Riona (33 page)

“You should have at least warned me that fatherhood was so risky,” he chided, one corner of his lips tugging in irascible fashion.

She touched it. “You’re not hurt.” Wonder affected her overwhelming gratitude.
God, You are so good
.

Kieran caught her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers. “Not unless I’ve gone to the other side. You, milady, I expect to see in
heaven, but this motley band of villains—”

“What makes you think
you’d
find yourself in heaven?” one of the Dromin protested with a nervous laugh, one clearly born of terror turned to relief.

“Because my lady could be nowhere else.” The huskiness in Kieran’s voice raked at the fine hair on the nape of Riona’s neck, as if his lips accompanied it, and his breath warmed the sensitive skin there.

She reacted to the
man
, not to her foster brother. God had spared Kieran for a purpose. He’d sent her a husband. What lay beyond, Riona had no idea. She was certain only of the one step God had shown her.

“There’s not a bruise on his flesh, yet here is the mark of the wheel on Gleannmara’s brat,” someone commented behind Kieran. Another tugged on Gleannmara’s cloak and another until he was nearly choked.

“Mercy, lads, have a care. One brush with death is enough for the day.”

Riona heard the slight catch in his voice, the only sign that Kieran himself was shaken.

He lifted the garment over his head sooner than unfasten its kingly brooch and handed it over. His expression changed as they held it up and shook it out. Aside from dust, it was in perfect shape. Thunderstruck, he handed Leila over to Colga and took the garment back to examine it himself. The color beneath his tanned face drained away. He cast a perplexed look at Riona.

“I thought my stilled blood dulled my senses to the cut of the horses hooves and the slash of the wheels. Sure my heart and breath ceased the moment I saw the little one standing in harm’s way. How can it be that I haven’t a scratch?”

Riona shook her head. There could be only one answer. “God spared you.”

Doubt arrested his features. “But why, when I’ve no use for Him?” An answer came, but not from Riona.

“He
obviously has a use for
you
, Kieran of Gleannmara.”

Clear as it was strong, the voice separated the throng as if by magic.
In its wake came a tall, stalwart personage robed in the coarse gray of the church. With a gaze as blue and fiery as the stones on Kieran’s brooch, Columcille, the venerated Abbot of Iona stood toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with the young lord.

T
he rushlight flickered, the cattle fat in which it had been soaked smoking the small room in the back of the hostel. It was a black reflection of Lord Maille’s humor. He didn’t like being summoned by a mere clan chief whose worth was less than a quarter of Maille’s herd. That the man was a coward as well made it worse. How sick he was of conspirators who failed to grasp that the rewards of ambition came at a cost: risk.

The door opened, throwing a gust of thick smoke in Maille’s face. Colga, the new Dromin chief, sidled through it after glancing over his shoulder to make certain he was not seen.

“Have you heard the news?”

“Which news?” Maille stared dully at the man. This was his second meeting of the day. The first had been with that sniveling priest, Senan. The fool was wild-eyed and unreasonable—convinced it was heaven’s own hand protecting Aidan, the divinely appointed king of the Scots. Even the venerated Columcille had been struck by an angel for his reluctance to support Aidan. The humbling, bruising blow made clear to the sometimes willful servant that God’s will differed from his, after which Columcille crowned the new king with whole-hearted blessing. The supporters of the new king’s brother should have realized their folly then. But when the plan to eliminate Aidan in Scotia Minor under the guise of attacking pirates failed, Senan said that was yet another sign that their cause was futile.

And now the hand of God was acting even more aggressively, foiling them even further. And how did Senan react? The fool wanted to confess!

“What has God done now?” the lord challenged Colga dourly. “Sent a host of warrior angels down like a cloud to stand guard over the Dalraidi?”

Maille knew the assassin he hired had been struck down with a
bad heart during the attempted murder the night before, nothing more. As for Gleannmara escaping condemnation for the abbot’s murder because two chariots missed running him over, that took no stretch of the imagination either to discern that it was merely good luck.

“Senan is dead.”

