by Kris Kennedy
“They look familiar, Jacks,” muttered one of the soldiers. “That green stamp on the sack.”
“Aye,” agreed the leader. “They do at that.”
“O’Mallery’s,” replied Finian in a tight voice.
Cold chills ripped up and down Senna’s chest, like invisible, saw-edged stripes. This was going to end badly.
“Gaugin’s,” countered the soldier, looking at Finian slowly. A corner of his mouth curled up. “The fur trader in Coledove. Them’s his sacks. And he don’t lend ’em out.”
“And that’s just where we’re headed,” Finian retorted. The tension spiraled thicker.
“Take them,” Senna said hurriedly. Panic jabbed at her belly with cold, stabbing pokes. She pushed her toe into the sack she’d dropped to the ground. “Take them to Gaugin for us, why don’t you?”
The leader looked at her, then back at Finian ever more slowly. “I think we’ll take you instead.” A brief pause. “O’Melaghlin.”
Finian knew a moment where his heart stopped beating, for the first time in a dozen years. He didn’t pause to consider ‘why now?’
He kicked out his boot and stepped in front of Senna, unslung his sword and, before the leader could even lift his own sword, Finian had sliced his through the soldier’s belly. Below the jutting iron nasal of his helm, his face looked surprised, then he toppled over, dead.
Finian spun to deal with the others with deft, rapid sweeps of his blade. His mind closed down during the battle, as always; it was all silence inside, narrowing attention and the feel of the earth under his boots.
But, in complete opposition to ‘always,’ he was for the first time aware of a person who wasn’t about to bring a blade down on his skull. Senna’s lithe form bobbed just outside their ring of battle, in danger, handling…was that a knife?
God save them.
He snapped his attention back and, with grim focus, absolutely overpowered the wiry young Englishmen, taking them down with quick, merciful strokes. And when the four of them lay like downed scarecrows around him, he held his sword hanging by his side, breathing rapidly.
Blood surged through his limbs, wicked fast pounding, urging him on, go, go, get more, now. Climb the side of a cliff, swim to the Aran Islands. It was at these times he knew he was an animal first, whatever God intended for his soul.
Gradually his breathing slowed. When his hearing returned, too, he looked over at Senna.
She was standing, mouth open, as if to make a very important point. Her chest was heaving, her breath short and swift. In her right hand she held a blade by its carved hilt, still hovering at shoulder height, as if she were about to throw it.
“I—I. Y—you. But, th—they…”
She was babbling.
“Ye’re all right,” he murmured, keeping his speech low and calm, to bring her back from the fringes of panic. “We’re well. ’Tis over.”
Her gaze was locked on him, wide, staring. She still held the blade, shivering, near her ear. He reached out and slowly pushed it down.
“Ye didn’t have to use it,” he said quietly, calmly. “Ye’re a’right.”
“I would have,” she whispered, vehement. Her voice shook. “I would have used it. I just didn’t want to…strike you. By accident.”
“My thanks.” He looked down at the soldiers, scattered in a semicircle, bleeding in the sun. Rardove’s men. Soon, someone would find the bodies. They had a day now, maybe half again, until the baron knew they were not headed north, but south.
Would he figure out they were going to Hutton’s Leap? Had Turlough, his captured kinsman, finally broken and revealed their mission to retrieve the dye manual? No way to know. And it didn’t matter. Nothing would stop him.
“Let’s go,” he said.
They left the sacks of skins. Someone would be along. And whomever it was, Finian had no desire to meet them.
Chapter 24
“You saw them where?”
Rardove repeated the question slowly, as if the newly sworn-in soldier was stupid. Which, Pentony decided, he probably was. They usually were. Stupid enough to swear fealty to Rardove for a position or some land.
Some might say the same about him, of course. But then, Pentony was doing penance.
“By the river. He was Irish, for certain. But she was, too, my lord,” the young soldier added weakly. He looked at his equally shamefaced companion, then tugged on the belt around his waist. The belt came with the hauberk, their lord’s livery as their mark and first payment for service. It looked cracked around the edges, old. “She was Irish. I’d swear to it.”
