The Game Read Free

wiping his bloody mouth with one sleeve. But his father’s brutal words were a blow he could not help but feel. Still, he said, “Leave the yellow-haired wench alone. The dark one is willing—she has been servicing our men all night.”
    “Weak!” Shane spit. “I take what I want, when I want it, and I am the O’Neill!”
    Suddenly another huge fist swung out and Liam’s head exploded with pain. When he opened his eyes, he was on the floor, and bright lights danced sharply before him. The sounds of the tavern washed over him, drunken laughter and song, raucous conversation. Slowly he sat up, then levered himself to his feet. His father was dicing, the dark-haired whore hanging on to him. Despite the painful throbbing of his head, Liam smiled grimly. The little serving maid had fled. It was a small victory, but it was a victory nonetheless.

1
    Normandie, January 1571
    S he had been forgotten.
    Katherine knew that there was no other possible explanation for her having languished for almost six long years in the Abbé Saint Pierre-Eglise. Beneath her knees, the stone floor of the chapel was hard and as cold as ice. She murmured the prayers which she knew by heart but thought instead of the fact that none of the letters she had sent home to her father in Munster had been answered, not one. Finally, in despair, last summer she had sent a missive to her stepmother, Eleanor. That, too, had failed to elicit a response.
    Katherine choked on both fear and despair. It was prime, the beginning of a new day, and although she prayed with the other sisters of the convent, today was the day that her life must begin anew. Today was the day that she must gather up all of her courage—today she would confront the abbess about her situation.
    She had no choice. She was eighteen, and growing older with every passing moment. Another year had concluded, and in a few more months Katherine would be nineteen. She could not grow old in this secluded convent. She could not ! She wanted to live. She wanted a husband, a home of her own, children. She was of the age when by now, she should have already had one or two or even threesturdy babes tumbling about her skirts. Oh, God. How had they forgotten her very existence?
    Six years ago she had been too numb with grief to care when Eleanor suggested, no, insisted, that she enter a convent. Her family had been in disarray after suffering tremendous losses in the Battle of Affane back home in southern Ireland. Three hundred of her father’s most loyal troops had been massacred by the forces of Tom Butler, the earl of Ormond, on the banks of the Blackwater River, and her father, the earl of Desmond himself, had been wounded and captured by Butler. But Katherine suffered more than just the defeat of her kinsmen and the capture of her father. For she had lost her betrothed that day.
    Hugh Barry had been fatally wounded in the ghastly fray. Katherine had been betrothed to Hugh from the cradle. The Barrys were kinsmen, and she and Hugh had grown up together, Hugh being but a year older than she. He had been her childhood friend, her childhood sweetheart; he had bestowed her very first kiss on her. His death had destroyed her dreams, and with them, it seemed, her future.
    Numb with grief, Katherine had obeyed her stepmother, glad to have a reprieve in a faraway convent before another marriage could be arranged. Losing Hugh had been especially difficult for Katherine to bear because the year before Affane, her own dear mother had died. The earl of Desmond had been Joan FitzGerald’s third husband, and Katherine was their first and only child. Mother and daughter had been close. Katherine had yet to cease missing her.
    But she had thought that a new marriage would be swiftly arranged, that she would spend but a year or two in the nunnery, and that she could be wed on her fifteenth birthday as planned. Yet Eleanor had only written to her once, later that first year, explaining that she was with the earl, who