Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (13 page)

“How could one seriously consider such a thing?” she asked rhetorically. As rhetorical questions required no answer, she did not have to reply to its dangerous allure, of why she would turn herself over to Aodh Mac Con’s barbaric touch.

Walter breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Of course not.”

She peered into the recklessly burning fire. “And yet, there is some merit to the notion, is there not? To an alliance with the rebel?”

He gaped at her. “Benefits? To lie with a savage—”

“To distract him, waylay him, perhaps upend him, these things too. I do not mean a true union—”

I prefer to make you willing.

“—but a ruse. I shall feign agreement.” She looked up. “Think you he brought his own clerk?”

Walter started. “His own…? No, he is a
savage
. Why?”

“To prepare the betrothal papers. But if he has no clerk, and you were to suddenly take ill…or perhaps they were unable to locate you at all…”

Walter stopped talking. The proposal was worth it for that alone. She went on. “In this way, we can hold what we may until the queen can send reinforcements. Recall, Walter, this ‘savage’ took Rardove Keep without so much as a shout.
No one knows he is here
. No one may know for weeks, months. Therefore, I think we would be wise to consider the advantages of feigning an alliance with the outlaw over adopting a more…combative stance.”

Do you see how we shall do it?

 
Walter stared, dumbfounded; his jaw dropped. She’d exceeded even his expectations for recklessness. There was something madly gratifying about this. For a second, she wished she could do more to shock him. Fling off her shoes and dance. Suggest Walter fling off his shoes and dance.

“Never.” The word was a breath of clerical outrage. “I would see you burn on a funeral pyre first.”

She lifted her eyebrows.

“Bertrand of Bridge is on his way, and when he arrives, with his garrison, he will sweep this outlaw and his rabble from our steps.”
 

And bring in his own rabble
,
she thought. Vicious, wealthy rabble.

“You cannot do this thing.”

She slid her gaze slowly over to him. “I am weary of being told what I cannot do.”

They looked at each other, a kind of tired sympathy in Walter’s regard. “That is the way of it, my lady,” he said gently. “We do what is necessary, oft as others command. To bend one’s will is no mean thing.”

“I hardly require tutoring on how to bend my will.” Hard as diamonds, the words spilled out of her as if tumbling from a pouch.
 

His eyes grew sad. “Katarina, child, I do but think of your welfare. Ever were you your mother’s child, rash and tempestuous. It runs in the blood. No fault of your own, but still, it must be tempered.”

“I have been tempered,” she whispered.
 

“I have seen the ravages of such states of high passion. Your father was imprisoned on account of your mother’s, and we saw how that ended.” Her face felt hot as he plowed on. “And when I was sent to watch over you, it was to guard against it ever lifting its head again.” He frowned. “But it already had, had it not, child? Yes,” he went on, pleased with his summary of the downfalls of the Rardove women. “Trust in me, then. Be as you are meant to be, quiet and circumspect. I shall guide us—”

For some inexplicable reason, she got to her feet.

Walter, mouth open to expound further, stilled.

More inexplicably, she started toward the door.
 

“My lady, what— Wait! What are you…” He hurried after. “You cannot mean… You are not capable of executing something so vast as— Why, you cannot
imagine
the plotting—”

“I just did imagine it, Walter. I recommend you do as well. We serve two masters now: Elizabeth, and the Irish savage.” She strode to the door, where she paused again. “And Walter? Please do bear in mind, there is nothing common about Aodh Mac Con. You have a habit of underestimating people. Please do not do so with him.”

Walter’s outrage froze.

They stared at each other. Then she flung the oaken door wide.
 

Young Bran, standing guard in the antechamber outside, spun. She gathered a thick handful of wool skirts in her fist and swept by him, saying coldly, “I need to see your master.”

Perhaps he was struck dumb. Or perhaps, when he looked into her eye, he saw the glint of determination that did not bear opposition.
 

In any event, he did not try to stop her. He did, though, turn and put a hand on Walter’s chest as the clerk tried to hurry after her.

“I’ll need to search you, sir.”

Bran would receive extra rations the moment she made it back into the kitchens.

“Good God in heaven, man!” Walter cried; he was becoming positively foul-mouthed in his desperation. Katarina heard them arguing as she went down the stairs.

“My lady!” Walter called after. “Heed me.”

She did not. Inexplicably.

“You are being
reckless,
girl!”
 

It was a last arrow, the hissed word flung like a curse. And in her life, it had been just that.

Still, she did not stop. She circled the lamplit stairs and stepped out into the great hall, then stopped short.

As Aodh Mac Con had done to the bedchamber, so too had he done to the hall. The room was, quite simply, alive.

Fires roared like dragons, gorgeously wasteful, in every hearth and down the huge center trough. Bright, leaping, wasteful, wonderful red, orange, and blue flames licked the air like beating wings.

The vast stony hall, cool even in the dog days of summer, had been made, in the cold coil of early spring, warm. Bright. Bustling.

