by Kris Kennedy
That suited Katarina well; she wanted no comfort. She wanted to bite him. Gnash Aodh Mac Con in her teeth, for having unleashed such dangerous passions. She’d spent years tempering herself, and in one day, he’d undone it all.
The barrage of a captain stayed by the door, watchful as Bran escorted her inside. He lit oil lamps that hung off wooden beams, casting wary glances her direction whenever her restless pacing took her behind him. Shadowy light rolled through the room, but when Bran crouched before the small hearth and made as if to light that as well, she pointed at the door.
“Leave.” She was the stern chatelaine now as she’d never been before, cold and regal.
Bran got to his feet, staring as if she was a wild thing. Which she was—wild and distressed and cornered and dangerous.
Bran joined his captain on the landing. Their gazes met, then slowly, the door swung shut with a thud. She heard a soft, heavy metal click, and the boots retreated.
She’d been locked in.
The thing she loved so desperately about Ireland—her freedom—Aodh Mac Con had taken away.
She took a wild turn around the room, roiling with energy, furious, wanting to fling herself at Aodh, to hurt him, to ruin him as he was doing to her.
Her boots rang out loud on the floor as she circled endlessly through the night.
*
“SHE WILL NOT submit.”
“I noticed,” Ré said.
Down in the jousting yards, with moonlight to light their swordplay, he and Aodh circled each other, blades out. Ré was accustomed to such things; Aodh was an engine of movement in the best of times, and when he’d stormed out of the castle a few hours ago, venting a fury the likes of which Ré had never seen before, he’d assumed they were in for a night of…this.
Ré smashed Aodh’s sword away and spun in a circle, coming around again, blade up.
The bailey was dark. Slivers of light from the castle windows broke the shadows cast by the surrounding buildings. Candle glow and soft sounds spilled from the hall. The barracks and gatehouse towers added some illumination. Tiny stars glittered here and there behind the scuttling clouds from a clearing storm.
“Are you asking my opinion?” Ré said.
“Have you one?”
“Perhaps you should send her away,” he said as he slid his boot to the side, watching Aodh’s sword in the moonlight. It moved in a wide sweep, and Ré leapt back. “As planned.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I am not yet convinced she cannot be of value.”
“In what way?”
“Contacts, networks, alliances. She has lived here for years. She knows these people, these men.”
They parried for a moment, then Ré said with deep suspicion, “So you want her for her…political connections?” Skepticism put a faint drag on the final words.
Aodh shrugged. “If I win her, we win those.”
They both swept forward. Their swords met and held in the air, crossed like steely wings. “And if you do not win her?”
Aodh looked at Ré over the swords. “I will.”
“That is good to hear.” With a sharp squeal of metal, they separated and stepped back. “Perhaps you did not ask properly.”
Aodh stared at his heretofore loyal captain and friend. “Am I to take some meaning from that?”
“Something happened in the hall, Aodh.” Swipe right, swipe left. “Something that made her unwilling to sign, when she had been ready.”
Aodh ground his teeth. Katarina had not been ready to sign. It had been clear as anything, which was why he’d sent them all away. To seduce her. And by it, convince her.
The former had worked. Not the latter.
He felt perilously close to being a fool, for it turned out she’d never intended to sign the betrothal papers at all. The whole thing had been a ruse.
Ré lunged forward, forcing Aodh to jump back. Ré pursued, sword cutting through the moonlight with swift strokes. “So what happened back there, to land her in the tower and us out here, fighting in the moonlight?”
Aodh let himself be backed up, engaging in swordplay by rote, reflecting on all the things that had happened in the firelit hall. Maps and long lingering gazes from dark eyes, throaty feminine laughter. The high curve of her breasts, the depth of her insights, the way she smiled at him, so that he felt as if fresh air had entered into his lungs, and when had he last felt that way?
Never.
