He raised a quizzical eyebrow. She had absolutely no idea what she was saying, he realized. Laughing again he struggled to his feet, and quickly caught the horses who had been grazing peacefully nearby. ' 'Tis past time, sweetheart, that we rode home. Your parents will wonder where we have gotten to, and Maguire will set the dogs on me, I fear, if he thinks I have dishonored you in any manner.' He helped her to mount, refraining from caressing her temptingly round bottom as she climbed into her saddle.
They rode home slowly even though the clouds were now beginning to scud quickly across the skies. A small rumble of thunder caused them to hurry the horses, and they reached the courtyard of Erne Rock just as the rain began to fall. There wasn't a stable lad in sight, and so they rode their mounts directly into the stables, dismounting there, and leading their beasts to their stalls. Efficiently they removed the animals' saddles and bridles. Fortune took up Thunder's own brushes, and began to curry him. He snuffled and danced gently as she worked. Kieran watched her, smiling. Then making himself useful he poured a measure of oats into the horses' individual troughs.
When Fortune had finished grooming her gelding she hung up the brushes and came out of his stall, closing the door carefully behind her. 'I don't know where Michael has gotten to,' she said. 'Perhaps he went to the kitchens to be fed.' She looked out of the open stable doors. The rain was coming down in sheets. 'I suppose we must remain here until this shower ceases, or at least eases.' She looked at him coyly. 'What shall we do to while away the time?'
He chuckled wickedly. 'You are really quite shameless, lass,' he told her, backing her against the wall of the stable. His body not quite touching hers he reached around her, and cupped her buttocks in his big hands, fondling them teasingly. 'What would you like to do, sweetheart?' he leered at her.
She was mesmerized by him. By the dark green eyes that devoured her face. By the strong fingers kneading her bottom. By the almost uncontrollable urge she was having to be made love to by him. She heard herself giving voice to her very thoughts. 'I want you inside of me, Kieran Devers. I want you hard, and hot, and hungry for me.'
'Jesu!' The word exploded from his mouth.
'I shock you because I am a virgin, and virgins shouldn't know such things, should they? But I have a mother who had a prince for a lover. I have a stepfather who is not shy about showing his passion for my mother. I have an elder sister who lived almost a year in a harem. And, Kieran Devers, I have eyes to see, and ears to hear. I know what happens between a man and a woman. I want that to happen between us. I am bold. Aye, I am, but I'm mad for you, and I want to be your wife,' Fortune told him, her cheeks flushed with her daring.
He kissed her. He didn't know what else to do with her in the face of such frankness. She hadn't said anything to him that he hadn't been thinking himself. She wanted no more of him than he wanted of her. His hands moved to take her face between his two palms. His mouth moved over her soft skin hungrily, touching her lips, her nose, her eyes, her forehead, her cheekbones. She smelled of horse and heather. The nearness of her sent his senses reeling. He wanted the moment to go on forever. It didn't.
Rory Maguire's voice cut into their reverie. 'Yer mam sent me to see where you were, m'lady Fortune.'
Her eyes opened, and she smiled up at Kieran Devers as his hands released their hold upon her heart-shaped face. She looked past Maguire through the open stable door. 'Ah, the rain has stopped,' she noted. 'We were waiting for it to cease, Rory.'
'And well occupied you were, I could see, while you waited,' he said dryly. Then his gaze fixed itself upon Kieran. 'Her ladyship wants you to remain at Erne Rock for the interim, Kieran. Do you think you can behave yerself if you do? Frankly I think this is the best place for you-where we can keep our eye on you at all times.'
'I'm not a maid of sixteen, Rory,' Fortune said sharply.
'Nay, yer not, which means you should know better than to be making love in the open where every servant and gossip can see,' he replied as pithily. 'Next time, lass, try and be a bit more discreet. Word of your indiscretions with the handsome rogue will be distorted enough when they finally reach Lisnaskea. And you may believe me when I tell you that they'll be repeated in salacious detail to Lady Devers upon her return. She will not be happy to hear them, particularly as you will probably be wed to her stepson by then, having first spurned her lad. Her immediate thoughts, good Christian woman that she is, will be upon revenge.'
'Mama should let us wed now,' Fortune snapped. 'Then there would be no cause for gossip.'
'Yer mam is wise. Where's the harm in waiting if you truly love one another?' he demanded of her.
Fortune tossed her head in a gesture that was oddly familiar to him. 'The harm may be in my belly if Mama makes me wait too long!' Then she dashed from the stables, heading for the castle steps.
Kieran Devers held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. 'I will not seduce her,' he promised the older man.
'Nay, but she'll do her best to seduce you,' Maguire said with a shake of his head. 'I had a younger sister, Aoife, who was just as headstrong as the lady Fortune. You had best be on yer guard, Kieran Devers. You could find yerself on yer back being ridden hard by that young vixen. A virgin she may be, but she's also an impudent wench.'
The two men parted, Kieran Devers going into the castle. Rory, however, left the stables, and walked to the small gatehouse that Jasmine had given him years ago. He had not lived in it until she returned to Erne Rock, but it had long ago been furnished with family heirlooms dear to his heart; and Bride Duffy had seen that it was kept clean and aired should he ever need it again. Entering the house, and seeing his things, he was overcome with nostalgia. He climbled to a little attic beneath the pointed roof. There in a trunk was a rectangular box made of ashwood, its corners banded in silver. Removing the box he brought it down into the main room on the first floor of the gatehouse that served as his day room. A servant had already lit a peat fire against the damp.
Setting the box down on a table near the fireside chair, Rory poured himself a small dram of smoky whiskey. Then sitting down he sipped it appreciatively for several long moments before setting the tumbler aside, and reaching for the box. He had not seen, or opened this particular box in years. It contained individual miniatures of his family. Looking on them gave rise to a deep sadness, for Rory Maguire remembered that time long ago when his family had been in possession of Erne Rock, and Maguire's Ford. They had held their modest holding for several hundred years for their more powerful Maguire kin.
When their chieftain, Conor Maguire, had left Ireland with the northern earls over twenty years ago, Rory Maguire's father, mother, younger brother, along with his three sisters, and their families, had followed. He had been the only one not to go for he could not bear to leave their people to the mercy of the English. It had only been God's blessing, or the devil's luck, that their new English master turned out to be Jasmine Lindley, marchioness of Westleigh; and that she, even knowing his history, had made him manager for her new estate.
He had been able to remain in his home. While some might have been too proud to humble themselves as he had, Rory believed he had done the right thing in staying. His parents were buried in France, far from their native soil. What had happened to his sisters and their families he did not know. His younger brother, Conan, had gone to Russia and become an officer in the Tzar's Imperial Army. He had last heard from Conan ten years ago. He might even be dead for all Rory knew. The box with its miniatures was all he had left of his family.
Slowly he raised the box's lid. There were the seven oval miniatures, each sitting in its little recessed velvet indentation. He smiled seeing his father's face for he realized he now looked like his father although he hadn't seen it when he was younger. There was his mother with her elegant long nose, and bright blue eyes. And there he was at eighteen, and Conan, the second son, and next to the youngest at fourteen. His sisters, Myrna, the eldest of them all at twenty-one; Aoife at sixteen, and Fionula at twelve. Those had been happy times, he thought sadly as he prepared to close the box.
