Lord Of Shadowhawk

Lord of Shadowhawk

Lindsay McKenna

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter One

March 1, 1798

Where’s that crippled half brother of mine? Vaughn wondered in irritation, his sensual mouth pursed beneath the full, luxuriant growth of his blond mustache. He gave the docked ship he stood on a negligent look, then walked to the gangway, idly watching as some prisoners from Wolfe Tone’s rebellion, captured in Ireland, were dragged off in chains. The dead and mortally wounded were being hauled out of the hold and carted away to some unknown destination.

Vaughn hated Colwyn Bay, a wretched port town on the moody Irish Sea. It was too near Shadowhawk, his family’s country manor and hub of their agricultural concerns. Theirs? He snorted, raising a polished, booted foot onto a crate, idly resting one elbow on his thigh. Shadowhawk was his half brother’s domain. Tray was perfectly suited to being a farming clod alongside his beloved Welsh compatriots and the Irish servants he insisted upon keeping at the estate.

Where in the devil was Tray? He had sent Sergeant Porter on the whip to fetch Tray from Shadowhawk two hours ago, after they had docked. Shadowhawk was a mere hour away.

A slow anger flared within Vaughn, his blue eyes icy as he contemplated his half brother. Tray might be the eldest son of the Trayhern family but he was least liked, least understood and least a man. A smile twitched Vaughn’s mouth—a mouth used to giving orders and having people obey immediately or face swift retribution. He didn’t wear the red uniform of an officer in His Majesty’s cavalry for nothing. Scanning the busy quayside dock, Vaughn pulled his cloak more tightly against the sharp winds. The clouds that churned above the sleepy village reminded him of Tray’s eyes, light gray among other shades, depending upon his half brother’s many perverse moods. Tray was true Welsh, dark and unfathomable. At least to everyone in the Trayhern family. Except for Paige.

Paige…Vaughn felt his throat tighten at the thought of his deceased older sister. Beautiful, dark-haired, gray-eyed Paige, who had been beloved by all. Even himself. Although she was only his half sister and slated to inherit the vast Trayhern wealth when their father, Harold, died, Vaughn couldn’t hold that against Paige. She may have been almost pure Welsh, like Tray, but her sunny disposition and gentleness appealed to everyone.

Vaughn’s eyes narrowed upon the raggedly clothed forms of several dead Irishmen being dragged down the wooden gangway to an awaiting cart already littered with bodies. His lips drew away from his teeth in a bloodless snarl. “We’ve finally avenged you, Paige. I killed five of them myself.” To his great surprise he felt hot, blinding tears, and he quickly bowed his head, not wanting anyone to see them. Damn! Tears? Vaughn rubbed his eyes angrily.

It was Tray’s fault that Paige was dead. If Paige hadn’t stayed at Shadowhawk that summer, she would never have fallen prey to those bastard Irish brigands. Tray knew attacks by the starving and rebellious Irish happened frequently along the coast. He should have protected Paige. Vaughn snorted violently, dropping his booted foot to the deck. Everything Tray touched died.

Slight satisfaction lingered in Vaughn’s eyes. At least Tray got some of what was coming to him. Two years ago Tray had married some local Welsh farm girl, and she had died a year later in childbirth. His child was stillborn, and deformed, like him. Pleasure flowed through Vaughn as he savored that low point in Tray’s life. Finally! Tray was being punished for all the deaths, the misery and the unhappiness that had been caused by his ill-fated birth. Served the cripple right. Vaughn watched as two sailors carried the body of another dead Irishman by him. Paige had been properly avenged.

Vaughn’s eyes narrowed and his blood chilled. There, on a blood bay stallion with black mane and tail, was Tray, making his way toward the ship, the sergeant riding behind him. He glared down at his half brother, familiar feelings of hate stirring in him once again.

Tray wore a simple white peasant’s shirt, open at the throat, a black coat and a wool cloak around his broad shoulders, canary yellow breeches and unpolished boots with traces of mud on them. The fool couldn’t even dress properly! He wore no white powdered wig, and even his black hair was cut ridiculously short! Tray defied English tradition. He defied everyone, Vaughn thought in fury. He looked like one of those untitled industrialists instead of the eldest son of an earl. The one who would inherit all the Trayhern wealth and privileges someday. Bitterness swept through Vaughn.

