by Kris Kennedy
Her fingers tightened around the leather. “You know naught of the choices I have had to make.”
“I know a few.” Striding over, he dropped to his knees and, shocking her into silence, buckled her sword belt around her hips, then got back to his feet, and retreated a few steps, his hand resting at the hilt of his own sword, waiting for her to draw on him.
“Oh, Aodh,” she exhaled, helpless. Her chest felt cold, her brain frozen.
“You’ve a fire to fight, lass. Let’s burn it out.”
“Someone might get hurt,” she protested
“People are already getting hurt, and there’s a world of it to come.”
Her throat was dry, making it difficult to form words. “I mean here, in this room.”
Something flickered in his gaze. “I’ll never hurt you.”
She straightened. “I meant you.”
He laughed.
Her hand touched the hilt of her sword. “I have been trained, you know.”
“Have you?” He tapped his fingers on his belt, then shrugged. “You’ll not be as good as I, Katy, but that is not the point, is it?”
She drew her sword from its scabbard.
He smiled and drew his own.
“You might be sorry, you know,” she said, an echo of her earlier words as she began to move about the room. He turned with her.
“I doubt it.”
They circled each other, parrying, testing each other as they moved. She stepped forward, and he backed up as they took a circuit around the room. He gave the table a hard shove with his hip as they passed by, pushing it out of the way, and as he did, she lunged forward, gave her sword a little flip up, nudging his aside.
With a surge of power, he tightened his hold and let the movement lift his sword up and around, a glinting arc of steel, then brought it back down again to hit her away, but she’d already danced backward.
“You’ve some talent, lady,” he said as he swiped his sword northwest, a flashing move.
“I know, my lord.” She swept around in a clockwise arc, out of the way of his blade, and returned her sword to its original position, lethally level, tip pointed at him.
They moved about the room, Aodh setting a rhythm that matched her mood. She took regular swipes at him, left, right, backing him up in predictable motions, then, when she used the natural flow of their parry to make a swift lunge forward, he stepped to the side, out of the way.
“Contratempo, Katarina,” he murmured as she stumbled forward.
She righted herself at once, blowing hair back from her face with the grace of a cat. His blood fired.
She was made for this.
“What is this word?” she demanded, circling him again.
“I created a rhythm, you fell into it, then I disrupted it. Contratempo.”
“I shall recall that to mind.”
“Do.”
“And pray, sir, who taught you such things?”
“The Corporation of the London Masters of Defence.”
Her gaze flew to his, then snapped back to the sword. “That is a great many words. I know what none of them mean.”
“Aye? Well, you needn’t use words, lass. Just look.” They parried.
“You are five stone heavier than I.” She punched off his parry and backed up. “Most of that between your ears.”
“You are paying attention to the wrong thing, Katarina. You keep watching the tip of my sword. Watch me—my posture, the grip of my hand; be aware of my sword.”
“That sounds like trickery.”
He laughed. Katarina frowned. He was laughing a great deal. Under other circumstances, she would welcome such lightheartedness. As it was, he was pointing a sword at her, so it rather unnerved.
“Drop your shoulders,” he instructed. She bashed away his blade. “They’re way up here, by your ears. And bring your elbows in.”
“Oh, hush up,” she muttered as they circled one another. Her face was bright, gleaming with sweat and energy.
They moved around the room, advanced sharply to engage, then retreated. He wasn’t toying with her per sé, but he could have ended this thing anytime. The reason he had not was because he was an insufferable, arrogant mule and he wished to torment her with this little drama as a metaphor for their larger struggle.
Still, she admitted, brushing back her hair, it did invigorate.
“Do you intend to make some point by this display?” she demanded, tucking loose strands of hair behind her ear as she bobbed to the left.
“What point could I possibly be making?” His tone was so dry, it could ignite.
“It escapes me,” she assured him.
“Come, lass, disarm me.”
She scowled. “You are making a point.”
“If you detect one, far be it from me to disagree with a lady.”
She tossed her head, flinging back her hair, and stepped to the left, moving her sword in a backswing arc.
He stepped to the side and deflected it lightly away rather than engaging, then swept free and slid his feet backward.
“Aye, you are good, Katarina.”
“I know.”
A loud crash broke the silence of the room as he kicked a bench out of the way.
“Who trained you?”
“Just the boys.”
He grinned. “The boys, is it?”
“Wicker.” She paused. “And Walter gave me a few tips.”
He laughed.
She lunged.
*
DOWN IN THE BAILEY, Cormac and Ré were returning from the barracks, where they’d conducted yet another fruitless session with the Rardove old guard, all of whom were younger than they. Striding across the bailey, they glanced up at the high tower as they passed beneath.
Two of the hinged windows were pushed open, and there were tinkling sounds and faint smashes, coming from within…was that metal? Or glass? And then…a male laugh?
“What do you think is going on?” Ré inquired grimly.
Cormac stopped and listened, then scratched his chin. “Sounds to me like a swordfight.”
“That’s what I thought, too.” Ré started walking again.
“You dinna think he’s fighting with her, do you?”
“He might be doing anything. He’s already done things I’ve never seen him do before.”
