by Kris Kennedy
“If I were a man, sir,” she whispered back, “you would already be dead.”
Goddammit.
It was his dagger, one of many strapped to his body. In the mêlée, she’d succeeded in getting it free. In the distraction of staring into her eyes, trying to ascertain if she were mad, she’d succeeded in lifting it to his throat.
A rush went through him, hot and intense. “You are left-handed,” he observed grimly.
“When necessary.”
A humming filled his stomach, deep and low. He’d come for battle, and that this slim audacious woman had given it to him, undefended, in a hopeless situation, outmatched and overpowered, bespoke great boldness. Of a kind he’d not seen in a long time. Either that, or idiocy.
She did not appear idiotic. Of course, she’d not appeared reckless either, out in the bailey. She’d seemed calm, clever, pale, and beautiful. Then she’d launched her body into his and turned into a bold, roaring-mad hellcat.
Perhaps everything in her was latent. Who knew, idiocy might rear its head at any moment. Or more boldness.
Although it was difficult to see how she could become more bold than she was at the moment.
Small wisps of hair brushed beside her mouth. Aodh knew battle and fights; her lips ought to be dry with fear, parched and tight. But they were wet. Parted and wet, her chin up, her cheeks a sort of hot red. Her slim body was pressed hard against his, female curves barely detectable through his armor. But the vivid flush of her was clear. Her mad, energizing, fearless self was the clearest thing on his mind.
That and the blade pressed against his neck.
He laughed low in his throat. It had been a long time since he’d felt this hum inside him, this energized, this vital. He leaned closer until his mouth was an inch from hers, until he felt the honed edge of his own blade indent the flesh of his throat.
“Do it, lass,” he whispered. “Or drop it. Now.”
Chapter Five
MAD IRISHRY.
The thought pounded through her brain with each beat of her heart. Her insides rattled like a winter leaf. This moment was constructed of madness. A pit of madness.
The sensible voice inside her, the one she relied upon to restrain her from acts of recklessness just such as this, had utterly failed her. She was alone with the bright fire of passion. It had taken over like an ember tossed back onto a dry forest bed.
“Do not push me,” she warned in a shaky voice.
“Oh, but I will.” He shifted on his booted feet, pushed his hips harder against hers, until she felt a part of the wall. A part of him. “You lifted a blade to me, Katarina. I’m going to push you hard.”
Fear spiked through her. “That is unwise.”
“Wisdom has never been my strongest trait. Tell me, how do you foresee this ending? Shall I help you think it through?”
She jerked her head in an abbreviated shake. “Stop.”
“You will either kill me or be very sorry you tried. Neither ends well for you, as my men have taken over the castle.”
“One ends poorly for you,” she pointed out.
“Then do it.”
“Y-you are not in a position to issue commands, sirrah.”
But he was. Even with a blade held against his throat, he was a mighty presence, and her hand was growing sweaty around the hilt.
Her breath was coming too fast, her heart hammering too hard, her hand—the one she’d punched him with—throbbed as if she’d punched a wall, not a man. Steel before and stone behind, she was, most literally, between a rock and a very hard place.
He was all wild thing, untethered and unafraid. His hair had been shaved close on the sides and back, growing long down the middle, banded at the base of his neck, so he looked familiar and yet utterly foreign. His face was all cut planes of male fury, hard cheekbones, dark brows above the ice-blue eyes pinned on her. She felt like she was staring at a flame burning inside a shard of ice.
“The blade is exceptionally sharp,” he assured her, his voice a rumble of cold, calm advice. “If you press the slightest bit, you shall see results.”
“Then stop pushing me,” she almost begged.
“No.”
She began to tremble outwardly. The rush of fury was fading; fear would soon settle in. Terror would come on its heels. And then, sanity, sense, reason, restraint.
The column of his neck, strongly muscled, pressed against the blade. Sheer hard will was the only thing that kept her from lowering it, for the moment she did, she was a dead woman.