“Aodh, do as you will,” Ré said shortly, stepping back and lowering his sword. “But if you want her, and have somehow made her not want you, you shall have to…do something about it.”
It was perhaps the most unhelpful advice he’d ever received. He lowered his sword as well. “Something?”
“Aye.” Ré shrugged again. “Something.”
Ré sounded as helpless as Aodh felt.
He suddenly realized his jaw ached from being clamped down so tight.
Do something?
What more did he have?
Thrice now, he’d touched her—in the entryway, in the bedchamber, and in the hall—and each time had been more intense. Gone deeper. Burned hotter. Why did she have this effect on him?
’Tis her eyes, he decided grimly. They saw too much.
Or mayhap her smile. The secret home of it.
Her mind. Quick, clever, insightful.
Her indomitable spirit.
The way she’d responded to his map.
Whatever the hell it was, Katarina had prised him open and tapped into some wellspring of passion and emotion he hadn’t known existed in the world, let alone within himself.
And that was not enough?
He had nothing more.
A yawning chasm seemed to open beneath him as it had not done for years, sucking at him with cold winds of fury and…emptiness.
It infuriated him.
He had no time for cold sucking winds. He had a rebellion to conduct.
“Call the men,” he said curtly, sheathing his sword with a vicious thrust and turning to the castle.
*
THEY ASSEMBLED in the great hall, before the huge hearth, sitting at tables with flagons of ale and wine and trays of bread and cheese, talking until late in the night.
They discussed the strategy of engaging the nearby town, and at the far end of the table, an argument broke out over whether it was worthwhile to send an emissary to entreat the town, or simpler to merely overrun it.
“We’re not overrunning the town,” Aodh said, moving his gaze down the long table to some of the younger soldiers who’d been involved in the discussions. “I told you before we sailed there would be no plunder. We are to live here. It will be our home. It is not our prey.”
Cormac leveled a warning glance down the table after Aodh’s words, and the men subsided.
“The town is rich, and its goodwill important,” Ré explained calmly. “We will not squander it by a show of impatience.”
“I’m off to visit it, in a day or so, when things are settled here,” Aodh informed them. When Katarina was settled here.
Cormac shifted the bulk of his shoulders and reached for one of the earthenware jugs. “Anyway, there’s no possible way we can garrison both a town and the castle when armies come marching. Nay, it must be won.”
“And if it cannot be?” someone asked.
“Aye, if the lady won’t submit?” someone else joined in. “If we cannot rely upon her allies, then we must need find other means. If the town sides with her, sacking it becomes ever more necessary.”
Cormac smashed a fist on the table. All the mugs hopped and shuddered. “The lady. Will. Submit.”
That settled it. The conversation moved onto less contentious matters, such as whether to roll up another barrel of ale, and which serving maids they were most interested in getting to know better, once the imprisoned women were released from their chambers.
Cormac said nothing, but he did shoot Aodh a dark look that could only be described
as hurt. The comely maid with the bouncing breasts been locked up as well.
But Aodh’s attention had moved away from impatient soldiers and defiant chatelaines to Tancred, his everyman—clerk, secretary, advisor in all things monetary—who sat at the next table over, assaying ledgers and poring over chests, while beside him sat the cowardly Rardove clerk, his face a monument of disapproval as he observed all the triumphant goings-on.
Then another round of Aodh’s treasure chests were brought in, years’ worth of plunder and tourney championships, hauled up onto the tables, overflowing with gold and coins. The clerk’s scrutiny grew less disapproving. Indeed, it grew downright lustful.
Ré leaned closer, and as the men debated whether or not it was worth sending an emissary to one of the smaller princes, he said quietly, “That clerk can be turned.”
Aodh nodded, not taking his gaze off Walter. “He is a windmill of opportunity. Whichever way the wind blows, so follows he.”
Cormac tipped his head into their secret council. “I’d as lief trust the lass over him. At least she bears her weapons openly.”
