"What is a silky?" she asked, curious.

"A man who can take the shape of a seal. Or perhaps a seal who can take the shape of a man. Or so the legends go."

"Ahh," she said, and she reached beneath the water with her hand to tease him. "And just when do you become a seal, sir? And if you become a seal, how shall we ever conceive a child?"

He felt himself hardening as her provocative words taunted him, and the brush of her nipples on his chest inflamed his desires. "Would you like to see how a silky mates?" he goaded her wickedly. He turned her about, and cupped her breasts in his hands, his thumbs tantalizing the hard little nipples. Fondling her he nuzzled at her, nipping at her earlobes, and the nape of her neck. "The silky," he said, "exhibits dominance over his mate."

"Does he?" Fortune returned, grinding her buttocks suggestively into his groin. "Just how does he do this, sir?"

He didn't answer. Instead his arm encircled her waist, drawing them even closer. A hand slipped beneath the water to find the little jewel of her womanhood which he teased unmercifully.

"Silkies don't have those, or such naughty fingers," she gasped.

"But their human mates do," he reasoned. He was afire with his lust, and he knew she was too. The oaken tub was wide enough for what he wanted to do, and so he bent her forward until her face was almost touching the surface of the water. Then grasping her hips in his big hands he slipped into her female passage in a manner in which he had not previously taken her.

Fortune gasped, surprised, and would have fallen into the water face first had he not been holding her. He began to move with a slow, almost stately rhythm within her, his long, thick manhood stroking the walls of her sensitive passage, stoking the fires of her own hunger for him. She caught the cadence of his movements almost immediately, and moved with him. Her head was spinning with the pleasure he was affording her. Her breath was coming in short, hard pants that sent ripples across the water before her face.

"This," he ground out in her ear, "is how the silky mates! He covers his female's body with his own, and takes her." He thrust deeper, and Fortune murmured with her open delight.

"Ahhh, Kieran, yes!" she encouraged him, wiggling her bottom into him. His own breath in her ear was hot, and fast.

"Oh, witch, you have unmanned me, and I am not yet satisfied!" he complained to her. His juices had burst forth, but he was still hard, and filled with a hungry lust. He withdrew from her, and exited the tub, pulling her behind him. Flinging her upon their bed he entered her once again, thrusting, thrusting, thrusting, until Fortune was desperately stuffing her fist in her mouth to stifle her cries.

The room was cold, yet she was burning up. If he could not get enough of her, she could not get enough of him now. Wrapping her long legs about him she drew him closer, her teeth sinking into his muscled shoulder, her nails raking the flesh of his back. "More, damn it! More!" she commanded him, and he complied, pushing himself as far as he could into her eager body. She screamed softly as their possession of each other became so intense she thought she was dying, would die from the extreme excess of pleasure she was now experiencing. The world dissolved behind her eyes, shattering into an explosion of color, and then she was soaring, soaring. As quickly she was falling into the sweet darkness that arose to claim them both from their excesses.

When she was in control of herself again some minutes passed. She became aware that he was bathing her gently with the love cloths. She watched him through half-closed eyes. "I have taught you well," she murmured softly.

He looked at her, his eyes dark with unconcealed passion. "Now, 'tis I who wants more, Fortune." He knelt over her, and taking his manhood in his hand, he rubbed it against her lips. Back and forth, back and forth, and then her little tongue shot from between those tempting lips, and began to lick at him. "Yes, my poppet, that's it," he encouraged her as his manhood began to tingle in anticipation. She opened her mouth now, not protesting at all as he guided himself in, and sighed deeply when she began to nurse upon him, at first tentatively, and then more strongly. "Ah, God, Fortune, 'tis sweet." He began to harden and swell until he more than filled her dainty mouth. Slowly he withdrew himself from the hot, wet cavity.

Fortune was trembling with her own desire now. What they had done had been incredibly exciting for her. She wondered if other women serviced their husbands in such a manner. Her breasts felt hard and aching, as if they would burst. Her pleasure place was already wet with her juices, and so filled with sensation it almost burned. She gasped when her husband slid down her body, and spreading her open brought her legs over his shoulders so he might service her as she had him. "Ohh yesssss!" she breathed, encouraging him. "Please!"

She was all musk and honey. Hot and slick, and so eager. Her little jewel was swollen and visibly throbbing. He touched it with the tip of his facile tongue, and she shrieked with its sensitivity. Now he played with it, flicking his tongue back and forth while she writhed and moaned with her rising pleasure until the first wave of her lust burst. It was then he entered her body, pushing slowly inside her as her legs wrapped about him once again. "Wanton, little witch," he taunted her, his love lance flashing back and forth with increasing speed. "I love you!" His lips found her, and he kissed her hungrily.

His mouth bruised hers but Fortune didn't care. Their passion was incredible, and unlike anything she had experienced with him before. "You are so randy, my husband," she told him. "I hope you will not change as the years go by. Ah! Ahh! Ahhhhhh!" The pleasure was rising, rising, rising, and then it burst again leaving her shaken with her joy and delight. "I love you too, my darling!" she told him as she yanked the coverlet over them.