“Would you?” Rardove snapped. “Was she comely?”
“Oh, as anything.”
“Red hair? Long?”
“Well, mores like yellowy-red, all curvy—”
“That’s my goddamned dye-witch!”
The soldier’s pimply face was not glowing red just from the sun he and his companion had endured all afternoon on their lark by the river, derelict in their duties at the keep. But what a gift, this truancy. Pentony was as certain as Rardove: these two sluggards had encountered O’Melaghlin and Senna.
“What were they doing?” Rardove demanded.
“Stealing a boat.”
Rardove stopped his furious circuit while behind the table. He leaned across its wooden width. “And you didn’t stop them? You let them just”—he flicked his fingers—“sail away, to go downstream and kill four Englishmen?”
“We thought they were delivering goods for the old man,” the other unhelpfully piped in. Rardove’s eyes snapped to him. “We thought she was his flaming doxy.”
The baron went still. A muscle ticked by his jaw. “What did you say?”
The soldier swallowed. “No offense, my lord. Now that we know…’Tis just she was, was…”
His voice trailed off.
“She was what?” The baron’s voice was thin and low pitched. Pentony felt the urge to cover his eyes.
“Aw, bollocks,” the soldier muttered. “She was sucking the Irishman’s cock, and they—”
Rardove exploded. He bent his knees and upended the huge oaken table with a roar. A jug of wine and half a dozen scrolled parchments careened into the air, held a moment, then came crashing back down into the rushes Rardove was now stomping across, hurling curses and objects through the air as he went. The jug smashed, and pottery shards skittered everywhere. The table came crashing back to the ground, too heavy to be overturned completely. It trembled on all four legs.
“God’s bloody bones!” Rardove punched the door of a wardrobe that held parchment and inks and wax for seals. It bounded open, the iron lock cranking wildly. He spun back and tried to yank the door off its hinges, then flung himself away, stalking across the room.
“Goddamned whore!” He picked up one of the fallen earthenware jugs and threw it back onto the ground. It shattered into a hundred pieces. “She will kneel at my feet and beg—” He smashed his hand into a tallow candle hanging on the wall. It fell, still aflame. Pentony put out a toe and quietly extinguished it. “She will bend that godforsaken head and—”
Rardove went still and spun to the soldiers. “They were going downstream?”
The soldiers, now utterly pale and huddled together like ducklings, nodded energetically. “Downstream, indeed. Far downstream.”
“Just so, milord. Downstream.”
Rardove looked sharply at Pentony. “South. They’re going south.”
Pentony nodded.
“But, why?” His voice quieted, as if on some inward journey. He felt for the edge of the bench and sat. “Why south? O’Fáil is to the north. What is O’Melaghlin up to?”
A few candles sputtered in their holders on the walls, casting pale, angular wedges of light across the room. One still huddled on the table, plunged deep enough in a puddle of tallow to have withstood the earlier quake. Its small, wavering light was almost depressing; it had no chance against the surrounding darkness.
Rardove stared at i
t, then cursed quietly.
“He’s going to meet with the spy Red.” His voice was hushed, perhaps in awe. “O’Melaghlin’s taken over the mission. God’s teeth. But…where? Where were they to meet? South. What lies south? Near enough for a foot journey, safe enough for the Irishry near my borders?”
His forearms were laid flat across the width of the huge oak table, a foot apart. The candle flame sucked and sputtered a few feet away as he sat, deep in thought. Then he lifted his head with a smile.
“Is not the abbess at Hutton’s Leap an Irishwoman?”
But they both already knew the answer to that.
Rardove actually threw back his head and laughed. Another candle flickered out. Only one burned now, a fat tallow one, guttering in its iron holder on the wall.
Rardove called for one of his captains and gave his orders. “Any guests of the abbey, be they cleric or lay, round them up. Question them, break them. Find out if one is the elusive Red. Then bring him to me. Be quick about it. I expect you back by Sext on the morrow.”
