Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws)

by Kris Kennedy

  The silence of their small enclave spread through the hall, rippling out as more and more people turned to look at the lady and the rebel, watching at each other across the room. Smiling.

  “Leave us,” Aodh ordered, and held out his hand to her.

  Everyone stared for one more long, horrified moment, then, in stunned waves, they turned and all but stumbled off. The entire hall emptied, an exodus of silent, gaping people.

  Katarina had no idea how long it took, she knew only that Aodh kept his hand out to her the whole time.

  And as if it were the simplest thing in the world, she reached out and laid her hand in his.

  Chapter Thirteen

  AODH TOOK her hand as if it were made of glass and led her to the dais, handed her down into the chair to the right of the lord’s seat, then dragged out the heavy lord’s chair and sat.

  She’d repaired the damage that wind and coup had rent on her hair, even pinned a veil overtop, and was as graceful and composed as ever, except…her breath. Light as gossamer and broken like glass, it was her tell, her secret revealed.

  He felt as if he’d climbed a mountain. His blood came hot, the heat he had not known for years.

  She’d bent. Bent to his hand, to his mouth, bent for his touch, and in the end, she would be his. The truth was…she wanted him the same way he wanted her. It emanated from her like scent from a flower. All he had to do was touch her, and she would be his.

  Christ, he felt that.

  He would have her undressed within the hour.

  For a long time, she allowed his perusal, allowed the silence, not quite comfortable with it, for there was the shallow, staccato breath, but neither was she agitated.

  Then, still looking forward, she said, “Well, it seems you were right after all.”

  “About what this time?”

  This arrogance earned a faint smile and she turned to him. “My inclination for recklessness.”

  “Och, I’m sure you have a plan,” he said companionably. “Do you want to tell me what it is?”

  “No,” she said primly, then her cheeks flushed. “I mean to say, I have no plan.”

  “I highly doubt that.”

  “Then you are foolish to treat with me. I’m sure your councilors advised you on just that matter.”

  “They did. As did yours.”

  “Oh, did you hear?” she murmured, as if he might not have heard her steward shouting at her. “He made some valid points, you know.”

  “Such as me being a savage?”

  “I believe he suggested the possibility.”

  Aodh shrugged. “And yet, here you are, with me.”

  Her dark eyes held his. “Perhaps I found your arguments more convincing upon reflection.”

  He smiled. Within the half hour. Where the hell was his clerk, Tancred? Doing something efficient and clerical, no doubt. Curse him. “I am glad to hear it.”

  One brow arched up, a little sweep of dark angles across her face. “Perhaps I expect it to be an extremely short-lived union,” she said tartly.

  He smiled. “I shall make your jointure a fine large one, to compensate you for your loss.” He spread out a hand. “In the event.”

  ”Yes,” she echoed drily. “In the event.”

  He sat back and called for a servant.

  “Bring me the leather chest in the lord’s chambers,” he ordered, and the man hurried off. Fires burned in the empty hall. She glanced over, then looked away quickly, touching her fingertips to the smooth curve of her neck, a nervous gesture.

  He smiled.

  She was born to be enflamed, and he would see the deed done.

  He slid a flask toward her. It rumbled as it crossed the oak tabletop.

  She looked at it. “Is that Irish whisky?”

  “‘Tis.”

  “Hm.” She ran her fingertips across the edge of the table. “I see Ireland still holds some charms for you.”

  His gaze trailed down her gown. “A few. Do you want a taste? ’Tis quite good.”

  “I do not drink your uisce beatha.”

  He sat back in surprise. “’Tis one of the finest things about Ireland, and you’ve never tasted it?”

  She tucked a strand of hair back under her veil. It seemed they were eternally springing free from Katarina’s attempts at control.

  “I did not say I never tasted it.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Lass, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “Yes, well, I have seen enough men facedown in the rushes to know what I might be missing.”

  He laughed. “Aye, you’ve got to go easy.”

  “I shall remember that.”