His icy gaze roamed her face. “I see ‘I shall do it’ in your eyes.”
Her hand tightened on the slippery hilt. “Indeed I shall.”
“Ah, but I see a thousand ‘I shall do its’ in your eyes, and yet, you do not.”
Swoosh. The blood coursing through her body washed cold, then hot. How had he done that, seen straight through to the heart of her?
“Are you going to drop it?”
“Are you going to kill me?”
Another mad smile. “Drop it and see.”
She squeezed the blade tighter, because that was terrifying.
Then, God save her, he leaned in closer yet, until she felt his breath on her cheek and he put his mouth by her ear and said, “I dare you.”
Dare? “To what?” she whispered back, as if they were in secret council and this was his whispered advice.
For a beat of her heart, he remained still. Then, like some animal, like some untamed, unbroken, undaunted sensual being, he ran his tongue across her ear, his breath hot and male.
She felt struck by lightning. Burnt, charged, dangerous. Whatever had been coursing through her before became a flood. Hot and raging.
She flung her head and leapt backward, but there was nowhere to go, and as she rebounded between his rock-hard body and the stone wall, she dropped the blade.
In a single move, he kicked it away and clamped a fist around her wrist, pinning it to the wall high above her head. He caught her other wrist and held it low beside their hips, their bodies still pressed together. Then he went suddenly, absolutely, terrifyingly motionless.
She felt the beat of his heart against her chest—it was not racing as fast as hers, but it was a strong, hard beat. She saw the vein on his neck thudding.
She had no idea what a warrior might feel inclined to do at such a moment—hanging; a simple, swift beheading—but none of them occurred. Nothing happened, nothing but the tension slowly rising through her body the way a flood tide rises on a riverbed. She was awash in awareness of him, pinning hers from chest to knee, in the way he was watching her with inscrutable eyes, in the hard, absolute motionlessness of his body.
She was doomed. Walter had been saying it for seven years, and now all the predictions were coming true.
Boots sounded on the stairs, then stopped short. A loud male gasp sliced through the stony entry chamber. “Dear God in heaven.”
Walter.
“My lady, what have you done?” It was barely short of a wail. “Did I not tell you this habit of the blades would turn out poorly?”
Aodh Mac Con moved his gaze to the steward. “They are not her blades.”
“My lord,” was Walter’s next attempt to reinsert sanity into the moment, and she had to admire him for it. “I beg you, sir, go gentle with her.”
She felt the Irishman’s hard body still against hers. “Gentle with her?”
She had the oddest moment of wanting to smile.
She was losing her mind.
Walter cleared his throat. “Sir, I will make her stand down—”
The Irishman cocked a brow. “Will you? How?”
Walter fell silent, struck dumb. A feat only a barbarian could achieve. A perverse bolt of satisfaction surged through Katarina.
“My lord, take heed,” Walter spoke in a confidential tone. “There are reasons for my lady’s mania. ’Twas a murrain in the sheep last spring that almost wiped out the flock, then the fire less than a twelvemonth past, and all those
Spaniards washing up on our shores, and…well, in truth, sir, it has been a most trying year for us all, Lady Katarina more than most, of course, as she is a woman and as such, perhaps not as well equipped as you or I…”
Walter’s voice drifted off in momentary pity for her less equipped nature. “But she has never done this sort of thing before,” he concluded carefully. Implying she’d done other sorts of things.
She felt an urge to stab him. With the Irishman’s blade.
Aodh Mac Con’s face turned down to hers. “He thinks you ill-equipped to handle murrains.”
“I am not fond of them,” she admitted in a whisper.
And there it was again, the faintest hint of a smile.
By the stairs, Walter tutted in an impotent, clerical way. “Sir Bertrand, I beg you, if you and I could but speak—”
“He is not Bertrand of Bridge,” Katarina said loudly, but her voice sounded as if it was coming from a long way off. “His name is Aodh Mac Con, and his men have taken over our castle.”
