Dublin
It was the thirtieth of July, 1658, the summer of her twenty-third year, and she couldn’t have asked for a better day on which to start the Plan.
The morning had dawned with a brilliant sunrise, scattering the heavy rain clouds that had long plagued the city, filling the sky, the very air around them, with a burst of renewing light. Seven years. Seven long and difficult years she had been waiting for this day. This fated day. And now it was upon them. She wanted to leap with joy and sing with the knowledge of it. Even the air seemed to smell crisper, and the rhododendrons lining the park walkways along St. Stephen’s Green flourished in bright and brilliant bloom as if celebrating the fact that soon she would have her due revenge.
It was market day, and the area around Merchants’ Quay was, as usual, a scene of chaos and confusion. Everyone, it seemed, had emerged from beneath their rooftops to revel in the unusual summer clemency. Dockworkers called out to young ladies as they strolled between shop stalls surveying the goods for sale. Hucksters pushing crude wooden carts filled with every sort of notion cried out their wares. Mothers sang to napping babies through open windows. Merchants argued over the price of wool. Through it all one could hear the faint cry of an osprey soaring high above the slanted rooftops, plunging beneath the water’s surface to rise moments later, clutching its codling supper.
Yes, it was a perfect day, a most fitting day, for revenge.
Bracing herself against a stack of wooden crates, Mara Despencer stood on her slippered toes atop an empty ale cask behind the raucous Bull’s Head Tavern, oblivious of the goings-on around her. Her attention was fixed instead on the narrow opening of Dublin Harbor at the mouth of the muddy River Liffey.
And she waited.
No one paid her any mind. Just one of the many, she was partially hidden behind a short wall of casks similar to the ones on which she stood. Her face was hidden beneath the hood of her woolen cloak and she wore a black velvet face mask, the sort that had openings for the eyes, nose, and mouth, and was worn by Irish ladies to protect their fair skin from the weather.
Today, however, with the sun shining down and the unseasonable warmth, the mask was making it quite difficult to breathe. But Mara didn’t care. It did not matter. Nothing mattered, except that she would have her revenge, just as soon as her long-awaited guests arrived in the city.
And they had to be arriving today, she thought, shifting her position to ease the growing numbness in her toes. For the past four days, she had been standing on the dock, at this very spot, watching and waiting until her entire body ached and not a speck of daylight remained. The back of her neck pinched from craning to look beyond the wharf area. Her vision blurred from squinting against the bright rays of sunlight for so long. Yet, still she stood, refusing to quit her vigil, waiting for that expected sight on the horizon.
And, then, almost as if the heavens above had heard her begging and had answered her plea, she saw it. A tiny speck had suddenly appeared far off in the distance, floating on the murky black waters beyond what used to be the old Buttevant’s Tower, now renamed Newman’s Tower some fifty years ago. Mara blinked to assure herself she wasn’t imagining it, that she hadn’t been standing and staring too long, making her see things that weren’t truly there.
The speck obligingly remained.
Her heartbeat quickened. It had to be them, it just had to be.
Mara watched, anticipation fluttering in her belly, as the speck slowly grew, drawing nearer, larger and larger still. Each minute, it seemed, brought it closer to the quay, and after what seemed at least an hour, the shape of a small oar-driven craft bobbed sluggishly on the waves before the Dublin Customs House.
“Is that it, Cyma? Can you see? Is that the ship Wayfarer’s longboat?”
Her maid, standing nearby, neglected to reply.
“It is low tide,” Mara went on, screwing her mouth into a frown. “They must not have been able to navigate their way past the sandbank between North and South Bull. They would have had to anchor at Clantarfe Poole just below Ringsend near Dalkey to come up the river by longboat, don’t you think? With the recent rains we’ve had, the road by coach would have been a veritable impasse.”
This time, she received a decisive snort for a response.
Ignoring her maid’s sidewise glance, Mara leaned forward against the stack of crates, mindful not to topple them, as the object she’d been watching for at the mouth of the harbor over the past days glided to the landing at Wood Quay, further down along the Strand. It was a small skiff, she could see, dwarfed by the larger craft moored at the quay’s edge, yet even at its distance away, she could make out two slighter-looking figures among three larger ones seated upon the planked seats, all but confirming her suspicions.
“Yes, that must be them,” she said with conviction. “Do you see her, Cyma? The one wearing the mustard-colored daygown? Do you think that could be her?”
When, again, her maid did not respond, Mara turned to see if she had gone deaf of a sudden. “Cyma? I was speaking to you. Did you not hear me?”
The grim look darkening Cyma’s eyes told Mara that she had heard and purposely hadn’t answered. Cyma did not agree with this plan, nay, she’d protested against it every day since its conception, but having known Mara since she’d been in leading strings, she realized her protestations were beyond futile. Mara had decided long ago on this course of action. She’d been given the means, and with it, she’d plotted and perfected the Plan over the past several years. And, once decided, the maid must know there was nothing on this green earth that would deter her young charge.
Mara had turned her attention back to the harbor and was now shading her eyes against the midday light. Beneath her mask, a small smile lifted at one corner of her mouth at knowing the waiting would finally be over, the months spent planning this fated day at an end. Soon, she would have what was rightfully hers. She would have her vengeance. She would have her due. And, most importantly, she would be back at Kulhaven where she belonged.
And he would finally pay.
Copyright © 2025 by Jaclyn Reding
Merry Monarchs #1
Flame-haired Irish lass Mara Despencer embarks upon a plan to take back her family's castle, Kulhaven, after it was confiscated by the English government under Oliver Cromwell's brutal Protectorate. She will lure the castle's new master, the scandalous Hadrian Ross, the Bastard Earl of St. Aubyn, into a marriage that will allow her to become mistress of Kulhaven once again. She thinks to avenge the wrong done to her family, but she soon learns not everything is as it seems with her new husband. In a maze of danger, secrets and intrigue, Mara and Hadrian will have to find a way to work together in a plot that could change the course of history, and see a "merry" prince restored to his thr
Romance Historical [Oliver-Heber Books, On Sale: March 11, 2025, e-Book , / ]
Jaclyn Reding’s award-winning, bestselling historical and contemporary romance novels have been translated into nearly a dozen languages. A National Readers’ Choice Awards finalist, and Romance Writers of America RITA Award nominee, she is the proud, proud mom of two grown sons, and willing minion to an elderly cairn terrier and a tuxedo cat. Home is with her family in New England, in an antique farmhouse that she suspects is held together purely by old wallpaper and cobwebs. A lifelong equestrian, she spends her free time in the saddle, going over plotlines and character arcs with her confidant and toughest critic, a very opinionated retired racehorse named Brunello.
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