Fortune nodded. "Will you tell Mama?"

"Nay. I know I can trust you, and that this conversation was just between us. Do not disappoint me, child," Rohana said softly.

"It won't be easy," Fortune admitted.

"I know," came the sympathetic reply.


***

The next few weeks seemed to pass quickly. Fortune spent most her time out of doors riding Thunder. She saw Kieran but briefly now and again. Her appetite ceased. She was restless at night, and sleep, when it did come, was unsettled, and filled with confusing dreams that she could only just vaguely recall when morning came, but she could never really remember what she had dreamed. Toward the end of July Kieran and Fortune met at Black Colm's Hall.

"This will be the last time we see each other for awhile," he told her. "My brother will be home on the first. My dear stepmother is, as always, prompt and efficient. The Elliots will arrive from Londonderry on the fifth to finalize the marriage agreement, and the wedding plans. It will be impossible for me to get away, sweetheart. Every moment of my day will be taken up by my father and his wife in pursuit of the perfect wedding day for Willy and his cousin. I'll try and come if I can get away, but I'll be unable to send word. If you are not here, I will leave a message for you beneath our bench, held down with a large rock. You do the same."

Fortune nodded bleakly. Weeping and bemoaning this turn of events wouldn't change anything. "It will be hard, Kieran," she said.

He took her in his arms, holding her against him. "I know." He kissed her lips softly. "You have not attempted to seduce me in our last meetings, Fortune. Do you yet love me, or have you had a change of heart?"

"Do you think me that fickle then?" she demanded half-angrily. "And what do you mean I haven't tried to seduce you? When did I ever attempt to seduce you, Kieran Devers? It is said that women are vain, but I think it is you men who are filled with conceit!"

He laughed wickedly. "If I offered to make love to you now, this very minute, what would you say, sweetheart?" he teased her.

"I would say you are a pompous ass!" Fortune snapped at him.

He laughed all the harder. "I love you, my wild wench," he told her, "and in a bit over two months you will be my wife. I can hardly wait, Fortune, and that is the truth."

She pulled his head down to hers, and kissed him slowly and deeply. Her firm young body pressed itself seductively against him as her lips worked themselves against his lips. She ran her tongue over his mouth, then pushed it into his mouth to stroke his tongue sensuously, nipping at that tongue when he played too fiercely with hers. Her fingers kneaded the nape of his neck, and she rubbed herself suggestively against him. It grew more difficult to remember her promise to Rohana as each minute passed. Her riding trousers did not offer the kind of protection that her many skirts would have, and she could feel him, hard and eager, against her belly.

His head was spinning. He held her so tightly that he wondered if she could breathe, and yet she writhed and twisted in his arms easily, arousing his basest passions. It was all he could do not to push her to the ground, and ravish her as he desired her so terribly. He could feel the full softness of her young breasts, and the flatness of her tender belly pressing against his muscled body. He wanted her as he had never wanted any woman, yet he felt something was different. A month ago she would have succumbed to his erotic blandishments. Now, however, he sensed the steel in her. She would not seduce him, nor would he be able to seduce her. His arms dropped from about her, and Fortune stepped back.

"Remember me until we meet again, Kieran Devers," she said softly, and then turning from him she mounted Thunder, and without a backward glance rode off.

He watched her go. She was his, he knew, and would eventually become more woman than any he had known, but he had been right. She would have destroyed his younger brother. Willy would be angry when he learned the truth of Fortune's passions, but Kieran Devers knew in his heart that Emily Anne Elliot was a better match for the heir to Mallow Court. His hand went to his groin, and he rubbed himself. The little witch who would shortly be his wife had roused him mightily. He walked slowly back and forth across the ruins of Black Colm's Hall, quieting his lust. His passions finally eased, he mounted his own stallion and galloped off towards his home.


***

In early afternoon on the first of August the Deverses returned to Lisnaskea, their coach rumbling down the drive of Mallow Court to stop before its front door. The footman hurried from the house to open the door, let down the carriage steps, and help his mistress from her traveling equipage. Jane Anne Devers looked about her with a pleased smile, and shook her skirts which had become crumpled within the confines of her vehicle.

