by Kris Kennedy
“Who says I don’t know it?” A flash of lightning could be seen around the edge of the shutters, then a few seconds later, a long roll of thunder rumbled into the room.
“Then if you know it, you must know I cannot turn to you. Don’t you see?”
He wiped his hand along his jaw. “The queen killed your father, so you will be loyal to her. I confess to being confused.”
She shook her head impatiently. “The queen was good to me, Aodh. Kind to me, despite what my parents had done.”
He plucked a card out of the fanned assemblage in his hands and laid it on the table. “And what had they done, lass? In truth, what had they done?”
Her jaw dropped at this assessment in the form of a query, and she stared at him, her cards on the table, her shields dropped, her defenses gone down like a drawbridge hitting the earth, and he simply strolled into her heart, through the pathway of her eyes.
Hurt. Scared. Betrayed. Abandoned.
All the things one was wont to feel after the careless, selfish choices made by others smashed through your heart like a cannonball.
Upon a time, such feelings had lurked within him too. They did not now—he’d gone as cold as the emptiness scalding his heart. But dimly, he recalled them. The horror, the fear. The screams. The endless, aching chasm of loneliness and fear, and knowing you were alone in it, forever alone.
Then, quick as a flash, it was gone, and she was Katarina the Bold again, Katarina the Fierce, sitting tall in her chair and regarding him with an expression pinned at the intersection of affection and desire and anger, which was debilitating in and of itself, to know affection lurked there too, tangled with desire.
The anger bothered him not at all. Katarina was fire. Fire burned.
But she could be won. She must be won.
For her sake, as much as his.
“The queen allowed me Rardove,” she went on softly, perhaps not realizing he’d just seen into her soul. “When my father had been found guilty of treason, and my mother was dead. Allowed it when I’m quite sure other voices spoke against it.”
Oh, aye, they had, he thought grimly. Aodh’s father’s had been the loudest, demanding the return of his ancestral lands. The queen had not listened, as was ever her wont when it came to Ireland. And so the rebellions followed not six months later, turning parts of Ireland—and all of Aodh’s heart—into a cold, bloody battlefield.
“The queen took me in wardship, brought me in from the wilds, to England—”
“But you did not want to be brought in, did you?”
“—and finally sent me back, under my step-brother’s care. And when he died, she allowed me—me, Aodh, a woman alone—to rule her marchlands. She even sent me my father’s steward, Walter, to assist.”
“For that alone you should turn on her,” he said grimly.
She smiled a little. The cards were entirely forgotten now, scattered across the candlelit table, interspersed with gold coins. “You may laugh, Aodh, but when I was younger, Walter was a mighty presence. He wrought precisely what he was intended to. I became a box, he my lock.”
“And what was he intended to lock up?”
She hesitated. “I never did a Humphrey again.”
He laughed. “And the Humphreys of the world are the worse off for it, lass.” But he was pleased. And realized Walter had some purpose in life after all.
“Oh, he brought me alternatives, of course.”
“What alternatives?” Aodh said, stiffening.
Delicate and pale, her fingers twisted about themselves on the table. It was a telltale twitching for a woman so self-contained. “Bertrand of Bridge. You may recall him?”
“Vaguely. In what way was Bridge an alternative?”
“An alternative bedmate, Aodh,” she said, almost sadly, that he had not understood. “If the passions could not be tamped down, they could be channeled. Bertrand was a perfect choice. He was of a long-standing noble family. We had land, he was impoverished. He very much wanted Rardove, and had the…will…to contain me. It was a perfect match, really. But I was…stubborn. I refused.” She lifted a faint smile to him. “You see, there it is again, stubbornness. Certes, I am doomed.”
“Spirit is not stubbornness,” he said grimly. The notion that someone had tried to tame her…as he himself was doing.
Something in his gut twisted, and a weight descended on his chest. He pushed it away. What he was doing here was different. Much different.
