Fallon shook her head.
His teeth flashed, white, in a feral smile. "I fear I'm never able to resist solving a puzzle, Miss Delaney. And this place puzzles me exceedingly."
"It's a castle ruin, just like so many others."
"This is no ordinary castle, or so the simple folk say. It's supposed to house some sort of ghost—a hero who is doomed to return generation after generation to perform epic feats. Abominable waste of energy, in my opinion. If he fixed things right the first time, he wouldn't have to keep coming back to do the job again. But then, you know all about this Ciaran of the Mist person, don't you, Miss Delaney, despite the ignorance you feign? The legend is linked somehow with your family."
He was watching for the slightest shift in her features. Fallon swallowed hard. "You don't strike me as the type of man who believes in fairy tales, Captain Redmayne."
She surprised a laugh from him. "No, I am not. I expected a nest of smugglers, or rebels or gypsies at the very least—not a wayward young woman, or a mythical hero. But I do believe in learning everything I can about my adversary, Miss Delaney."
God in heaven, Redmayne did know or at least suspect that the smugglers were linked toCaislean ag Dahmsa Ceo? He must. What could she possibly do to distract him, turn him away?
"You aren't likely to learn anything of value here, Captain Redmayne. The castle has been abandoned for almost two hundred years."
"You disappoint me, Miss Delaney. I had begun to hope you were a lady of some intuition and subtlety. From the moment we English set foot on Irish soil, this island has been nothing but a hornet's nest of trouble. Even now, I can feel the hum of rebellion, just beneath the surface, waiting to break free. I think it is time we put an end to this countless round of revolution and destruction."
"Then pack up your soldiers and go back to England."
"And let your good friends the French sail in? Set up camp such a short way from English beaches? I think not. No. I'm afraid I must take another tack. A more permanent one."
"After six hundred years, you believe you have the answer?"
He met her gaze with such calm certainty it chilled her to the bone. "Astonishingly enough, I do. Men think countries can be subdued with pistols and swords, but that's not true. Bloodshed only crowns more martyrs to feed the fires of rebellion later on. If you want to destroy your enemy once and for all, you must look into his soul. Every man—or woman—every people has a weakness, some fatal flaw. Apply the right pressure to that vulnerable point and they shatter."
Sweat trickled down Fallon's spine, her fingers trembling where they clutched the brooch. Ireland had faced formidable adversaries before. But even devil Cromwell who had swept through Ireland in the seventeenth century like the horsemen of the Apocalypse could not have been more dangerous than the man who stood before her now.
"One can reassemble broken pistols, smuggle more ammunition ashore. One can even grow more sturdy sons to take up their fathers' place in battle. But if you burrow into a peoples’ soul and destroy the very essence of who they are, they'll lose the will to fight back. Rebellion will be at an end, not just for a decade, but forever." Redmayne's theory was hellishly clever. Terrifyingly true.
His voice dropped low. "You wonder what I'm doing here tonight, Miss Delaney? Searching for the soul of the Irish. And I think—" His fingers ran over weather-pitted walls. "—I have found it."
"I can't imagine what you mean."
"The trouble with Ireland, Miss Delaney, is this absurd clinging to past glories. Tales of high kings and heroes that have been dead for centuries. Every urchin who can lisp can recite three hours of tales about such nonsense. The people behave as if those feats happened yesterday at the site of their own pigsty. It's time they faced the truth—that natural order placed them where they are. They need to stare into the mirror and see what they are—dirt-scraping, illiterate beggars, the offal on the boot soles of those who now rule, tolerated only because one cannot find an expedient way of scraping them off."
"You English were still painting your faces blue when the Irish held all the learning of the world in their hands!"
"Ah, yes. I had forgotten. That is your overriding flaw, isn't it, Miss Delaney? You are tainted by Irish blood. A high enough crime, in the eyes of many. Of course, according to the local gentry with their ties to England, your unforgivable sin is that you take pride in it."
Her chin jutted up. "I could not care less what that pack of greedy, pompous fools think of me!"
"Perhaps not. But it's obvious you do care about this island, the people here. This... place." His gaze swept the castle, as if it held every secret in her heart. "This entire country is littered with standing stones, ancient dolmens, tombs of warriors long dead. Castles, like this one, towering over their meager little cottages, whispering to them of past greatness. A greatness they believe they can achieve again, if they only have the courage to reach out, take it."
He understood them, Fallon knew with a sick clenching in her stomach. Understood these people she loved, this land of mist and magic and dreams no sword could cut down. To be understood so completely by such an enemy was terrifying.
But the Irish had clung to the past with astonishing tenacity, through the most horrendous trials imaginable. One lone Englishman couldn't destroy what they'd built over a thousand years. "You cannot obliterate a people's history, Captain."
"Perhaps not. But I wonder how many of your precious Irish would recall the ancient stories without constant reminders?"
"Reminders?"
"What would happen, Miss Delaney, if there were not a ring of standing stones in their pasture, or a dolmen halfway up their hill? If fairy rings and castles steeped in legend no longer existed?"
She froze, staring into the chasm of that possibility. Ireland without the ancient stones carved with pagan symbols, Ireland without the whispering of ages past. It would become a place hollow-eyed with hopelessness. She must not betray that to this man with his fiendish gift for peering into the soul.
She tossed her hair and gave a scornful laugh that sounded brittle even to her own ears. "You should send a missive to the king regarding this brilliant plan, Captain Redmayne. Considering the massive debt left from the war in the Americas, I'm certain His Majesty would be overjoyed to pay an army while they tumble piles of rock God knows where. I only wish I could be present when you explain your strategy to your superior. Is there a military ceremony for being stripped of one's rank?"
Even white teeth flashed in the moonlight. The sick knot tightened in Fallon's gut.
