by Kris Kennedy
Aodh paused above the papers being spread out in front of him. “But what?”
She could not sign betrothal papers. Signing her name would be tantamount to treason. Her father had been hanged for less.
Oh, this was not going at all as she had planned.
She searched for a reason to delay the formalization of her subterfuge, some way to mitigate the damage. For as much as the Queen of England was not a woman to cross, neither was Aodh Mac Con a man to cross. And Aodh was much closer to hand.
And notwithstanding that they’d started as enemies, and much as he could reasonably expect nothing even approaching honesty from her, let alone loyalty, still, somehow…somehow, to say no felt like a betrayal.
To say yes felt like a binding.
If she wed Aodh Mac Con, he would never let her go.
Chills ran down her body. “What of the banns?” she asked, shocked to hear how shaky her voice had become.
He took a pen from his clerk. “There will be banns.”
The clerk competently uncorked an ink bottle and laid it before Aodh. With a flourish, he set out a second pen. The bottle squatted above the papers, ready for dipping. The ink was red, like blood.
“But we must wait…three weeks…”
The clerk had taken his seat, a pouch of sand laid beside the parchment he was now scribbling on. Aodh stood looking over his shoulder, but at these words, he glanced her way.
“We shall not have the ceremony until three weeks.” He leaned close and murmured, “But to alleviate any concerns you may have, Katarina, know this: we shall consummate. Hard and well.”
Her knees almost collapsed. She curled her fingers around the back of the lord’s chair. In truth, the ceremony meant nothing. These papers were all. Her signature, on the papers, their union afterward, this binding to Aodh.
It could not be.
“What of witnesses?” she whispered. It was a hopeless gesture, a shot in the dark, for she knew nothing would slow this down. Aodh Mac Con meant to have her.
The rock she’d tossed into the air was coming down now, hard.
He snapped his fingers without looking over. “Call for Cormac and Ré,” he ordered the soldier who appeared, then turned to her. “Who do you wish for, my lady?”
“I— Wish for?” A list of patron saints floated through her mind.
“As witnesses. I suppose you’ll want the coward?”
“Walter?” No. “Yes. Of course.”
“Bring her steward,” Aodh ordered the soldier, and turned back to the clerk, murmuring something about jointure.
Her mind whirled as they talked through the time it took to round up several servants and Aodh’s grim-faced soldiers, who looked no happier about this union than she, then finally, Walter appeared, stern and disapproving.
A pen was placed in her hand.
His men stood arrayed around the front of the dais table. Walter stood like a monument of disapproval, his already prodigious brow quivering with disgust that the family had been reduced to this: marriage to an Irishman.
She stared down at the papers, covered in scrolling black scribbles. Words, surely these were words. But she could decipher none of them. Her heart was thudding too fast, the roar in her head was too loud.
Aodh’s clerk was speaking in Latin, saying something, saying their names…saying Aodh’s name…Aodh Mac Con Rardove.
Aodh, son of the Hound of…Rardove?
Another cold blast struck her. She dragged her gaze up from the parchment. “You are the Hound of Rardove?”
“Aye.”
She curled her hand tighter around the chair to steady herself, reeling. The Rardove clan was dead, or all but. Living on the fringes of Irish society for centuries, they were a pale shadow of their former selves, slowly dying out, notwithstanding a brief, if spectacular, resurgence a couple decades ago. But they posed no threat, they had no presence. Legend said the Rardove chiefs were doomed to die young, half from heartbreak, half from drink, half from…oh dear God save her, recklessness.
“I thought…I thought you all dead,” she whispered.
His icy eyes flicked her way. “Not yet.”
Her knees were bending now. Force of will was all that held them straight. She would not sit. She would not fall over.
The clerk’s voice droned on in Latin, and the Irish Hound was replying—in Latin—then the clerk read the terms aloud in French, and then in English, to ensure no confusion—oh, there was nothing but confusion—while Walter’s grim, furious, and yet vaguely triumphant face glared at her.