  “Wine, then?” he asked, reaching for the jug.

  “No! I mean…no.” Her fingertips skipped down her neck, to the V of her collarbone. His gaze followed it.

  “’Twasn’t the wine, you know,” he said gently.

  Like glass, smooth and almost translucent, her gaze lifted to his. “What was not the wine?”

  “What happened. Upstairs. What you did.”

  A little shiver disrupted the otherwise calm façade of her gracefulness, then she shrugged dismissively. “You know naught of me, Aodh Mac Con. Perhaps I am eternally flinging myself at strange warriors whenever I drink wine from Gascony.”

  “Is that so? I shall inquire as to your habits at the first instance.”

  She sniffed. “Gird your loins, my lord. You shall hear stories.”

  He smiled and sat back and pushed out his legs. The tips of his boots, black and mud-stained, came to rest just beside the green hem of her skirts. “Why do you say Gascony?”

  “’Twas a guess. Is that not where most wine is from?”

  “Some. ’Tis fine if you like a claret.”

  Surprise lifted her brows in a delicate arch. “And if I do not?”

  “Then you will like my wine. ’Tis a canary.”

  “Indeed?”

  He nodded. “From the Canary Islands.”

  Her lips parted, into the smallest O. “And where, pray, are they?”

  ”I will show you,” he murmured as the servant arrived back in the hall, wooden boots clattering across the floor. He was puffing slightly from his labors on the spiraling staircase, and carried a leather chest in his arms. He placed it before Aodh, bowed deeply, then scurried out, leaving the hall once again empty but for burning fires and Aodh’s marriage gift for Katarina.

  Aodh’s blood was starting to churn; want fired through his veins, charging his blood, swelling his cock. Reveling in it and resisting it, he stood to unbuckle the leather straps lashing the chest, and creaked it open.

  Beside him, Katarina straightened her spine as far as it could go and yet remain sitting, feigning disinterest while craning her neck to peer inside, practically vibrating with curiosity.

  Claimed.

  He removed the long, rolled parchments from within and began untying the laces that bound them. He set the first on the table and reached for candles, setting one at each top corner, to weight it down and hold it open, unrolling it as he went. Then he reached for another.

  “Take an edge,” he said, giving her an excuse to rise. She rose with alacrity and helped unscroll it.

  They did the same to the other panels. There were six of them, six sections, and when they were all unrolled and set together, candles burning along the top and sides, Katarina and Aodh stepped back and looked down at them.

  Aodh waited with a strange sort of anticipation, recalling his interminable wait in the queen’s receiving corridor nearly two decades ago, a ragged Irish boy with nothing but a sword in his hand and cold determination in his heart: would his petition be well met?

  Covered with gorgeous lines and shapes, the parchment was an explosion of color, in beautiful, vibrant sections, with scalloped and undulating edges, hues of red and green and yellow, with filigree-thin lines crisscrossing it, vertically and horizontally.

  “It is beautiful,” she whispered.

  “It is
a map. Of the world.”

  The softest intake of breath passed across her lips, not quite surprise. A little higher pitched, a little more silvery, a little more feminine, nigh onto a gasp of…pleasure.

  His map had pleased her.

  Savage satisfaction roared through him. Standing in a great hall, looking down at a map, he felt blown back by a wind.

  “There are six panels,” he told her quietly, as she bent over it. “Made by a friend of Mercator’s. Abraham Ortelius.”

  They peered at it in silence a moment, then he tapped his index finger to a spot on the paper. “Jerusalem.”

  She ran a fingertip across the page, near but not touching his.

  “And here,”—he tapped again—“are the Canary Islands, where your wine came from.”

  “It is not my wine.”

  “It is now.”

  Their eyes met over the map of the world. “Not yet.”

  She was…testing him? Toying with him? Teasing him?

  No matter; all stoked the flames of his lust.

  She angled her face back down. “Where are we? Where is Éire?”