People were everywhere, more souls than Rardove had held in its belly for many a year, milling and talking, hurrying to and fro, laughing, even her own people, intermingling. No formal, seated meal, this; it was the butt end of a coup, and there was only sound and noise and movement.
 

A portly industrious clerk with a pen in his hand gestured to a man running by with a sheaf of papers, while a group of soldiers near the door plucked hunks of bread and cheese off trays being hurried past before turning for the door and striding out again. Calls came from all corners of the hall, as servants, both his and hers, frantically set up long trestle tables and benches down the length of the room, their voices swept up the vent holes in the roof. It was a hum of energy. Squires hurried here and there, pounding iron spikes into the walls, dangling tapestries down from them.
 

The bare stone walls were being made into a pageantry of color, fluttering scenes of hunts and sea battles marching along all forty feet of the hall. Swords and armor were being hung, pennants and shields, testaments to the warrior prowess of the new, outlaw lord of Rardove.

He sat at the near end of the hall, at one of the common tables, a boot kicked out, an elbow bent on the table, regarding the two armed men who sat opposite him. Aodh sat with what seemed to be a mixture of patience and boredom.
 

The two men, his barrage of a captain and another, red-bearded one, appeared rather more interested. In fact, they looked earnest. Intent. Angry.

His captain, blond hair sweaty on his temples, leaned forward and said in an angry voice, “It serves naught.” His words carried like light; they went everywhere.

Behind her, she heard Walter stumbling down the stairs. “My lady,
you
cannot
do this
.”

But here she was, doing this.

Aodh moved his gaze away from his earnest, angry councilors and swung across the room, to her.

“It serves something,” he said lightly, looking at her.      

Something opened inside her, a ray of brightness. Aodh got to his feet. Behind him, his companions scrambled to theirs as well.

“Aodh,” warned the tall one in a low voice. “Do not be rash.”

Why, the same accusations were being hurled at each of them. They were peas in a pod.
 

She took a step forward.

“My
lady
,” Walter all but hissed behind her.
 

She felt as if she were floating forward.

“Aodh, Christ’s
mercy, listen—”

“Katarina, you can
not
—”

Both their advisors frantically trying to stop a union neither of them could possibly want.
 

It made her smile. Aodh Mac Con smiled back in slow, wordless reply.
 

Everything faded to the buzzing of bees as the Irish rebel, with his calm, devastating confidence, smiled at her over all their heads.
 

I do not follow many rules.

“Yes,” she said, silencing them, the way a rock tied to a rope drags everything down into the river.
 

For a moment, no one spoke. Then, “Christ on the goddamned
cross
.” Walter’s vicious mutter broke the brittle, shocked silence.

The silence of their small enclave spread through the hall, rippling out as more and more people turned to look at the lady and the rebel, watching at each other across the room. Smiling.
 

“Leave us,” Aodh ordered, and held out his hand to her.
 

Everyone stared for one more long, horrified moment, then, in stunned waves, they turned and all but stumbled off. The entire hall emptied, an exodus of silent, gaping people.
 

Katarina had no idea how long it took, she knew only that Aodh kept his hand out to her the whole time.
 

And as if it were the simplest thing in the world, she reached out and laid her hand in his.

Chapter Thirteen

AODH TOOK her hand as if it were made of glass and led her to the dais, handed her down into the chair to the right of the lord’s seat, then dragged out the heavy lord’s chair and sat.
 

She’d repaired the damage that wind and coup had rent on her hair, even pinned a veil overtop, and was as graceful and composed as ever, except…her breath.
 
Light as gossamer and broken like glass, it was her tell, her secret revealed.
 

He felt as if he’d climbed a mountain. His blood came hot, the heat he had not known for years.

She’d bent. Bent to his hand, to his mouth, bent for his touch, and in the end, she would be his. The truth was…she wanted him the same way he wanted her. It emanated from her like scent from a flower. All he had to do was touch her, and she would be his.

Christ, he felt
that
.

He would have her undressed within the hour.

For a long time, she allowed his perusal, allowed the silence, not quite comfortable with it, for there was the shallow, staccato breath, but neither was she agitated.
 

Then, still looking forward, she said, “Well, it seems you were right after all.”
 

“About what this time?”

This arrogance earned a faint smile and she turned to him. “My inclination for recklessness.”

“Och, I’m sure you have a plan,” he said companionably. “Do you want to tell me what it is?”

“No,” she said primly, then her cheeks flushed. “I mean to say, I have no plan.”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Then you are foolish to treat with me. I’m sure your councilors advised you on just that matter.”

“They did. As did yours.”

“Oh, did you hear?” she murmured, as if he might not have heard her steward shouting at her. “He made some valid points, you know.”

“Such as me being a savage?”

“I believe he suggested the possibility.”

Aodh shrugged. “And yet, here you are, with me.”

Her dark eyes held his. “Perhaps I found your arguments more convincing upon reflection.”

He smiled.
Within the half hour.
Where the hell was his clerk, Tancred? Doing something efficient and clerical, no doubt. Curse him. “I am glad to hear it.”