Riona (11 page)

While Bran gathered his belongings and put them back in the sack, Brother Domnall came out of the stable with a bundle tucked under his arm. Next came Fynn, leading Bran’s shaggy horse, with Liex and Leila skipping alongside.

“Well, this young man’s either a gifted diviner or has the keenest ears in the abbey,” Bran said, taking the reins from Fynn. “Either way, I thank you, sir.”

“Good ears.” Fynn gave him a sheepish grin. “I’d have brought the stallion, but he nearly blew me over the way he snorted through his nose. I’d half a mind to see fire comin’ out of it.”

“Hah!” Bran laughed. “If you’d managed him, then
you’d
be the man to ride to Drumceatt, not I. His temperament is as contrary as his master’s, but like Kieran, he has a noble heart.”

“I can believe it,” the lad professed with whole heart.

Riona hadn’t seen Fynn since she’d pulled him and Kieran apart. He’d vanished in the confusion and wasn’t in his bed when she rose to dress for morning prayers. “And just where have you been, Fynn?”

“Around.”

“He waked me up to see the soldiers this mornin’,” his younger brother
supplied helpfully. “An’ then he was away. To mischief more likely.”

Fynn started to give his younger brother a playful cuff on the back of the head, but Riona caught his wrist.

“I didn’t think you cared what might happen to Kieran after last night. What’s made you decide to help?”

Fynn scuffed his heel against his leg and tried to look indifferent. “He’s innocent, even if I don’t like him, which I don’t, but I like even less me and the twins being called a little band of chronic liars.” At Riona’s sharp intake of breath, he went on, clearly pleased by her reaction. His ability to hide or blend into his surroundings undetected was a ceaseless source of delight to the lad. “Aye, I heard it all from my perch in the rafters. And that weasel-eyed Senan had no right to call you a liar. I wish the lord had peeled ’is bobbin’ apple instead of handin’ over his knife.”

“The talk this lad has,” Brother Domnall scolded. He handed Bran the linen bundle. “Take this, son. ’Tis some cheese and bread the twins gathered from the kitchen while Fynn and I readied your steed. God speed you to the high king and holy fathers at Drumceatt.”

Riona gathered the little ones in her arms, sparing the elder Fynn such an embarrassment, and gave them a big hug.

“I don’t know what Senan is up to, but I can see now he hasn’t got a chance against the lot of you.” After securing his belongings on the horse’s back, Bran mounted up. But before he could ride off, Brother Ninian ran through the gate and shouted at him to wait.

“I begin to feel like Cuchulain, riding off to battle with this sendoff. A fair lady, soldiers, brothers, children …”

Another time Riona might have cut him off with sarcastic wit, but Brother Ninian’s approach bode ill. She felt it in her bones. Even the hair on her arms lifted, stroked by icy dread. As Ninian reached them, he took a moment to catch his breath. The exercise had forced more blood to the sedentary cleric’s face than Riona had ever seen.

“You ride in vain, Bran,” the brother told his friend. “Kieran of Gleannmara will be hanged before you reach Drumceatt.”

“Hanged?”
Riona ignored the way her knees turned to water, willing herself to remain upright.

Ninian nodded. “After the hearing was adjourned, I left with the others, when it occurred to me that I’d forgotten my quills. I returned through the back entrance from the kitchen and overheard Maille and the bishop in consult. The lord of Gleannmara is doomed and you are, too,” he told Bran. “Men have been dispatched to see that you meet with some ill fate in the forests on the road to Tara.”

“Then we’ll have to do something on our own,” Riona stated grimly. At least it sounded like her voice. Exactly what the resolute speaker had in mind was beyond her.

I
’ve food for the lord of Gleannmara.”

Riona tolerated the guard’s examination of the basket prepared in the abbey kitchen with admirable restraint until the man stirred the porringer with his grimy finger. She snatched the basket away.

“I don’t think a useful weapon can be hid in porridge and beans, but allow me to break the bread with my clean hands lest you contaminate it as well.”

“Me and Oife is hungry, too,” the guard said. He reached again for the food, but Riona sidestepped him. “You’ve two legs apiece and none of my sympathy. Get your own.” She nodded at the bar of the grainery door. “Now open the door, or shall I advise Bishop Senan and my lord Maille that you offend me?”