  Ireland. She’d spoken the Irish word for the isle, and something moved inside him. Likely irritation; Irish was a convoluted language that no one cared for anymore. Outdated, unnecessary. Anything of importance could be said in another language. Should be said in another language. Any other language. Surely you would be understood by more people.

  He slid his finger closer to hers. A tiny oval of green and blue sat quite near the edge of the world, high up, as if it were hovering above all the rest, and hadn’t quite descended.

  “Oh yes,” she exhaled, smiling faintly. “Yes, that is we.” He looked at her sharply, but she was still staring at the map.

  “And that…”—he pointed—“is the New World. America.”

  She leaned so close, her nose almost touched the parchment and its bright colors. If he’d bent down too, Aodh knew he would see it all mirrored in her eyes.

  She spread a hand over it, hovering half an inch over it, as if she were casting spells. Her corset, laced up tight and proper, pressed against her ribs as she took swift breaths. She was excited.

  And this, that this lass banished to the edge of the world, wished to go farther yet, this was wildly…exciting.

  “What do you know of it?” she asked, so soft she was almost whispering.

  “’Tis abundant in wood and game and wild men.”

  He saw the curve of her cheek. She’d smiled. “Somewhat like Ireland, then?” she murmured, a teasing tone.

  He looked at the back of her head. Under the almost sheer veil, her dark hair tumbled, silken thick lushness he would soon be dragging his fingers though. The curve of her shoulder, where it met her neck, held great promise as well. Earlier, he’d all but brought her to culmination by kissing her neck. And then there was her throat…

  “Have you sailed, Mac Con?”

  He dragged his attention from her neck. “I have.”

  “Much?”

  “Much.”

  She was still a moment, then turned her head. “Are you an Irish pirate?”

  “I’d not call myself that.”

  “Would others?”

  He laughed. “It would depend on how much money I earned them.”

  “Mm.” It was a skeptical murmur, but it stood his cock at attention. “Have you ever been? To the New World?”

  He shook his head, staring over her shoulder at the map. “Not yet.”

  “Yet?” she repeated, craning her head around.

  He met her gaze. “I am not yet done, lass.”

  Her eyes lit with some spark, surely the reflection from the high, tapered candles burning on either side of the map, but it seemed to come from within her. And then she smiled. The small, secret smile. At him.

  Something fierce awakened in his chest.

  “And the queen’s colony in the New World, Roanoke…what do you know of it?”

  “There has been no word,” he said quietly.

  “What do you suspect?”

  He shrugged. “’Tis a hard world out there.”

  “Sad.”

  “Perils of an adventurer,” was his careless assessment. “If one wishes to go adventuring, one must be prepared.”

  “Indeed,” she murmured, such dry meaning in the word that he grinned.

  She laid a hand on the table beside the map, and the candlelight illuminated all its varied textures: small rounded knuckles; the pale blue line of veins; slim, curving fingers, nails unadorned, blunted from work. She leaned on her hand to turn and look up at him.

  “But that will not stop adventurers, will it?”

  “Would it stop you, Katy?”

  Her eyes were bright as she shook her head. “I do not think it would.” She turned back to the map. “More will go.”

  “There will always be more,” he agreed. “Explorers. Adventurers.”

  She was quiet a moment, then announced, “I invested in an adventure company once.”

  He stared at the back of her head. “Pardon?”

  “Yes, indeed. Does not every reckless fool with any spare coin? And even those without. The Gilbert Humphrey Trading Co. was my particular pitfall.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  She glanced up absently. “I am unsurprised. He was an Englishman, so how would you? And he was desperately…” She pondered the correct word a moment. “Well, desperate. But bold. Oh, exceedingly bold.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial tone, the sort used for secrets and bedrooms.

  A long quiver unfurled inside Aodh, a misericorde-thin, daggerlike thrust through his chest, comprised of interest and…jealousy?

  Good God. What was that doing inside him?

  “Humphrey, was it, then?”

