For a few minutes longer they clung to each other, unwilling for
the bittersweet interlude to end. Then, kissing her tenderly, he laid
her back against the pillows. “I’ll find other times during this visit
when we can talk,” he said. “Promise me one thing, though. Promise
me you’ll ask my help should you ever need it. I will not rest easy
if you do not give me your word, Skye, and swear to it. I’ll not
have O’Flaherty mistreating you.”

“I do not fear Dom. As long as I play the beautiful and docile
wife for him in public, his vanity is fed enough.” She would not tell
him the truth, tell him of her husband’s degrading ways in their bed,
for it would only infuriate Niall and there was nothing he could do
about it. “Sit with me but a moment longer,” she begged. Smiling,
he took her hand. She closed her eyes. Soon she was asleep. Gently
drawing the featherbedding over her, he unbolted the door and
slipped from the room.

Making his way back to the banquet hall, Niall dismissed his
page for the night. Then, turning to seek his own quarters, he almost
collided with a young squire. “Your pardon, my lord, but the
MacWilliam would see you.” Niall nodded and immediately sought
the old man’s rooms.

He found his father sitting up in bed, a nightcap upon his leonine
head. His gouty foot was freshly bound, and he held a goblet in his
hand. Niall bent and sniffed the cup. “I thought malmsey was bad
for your foot,” he noted.

“That quack of a doctor tells me everything is bad for my foot.
I suppose if I could still fuck he’d tell me that was bad for my foot
also,” was the flinty retort. The MacWilliam paused. “I would say
that the beauteous young Lady O’Flaherty is bad for more than your
foot, Niall, my son.”

The two men eyed each other, and the MacWilliam sighed. “I
was wrong to force you into marriage with the O’Neill lass. I can
see O’Malley’s girl would have made you a better wife. Christ! Wed
seven months, and already with child! And she carries the babe well.
What a breeder! She’ll give O’Flaherty a houseful of sons, and still
have a waist a man could span with his two hands. And what a
beauty… that hair, and those Kerry-blue eyes, and those marvelous
tits! Damme, I wish I weren’t so old!”

Niall laughed, but his father now continued in a more serious
tone. “Keep away from her, Niall. O’Flaherty won’t wear the horns
of a cuckold gracefully. He’d kill you if he catches you with his
wife. I know you were with her in her bedchamber tonight while
her husband lay drunk in the hall. Be careful, lad! You’re my only
son, my heir, and I love you. Until you get a legitimate son, we’re
not safe.”

“Rest easy, Father. Skye and I but talked. If we had done it in
public the gossips would have had a field day.”

“You talked?! God’s nightshirt! If I were twenty years younger
and alone with that beauty, it would not have been talking I’d have
been doing!”

Again Niall laughed. “Come, Father, she’s six months gone with
child.”

“There are ways, boy.”

“I know, and perhaps if the child were mine-but it’s not. Be-
sides,” and here Niall eyed his father firmly, “finding out the trick
that you and O’Malley played to separate us has made Skye very
vulnerable. I would not hurt her further. I love her.”

“If she lost the babe then she’d be free of O’Flaherty,” said the
old man slyly. “His wife, yes, but free to come to you… and she would. I’d recognize any bastards she gave you as my heirs, for I
strongly doubt the O’Neill girl will ever conceive.”

“Don’t tempt me, Father. If you think Skye worthy to bear our
heirs, then surely she is worthy of our name as well. You see her
as nothing but a brood mare who will secure our immortality, but
I love Skye. I have never wanted any woman but her for my wife.”
He took a deep, ragged breath. “But O’Flaherty is strong and healthy.
He will probably live forever. She and I have no hope.”

“His death could be arranged… but you’re too noble for your
own good, Niall! Love has made you a weakling. If you don’t mean
to claim the woman for your own, then keep away from her else her
husband kills you in a fit of jealous rage,” growled the old man.

“Or I kill him,” mused Lord Burke quietly.

Chapter 6

Skye’s son, Ewan, was born in early spring. Eibhlin helped
deliver her new nephew, having come to the O’Flahertys’
immediately after Twelfth Night. Eibhlin was shocked by the
poverty of the O’Flahertys’ tower house. Anne had, of course,
repeated Skye’s descriptions of her home, but the nun had assumed
that Skye’s bitter disappointment over her marriage caused her to
exaggerate. Now she saw that everything Anne had reported was
dismayingly true.

