Her feet were literally dragging on the last steps up a winding bartizan staircase that opened onto a lady’s solar in some distant quadrant of the massive house.
Mullioned windows lined the solar’s outer wall to the east, two of them partially open, letting damp night air mingle with the ripe, earthy scent of a peat fire in the hearth. Numb with fatigue, Morgana surveyed the solar’s elegant furnishings, cushioned chaises, tapestries, painted walls, coffered ceiling and beautiful ribbon-fold paneling.
The chamber didn’t fit with her preconception of what the inside of the clan O’Neill’s stronghold should be. O’Neills were barbarians, brutal killers, savages. How could such ignorant, uncivilized folk have produced any such beauty? Morgana’s mind was incapable of dwelling on that conundrum. She wanted to drop where she stood, and couldn’t, because a man named O’Neill remained with her in this impossible-to-comprehend chamber.
The peat fire in the solar’s wide hearth beckoned her. Morgana stretched cold, trembling fingers out to it. Hugh’s wet kilt slapped on his ankle as he put one knee to a marble hearth and wrestled a stout log onto the fire.
“You’ll be comfortable here,” he said casually, casting a sideways look over his shoulder at her. Morgana swallowed, mesmerized by the breadth of his left hand as he rocked the log back and forth, breaking apart the coals underneath it.
Smoke and flames stirred to life out of white ash and soot-blackened peat. Sparks shot up, snapping and crackling with the blue flames that licked the log, and tried to kiss his hand. A warm glow gilded his profile, highlighting his straight nose and angular jaw.
Morgana caught herself staring at his mouth. It looked out of place against his otherwise strongly masculine features. His mouth was too pretty and too gentle by half.
A wild impulse to run her fingers across that Cupid’s bow lower lip, to touch the cleft indenting it, just to make certain it was real, unnerved her. She restrained the urge by pressing both her hands tightly against the wet cloth on her thighs.
“Mrs. Carrick will be here momentarily. You may sit down, Morgana of Kildare. The chairs won’t melt if they get wet.”
“Perhaps not, but no one will thank me for ruining them with the filth covering me,” Morgana told him. She spread her skirts toward the fire, abhorring the dirt ground into the cloth. It was not the best gown she owned, but it hadn’t begun this day as a shabby rag, either. Disheartened, she let the cloth drop. “I may as well burn this as try to clean it.”
“With two sisters and their offspring to the house, I’ll have no difficulty replacing that with something more suitable.” Hugh rose to his feet, dusting soot off his hands.
Both his knees popped loudly, making him grin at the incongruity of his own clothing. Standing beside Morgana, he towered over her. She was uncomfortable, and he knew the reason why. His bare knees, her torn gown. No wonder Susana had regarded him with such shock in her face.
The earl of Tyrone had not worn a kilt in his castle since he’d returned home from England. A wild grin edged Hugh’s mouth. He hadn’t liked dressing in a kilt and tartan earlier that day just to prove a point to his men, but he rather liked the feel of the cloth now. It had certainly contributed to his enjoyment of the ride home with a half-naked woman seated on his lap.
He crossed to a silver service set on a sideboard, uncapped a crystal decanter and poured a generous glass of spirits. Hugh put the glass in Morgana’s hand, saying, “This might restore you somewhat.”
Morgana brought the glass to her nose, sniffing its contents. She was as wary as a wet cat. “What is it?”
“Whiskey.” His fingers remained at the bottom of the finely cut crystal, tilting the contents toward her mouth. “Drink it by little sips, not too much at a time. It’s well proved. At the least it will warm your bones, at the most loosen your reticent tongue.”
“What do you mean by that?” Morgana sputtered over the first taste. In her part of Ireland, whiskey was a man’s drink. She was more used to wine—and that only in modest amounts.
“What would you like me to mean by that?” Hugh’s back, which faced the fire, enabled him to study her more critically. In the hall he’d guessed her hair was as dark as Inghinn Dubh’s. Under the better light of his mother’s Waterford chandelier, he could tell that the wet, mud-caked mop wasn’t black at all. Under the river’s grime, that hair was redder than autumn apples.
Even filthy and battered, she was an attractive woman. Younger than he’d first supposed.
Morgana tried to hand him back the glass. “I’m not going to drink till I fall down in a drunken stupor, if that’s what you’ve got in mind.”
“I didn’t say you would.” Hugh helped himself to a glass of Bushmill’s finest distilled spirits. “In fact, I’ll join you. A dousing in the Abhainn Mor saps one’s body heat.”
“So does the bloody rain.” Morgana tasted another sip, grimacing over the burn at the back of her throat. “Does the sun never shine on this part of the island?”
“I seem to remember it doing so upon occasion, but I will admit it has rained repeatedly since I returned from England. Does Kelly actually have a warrant for you, Morgana of Kildare?”
“I doubt it.” She met the intensity of his dark eyes without flinching. “Nothing is too low for his kind, especially if it means he can steal from defenseless children or women.”
“Are you speaking from personal experience?”
“Aye, I suppose I am.” Morgana affirmed that much, but she deliberately clamped her mouth closed afterward, minding her tongue. She took another sip from the glass, swallowing purposefully.
Hugh sighed silently. He wanted her to open up and give him some reason to put his trust in her. “Kelly rarely picks on anyone his own size, but then, most bullies are like that. You still haven’t said what it is that put you on his list of enemies.”
“I haven’t the foggiest idea.”
Morgana tilted the glass to her lips and finished it. She rather liked the whiskey’s immediate ability to start an internal heat. The ache in her jaw numbed, the back of her neck and her hip throbbed a little less ferociously. Her fingers trembled as she put the glass on the marble mantel.
“You will forgive me if I call you a liar to your face, then, won’t you, Morgana Fitzgerald?” She jerked when he said “Fitzgerald.” “A few years back, I had the dubious honor of attending Parliament when the latest writ of proscription against the house of Geraldine was read into law.
“More recently, Her Majesty insisted I attend the execution of an Irishman named Warren Henry Fitzgerald, as a lesson in prudent stewardship prior to my return to Tyrone. It is an act of treason to use the name Fitzgerald nowadays, isn’t it? Is that why you claim to be known as Morgana of Kildare?”
Morgana chose to say nothing. She turned to warm her back at the fire. A pair of burly servants toted a huge wooden tub into the solar. Hugh directed them to place it near the fire.
Both he and Morgana stepped back, allowing a stream of servants bearing steaming buckets to fill the tub. A short, heavyset woman supervised that work, and the laying out of towels, soaps and fresh clothing.
“We shall have to continue this conversation on the morrow, Morgana.” Hugh motioned the woman forward. “Here is my housekeeper, Mrs. Carrick, come to help you out of these wet clothes. A hot bath will soothe and restore you, though I do suggest you make a strong effort to stay awake after your bath, Morgana.”
“Why is that?” Morgana asked suspiciously.
Hugh brought his hands to her cheek and chin, touching the bruises on her face. With uncanny accuracy, he found a throbbing lump at her temple.
“People who sleep too soon after taking serious blows to the head sometimes have the ill fortune of never waking up. I shouldn’t want that to happen to you,” Hugh said firmly. “It would bode ill for the O’Neills to have another Fitzgerald woman die in this house.”
