brother reined his stallion to a stop and dismounted with enviable grace, always having been an excellent horseman. But that was the limit of his grace.
Vaughn smiled in silent satisfaction as Tray handed the reins to the awaiting sergeant. He watched through slitted eyes as Tray limped through the milling traffic on a clubbed left foot. The wind jerked and pulled at Vaughn’s cloak as he measured Tray’s progress up the ramp. Their mutual father had rued the day Tray had been born with the deformed foot. Among the titled gentry, the deformity was thought to be the mark of the devil or a curse. In Vaughn’s estimation, it was both. Tray looked like the devil—tall, powerfully built and ever watchful. He had black hair and, as often as not, gray eyes dark with brooding anger. And his skin was tanned, proof that he was out in the fields alongside his own people, something an English earl’s son would never contemplate doing.
Vaughn felt his gut tighten reflexively as Tray drew closer. He forced himself to relax. Why should he feel fearful around Tray? He was the one sent to Eton. He was the one who had become his father’s pride, while Tray remained at Shadowhawk to till the soil and raise the sheep, cattle and horses.
A grimace pulled at one corner of Vaughn’s mouth. It was well-known that Tray harbored no bitterness toward the Irish. Vaughn absorbed Tray’s anguished expression as a woman in a blood-soaked and shredded dress was carried between two sailors to the awaiting cart, her red hair hanging as lifelessly as her limbs. Good, Vaughn thought, feel the pain, half brother. She’s Irish. Dead in the name of the King of England. And there’s not a thing you can do about it, Tray. Not one damned thing. You’re always standing up for the rights of the Welsh and Irish. Well, swallow your bile, pale brother of mine. Don’t retch and shame our name. But you’re only half a man, aren’t you?
By the time Tray maneuvered clear of the gangway activities and faced his younger half brother, there was a pallor beneath his taut, bronzed flesh. His gray eyes were almost black with anger as he approached Vaughn. They stood of equal height. Because of his English mother, Vaughn was slender and by far the more conventionally handsome of the two, while Tray personified typical Welsh blood, and was heavily muscled, stocky and full-faced.
Tray swallowed hard, forcing down the gorge that wanted to rise. The smell of death clung like a nauseating perfume aboard the four-masted ship. Blood was being washed from the upper deck with bucket after bucket of seawater. Tray could not shut out the moans and cries coming from below the deck.
“Sergeant Porter said you wanted to see me immediately,” Tray said tightly, his mouth pulled into a thin line. God, the carnage and waste that surrounded them! And looking steadily at Vaughn’s amused features, Tray felt even sicker. His half brother was actually enjoying the swelling sound of pain that rose around them from the Irish prisoners below.
Vaughn’s crooked smile disappeared and he flicked a look of anger toward him. “Speak to me in English, damn it! I won’t be caught speaking Welsh.”
It was Tray’s turn to smile, but it was a bloodless one, matching the pallor of his flesh. “You’re still half-Welsh, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.”
“Yes, and you revel in the fact you’re nearly all Welsh like a pig rolling in the mud!”
Tray drew his black wool cloak more tightly around himself. The winds were icy, like Vaughn’s fury. “I’m Welsh, in body and in spirit. The few drops of English blood bred in me have long since been given back to the soil of our land.”
“Enough of this. I didn’t ask you to come here to discuss our unfortunate mutual lineage.”
Tray gazed at his half brother. As usual, their meeting was barbed and double bladed. Hate kept their liaison alive. “Why did you send for me, Vaughn? I’m not interested in this—this—”
“Bloodletting? Call it an eye for an eye.” Vaughn raised his arm, pointing to the cart below being filled with bodies. “I evened up the score.”
Tray’s voice grew deadly quiet. “What are you talking about?”
“Paige. Didn’t you know? It was my cavalry unit that broke the back of Tone’s rebellion near Wexford. We rode down the Irish throats and gave them exactly what they deserved for revolting against England.”
Tray’s eyes flashed thunderstorm gray as he stared at Vaughn. “Get to the point, Vaughn. I won’t waste my precious time on your tales of carnage.”
Vaughn laughed. “That’s right. I forgot, you get squeamish around men who are doing a man’s job. Can’t stand the sight of blood. Can’t fight.” His lips pulled away from his teeth. “You couldn’t even defend Paige when she needed a man to protect her!”
Tray stiffened. “Swords and pistols don’t change things, Vaughn. They only create more hate and thirst for vengeance. No, I don’t condone your soldiering. I don’t condone war.”
“That’s why you let Paige wander down to that beach alone!”
“Paige has been dead thirteen years, for God’s sake! Let it rest!”
Vaughn turned away, resisting the urge to strike Tray’s stubbornly set features. He took a few deep breaths, trying to wrestle with his explosive temper. When he turned back around, his blue eyes were midnight colored as they scorched Tray.
“Father wrote and told me that you need another hand to work on that farm of yours. There’s an Irish brat of nine or so years in cell two. Go get him and take him home, and tell Father it was the best I could do. He doesn’t like the Irish any more than I. If you don’t want him, Father can arrange to send him to one of our coal mines.”
Tray’s mouth tightened. “Are you using nine-year-old boys to win Father’s favor now, Vaughn?”
Vaughn’s features whitened and he stalked back toward Tray, his hand clenched into a fist. Tray tensed, and the movement halted Vaughn. There was a dangerous quality to his Welsh half brother, and the look in his colorless gray eyes warned Vaughn that for all the peaceful tenets of Tray’s life, he would be a formidable adversary if provoked. Tray outweighed him by a good two stone. Although he would be hampered by that club foot, which was encased in a specially made boot, he had seen Tray move with startling agility.
“Just take the boy and be gone!” Vaughn whipped his cloak around himself, shouldering past Tray. He hesitated a moment at the top of the gangway. “Don’t be here when I get back, half brother.”
Tray watched Vaughn stride down to the wharf, snarling orders to the sailors. Grimly, Tray turned and tried to prepare himself for what had to be done. Walking across the wet, slippery deck, he ducked into the first hold and down stairs dimly lighted by lamps.
The stench of vomit, blood and excrement assailed his nostrils and he hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. Tray’s stomach knotted as he surveyed the hastily erected cells containing the survivors of the Irish rebellion. A sailor standing guard came to attention.
“Sir?”
Tray hated speaking in English but switched to it from his native Welsh. “Show me where cell number two is,” he asked, his voice hoarse.
Prisoners clung to the iron bars, crying out as Tray and the sailor passed by them.
“Water, sir! Take pity upon us. Water…”
Tray glared down at the sailor, who stood several inches shorter than himself. “Why haven’t these people been
