Elizabeth Mayne - Lord Of The Isle

“Tsk.” Hugh clicked his tongue, releasing her chin so that she could resume consuming her meal. “Such waspish sarcasm is not very becoming, Lady Morgana. I feel rather certain you’ve been trained to do better.”

“When did I get the promotion? I was plain Morgana when you introduced me to your sisters.” His scold didn’t stop Morgana from taking another shot.

“No, you were never plain Morgana. I’ve had time to look up a few references lying about my study. You are Lady Morgana Fitzgerald, oldest daughter of the exiled earl of Kildare, James FitzMaurice Fitzgerald. By some curious twists of fate, I also know you entered the Arroasian novitiate at Saint Mary de Hogges’s Abbey in March of 1569. Four months later, your father fled Ireland for France.”

He was right, but Morgana wanted to know how he had learned those facts. “What makes you so certain of that?”

“I have copies of all the convent rosters, from Sussex’s articles of dissolution, through 1574. In fact, I have rosters of all the monasteries and abbeys in Ireland, including the justicar’s official valuation of the properties seized for the crown.” Hugh took his time forming his next words. “I also know that you have two brothers that your father was also forced to leave behind. It’s very dangerous to be a boy named Fitzgerald in this clime, isn’t it, Morgana?”

She sat very straight, her marvelous blue eyes so cold with suspicion that Hugh feared he’d done more than upset her digestion. He was very glad he’d disarmed her, and doubly glad he’d insisted there be no knife of any kind put on the tray.

“What is the price of your silence?” she asked.

“My silence?” Hugh frowned, distracted and not following her reasoning.

Her chest rose and fell deeply three times before he picked up his goblet and drank from it. Hugh withstood the temptation to look again at the lovely white mounds of her breasts swelling over the gray gown’s neckline. It would be better if he kept firm control over his passions—at least for the moment. She’d been brutalized this very night, and he wasn’t such a scoundrel that he’d take advantage of her now. His body responded otherwise, reacting like a randy goat’s to her abundant physical attributes.

“I said, what’s your point? Or should I say, what is your price for silence?”

“Ah, you think I would stoop that low, milady? Blackmail you? I am not an unconscionable bastard.”

“Aren’t you? You are the O’Neill, aren’t you?”

“The O’Neill?” Hugh laughed.

“Your men claimed you are he.”

Hugh laughed bluntly. “That is wishful thinking on their part. I am most certainly not the O’Neill. If I were, I’d have run my sword through James Kelly’s belly and left him staked out for the carrion crows to pick the meat off his bones. I am no more than Hugh O’Neill, lately the good-conduct hostage of clan O’Neill at Her Majesty’s court in London.

“Thanks to interference from the powers across the water, there will never be another revered as the O’Neill. As I, might add, there will never be another Fitzgerald earl of Kildare. A right pity it is, too.”

Digging into the soup, Morgana asked, “How so?”

“It took the English five hundred years to establish a toehold on our island. But it has taken we Irish only two generations to destroy ourselves. Lift your goblet, Morgana of Kildare, and drink with me to a dying land. Erin’s death throes surround us. Yet no one sees what is as plain as the noses on each other’s faces.”

Morgana swallowed and carefully laid the silver spoon down on the table. “I don’t follow you.”

“I think you do.” Hugh picked up her full goblet and put it in her hand. “Tell me, Morgana, late of Kildare, when someone asks you what country you claim allegiance to, what do you say? ‘I’m Irish’? Is that your answer?”

“No. Of course not,” Morgana answered immediately. “I’m not Irish, I’m English.”

“Yet you were born in Maynooth castle in county Kildare, Ireland. Your father was also born at Maynooth, and his father and his father going back twelve generations, to the year 1069. How much more Irish do you have to be?”

Morgana broke the small loaf of bread in her hands and bit into it, chewing on the tough bread as if it were dried meat. “You Irish don’t accept us.”

“And the English do?” Hugh lifted a skeptical brow. “You told my housekeeper that you’ve never been to England. Is that true?”

“And if it isn’t, am I to be cast out into the night? Will you take the food from my mouth and the clothes from my back?”

Hugh brought his fist down on the table, making candles jump and goblets totter. “Woman, don’t you dare sit there accusing me of cruelties to you! It was not by my hand that you were stripped of your dignity and raped this day. I have given you nothing less than fairness, generosity, and the hospitality of my home. When in truth I owe you nothing, for your kind are the usurpers of all that was and is good in Ireland.

“Well, by God’s grace, I’m Irish. Since the dawning of all memory on this island—from the great battle between the Firbolgs and the Tuatha de Danann—an O’Neill king has ruled over the rocks of this lake and the hills that surround it. We’ve been overrun by Vikings, Scotchmen, Normans, Englishmen. We Irish savages have been converted by saints to Christianity, saved from eternal damnation by kings who proclaim they rule by divine right and lesser kings who rule only by the might of their own hand. But, by God, I’m Irish. I know exactly who and what I am. Can you say the same?”

Morgana picked up a slice of salmon with her fingers and laid it between the bread in her hand, folding it into a convenient bite-size morsel. “Obviously, I can’t speak with the same eloquence and passion to answer your question. But, yes, I do know exactly who I am and what I am.”

She shoved the whole bite into her mouth and chewed hard, as though his bread were made of gravel, not milled grain. Hugh sat back in his chair, drinking his wine, his eyes glittering as they assessed her.

“Then tell me, Morgana of Kildare. Who are you, really? What are you doing here in Ulster, where you are not welcome and not wanted? For what reason do you travel to my liege man in Dunluce?

“If you are an English spy hired by Walsingham, sent here deliberately to tempt and compromise me, I have the right to know the truth.”

Morgana almost choked. The bread stuck in her dry throat and wouldn’t budge past her windpipe. She raised one hand to her throat and reached for the goblet with the other.

Hugh made no move to assist her. In fact, he didn’t even blink as he stared at her, watching her gulp down swallows of wine as she tried to dislodge the wedged bread and salmon. Her color was quite high when she set the goblet aside and finally brought her pale eyes back to his.

“You think I’m an English spy?” she whispered, her voice barely a croak. “Sent here by Walsingham?”

“Circumspectly, I believe that what I witnessed today was just a little too patent to be real. I find it curious that in the heat of his passions James Kelly would confess his crimes to you. Forgive me if I tell you it doesn’t ring true. I won’t be set up to fall victim to Walsingham’s treacheries.” Not this O’Neill.

“Now, young woman…” Hugh reached forward and took the hourglass on the table in hand and turned it over.

“You have exactly ten minutes to tell all and convince me that every word you utter is the Gospel according to Mark, or else you will find yourself locked away in the same pit in the earth that James Kelly occupies this very moment. Begin at the beginning.”