She had done precisely what she’d told him not to do: seriously underestimated Aodh Mac Con.
The pen was placed in her hand. She could not catch her breath. Everyone was staring. Silence spread through the hall. A boot shuffled, leather creaked, a burning log shifted, then fell into hot ash in the hearth. All she had to do was sign her name.
All she could do was stare at the paper.
If she signed this, she was doomed.
Traitor. Treason.
Dead woman.
At the tip of the pen in her hand, a drop of bright red ink hung, suspended. Aodh’s name was already on the page, scrawled in gorgeous, bold, educated letters, large enough to be read in Windsor.
He was afraid of nothing. This castle, this rebellion, Katarina—he claimed it all.
Trembling, she looked up into his eyes.
“Aodh,” she whispered. It had slipped out helplessly.
He went into motion. “Leave us,” he ordered, taking the pen from her hand.
And once again, the people in the hall dispersed like pebbles running down a hill. His clerk and hers, the witnesses and soldiers, everyone turned and left, until she and Aodh were, once again, alone.
Shaking, she stood, head down, staring at the ground, braced for his fury. That is what men did, vent their fury. It would be over soon enough. He circled her once; she watched his boots make the circuit around her body.
“What is it?” he asked while behind her.
She inhaled, shook her head. She looked at the papers, the signatures, then her eyes dropped to his sword. Everything about this was a conquest.
“I…cannot,” she whispered.
He’d followed her glance at his sword, and with a swift sweep of his hands, he unbuckled it and let it fall. It clattered to the ground. He stepped over it and came nearer.
“Why are you saying no?”
“Because I would lose everything.”
“Och, lass, you’ve already lost everything. All you can do now is gain.”
She gave a broken laugh. “That is not a good answer.”
His gaze roved over her face, then he took the last, natural step and drew up before her. “Listen to me.”
She shook her head. “No.” She could not listen to his low resonate persuasions, spoken in that dark Irish lilt, the one that tempted as if it were touch.
He curled a finger beneath her chin and tipped her face up. “You cannot think it would have gone well for you when Bertrand of Bridge arrived? The queen’s interrogator?”
She gasped. “Wh-what do you know of it?”
“In England, they are calling you a traitor. A priest-lover. An unwed dye-witch.”
Shock made her hands fly to his chest. Fear curled them into fists, bunching his tunic. “No.”
“Aye. So now, maybe, it is not so mad an idea.”
“Oh no,” she whispered as he curled his fingers around the back of her neck and guided her closer, up to the towering length of him, until they were touching from knees to stomach.
“I swear to you, Katy,” he said in a low rasp. “I will protect you.”
Confusion washed through her, an amalgam of shifting emotions.
Protect her? When he was the danger, England her salvation?
Protect her? No one protected Katarina. She was the protector, of Rardove, of the people within, of the queen’s rights in Ireland.
But that this warlord had offered…
<
br /> Their mouths were so close she could feel his breath on her. She wanted his breath.
Slowly, the hard fingers cupping the back of her neck pushed up into her hair and tipped her head back.
“Now, Katy, let me show you the truth of us,” he said, and bent to her neck.
She leaned back against the table before her knees buckled, her neck arched as he kissed the base of her throat, raining a wash of chills down her body so potent, she almost did not notice the wide palm skimming down her waist. She was far too focused on his other hand, plunging deeply into her hair, fingers splayed, forcing her head back further. The pressure was hard and exquisite. Heat streaked down her body, followed by chills. It tore a heady, hot gasp from her lungs.
He worked his way up her neck, over the ridge of her chin, and, wasting no time on preludes or introduction, when he reached the summit of her mouth, he simply claimed her. Slanted his lips over hers, spread her mouth wide, and delved in deep.