“Country bumpkin!” he muttered beneath his breath. Tray should have come in a coach drawn by at least two horses. Instead, the lover of the Welsh and the bloody Irish rode his spirited Arabian stallion through the shouting confusion as if he were accustomed to the rabble that ebbed and flowed around him. No titled Englishman would be seen in hacking clothes on a dock! Vaughn’s hatred rose, constricting his throat. The less he saw of Tray, the better. His half brother reined his stallion to a stop and dismounted with enviable grace, always having been an excellent horseman. But that was the limit of his grace.

Vaughn smiled in silent satisfaction as Tray handed the reins to the awaiting sergeant. He watched through slitted eyes as Tray limped through the milling traffic on a clubbed left foot. The wind jerked and pulled at Vaughn’s cloak as he measured Tray’s progress up the ramp. Their mutual father had rued the day Tray had been born with the deformed foot. Among the titled gentry, the deformity was thought to be the mark of the devil or a curse. In Vaughn’s estimation, it was both. Tray looked like the devil—tall, powerfully built and ever watchful. He had black hair and, as often as not, gray eyes dark with brooding anger. And his skin was tanned, proof that he was out in the fields alongside his own people, something an English earl’s son would never contemplate doing.

Vaughn felt his gut tighten reflexively as Tray drew closer. He forced himself to relax. Why should he feel fearful around Tray? He was the one sent to Eton. He was the one who had become his father’s pride, while Tray remained at Shadowhawk to till the soil and raise the sheep, cattle and horses.

A grimace pulled at one corner of Vaughn’s mouth. It was well-known that Tray harbored no bitterness toward the Irish. Vaughn absorbed Tray’s anguished expression as a woman in a blood-soaked and shredded dress was carried between two sailors to the awaiting cart, her red hair hanging as lifelessly as her limbs. Good, Vaughn thought, feel the pain, half brother. She’s Irish. Dead in the name of the King of England. And there’s not a thing you can do about it, Tray. Not one damned thing. You’re always standing up for the rights of the Welsh and Irish. Well, swallow your bile, pale brother of mine. Don’t retch and shame our name. But you’re only half a man, aren’t you?

By the time Tray maneuvered clear of the gangway activities and faced his younger half brother, there was a pallor beneath his taut, bronzed flesh. His gray eyes were almost black with anger as he approached Vaughn. They stood of equal height. Because of his English mother, Vaughn was slender and by far the more conventionally handsome of the two, while Tray personified typical Welsh blood, and was heavily muscled, stocky and full-faced.

Tray swallowed hard, forcing down the gorge that wanted to rise. The smell of death clung like a nauseating perfume aboard the four-masted ship. Blood was being washed from the upper deck with bucket after bucket of seawater. Tray could not shut out the moans and cries coming from below the deck.

“Sergeant Porter said you wanted to see me immediately,” Tray said tightly, his mouth pulled into a thin line. God, the carnage and waste that surrounded them! And looking steadily at Vaughn’s amused features, Tray felt even sicker. His half brother was actually enjoying the swelling sound of pain that rose around them from the Irish prisoners below.

Vaughn’s crooked smile disappeared and he flicked a look of anger toward him. “Speak to me in English, damn it! I won’t be caught speaking Welsh.”

It was Tray’s turn to smile, but it was a bloodless one, matching the pallor of his flesh. “You’re still half-Welsh, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.”

“Yes, and you revel in the fact you’re nearly all Welsh like a pig rolling in the mud!”

Tray drew his black wool cloak more tightly around himself. The winds were icy, like Vaughn’s fury. “I’m Welsh, in body and in spirit. The few drops of English blood bred in me have long since been given back to the soil of our land.”

“Enough of this. I didn’t ask you to come here to discuss our unfortunate mutual lineage.”

Tray gazed at his half brother. As usual, their meeting was barbed and double bladed. Hate kept their liaison alive. “Why did you send for me, Vaughn? I’m not interested in this—this—”

“Bloodletting? Call it an eye for an eye.” Vaughn raised his arm, pointing to the cart below being filled with bodies. “I evened up the score.”

Tray’s voice grew deadly quiet. “What are you talking about?”

