The Irish Warrior (8 page)

Finian knew the feel of surrender, felt the bending of her spine and, battling the roar of lust surging through his blood, he pulled away. She was completely untutored in her body, that was obvious. The only thing more obvious in all the world was that if the sun rose, it also set, and until tonight, Senna de Valery had known nothing of the shuddering glories her body was created for.

She'd just been awakened.

With no choice in the matter. No real choice. She hadn't known what was coming. And he couldn't imagine anything more despicable than doing, with the best of intentions, what he suspected so many others had done with the worst: use her as a means to his own ends.

He let her go.

She stumbled backward, her cheeks flushed, her hair in wild, glinting disarray, her fingers reaching up, touching her face, as if amazed to find herself still there.

He bent over, hands on his thighs, and stared at the ground. “We'll not have any more of that,” he said to the dirt.

“No,” she gasped. “Certainly not.”

He looked up, palms still pressed on his thighs. Even through the darkness he could see her lips were slightly swollen from his kisses. Her hair was mussed and looked like a dim halo, loose sprays of red star-tails around her nose and cheeks. Her chest was fluttering up and down, her breath unsteady, rapid. Aroused.

He straightened. “Let's be off.”

“But, what of Dubli—Bathy Clee,” she whispered, trying to pronounce the Irish word.

“Whether we're going to Dublin or hell, Senna, we first have to go up that hill.” He jerked his head in its direction. “Travel near the highway is unsafe. So,” he added when she opened her mouth, “is talk.”

“Oh?” she retorted, unconsciously gathering a collar she didn't possess closer to her neck, in a protective feminine gesture. “But kissing is allowed?”

“I don't know, Senna. That'll be up to yerself. Is kissing allowed?”

Without waiting to see if she replied, followed, or began ripping her clothes off, a fairly slim likelihood, Finian admitted, he started off, deep into the Irish woods.

They walked throughout the night, weaving their way deeper into the countryside. Finian kept watch, gently correcting her when she was about to tread into a tree or a hole, but otherwise said little, unless she asked a question, usually shrilly, usually about a sound.

“What was that?” she whispered once, huddling close to his back as they trekked swiftly up an exposed hill.

“A nightjar.” He looked down. “A bird, Senna.”

A few moments later she threw her hand over her heart when they entered a clearing and an owl hooted loudly, swishing overhead. She ducked.

“Ye've owls in England, haven't ye, Senna?” He knew he sounded irritable, which he wasn't. Not with her. But he was highly irritated with the way his body behaved every time she pressed near.

“I wouldn't know,” she retorted, sounding just as irritated. “I'm hardly out walking at night a great deal, now, am I?”

He just lifted an eyebrow and kept going. They reached the edge of the clearing and ducked beneath the trees. A flutter of wings and brush exploded beneath their noses. A covey of birds shot into the air. Senna tripped backward and landed on her buttocks.

“And that?” she demanded in a whisper.

“Birds, Senna. Some are ground-dwelling, build their nests in leaves and rocks and such. We disturbed them.”

She scrambled back to her feet and brushed her bottom off with her uninjured hand, grimacing. “I suppose we did.”

Grayness was slowly overtaking the black of night. Even beneath the forest canopy the darkness was lightening. He pointed to a wall of long-clawed brambles just ahead. Some of the thorns were as long as a toe. Senna studied them.

“You jest.”

He started forward. “I never jest about things that bite.”

They pushed through slowly, Finian holding aside the worst offenders with his mailed forearm and sword. The brush crowded back into place behind them with eager rustlings and clickings. They finally emerged, slightly scratched and breathing heavily, on a meadow near the crest of a ridge.

“We rest here,” he said shortly. “We have until twilight.”

A fervent orange glow pulsed along the edge of the horizon, bringing light and heat to their chilled fingers. Finian threw himself on the ground, absorbing the respite for all it was worth. He closed his eyes and flung out his legs and arms, letting the fresh air and morning dawn flow over him like water.

“When you look like that, Finian, I can see you as a boy.”