“That does not mean he doesn’t have his uses,” Aodh replied quietly, then raised his voice. “Clerk.”
The other conversations in the hall died as if a boot had stamped on them. Walter’s head jerked around, yanking his gaze off the treasure chests. Tancred looked up too, then, glancing at Aodh, he murmured something. Walter got to his feet.
Cormac made a sound of disgust. “Bleedin’ snake,” was his final mutter before Walter drew up at their table.
“I saw you watching the chests.” Aodh touched the one nearest to him and lifted the lid. Walter’s eyes flicked to it, then held as he saw the golden coins within.
“One cannot help but notice, my lord.” His bald dome had a faint sheen. “The fire last year caused great damage, and a few years past, the sheep fold was decimated. The other estates had to be sold off. Rardove has been without for some time, sir. My lady has been without.”
“How highly do you value your loyalty?”
His gaze lifted off the coins. “To whom, my lord?”
Aodh smiled.
Beside him, Cormac muttered again, “Bleedin’ snake.”
Aodh tapped the chest, and the coins inside rippled like a golden sea. “There’s more where this came from, clerk. Make yourself useful, and I may remember it.”
His hooded eyes met Aodh’s. “What would my lord consider useful?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
*
RÉ WOKE AODH at dawn, informing him a missive had already arrived back from the powerful MacDaniels tribe. Their leader would be here on the morrow to treat with Aodh.
“He’s interested,” Ré said, smiling. “And he has three hundred men under his command.”
Chapter Fifteen
THE DAY PASSED as if shards of glass had been embedded in it: slowly and painfully.
As evening fell, Katarina sat on the wide stone seat under the tall, curved window in the high tower. Sunset had already done its brief deed, and was now nothing but a thin red scar on the horizon. It would be a short twilight. Already the sky was a brilliant sapphire blue, darkening to ebony. And on the horizon, storm clouds built.
When she heard the step on the landing, she turned, her heart hammering. She didn’t know if it was due to fear or hope. Fear that Aodh was coming up.
Hope that he was.
Accursed hope.
An urgent whisper came through the keyhole. She crossed over and crouched before it.
“My lady,” a voice said softly. “My lady, ’tis I, Walter.”
Resignation mingled with admiration. How had he got out?
“My lady, are you well?”
She was touched. But then, Walter had been her guardian, at least in name, for many years. She whispered back, “I am fine. How goes it belowstairs? Are you all safe?”
His next whisper was less solicitous. “Have you lost your mind, girl?”
She sighed. Even in whispers through keyholes, Walter was a force for shame. “No, I simply realized accession was not the route to our greater goals.”
“He’ll kill the garrison for what you’ve done.”
“No, he won’t,” she said, realizing the truth as she said it. “But he might kill you,” she added solemnly, mischievously.
Wherever had mischief come from? And at such a time.
Whatever its source, it earned an exasperated sigh from outside the thick oak door. “He’s locked us all up.”
“You seem to have made it out.”
A pause. “I had to go over the books.”
She touched the door. “Seeing as you are yet at liberty, Walter, you must be the one to get a message out.”
“A message!” He sounded shocked. “The castle is locked up tight, my lady. Wind barely gets out, and only Irishmen get in. I could not get a fly out, let alone a person with a message.”
“But you must try, Walter.” She scooted closer to the door and dropped her voice lower. “The queen must be told that Rardove has been taken. She must be told we stand firm.”
A long silence followed. “My lady, I have been thinking…”
Oh no.
“Perhaps your course was wisest after all.”
Now she was silent. Had that been a compliment? A concession? An admission? Had she struck her head? Had Walter struck his?
“What do you mean?” she whispered back.
“Perhaps it would be wisest to play along with the savage’s desires.”
“Whatever happened to the funeral pyre?” she asked angrily.
“He has imprisoned the entire castle, my lady. No one may leave, no one may enter. It is locked down entirely. Because of you.”
