by Kris Kennedy
“And I’d always been told it was the reckless ones,” she countered, having no other reply to hand.
“You were misinformed, my lady. Recklessness gets you admirers.”
“And enemies, who then get you dead,” she said tartly.
“Only if you are stubborn too.” His gaze sailed down her body, as if examining it for signs of stubbornness.
A sizzling thrill arced through her. “Some call it loyalty.”
His gaze came back up. “Others call it idiocy.”
She sniffed. “I see. So you will deal with any devil.”
He grinned, a lopsided, sensual, self-approving thing. “Aye, I’ve dealt with England. What more proof does one need?”
“And yet live on,” she observed darkly.
He bent closer, his face angled slightly away, his mouth directly beside her ear. “As do you, my lady, and recklessness marks you like a brand.”
The breath caught in her throat. He turned on his heel and strode into the inner chamber, saying over his shoulder, “Wine?”
She blinked. “Wine?”
“Wine. ’Tis a drink.”
“Of course. Wine,” she said stupidly. “Indeed. I should very much like wine.” A large, potent pot of it. Perhaps two.
Why was he not chaining her to the walls?
She followed him into the inner chamber and stopped short in amazement.
A monstrous fire roared, orange and red and blue flames dancing merrily in the gaping maw of the hearth, so different from the low range of flames that flickered across the single log Katarina allowed herself each day. On the walls were hung tapestries both rich and thick, wool and silk weaves that seemed to undulate in the light of the conflagration.
A far cry from her threadbare, much-loved tapestries. On the floor lay a variety of plush pelts, and along the walls, every oil lamp was ablaze. The room practically pulsed with light and heat.
What a shockingly profligate approach to warmth. Not at all how Katarina managed heat.
Aodh Mac Con stood at the table that dominated one side of the room, pouring a stream of silky-looking wine into a silver goblet.
He saw her standing by the door, and lifted the cup in the air. “You’ll have to come in to get it.”
She took a step, then another. He extended the wine into the space between them, hand overturned to cup the bowl. The filigreed stem rested between his thick fingers, which were dark against the delicate silver. The long, winding illustrations adorning his wrist and hand snaked up several of his fingers like beautiful snakes.
“Do not be frightened,” he said quietly. “’Tis naught but wine. I’ve no intention of harming you. Yet.”
A roguish smile accompanied this minimally reassuring statement. But the mockery in it was sufficient to help her regain her wits.
She made a little sound in her throat. “You underestimate me, sir.”
“To think an angry Irishman would scare you?”
“To think death would.”
His smile grew to encompass both sides of his mouth. The goblet remained in the air, a silent challenge. He had an uncommonly handsome smile. How unfortunate.
She reached for the goblet, careful not to touch the winding dark flames that licked across his hand and fingers. She closed her fingers around the stem and tugged.
He did not let go.
She looked up, surprised to find she wasn’t surprised, but…prepared.
Surprise did not haunt his features either. So, neither of them was surprised. And neither of them was letting go.
No doubt there were several paths of wisdom through this moment. Unfortunately, Katarina knew none of them. Wisdom had fled. It was as if she’d been blindfolded, dropped in a foreign land, and told to reach the shoreline. Diplomacy and experience meant nothing; previous knowledge was of no use. There was only Aodh Mac Con and his desires, and how she met them.
Something small and fiery charged through her, a miniature lightning bolt.
Surely, clinging to the wine cup just now was not wise.
Yet she did not let go. She could not. Her fingers were locked on the goblet’s stem, her gaze on his. There developed the distinct possibility they might go to battle right here, right now, over its gilded rim.
“If you ever take my blade again, lass, death will be the least of your worries,” he said amiably.
“I shall recall that to mind.”
“Do,” he urged, then uncurled his fingers, releasing the cup. “’Ware,” he murmured. “’Tis strong.”
It was an ambiguous victory, but what could she do but claim the spoils? “I consider myself warned,” she said, and lifted the cup to drink his wine, his soft, exquisite—St. Vincent, it is velvety—wine.
A half smile played at his mouth as he watched her, one dark brow slightly raised. It was not so much a challenge as…something else.
Which, unfortunately, triggered a something else inside of her, not unlike the reverberations from a struck bell.
Papa would have called it anger, Mamma would have named it pride, but Katarina knew precisely what it was: danger.
She drank the entire cup of wine without stopping, slowly, holding his ice-blue gaze over its rim the entire time. She drank it down until there was nothing left inside but dregs. Exceptional dregs.
The half smile became a whole smile, and he nodded slowly. As if she’d said something. Or rather, told him something.
That could not be good.
She set the cup down on the table, careful not to come any closer to his body, while demonstrating she did not care how close she came to his body. He rested a hip against the table and watched.
“That was speedily done,” he said, a faintly admiring tone to his words. “More swiftly than I’ve ever seen a cup of wine downed.” He reflected a moment. “Even by Cormac.”
“I am sure your Cormac has other talents,” she said modestly. “You’ll be pleased to hear I am also quite skilled with a cup of ale.”
He laughed, a low, entirely masculine sound. “I am impressed.”