The masonry of the tower house was in poor repair and there
were drafts everywhere. The floors were covered by nothing except
dirty, much-used rushes. The few wall hangings were threadbare
and virtually useless for warmth, let alone comfort. The furniture
was sparse as well. Eibhlin was puzzled. She knew that her father
and stepmother had sent a number of fine pieces along to Skye, but
when she questioned her younger sister all she got was a mumbled
answer about Gilly and Dom and their endless debts.

Having her sister with her made it a happy winter for Skye.
Ewan’s birth was a relaxed and easy one, and Eibhlin left four weeks
afterward. She returned within several months to aid her sister once
again, for Skye’s second son, Murrough, was separated from his
brother by but ten months.

Murrough made his entry into the world during a brutal midwinter storm. Fortunately this birth was also an easy one, for Eibhlin had
other factors beside the baby to contend with. The strong winds had
blown so hard that the floors of O’Flaherty House were covered
with half an inch of snow in some places. It had blown through
cracked walls and the sheepskin-covered windows. The fires had
gone out several times, and Eibhlin had been hard-pressed to keep
her sister and the newborn boy warm and dry. Eibhlin was angry.
She was ashamed that her sister should live this way. Skye’s dowry
gone to pay gaming debts, or for wine, or to buy gifts for the women
Dom and his father amused themselves with. Eibhlin made herself
a vow: Skye would have no more babes, especially so quickly, until
Dom grew up and took his responsibilities seriously.

“Ten months between babes is too soon,” she scolded. “Now you
must rest at least a year or two before conceiving again.”

‘Tell Dom,” said Skye weakly. “He’ll be on me within the month.
Despite his whores, he harbors a constant lust for me. Besides, I
thought I could not conceive as long as I nursed Ewan.”

“An old wives’ tale that has done more harm than you can imag-
ine,” replied Eibhlin. “And I shall talk to Dom myself. Then I’ll
give you the recipe for a potion that will prevent conception.”

“Eibhlin!” Skye was both amused and shocked. “And you a nun!
How on earth do you know such things?”

“I have as much knowledge as a doctor,” replied Eibhlin. “More
perhaps, since I have also learned midwifery and herbal medicine
from the old ones. Doctors scorn these things, but they are wrong
to do so. I can tell you several ways to prevent conception.”

“But does not the Church forbid such wicked practices, my sis-
ter?”

The nun answered forcefully, “The Church has not seen innocent
babes dying of starvation because there are too many mouths in the
family to feed. They have not seen little children and their sickly
mothers freezing to death, blue with the cold, because there are not
enough blankets or clothes in the hovels they call houses-not even
food or wood for warmth! What do the well-fed priests and bishops,
snug in their stone houses on this snowy night, know of these poor
souls and their endless torments?

“I help where I can, Skye. For those innocent and superstitious
poor I offer a ‘tonic’ to help them regain their strength after the
ordeal of several births. They know not what I give them. If they
did, they would not take it because they truly believe the Church’s
threat of eternal damnation. You, sister, are not so foolish.”

“No, Eibhlin, I am not. And I want no more of Dom’s children.
I will not be made old before my time, nor shall I nurse this child knowing what I do now. One of Dom’s women gave birth but a
month ago. She has breasts like udders, and it will amuse me to
have her nurse both Dom’s’ son and his bastard. She can live in the
nursery with both boys and have Ewan’s wet nurse for company.”

“You’ve grown hard, Skye.”

“If I were not, Eibhlin, I should not be able to survive in this
house. You have been here enough to know what the O’Flahertys
are like.”

The nun nodded. “Have you had any luck in finding a husband
for Claire?”

“None, and I’m not likely to unless I can convince Da to dower
her. Gilly and Dom have gambled away the dowry left to Claire by
her mother. There’s nothing left. And if I didn’t know better, I
would swear she was a half-wit, for she cares not. The few young
men who have come calling have been met with indifference. One
is too fat, another too lean. This one is a buffoon, but that one lacks
a sense of humor. One is too ardent in his wooing, and another has
no blood in his veins. I don’t understand her at all! She has no
religious vocation, no passion for anyone so far as I can see. Nor
does she seem to desire to control her own life, as I did. She cares
for nothing.”

“Perhaps she is merely content to stay with her father and brother.
Some women are like that.”

Skye looked candidly at her sister. “Do you really think Claire
O’Flaherty is like that, Eibhlin?”

“No,” came the quick reply. “She’s a sly and secretive girl for
all she looks like an angel. There is something…” and here Eibhlin
hesitated, loath to criticize yet genuinely concerned. ‘There is some-
thing unwholesome about Claire,” she finally finished.