Maire (6 page)

“You’ll swear loyalty to Gleannmara?” she whispered, still in disbelief. His sword would be an asset to the tuath, especially if she were to battle Morlach for it, which she’d do or die trying.

“And to its queen, so long as she asks me to do nothing against my God’s will.”

If his God hated evil, He would see Morlach put in his place, Maire reasoned, as a strange calm enveloped her. She would need the help of all the gods she could muster.

“And so Maeve took the prince of her hostages to marry as her choice, rather than accept that of the men of Erin for her…”

That man had been Maire’s father, Rhian, and the union was a happy one from what she recalled from her short childhood. He’d been at Maeve’s side to avenge her death before falling himself. It was all commemorated in beautiful song, their union of love in life and death. It was the kind of ballad that made a red-blooded Celt’s heart sing tender beneath his formidable armor of muscle and fierce spirit. Even now, wild roses grew amid the hawthorn about their place of rest, forever entwined.

“As my husband?” The question slipped out even as Maire considered the bizarre possibility. This man had already demonstrated himself to be honorable, if in a somewhat fey manner.

Why hadn’t she thought of it before? If she married another, Morlach would have no grounds to press her further in the king’s eye. Pursuit of her land would be nothing short of outright aggression and in direct opposition to the king’s promise of protection to Maire’s mother.

“Aye, as hostage and husband,” she decided, seeing this also as a way to ensure the payment of tribute by joining their tuatha. Not that Emrys looked capable of producing a decent fighting force.

Rowan’s surprised laugh shook her from her ingenious burst of thought.

“By all that’s holy, you ask too much! Why would I take to wife such a painted vixen with sword as sharp as her tongue?”

Again he mocked her. Humiliation boiled in Maire’s blood, fortifying her waning strength. She snaked her fingers between their bodies and around the hilt of her secret weapon. In his sudden swell of confidence, the man had relaxed his guard. All she had to do was keep him that way until the blade was free.

“You’ve admitted yourself that I’m comely enough and—” Maire moistened her lips and silently cursed at the battle grit clinging to them. Coquettishness was not her strength, but she’d seen other women use that ploy to snag the attention of a strapping warrior. No matter how she longed to, even she knew that now was not the time to spit. She swallowed the grime as best she could. “I cannot say in truth that I do not find your person worthy of this queen.”

Though she had briefly admired the Welshman’s fine physique when he’d stripped off his clerical robe for the fight, she couldn’t bring herself to return his earlier compliment. The wrap of cloth about his hips was not unlike what her male kinsmen wore outside of battle, although his was shorter to allow greater mobility. Thankfully, it was more modest combat attire than the Scotti preferred. It annoyed Maire that the mere thought of a more intimate glimpse of her opponent deepened the battle flush of her cheeks with embarrassment.

Regardless of what she thought of him as a man, Maire now had his full attention. She wriggled beneath him, a provocative smile curling on her lips. From the corner of her eye she saw Eochan block Declan, whose fist was tight about the hilt of his sword. If her brother broke the terms of the contest, shame alone would emerge the victor.

The long, thin blade of her stinger came loose and her oppressor was none the wiser. What he mistook as an intended
embrace became, with a practiced flash of metal in the torchlight, her triumph.

“We marry in name only, of course.” More color claimed her face. If more was to come of the marriage, as it had in her mother’s… well, that remained to be seen.

She pressed the razor-sharp blade against Rowan’s skin, where a vein swelled with the flow of his life spirit. His wince was barely perceptible, but it told he’d felt a taste of the stinger’s deadly potential.

“May I ask why this sudden proposal?” He grated the words out, careful not to strain against the knife in his evident battle between hostility and bewilderment.

The crowd closed in no more than a body’s length from them in hopes of hearing the negotiations whispered for each other’s ears only.

“I need a husband to be rid of a troublesome suitor. You need your head.”

Rowan clearly didn’t care for either rationale. Had there been real steel to his cutting gaze, her eyes would be gouged out by now.

“Then I don’t see where I have much choice.”

“I’d have your word in your god’s name,” Maire added, somewhat offended by his decidedly reluctant concession. After all, it was
he
who’d admitted aloud she was comely.

