A Rose in Splendor Read Online Free Page B

dead.”
    “No, lass, he’s not dead,” Lord Fitzgerald assured her.
    His voice hardened as he added, “Ye were not to come back. ’Twas an order.”
    Her gaze shifted to the boy lying disquietingly still. “I found him,” she said, as if by saying that she could reclaim him as hers.
    “Aye, lass, and a brave thing it was ye did. But ye’ve no need to think about it any longer. We’ll patch him up and have him on his way in a trice.”
    Deirdre looked up at her father, her gray-green eyes swimming with tears. “He thinks you’ll hang him, and he hurts something fierce.”
    With a rueful smile Lord Fitzgerald held out his hand to his daughter and said, “If I promise ye shall see him again when he’s cleaned and bandaged, will ye go up to the house and wait?”
    Deirdre nodded, the agreement reluctantly drawn from her.
    “That’s me girl. Go now and—”
    Suddenly Deirdre’s father stiffened and his sergeant with him. The men exchanged glances and the sergeant nodded his head. “Damn!” her father swore.
    Deirdre stared at them a fraction longer and then she heard it too—horses cantering toward Liscarrol.
    “That’ll be me cousin Neil,” Lord Fitzgerald said.
    “And the English,” Sergeant O’Conner added.
    “Aye. English soldiers come to see me off.”
    Together the two men glanced down at the boy as he stirred and began coughing. When their eyes met again, each realized that his thoughts were the same as the other’s.
    Regular Irish troops like themselves were under the protection of the Treaty of Limerick, but it did not cover rebels who fought the English in informal combat using ambush and surprise. Rapparees were fair game for English soldiers, to be hunted and killed like vermin.
    Lord Fitzgerald shook his head even as his sergeant opened his mouth. “It will not serve, man. Look at him. He cannot escape on his own, nor can we leave him here to be discovered once we’ve left. I’ve seen too much of English justice. Those we leave behind will be made to pay for harboring a wanted man.”
    “Hand him over to them,” the sergeant suggested without batting an eye.
    Lord Fitzgerald did not hesitate. “I’m not a man to set the dogs on a wounded stag.”
    “What then, sir?” the sergeant questioned, a grin easing into his features for the first time.
    “An old trick. ’Tis served well enough before,” his commander answered with a wink.
    He knelt and took Deirdre’s face in his hands. She is so like her mother , God rest her soul he thought fleetingly. Too severe of feature to be called a pretty child, he believed she would one day grow into a beauty. She was why he was willing to leave Ireland. He could watch his sons fight and die, if need be, for the cause in which they all believed. Deirdre was another matter. There was a promise made on a deathbed which he must honor to save his soul.
    He smiled at her. “Lass, I need ye to go to the house and tell Brigid there’s to be a man put in the priest hole. We’ll be coming by way of the servants’ door. Tell her that.”
    A smile bloomed suddenly on Deirdre’s face and the effect softened her too-sharp chin and the too-high bridge of her nose. “I knew you’d not hurt him. I told him so.” She threw her slender arms about her father’s neck and squeezed him tightly before running toward the house.
    Lord Fitzgerald turned to his sergeant.
    O’Conner shrugged, offering, “I’d not wager a sum on his living out the night.”
    Fitzgerald nodded slowly. It was not the lad’s life that concerned him at the moment. Hiding a man sought by the English authorities was a hanging offense.
    While O’Conner lifted the young man into his arms like a babe, Lord Fitzgerald bent to pick up the hat with the telltale white cockade. If the mysterious young man lived, he would have to come with them to France. If he lived.

Chapter Two
    Lord Fitzgerald kept watch as the sergeant lowered the injured young man to the floor in the narrow passage.