Besieged

Начало книги

She was coming. Sweet Jesu, she was coming! Coming back to Maguire's Ford. It had been twenty years since he had seen her last, but he knew everything about her there was to know; for her cousin, the priest, had never been chary about sharing her letters. She had borne a royal bastard by the late Prince Henry Stuart. How could a prince not love her? How could any man not love her? he wondered nostalgically. She had married again, to a Scotsman, and had given him three sons. Her eldest daughter by her second husband was a married woman with two children. She had had so much more these last twenty years, while he had only his memories of her. It had been enough until now. He ran a big hand through his thick hair, still a warm red-gold, but less so than it had been those many years back. His eyes, blue as Lough Erne itself, were troubled. He sighed deeply. Why now? Why when he had only recently begun to feel the lack of a family was she returning to Maguire's Ford? He laid her letter to him aside.

Читать дальше →