She waved her hand. “Do not be. It is not a terribly useful talent.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I would say that depends entirely upon the occasion.”
She studied him. “Would you? And upon what occasions do you deem it wise to render yourself witless, Aodh Mac Con?”
Certes not the wisest thing to say, but then, this moment was not made for wisdom. It was parry and thrust, stand and deliver or die. That was life over the Pale in Ireland: the edge of a knife.
Especially when one had an Irish warrior standing in one’s bedchamber.
One who was…smiling at her.
He stood, hip against the table, arms crossed, head tilted slightly to the side, not answering, just…watching her, as a hawk might do, if hawks smiled.
Why, this was just how young Bran had stood in the solar, absent the hawkish smile. It was unsurprising, and doubtless unconscious. Aodh Mac Con emanated a presence like air or light. Elemental. The sort men wished to emulate, the kind one absorbed without intent, the way a sheet laid on the grass absorbs the morning dew, or a rag tossed onto a spill absorbs the wine.
Water. Wine. Aodh.
A flush moved up her cheeks. She had to physically force herself not to cover them with her fingertips as he slid his gaze down her body, forehead to boots, a swift, masculine appraisal. Heat trailed behind, searing everywhere his gaze had touched.
“It depends,” was all he said.
He’d been correct; the wine was quite strong. Katarina had the smallest, waviest feeling of being out of her senses.
“I am unsurprised you find such a thing relative, sir,” she said. “Most folk, though, take a certain comfort in knowing that coups of castles are almost always a poor occasion upon which to render oneself witless.”
A dark brow arched up. “Do they now?” He moved his gaze pointedly to the wine cup she’d emptied in a single downing. “Then why did you just do so?”
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nbsp; Her eyebrows lifted. “Aodh Mac Con, you do not think me witless now, do you?”
A smile of something, perhaps delight?, crossed his face. “Ahh,” he exhaled, as if a new clue had just been discovered in a treasure hunt. His eyes were all but dancing. “I do not know. You did take my blade.”
“And you did take my castle.”
“Ah.” His gaze roamed her face. “Was that unwise of me?”
“Exceptionally.”
“And yet I have done many unwise things in my time.”
“As have I.”
“How unwise?”
“Enough to almost get me kicked out of Ireland,” she said without thinking. How could one think properly, locked in his ice-blue eyes?
“That would be bad indeed. Mine was enough to bring me back again. And since then, lass, how has your wisdom fared?” Rough, low-pitched, dangerous, the questions were like tiny tools chipping away at her composure.
“At times, ’tis practically nonexistent,” she admitted in a whisper.
A slow, dangerous smile crossed his face. “Good.”
“My steward would not agree how fare my men?”
She threw the question out the way an anchor is thrown off a ship, so it became a single unstoppable sentence, trying to slow down this thing he’d set in motion, this river comprised of Aodh Mac Con holding her gaze, talking about wisdom and the things they had done and the things they might do, and how dangerous it all could be.
He pushed away from the table and leaned over her so she had to tip her head back. His mouth was bare inches away, his tongue so close, so able to do the things it had done before. He will take me now, she thought wildly, her body charged, and she, standing here with her lips parted, not to receive him—not at all, that would be madness—but to draw air into her suddenly breathless body.
He smiled just above her mouth and said, “Stubborn,” then turned away, striding into the room.
She tripped backward a step, almost reeling at the…nothingness. The absence. At the way her expectations had not been met.
“Stubborn?” she echoed. “My men are stubborn?”
He made his way deeper into the room, touching small things as he went: the edge of her dressing table; the long oak table that dominated the side of the room, the post at the corner of the bed. He touched everything he passed, brushing it with his fingertips as if testing its quality.
Or laying claim.
“They are reluctant to surrender.” He ran his hand gently over a small beveled glass perfume bottle on her table. It rocked slightly but did not fall. “It seems they await a word from you on the matter.”
“Fools,” she said aloud, but inside, she smiled. Loyal, wonderful fools.
“Aren’t they?” His gaze slid to her. “I do not need their allegiance, of course. But neither can they stay at Rardove in their condition.”
Their rebellious condition.
“No, of course not,” she agreed.
His red-and-black tube tunic, belted at the waist, stretched taut across the flat plane of his stomach as he reached across the table. She saw a thin tendril of paint curling up the back of his neck, like a vine, a lick of dark flame.
She felt breathless.
Good God, was he painted everywhere?
The corded muscles in his neck flexed as he looked over his shoulder at her. She ripped her gaze up.
“And you are their fire. More wine?”
She stared stupidly at the cup in his hand. “I am their…what?”
“Fire. The thing they kindle themselves on.”
This was a shocking observation. “Me?”
“Aye. You.”
“You are mistaken,” she said, intensely startled. “I assure you, I am as baffled as you why my men would be so reckless in such a lost cause.”
He gave a soft laugh. “I did not say I was baffled.”
Something about the low, slow way he said the words sent a trail of heat flaring through her body.
He set down the refilled cup of wine on the table next to her. She regarded it grimly, then looked away, not without effort, because it truly was exceptional wine. She peered up at him suspiciously. He was toying with her. Dragging out whatever punishment or unpleasant consequences he had plann—
“Have you been treated well?” he said.
