Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (38 page)

Aye, himself. He’d been fostered at the O’Fails’, had trained with his warriors. Indeed, Keegan himself had taught Aodh to whittle, made him a little horse Aodh had kept on the mantel of his home until the English burned it to the ground with Aodh’s mother inside. Keegan had been more than a decade older than Aodh, but they’d been foster brothers, friends, closer than blood. And Keegan had not come to the battle that day. And Aodh’s family had died.
 

Katarina bent nearer. “Aodh, I am sorry.”

“We are all sorry,” he said coldly, not in the spirit for being comforted.

“But you do not know what forces were at work.”

“I know he did not come. I know he took an oath, and I know he turned.”

“As you have asked me to do?”

He looked up sharply.
 

“Aodh, it was a long time ago. If Keegan O’Fail promised, then he should have come. Maybe now, he knows that.” She gave a little shrug. “Maybe now he is sorry. Maybe we could at least…see?”

He heard his men waiting, boots shuffling.

“He has many men at his command, Aodh,” she urged. “Perhaps near to a thousand. It was his summons that raised five hundred for a hosting several years ago, and by it almost decimated the English forces. He has droves of supporters. Is it not worth at least inquiring?”

He was not inclined to grant this request. Beg for an alliance with a worm?

In the background, Ré shifted and said quietly, “We do not know where The O’Fail is at present, my lady.”

Katarina’s head lifted. “He itinerates constantly. Like as not he is at his keep of TorRising, for Easter is nearing, and that is but a long day’s ride from here. Still”—she nibbled on a fingernail as she stared across the room at one of Aodh’s tapestries—“we ought to send messengers to Pike’s Deep and the glen at Dark Lough. He often visits there.”
 

The room was silent under her musings. Aodh looked at Ré, who shrugged, then said, “That’s a great many men traipsing about the countryside on questionable missions.”

“You must risk large to gain large,” she countered.

Aodh thought a moment, then shook his head. “Ré is correct. We haven’t men enough to send a few to the main castle, a few to the Pike, and yet more to that godforsaken lough. Not with an army marching for us.”
 

She nodded briskly. “Then go only to TorRising. I am certain that is where he will be.”
 

“No.”

She frowned. “Why ever not? I swear to you, he is worth the risk. The time, the men.” She paused a moment, then added in a more musing tone, “You may have a point, though.”

A sigh of relief moved down the line of men seated along the tables. Aodh just watched her through faintly narrowed eyes.

“The O’Fail is notoriously unwelcoming to those he does not know,” she said, her tone thoughtful. “Sometimes violently so. It would not do to send low-level emissaries.” She got to her feet. “I will go.”
 

In startled unison, everyone pushed to their feet.
 

She reached for her cape. Spotting one of her servants in the distance, she gestured. “Emmitt, please instruct Wicker to saddle my horse and gather an escort. I shall require…seven,” she said decidedly, affixing the large Rardove pin to her cape before stepping out from behind the table. “I shall not be gone more than three days—”

She walked directly into Aodh.
 

She stopped and looked up. He put a hand on her arm, gently, but most decidedly stopping her. The others stared in a silence that could be shock, or perhaps horror. It was difficult to tell, among one’s so recent enemies.

Aodh’s expression was the most unreadable of all.

 
“Leave us,” he ordered quietly.

“You are always clearing the room,” she complained as everyone left.

“You keep saying and doing such room-clearing things,” he replied, drawing her toward the fire. “Katarina, you cannot simply march off with my men.”

“I was going to take my men.”

“They are all my men.”

She stilled. Of course. What was she doing? The castle was Aodh’s. Her will, her orders, her desires, were secondary now. And if Aodh did not heed her, her will meant as much as a bag full of feathers.

He must be convinced.

She curled her fingers around his arm and said earnestly, “Aodh, I vow to you, The O’Fail is a necessary addition. He is greatly like…” She paused a moment, searching for the right words. “A beating heart. Through him flows a network of clans and loyalties. He is like the center through which the blood flows. If you gain him, you gain them all.”

He considered her a long moment in silence.

“Aodh, I thought it suited you for me not to be a thing to be done with,” she said.
 

“It does,” he replied gruffly.
 

“What makes Ireland so good to me is the freedom to be out from under anyone’s thumb. I must be able to do things. To think things, to be heeded.”

A dark scowl touched his features. “Have I not sat you in my council?”

“Indeed, you have. And then said we could not do what I suggested.”
 

“We do not always do as a man suggests.”

She leaned in closer. “I know Ireland, Aodh. I know these men. You asked how I survived out here? I did it through union. Relationship. Trade. That wood out there? Sent by The O’Fail, in exchange for a barrel of Rardove whisky. And the iron we melt for arrowheads and bullets came from a trade with O’Reilly that served us both. I know these men, their families, their petty wars, and their fierce loyalties. I believe I
am
them now, to Elizabeth’s chagrin.”

He looked her over. “An Irish princess.”

Her cheeks flushed faintly. “Not precisely, but it will do. You would be wise to heed me in those things of which I know more of than you. And that is Ireland.”

