Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (14 page)

One brow arched up, a little sweep of dark angles across her face. “Perhaps I expect it to be an extremely
short-lived
union,” she said tartly.

He smiled. “I shall make your jointure a fine large one, to compensate you for your loss.” He spread out a hand. “In the event.”
 

”Yes,” she echoed drily. “In the event.”
 

He sat back and called for a servant.

“Bring me the leather chest in the lord’s chambers,” he ordered, and the man hurried off. Fires burned in the empty hall. She glanced over, then looked away quickly, touching her fingertips to the smooth curve of her neck, a nervous gesture.

He smiled.
 

She was born to be enflamed, and he would see the deed done.
 

He slid a flask toward her. It rumbled as it crossed the oak tabletop.

She looked at it. “Is that Irish whisky?”

“‘Tis.”
 

 
“Hm.” She ran her fingertips across the edge of the table. “I see Ireland still holds some charms for you.”
 

His gaze trailed down her gown. “A few. Do you want a taste? ’Tis quite good.”

“I do not drink your
uisce beatha
.”

He sat back in surprise. “’Tis one of the finest things about Ireland, and you’ve never tasted it?”

She tucked a strand of hair back under her veil. It seemed they were eternally springing free from Katarina’s attempts at control.
 

“I did not say I never tasted it.”

He shook his head sadly. “Lass, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

“Yes, well, I have seen enough men facedown in the rushes to know what I
might
be missing.”

He laughed. “Aye, you’ve got to go easy.”

“I shall remember that.”

“Wine, then?” he asked, reaching for the jug.

“No! I mean…no.” Her fingertips skipped down her neck, to the V of her collarbone. His gaze followed it.

“’Twasn’t the wine, you know,” he said gently.

Like glass, smooth and almost translucent, her gaze lifted to his. “What was not the wine?”

“What happened. Upstairs. What you did.”

A little shiver disrupted the otherwise calm façade of her gracefulness, then she shrugged dismissively. “You know naught of me, Aodh Mac Con. Perhaps I am eternally flinging myself at strange warriors whenever I drink wine from Gascony.”

“Is that so? I shall inquire as to your habits at the first instance.”

She sniffed. “Gird your loins, my lord. You shall hear stories.”

He smiled and sat back and pushed out his legs. The tips of his boots, black and mud-stained, came to rest just beside the green hem of her skirts. “Why do you say Gascony?”

“’Twas a guess. Is that not where most wine is from?”

“Some. ’Tis fine if you like a claret.”
 

Surprise lifted her brows in a delicate arch. “And if I do not?”

“Then you will like my wine. ’Tis a canary.”

“Indeed?”

He nodded. “From the Canary Islands.”

Her lips parted, into the smallest O. “And where, pray, are they?”

”I will show you,” he murmured as the servant arrived back in the hall, wooden boots clattering across the floor. He was puffing slightly from his labors on the spiraling staircase, and carried a leather chest in his arms. He placed it before Aodh, bowed deeply, then scurried out, leaving the hall once again empty but for burning fires and Aodh’s marriage gift for Katarina.
 

Aodh’s blood was starting to churn; want fired through his veins, charging his blood, swelling his cock. Reveling in it and resisting it, he stood to unbuckle the leather straps lashing the chest, and creaked it open.
 

Beside him, Katarina straightened her spine as far as it could go and yet remain sitting, feigning disinterest while craning her neck to peer inside, practically vibrating with curiosity.
 

Claimed.

He removed the long, rolled parchments from within and began untying the laces that bound them. He set the first on the table and reached for candles, setting one at each top corner, to weight it down and hold it open, unrolling it as he went. Then he reached for another.
 

“Take an edge,” he said, giving her an excuse to rise. She rose with alacrity and helped unscroll it.

They did the same to the other panels. There were six of them, six sections, and when they were all unrolled and set together, candles burning along the top and sides, Katarina and Aodh stepped back and looked down at them.
 

Aodh waited with a strange sort of anticipation, recalling his interminable wait in the queen’s receiving corridor nearly two decades ago, a ragged Irish boy with nothing but a sword in his hand and cold determination in his heart: would his petition be well met?

Covered with gorgeous lines and shapes, the parchment was an explosion of color, in beautiful, vibrant sections, with scalloped and undulating edges, hues of red and green and yellow, with filigree-thin lines crisscrossing it, vertically and horizontally.
 

“It is beautiful,” she whispered.

“It is a map. Of the world.”

The softest intake of breath passed across her lips, not quite surprise. A little higher pitched, a little more silvery, a little more feminine, nigh onto a gasp of…pleasure.
 

His map had pleased her.
 

Savage satisfaction roared through him. Standing in a great hall, looking down at a map, he felt blown back by a wind.

“There are six panels,” he told her quietly, as she bent over it. “Made by a friend of Mercator’s. Abraham Ortelius.”

They peered at it in silence a moment, then he tapped his index finger to a spot on the paper. “Jerusalem.”

She ran a fingertip across the page, near but not touching his.

“And here,”—he tapped again—“are the Canary Islands, where your wine came from.”

“It is not my wine.”

“It is now.”

Their eyes met over the map of the world. “Not yet.”
 

She was…testing him? Toying with him? Teasing him?

No matter; all stoked the flames of his lust.

She angled her face back down. “Where are we? Where is
Éire
?”