“Paige. Didn’t you know? It was my cavalry unit that broke the back of Tone’s rebellion near Wexford. We rode down the Irish throats and gave them exactly what they deserved for revolting against England.”

Tray’s eyes flashed thunderstorm gray as he stared at Vaughn. “Get to the point, Vaughn. I won’t waste my precious time on your tales of carnage.”

Vaughn laughed. “That’s right. I forgot, you get squeamish around men who are doing a man’s job. Can’t stand the sight of blood. Can’t fight.” His lips pulled away from his teeth. “You couldn’t even defend Paige when she needed a man to protect her!”

Tray stiffened. “Swords and pistols don’t change things, Vaughn. They only create more hate and thirst for vengeance. No, I don’t condone your soldiering. I don’t condone war.”

“That’s why you let Paige wander down to that beach alone!”

“Paige has been dead thirteen years, for God’s sake! Let it rest!”

Vaughn turned away, resisting the urge to strike Tray’s stubbornly set features. He took a few deep breaths, trying to wrestle with his explosive temper. When he turned back around, his blue eyes were midnight colored as they scorched Tray.

“Father wrote and told me that you need another hand to work on that farm of yours. There’s an Irish brat of nine or so years in cell two. Go get him and take him home, and tell Father it was the best I could do. He doesn’t like the Irish any more than I. If you don’t want him, Father can arrange to send him to one of our coal mines.”

Tray’s mouth tightened. “Are you using nine-year-old boys to win Father’s favor now, Vaughn?”

Vaughn’s features whitened and he stalked back toward Tray, his hand clenched into a fist. Tray tensed, and the movement halted Vaughn. There was a dangerous quality to his Welsh half brother, and the look in his colorless gray eyes warned Vaughn that for all the peaceful tenets of Tray’s life, he would be a formidable adversary if provoked. Tray outweighed him by a good two stone. Although he would be hampered by that club foot, which was encased in a specially made boot, he had seen Tray move with startling agility.

“Just take the boy and be gone!” Vaughn whipped his cloak around himself, shouldering past Tray. He hesitated a moment at the top of the gangway. “Don’t be here when I get back, half brother.”

Tray watched Vaughn stride down to the wharf, snarling orders to the sailors. Grimly, Tray turned and tried to prepare himself for what had to be done. Walking across the wet, slippery deck, he ducked into the first hold and down stairs dimly lighted by lamps.

The stench of vomit, blood and excrement assailed his nostrils and he hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. Tray’s stomach knotted as he surveyed the hastily erected cells containing the survivors of the Irish rebellion. A sailor standing guard came to attention.

“Sir?”

Tray hated speaking in English but switched to it from his native Welsh. “Show me where cell number two is,” he asked, his voice hoarse.

Prisoners clung to the iron bars, crying out as Tray and the sailor passed by them.

“Water, sir! Take pity upon us. Water…”

Tray glared down at the sailor, who stood several inches shorter than himself. “Why haven’t these people been given water?”

The sailor flashed him a smile. “Why, sir, these aren’t people. These are animals.”

“Now look here—”

“Captain Trayhern’s orders, sir. The lot of ’em gets water twice daily. A cup in the morning with their bread and a cup in the evening.”

A desolate cry shattered the murky atmosphere and Tray snapped up his head. Halfway down the darkened aisle he saw a young, red-haired boy fighting two sailors who were trying to drag an unconscious girl out of a cell.

“No! Don’t take her! Don’t take her! You can’t! You—”

One of the sailors reached around and with a vicious thrust of his foot sent the boy flying off his feet. Tray lunged forward. In four strides he reached the cell and shoved the sailor away from the girl, who had been dropped on the floor between them.

“You dog,” Tray snarled, pushing the burly sailor back. He looked up at the other sailor. “Get back, both of you.” Tray saw the boy slowly get to his knees, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.

“This is cell two?” he asked one of the sailors.

“Aye, sir, it is.”

“Then begone!” Tray turned to tend to the girl.

“But, sir, she’s near dead. Captain Trayhern’s orders were to take her off the ship. We can’t have the dead smelling up the ship for the journey to London.”

“No! You can’t take her! She’s alive! Alive!” The boy launched himself at Tray, his small fists beating on him with unrelenting fury.