The guard nodded and spun on his wooden heel. Turning back, Rardove sailed a brief look over the young, derelict soldiers. “Return the armor and find another lord.”
Their mouths dropped open. “But sir—”
Rardove turned on them. “You were not at your posts. You were playing at shuttlecocks, jacking off while an escaped prisoner sailed by your stupid faces. You do not know Finian fycking O’Melaghlin when he’s standing right in front of you. You are of no use to me. Begone. Or stay,” he added, turning away, “and if either of you are here by couvre-feu, it shall be your last.”
Pentony watched as they made their dazed way out, escorted by one of Rardove’s faceless helmed guards. The baron had taken to keeping his personal guard with him at all times, even about the castle. Perhaps that was wise. There might be need for such caution. Especially if Balffe succeeded in bringing Lady Senna back.
Rardove reached for the candle on the wall and pinched it out.
Chapter 25
“Why is it so dark?” Senna mumbled under her breath as she tripped over yet another tree root. But darkness wasn’t the problem. It was her body.
Finian had healed her fingers, but the rest of her felt as if it had undergone a beating. Her hand was at the small of her back, cradling it as they scrambled up yet another hill. Her hips felt like they’d been stretched on a rack, or at least what she imagined such a torture would feel like. Her thighs actually burned, as if hot coals were ablaze under her skin. And her back…best not even to think of it.
“I believe I am somewhat the worse for wear,” she said.
This time Finian replied, which he had not been doing for the last hour of hiking. Still, though, he was exceedingly curt, which he had been ever since the river.
“Ye’ll be better off by tomorrow,” he said. Curtly. “Three days is the charm. Yer body will get used to this manner of traveling.”
“Ha.” She flung knotted curls over her shoulder, spitting a tendril of hair out of her mouth.
He glanced over his shoulder. “Ye did fine back there.”
Still curt, but communicative. She did not take her eyes off the treacherous, root-strewn ground below. “So did you. I had no notion you could mimic a man from Shropshire.”
“I don’t often find the need.”
“No,” she agreed ruefully. “I expect not.”
He grunted. Senna scowled. Back to that, were they?
They walked for a long time, and Senna soon found that ignoring her painful muscles was one thing, but ignoring her growling stomach was quite another. By sunset her belly was reprimanding her at regular intervals.
She hadn’t filched half enough food for them. She’d planned a quick trip to Dublin, not this trek across the marchlands. Cheese and dried meat were good, but they were almost gone, and she was hungry for real food, and above all, fresh meat.
He turned back regularly to watch for her welfare. Once he pulled her up the other side of a steep stream embankment, another time pushed her away from a deep crevasse she was about to blunder into.
“Sooth, woman,” he growled from a few feet ahead after one such incident. “Can ye not keep your eyes open?”
“Sooth, woman,” She mimicked his impatient tone, then stumbled and stubbed her toe. She hopped around on one foot, muttering.
He didn’t look back and he didn’t stop walking, but he said over his shoulder, “’Tis yer penalty for being contrary.”
She glared at him. “’Tis, is it?”
“Aye.”
Too weary to summon the strength for a good inhalation, she certainly could not come up with a good, biting retort. She yanked a tree branch out of her way then let it go. It slapped her bent backside as she walked under. She rubbed her nose and blundered on, each step a leaden effort, eyeing his back with an evil glare.
Long dark hair swung down past his shoulders. His chin was up, his shoulders back, and his gaze moved in a constant sweep of the land. The plated muscles of his thighs worked tirelessly, eating up the miles between them and a modicum of safety. He hopped over a downed tree trunk and, pushing lightly on the balls of his feet, leapt the width of a small creek. Landing without a sound in the thick, fecund earth on the far side, he turned and extended a hand for her.
Accursed Irish.