Stunned by the onslaught, whipped by fiery threads of desire, she could do nothing but follow the command of his hands to bend back more, the urging of his lips to open wider, to meet his tongue with her own in a hot swipe that made him groan deep into her mouth, which sent a shudder of excitement through her. And somehow her hands were around his shoulders, and she was pushing her body up to his.
This emboldened a man who needed no more boldness, and he tore his mouth free enough to suck her bottom lip into his mouth.
Her mind shut down, shocked by the carnal move, but her body, oh, her body reveled in it. She pushed up on her toes to meet him, to give him more.
More and more and more. It would never end. The fire-scorched clarity of her desire saw the truth. Aodh would ever demand more of her, and she would give it.
“We are meant to be, Katy,” he said by her ear. “It will be so good, I will ensure it. Sign the papers, stand down your men, and we will be together.”
Her heart leapt, for a brutally long second, then crashed back, yanked down by cold reality. But in that leaping, she saw the deeper danger of Aodh expanding like a storm on the horizon: he could make himself matter to her.
For a moment, at his words, her heart had been buoyed by…hope.
But this rebel was not hope. He was her downfall.
She’d simply been seduced. By a warlord with an agenda. And despite how her body became a candle for him, this was no matter of seduction. This was politics and power and war.
This was treason.
Woe to her if she ever forgot it again.
Resist. Deny. But never, ever give him anything he wants.
For once she began, she might never stop.
As his head hung beside hers, his breath warm on her neck, she whispered back, “No.”
“No?” he repeated softly.
“No.” With effort, she lifted her head. He was watching her, his ice-blue eyes searching.
“Céard sa diabhal?”
It was in Irish, but Katarina had spent her life in Ireland, and she knew very well what it meant: what the hell?
So she repeated herself. “No. No. No.”
He straightened away from her. “What are you saying?”
“I cannot wed you.”
“Why not?”
“Treason is why.”
The dark brows descended. “If ’tis treason now, ’twas treason before, when you were willing. What has changed?”
“I… The papers.” She pointed at the table, inkpots and brightly colored sealing wax and long silk threads lying all about, a festive little documentary celebration of treason.
Still cupping her face, his thumbs by her temples, his fingers curled around the back of her head, he looked over his shoulder at the table.
“You never meant it,” he said in low accusation. “’Twas all a lie. You lied to me.”
Anger rose up in her then. Lied to him?
“And who are you?” she whispered fiercely, feeling quite mad. For she was coming undone. The restraint and rigid self-control of the past years were slipping away like ice in spring. She felt it sliding, slippery and wet, like a sheet of ice shearing off into a swift-moving river. Further proof she’d slipped off the ledge of sanity entirely, she put her hands on his chest and pushed him.
“Who are you, Aodh Mac Con, that I may not lie to you?”
He dropped his hands, shock on his face.
“You, a usurper? A warlord? A thief?” And as madness abounded this night, she pushed him again, forcing him back a step. “And I may not lie to you?”
His jaw worked, but no words came out.
“I would not wed you, Aodh Mac Con, not if all the kings in the world begged me. It would be treason. And I am not that woman.”
For a moment, there was nothing but his hard body, motionless, and the long, slow breaths coming out of it, and the fierce, penetrating gaze, growing harder, harder, harder yet.
“Are you mad?” he snarled.
“Reckless,” she said, her words and body shaking, but her will unmoved.
“Veering perilously close to stubborn.”
“So be it.”
A beat of silence. “You have already agreed.”
“I changed my mind. You cannot have my men, and you cannot have me.”
Fury burned in his gaze.
“I signed nothing.” Still, though, it had the whiff of a betrayal. Curse him.
A ripple moved through his jaw. Clearly, Aodh was not used to being told no. “This will be done,” he vowed, low and lethal.
“Over my dead body,” she whispered back.
“If it comes to it.”
“You did not do so before.”
“Do not use the past as a judge of what I am willing to do in the future.”
“Do what you must, Aodh Mac Con. I refuse.”