Maille’s brow arched in feigned surprise. “The bishop of Kilmare? Why, I just saw him a few hours ago.” And gave the priest leave to do what he must, provided he implicated no one other than himself. His mouth twitched in satisfaction, quickly suppressed. It would not do for anyone to suspect Senan’s death had been anything short of suicide.

Colga wiped the perspiration soaked hair from his forehead. The man was positively white and looked ready to heave up his gullet. “They say it was suicide.”

Of course they did. Maille again quelled his pride over a job well done. No one need know that he’d read Senan’s confession, an elegantly penned declaration of contrition addressed to His Holiness of Iona. The idiot thought his appeal to a fellow priest who’d fallen short of God’s will himself and been forgiven would win him consideration and forgiveness as well. Maille had watched the priest drip the wax on the envelope. When he pressed his seal upon it, Maille sealed the fool’s fate.

Senan never suspected that Maille had picked up the dining dagger from a tray bearing the hardly touched remains of the priest’s repast. Even when Maille plunged it into his abdomen and shoved it upward into his heart, nothing but surprise had registered on Senan’s face. As the priest collapsed, Maille turned him toward the desk, easing him over it and the confession. Only then was Senan done with the affair, silenced so that the questions asked regarding his confession would never be answered.

“He left a note confessing that he’d ordered the death of his half brother, Fintan, after the abbot discovered Senan’s involvement in selling Irish orphans into slavery,” Colga added. “In it, Kieran and Riona were absolved of any part in the crime, save being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was a slaver named Tadgh who slit the abbot’s throat.”

“Selling innocent children? Assassinating his own brother?” Maille tutted. “Obviously our promise to make Senan abbot wasn’t fattening his purse fast enough.”

That was a wrinkle Maille had not counted on. Senan’s position as messenger of the church made him the perfect courier for Iogenan’s supporters. Aidan’s brother would see Scotia Minor subservient to its mother province of Ulster rather than an independent kingdom. The bishop’s reward was to become abbot after Fintan was eliminated by their group. Maille was furious when he’d learned how Senan panicked at the discovery of his petty part in child slavery and had Tadgh prematurely kill his brother.

“How could a man of God sell hapless children?” Colga reflected, as if the thought itself was vile.

“For a profit, I would hope.” Maille smiled at Colga’s shocked expression, thankful that at least he did not suffer from conscience. “The same reason you turned your back to your chief’s and Aidan’s would-be assassins. Don’t tell me you find the brooch of Dromin worrisome?”

Colga bristled at the derision. “Men can defend themselves. Children cannot.”

At least the whelp had
some
spine left, Maille observed with satisfaction. One murder a day was risky enough, although the lord was determined to do what was necessary to get his reward. He agreed with Senan that the conspiracy had failed. Those involved were already fading into oblivion, their identities at best a guess. The incompetents had received their rewards: Colga was clan chief, Senan had been a formality away from succeeding his brother. And had the fool not panicked and killed the abbot prematurely, Maille would have had his payment as well. Curse the confessing idiot!

“So Senan’s killed himself. He did us all a favor. Had he lived, he might have been tempted to confess our names.” Irritated, Maille leaned on one of the barrels of ale in the storeroom. “Don’t tell me that you, too, are suffering from pangs of conscience?”

“No, no,” his companion assured him hastily. “I’m just done with it.”

Maille reached across the hogshead and clasped Colga’s shirt at the
neck. “You are done with this when
I
say so.” With effort, Maille reined his outburst to a low growl of warning. “ ’Tis just you and me left, lad, and I
will
have my payment. I earned every precious jewel in that vial, curse that holy coward’s cold bones!”

“It’s lost,” Colga croaked through the tightness of Maille’s grasp. “Kieran’s party does not have it.”

“You haven’t checked the bags they carry on their persons,” the lord reminded him.

“It could be with Bran at Gleannmara.”

“Senan thought he saw one of the children lurking about Fintan’s quarters. It was dark, and he couldn’t tell which child it was. One of those little thieves
must
have it.” Maille shoved Colga away, as if the greed gnawing at him had cut through his restraint.

“So what am
I
to do? Manhandle them or steal their bags and run in front of hundreds of witnesses?”