“Easy, boy,” Tray breathed harshly, gently gripping him and holding him at arm’s length. “She’s going nowhere.” Tray looked up, daring any of the sailors to protest his decision.

The guard shuffled uneasily. “But, sir, Captain—”

“I’m Lord Trayhern. My brother wanted these two for my estate. Now I suggest you stand aside so that I may take them out of this hell!”

The sailors and guard stiffened, their eyes widening. “Lord Trayhern? The Earl of Trayhern’s son?”

“That’s right.” Tray jerked his head toward the dimly lighted opening at the other end of the passageway. “Leave us. Immediately!”

Tray waited until the English sailors had left and then released the boy. Instantly, the child dropped to the girl’s side, his young face puffy and swollen from the blows he had received. His blue eyes were mutinous and filled with hate as he dared Tray to come any closer to the girl whom he embraced with his thin arms.

Tray turned and faced the boy, his bulk filling up the small passageway, blocking any attempt at escape. His square face was shadowed as he squatted down beside them. The hardness melted from Tray’s features as he broke into Gaelic, the native language of Ireland.

“Rest easy, lad, I won’t harm either of you.”

The boy’s spirit suddenly sprang with hope, although he remained leery. Who was this stranger who looked as if the devil himself had carved his face out of the cliffs of Ireland? Sean tightened his hold on Alyssa’s shoulder as he flattened protectively across her. The man spoke Gaelic! Was he Irish? He didn’t look it. Hot tears wavered in his large blue eyes as he saw the stranger’s face soften.

“You can’t take her to that cart! She isn’t dead,” he cried out, his voice high and off pitch.

“No one’s taking her, lad. I promise you that. Is she your sister?”

Sean’s lips trembled as he fought back the deluge of emotion that this man’s soothing presence was releasing. By the love of the Mother Mary, he mustn’t show his fear. Alyssa needed him. She was the only one left. He had to protect her. He’d give his life if any man tried to hurt her or make her cry again. Sean valiantly fought back the tears, the stranger blurring before his eyes.

“My cousin.”

“And your name?”

“Sean. Sean Brady.”

“And hers?”

“Alyssa—” A huge sob welled up and broke from Sean. He gripped her hard, burying his head against her breast. “They hurt her! I heard her screaming again and again. And they killed Shannon!”

Tray swallowed hard and reached out, gently touching the boy’s thin shoulder as sobs racked his small body. He was dressed like so many other Irish peasants: no shoes, loosely hanging black wool trousers and a dirtied white cotton shirt. Sean’s weeping continued as Tray rubbed his shoulder to help ease the pain the boy had witnessed. It was senseless. Women and children were prisoners of a war that should have been fought by men only. And when Tray remembered that Vaughn had been instrumental in all the carnage that surrounded them, he choked down the threatening nausea.

Tray focused on the girl who lay between them and felt his heart wrench in his chest. My God! Flashbacks of discovering Paige on the beach just an hour after her murder swept through him. Only this time, instead of Paige’s blond hair, the girl called Alyssa had auburn-colored hair highlighted with burgundy, shot through with gold beneath the lamplight. Her skin, almost translucent, was drawn tautly across her high cheekbones. Tray held his breath as Sean’s words struck him with the force of a hammer hitting an anvil.

A bloody lump rose from her left temple and he wondered how she had received the blow. No man’s fist could have caused that kind of injury. Anger mixed with repulsion as his gaze moved downward over her limp body. Clearly, she had been abused. The once beautiful, frail Irish girl, dressed in man’s clothing, now appeared nothing more than a broken doll. Sean had pulled the ragged ends of her tattered white peasant shirt across her chest. The dark blue wool pants she wore were torn, all the buttons missing. He saw dark blood stains between her thighs and swallowed hard. Images of Paige lying dead on the beach, her arms stretched outward in death, her beautiful silk skirt and petticoats torn off her, her legs parted and bloodied, slammed back into his memory. Tears stung Tray’s pain-narrowed eyes. God, no. Sweet God, not again…not this innocent girl, too….

He moved dazedly as he gently pulled Sean away from her. “Is she alive?” he demanded hoarsely.