He opened his eyes and stared at the dark blue-black sky overhead, still pricked by a few stars, then shifted his gaze down. Senna sat, arms hooked around her knees, considering him.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Is that so? A lad? In what manner?”

She smiled. “In the stubborn sort of manner.”

He snorted. “We're two of a kind, then.”

Her smile faded. “No.” She shook her head. “Not so much.” He watched from beneath his lids as she got to her feet and stumbled, head down, to the edge of the ridge, one hand pressed to her spine as if for support.

Small birds trilled and chirped. Fresh pine scents filled the air. The weak but fiery sunlight warmed his bruised legs as he lay, arms crossed under his head. Sleep crept in, dragging his eyelids shut.

The sudden sound of pebbles kicking out snapped them open again, but it was just Senna. Although now her body stance was entirely different than a few minutes ago. Her chin was up, her shoulders back.

He pushed to his elbows. “What is it?”

“That”—she turned to him with a smile—“is a beautiful sunrise.” She gestured to the horizon. Though hushed, excitement carried her words clear across the meadow. She sounded like she'd made a discovery.

He glanced briefly at the sunrise, then back to her.

“Aye, beautiful,” he agreed slowly. “'Tis a powerful draught you've sucked on.”

The sun had expanded from a pulsing orange to a warm golden orb. Their shadows had shortened a quarter inch. Dew sparkled in flashes of green and sapphire in the chilled air. And she stood at the forefront of it all, a dark, curving figure, but the fiery glints of her hair picked up copper and gold from the sun.

She touched her cheek as if trying to feel what he might be referring to, then gestured to the horizon again. “'Tis a beautiful day.”

“Aye,” he agreed. “A mighty tonic, that fact.”

If Senna could see him as a lad, he could see her as a young lass, all wide-eyed and wondering, sending men into madness even at that age. The cliffs around her home were probably littered with the bodies of unsuspecting knights who came to find a wife and ended up hurtling themselves off bluffs to escape her bewitching, obstinate beauty.

“I admit, I don't think I've been out for a sunrise in…” She paused, figuring. “Three years,” came the final report.

“Been hunched over a desk, have ye?”

She half shrugged. “Something like that.”

A good merchant. And yet…

Untutored passion practically pulsed from this woman. Their kiss on the ridge proved it. She was packed with something molten, and it spilled out in everything she did, from removing her hand from Rardove's grip to flinging herself over boulders. To kissing him.

He frowned. What did that matter? He had no time for things of the heart. No interest. No capacity.

Women's bodies, though, he had interest and ability there. But much as he could not live without their curving bodies and pretty smiles, they had never captured anything more enduring than his attention. Noble or peasant, dainty or voluptuous, he loved them all equally: not enough to matter.

He had nothing to give. He paid it little mind. For what reason dwell on the truth that he would always be alone?

Better than becoming what his father had: ruined by a woman.

That was not his path. His duties for The O'Fáil, foster father and king of the greatest
tuatha
in Ireland, were endless. Chief negotiator, councilor, and diplomat, Finian's position occupied him constantly, by desire and design and great, pressing need.

At present, that need was simple and dire: find the secret recipe of the Wishmé dyes before Rardove did. Or else their lands, their lives, and possibly large tracts of Ireland would be lost to the English king, Edward I.

There was nothing left for women, nothing meaningful, and certainly nothing moving.

Which is why he was surprised to find that, notwithstanding his current, dire circumstances, and their direct connection to those consequential duties, he was enjoying the distraction Senna provided, with her bright eyes and bright wit and the bright, surprising things she kept saying and doing.

“Why do ye do that, Senna?”

She flipped open the flap of her pack and knelt carefully upon it, as if it were a small table linen, then started rebraiding her hair. As her fingers twirled in and out of the reddish-yellow silk, he kept remembering how it had felt, crushed in his palms. How she'd arched her body for him, and—

“Why do I do what?” she asked.

He dragged his gaze from her hair. “Accounts. Ledgers. Hide yourself from the sun.”

He'd never known a woman who kept accounts. And he could not imagine why she would choose to be bound up in a line of numbers, clicking wooden markers across a stone, when she could be out in the sunrise she just admitted to missing for the
past three years.