His hand fell away and he walked to the window. Sunlight poured through and illuminated him in colors: the vibrantly colored
leine
hanging just below his knee, red and green and cobalt blue for Rardove; tall black boots. From his hips hung a belt strapped with sword and daggers. His face was lightly bearded and the inked lines swirled down his neck. The sun lit one side of his face, leaving the other in shadow.
 

He rested his forearm on the wall beside the window and looked back at her. “You may know more of Ireland, Katy, but you do not know more of war.”

“I know more of The O’Fail.”

He sighed. “You are not letting this go, are you?”

She sighed back. “I will try to be docile, but I fear it will fail.”

“I know the sentiment,” he admitted grimly.

She crossed to him and held his cheeks between her hands as he had so often done to her, and smiled into his worried eyes, as he had so oft done to hers. “You’re worrying too much,” she teased.

“You’re not going to The O’Fail,” he replied grimly.

“Oh, Aodh—”

The resumption of their argument was cut short by another messenger flying into the keep, shouting.
 

“My lord! My lord, they are coming! The English army is marching, burning as they come!”
 

Chapter Thirty-Four

THE MESSENGER stumbled to a halt and dropped to his knees in front of the dais, his chest heaving. Aodh took a step toward him, bent to eye level as the man dragged his sweating, red face up.
 

“The English, my lord. I was sent to tell you…they’ve dropped anchor, and they are marching…
They are burning everything
.”
 

Silence rent like a bolt through the fabric of low conversations filling the hall. Katarina got to her feet. “Burning?

The messenger nodded.

“Burning…Ireland? Oh no, they cannot do this.” She turned, dumbfounded, to Aodh. “They cannot
do
this. Those are my people, my lands. They must be stopped. I must…send a message.”

She hiked up her skirts, flew upstairs, calling for people as she went. “Ready a messenger,” she called, hurrying up to the walls, into the wind, her cape flying out behind her. “Send riders to survey the damage,” she said to one man as she rushed by. Their gazes trailed past her, over her shoulder. “And Rudy, bring me a pen and parchment. Bring me Walter! I must send word, at once. They cannot be allowed to burn my lands.”

She pushed the hair behind her ear and whirled back around, flinging out her hand. “A pen!” she shouted impatiently. “I require a—”

Her hand connected with Aodh’s chest. “Oh, Aodh,” she gasped in relief, as if she’d forgotten him. She gripped his arm. “We must send a message to the commander of that army, to stop them.”

“So you said. That would be unwise.”

“And then we must send food, to the villagers, and— Unwise?” she blinked. “No, it is
necessary
. Essential. They must be stopped.”

“You will not be the one to stop them.”

She was already peering down into the bailey, at a handful of soldiers hurrying by. “Saddle my mare,” she called to them.
 

Wicker looked up, lifted a hand that fell to his side when his gaze shifted to Aodh. She turned too, and for a few beats, she and Aodh stared at each other.

“Katarina,” he said carefully.

She knew that tone. It was the “no” tone, the one that said his will, not hers, would be done. Again.
 

“No,” she said, beating him to it, and backed up a few paces. “You cannot gainsay me on this. We must send help.”

“At best, ’tis a ruse, lass.”

“A ruse?”

“Intended to do precisely what you are about to do: open the gates. Make us ride for them. We must do the opposite—”

“But—”

“Hush.”

She trembled with fury. “Did you tell me to…hush?”

“I am telling you to cease. Right now.” His voice was level and hard. “Our people are watching.”

Indeed, all along the walls, and down in the bailey, soldiers and villagers and castle folk were watching the argument between the lord and lady of the castle. She swallowed.
 

“So, aye,” he confirmed quietly. “Becalm yourself. And if you cannot, then return to the castle, and I will manage this matter.”

She stared at him, not seeing him anymore, but every person who’d moved through her life, telling her what she should not, could not, must not do.
 

It was the story of her life.

And now Aodh, too? Instructing her to silence her voice? She felt it as a betrayal, sensible or not.
 

“Do not tell me to
calm myself
,” she replied in a furious whisper.

He shook his head almost sadly. “Katy, I will toss you over my shoulder if I must.”

She gasped. He held out a hand, directing her to the stairs, back to the keep.
 

She didn’t move.
 

“Do not make me do it,” he warned.

“Stop telling me not to make you do things, Aodh,” she snapped. “You will do as you will. Did you not plant your flag on that claim? So, then, do what you will.” Her eyes were fierce, pinned on his. “As will I.”
 

He watched her a second longer. Something about the silent regard introduced the barest hint of, well…fear. Perhaps terror. Certes a grave and great discomfort in the pit of her belly.

She swallowed. “Aodh, if you would but listen to me—”

He bent and swept her up in a single move and tossed her over his shoulder.

“Good
God
!”
 

Shock wrenched the words from her mouth, then fury moved in, fast and hot. She began kicking with her knees and pounding her fists on his back. “Set me down this
instant
.”

He said nothing as she raged, just clamped his arm around her legs, pinning them to his chest, and walked her down the stairs.
 

Her face was scarlet with embarrassment, which mattered not at all, for her nose was bumping his back, and all her hair was now a thick dark curtain swaying back and forth over her head and down the backs of his legs, the ends trailing on the ground as he carried her inside to their bedchambers.