“Oh, on occasion it is,” she said, as rain began to lash at the windows. “In any event, I said no. Which mattered not at all; Bertrand is a resourceful man. All the situation required was a little ruination. He came to my room one night. It was very dark, and I’d only seen him once, across a crowded courtyard, so at first I did not know who he was. I was terrified. Then when he told me who he was, and what he wanted.... Me, Rardove.” She shrugged. “I’d already been disgraced, you see.”
Darkness veiled his vision. “Did he hurt you?”
She looked up swiftly at the low, menacing tone. “No, Aodh, no. Just…frightened me.”
“I will kill him.”
Her eyebrows arched. “I thought that was already part of your plan.”
“I will kill him twice,” he vowed.
Katarina smiled faintly, and her fingers trailed over the cards on the table. “And yet again, the queen was good to me. I said I did not want Bertrand, and she allowed me that. Instead of throwing me into the sea, or the Tower, she gave me Rardove. Aodh, she could have done any number of things, none of them good. Time and again, I was the product of misbegotten passions, and looked to recreate them ever and anon. And still, she gave me Rardove to rule.”
“Until she gave it to Bertrand after all.”
“And then you came,” was her tart reply.
“Thank God for small favors,” he said with feeling.
She laughed, and a smile lingered after. The secret smile, the one that housed something sweet and hidden, and it was aimed right at him.
Soon. Very soon, she would be his.
Chapter Eighteen
KATARINA DRAGGED her gaze away from the clear intent in Aodh’s eyes: he wanted her. She looked at the treasure chests, then the map, then turned slightly to examine the bundle of silk he’d tossed on the shadowy bed. She nodded toward it.
“And what is that? It does not look like something won in a pirate raid.”
“I am not a pirate, Katy.” The words were quiet, but hard as steel.
“Good. What is it?”
“Silk. Soon to be a gown. For you.” He reached out and pushed the bundle closer.
She got to her feet and touched the fabric, then swept it up and held it against her body. It was a gorgeous, luxurious piece of fine-woven silk. She stroked her hand across it, then looked up to see his ice-blue gaze climbing from the fabric to her eyes.
“You said you would accept a gown.”
Her fingers curled into the silk. “Aodh, you do not have to bring me gifts.”
“Aye, I do.” He sounded grim and sat forward. “Does it please you?”
She shrugged dismissively, pulling her mouth into a pout of indifference as she glanced at the fabric that was finer than anything she’d ever owned. “It is pleasing. Is this what they are wearing over the sea?”
“Some.”
She lifted a handful of the silk and slid it over her cheek. “I recall in England, the…thing worn…about the neck? A bit of lace…?” Her fingers fluttered against her throat.
His gaze dropped to the movement. “Och, Katy, it’s more than a bit.”
This little nickname he’d chosen for her, it fairly intoxicated.
“’Tis truly awful.” He shook his head sadly.
She lowered her hand. “How awful?
“Awe-inspiringly awful,” he assured her.
“I’m…breathless to know more.”
“Well then,” he drawled, and got to his feet, then flipped open another one of the chests and drew out pens a
nd paper and stoppered bottles of ink. My, he was a veritable chancery, this warlord.
He laid the parchment on the table, and, holding it with the edge of one fist, moved the candlesticks closer, swept up one of the pens and began sketching.
She stared in silence. Bent at the hips, sword dangling, muscles of his back evident beneath his shirt, he held the pen with strong, callused fingers and sketched her the likeness of a very pretty dress.
She made a little noise.
He tipped his face up, pen poised in the air, midway through the hemline of what appeared to be becoming a bodice. “Aye? You’ve something to say?”
Clamping her teeth together, she shook her head. Nothing. She’d said nothing. Aodh the warlord could sketch a very fine gown.
The room was silent but for the crackle of the fire and the scratch of his pen. Finally he straightened. “Aye?” He motioned to the paper.