“I have been locked in the solar, and have not yet had the opportunity to learn how your men take to their role as conquerors, nor how they treat their plunder.”
His gaze held hers, pale blue and piercing. “You mean rape.”
She hesitated, then nodded.
He watched her a moment more, then turned and dropped into the carved lord’s chair at the end of the huge oak table. Meetings of lords and princes had taken place around this table for hundreds of years, secret councils plotting coups and rebellions and marriage alliances. Aodh sprawled back, his fire-ice eyes unreadable beneath dark brows, hard fingers interlaced on his lap, his body in the pose of ease, but Katarina could feel him from across the room. His entire being was barely leashed power, like a bow drawn back, taut and ready.
He said nothing.
She desperately wanted him to say something. Anything. She also wanted more wine. She wanted something to throw at his head. Anything to break the tension.
“Where do we begin?” she asked.
“We have begun.”
The simple, ominous reply occasioned a host of chills across her chest. She swallowed. “You’ll want to see the ledgers.”
“No.”
She blinked, then curled her fingers into the wool of her skirts and tugged free the castle keys. Armory, storerooms, castle door and coffers, they held access to everything of value in Rardove. She gave them a silvery-iron jingle and held them up.
He shook his head.
“They open all the doors and coffers,” she told him, unnecessarily. Surely he knew what keys did. “You will find the account rolls. The ledgers. The coin.”
He shook his head again.
She reversed step to examine the padlocks of the nearest chest, sitting under the edge of the table. Perhaps they’d already been broken open. No, they were intact, as flat black and foreboding as ever. She turned back, feeling oddly and unaccountably embarrassed.
Their eyes met. He shook his head again, very slowly.
He had the face of a warrior, hard and bold, with no way to hide the past. His chin was scarred by an old, jagged slice. Another long, narrow scar traversed the summit of his cheekbone. His nose had clearly been broken sometime in the past. He’d been in battles. He was a warrior. He was in her bedchamber.
The first inkling of things to come slid down her belly like a drop of cold rain. Their eyes locked on each other.
“Why do you not simply do it?” she asked quietly.
He pushed his boots out. “Do what?”
”Punish me.”
“Why would I punish you?”
She gestured behind her, toward the door. “For what happened. Downstairs.”
“Ah. What happened. Downstairs.” His echo was a long, drawn-out affair.
Heat swept across her cheeks. “’Twas an…aberration. sir. It is not like me.”
He leaned his hard body back, slung an arm over the side of the chair and let it hang, deceptively relaxed, for she knew he was as relaxed as a wolf.
“Oh, Katarina, what ‘happened downstairs’ is very much a thing of you.”
Her jaw dropped at his words, at the use of her Christian name. For on his lips, it had not sounded Christian at all. He’d rendered it into something else entirely. The words were English, but the intonation, the inflection, the way it rolled over his tongue… No, this was not her language. This was his. Some melding of English and Irish. Something old, foreign. Ensorcelled. Enchanted.
She dragged her mind from the things he was doing to her name. “Y-You are wrong about me, Aodh Mac Con.”
He bent to the floor beside him, lifted something, and tossed it onto the table. It was a lightwe
ight sword belt, blades attached.
Her blades.
Other weapons followed behind, hitting the table with muted thuds: the long clumsy dagger; the short, fierce knife; the sleek, keen-edged misericorde. Her wheel-lock pistol. The newer snaphances. Five of them.
Why, he’d found everything. How…unsettling.
They stared at the deadly cache together in silence a moment. Then she cleared her throat. “Ireland is a dangerous land.”
He gave a low laugh. “Aye, Katarina. With you in it.”
She forced herself to look at him. “I would not want my men to suffer on account of my misdeeds. I offer my… I am…sorry.” She scraped the word out and wiped it through the air.
He pushed the weapons to the side, inconsequential anymore. “’Tis time to clarify a few things, lass. I do not rape women.”
His voice had turned to hard steel, and it made her feel cold inside. “Oh.”
“I do not smash open coffers to steal coin.”
“I meant only—”
“I do not deal in feigned apologies—”
“I—”
“And I do not punish men for defending what is theirs.”
It was an impressive litany of the restraints of a warrior.
Katarina was not impressed. “Do you not punish men for defending what is theirs? That is most noble of you. And what of women, sir? For I have found there are so often different rules for them.”
He watched her a moment. “I do not follow many rules, Katarina.”
Whoosh, directly through the center of her belly. With her name strung on the end like a pearl, in his rough, dark lilt, it had sounded like a promise.
“Ah,” was all she could conjure up, a sad reply to the admission of his mutinous nature.
“What ‘happened downstairs,’” he said softly, “is what I’d expect from someone with wits enough to see that their opponent was distracted, for even an instant, and the bollocks to seize that moment.”
Something that carried chills in its pockets swept over her. It was not so much coldness as a slapping sort of alertness, like drawing the furs off a slumbering body in winter. A splash of cold water in the heat of a fever. Alert, aware, awake.
“I do not disapprove.”
Oh, now she saw the danger. Felt it as surely as she felt the heat from the fire he’d lit. Now, when he was far too close.