by Kris Kennedy
She leaned closer, examining it as if it were a sleeping beast, then picked it up and carefully uncorked it. Holding it away from her body, she bent and sniffed.
The odor assaulted her. She swiftly set it down. “Mon Dieu, you are a horrible man. That smells awful.”
His astonishing blue eyes lifted. He said nothing.
Beast.
She kicked her skirts impatiently out of the way and took another restless turn around the tent. He seemed entirely indifferent to her, as if she did not even exist, which was highly galling. They were intimately, painfully aware of each other, closer than a married couple, and not saying a word.
On one circuit around the space, her swirling skirt dragged against his knee. The fabric tugged on her belly and chest, slowing her step. The sensation traveled up her body in a wash of chills, shocking her. It was as if he'd reached out and pulled her back toward him.
He exhibited no response, as if he did not even realize he'd been touched.
It was infuriating.
“Do Irishmen do nothing to entertain themselves beside carving small pieces of wood into smaller pieces?” she demanded.
“Aye,” he said laconically. “We kill things.”
“Ha. This I can believe.” She paused. “What manner of things?”
“Usually arrogant, spoiled heiresses,” he replied without looking up.
“Again we speak of my arrogance.”
“'Tis so prominently on display.” For a moment all was quiet, then, his attention still fully on the wood, he said, “Do you sing?”
Her step hitched. “I beg your pardon?”
“Perhaps you might wish to sing to pass the time?”
He was making fun of her.
She folded her arms over her chest. “Yes, I have the very lay in mind. The Tale of The Irishman Who Whittled Away His Greatest Folly.”
His head remained bent, dark hair falling past his scruffy jaw, but she thought, maybe, she saw a faint dented line deepen on his cheek. A smile.
Oh dear.
She hesitated, then said in a tentative voice, as her hopes were very low indeed, “Have you ever heard of...chess?”
He stopped whittling. Went so far as to look up and pin her with a gaze so crystal-blue and cold, she might have suggested they thrust lance tips into puppies.
“I believe I've heard of it.”
She couldn't resist giving her gown a small flounce. “I am quite skilled at the game. A master, so I am told,” she added humbly.
“Are you now?”
“I am now.”
“Does that mean you wish to play...me?”
The light touch on “me,” the faint hesitation that preceded it, as if she was surely jesting, to wish to play his vaunted self, ignited a flood of hot indignation. And, unfortunately, recklessness.
She swung her hand out. “I would, but alas, I see no chessboard in the outlaw’s tent.”
For the longest time, he just looked at her with those astonishing blue eyes, leaving her feeling...waded through.
Then he shoved to his feet. She scrambled back a few steps, but when he unsheathed a blade, she gasped.
He merely glanced at her, then bent and slashed the knife tip into the table, dragging it along in horizontal lines and vertical ones, creating...squares.
A board. He'd carved a chessboard into his little table.
How clev—
Destructive. How terribly destructive of him.
“You have a knack for destroying things.”
His eyes slid up. “I didn't destroy it. I made it serve two purposes.”
For a second, they stared at each other, then he dug into one of his innumerable pouches and pulled out yet another, smaller pouch. The man was laden with the things. As if he carried his whole life on his back, in these little moveable satchels and bags.
He began pulling out a whole host of little whittled men and figurines. An army of them. An ark of human and animal shapes.
He laid them on the small table.
“But these are beautiful,” she exclaimed, touching each piece as he laid it on the makeshift board.
He watched in silence as she lifted each one and hefted it in her hand, testing its weight, the sturdy, heavy feel of it. She ran a lion-shaped one over her cheek to feel the silky smooth, well-sanded surface.
She looked up to find him staring at her. Hurriedly, she set them down, her face hot.
“I an fond of beautiful things,” she explained, embarrassed to be seen so greedily touching and feeling.
“As am I,” he agreed, his tone a veritable well of double entendres as his gaze slid across her face.
She very much enjoyed entendres, double and triple if possible. Unseemly as it was, in the tent of this man she was bound to oppose.
“Which is the king?” she asked.
“The stumpiest one, of course,” he said, taking it from her hand and setting it on the table.
She was about to chasten him when she realized it would do nothing to stem the tide of his many outrages. Additionally, she knew a moment of glee, a cool, almost giddy feeling that rode through her belly when he called a king ‘stumpy.’
It was just the sort of thing an outlaw might do.
He set up the board, then flipped over his little stool and settled it in front of Cassia. He extended his hand, inviting her to sit. The entire thing was done in silence.
She brushed her gown to the side and, bending her knees primly, sat.
They played in silence. Of course. She drummed her fingers restlessly on the table as he examined the board.
After a moment, he slid his gaze up.
She stopped drumming and asked sharply, “Do Irishman never speak?”
“When we’ve something to say.” More silence.
She sighed. “It is customary to engage in conversation when you are in the company of another person.”
“Is it now? Perhaps you should tutor me.”
Her face lit. “Very well. Firstly, conversations commonly contain questions and replies.”
He snorted softly. “Trust you to turn it into an interrogation.”
