Free The Maid of Ireland by Susan Wiggs Page A

his arm. Again and again his attention strayed to the golden-skinned girl who stood with her father and Logan Rafferty by the table.
    “It’s generous of you,” said Wesley, “to give an Englishman this dance when your husband’s obviously such a great lord.”
    “My husband’s a great fool,” she retorted. “I’m using you to show him so.”
    Wesley could not suppress a grin. “All men should find themselves so used.” The pattern of the reel brought them near the table. Like a she-wolf guarding her cubs, Caitlin watched their every move. Feigning casual interest, he remarked, “Rafferty must be a busy man, times being what they are.”
    “Aye. He expects me to sit and warm the hearthstones while he—oh!” Magheen lurched against Wesley. He whipped a glance over his shoulder in time to see Caitlin drawing back the foot she had stuck in her sister’s path.
    The deliberate interruption convinced Wesley that he had guessed correctly about Rafferty.
    When they passed the table a second time, the lord of Brocach reached out and grasped Magheen’s arm. “Get some manners on you, wife,” he ordered.
    Magheen tossed her head. “I’ll not be your sometimes wife, Logan Rafferty. ’tis a full partner I’ll be or none at all.”
    His spine stiffened. The people nearby hushed, the better to hear the quarrel.
    “I came here to make a bargain,” said Logan. To Wesley’s surprise, he addressed not Magheen or Seamus, but Caitlin. “I’ve decided to reduce the dowry, out of the goodness of my heart.”
    Magheen’s face blossomed into a smile that might have set the mountains to singing.
    “The betrothal papers specified twelve healthy cows,” said Rafferty. “You offered one bullock as a token of good faith. I’ll take that, and call us even.”
    While the onlookers gasped, Magheen buried her face in her slim white hands. Seamus hid behind the wide rim of his mug. Caitlin closed her eyes, nostrils thinning as she tried for patience and lost the battle.
    “You picked the wrong time to let reason come on that great fat head of yours, Logan,” she burst out. In one swift movement she picked up her untouched wooden trencher of beef and thumped it down on the table in front of him. “There’s your bullock, and welcome to it!” Leaping up from the table, she stormed across the yard and disappeared up a crumbling flight of stairs to the wall walk.
    * * *
    Christ have mercy, Caitlin seethed, her bare feet clapping against age-worn flagstones. “Will nothing go right with me these days?”
    She had arranged a brilliant marriage for her sister only to have the two fighting like Roundheads and Irishmen. She had cast a spell for her lover and had conjured a renegade Englishman. And to cap all her woes, Hammersmith was on the march again.
    She paused at a wide break in the wall. Her gaze traveled down the sheer drop of Traitor’s Leap, where the sea hurled white-bearded breakers at the pointed rocks. Back in the Tudor queen’s time, a member of the MacBride sept had tried to adopt English policies. His efforts had driven him to this spot; his guilt had hurled him over.
    Her thoughts circled round and round like a flock of gulls after a fishing boat, and came to rest on John Wesley Hawkins. She should feel relieved that he had decided to go. And yet a hidden voice in her heart whispered that he must stay, for there was unfinished business between them.
    “I’d been wondering why you wouldn’t touch your meal,” said a smooth, golden voice.
    She spun around. There stood Hawkins, smiling that heart-catching smile, transfixing her, backing her against the rough crenellated wall.
    “I take it that roasting the bullock wasn’t your idea,” he added.
    “My father’s.” She swung back to look over the wall. Waves exploded against the shore but farther out, the waters lay dark and calm. How many times had she stood here, gazing at the flat empty line of the horizon, seeking a glimpse of a tall ship coming toward