Page 1 of Desire's Ransom
Chapter 1
TUATH O’KEEFFE
BARONY OF DUHALLOW
IRELAND
FALL 1193
Temair O’Keeffe closed her eyes and breathed in the sweet smell of dry hay. It was peaceful here in the shadows. Lying in the straw between her two best friends in the world—Bran and Flann—she could forget everything.
Her da wouldn’t think to look for her here. He seldom staggered out of the tower house after supper. Temair would hide in the stable until he drank himself out of his temper and into a stupor. Then she’d steal back into her chamber after nightfall.
She could easily find her way by the light of the full moon. Not that she was afraid of the dark—not anymore. At twelve years old, she knew there were far worse things to fear…
Like the sickness that had taken away her ma two years ago.
The brutal fists her da swung when he was in his cups.
The soft weeping of her older sister late at night.
She stroked Bran’s fur, grateful for the wolfhound’s company. His brother Flann, jealous, licked at her bruised face, making her laugh.
“I love ye too, Flann,” she said, giving him a good scrub behind the ear.
She doted on the two hounds, which she’d raised from pups. They’d wandered onto O’Keeffe land on the day after her ma died. If her da hadn’t been drinking away his melancholy, he probably would have drowned them, saying he didn’t need more mouths to feed.
But Temair had hidden them here in the stable, fed them scraps from supper, and sobbed out her own secret grief over their warm, wiggly bodies.
She’d managed to keep them secret for weeks. By the time her da discovered the hounds, it was too late. They were too big to drown. Indeed, unlike her da, who had never liked the water, the dogs actually enjoyed a good frolic in the river.
Now the enormous hounds deemed themselves her protectors, snapping at strangers who drew too close to her. Which was why they were forbidden in the tower house.
Bran yawned with a squeak. Then he shook his head. One of his flapping ears struck Temair’s cheek. She sipped in a quick breath as it stung her scrape. But when he sniffed at her in concern, she smiled and scratched him under his fuzzy gray chin.
“’Tis all right, Bran.”
That was a lie.
Nothing was all right.
And the older she grew, the more certain she was of that.
She’d seen the pitying looks from the servants after her da blacked her eye or cut her lip. None of the otherclanndaughters had faces so bruised and broken.
Her da said it was because she was bad. He claimed Temair had the devil inside her.
Maybe she did.
She didn’t always do as she was told. She was headstrong. She had a sharp tongue.
And sometimes instead of enduring the punishment he meted out, she fought back.
Of course, that enraged him even more and earned her a much harsher beating.
But there didn’t seem to be any cure for her wild spirit. She couldn’t curb her willful ways.
Her older sister Aillenn fared a bit better. She was sweet and mild-mannered, agreeable and obedient. She never challenged their da’s authority. She suffered the chieftain’s chastisement in silence.
