Lord Of The Isle
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A cup of tea and a scone settled the girl’s stomach when leaving the heated tub had made her woozy and dizzy-headed. The judicious use of a leech drained most of the blood swelling the lady’s blackened eye and went a fair ways toward removing the worst of the bruising on her face.
Mrs. Carrick did not ask any questions about any of the injuries she treated. Morgana of Kildare did not offer any explanations or make any observations of her own, either. She seemed to be a stoic sort, and very private.
As for the rest of the physical damage the young woman had suffered, Mrs. Carrick knew time would heal each injury. The razorlike cut from Morgana’s breasts to her throat was most likely going to leave a scar. The origin of that wound caused a troubling frown on Mrs. Carrick’s brow. True, only the young woman’s husband would ever see it, but he would very likely have questions about its origin, too.
On that subject, Mrs. Carrick came away from the solar with numerous questions to put to Sir Hugh. Most importantly, where had the lady come from, and how was it that she had met young Hugh?
For a short while, Mrs. Carrick harbored the idea that Morgana might have met Hugh at court in England. On that subject, Morgana had made the vehement claim that she had never been to England. She’d said she’d never traveled north of the Pale until she’d begun her pilgrimage to Dunluce.
Of the few things Morgana had said, none sounded more outrageous than that she was making a pilgrimage to Dunluce.
No one in his right mind would do that. Mrs. Carrick knew that pilgrims prayed at Saint Patrick’s shrine in his cathedral at Armagh, climbed to the top of Croag Patrick in county Mayo and gave penance by fasting on Skellig Michael off the coast of Kerry.
There were no saints to be honored at Dunluce. Devils, demons, ghosts and fairy folk, yes. Dunluce had evil aplenty.
It was most peculiar.
Mrs. Carrick found a way to appease her growing curiosity when she found out later in the evening that Hugh had retired for the night. She made a supper tray and personally took it to his study, high in the tower. She found him in his upside-down seat, gazing at the clearing night sky through his optic instruments.
Hugh’s tower was something else that bothered Mrs. Carrick. He allowed no servants to enter the uppermost chambers. He claimed that some of them might do unwitting damage to his inventions and banned all but Mrs. Carrick and his gillie, Loghran O’Toole.
The young man was obsessed with grinding tools and glass furnaces and sheets of gleaming brass. He personally shaped and welded brass into odd tubes, making all manner of aids for sight. He also cleaned and swept the chamber himself, when he thought it absolutely necessary. That was the one source of contention between him and Mrs. Carrick.
Now—she had another—Morgana of Kildare.
“I’ve brought your supper, young Hugh,” Mrs. Carrick said, alerting him to her presence. He twisted his head around, disengaging himself from a strangely carved ivory eyepiece that left an indentation around his right eye.
“Ah, supper. Wonderful. Thank you, Mrs. Carrick. Put it there on my worktable, but do mind the glass lenses scattered on the felt.”
It took him a moment to untangle his long body from the upside-down chair. As he came upright, she saw that he’d changed back to his normal clothing, a dark tunic, fitted trews and hose. His wearing aphilabeg, and the woman he’d brought home, were the talk of the house.
Hugh O’Neill never dressed like an Irishman. To Mrs. Carrick’s knowledge, he hadn’t so much as lifted an eyebrow in the direction of any Irishwoman in the few weeks that he’d been home from England. Of course, he was a widower, but he was no longer required to mourn the loss of an English wife. None of clan O’Neill counted that a true marriage, since the vows had been spoken in the Protestant church and were therefore not valid.
To the clan’s eyes, Hugh and Loghran O’Toole lived like monks in this tower. O’Toole’s behavior Mrs. Carrick understood. He really was an Augustinian monk, ordained as a priest at Holy Trinity Priory in Dublin before the English razed the monastery.
Conn the Lame had provided the Augustinians sanctuary at Dungannon when Henry VIII had evicted them from their properties in Dublin. In return, O’Toole had been entrusted with the education of Conn’s grandson.
Hugh padded on bare feet to his table. He towered over Mrs. Carrick as she set his supper tray on the cluttered worktable. Looking up at him, Mrs. Carrick always had trouble linking this tall man to the apple-cheeked, curious boy he had been fifteen years ago. How they had all fretted and worried when Lord Sussex took Hugh from Ireland, and none more than his grandfather, old Conn. Losing Hugh had killed him.
“What did you bring me?” Hugh eagerly rubbed his palms together. “Summat sweet, perhaps?”
“A bit of the mutton from the day’s roast, and some shepherd’s pie. Bread and cheese, too. And there’s plenty of vegetables, do you care to eat them. I don’t think you eat near enough good cabbage, milord. To wash it all down, I brought you ale.”
“Excellent!” Hugh toed a stool, nimbly dragging it to the worktable without having to use his hands. He tossed the napkin covering the tray aside and gave a glance at his clock. “Good Lord, it’s gone past ten o’clock. I’m famished, and could eat a whole oxen. Did you make a tray for my guest? What’s she look like without the mud?”
“Look like?” Mrs. Carrick asked, surprised by the question. “Why, she looks as a girl of ten-and-six should look, Sir Hugh. Save for that awful bruise on her face. The poor mite’s battered from head to toe. Such bruises as I’ve never seen the like. Not from an unexpected dip in Abhainn Mor, I haven’t. But if you say that’s how the poor dear was hurt, then so she was.”
“I didn’t actually say that,” Hugh pointed out.
“Well, then, I suppose those rapids could cut a lady’s gown to ribbons. Or scratch her deep from her belly to her throat. Why, if she tumbled off that Benburg bridge, that would account for blackening her eye and putting bruises the size of a man’s fist on her back and her hip. Are you sure it was just the river you rescued her from?”
Hugh bit down on a biscuit, eyeing Mrs. Carrick’s placid face. He knew better than to try and fool her. “All right, then, you’ve found me out, Mrs. Carrick. Aye, a brute of a man was intending her grievous harm. But I don’t care for that to be common knowledge, or for there to be gossip down in the kitchens about her. She’s a lady, and rightly in need of my protection.”
Just what exactly had convinced Hugh of that fact, he couldn’t lay his finger on. Certainly nothing tangible. Then he remembered her horse and her concern for the animal, or for what the horse might have carried in its saddle packs. He’d have a look for himself when Macmurrough arrived.