“Well, there’s a frightening thought, isn’t it, seeing as the list of things Aodh’ll do is long and notorious.”
“I know.” Ré was silent a moment. “Son of a bitch.”
A shout disrupted the continuation of this considered opinion. Another rider had just returned.
*
“YOU LOOK GOOD, lass. Your chemise…” Aodh swiped his free hand down the front of his body. “All wet.”
She gasped, but there was nothing to be done. “I hate you.”
He laughed.
“Moreover, the queen will hate you.”
“Some days, the feeling is mutual.”
She eyed him suspiciously. “What does that mean?”
“Some days, I’m not too fond of the queen myself.”
“Of course you are not fond of her,” she said warily. “What do you mean, ‘fond’? You do not know the queen.”
“Aye, I do.”
“You know Elizabeth, Queen of England and Ireland?”
“She’s the one.”
Her mind, torn between his words and his sword, rebelled. “But…how? In what capacity do you know her?”
“Councilor.”
“Councilor?”
He shrugged. “One of them. Member of her court. Friend.”
Slowly, her jaw dropped. “You cannot…that is not possible…what you say…no.”
“Aye.”
The single word was more compelling than an argument. “In what manner? In what way, did you…” She waved her sword ineffectually, so stunned she could hardly speak. “For how long?”
His lips pursed. “Nigh on sixteen years.”
“No.” It wa
s barely a breath. She stopped moving her sword and simply stared. “You are lying. I do not believe you.”
“Well, that’s a shame, for I am telling the truth.”
“But, I… Why didn’t you tell me?”
He stopped too, his sword motionless. “What difference would it have made?” he asked in a low voice.
“Oh, Aodh, it means everything.”
“To you?”
“To the queen.” Katarina knew very well what happened to the queen’s favorites when they did a thing that even hinted at betrayal.
When her mother had been accused of being a witch, a maker of the ancient dyes of Rardove, and priest harborer, her husband, Katarina’s father, had stood surety for her. Claimed her innocence to the queen’s representative in Dublin, and then to the queen herself.
The claims had meant nothing; indeed, they may have doomed them both even more in the queen’s eyes, if for no other reason than jealousy. The way they saw it in England, an Irishwoman had stolen the queen’s captain, then bewitched him, then turned him Catholic.
Even a hint of disloyalty could doom a man.
Aodh had more than hinted. He had stolen a castle.
Oh, this was much, much worse than she’d thought. An Irish warlord rebelling was a matter of course. But one of the queen’s favorites?
This was treason on a high scale.
Aodh would be dead before Elizabeth finished giving the command. Lashed to a table, his body cut open, disemboweled while still alive, then his arms and legs half-severed and tied to horses…
She actually bent forward, sickened by the thought. She did not think she could survive that.
Oh, curse him, he had ruined her.
“Aodh,” she said in a cold whisper. “This is terrible. The queen will destroy you.”
“You’re concerned for me?”
“I’m horrified for you.”
With a twist of his wrist, he spun his sword and wrenched the blade from her grip. It tore free and clattered to the ground and he moved in, flinging his sword away as he came, driving her back to the wall. He drew up in front of her and put a hand on the wall on either side of her head, his arms stretched out straight.
“Aodh, this is madness.” She touched his jaw with trembling fingers. “Are you not even frightened?”
He skimmed a hand down her ribs, his hand catching on the damp chemise before he hooked it around her waist.
“I have been through fire, Katy. I have no fear left in me. It all burned away when I saw my father’s body torn limb from limb. Whatever happens will happen. I will not shy away.” He brushed his beard-roughened cheek across her soft one. “This, right here, now, between you and me, ’tis meant to be.”
She leaned her head forward until her forehead touched his. “I do not know what to do with you. You are mad.”
“Aye, mad. Join me.”
She gave a broken laugh. “I cannot.”
His head came up a bare inch. “You keep saying that, but most things are indeed a choice.” His voice was a low rasp. “Not a fine one, nor a pleasant one, not the one we thought we’d have, or that we wanted to have, but a choice, nevertheless.”
“And I am to thank you for offering me this one?”
“I am not offering it. It is. What you do with it is the choice. This moment may not be the one you sought, Katy, but it is here, before you. Choosing not to make it, that too is a choice. This moment, here,” he tightened the hand on her hip, “this is our life.”
“Oh, Aodh, you think I am not choosing you. I am not choosing treason.”
Aodh must have heard the tremble in her voice, for he moved in, no doubt sensing surrender. His other hand came to rest on her hip, and he pressed a kiss to her shoulder.
“Choose me,” he said, so simply it almost broke her heart.
“But, Aodh, does this all not mean you, too, have a choice?”
He stilled.
“You could choose something different. You could change this matter entirely.” Her words sped up as excitement grew. “You could admit you were wrong. Please, let us write the queen. I shall write her—”
“No. ” He slid his open hand from her hip up to the nape of her neck, where it hung, half a caress of affection, half a sign of warning. “My plans are the plans of generations, Katy, an entire people. My father, his grandfather, and his, and his. Rardove is four hundred years of waiting. I cannot lay it aside, nor have it endangered, not even for you.”