Much as Riona was loathe to claim any relationship with the two connivers, distant or nay, it suited her purpose at the moment. Grudgingly, the man-at-arms opened the door and admitted her.

Kieran stood as she entered. There was no light, save that from the late afternoon sun streaming in through the open door. Instead of on her, Gleannmara’s gaze was on the leather-clad men, taking their measure.

“It isn’t lordly fare, but it’s filling.”

“Food is the last thing on my mind, milady,” he growled sulkily.

“Then you’d best change your mind. This, at least, will keep you from tripping over that temper-fired tongue of yours.”

Kieran winced as though she’d dealt him a physical blow. “Yours is its only match.”

Riona smiled. “At least milord knows when he’s well met.” She took the linen cover off the food and spread it on the ground before placing the basket on top of it. “Sit. Eat.”

With a scowl toward the door, Kieran dropped to a cross-legged position and took up the porringer. Despite his claim of no thought for food, he wolfed down the meal as though it were his last.

From all the rumors, that might not be far from the truth. The word of a bishop outmatched that of a tuath king—especially with the evidence that had been put out to indict Kieran. Even now those empowered to condemn him put their heads together over a feast of roast grouse hen in the late abbot’s private chambers. Thankfully, Father Ninian kept a close ear to the goings-on from his station at his desk beyond the dividing wall.

“The way I see it, Bran should be at least three days getting to the high king and that much again and some in return,” Kieran observed aloud. “If Senan doesn’t have me hanged before.”

“I’m certain the bishop will lend more time to this matter, once his shock over Fintan’s death has abated. Reason and grief are a poor mix.”

Kieran’s brow shot up. “You should know well enough.”

“Till then, you need to keep your strength up until Bran returns. Have some honeyed bread.” Riona shoved the delicacy at him. “And take care not to drip it.” The
drip
she referred to had nothing to do with the honey gathered by the abbey’s beekeeper. It had to do with the note she had slipped beneath it.

“I don’t—”

“Eat, fool!” She cut her gaze to the food to make the despondent lord look closer.

Riona suspected the guards would not allow them privacy. A note was the only way to let Kieran know what was going to happen—or what she
hoped
would happen. She made certain her back blocked the guards’ view as Kieran secreted the note away in his belt and took a bite of the bread.

“Mmm … good,” he garbled, mouth full. “Are you having second thoughts about wedding me now that I am a condemned man?”

“Wedding you, milord, is the very last thing on my mind. You may count my attention as Christian charity, nothing more.”

Riona repacked the basket with prim efficiency, but as she made to rise, Kieran reached across the short distance between them and pulled her to him. The basket dropped, spilling the wooden tableware with a clatter. Her startled gasp received his lips and with them, a long, sound
kiss. It smacked of honey and the wine she’d given him to wash down his meal, but the greatest distraction was the man himself. A curling warmth conveyed itself through the unsolicited union, the strength of which melted Riona’s resistance.

It still worked its spell after the guards fell upon them and separated them.

“Unhand her, ye cur!” The senior officer knocked Kieran away from Riona with the butt of his sword, while the second steadied her from the plummet from her heightened senses.

“Milady, are ye all right?” the man Oife exclaimed.

“I … oh!” She cried out as the senior guard creased Kieran’s forehead with the sword, laying open his skin. “Spare him, sir.”

The guard stopped short of striking the dazed lord again, and Riona’s mind raced. “Our court would rather he possess
all
his senses when his penance is handed out.” She struggled to her feet on knees still wobbly from Kieran’s unexpected assault. “Do help me gather these things. I must be off to the kitchen.”

“What of our supper?”

“I’ll see extra added to it for your gallantry, sirs. A good wine to soothe the troubled soul.”

Oife grinned, revealing two good teeth. The rest were either rotted stubs or missing totally, no doubt the price of a drunken brawl. “That’d be more’n fine, milady, more’n fine.”

“Unless you think it might impair your ability to stand guard over this ill-mannered buffoon,” Riona said, feigning afterthought.

The senior guard sneered. “ ’Twould take more than a bottle made by clerics to dull a real man’s senses, eh, Oife?”

“Sure as a pig stinks.”

Riona masked her distaste and took the basket Oife handed to her. “Then I’ll see to your meal at once, sirs.” She tucked the linen coverlet around the contents and started for the door.

