Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws)

by Kris Kennedy

  “I am coming.”

  Ré said almost gently, “Aodh specifically ordered you to stay here, Bran. He wanted you safe—”

  “He raised me. He saved me. I am coming.”

  Katarina saw in his eyes exactly what she felt in her heart. “Of course you are coming,” she said, and flung the door open. Cormac shook his head, and Ré all but glared at her. “He doesn’t want to be safe,” she said. “He wants Aodh. Surely we can all understand that. Come, we must be off. The army will move directly for England, and the queen will not be kind to Aodh.”

  She had no further plan than this. The queen will not be kind was not, in actuality, a plan, but these were Aodh’s men, built for reckless adventures, and they required no convincing.

  Nighttime was everywhere by the time they led their horses though the small back gate and along the path of the precipice that overlooked the sheer cliff. Carefully, they led their horses along the slippery, rocky cliffside. The hard rock trail underfoot was damp, and reflected moonlight off stone like wet obsidian.

  “Jesus save us,” Cormac muttered, his rumbling murmur bouncing off the cliffside, “If I didn’t know better, lady, I’d swear you were trying to kill us.”

  “I did not realize you were afraid of heights,” she said, leading the way, her hood pulled forward so she was little more than a dark shadow.

  Cormac stiffened but didn’t look up from ground beneath his boots, “No’ frightened, simply…cautious.”

  “Since when?” Ré inquired from behind.

  “I’m a cautious fellow, at times,” came the indignant, if faint, reply.

  “Aodh did not mention ‘cautious’ in his descriptions of you,” Katarina said, supporting Ré in this line of questioning.

  “Talkin’ about me, was he?” Cormac muttered.

  “He spoke of all of you.” She stepped over a portion of the path that was washed away. Rocks dribbled into the little gorge that had been left behind. A little earth slide cascaded into the miniature crevasse, and bounced noisily down the vee.

  “What’d he say?” Cormac asked.

  A few more pebbles skidded down and fell blackly into the chasm below. She tightened her hands on the wet leather reins of her horse and walked on a little faster. “He told me Ré was most bold, Bran fiercely loyal, and you were middling with a bow and lethal with everything else. He also mentioned you were a most valiant drinker of ale. Mind the washout,” she added, as if it were an afterthought.

  “Valiant, is it?” he railed indignantly. “An’ he said nothin’ of Ré’s drinkin’, did he?” He snorted and stepped over the washed-out portion indignantly.

  “He said you could drink Ré under the table,” she informed him.

  “Hardly,” the amiable retort drifted up from the back of the line, where Ré brought up the rear, and in this way, they distracted Cormac from the plunging depths to their left until they reached the end of the rocky cliff trail and stepped out onto grassy earth. There they crouched, and watched the army begin its retreat.

  Then smoothly and in single file, caped and hooded, like moving shadows, they rode down the only path of safety through the bog and followed after.

  *

  THEY TAILED THE ARMY for two days, but it moved swiftly, never stopping for more than an hour or so. There was no chance to intercept it, or sneak inside its perimeter, nor to make any sort of more complicated plans. The army reached their ships and loaded up immediately, eager to return with their prize. And to leave Ireland in their dust. No delay, no pause.

  Above the town, Katarina, Ré, Cormac, and Bran watched the launch. After two days’ riding, they were a motley-looking crew and would never get through the gates.

  “I suppose we must hire ourselves a smuggler,” Katarina announced, realizing she had utterly turned a corner. Lover of rebels, employer of smugglers.

  “We don’t need smugglers,” Ré replied, reining about.

  “Why not?”

  “We are smugglers.” He cantered off down the hill.

  Katarina started after him. “Where is he going?”

  “To our boat,” Cormac said, gathering his reins. Bran followed suit, and Katarina reined around too, their hooves a low thunder back down the hill.

  She’d forgotten they had a boat. How like Aodh, to have provided something that could assist in his own rescue.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  “HOW ARE WE EVER going to get in there?”