Finally, finally, Walter stopped talking. He might have stopped breathing, the silence was so complete. Then he gasped, and boots scraped against the stony ground, and then…
“He is running,” the Irishman said, sounding surprised.
A strange bubble rose up inside Katarina, an iridescent sort of lightness. Buoyant. Dreamlike. Perhaps she was going into shock. “He is frightened.”
“So were you.”
She shook her head the slightest bit. “No. But it shall come.”
He never looked away from her. His eyes were so blue, so intensely, palely blue, so utterly focused on her, it was like being immersed in a sea. An ocean of consideration.
It was the oddest moment, so quiet, so…connected, his body pressed to hers as they conversed quietly about her cowardly steward. The Irishman’s hard body had taken away all her choices. She was shorn of responsibility as she’d not been since she was eight, and in consequence, she felt…like a soap bubble.
She became aware they were breathing in unison.
Shock, most certainly.
Then she heard Walter cry out, “Oh sweet and merciful Lord,” and a contingent of Irishman thundered into the entryway, foaming up the stairs like a steel river.
One of the warriors bounded up from behind and stopped short, perhaps taken aback by the sight of his master pinning the lady of the castle against a wall, an assortment of blades scattered on the ground around them.
“Aodh?” the warrior said carefully.
Aodh Mac Con tossed a reply over his shoulder. “What news?”
His captain took a cautious step forward. “We’ve taken the keep.”
“The walls?”
“Our men are stationed the entire length. The gatehouse and all the outbuildings are secured.”
“The garrison?”
His captain shook his head. “Must be in hiding. We found only nine, and a handful of youths.”
Aodh Mac Con’s gaze honed back in on her. “Where is he?”
She swallowed. “He?”
“The tenth of your garrison.”
Self-disgust burned in her throat. She’d told him that. Still, she hesitated, debating whether to withhold any more specific information regarding Wicker’s whereabouts. Might it give him a chance to escape? Rally a counterattack?
Get himself killed.
“He is in the cellars,” she said, her voice flat. “Bringing up barrels of wine. For the celebration.”
The irony seemed to elude him. He cast orders over his shoulder. “Retrieve him, Réalta Farraige,” he said, saying the Irish words, sea star, as if they were a name, elongating the vowels into a sensual rumble, so the latter sounded a bit like barrage, which was entirely fitting and quite unnerving. “Have the men search the outbuildings and upper floors. Round up all the servants.”
The captain nodded. “The others are being held in the yard, at blade point.” Aodh didn’t move. From the corner of her eye, Katarina saw the captain’s gaze drift in her direction. “We await your instructions, Aodh.”
So, this barrage of a captain was more than a captain. He was a friend.
A ripple moved through Aodh Mac Con’s body, like a statue awakening. He stepped back, releasing her from the wall, leaving her strangely cold without his armored body pressed up to hers.
“Take her ladyship to the solar.” He waved a young man of his guard forward and turned away, and was immediately ensconced in a phalanx of armed men. They moved toward the door like a flock of birds, boot heels clattering.
Katarina stared after them, stunned and reeling without the support of the wall or his armored body. The young guardsman put his hand on her elbow and turned her toward the stairs.
Behind them, Walter’s voice rang out with vague encouragements. “My lady, do not lose courage! If ever it has been needful for English blood to come to your aid, now is that time,” he called, then huffed, “Leave off me,” to someone who was evidently restraining him.
“Heed me, Katarina,” he called again. “Many’s the Englishman who’s found himself in straits even more dire than these, and though you are but a woman, even you can attend the need for restraint and—”
“Oh, Walter, please do shut up,” she said mildly, not looking around. One could only take so much, after all, and the inner voice of reason had fallen blessedly silent.
So did Walter.
It was all oddly…satisfying.
Chapter Six
AS HE CROSSED the bailey, his friend and captain at his side, a strange quietness rode under the more savage thrill Aodh now, finally, felt at accomplishing the task no one thought he’d attempt: take the castle the Queen of England would not give him.