“Befriend them, lure them off, slit their white, little throats … I don’t care. Just get that vial.”

Slit their white, little throats
.

Colga swallowed the bile the Ulster lord’s words conjured. “And if they don’t have it? What then?” Never had he seen a smile so sinister as the one that spread Maille’s lips. He shivered despite the warmth of the summer night.

“Sir, I leave nothing to chance. Someone is already there on my behalf, or should be by now.”

Again the dark lord leaned on the barrel Colga had maneuvered behind. Even so, Maille’s fetid presence overwhelmed him. The rich meal of beef and pork soured in Colga’s stomach and threatened to erupt.

“Just remember, Dromin, nothing is done until I say so. No one is safe, not child, nor priest … not even you.”

Colga saw Maille’s fist tighten on the hilt of his knife. With a bolt of clarity, he knew from that one gesture what had happened to Bishop Senan—and what would happen to him as well if he did not do as the
Ulster lord said. He watched Maille stride past him and out the door without a backward glance. Of their own accord, Colga’s fingers went to the Dromin brooch he’d coveted and finally possessed only to be consumed with a sick dread the likes of which Colga never dreamed existed in the soul of man. Maille’s gesture told Colga all he should have known from the start.

God help him, he’d made a pact with the devil himself. The young chief crossed himself out of habit and then laughed. Far from amused, it was filled with irony and despair. As if God would even hear him now, much less care.

M
ilady, we should be on our way.” Finella stood at the door of the guest house, apprehension overtaking her expression as Riona rose from her knees and faced her. “My stars,” Finella said seeing Riona’s tearstained face, “What is this?”

Riona shook her head. She’d be fine. The torrent of second thoughts that assailed her would not sway her now. She believed with all her heart that she’d made the right choice, but her mind rebelled. There were so many issues on which she and Kieran differed.

Dressed in her best costume, the gleeman’s wife rushed to Riona’s side, producing a handkerchief. “Hasn’t anyone told you that tears will ruin the ruam on your cheeks, milady?”

“I’m not wearing any coloring,” Riona answered with more impatience than she cared for. Except it was not for Finella, but for herself. “He would still turn to violence before prayer.”

Both women knew what Riona referred to. In the prewedding celebration the night before, someone made a poorly worded remark about the lineage of Kieran’s soon-to-be foster children, and Kieran was at the man’s throat before anyone knew what he was about. His face was shot with rage in an instant, his good humor vanishing.

“Milady, do you think you are the only one who walks barefoot on nettles these last days?” Finella challenged. “Taking on not just a wife but three foundlings not even his own—and just after being absolved of life-threatening charges and a brush with death—is far more than most young men will accept before pledging their troth.”

Riona shook the front of her bodice, allowing air within. Her lovely gown clung to her from perspiration, even though a soft shower had come in the early morning to cool the wedding day. She’d lain awake half the night praying, asking over and over if she was doing the right thing. Memories surfaced, one conflicting with another.

She saw Fintan expressing his doubt that she belonged at the abbey. “You are a spirited soul, Riona. Remember, even Christ did not confine Himself to one place, but went out among the peoples to share and witness His faith. To confine yourself among those who strive to be as devout as you is far easier than testing your commitment in the world beyond the safety of our walls.”

A wife, lady of the house, and mother … such roles provided ample opportunity to witness and serve her God.

“Heber’s dead.” This from the man she was about to marry. “Would God that it were me.”

Except that Riona had forgiven him. So why couldn’t she forget it? Why did this memory still stir resentment toward her foster brother, the very man she was to wed?
Abba, help me!

“It takes more courage to do what we are led to do than what we want to do,” her uncle Cromyn had told her just the night before. “Follow God’s lead, child.”

Finella’s practical tone drew her back to the conversation at hand. “I am not the most pious of souls, milady, but Gleannmara’s heart has softened before my very eyes. Instead of dwelling upon himself and his wants, he’s making a pained effort for your sake and the children’s. It doesn’t come easy to him, but he is trying. He might have remained with the Dalraidi men and celebrated till sunup but instead assisted you in the last-minute preparations. Another lord would have appointed a hireling in his stead.”