Ireland. She’d spoken the Irish word for the isle, and something moved inside him. Likely irritation; Irish was a convoluted language that no one cared for anymore. Outdated, unnecessary. Anything of importance could be said in another language. Should be said in another language. Any other language. Surely you would be understood by more people.
 

He slid his finger closer to hers. A tiny oval of green and blue sat quite near the edge of the world, high up, as if it were hovering above all the rest, and hadn’t quite descended.

“Oh yes,” she exhaled, smiling faintly. “Yes, that is we.” He looked at her sharply, but she was still staring at the map.
 

“And that…”—he pointed—“is the New World. America.”

She leaned so close, her nose almost touched the parchment and its bright colors. If he’d bent down too, Aodh knew he would see it all mirrored in her eyes.
 

She spread a hand over it, hovering half an inch over it, as if she were casting spells. Her corset, laced up tight and proper, pressed against her ribs as she took swift breaths. She was excited.

And this, that this lass banished to the edge of the world, wished to go farther yet, this was wildly…exciting.

“What do you know of it?” she asked, so soft she was almost whispering.

“’Tis abundant in wood and game and wild men.”

He saw the curve of her cheek. She’d smiled. “Somewhat like Ireland, then?” she murmured, a teasing tone.

He looked at the back of her head. Under the almost sheer veil, her dark hair tumbled, silken thick lushness he would soon be dragging his fingers though. The curve of her shoulder, where it met her neck, held great promise as well. Earlier, he’d all but brought her to culmination by kissing her neck. And then there was her throat…
 

“Have you sailed, Mac Con?”

He dragged his attention from her neck. “I have.”

“Much?”

“Much.”

She was still a moment, then turned her head. “Are you an Irish pirate?”

“I’d not call myself that.”

“Would others?”

He laughed. “It would depend on how much money I earned them.”

“Mm.” It was a skeptical murmur, but it stood his cock at attention. “Have you ever been? To the New World?”

He shook his head, staring over her shoulder at the map. “Not yet.”

“Yet?” she repeated, craning her head around.

He met her gaze. “I am not yet done, lass.”

Her eyes lit with some spark, surely the reflection from the high, tapered candles burning on either side of the map, but it seemed to come from within her. And then she smiled. The small, secret smile. At him.
 

Something fierce awakened in his chest.
 

“And the queen’s colony in the New World, Roanoke…what do you know of it?”

“There has been no word,” he said quietly.
 

“What do you suspect?”

He shrugged. “’Tis a hard world out there.”

“Sad.”
 

“Perils of an adventurer,” was his careless assessment. “If one wishes to go adventuring, one must be prepared.”

“In
deed
,” she murmured, such dry meaning in the word that he grinned.
 

She laid a hand on the table beside the map, and the candlelight illuminated all its varied textures: small rounded knuckles; the pale blue line of veins; slim, curving fingers, nails unadorned, blunted from work. She leaned on her hand to turn and look up at him.
 

“But that will not stop adventurers, will it?”

“Would it stop you, Katy?”
 

Her eyes were bright as she shook her head. “I do not think it would.” She turned back to the map. “More will go.”
 

“There will always be more,” he agreed. “Explorers. Adventurers.”

She was quiet a moment, then announced, “I invested in an adventure company once.”

He stared at the back of her head. “Pardon?”

“Yes, indeed. Does not every reckless fool with any spare coin? And even those without. The Gilbert Humphrey Trading Co. was my particular pitfall.”

“Never heard of it.”

She glanced up absently. “I am unsurprised. He was an Englishman, so how would you? And he was desperately…” She pondered the correct word a moment. “Well, desperate. But bold. Oh, exceedingly bold.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial tone, the sort used for secrets and bedrooms.

A long quiver unfurled inside Aodh, a misericorde-thin, daggerlike thrust through his chest, comprised of interest and…jealousy?

Good God. What was
that
doing inside him?

“Humphrey, was it, then?”
 

“Yes. Gilbert Humphrey. Tall and charming, full of tales of faraway places and derring-do. Oh, half were lies, no doubt, but I was fooled. He was a dreamer.” She gave a helpless little shrug, her shoulders lifting under the force of her inability to fully express the charms of the most excellent Mr. Humphrey. “A dreamer, and a talker, and an…”

“Exceedingly bold man?”
 

She straightened away from the map. “Perhaps bold overstates the matter. Better to say…” She touched her lips, and he felt it as if her finger had been laid upon his own mouth, the pad light, hot, pressing an oval onto his bottom lip. For a moment, everything, even her voice, faded away, while he imagined coaxing the tip of it into his mouth with his tongue.

“…be a more accurate description.”

He dragged his gaze from her finger. “Pardon?”

“Mr. Humphrey was a cony catcher in the guise of a poet in the guise of a ship’s captain.”

He laughed, pleased with this tearing down of the bold and excellent Mr. Humphrey. “All ship captains are cony catchers, lass. Deceit and trickery are the wind under which they sail.”

She laughed. “Yes, well, this one was that indeed. Foolhardy. Reckless.”

Their eyes met.

“Stubborn?” he suggested.

Her eyes slid away. “He is dead now, if that is what you mean.”

“And you miss him.”

Her gaze arrested, stilled at some point in space between him and the map of the world. “Sir, I lost over a hundred pounds and my reputation because of him. ‘Miss the man’ hardly describes my feelings. His dream was not carefully dreamed. He was wild and careless and—”

“Exceedingly bold.”

She looked at him sternly. “Reckless.”