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had he spent every second of the ride bellowing at the top of his voice, his resentment of her would not have been more clear. With each crack of the stallion's hooves on the rocky earth, that unspoken anger grated on her, fraying the tiny threads of pride that kept her from breaking into tears of exhaustion.
    Even the den of murderers she had been picturing since they had ridden out of the valley no longer frightened her. She didn’t care where Tade Kilcannon was taking her, only that they arrive.
    "Not far now." Devin called encouragement from the gray. Maryssa could have hit him for sounding so cheerful, but her fingers, still clenched in the folds of Tade's shirtsleeve, felt far too heavy to lift.
    "Devin, one last time, will you think what you're doing?" The sound of Tade's voice made Maryssa start, the anger-edged words honed with the slightest note of pleading as he reined the horse to a halt beside a stone fencerow. "Think of Rachel and—"
    With a snort of irritation Tade stopped in mid-sentence. Maryssa's bleary eyes looked up to where Devin stood high in his stirrups. His gentle features seemed to glow with a light of their own, the sensitive mouth curving in an enraptured smile as he stared at a ray of yellow flickering across the modest fields. "I never thought I'd see it again," he whispered.
    "You'll bloody well wish you never had when you're rotting at the end of some Sassenach rope."
    "You're wrong, Tade." Devin's earnest reply touched something deep inside Maryssa. "No matter what happens . . . no matter what comes . . . to see Ireland again, to see all of you, will be well worth the price."
    "Blast you, Devin. I'd like to murder you myself." The tone of Tade's voice was that of a world-weary adult upbraiding a foolish but beloved child. With a whoop of pure joy, Devin urged his mount over the fence and up the hill.
    For long seconds Maryssa watched as the gray ran across the raw fields hewn from the mountains in their fences of stones, her gaze caught by the puffy silhouettes of a dozen sheep and eight bleating lambs as Devin's galloping mount sent them skittering to the far end of the crude pasture. Maryssa looked up into Tade's shuttered face. "Devin. He's been gone a long time?"
    "A lifetime." There was something sad and tired in the way Tade said it. Maryssa suppressed an urge to smooth away the worry lines that marred the perfection of his brow, chiding herself for being a fool as reality intruded, a flame of fear rekindling. This man was no battle-scarred knight embroiled in some noble, futile quest. He was a stranger, a brigand, dragging her off against her will to God knew where. His eyes lingered on her face a long moment; then, as if he could read her tangled, confused thoughts, he tore his gaze away.
    She set her teeth against the bone-jarring start as Tade kneed the stallion forward. In the dim light ahead she could see Devin Kilcannon reining in his horse before what appeared to be a large cottage at the far edge of the field.
    Rambling clay wings jutted out in three directions, seeming to embrace the slope upon which they were perched. Thin shadows of rose vines tracked across the walls, tangling upward like the trails of frolicking children to weave across thatch that promised to be gold as a new-minted crown. And the windows shone with all the open welcome of an angel's smile.
    A den of thieves? Maryssa tried to focus her burning eyes on the shapes now passing before the candlelit panes. The stallion gained the cottage yard just as Devin flung himself from his mount's back.
    He had not even reached the heavy wood portal before it burst open, spilling out a patchwork of shrieking, freshly scrubbed children. Maryssa gaped in amazement as, instead of the savage cutthroats she had expected, a bevy of bright-cheeked urchins, as varied in height and coloring as blossoms in a glen, hurled themselves at Devin, the tails of tiny nightshirts fluttering behind them. Only the fact that they were