Sean kept a hand on Alyssa’s shoulder. “Sh-she was. They beat her and—and—”

“They won’t anymore,” Tray promised thickly, placing his fingers against the slender white column of her throat. There! Just the faintest pulse throbbed slowly beneath his fingertips. “She’s breathing. How long has she been unconscious, Sean?”

The boy leaned back, hope written on his face. “Since yesterday afternoon. A-are you going to help her?”

Tray pulled off his heavy cloak and carefully wrapped the girl within its folds. “I’m here to help both of you.”

“B-but, who are you?” His small voice was strained. “Are you Irish?”

“Maybe not by blood, but through the milk I drank when I was a babe,” Tray said, sliding his hands beneath the girl. He gently scooped her into his arms. It was as if he were lifting a mere hundred pounds of grain against him instead of a human being. My God, she was nothing but skin and bone! His heart constricted as her head lolled against his shoulder; her bruised and swollen lips were cracked and parted. She was as vulnerable as the newborn lambs that he helped deliver every April. Holding a deluge of emotions in tight check, Tray concentrated on Sean.

“Stay near me, lad. I’m going to take you and your cousin with me to my home. Do you understand? You’ll have to ride on the back of my stallion. I don’t have a coach and time is of the essence. Your cousin is badly injured and I must get her home and then send for a doctor to help her.”

“Y-yes, sir. I can do that.” He shyly reached out, his hand wrapping tightly in the folds of the wool coat Tray wore. “Who are you?”

Tray grimly ignored his question. He limped along the passageway and up the stairs, never more glad to reach the fresh salt air of Colwyn Bay than now. I’m the black sheep of the Trayhern family, he thought with grim irony. An unwanted son who will inherit everything and who is hated by almost every family member. Except for Paige. As they walked down the gangway, Tray mentally answered Sean’s earlier question. I’m Irish because an Irishwoman raised me as her own. Because my father accused me of killing my mother and sent me north so I could be out of his sight. Sadness enveloped Tray, as it always did when he thought of the mother he had never known.

Her name had been Isolde, a beautiful Welsh name for a lovely black-haired, gray-eyed woman. And in his father’s grief over her death, Harold named him Tristan, a Welsh name meaning sorrowful. And sorrow had followed his existence from the day of his birth. Tray would never forget when Sorche, his Irish wet nurse and foster mother, had answered his gravely asked question as to why he was named Tristan. Sorche sadly told him that his father blamed him for Isolde’s death and he would forever be called Tristan as a result. That day he had begged Sorche to call him Tray, because in Welsh the name Trayhern meant “strong as iron,” and he would be strong, he promised her. He would turn into the boy that his father wanted him to be; he would no longer bring sorrow and unhappiness to everyone.

Tray slowed his pace as he neared the area where Sergeant Porter was holding his blood bay Arabian stallion. So much for a seven-year-old’s dreams, he thought wearily. From that day forward, everyone at Shadowhawk called him Tray. But try as he might, Tray learned that his father would never be proud of his crippled son.

“Hold the girl for me until I get mounted, Sergeant,” he commanded, placing Alyssa in the stunned soldier’s arms.

Porter’s eyes widened with shock. “My lord?”

The Englishman gave Tray an angry look but stood there with the girl wrapped securely in the warmth of the black wool cloak. Rasheed, the Arabian stallion, moved mettlesomely beneath Tray as he mounted.

“Stand,” Tray ordered the stallion in Welsh. Obediently, the animal became a living statue as the girl was transferred back to Tray’s arms.

Tray looked down at Sean, who was shivering, his arms wrapped about his skinny body. He glanced at Porter.

“Sergeant, give the boy your cloak. I’ll make sure you get it back.”

Porter glared at the young ruffian, but he shoved his cloak into the boy’s awaiting hands without a word.

“Now help him up here. Behind me.”

This was scandalous! But Porter did as told, flushing red to the roots of his brown hair as he grudgingly obeyed. Didn’t Lord Trayhern realize the picture that he presented? No one rode anywhere on a lord’s horse, especially two Irish prisoners of war!

Sean’s arms wrapped tightly around Tray’s waist.

“All right, lad?” he asked, barely turning his head.

“I’m ready, sir.”

“Good. We won’t be going any faster than a brisk walk, but hold on. Rasheed hasn’t been run for a few days and he’s feeling his fettle.”