She gave him a level look. “And they rarely involve insults.”
“Ah.”
Oh yes, this was a smile. Ever small, barely a dent in the cheek beside his ridiculously hard and handsome mouth.
“Will this be too difficult for you?” she inquired. “Exchanging words, and a lack of insults?”
“I’ll endeavor.”
“Very well. Let me see what I know a’ready… You are not a knight yet you came to a tournament you did not intend on fighting in, then fought a nobleman and took his daughter to ransom.”
“Are you insulting me, lass?” He clucked his tongue softly.
She flushed and dropped her gaze. It fell upon his broad hand, resting on the table. His wrist was curled slightly, his forearm roped with muscle and covered with dark hair—
She cleared her throat. “So, you are from Ireland?”
He nodded.
“Have you been in England long?”
“Years.”
She flung up her hands in exasperation. “This is a poor conversation. All you do is grunt and nod and shake your head.”
“Maybe you’re simply a poor tutor.”
Their eyes met and he might—might—have smiled again. It was very small though, so it was difficult to tell.
“English conversations involve words,” she informed him. “Stories. A sharing of ideas. Compliments.”
“Compliments?” he echoed. “Is that what we’re to do?”
Her cheeks grew a bit hotter.
“So be it. You’re the tutor.”
“We shall try again,” she agreed magnanimously. “Have you lands or title back in Ireland?”
He stared at her through a great many beats of her heart. So many her heart actually began to speed up, hammering out more rapid, unsteady beats.
Perhaps she ought to have asked about hawks or hounds rather t
han lands and titles.
“Aye, I’ve a title,” he finally said, his voice a slow drawl. “‘Fugitve.’ ‘Exile.’ And the lands that go with them: an impenetrable forest not even the king’s men dare enter, though they took it from me and mine. ’Tis wound about with spells, my home is.”
Her breath hitched on the word “fugitive,” and when he got to, “wound about with spells,” she stopped breathing entirely.
Which was no doubt his intent. To kill her with shock.
Well, she was not so easy to kill, with shock or anything else. He had no idea the things she’d seen…the things she’d borne, all alone in a remote castle while her father gambled her future, quite literally, away.
She met his cold gaze and lifted a brow. “I think you are trying to upend me.”
He sat back. “Is it working?”
“No.”
And then…oh yes, that was a smile.
She cleared her throat. “And what do you do with yourself now, now that you are banished from your enchanted forest?”
“I hunt people down. For a fee.”
Her jaw fell. He moved his queen forward, unaffected by the conversation. But then, none of this was a surprise to him.
“Perhaps we should not speak of Ireland,” she suggested weakly.
Move completed, he sat back. “You brought it up.”
“Yes, well, I have learned my lesson,” she said a trifle breathlessly as she bent to the board.
For long moments they played in silence, which she now found rather restful. But then, conversation had never been combat before.
Outside, campfires burned. Conversations ebbed and flowed as more fires flared up. A couple walked past, the black silhouette of their shadows cast against the walls of the tent. A willowy figure whispered and giggled, pressed against the side of a sturdier dark figure whose low, murmured reply was lost as they hurried past.
“You are quite good, my lady,” he conceded.
“This, I know.”
He slid his gaze up, a level regard from a downturned face. “You're not shy, are you?”
“I have never been trained to be shy, nor had a reason to be.”
“Nay, being rich is to be given a right to be bold, ’tis true.”
Well, he could not have been more wrong about “rich,” but for a woman, “bold” fit. She was unashamed of this.
“Some call it spoiled,” he added, his fingers closing around one of his pawns.
“Ha. You mean you call it that.”
“I hardly think of you enough to call you anything at all, my lady.”
She folded her arms over her chest and peered at him, as he was now peering at her, returning level gaze for level gaze. She was missing only the faint, mocking half-smile that inhabited his handsome mouth.
One did not like to be mocked by a mouth.
“That is a lie,” she announced.
It offered some satisfaction to see his look of insouciant confidence falter.
“I am all you think of, Lord Rogue. I am the center of your life just now. Think of all the things you have done and sacrificed, to place me here, in your tent, right now. Check,” she added with a smile, and slid her rook forward to land two makeshift squares away from his now-exposed king. She looked up triumphantly.
Her swift glance was rewarded by the sight of surprise on his impassive features. Quickly his eyes turned unreadable again. He looked down at the board.
“I see your point,” he murmured, rubbing his chin.
“Yes, I thought you would,” she murmured, feeling quite accomplished.
They both bent back to the table.
“I believe you have more than heard of chess, Irishman,” she murmured as he cornered, then captured, one of her knights.
“Aye, well, I used to be considered something of a master,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
A smile pulled at her mouth to hear her words tossed back at her. “Did you, now?” she said, not looking up.
“I did, now.”
It sounded as though he might be smiling too, but she did not look up to learn the truth. She did not need to see any more of his small, handsome smiles. She kept her gaze studiously on the chessboard.