  The five of them stood outside the English army camp as night fell. Campfires burned, bright punches of dancing flame amid the dark bodies of army soldiers, who were, without a doubt, celebratory.

  For good reason. The English battalion had had an easy sailing across a notoriously shifty sea, after having accomplished their mission for the queen with surprising speed and no bloodshed. Even now, their commander had ridden on ahead to inform the queen of their successful accomplishment, leaving the army encamped outside this small town, as night fell and revelry erupted.

  On the morrow, they would bring the queen her prize, the Irish rebel. They were understandably and intensely celebratory.

  The nearby townsfolk seemed of a like mind. Merchants and vendors and whores streamed into the camp as it lit up under the night sky to sell goods, and a festive atmosphere reigned. An army marching into your town was bad news, but passing by it while on other, non-military business was an entirely different matter. The aspiring merchant—or whore—could make a lucrative showing.

  But exultant and celebratory, the army had not entirely relaxed its guard: everyone entering was being searched.

  “We shall get in as merchants,” said Ré firmly.

  They all looked at the merchants walking by. Every one had a barrel or basket or wagon of goods. The only ones who did not were the tricksters and the whores.

  “Can any of you do any tricks?” Katarina asked, watching a trained bear go by.

  “I can juggle a bit, ma lady.”

  Everyone turned to the great hulking mass of Scotsman.

  “You juggle?” Incredulity stretched Ré’s voice as if it was on a rack.

  A huge shoulder lifted in a nonchalant shrug. “Upon a time. Learned when I was a lad. Earned a penny by it here and there.”

  “Cormac, every day, you become more of a revelation to me,” Ré said in an admiring tone.

  “That’s just what ma mam said,” Cormac replied comfortably.

  And finally, finally, Bran smiled. Bran who had not smiled, nor barely spoken, since leaving Rardove Keep. In response, she patted Cormac’s chest fondly. “Then juggle you shall, sir. With Ré and Bran as your assistants. And I… I think I shall make a credible whore.” She pulled up her hood and tugged down the laces of her bodice. “Do you think I look like a whore?”

  They stared. She’d bathed briefly in the cove they’d sailed from last night, where the water came down over the rocks in a pool lit by reflected moonlight, so it seemed to be a home for nymphs more than men. She’d washed her tunic and her hair, and tucked it all back under the veil, but perhaps… Well, one could not be sure how one looked after several days of riding a horse, chasing an army.

  “You’re the best-looking whore I’ve ever seen,” Cormac assured her in reverent tones. He sounded slightly choked up.

  Ré smacked him on the back of the head and turned to her. “My lady, you should wait here. We will get Aodh.”

  “Yes, with a great deal of bloodshed and attention, which will never do. In any event, you cannot stop me. I am going to be a whore.”

  Ré wiped his hand over his face. “Aodh will have my head,” he muttered into his palm.

  “I will stand for you,” she assured him. Then Cormac, ever helpful, reached out with huge, beefy hands, and puffed up her hair a little. “They like it a bit more tousled,” he informed her soberly.

  She thanked him for the insight.

  “At least, I should be the one slipping into the tent,” Ré said, and Cormac, hands still in her hair, nodded. “Or myself, my
lady.”

  She sighed. “We have already been over this. There will almost certainly be guardsmen inside the tent, and they will not be distracted by a man stepping into their tent, at least not in the way we want. Only a woman can do that. Whereas the guards outside the tent will be very distracted by an argument occurring in front of their faces. With a juggler.”

  Ré watched in dismay, and Bran watched, impassive, as Cormac dropped his hands, her hair apparently sufficiently tousled. She smiled at him and tugged at the laces of her gown, loosening them a little more.

  Ré closed his eyes. Cormac examined her with a soldier’s eye, then nodded. “You’ll do,” he said. Ré groaned.

  “The green tent is Ludthorpe’s,” Bran informed her.

  She nodded and tugged her hood forward.

  “You get Aodh, and you go,” Ré said grimly as they started walking. “Do not wait for us. We meet back at the cave.”