“I only sought to see if milady’s lips were as sweet as her words,” Kieran called after her.

She paused outside the grainery and glanced back in time to see him wipe his mouth in distaste.

“And sure one was as hard to stomach as another.”

As if the fire flaming her cheeks scorched her heels as well, Riona stalked off toward the abbey kitchen. Once inside, she slammed the door behind her, rattling the utensils hanging on the wall. Father Domnall and the children looked up from their meals with widening eyes.

“Tell me once again
why
we are trying to save that wretched man’s hide?”

Stomping to the table, she threw the basket, bouncing its contents out. Fynn grabbed the cup he’d helped carve as it rolled to the edge. Liex righted the porringer. Leila merely looked at Riona as if wondering where the gentle lady who had offered selfless love and care to three homeless children had gone. At length, the child rattled off something to Liex.

“Seargal says your husband made you angry.”

“Well, he’s half right,” Riona fumed. “I
am
angry. Do you know what the ungrateful beggar had the nerve to—” She broke off. Father help her, she was addressing the child’s imaginary companion. Abruptly, she turned to Domnall. “The note said for Kieran to create a diversion that would bring the guards to my rescue, and do you know what he did? He
kissed
me, that’s what.” She huffed like the bellows over a smith’s forge. “Full on the mouth, no less.”

“Shameful,” the brother averred.

The nonexistent force of his disapproval was no more to Riona’s liking than the twitch of his lips. As if to cover himself, he popped the remnant of his daily bread in and chewed without relent until it required washing down with a sip of diluted wine. With a grunt of satisfaction, he wiped his lips on the coarse linen of his sleeve and glanced up at her.

“It was successful, I hope. The diversion,” he added hastily, “not the kiss. That was most ungentlemanly of him.”

“He shoulda smashed his fist in your belly,” Liex said, slamming his into the palm of his other hand. “That would get the guards’ attention.”

“If ’e was half as noble as he’d make one think, he’d ’ave just grabbed your wrist.” Fynn’s dark eyes fired with indignation. “An’ I’ll
deal with him once we’re away from here, milady, don’t ye worry.”

“I’ll not have you going head-to-head with Kieran again, Fynn. I can take care of myself. I … well, it was just not what I expected him to do.”

Riona took a calming breath and exhaled the last smoke of the fire Kieran and his disarming kiss had ignited. The last time she’d endured the lord of Gleannmara’s affection, it had been a brutish, clumsy affair. He pursued romance like he plied an enemy: headlong, without regard for the sensibilities of his prey. Today’s assault was no less forceful … yet it had been possessed of a play that taunted the senses rather than abused them. Had the guards not intervened, she might have been tempted to actually enjoy it.

The very idea made her shudder.

She put her fingers to her temples and massaged the ache there. This was not the time for discord of any nature. She put her fists on the table, ignoring all but what was most important. “We all need to work together, just as we’ve planned.”

Liex slid off the bench, his blue eyes bright with excitement. “Is it time to go froggin’?”

At Riona’s nod, Fynn was up and off, beating his younger sibling to the corner where the gig and sack lay. She and the children were to make their way to the outer fosse, which was filled with the earlier rainfall almost to the top of the earthen embankment surrounding the abbey. The closing twilight curtain afforded the perfect opportunity for catching frogs, which allowed Riona and the children to leave the confines without arousing suspicion. Once outside, they’d make their way to the forest where Bran waited in hiding after pretending to make off for Drumceatt. The rest was up to Brother Domnall, Kieran, Gray Macha … and God.

“But first, dear ones,” Riona cautioned, motioning them into a small circle around Domnall, “let us pray.”

“Rescue is at hand. Be prepared tonight. For now, make a diversion to summon the guards.”

Kieran could not read the note he fingered in the darkness, but its words committed themselves to his memory—as did the sweet sampling of Riona’s lips. When the guards pulled him away from her, he was fit to chew the beggars like raw fodder and spit them aside that his hunger for more might be satisfied.

Another place, another time …

Wiping his brow with the back of his hand, he tested the scabbed wound the guard had given him. The way Riona played the guards into taking an extra bottle of wine when she returned with their evening meal proved the church had not spoiled all the spice in her. The men fell asleep with dreams of the reward she promised Lord Maille would give them for their timely protection.