“You have my word in the name of God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, that I will take you as my wife.”

Maire shook her head. “That I will take you as my husband,” she corrected, gaining satisfaction at his deepening scowl. Here was a man unaccustomed to a woman’s dominion. He’d get used to it, being married to a queen.

“However you wish to put it, milady.”

“Then give me your sword… carefully.” She kept the stinger pressed against him as he reached over her head to retrieve the weapon he’d dropped to break his fall. “Place it in my other hand.”

Her fingers closed about the hilt of Rowan’s sword. It was still warm from his grasp. A surge of nearly lost triumph welled in her chest as if to explode like heaven’s own thunder. Praise her mother’s gods, she’d won!

“You may get off me now, sir.”

“Aye, for now.”

Maire allowed the taunt to glance off harmlessly, unanswered. It was her moment. It was Gleannmara’s day. The bards would sing of this in centuries to come, after all. She was just gone eighteen. She’d beaten a seasoned warrior in battle. She won Gleannmara a tribute fit for a king. Further, she found the answer to Morlach’s threat and secured the tribute with the same blow, taking Rowan ap Emrys as husband and hostage. Brude had been right all along.

She flashed the druid a smile as she held up Rowan’s sword to the ecstatic approval of her clansmen. Her vigor returned, renewed with each shout of her name and of Gleannmara’s. Floating on a cloud of triumph, Maire was unprepared when Rowan suddenly seized her in his arms and kissed her soundly on the lips. His sword fell from her hand, disabled as she was by shock.

As he released her, only the rising heat of embarrassment thawed her frozen state. Indignation grew to a roar in her veins, but before she could land a retaliatory blow on his smirking face, the Welshman caught her wrist and raised her arm along with his own as if they shared the victory.

“Mother and friends, I give you my bride-to-be! God keep us all.”

W
ith no time to exult in Maire’s disconcertment, Rowan sprang from her side to catch his mother before she collapsed on the ground in a full swoon. Lady Delwyn had stood during the contest, refusing the chair her servants brought her. Rowan had heard her inadvertent cry as he’d plunged down toward Maire’s sword.

His announcement, however, proved more of a shock than her unselfish love for him could bear.

“Seize him!” the queen’s younger spokesman shouted, stepping up to block Rowan’s path. “He’s a hostage.”

“Let him be, Declan.” Brude’s words were not nearly as loud as the warrior’s, but their impact stalled Maire’s men in their tracks. When all eyes were upon the druid, he explained. “He is a man of his word and of a noble god. Leave him to make ready for the journey ahead.”

The young buck called Declan fell reluctantly aside. Rowan gave Brude an appreciative look and rushed into the villa with his charge. His mother’s maidservant wailed in his wake. A glimpse at his mother’s pallor assailed his conscience. Of all who watched the contest, it was only Lady Delwyn who had an inkling of the real battle he fought, for it was she who’d nursed him through the fevers. It was she who shook him from the battlefield, where he wretched at the sight of the dying barbarian female, desperately clutching at the unborn babe his sword had slashed from her swollen belly. Only his mother knew the horrible deed that had robbed Rowan of his will to ever lift a sword again.

He’d been so intent on the contest between him and his smug bride-to-be that he’d unintentionally dealt his gentle mother a terrible blow with his announcement. God had been with him. He hadn’t had to kill Maire of Gleannmara. In his defeat, he’d triumphed, and the victory impaired his good sense.

His mother stirred as he laid her on the high-back couch in the hall and clutched weakly at her chest. “Tell me it isn’t so, son! How can you consider marrying that painted heathen?”

“Mother, I prayed for God to show me His will and save our people from harm. It appears this is the manner in which He chose to answer.”

“I cannot believe God would have you marry a heathen. And what will we do without you?”

Rowan helped her as she sat up, her strength returning. Her hand trembled as he released it. Marriage certainly hadn’t been Rowan’s intent at the outset. All he’d hoped for was to save his people from plunder, and then Gleannmara had been mentioned. He could barely explain himself what had happened. But had any of God’s chosen ever understood why the Lord’s answer to a prayer was not exactly as anticipated?

No, this was no accidental turn of events. Of that Rowan was certain.

