Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (7 page)

To what?

She stumbled on the stone steps.

They stepped out on the landing before the lord’s chambers. A crowd of soldiers milled there, as if they’d just left and were about to disperse to the various tasks attendant on conquerors.
 

Bran stepped forward into their midst. Loud conversations and a general sort of self-approving masculine din died down as she passed through, until there was absolute silence as she waded into the thicket of sword-bearing, hard-eyed, long-haired warriors.
 

Her fingertips were so cold, it felt as though they would break off if she were bumped too hard. Every man tilted his head down to peer at her as she passed by. She felt as though she was in a forest of men.
 

Her young guard stopped at the outer chamber door and rapped hard.

The men stared at her back, and Katarina knew, quite suddenly, what creatures on display must feel like. The giraffes and lions in the queen’s menagerie, the bears muzzled until their fight. They were fodder for food or fight. Entertainment. Not even prey anymore. Simply doomed.

To the good, doomed things did not need to wrestle with options or consider consequences. The future was laid out rather neatly, if uncomfortably. So she returned a regard as disdainful as the ones fixed on her. She slid her gaze across them all, man by man.

A few raised their eyebrows, one laughed, and then a low, male murmur rippled through their steely midst.

“You’re wasting your fight on the wrong mark, my lady,” someone observed drily, nodding toward the chamber behind her. A few rumbles of appreciative laughter followed.

She returned a cold smile. “I waste nothing. You are all my mark.”

A surprised hush swept the landing. Then, almost as one, they threw back their shaggy heads and burst into laughter.
 

It shook the room. Or mayhap that was inside her.
 

The young guard at her side spoke quietly. “He’s ready for you, my lady.”
 

She turned, skirts gripped in her fingertips. The door to the outer bedchamber had been pushed open. A pair of boots could be heard moving in the inner chamber.
 

“My lady?” Bran’s voice was quiet at her side. “You may go in.”

She peered into the antechamber. This was not an insurmountable distance. One simply took the next, natural step.
 

“My lady?”

She looked down at her feet. They were not moving.
 

Unable to determine a way free from this paralysis except to be dragged, she put her fingertips on Bran’s forearm and said quietly, “Please, escort me in.”

He stared.

“Physically,” she explained.

Understanding flooded his face in the form of a blush. He laid his hand over hers and took a swift, decisive step forward, pulling them into the room.

The boot steps in the inner chamber stopped.
 

Bran, who now seemed a great friend, gave her hand a faint squeeze.

“Just go easy, my lady,” he murmured, a quiet warning tossed to the passenger of a sinking ship:
Do not fight it; in the end, you will sink.
He lowered his arm and stepped back into the throng of men.

She felt their gazes like the points of a dozen invisible swords, poking at her back.
 

She glanced over her shoulder. They were watching her, grinning. No one said a word, but the energy was voice enough:
menagerie girl
. She met their gazes, fierce and silent, hands fisted at her sides.

“That’s enough, lads,” said a low, familiar voice behind her.
 

Like a rumble of thunder, chills skipped across her skin, hot and cold and absolutely everywhere.

A muscular arm appeared at her side and reached past her to push the door shut. She stared down and her heart skipped a beat.
 

Why, his wrist and hand were
painted
. Almost engraved. Covered in thick, dark lines, curving and swirling as they roped up his skin, some resembling the shapes of mystical animals, some simply bursting into curves and flourishes.
 

God save her, he’d adorned his body with paint, like a barbarian. Like an illumination.
 

“Come in, Katarina.”

She swallowed and lifted her head.
 

He certainly looked the barbarian. Gloriously so. His dark hair was untethered now, hanging freely, so she could no longer see the shaved sides. Divested of most of his armor, he still wore his arming doublet, the fustian fabric of the vest dyed a smoky black, so the mail encasing his arms seemed to grow out of the darker bulk of him like tree limbs. The metal rings winked dully in the firelight.
 

Hose encased his powerful legs, what she could see of them. A black-and-red tunic hung to mid-thigh, and his calves were clad in high, muddy leather boots. But his body was rock-hard and pulsed with masculine vitality in the cold, almost bare antechamber. A painted body that seemed sculpted of stone, and eyes wrought of icy steel.
 

He was magnificent.
 

What a terrible, terrible thing.

Any moment now, he was going to do something wild and barbaric.
 

His eyes held hers, then slowly narrowed, his gaze piercing, pinned on her face.

“Why is your nose red?”

Chapter Eight

STARTLED, KATARINA’S HAND flew to her nose. She touched it, shielded it. It seemed suddenly important to protect her nose from observation. Aodh Mac Con stood motionless, awaiting her reply.

Because I refused your wood. And your man’s cloak.
 

She finally said, “Because I am stubborn,” for if you could not tell the awful truth to your enemy, then who?

His gaze trailed across the rest of her face, and she battled back the urge to cover the whole thing. “Stubborn people tend to end up dead before their time,” he said after a moment’s slow examination.