They had already covered this ground. “It is locked down because they are in the midst of a rebellion. Now, dear Walter, seeing as you are not locked up, please do find a way to get a message out. Send two, by separate means, perhaps a village child? If they can get so far as—”
“To what end?”
She stared at the door. “Your meaning?”
“To what end would we invite the retribution of a man such as Aodh Mac Con? For what reason risk his fury?”
“Why—”
“What ever happened to ‘serve two masters’?” His words were sharp, almost a reproach.
She gaped at the door, unable to form a sensible reply, but was saved the trouble when Walter hissed, “Hush.”
Low and gritty, boot steps sounded faintly on the stairs. Then, Aodh’s voice, low and rumbling and unmistakable, came rolling up.
Another male voice joined in, not Walter’s, and then Walter did say something; two of the three voices drifted away, one fussing as it went, and a single set of boots came toward the tower door.
Chapter Sixteen
SHE BACKED UP AS Aodh entered the room, a bundle of something in his arms. He kicked the door shut behind him.
“I do not like your steward,” he said curtly.
“Lock him up,” she retorted, not inclined to be friendly.
“I just did.” He dropped the dark bundle onto the bed. It looked red, a rich wine color. Silken.
He crossed the room, relighting oil lamps on the walls as he went, and setting a burning ember to ignite the wicks of the multitude of rush lights set around the room. In the growing illumination, the hard, muscular power of him was revealed. She drank in the sight of him almost despairingly.
Why must this Irish rebel be so precisely the manifestation of her secret desires?
A moment later, servants appeared, scurrying in wordlessly with trays and a few small chests, setting them on the floor, then hurrying out again while Aodh crossed the room, unpinning the heavy, fur-lined cloak slung over his shoulders as he went. He dropped it onto the bed, next to the silken bundle.
Midnight blue shadows stretched across the room as he knelt before the hearth, struck a flintstone into the kindling, and leaned forward to blow gently on the
tiny sticks.
A few sparks glinted in the blackened maw of the hearth, then, small and orange-bright, flames began spearing up.
“Stop doing this,” he said quietly.
“Doing what?”
“Sitting in the cold.”
“I am not cold.”
He swiveled his head around. “Then why is your nose red again?”
She chose not to reply. It was, in fact, cold. She simply had not noticed.
The fire began to snap and crackle as more flames caught. Soon, a miniature inferno was burning in the stony firebox. The flickering flames lit his face as he stared into it, then he said quietly, “I have some questions for you.”
And so it began.
“Tell me of the defenses.”
“No.”
He reached for a few larger pieces of wood and set them carefully atop. “Then I shall tell you. The west wall is in disrepair. The southern tower was undermined some time ago.”
She shrugged faintly.
“Until they met rock. Rardove is built on bedrock.”
As if she did not know what her castle was set upon.
“So the foundations are firm, but the other parts less so. The gatehouse is weakening, and the portcullis may last through the summer. Or it may not.”
It would not. The logs for its repair were in the northern bailey, half-sawed, half-snowed upon.
“Those planks in the northern bailey ought to have been put up months ago, before the winter came,” he said.
Yes, indeed. Before the flood-wet autumn came, before the sickness came, sweeping through her men, disabling them in successive waves. Yes, before all that.
“Or at least before you came,” she suggested quietly.
Hard-packed muscular thighs bunched as he turned to look up at her, a forearm draped over his knee. “There is a field of mud out there, Katarina. Fronting the castle on every side but the north, and that is where the cliffs are. It is an entire meadow of mud.”
“It is not an entire meadow,” she demurred modestly. “There is a small pathway safe for passage, far to the east…”
“So that is how you did it,” he murmured, a note of respect in his words. But then, Aodh did not seem reluctant to show respect; she suspected it was one of his greatest traits. “The way you were able to hold Rardove with ten men? You tricked and maneuvered and built fields of mud, and you prevailed. I am impressed.”