Read The O'Madden: A Novella (The Celtic Legends Series) for Free Online

place—”
    “He sent a son this time.”
    She sighed heavily . “Garrick, the earl has no sons.”
    “Aye, he does. A bastard son.” He slapped his chest with a fist. “Not worth much to a great English earl, but enough to warrant giving me this place, if for no other reason than to stop my Irish mother from badgering him in the English courts.”
    She froze in the dusky light flowing in through the barn door . Her eyes widened, disbelieving.
    “Yes, the earl has recognized me, in his manner.” He trailed his gaze over the body he’d loved so thoroughly and knew exactly what he needed to say. “I’m the lord of this place now,” he said, “a lord who is in need of a wife.”
    And in that instant he saw his life in the way his friends always joked about, in the way his own mother bewailed—as a series of mad, impetuous decisions. At thirteen he was offered a place on a merchant ship and he’d gone without a second thought on a year-long journey to the coast of Wales and Bordeaux and the shores of Assyria. When he decided many more voyages later that the sea was not for him, he’d returned only to find his mother guarding the promise of a lordship for him. He seized it without hesitation. So now here he was, in a manor house he knew nothing about running, about to tackle a life of rural husbandry he hadn’t a clue how to manage.
    Yet luck had shown him a smi ling face again. How bright fate had lit the path that had led him to her.
    He said, spreading his arms, “Maeve, be my wife.”
    “You’re English .” 
    Her face contorted as if the word were something slimy on her tongue.
    “The earl is English,” he said. “My mother is as Irish to the bone—”
    “You—you deceived me. ” She clutched her belly and then cupped a hand over her mouth. She sidled along the milk stalls until she shouldered into the wall of the barn. “My God . . . my God.”
    Irritation rippled over him. He hadn’t asked to be the by-blow of an earl. And he hadn’t expected that she’d be the sort of woman too proud to take a bastard to her bed.
    He said, “Did you not hear me? I asked you to be my wife .” He’d never asked a woman to be his wife, though he knew plenty who’d have fallen into his arms if he’d done so. “More than that:  I’m asking you to be my lady of Birr.”
    She shook her head at him. “ Never will I consent to be an Englishman’s wife.”
     
    ***
     
    Maeve stumbled across the fields as mud splashed under her skirts and soaked her hose. The woods loomed ahead, bare-branched and gray. She barreled toward them, seeking the home of her youth where all was simple and plain.
    She had lain with an Englishman.
    An Englishman .
    It was Glenna’s fault. A fairy- woman was supposed to know such things. Glenna was supposed to guide her away from such catastrophes and see that all worked out right. Glenna had even led her to that village, telling her that this was the best place to go to have the wretched thing done. What good was a fairy-woman if Glenna couldn’t protect her from the very calamity Maeve feared the most?
    Maeve broke into the woods and stumbled from tree trunk to tree trunk, tearing a path through the autumn leaves. When Maeve had first seen him standing in her yard her heart had swelled— he’s come for me . For a flicker of a moment, she’d thought that she could touch him again, she could kiss him again, and she could even lie with him again. He’s come for me! What a coincidence that he would find her after all the lengths she had taken to disappear. Perhaps he would be the man she could marry: An outsider, a strong and brave Irishman who would accept what and who she was. Because of course he was Irish: She’d seen the dirt of Ireland staining his broad worker’s fingers.
    An Englishman .
    She glimpsed Glenna’s hut ahead . It hugged the base of a giant oak tree which sheltered the thatch. Maeve hurtled toward it and shoved open the door.
    “Glenna!”
    The door slammed