She dragged her gaze from him, down to the page, which depicted a woman in a gorgeous gown, flowing skirts, a golden snood, and… “Good God,” she murmured.
He laughed.
The sketch, it was…ludicrous. The stiff circlet of lace, confining the neck, opening out like an angry, fluted flower to plume under the chin in the most unappealing of ways. And so wide…it seemed to go on, and out, forever.
“Well,” she said softly.
“Well.”
She cleared her throat. “After all…”
“After all that.”
The tempered amusement in his drawl made her smile. “How would one ever eat?”
“Well now, that is an interesting question. One lady, a very fine baroness, had a two-foot long spoon.” He demonstrated how she would lift it far out, away from her body, then bring it back in, the way a hawk might land on a tree limb.
She laughed out loud. “I thought it a jest.” She touched the ink. A tiny blot of green came away on her finger.
“I assure you, lass, in a thousand years, I could not have thought of that.” They considered the sketch, then he added, “And I’ve thought of some fine, awful things.”
This time, she tipped her head back and laughed, rustling the drape of whisper-soft silk still held to her body. He smiled at her, but repressed energy strained beneath the surface of him. Aodh was like the power under the waves, rolling through the world.
And now he’d rolled into her world, this warrior who gifted gowns and had known a fine baroness who ate dinner from a two-foot spoon.
How had he come to know such a person? How had he come by his treasures and his pretty playing cards and his very fine wine?
Aodh was not a simple man, and she realized with a shock that she knew nothing of him.
“Aodh?”
“Aye?”
“Where did you go?”
His eyes came up, pale blue and burning. “What?”
“When you left Ireland, where did you go?”
For a moment, surprise shone in his expression, then it was shuttered. “Many places.”
“I was hoping for more particulars,” she said gently.
“Aye? And I was hoping to have you laid out on the bed by now, crying out my name.”
Her cheeks flared with heat. “Yes, well,” she said mildly.
“Aye, well,” he drawled back.
They smiled at each other.
He sat back down and picked up a cup, with whisky in it, most likely. “What do you really want to know, Katarina?”
Oh, the way he said her name was seduction enough. She would have to tell him to stop, but then he would know how much it affected her, and would say it endlessly.
She sat down too, silken fabric in her lap, for she could not quite bear to set it aside yet. “I want to know about the treasure chests. And the Latin…”
“The Latin, is it?”
“Yes, the Latin.” Because the Latin had told her something, confirmed something that had been growing in her mind, a cord of thought strummed by the clerk and Aodh’s huge, scrawling signature.
She’d known he was intelligent. Now she was sure he’d been educated too. Or else in the company of cultured, expensively educated folk.
An uncommon course of events for dispossessed Irish warlords.
“I’ve been to Rome,” he said, so dismissively, so casually, it took a moment for the words to penetrate.
When they did, she sat forward sharply. “When?”
He shrugged, as if he could not be bothered to recall the dates. “Years ago.”
“Where else have you been?”
“Paris. Venice. The Netherlands. Constantinople. Bohemia.”
“No,” she whispered, enchanted.
“The Canary Islands,” he added with a flourish of his hand. “Where your wine is from.”
“What did you do in Rome?”
A brief, but very definite, pause. “Met with people.”
“Catholics?”
He tipped his head to the side. A hedging affirmation, then.
“What was Rome like?” She flung the question like a dagger.
“Dirty.”
“Paris?”
“Dangerous.”
“Constantinople?”
His nostrils flared slightly. “Exhilarating.”
She inhaled a cool breath. How wonderful, the word he’d selected. “Is it true the outer wall has over ninety towers? And the sea wall almost two hundred? Did you see the Hagia Sophia? Is it not the city where Marco Polo launched his journeys from…?”
A slow, knowing smile crossed his face. “I’ll make you a deal, Katy. You marry me, and I’ll tell you everything.”
Disappointment coursed through her. She sat back, affecting disinterest by means of a miniscule shrug.
