The Maid of Ireland by Susan Wiggs Page A

initiated the encounter. His story of shipwreck was as weak as watered claret, but the lie about being a deserter from the Roundhead army had gained him a small measure of sympathy.
    Sympathy was a useful tool indeed.
    They walked across a boggy field. The earth felt springy beneath his feet. The girl beside him was silent and absorbed in thought.
    He noticed the forthright manner in which she walked, a purposeful stride mitigated by the slightest of limps. The flaw was subtle but his tracker’s eyes took note. He burned to ask her what unhappy accident had hurt her. He held his tongue, reluctant to provoke her quick temper.
    The night wind swept up the dark honey waves of her hair and fanned them out in a thick veil. Her bare foot caught a rock and she lurched forward. Wesley’s first impulse was to put out a hand to steady her, but he drew back.
    Pretending not to notice the stumble, he asked, “Your father is the lord of Clonmuir?”
    She hesitated a moment, then said, “Yes. He’s the MacBride, chief of our sept.”
    “So Clonmuir is your ancestral home?”
    “Yes. Since Giolla the Fierce became the servant of St. Brigid. And until the cliffs beneath it crumble and the keep falls into the sea.”
    He started to smile at her vehemence, but realized his amusement would not sit well with her. “Cromwell claims the entire coast of Ireland, three miles deep, for the Commonwealth.”
    Her chin came up. Her eyes flashed in the moonlight. Her body went as taut as a drawn bowstring. “I spit on Cromwell’s claim.”
    “You’re devoted to your home.”
    “And why shouldn’t I be?” She spread her arms, embracing the broad sweep of the rugged landscape. “It’s all we have.”
    Wesley caught his breath and wondered at the ache that rose in him upon hearing her speak, on watching the reverential and possessive way she walked across Clonmuir land. The mood of the sere wind-torn grasses racing up to meet the broken-backed mountains, the spirit of the misty wide sky crowning the craggy jut of land, flowed in her very bloodstream.
    Something about her called to him, and the yearning he felt discomfited him thoroughly. He had made a vow, broken it, and gotten Laura. Her appearance in his life had compelled him to renew his oath of celibacy. Like a drowning man, he had clung to that oath, turning aside invitations that would have brought a smile to Charles Stuart himself.
    So how could he be feeling this heart-catching tenderness for a wild, barefoot Irish girl? Damn Cromwell. And damn Caitlin MacBride, for Wesley could not help himself. He stopped walking, touched her arm.
    “Caitlin,” he said urgently. “Look at me.”
    She stopped and eyed him warily.
    “What happened to us, down there on the strand?”
    “I don’t know what you mean.”
    “You do. Don’t deny it.”
    “Moonstruck English fool,” she murmured. Her words meant nothing, for the shadowy rhythms of her speech captured him, and the secrets that haunted her eyes beckoned mystically.
    “Caitlin MacBride, you do ply strange arts upon a man.”
    “I do no such thing.” She drew away and started walking again.
    I cannot trust her, thought Wesley. Yet at the same time he admitted to himself that he had never met so compelling a woman. Heather and moonglow colored every word she spoke. Fierce conviction molded every move she made. She plundered his heart like a bandit after treasure.
    A dangerous thing. For the plundering of hearts was supposed to be Wesley’s specialty.
    They passed a great, brooding rock that sat on the upward-sloping lip of a cliff. Tiny facets in the granite winked in the moonlight. Wesley paused, passed his hand over the surface of the stone. “There are symbols chiseled here,” he said, and the rough whorls beneath his fingers made him shiver.
    “So there are.” Sarcasm edged her voice. “Pagan runes.”
    “Who put them here?”
    “Probably the first MacBride to leave his cave and proclaim this the Rock of Muir, his