A Love for All Time by Bertrice Small Read Free Book Online Page B

waking with a start, and he was alone. The place where she had lain next to him was still faintly warm so she was not long gone. He pulled the coverlet up, and over his big frame, and snuggled down into the warmth. Good Fortune, Lettice, he thought sleepily. Yer going to need it, especially when Bess learns of what ye have done. She’ll not hold her precious Lord Robert responsible, my pet, but rather ’tis ye who will bear the entire blame of this episode. Then he fell back asleep.
    When he opened his eyes again Cluny, his body servant, was drawing back the draperies of the bedchamber. “Good morning, m’lord Conn. God grant ye had a good night, and from the looks of ye, ye did.” Cluny’s brown eyes twinkled in his wrinkled face. He had the look of the little people about him.
    “How many times have I told ye that I’m no milord, Cluny?”
    “Well, ye will be in time, I’m certain.” Cluny always had the same answer for Conn, and Conn usually laughed.
    This morning, however, he didn’t feel like laughing. His mouth was dry. His whole body in fact had been wrung dry by his greedy partner of the night before. “Get me some wine,” he groaned. “That vixen nigh killed me.”
    Cluny cackled knowingly, and did his master’s bidding, but as he handed him the goblet he gently scolded him. “Ye can’t go on like this forever, wasting yer youth, exhausting yerself on white English thighs, m’lord. ’Tis past time ye were married. Look at yer brothers. They’re all married.”
    “Cluny!” The sharpness of his own voice made him wince. “Dammit, man, don’t be holding up the fine example of Brian, Shane, and Shamus to me. Have ye looked at their women? None of them are much past twenty, and already they’re worn out and faded. Thank ye, no!”
    “Life isna easy on Innisfana,” Cluny reminded him.
    “No, it isn’t, and that’s why I came to England. I had no mind to go pirating with my brothers, and what else was there for me? Here in England I have a position of respect as a member of the queen’s personal guard. My investments with my sister’s trading company have made me a rich man. I’m content for now.”
    “A rich man needs a wife to give him sons. Ye have gold, but no land to call yer own. Even this house in which ye live belongs to yer sister, and were she not barred from the queen’s court ye’d not have even that, m’lord.”
    “Yer beginning to sound like my mother,” grumbled Conn.
    “Yer mother is a good woman, and yer father, may God assoil his soul, Dubhdara O’Malley, him of sainted memory, married young so he might breed up a fine crop of sons.”
    “And didn’t stop until he killed one wife with his excesses, and given my mother four sons in as many years. Had he not died when he did my own mother might not be alive today. Dammit, Cluny, have not my three brothers given the O’Malleys enough heirs for the next generation?” Then he chuckled. “I could almost wish my father were alive to see it. Five sons he finally bred. One a priest, three no better than he, pirates all with randy cocks, and me! The Handsomest Man at Court!” He burst out laughing.
    Cluny, however, did not laugh with his master this time. Rather his face was disapproving, and finally, he said, “Yer not like yer brothers, m’lord. Yer like yer sister, Lady Skye. She is nothing like her sisters. You two are the rare birds in Dubhdara O’Malley’s nest.”
    “What of Father Michael and Sister Eibhlin, Cluny? Surely yer not putting them with the others; the three pirates and the four disapproving goodwives our father sired?”
    Cluny shook his head. “They went to the church, m’lord,” he said as if that explained everything. “Church people are always different. What I mean was that ye and yer sister, Lady de Marisco, are the ones with the ambition. Look how far she’s gone, and her just a mere woman.”
    The admiration in Cluny’s voice for Skye bordered on the worshipful, thought Conn, but