  They made it into the camp easily, and moved straight toward the green tent. Katarina hung back, head averted, hood up, waiting until Ré and Cormac started a full-on argument that was clearly tending toward violence, then skirted behind the two guardsmen who, as predicted, stepped forward to watch, and slipped inside the tent.

  She straightened immediately, prepared to offer explanations and anything else that might be required, momentarily, in order to distract the men and free Aodh. She would just have to hope Aodh could, at some point, offer his own invaluable assistance.

  But there were no soldiers. There was only darkness, the pale ambient light of moon and fire that filtered in from outside, and a single figure, slumped sideways on the ground, propped against the tent pole, arms wrenched behind his back, lashed with rope.

  “Aodh,” she whispered. “Oh dear God.”

  His face had been beaten. Dried blood formed a crusted river down his cheek and jaw and neck, stuck to his clothes. His booted legs were stretched out, half-bent, boot heels dug into the earth. His head hung to the side, as if he was unconscious. Or…dead.

  Her body, which had been flushed hot from tension and excitement and endless movement for days now, went cold, full cold, from her fingertips to her toes, and all the way to her heart.

  Her heart managed to thud out two sodden beats, then, choking slightly, she dropped to her knees at his side, her knife out. What sort of beast would do this to a helpless man…

  His body suddenly twisted up and over in a shocking move, knocked her off-balance. His boot came up and kicked the blade out of her hand. It tumbled away, flashing, and before she could open her mouth, he had kicked her over onto her side and wrapped his legs around her, her arms and torso trapped in the grip of his powerful thighs. His hands were still tied behind his back, the blade three feet away.

  So much for “helpless.”

  “Aodh,” she breathed against the hard press of his legs.

  His eyes, one of which was almost swollen shut, opened. “Katy?” his voice scraped hoarsely.

  “Dear God,” she whispered. “What happened?”

  “Bertrand,” he said, releasing her.

  “I will kill him,” she vowed, shaking with fury and fear. She knelt beside him as he rolled to his side, presenting his bound hands.

  “How…get here?” he croaked. Outside the tent, the argument raged, the shadows of people pressed onto the walls of the tent.

  “Ré and Cormac,” she whispered, gesturing to the bodies and now-raging argument, and swiftly sliced through the ropes.

  In a flash, he took the knife and cut the away bindings trapping his ankles, and staggered to his feet.

  He swayed at once, stumbling sideways. She caught him, her arms tight around his ribs as they stumbled together for a moment. His breathing was harsh. She leaned them gently against the center pole and, fumbling with a hand, tugged a flask off her belt.

  He downed half of it, trickles of it wetting the beard now covering his face. She looked over her shoulder. The shouts were ever-present, and by the shadows, it appeared a few punches had been thrown, so the fight was escalating apace, but the shadows of bodies were all clustered around the tent flap. Slipping out undetected would be impossible.

  Aodh handed the flask back, wiping his chin with his forearm. “Whisky,” he said thickly. “Gave me…whisky.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, why did you drink it?,” she whispered fumbling for another flask. “I thought it was water.”

  “Was perfect.” He pulled her to him, kissed her with his swollen, torn-open mouth, then spun her to the back of the tent. “Under,” he ordered in a rasp.

  Aodh crouched and slit the bottom edge of the tent with the knife, then tugged it up enough for her to roll under. He came after, then they were off, his arm slung around her shoulder for support, hurrying behind the row of tents, into the darkness, into the night.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  THEY MADE IT to the cave hidden on the western edge of the coast, and crept inside. Katarina propped Aodh against the wall and swiftly removed her gown then laid it on the hard ground. Aodh fell onto it as if he were already dead. He went down first to his knees, then toppled over. He grabbed her hand as he went, pulling her down beside him.

  “Give a lady a moment,” she whispered as she pulled her cloak over him.

  “Never needed moment…before…to remove gown…for me.” His voice was a hoarse, barely guttural rasp, but that he had made a jest at all filled her heart with hope.

  “On account of such arrogance,” she whispered as she tucked the cape up to his neck, then pulled the satchel with salves and unguents in it toward her, “I shall make you wait a full hour before my gown is removed next time we are in the bedchamber.”