"Welcome home, madame," Kieran said, coming forward to greet his stepmother, a smile on his handsome face. "I trust my sisters, and their families are all well. Will they be coming home for Willy's nuptials?"

"Unfortunately no as both of them are breeding again. They are more like Catholics than Protestants in their desire to have large, and rather unwieldy, families," his stepmother replied. She glanced about. "All looks in good order, Kieran. You have done well, and I thank you for husbanding your brother's patrimony so diligently." She then swept past him into the house.

His father descended from the coach followed by his younger brother.

"Thank God we're home," Shane Devers said. "May I never have to go more than five miles from Lisnaskea ever again, laddie. Yer sister, Colleen, wrote well of ye, and as you can see, yer stepmother is pleased. Now, laddies, I want a good sup of my own whiskey."

"The tray is awaiting you in the library, Da. Coming, Willy?" Kieran looked to his sibling who was oddly quiet.

"I'm marrying Emily Anne," William Devers said dully.

"I know," his brother answered.

"I don't love her," William replied.

"Ye'll learn to love her," his father said impatiently. "Come along now, and let's have a drink." He hurried into the house.

"I suppose the Leslies have returned to Scotland," William said. "I'll never see Fortune again."

"Nay, they're still here," Kieran told William. "The duchess has, much to her surprise, found herself to be enceinte. It was quite a shock. The child is due in November, and her ladyship has been advised not to travel. It's quite the gossip in Maguire's Ford. As you know, I have several friends in that most hospitable little village."

"If they are here then they must be invited to my wedding," William Devers said horrified. "I do not think I can bear to see her on the day I wed another woman."

His elder brother took him by the shoulders and shook him hard. "Get ahold of yourself, Willy. You are no longer a little lad denied a toy you desired. You're a man. Lady Lindley turned you down. Move past it and be glad you have such a faithful, and devoted young girl as Emily Anne willing to marry you. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, and whining about what might have been. You have agreed to marry your cousin, who is, whether you realize it or not, the perfect wife for you. Do not hurt Emily Anne by your selfish and childish fantasy that there was something between you and Lady Lindley. There wasn't. There could never be, and there will not be," Kieran told him harshly. "Now come into the house, and have that drink with Da."

"Have you seen her?" William asked as they walked together into the house.

"Aye, out riding," Kieran replied.

"Was she alone?" his brother probed.

"Aye, she was alone. There was no gallant with her, Willy. I suspect she doesn't fancy the Irish."

"I'm not Irish," William said.

"Of course you are," Kieran told him. "Our father is Irish. You live in Ireland. You are Irish."

"She once said very much the same thing to me," William said.

"Then she has more sense than I ever gave her credit for," Kieran noted. He opened the library door. "Here we are, Da."

Their father, now seated before his own peat fire, his boots off, his stockinged feet turned towards the blaze as he sipped his whiskey. He waved them both to the sideboard where the decanter sat upon a silver tray. "Help yerselves, laddies, and come sit with me," he said. "Ahh, now, I've been waiting for this since yer mam hustled me from here in June. Both yer sisters live in the country, and their homes were intolerably damp the summer long. Mary is the mother of five, and Bessie has four. Such noisy, ill-mannered children I have never met, and even yer mam agreed with me on that even if they are our grandchildren. What unruly households yer sisters run. Children, and nursemaids, and dogs running all about, and never a moment's peace. There were five of you, but my house was never in such an uproar, thanks to my Jane," Shane Devers said.

Kieran Devers laughed. "I will have to agree with you, Da. My stepmother has always managed to keep an orderly establishment, and whatever good manners I may have, I will lay credit at her feet."

Shane Devers looked up from his whiskey tumbler at his eldest son. The look was piercing. "If only…" he began.

Kieran held up his hand to silence his father. "I will gain what I want on my own, Da," he said softly. "I am not suited to your life. Willy is. I have no regrets, nor am I filled with any choler. Everything is as it should be, and the Devers bloodline will continue on at Mallow Court."