Her skin heated with the endearment. “What do you mean, even?”
“You must know, I esteem you.”
She shook her head angrily. “What would tell me so? Being locked in a tower?”
“Not being dead should tell you.”
She inhaled sharply. In the dim room, he was a force of nature.
“Not being sent away should tell you.” His voice was low and murmuring, coaxing her to see this his way. “The gifts should tell you.”
“Stop giving me gifts,” she pleaded.
“No.”
He bent his head and claimed her mouth, kissing her as if they were sinking, the land falling away beneath their feet, her mouth the only thing holding him up. She met him, lash for lash, her arms around his shoulders. He backed her to the wall and plunged his tongue deep into her mouth.
It was a dark, wild, unforgiving, primal, insanely arousing demand of a kiss. She returned it in the same fashion, reckless, hot, willing. He tore his mouth free.
“Should I stop, Katarina?”
She leaned her shoulders against the wall, pushed her hips out to receive him, drowning in want.
“Do I stop?” He kicked her legs apart and stood between them, ready to take what she so clearly wanted to give. “Do I stop?” he said again, in his rough, perfect voice. He rocked his hips into her.
She forgot how to reply.
“All you need to do is say stop.”
She did not say stop.
He bent to her ear. “Do you not see? We are fated. What more proof do you need? You cannot say no, and I cannot stop coming for you.”
His vision of their union scorched her heart, because she did care, and she could not say no, and still, she could not give him what he wanted.
Coldly, he stepped back, his gaze at once burning and distant. Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode out, leaving her standing, bereft against the wall, the sword at her feet.
But it mattered not at all, for she’d already been disarmed.
Chapter Twenty-Four
AODH BARRELED down the stairs into the hall. Soldiers lounged on benches and played games of dice and cards, while servants drifted in and out. The pretty maid Cormac seemed smitten with was sitting with him and Ré and a few others at a table by the fire, talking quietly. All heads lifted as he entered.
No doubt his expression was darker than whatever Bran had seen the other day when he stormed out of the bedchamber, for most of the men got to their feet instinctively, then swiftly retook their seats and averted their eyes. All but Ré, who, once again, just shook his head.
Aodh passed Walter, who stood in conference with Tancred, pointing to something in a book. As he went by, Walter’s gaze drifted to the stairwell, then the clerk shook his head.
“She always was defiant, my lord,” he murmured in sympathy.
Aodh’s hand flashed out and closed around the man’s throat, pushed him back to the wall, arm flexed straight.
Walter’s eyes flew wide as he began to choke.
Aodh leaned in close. “Do not speak to me of Katarina again, viper.”
Ré was there by then, and Cormac. They pulled him off the steward, who stumbled away, hand to his throat.
Aodh stalked to his chambers, leaving the hall in shocked silence.
A moment later, Ré and Cormac appeared at the door. He waved them in and reached for a whisky jug. Splashing drink into three glasses, he dropped them unceremoniously on the table before his friends and dropped down into the lord’s chair. He lift
ed his cup.
“Sláinte,” he said dourly, and stared into the fire.
Cormac and Ré exchanged uneasy glances. Looking at Ré, Cormac lifted his bushy eyebrows as high as they would go, then his shoulders, then put his hand in a fist and wiggled it back and forth, tipping his head ever so slightly in Aodh’s direction.
Ré blew out a noisy breath and turned to Aodh. “Did we hear swords upstairs?”
The flames danced bright red and blue. “Aye.”
Cormac sat forward, grinning. Ré made a sound of disgust. “What the hell are you doing, Aodh, using swordplay as…prologue?”
“Epilogue,” Aodh muttered, then sat forward and lowered his forehead to the table. “Betwixt.” He lifted his head an inch and banged it back down on the table, once, twice.
Ré leaned forward on his elbow, staring at Aodh. “Betwixt? Betwixt? You took her after the swords?” He smashed his hand over his face. “Whatever the hell you’re doing up there, Aodh, you need to do it faster. And much, much better. We haven’t much time now,” Ré said grimly. “The queen is coming, and we need allies.”
Aodh threw himself back in his chair. “Sent out more riders.”
Ré and Cormac exchanged a glance. “Have you considered the O’Fail?”
“No O’Fail.”
*
AODH SLEPT a few brief hours, in the chair in front of the fire. It was a hot, hazy sleep filled with dreams of Katarina, her knees parting for him, her eyes half-lidded with passion as she reached for him.
A touch on his shoulder ripped him from his slumber with a jutting erection. He sprang to his feet, sword drawn.
Bran leapt backward, hands out. “My lord, I am sorry!”
“Jésu, Bran,” he muttered, resheathing his blade with a shove. “How many times have I told you, do not do that.”
He unbuckled his sword belt and threw it on the bed, then plunged his cupped hands into the stone cistern.
Over the fire, a bucket of water warmed, and he washed with it, dressing as Bran reported on the nighttime developments.
“…fully stocked, so we can do a late slaughtering, and Tancred reports the Coward has gone over the accounts fully now, and most are in arrears, but there is a cellar full of wool fells that will be worth a great deal, and there are other reserves that should be …worth…some…thing…”