  “Who waits…for bed…?” A slow, harsh breath. “Ré? ’Mac?”

  “Will be here soon,” she whispered. She decided not to mention Bran just yet.

  “Fools, all.” His words, already misshapen due to the bruises covering his battered mouth, were getting softer, more mumbled.

  “Reckless,” she whispered, brushing back blood-sticky hair from his temple.

  “Owe you…life.”

  “Nothing, Aodh,” she whispered. “You owe us nothing. We do but return the favors you have done for each of us.”

  The hard hand clasping her tightened momentarily, but his words had disappeared into breath before they were fully out, for he had fallen asleep.

  She stared at his beaten and bloody body, and since no one was there, and it was dark, she allowed herself the indulgence of one good cry, done quietly and quite wetly, as she knelt beside him and tended his wounds.

  They looked worse than they were, mostly cuts, and one that needed stitches, but Aodh barely stirred as she put them in. Then she washed what needed washing, bandaged what needed bandaging, shifted him gently, and resting his head on her legs, she stroked his head, watching him sleep and breathe, giving thanks her rebel was still alive.

  *

  AODH AWOKE as the linen-white light of dawn glowed around the corner of the cave and illuminated the far wall. As soon as he saw the wall, he knew where he was.

  Renegades Cove.

  Black rock glowed wetly in the pale pearly light, the delicate veins of white and faint shadings of rose and pale green within almost translucent in the dawn glow. And all across the rock, like some granite tapestry, the faintest hint of etchings, silent, visual diaries left by marauders and outlaws and lost souls through the ages.

  He remembered the wall well. In fact, if he were to rise now, he would find his own etchings made, sixteen years earlier, on that hellish, stormy night when he’d landed in England and Ré had dragged him out of the sea. The years had not dimmed the memories much. Landing on a shipwrecked boat, crawling up on land on his hands and knees, spitting ups seawater, intent on one thing: crawling to the Queen of England to resurrect Rardove.

  Now, to this moment, crawling away from the queen, beaten and battered.

  One had to admire the symmetry of it all, Aodh thought grimly. The patterns re
peating ever after, like the angles of a shoreline or the peaks of a mountain range. He and his father. Katy and hers.

  Sacrifice bore its costs. As did love.

  He looked down at Katarina’s sleeping form, curled up beside him. The cycles, ever repeating. Until broken.

  He’d spent his entire life fighting battles selected by others. Until Katarina. He’d lied—he had every intention of winning her, it had been his single goal—but she was the only thing, in all his world, that had been worth fighting for. And he’d won her.

  And now she’d sacrificed herself for him.

  If that did not fire a man’s blood, nothing could. This woman, so hard to win, had now transferred her loyalties to him, completely and utterly. He didn’t know if he was worthy, but it hardly mattered, for the deed was done. She was his. Under his protection, at his command—occasionally, he amended in a spasm of honesty— his in every way, from here on.

  As for that here on… They had some decisions to make.

  Katy was not going to be happy about his.

  But that was for later. Her body shifted in sleep, and he dropped beside her and slid his hand along the warm curve of her body. Everything else was for later, because if there was one thing Aodh had learned in all his years of hard living, it was to seize what you wanted, the moment you saw it, ere it was snatched away forever.

  He slid his hand lower.

  *

  AT DAWN, Aodh was up, awake and seemingly hale, which seemed impossible, except that he was touching her.

  At first, she thought it was a dream. A dream he was uninjured and hardy and virile. Slowly, she roused out of the heady, clouding state of slumber and found him most definitely injured, not quite well, but very hardy, exceptionally virile, and most definitely touching her, his hand working its way masterfully down her body, seemingly none the worse for wear. Her hips rose up to meet his hand, her knees falling apart at the merest coaxing touch.

  “I thought I’d lost you,” she whispered, the words catching in her throat as she threaded her fingers though his hair.

  “You will find I am exceptionally hard to lose.” His words rose up, muffled, from under her cloak. Then he poked his head out. “But then, you came and found me, did you not?”