She glared at his upright figure across the creek. Her spine was curved in an endless, creaking bend. Her feet were screaming, her thighs burning, and if he did anything else agile or energetic, she would cuff him. Simply reach out and smack him on the back of the head.
She crawled over the greening stump, her nose pressed into the moss. Disdaining his help, she leapt over the creek, tripped as she took off, and landed smack in the center of the babbling stream, wetting herself to the knee.
Cursed Irish.
He said nothing as she slogged up beside him, squishing and squeaking. Slanting evening light sliced between the tree branches and lit up the contours of his impassive face, but as soon as she opened her mouth, he shook his head and turned away.
Some time later, he finally halted them. “We’ll camp here for a meal,” he announced curtly.
All in all, he was being very curt, which she considered highly unfair. She was the rejected party. Curtness was hers.
She sat down beside the pit as he gathered wood. Sleep would solve a few of her problems. For a little while.
But when Finian sat down nearby, even sleep became a lost cause. “Let me see yer fingers,” he said. Again, curtly. He extended his hand.
She retracted hers, holding it to her chest. “They are hale.”
He regarded her with a disheartening mixture of disgust and perceptiveness. “Senna—”
“Grand.”
Had her teeth just gritted?
“What was that?” he said, looking around.
She glanced over her shoulder, as if seeking the source of the strange, creaking noise. “Perhaps another bird. Some are ground dwelling, build their nests in rocks and such.”
His gaze swung back around slowly. He pinned her with a long look, then got to his feet. “I’ll have us some food before we hike out tonight.”
“Tonight?” Her voice curved up high with incredulity. Horror. “We walk more this night?”
He paused in the act of bending to sweep up the bow he’d set on the ground. “Ye had a different plan?”
“Sleep?”
He cradled the smooth curving wood of the bow in hand. “Not ours yet. Just a few more hours.” He turned away.
“Where are you going?”
“Hunting.” He started out of the clearing, into the woods beyond.
“Wait. I can help,” she called, furious to be so expendable, to be treated in such an offhand manner. To be so…left behind.
He drew to a halt, his wide shoulders almost, if she was seeing correctly, slumping. He turned around slowly. “What did ye say?”
“I can help.” She gestured toward his bow. “Hunt.”
He extended his hand in a mockery of politeness, allowing her to go first.
She swept haughtily by. “I’ve no notion what this mood is about, Finian, but I do wish you’d scratch whatever itch is causing it, for your mood is most foul.”
Before she could finish the L in foul, he had her arm locked in his grip and her body backed up against a tree.
“Scratch my itch, is it?” His eyes glittered dangerously, and Senna recalled he was a warrior first.
Then he spoke again, and in the onrush of deep, tempting fear, she understood he was a man first and last. A prime specimen of raw masculinity, virile, potent, hunting.
“Ye’re my itch, Senna. I want to scratch ye. No notion?” He stepped closer, his fingers gripping her arm like a vise. “Shall I give ye a notion? Shall I give ye some small inking of what I want to do to ye?”
And like that, she was panting, her head spinning. One of his hands was on her arm, the other fisted against the tree over her head. In the dimming light, he was all solid, dark outline, his body taut, looming over her, closing in on her, dark, male energy about to consume.
He bent close to her ear. “Shall I tell ye, Senna, what I want?”
She whimpered something. Was it yes? Please? Whatever it was, he mustn’t stop. She would die from the want of him.
“I want to run my hands up your side, take ye in my mouth. I’ll start wherever ye want. I’ll kneel down before yer body and worship ye.”
Her knees weakened. He caught her and his hand moved just as he’d said, up her ribs, so tightly she felt he was lashing her with rope. His powerful thighs bunched and he pressed forward.
“I want to taste ye. Can I do that, Senna? Will ye let me do that?”
“Oh, Jésu,” she whispered.
“Can I slide my hand up yer leg? Can I feel how wet ye are? Can I be inside ye? I want to be inside ye. Hard.” His voice was like dark, perfect fury. He pushed his hand across her belly. “Do ye want me inside ye?”