She blinked. Was he threatening her? It did not sound so; it sounded…conversational.
 

“And I’d always been told it was the reckless ones,” she countered, having no other reply to hand.

“You were misinformed, my lady. Recklessness gets you admirers.”

“And enemies, who then get you dead,” she said tartly.

“Only if you are stubborn too.” His gaze sailed down her body, as if examining it for signs of stubbornness.

A sizzling thrill arced through her. “Some call it loyalty.”

His gaze came back up. “Others call it idiocy.”

She sniffed. “I see. So you will deal with any devil.”

He grinned, a lopsided, sensual, self-approving thing. “Aye, I’ve dealt with England. What more proof does one need?”

“And yet live on,” she observed darkly.
 

He bent closer, his face angled slightly away, his mouth directly beside her ear. “As do you, my lady, and recklessness marks you like a brand.”
 

The breath caught in her throat. He turned on his heel and strode into the inner chamber, saying over his shoulder, “Wine?”

She blinked. “Wine?”
 

 
“Wine. ’Tis a drink.”
 

“Of course. Wine,” she said stupidly. “Indeed. I should very much like wine.” A large, potent pot of it. Perhaps two.

Why was he not chaining her to the walls?

She followed him into the inner chamber and stopped short in amazement.
 

A monstrous fire roared, orange and red and blue flames dancing merrily in the gaping maw of the hearth, so different from the low range of flames that flickered across the single log Katarina allowed herself each day. On the walls were hung tapestries both rich and thick, wool and silk weaves that seemed to undulate in the light of the conflagration.
 

A far cry from her threadbare, much-loved tapestries. On the floor lay a variety of plush pelts, and along the walls, every oil lamp was ablaze. The room practically pulsed with light and heat.

What a shockingly profligate approach to warmth. Not at all how Katarina managed heat.

Aodh Mac Con stood at the table that dominated one side of the room, pouring a stream of silky-looking wine into a silver goblet.

He saw her standing by the door, and lifted the cup in the air. “You’ll have to come in to get it.”
 

She took a step, then another. He extended the wine into the space between them, hand overturned to cup the bowl. The filigreed stem rested between his thick fingers, which were dark against the delicate silver. The long, winding illustrations adorning his wrist and hand snaked up several of his fingers like beautiful snakes.
 

 
“Do not be frightened,” he said quietly. “’Tis naught but wine. I’ve no intention of harming you. Yet.”
 

A roguish smile accompanied this minimally reassuring statement. But the mockery in it was sufficient to help her regain her wits.
 

She made a little sound in her throat. “You underestimate me, sir.”

“To think an angry Irishman would scare you?”
 

“To think death would.”
 

His smile grew to encompass both sides of his mouth. The goblet remained in the air, a silent challenge. He had an uncommonly handsome smile. How unfortunate.
 

She reached for the goblet, careful not to touch the winding dark flames that licked across his hand and fingers. She closed her fingers around the stem and tugged.
 

He did not let go.
 

She looked up, surprised to find she wasn’t surprised, but…prepared.
 

Surprise did not haunt his features either. So, neither of them was surprised. And neither of them was letting go.
 

No doubt there were several paths of wisdom through this moment. Unfortunately, Katarina knew none of them. Wisdom had fled. It was as if she’d been blindfolded, dropped in a foreign land, and told to reach the shoreline. Diplomacy and experience meant nothing; previous knowledge was of no use. There was only Aodh Mac Con and his desires, and how she met them.

Something small and fiery charged through her, a miniature lightning bolt.
 

Surely, clinging to the wine cup just now was
not
wise.
 

Yet she did not let go. She could not. Her fingers were locked on the goblet’s stem, her gaze on his. There developed the distinct possibility they might go to battle right here, right now, over its gilded rim.

“If you ever take my blade again, lass, death will be the least of your worries,” he said amiably.
 

“I shall recall that to mind.”

“Do,” he urged, then uncurled his fingers, releasing the cup. “’Ware,” he murmured. “’Tis strong.”
 

It was an ambiguous victory, but what could she do but claim the spoils? “I consider myself warned,” she said, and lifted the cup to drink his wine, his soft, exquisite—
St. Vincent, it is velvety
—wine.
 

A half smile played at his mouth as he watched her, one dark brow slightly raised. It was not so much a challenge as…something else.
 

Which, unfortunately, triggered a
something
else
inside of her, not unlike the reverberations from a struck bell.
 

Papa would have called it anger, Mamma would have named it pride, but Katarina knew precisely what it was: danger.
 

She drank the entire cup of wine without stopping, slowly, holding his ice-blue gaze over its rim the entire time. She drank it down until there was nothing left inside but dregs. Exceptional dregs.
 

The half smile became a whole smile, and he nodded slowly. As if she’d said something. Or rather, told him something.
 

That could not be good.