It was unfortunate, then, that at the very edge of her circle of vision, she could see a portion of a wide male chest, and even more unfortunate that, where the soft tunic was unlaced at the collar, one could see a dark swirl of masculine hair.
If she tilted her gaze downward just the smallest bit, and moved her body to the side, she could espy a bent knee and his muscular thigh, clad in dark gray hose, and....
Best not to go any further.
She refocused her eyes firmly on the chess pieces, but they kept drifting toward the silver flask, which was sitting on the table in front of him. Every so often, he took a sip from it.
Finally, she pointed. “What is inside there?”
He glanced at it. “Uisce breatha.”
“And what is this complicated-sounding thing?”
“Water of life. Whisky.” He paused. “Would you want a taste?” He laid it on the table.
“Water of life?” she echoed. “Pah, it smelled like death.”
He clucked his tongue and reached for it. “Just as well you don't try it. It would be too much for a woman from England,” he said, taking it back.
She reached out. Her hand froze an inch above his wrist, hovering there. She could almost feel the heat of him.
Do not touch.
He opened his hand, offering the flask. Be my guest, his hand said. His hand was very hospitable.
Her face flushed. The rest of him was not at all hospitable, no matter how piled with softness his little bed might be. His whole being was comprised of hardness. Armor, muscles, intent. He was a warrior. Everything about him was meant to conquer, to make others fear and submit.
“I am not frightened of you,” she announced, a trifle too loudly.
The firelight from the candles on the table reflected in his blue eyes, which no longer looked blue as night fell, just very, very dark. Black like opals.
“I am glad to hear it, my lady.” He smiled. “Only of my whisky.”
She arched a brow. “Is that a challenge?”
“If you want to be challenged,” he said in a slow drawl.
Want to be? She was dying to be challenged. To live, to be met, to be seen. She'd been courted by some of the richest, most noble men in England, and not one of them had made her feel the way she felt right now, with this man’s eyes on her.
She glanced at the innocent silver flask of devil-drink. “I will have some of this ‘life water,’” she announced.
He arched up a brow, waiting.
“Please,” she said. The word fell clumsily from her lips, but it seemed to suffice. He slid the flask to her side of the table.
She picked it up and held it aloft in the air. “And it will not kill me?” she confirmed.
“We can only hope,” he said, laughter in his reply. Whether he hoped it would or would not, wasn't clear.
She took a deep, preparatory breath and threw the drink back in her throat.
She'd been prepared for anything. Fire, lightning, even pain; the Irish were a mad bunch. But this firewater was nothing like what she expected. It was not vicious or hurtful; it was a length of smoky silk, lapping fire down her throat, hot and smooth. She hardly coughed in the least.
Which was not to say she did not cough at all.
His smile grew, slow and heated, the way a fuse slowly burns up to ignite. The dizziness spread to her body. She thrust the flask at him.
“That,” she said, trying not to gasp, “was not so bad.”
When he grinned, his whole face lit up. Fire could hardly compete.
Oh dear. It was possible this had been her true purpose. A frightening thought, that she'd been maneuvering to make this man smile at her.
“I am glad to hear it.” He swept the flask out of her hand, took a swallow and handed it back again,
that fast.
Oh, he was all challenge now.
She took it. Far too ready.
He eyed her in a way that made little chills run up and down her chest. It also made her breathe a little faster, a little shallower, as if her body was readying for something.
“You surprise me, lady.”
“Oh, indeed, I am full of surprises.”
“Which is entirely unsurprising,” he said drily.
“And unwelcome.”
He hesitated. “Soldiers at my door and swords aimed at my heart are unwelcome, not women with wits.”
“And now, you've surprised me, Irishman.”
This earned something almost better than a smile: a low, rumbling laugh. “Aye, we're reeling from each other.”
“Best to stop now, before we say something we'll regret,” she said, meaning it.
“Or do something.”
So, they were agreed. Best to stop.
She had no desire to stop.
She did have a desire to kick her father from here to Jerusalem, to best this Irishman in a game of chess, to throw up her skirts and relieve the delicate sweat forming on her inner thighs, to push off her hard-soled slippers and feel the grass under her feet.
Oh yes, she was filled with many sorts of desires, but she had no desire to stop drinking this Irishman's whisky and talking with him about what might come next.
Because with this man, you knew there was always something coming next.
There was nothing so exciting as what was coming next.
What lay behind was wreck and ruin. Anything might lie ahead.
It ought to frighten her silly.
It made her feel alive.
Chapter 9
Máel looked at her, in her gilded ribbons and silken gown, her chest heaving slightly, her face flushed and smiling from the whisky she knew she ought not to have drunk, and revised his opinion of her.
She was not her father’s daughter. She was clever and compelling, carnality sheathed in silk. He felt it rise out of her in bands of invisible heat: this woman wanted to be unbound. She was straining at the seams of her noble life.
He looked her over as she bent to examine the board, hair falling in a golden river over her shoulders.
“You are a dangerous woman, Lady Cassia,” he murmured.
“Pah, you are simply frightened I shall beat you in chess,” she said lightly.