Free Black Falcon's Lady (Celtic Rogues Book 1) by Kimberly Cates

have battered my sensibilities, not to mention certain parts of my anatomy." Tears brimmed over her lashes, burning her cheeks in hot trails of fear. "But to be humiliated—called a liar—by you, an English gentleman—I'll not bear one more second of this outrage! Tear the cottage down looking for phantom criminals if you must, Colonel Rath. I'm going to Nightwylde. Now. If I have to walk every step of the way!"
    "Miss Wylder, surely you cannot mean—Why, every brigand in Ireland frequents these hills. Just last night the Black Falcon—"
    "Perhaps the Black Falcon will prove to be more of a gentleman than you!" Maryssa spun around and ran through the door. The thin facade of control she had held over herself melted in the misty night air, terror, desperation, and guilt causing her knees to quake until she was certain they would pitch her into a heap on the rocky yard. She could merely turn around, confess everything to the soldiers, and tell them Tade had threatened her into silence.
    But it was not Tade's rage that had stilled her tongue, not fear of his revenge. Maryssa bit her lip until it bled, welcoming the stinging pain. It had been their love she could not betray—Devin's, Tade's, Rachel's. No matter what Devin's crime, Maryssa could not have borne seeing the soldiers tear him away from his loving family, could not have borne the tiny Kilcannons' sobs, Rachel's keening.
    Maryssa buried her face in her hands. She was aiding a fugitive from the Crown. A thief? Murderer? Traitor? No court in England would acquit her if she shielded a truant from justice. And her father would no doubt rejoice to be rid of her.
    She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes. Were the soldiers even now discovering the ladder to the loft? Piercing mattresses, piles of cloth with their sharp-honed swords? Tade—lightsome, rakehell Tade—would never let them take Devin without a fight. A hopeless fight. A fatal one. The image of his life-blood drenching the body that had pressed so warm against her own made Maryssa want to scream.
    There was a swishing of steel and the sound of boots. She whispered half-forgotten childhood prayers, pleading with a God who had always seemed icy and vengeful.
    "Miss Wylder.” Rath's stiff tone bristled with irritation as he strode up beside her. “We can hardly allow Bainbridge Wylder's daughter to go dashing off into the hills. If your comfort is more important to you than the escape of a desperate criminal—"
    "At this point, Colonel Rath, I could cheerfully commit murder myself to get beneath the coverlet of my own bed," Maryssa said with heartfelt sincerity as Rath's command poured out of the cottage.
    Yet even when the colonel settled her before him in the saddle, the soft, pudgy folds of his stomach flattening against her back, Maryssa could feel the cottage call to her. The cottage, and the green-eyed rogue inside it. She glanced back at the flower-draped whitewashed walls, trying to imprint them in her memory to be taken out and savored on listless, lonely days. But all she saw were the broad shoulders silhouetted in the shattered doorway, and the solemn, seeking face of Tade Kilcannon staring after her into the night.
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    T ade dug his fingers into the unyielding wood of the door jamb, fighting the urge to bolt into the yard and rip Maryssa from Rath's defiling arms. The taunts the English troops flung back as they mounted their horses found no chink in Tade's self-control, their voices only grating on his ear like those of whining children deprived of their game. In the room behind him he could feel his father’s rage as though it were a tangible thing, Kane Kilcannon’s hatred of all things English nurtured and tended all these years. He could hear Rachel's whispered prayers of thanks, sense the children's still-raw terror.
    Yet it was the sight of Maryssa that knotted in Tade's belly, chasing the pale, frozen faces of his family into the shadows of his consciousness. Maryssa, her