They awoke again to the glowing light of a spring dawn coming soft, and faintly golden into their chamber. The fire had long since gone out, the great oak tub blocking whatever warmth it might have provided had it been ablaze. Fortune sneezed, and then she sneezed again. Her husband crawled, swearing softly, from the bed, going across the room to push the great oak tub from before the fireplace, but there was little room. He knelt, and poked among the coals, but their life had been long extinguished. Kieran sneezed.

"Merde!" He swore more volubly now. "I think I am catching an ague."

"I know I am," she responded. "Can't you get the fire going?"

"I'll have to go down to the hall and fetch some live coals, for these are dead." He sneezed a second and third time.

Fortune couldn't help herself. She chuckled aloud, and then as quickly explained to her aggrieved-looking spouse. "I think there is a lesson in this, Kieran. Do not make love wet, and then sleep in a damp bed on a chilly spring night. I think we had best get some clothing on, and then go down to the hall to get warm. The servants will take care of the chamber, and empty the tub for us, but I could use some oat stir-about, and some hot mulled cider, sir."

"I concur," he said. Then a twinkle lit his eyes. "But 'twas a grand evening's entertainment we had, my lusty wife, was it not?"

Fortune laughed aloud.


***

April came to an end, and their time in Ulster was growing short. Kieran had gathered several Catholic families as well as individual men and women who were willing to leave their homeland and go to the New World. There were fourteen men. Most were farmers, but for Bruce Morgan, who had been his father's apprentice and was a good blacksmith. There was also a cooper, a tanner, a shoemaker, two weavers, two fishermen, and a female physician, Mistress Happeth Jones, who came from Enniskillen. She had been driven out by her Protestant neighbors who suggested she might be a witch. Before they might act on their assumption, Mistress Jones had packed her belongings and fled to Maguire's Ford. Mistress Jones had no declared faith, but she had heard that in Maguire's Ford there was more tolerance than in the rest of Ulster, and so she had come.

"Do you practice witchcraft?" Kieran asked her bluntly.

"Of course not," Mistress Jones answered him indignantly. She was a plump, sweet-faced woman with dark hair, rosy cheeks, and bright blue eyes that surveyed him with a level gaze. "The ignorant always try to explain what they cannot by crying witchery, sir. I am a physician as was my father who taught me. I am a healer, as was my mother, who had the touch. I have it also. My success in Enniskillen succeeded in arousing jealousy in the town's two other physicians, and its surgeon. 'Twas they who started the rumors. Not only was I a better doctor than they were, but I was a woman, and we all know that women are only good for bearing children and keeping a man's house," she finished with a twinkle in her eye.

"You have no husband?" he pressed her.

"I have no time for a husband," she replied tartly.

"Jones is not an Ulster name," he said.

"My parents came from Anglesey," she told him. "My grandfather was a physician at Beaumaris. My mother's people were merchants who traded with Ireland. Since my grandfather Jones had two sons, and both followed in his footsteps, my father, who was the younger, had no choice but to leave Anglesey to seek a place where his skills would be needed. Anglesey is a poor place, and one physician and his elder son were more than enough. I was my parents' only child, and a wee baby when we came to Enniskillen," she concluded her explanation.

"It will not be easy in the New World, Mistress Jones," Kieran told her. "Have you no one to go with you?"

"There is Taffy," she said quietly. "He is part of the reason it was so easy to believe witchcraft of me."

"Why?"

"He is a dwarf, sir, and he is mute, but he is intelligent, and understands everything said to him. His mother abandoned him when she saw what he was going to be. I have raised him as I would have my own child. He assists me, and is my apothecary. He is not ugly, just tiny. And there are my dogs, sir. I do not keep a cat for obvious reasons," she finished with a chuckle.

He laughed. He liked her, and knew Fortune would too. "There are certain things you must bring," he said. "Have you the coin to purchase them? We can help if you do not. Your skills, and that of your assistant, will be valuable assets to us."

"When do we leave?" she asked him.

"My wife and I will depart for Scotland, and then England in a few days' time," he explained. "Then I must be introduced to Lord Baltimore, who is heading this expedition, and convince him to take us with him. My people will remain in Ulster until I send for them. It may be this summer, or it may not be until next year. We have the ships, and they will take our party from here. There is no necessity to travel to England," Kieran said. "The horses will come with the rest of you."


***

Adam Leslie celebrated his fifteenth birthday on the fourteenth day of May. He was as tall as his father now, and openly eager to be his own master. Jasmine, however, took her second Leslie son aside.

"You must keep the peace here," she said. "You cannot allow any persecution of either Catholic or Protestant in Maguire's Ford. There will be those who will come and attempt to make you choose sides, Adam, but you must not give way. No faith is better than another, whatever certain men may say. St. Augustine said, Love God, and do as you please. It is good advice, my son. I hope you will go down to Trinity in Dublin in another year, or so. As long as Rory Maguire is here to see to your interests you are free to educate yourself fully."

"I've hae all the education I can stomach, Mam," he told her. "Duncan is the one who hae a love of book learning. I can read, write, and keep the accounts. I can speak French and Italian, although what good that will do me, I dinna know. Now I would learn from Maguire how this estate is managed, and how to breed the horses. Free me this day forever from the good-hearted, but dull Samuel Steen."