A low rumble of laughter met this; he knew she’d been practically speared by the desire to know more.
“’Twas a mere curiosity,” she assured him.
“What I want isn’t mere, lass.” Low and lazy, it was a confident, masculine drawl, followed up by the immeasurably more confident, and equally masculine, command, “Come here.”
Heat swept through her, everywhere. “No.”
He gave a faint smile. “Getting tired of that word.”
Shivers, hard and pricking, like falling stars, rained across her belly and chest. Traitorous body, to turn into a night sky simply because this warlord had issued a command.
And he knew it. Knew every shiver that ribboned through her body, for he pushed to his feet and came around the table and lifted her out of the chair. He skimmed the fabric she still held to her chest with the back of his hand, then closed it around the silk and tugged it away, tossing it to the side, a slithery pile of silk by her feet.
Nothing lay between them now, nothing at all.
He tipped his head to the side, watching her. Waiting. She should walk away.
She did not walk away.
“Aodh,” she said, feeling strangely desperate. On his behalf. “You do not know what you have done here, by taking Rardove. Your arrogance will be your doom.”
“I am not arrogant. Rardove is. It sits, as we have said, on bedrock. With sea cliffs behind. It can hold off an army for years.”
She stared at him. “That is the extent of your plan? To hold them off for years?”
A shrug from the powerful shoulder. His gaze slid off hers, trailed down to her chest. “If all else fails.”
“Else?” A tendril of panic uncurled in her belly. “What else are you planning?”
“Negotiations. There are worse things than having an Irishman hold a castle in Ireland.”
“You cannot mean to try— You cannot think the queen will negotiate with you? Aodh, she will annihilate you. You must see— ” She stopped short as a new shot of fear went through her. “Does the queen know you are here?”
He nodded. “She ought. I wrote her myself.”
She felt flushed and feverish. “You wrote her? Oh no. Did you mention me?” She couldn’t keep the panic from her voice. “Aodh, did you mention me?”
His gaze came up from where it had been trailing down her body. “Is that what is worrying you, Katy?”
Her hands were shaking. “’Tis treason enough to harbor priests, but to harbor rebels…”
“I told you, Katy, I will protect you.” He turned his hand and slid it along her jaw. “I swear it, on my life. I will not abandon you.”
She stared into his eyes, dumbfounded, as if she’d never heard the word before: abandon. No one had abandoned her. Her father had been executed by the queen, her mother died of a broken heart, too swaddled in pain, perhaps too frightened of the queen, to stay alive anymore.
“Abandon me?” she whispered.
“Never,” he murmured, and skimmed his hand to the ties of her bodice and tugged on one frayed silk ribbon.
She watched his hard hand being so gentle with her, and began to tremble. “You are taking your life in your hands, Mac Con.” Her voice shook.
He slid his gaze up. “Right now?”
“By taking Rardove.”
“Ah.” He tugged on the laces harder.
“The queen will be enraged.”
“Are you?” he asked, his head bent, watching what he was doing to her bodice.
“You do not understand. The queen will destroy you.”
He leaned closer, put his mouth by her ear. “The queen will try.”
And somehow, with his body so close and his confidence firing the room, it actually seemed possible this Irishman might succeed, against the most powerful monarch in Christendom.
Madness. Hopeless, reckless, madness.
She curled her hands into fists. “Aodh, listen to me. It is not too late. We could write her. I could write her, on your behalf.”
His gaze lifted from her bodice. “You would do that for me?”
Her mind raced. “Yes, of course, I will write the queen—”
“There’ll be no messages,” he said firmly. “But I thank you.” Ever so gently, he kissed her cheek. “For worrying on me.” He skimmed his hands to her hips and, in a single move, lifted her and set her down on the table.
Before she could release a shocked gasp, he’d stepped between her knees.
An exhale of desire broke from her. “We c-cannot…” Her words drifted off, as she almost forgot what they could not do. “P-people do not...”