They hadn’t taken too many steps inside the vast hall before the music stopped, the dancing ended and all heads turned to stare.

Susana O’Neill rose to her feet from her comfortable seat on the dais, alarmed by two things: young Hugh’s tardy arrival to hall and his attire in the rough garments of a kern. Their uncle, Matthew, rarely came to hall, so Susana was by all rights the lady of the manor, and most entertainments she organized suited her pleasures. Since Hugh had returned from England, she’d made many accommodations to please him, but he really didn’t care what sort of events took place in the great hall each evening.

“Young Hugh? What has happened?” Susana left her seat at the high table, rushing forward to intercept her little brother. “Who is this woman? What happened to the both of you? I expected you to hall hours ago.”

“Yes, do explain this.” Morgana challenged him before the woman, obviously great with child, came within hearing range of her voice. “I dare you, young Hugh.”

“Ah, you just proved something else to me, lady,” Hugh said under his breath. “You are a troublemaker.”

Morgana’s hand left his arm, reaching out to snatch her dagger from the sheath on his hip. Again Hugh kept her fingers from their prize.

He offered a soft warning. “Mind what you do, Morgana of Kildare. Tempt me not to make you officially my prisoner. Kelly did accuse you of being a Fitzgerald. That is reason enough to lose one’s head, isn’t it?”

Morgana’s hand clenched into a fist, which she dropped to her side. She turned her back to Hugh, waiting to meet the approaching woman. Several more trailed her, young beauties all, making Morgana feel even more disadvantaged. She heard water drip from her clothes onto the polished tiles at her feet, but she’d be damned from here to eternity before she bowed her head to look at the damage she was causing.

“Ah, good eve, my dear sister. Forgive me for interrupting your soir'ee.” Hugh smiled disarmingly and bent to kiss Susana’s fair cheek. “I’ve brought a guest to the house. You will see that she has had a rather troubling time on her journey. Morgana of Kildare, may I present my sisters, Susana and Rachel. Susana, Morgana will need some cosseting. The Abhainn Mor is a most rapacious river. I fear Morgana lost all of her possessions to the flood.”

“Sweet Mother of God, Hugh, you weren’t out crossing the river in this weather, were you?” Susana exclaimed, her alarm deepening. “And why on earth are you dressed like a kern? Have you forgotten that I invited Inghinn Dubh to be here this eve?”

“No, I hadn’t forgotten.” Hugh turned to another woman, trailing his sisters. He bowed to Inghinn, also, but did not favor her cheek with a kiss, as he had done with his sisters. “Inghinn, you are-looking splendid this eve, as always. Ladies, please, do not allow us to interrupt your evening. I’ll see Morgana settled by Mrs. Carrick. She’ll take her under her wing and see to everything, I’m sure.”

Hugh turned Morgana to the open stairs rising up to the minstrels’ gallery. Ignoring his sister’s gasp of shock, he led Morgana out of the gallery, to the supreme isolation of the round tower. It adjoined the castle itself at his mother’s solar, on the second floor.

Both the tower and the solar had been closed following his mother’s death in 1570. Five weeks ago, when he and Loghran returned from England for good, Hugh had decided to take up residence in the tower’s comfortable upper rooms.

He had decided that Morgana could be housed in the solar and the sleeping chamber adjoining it on the second floor of the tower. His gut told him to keep her nearby. She was English, therefore not to be trusted. Servants ran ahead of him, opening doors and lighting candles.

Morgana hadn’t missed the surreptitious look of alarm that had passed from Hugh’s sisters to the beautiful black-haired young woman named Inghinn Dubh. The women surely thought their young Hugh was bringing a doxy into their house. Had Morgana been standing in their shoes, viewing a ravaged and filthy woman in these tattered clothes, that would have been her assumption. So she couldn’t hold theirs against them.

Her feet were literally dragging on the last steps up a winding bartizan staircase that opened onto a lady’s solar in some distant quadrant of the massive house.

Mullioned windows lined the solar’s outer wall to the east, two of them partially open, letting damp night air mingle with the ripe, earthy scent of a peat fire in the hearth. Numb with fatigue, Morgana surveyed the solar’s elegant furnishings, cushioned chaises, tapestries, painted walls, coffered ceiling and beautiful ribbon-fold paneling.

The chamber didn’t fit with her preconception of what the inside of the clan O’Neill’s stronghold should be. O’Neills were barbarians, brutal killers, savages. How could such ignorant, uncivilized folk have produced any such beauty? Morgana’s mind was incapable of dwelling on that conundrum. She wanted to drop where she stood, and couldn’t, because a man named O’Neill remained with her in this impossible-to-comprehend chamber.

The peat fire in the solar’s wide hearth beckoned her. Morgana stretched cold, trembling fingers out to it. Hugh’s wet kilt slapped on his ankle as he put one knee to a marble hearth and wrestled a stout log onto the fire.

“You’ll be comfortable here,” he said casually, casting a sideways look over his shoulder at her. Morgana swallowed, mesmerized by the breadth of his left hand as he rocked the log back and forth, breaking apart the coals underneath it.

Smoke and flames stirred to life out of white ash and soot-blackened peat. Sparks shot up, snapping and crackling with the blue flames that licked the log, and tried to kiss his hand. A warm glow gilded his profile, highlighting his straight nose and angular jaw.

Morgana caught herself staring at his mouth. It looked out of place against his otherwise strongly masculine features. His mouth was too pretty and too gentle by half.

A wild impulse to run her fingers across that Cupid’s bow lower lip, to touch the cleft indenting it, just to make certain it was real, unnerved her. She restrained the urge by pressing both her hands tightly against the wet cloth on her thighs.

“Mrs. Carrick will be here momentarily. You may sit down, Morgana of Kildare. The chairs won’t melt if they get wet.”