Virginia Henley Read Online Free

Mrs. Malone.”
    She ladled him out a bowl of porridge and laced it with whisky. “Throw that across yer chest, Mr. Burke. It’ll warm the cockles of yer heart.”
    “Yer too kind, Mrs. Malone. How’s yer toothache this morning?”
    “It’s a thought better, Mr. Burke. I felt worse many a time when I was only half as bad.”
    Kate Kennedy spread the tray with a snowy linen cloth and winked at Paddy Burke. “No wonder it’s a thought better. You put away enough whisky last night to paralyze a dead man.”
    “Yes, and it put me to thinking, Kate Kennedy. A wee drap of whisky might be the very thing to sweeten yer tongue, don’t ye think so, Mr. Burke?”
    “Don’t drag me into this, Mrs. Malone, I beg ye. I don’t fancy bein’ a great ugly thorn between two roses.”
    “I’d like some of yer special wheat cakes for the mistress, Mary,” Kate said.
    The cook looked with alarm at the tray Kate was preparing. “Is she poorly?”
    “Not a bit of it, Mary Malone. Himself has decided she’s to have her breakfast in bed.”
    Mary was shocked. “It’s indacent!”
    Kate rolled her eyes.
“Indacent
describes him exactly. I could tell ye things that go on in that bedroom would make your hair curl, Mary Malone.”
    She’d barely gotten the words out when Shamus burstthrough the kitchen door, his scowl barely hiding his secret pleasure at the housekeeper’s words. He glowered at the women, however, and took the tray from Kate Kennedy’s hands. “I’ll take it up; Kathleen and I wish to be private a wee spell.”
    Paddy Burke almost choked on his porridge as he watched the women’s jaws drop open. He polished off his food quickly, knowing that stewards from every wealthy Anglo-Irish house in Dublin would soon be arriving to pick up kegs of illegal French brandy. Shamus had raised the price, shrewdly guessing it would double the demand.
         “D id ye set aside a couple of casks for the celebration, Paddy?” asked Shamus, descending to the first cellar.
    “I did that. When’s it to be?”
    “Sunday.”
    Paddy rubbed his nose. “I understood Sunday was when the shipment for Captain Moonlight was comin’ in.”
    “It is. The timing’s perfect.”
    Captain Moonlight
was a euphemism for all Irish rebels. A secret revolutionary society existed. It had started when England was at war with America. England’s necessity had been Ireland’s opportunity. While France and Spain allied themselves with the colonies, Ireland was left exposed to invasion. When it had been impossible for the English fleet and armies to protect the entire coast of England, Scotland, and Ireland, fifty thousand volunteer troops were raised. They professed loyalty to the British crown, but when the war was over they did not disband, they just went underground.
    Men like Shamus O’Toole’s father-in-law, Edward FitzGerald, Earl of Kildare, passionate to win Ireland’s freedom from the British yoke of oppression, had achieved legislative freedom of the Irish parliament. But a decade after that achievement Irish Catholics still could not sit in that Parliament,nor vote to elect its members. Edward FitzGerald was one of the founders of the Society for United Irishmen, but under cover of dark, he did far more risky and foolish things for his downtrodden Catholic countrymen. The Kildare wealth, horded for generations, poured forth from his coffers to buy guns and arms for the rebels and food for the starving peasantry who lived on his vast acres.
    Shamus O’Toole did not have his father-in-law’s bleeding heart. Unlike him, Shamus had not been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He had been born in stark poverty. His father had deserted his mother and the pair of them had subsisted by cutting peat as soon as he turned five.
    In ancient times the O’Tooles had been a powerful clan and Shamus decided early in life
he
would become a power to be reckoned with. Before he had turned ten, Shamus had learned the value of expediency. His