  “Yes. Gilbert Humphrey. Tall and charming, full of tales of faraway places and derring-do. Oh, half were lies, no doubt, but I was fooled. He was a dreamer.” She gave a helpless little shrug, her shoulders lifting under the force of her inability to fully express the charms of the most excellent Mr. Humphrey. “A dreamer, and a talker, and an…”

  “Exceedingly bold man?”

  She straightened away from the map. “Perhaps bold overstates the matter. Better to say…” She touched her lips, and he felt it as if her finger had been laid upon his own mouth, the pad light, hot, pressing an oval onto his bottom lip. For a moment, everything, even her voice, faded away, while he imagined coaxing the tip of it into his mouth with his tongue.

  “…be a more accurate description.”

  He dragged his gaze from her finger. “Pardon?”

  “Mr. Humphrey was a cony catcher in the guise of a poet in the guise of a ship’s captain.”

  He laughed, pleased with this tearing down of the bold and excellent Mr. Humphrey. “All ship captains are cony catchers, lass. Deceit and trickery are the wind under which they sail.”

  She laughed. “Yes, well, this one was that indeed. Foolhardy. Reckless.”

  Their eyes met.

  “Stubborn?” he suggested.

  Her eyes slid away. “He is dead now, if that is what you mean.”

  “And you miss him.”

  Her gaze arrested, stilled at some point in space between him and the map of the world. “Sir, I lost over a hundred pounds and my reputation because of him. ‘Miss the man’ hardly describes my feelings. His dream was not carefully dreamed. He was wild and careless and—”

  “Exceedingly bold.”

  She looked at him sternly. “Reckless.”

  “And stubborn.”

  “And now he is dead.”

  Good. “So be it,” was all he said.

  She sighed. “So be it. ’Twas a waste of everything but the dream.”

  He smiled grimly. He knew the waste of dreams, far too well. Then, because he’d learned to listen deeply, he said softly, “Is money all you lost to Gilbert Humphrey, lass?”

  She took a long inhalation as color flowed across her cheeks, down h
er neck, and her chin dimpled. The response was gone in an instant. “I was seventeen. It was a mistake,” she said quietly.

  “I’ve made a few.”

  She gave a little laugh and shook her head while she traced the lines on the map, outlining Bohemia. “Such things are never the same for men.” Her finger migrated west, into the Holy Roman Empire.

  He reached out and swept up her hand, lifted it to his mouth. “I do not care for such things. They do not concern us.”

  Her eyebrows slanted into a confused V, her eyes wary. “How could such things not concern you?”

  “Because they are the past. We are now.” He nodded to the map. “Do you like the world I’ve given you?”

  It earned a startled laugh. “It’s very nice. Rather flat, of course. But quite nice.”

  “I also have a gown for you.”

  She looked up. “A gown?”

  “And seed.”

  The hand still held in his tightened.

  “Wheat. And rye. For the spring planting.”

  Her fingers curled into his. “You brought seed?”

  “I brought seed. Will that suit, Katy?”

  Katarina stared at him, stricken breathless. Who was this man, who conquered with gowns and wheat seed and maps of the world?

  As if she forgot entirely that this was a ruse, she smiled at him. “It suits quite well, sir.”

  He smiled back, the lazy half smile that couldn’t be bothered to stretch all the way to the other side. It was rather devastating.

  From the far end of the hall came a bustle, and a figure appeared. It hurried forward into the shifting amber light thrown by the leaping, roaring fires and materialized into a man. He tiptoed up beside the table and leaned near to Aodh.

  “The papers, my lord.”

  Still smiling faintly, she said, “Papers?”

  Aodh pushed aside the map, while the tonsured clerk—Aodh had a clerk?—began setting down a sheaf of papers and pens and inkpots. Aodh glanced at her, his blue eyes level. “Betrothal papers.”

  “Now?”

  “Aye. Now.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. Then another. Then it lurched forward in a cold staccato rhythm.

  She stared helplessly at the preparations of Aodh and his clerk. Where had the clerk come from? “But—”