Free The O'Madden: A Novella (The Celtic Legends Series) by Lisa Ann Verge Page A

Maeve was sent to be raised in the woods with a fairy-woman, Glenna.
    Garrick knew she spoke the truth. He heard the verity in the tremble of her voice. Her dark hair marked her as an O’Madden, she told him. Only in the woods apart from the fair-haired villagers could she be safe from the sharp eyes of the Englishmen. Glenna had taught her the things that an O’Madden must know. Glenna kept her safe as Englishman after Englishman took on the title of lord of Birr, until so many years passed that the English all forgot about the threat of The O’Madden. Glenna kept her safe so the English would not know that one of the royal blood still lived to fulfill the terms of a widow’s curse. In the end, Glenna arranged to have her installed as housekeeper in her own castle.
    Garrick ran his hand through his hair . The story explained so much:  Why she walked amid her people like a queen, why she didn’t fear the strange goings-on in the castle. These were things that could not touch her, for she was The O’Madden. She was his rival to the lordship of this manor.
    She said, “When you said a person could not choose his parents, Garrick, you spo ke true. I did not choose to be the only surviving child of The O’Madden and the widow whose curse only I can break.”
    A thought came to him, hard and fast.
    “You went to the fires,” he said, “to conceive a child.”
    Collapsed at the end of his bed, she looked so fragile as she spoke into her own lap. “For a lifetime I’ve lived separate from all. I’m too wellborn to take a husband amid the boys of the village. Yet my true identity has been kept a secret from all of the neighboring chieftains. That, too, was for my own protection, and for the safety of the manor. It was too big a risk to go to the neighboring chieftains with my true identity. I had no one to protect me but the cattle herders of the village. What was to stop one of the chieftains from marrying me off to one of their sons and conquering my lands for themselves? If that happened, those petty chieftains would call the place theirs and all memory of the O’Maddens would be erased, and the curse would continue. No man of chieftain’s rank would take his wife’s name.”
    He struggled to grasp the consequences of everything she said .
    “And y et here I was, nigh five-and-twenty,” she continued, “with no hope for a husband, no hope for a son to take these lands back.” She shrugged a shoulder, and in that moment, Garrick had never seen her looking so uncertain. “I yearned for a normal life. For a real family. But as The O’Madden I’m not allowed such common dreams.”
    “You went to the fires,” he repeated, “to conceive a bastard.”
    She tilted her chin. “The son I would bear co uld be the hope of the future. He could raise armies loyal to him to take back this land— something I could never do. I told myself I would get myself with child and raise a warrior.”
    “Against me.”
    “Against whoever dared to hold out against The O’Madden, the rightful heir to the leadership of this clan.”
    He stared at her with new eyes and wondered how he could not have known. Look at her, so straight-backed and regal, with the stamp of aristocracy on her fine-boned features. She belonged there, perched on the edge of a royal bed. He was the usurper. She was of higher rank than him. She bore Irish chieftain’s blood, probably with a pedigree she could trace back to the time of Patrick the Saint. What was he but a by-blow of a lord’s summer night’s folly?
    Truth be told, even less than that.
    She drew in a deep, rasping breath. “It was a bitter twist of fate that I found you at the Samhain fires. I wanted some Irishman who would get the deed done and forget about it and about me. Someone I would never see again.”
    He shook his head. “Such things a s this never happen by accident, my girl. Luck smiled upon us.”
    “ Luck? Everything is ruined, don’t you see?” She buried her face in her