“You will bend to me, Katarina,” he vowed as he swept his sword belt off the floor.
“I will not.”
The gaze he snapped to her was like a lance, slicing through her. “Then I will break you.”
“I should like to see you try.”
He reached her in two strides, roughly cupped the back of her neck, and plowed her mouth open with a violent, unforgiving kiss.
She stood cold beneath it.
Ripping his mouth away, he clamped his fingers around her face, held her mouth just below his, and growled, “Katarina, do not make me do this.”
“Do what you must. As have I.” Their mouths were so close, her hair was fluttering from their softly enraged words. “No,” she whispered again. “I say no.”
With a roar of rage, he backed up, then leapt off the dais as if she were a rolling fire and he had to move fast to get out of the way. He strode halfway across the empty hall with its bright fires burning, calling out, “Ré!”
No reply. Everyone had escaped farther away.
Abruptly, he spun on his heel and came back for her. Fear now joined the glorious rebellion, and she scrambled backward as he came toward her, his gaze fixed.
“Aodh,” she exhaled in terror.
He took her by the arm and propelled her out in front of him, off the dais, across the hall, bellowing as they went, “Ré!”
There was a brief moment of silence, then came a distant voice, very low: “Son of a bitch.” From all corners of the castle came the sound of men and boot steps, hurrying toward the hall.
A group of soldiers appeared at the top of the stairwell that led down to the hall. Aodh flung himself away from Katarina and backed up, as if he could not trust himself to touch her any longer, leaving her standing alone in the hall, his men at the far end.
She stood straight and tall between them all.
The blond-haired barrage of a warrior looked between her and Aodh. He seemed to give her the faintest of nods then turned to Aodh. “My lord?”
Ah. He’d reverted to a respectful title in view of his master’s fury. Something to learn from those who knew Aodh Mac Con better than she. Too late now.
“Take her
ladyship to the high tower,” he commanded, his voice like ice, like winter, so cold it was impossible to believe his mouth had been so hot on her body just a few moments ago. “Lock her in.”
Ré nodded. His face showed no emotion.
“Collect the rest of her household. Round them up, servants, hen maids, clerks, get them all. Lock them up.”
She spun so fast, her hair, loosened by his attentions, whirled around her shoulders. “Aodh, you cannot—”
“What?” His question sliced her words off like a blade. “What can I not do? I can do anything, Katarina, and you cannot stop me. Rardove is mine. I need nothing from you.”
He strode away, toward the stairs, buckling his sword belt on. He leapt up the stairs and strode past his men without a word, out into the cold black night, without cloak or hood.
Katarina was led by yet another soldier to yet another tower, even higher than before.
Chapter Fourteen
FURY FUELED her ascent up the circular staircase, flanked fore and aft by Aodh’s soldiers. They stepped out onto the landing of the high tower and young Bran, heretofore the closest thing she’d had to a friend, glanced at her uneasily as he unlocked the door.
With an indignant squeal of iron hinges, it swung wide. Darkness unfurled like a tongue.
Part of the original castle built in the twelfth century, the high tower had been designated a bedchamber for guests many years ago, then forgotten entirely when the guests disappeared. With walls five feet thick and an oak door four inches, the high tower was a testament of medieval power. No drafts here.
No luxuries either; the tower had escaped most of the renovations that had swept the rest of the castle over the centuries. In fact, it had become a bit of a storage room.
A huge, pitted oak table was pushed up against one wall, benches atop it and chairs pushed carelessly beneath. On and around the table, sat crates of old bottles and bolts of fabric and the butt ends of candles that had yet to be remelted, all the various odds and ends that inhabited a marcher castle in constant flux on the edge of war.
A small hearth had been added at the turn of the last century, and a few old tapestries were pinned unevenly across the walls. A recessed cistern in the far wall held fresh water, and a large, canopied bed dominated the room, a twist of linen hanging from the ceiling above it to keep out drafts. Otherwise, there were few comforts.