“Mother, Dafydd knows more about running this estate than I. Under his management, we should more than be able to pay the tribute I promised Maire, if she should win. And once word is spread that Emrys is under her clan’s protection, you need fear no more Scotti raids. I didn’t have to kill her. God spared me.”

“Maire, is it?”

The glaze of worry in his mother’s pale gray eyes sharpened. Rowan wondered if she saw more than he’d admitted, even to himself. How could he explain that he somehow knew this female? He’d seen her night upon night and again just this morning. At least he thought it was the Scotti queen. Could
such a comely creature as had so often visited his dreams lie beneath the Scot’s paint and spattered blood? Did the filth of battle disguise her flawless complexion? Were her stiffened and lime-whitened tresses truly silken and fire-kissed?

“Aye, Mother. Maire of Gleannmara.” Rowan emphasized the name of the tuath from which he’d been sold long ago.

Recognition registered on her face. With it came a quiver of resignation.

“Oh, I see.”

From time to time, Rowan had spoken to his mother about returning to his place of birth and hinted at going as a cleric. It seemed the most logical way for him to do this, now that iron had become his servant as a plow not his master as a weapon. He’d met scholars from Ireland who’d come to Emrys to study. And he’d heard the call.

Rowan often dreamt that Glasdam was searching for him. He and Rowan had been close. But with Demetrius’s failing health, Rowan hadn’t pushed the issue of leaving Emrys. He’d not wished to cause Lady Delwyn more concern than she already bore.

“Will you seek your brother for revenge?” That was his mother. Straight to the point, often able to see more about Rowan than he knew himself.

“Would God have opened this door for me if that were my purpose?”

His mother’s touch was gentle on his arm. “It will break your father’s heart.”

Rowan was struck, not for the first time, with the ironic reversal of his and his father’s roles. Since the day Demetrius had carried Rowan into the chapel to pray for his recovery, the son had watched his father’s physical strength wane, while his spiritual strength grew. Demetrius had known this day was coming. It had to, for Rowan to be completely healed of his past.

“He and I have discussed this matter many times. He will
understand, as I know you will when God speaks to your heart.”

“Rowan, your side!”

At his mother’s exclamation, he looked down, suddenly distracted by the large stain of blood now clotted where the amulet had deflected the warrioress’s near-fatal blow. With the speed of a magician’s hand, Lady Delwyn snatched an embroidered scarf from the table at the end of the couch and handed it to him without thought to the hours of eye-wearying stitching she’d invested in it.

“’Tis nothing but a scratch.”

Rowan tested the gash of flesh before pressing the linen over it. It was nearly sealed with dirt. Even as his momentum carried him onto Maire’s upthrust blade, he’d twisted mightily. It had seemed to take forever to complete the fall. He’d had time to call out to God, his silent prayer blending with his mother’s heart-wrenched cry for mercy. The answer came with the telltale collision of his amulet against the upward momentum of the steel. He’d barely felt the rip of his side as the deflected metal cut into him.

“It looks worse than it is,” he reassured her. He planted a light kiss upon her forehead to soothe the dismay gathered there in soft furrows.

“Emrys, while this sight of a warrior and his maithre is sweet as a robin’s trill, we’ve no time for long good-byes.” Maire strode boldly into the room, as though she were mistress of the house, and squared off before him. “We’d best be to the ship and away before morning. We’ve much to do.”

In truth, she hated to interrupt this tender moment between mother and son. Such exchanges had been rare in her orphaned life. But only fools would remain long enough for the countryside to gather an army against them. Brude had already started back for the ship to prepare for a sacrifice to the gods,
but not before cautioning her to take no more time than was needed to gather the prizes. Besides, how could she resist the opportunity to raise the color in her adversary’s face? It was only fair turnabout after the embarrassing kiss with which he’d staggered her.

Rowan straightened and turned. If he was annoyed, he didn’t show it.

“I will speak to my people and tell them to cooperate with yours in regard to fulfilling the details of our arrangement. We’ll be wed by the priest at the village on our way to the ship.”

“We’ll be wed by Brude,” Maire corrected. She would not ask the robed men of the church she’d just plundered to marry them. Why give them the chance to curse this union? Better that her mother’s gods, who had given her victory, bless it instead.