Aodh was an opportunist. From the moment of his birth to this one, his every move had been aimed at gaining the next foothold, and a bloody climb it had been. Rardove was the prize.
Sent out in the world almost twenty years ago with a single mission—to regain his ancestral homeland—he’d meant to do great things, and by those deeds win favor and honor, and return home, Rardove in his fist.
Over the years, Aodh had seen much and done much, most of it hard and brutal, the sort that did not make for suppertime conversation. First as one of Elizabeth’s sea dogs, then as courtier and councilor, Aodh had grown adept at both war and court life. At politics and power, and the furtive maneuverings of mind and man. Such skills were both requisite to and consequence of being favored by Queen Bess.
Rardove had been his father’s dream. And his grandfather’s. And his grandfather’s grandfather’s. And so on, marching back down the family line for centuries. Everyone had dreamed of returning as lord of Rardove.
And now here he stood, within the walls, feeling…cold inside.
He glanced up at the castle walls. His castle walls.
The battlements loomed over the surrounding countryside, forty feet of stone to the top of the walls, the towers rising higher yet, all painted a vibrant cobalt blue and white. Pennants snapped wetly at intervals along the battlements.
Still, nothing like the mythic images his father had drawn in his mind. It was just a wall. Not the castle of Finn MacCumhail, or the fortress of Conchobor Mac Nessa. Nothing great, certes nothing out of the mists of legend. Just rubble and stone with frightened people inside.
Except Katarina. No doubt she had been frightened, but she’d come at him like a warrior. Like a berserker in a coif. A beautiful, nay, carnally made woman who, in a moment of great fear, had attacked instead of fled and made his heart beat more fiercely than it had for many a year.
At his side, his captain walked in companionable silence. His proper name was as simple and unfitting as his origins: John. His father had been a poor peasant farmer, but even at thirteen, he’d held ambitions higher than dirt in furrows, and Aodh had rechristened him after he’d dragged Aodh’s broken body out of the sea, pumped the water from his lungs, and saved his life, then latched his plow to Aodh’s ambitions and followed him up. Shor
tened to Ré most of the time, it was as succinct as his English name, but it meant a great deal more.
Now, after sixteen years of a friendship that had included bloody flashes of battle, interspersed by the low-burning flame of courtly intrigue, there was little that needed saying. Each would watch the other’s back, be there when needed, and say a thing only if it needed saying.
“By any chance, did the lady of the castle have a blade at your throat?” Ré asked, breaking the companionable silence.
This, then, apparently was a thing that needed saying. “Aye, she did.”
“By any chance, was it your blade?”
“I believe it was.”
“Ah. Because that’s what it looked to be. Your blades. Saw them both.”
“Your eyesight is remarkable.”
Ré grinned. He was not one to resist many things, neither danger nor dare. It had been thus since the moment they’d met, and was partly why they were so close—both of them saw the edge of the cliff as a thing to skirt very close. Occasionally to dive over.
And so, Ré stepped closer to this particular cliff. “What I can see, friend, is that we’re in for trouble if you cannot keep your blade out of a woman’s hands.”
Oh, the innuendoes. They looked at each other as they walked.
“So, how did she—”
Aodh blew out an impatient breath. “I was distracted.”
Ré looked delighted by this. “Were you? That is fascinating.”
“By Cormac,” Aodh explained, dispersing blame.
“Is that so? For I did not see him—”
“He had been there, a moment earlier. Stuck his head through the north door.”
“I see. So you were chatting with Cormac, and the lady of the castle put a blade to your throat. Entirely understandable. Could have happened to anyone.”
Aodh looked over. “Must we?”
Ré considered him with a happy grin. “We must.”
Aodh sighed. “She surprised me.”
“Right. And how did a lass in a gown do that?”
“She punched me in the jaw. Then kneed me in the bollocks.”
This granted him a full minute of relief, since that was how long Ré spent laughing, rendering him incapable of posing any more questions. Aodh took the respite to debate whether he actually required Ré’s services any longer.