“The books need to be kept.”

Ah. Well, then.

She adopted a look of exasperation. “The business is large, ever expanding,” she explained in a tone of…was she reprimanding him? “You've no idea the work it takes, Finian.”

He stretched out on the ground, head resting on his crossed palms, grinning a little. “I'd know if I loved sheep as much as ye do.”

A moment of shocked silence ensued. “I do not love sheep. Not a'tall. I love—”

Then, mystery of mysteries, she faltered.

“Money?” he suggested.

A pale flush slid up her cheeks.

Which is why, even if he had been inclined for more than a tumble—which he most certainly was not—her all-but-admission that money ruled her world should have been enough to cool his ardor. His experience with women said only that Senna was more honest in admitting to it.

It didn't make her any less mercenary. But it definitely made him less interested.

Or should have.

“'Tisn't funny.” She was all about reprimand now. The edges of her mouth puckered around disapproval. She picked up a stick and began shredding it. He could see the light of determination in her eye. Or mayhap it was something not so nice.

It mattered naught, either way. Mercenary or saint, she was not his.

“Wool is highly lucrative business,” she declaimed. “I have been building it for…I know every penny that comes in and goes out…I am in charge of everything. I hire the carters and wagons. I ensure we've stalls at the fairs. I negotiate the contracts. Barns, ewes, safe conducts, I arrange them all.
I
charter the ships.
I
hire the laborers.
I
pay the creditors. I—”

She must have hit some internal sea wall, for the deluge of instruction on the merits of the wool business—or perhaps of her—came to an abrupt halt.

He waited.

A moment later, staring at the ground, she said in a quiet voice, “I'm awfully good at it.”

He was certain she was. The best. But her face looked as if it had been carved from wood, and her voice was hoarse, like sand had swept over it in a storm.

“Awfully, is it?” he echoed.

She stared at the stick in her hands. “You've no idea.”

She said it so quietly he might not have heard, her words like moths fluttering away from a light extinguished. Then she tipped her chin up with a sudden shove, as you might if you were preparing to lift a heavy weight.

“I know about awful things,” he said, surprising himself. He did, indeed, know of dark things. He simply never spoke of them.

She considered him out of the corner of her eye. “Do you?”

“Aye. I know two things.” He held up two fingers.

An infinitesimal smile tipped up her mouth. “Which two?”

“I know they are sticky, and I know they are always behind us.”

“Sticky?”

“Aye. They stick, if ye let them, like pitch.”

First one cheekbone, then the other rounded and lifted into a much larger, genuine smile. “Indeed. They stick,” she echoed softly.

“But I also know they are not here. Not now.”

Her eyes were on his. “No,” she agreed. “They are not here, now,” and the husky, considering tone of her agreement was the most beautiful thing he thought he'd heard in decades of tossing awful things over his shoulder and walking on.

Morning sun lit up the side of her face. In the prisons, in the bailey, even in Rardove's candlelit hall, she had been all reflected light and shadow. But here, as the sun rose and the shadows shortened, she was like a drop of dew on a flower, bright and glittering.

“Rardove is likely ruing his error in judgment about now,” he remarked, mostly to himself, for in the daylight, one could see what a jewel had been tossed aside.

She snorted. “For certes. He could have had a lucrative showing in the wool trade. Instead, he speaks to me of marriages and dyeing.” She shook her head.

Finian sat up straight. “Rardove spoke of dyeing?”

“Aye. Some mad notion of his.”

“The Wishmés?”

She was mid-nod before she stopped, abruptly. She looked at him with a new, considering regard. “The Irish know of the Wishmé indigo?”

“We know,” he said in a flat voice.

“Legend.” Her words tumbled out quickly. “Rumors, all. Wishmés. The Indigo Beaches. Rardove lands are not the Indigo Beaches of legend. Pah.” She pushed a length of hair behind her ear and picked up another stick.

“
Now
Rardove lands,” he said quietly, tamping down on the churning in his gut. “Upon a time, they were Irish lands.”

Indeed. Upon a time, they were
his
lands. His family's.

Still, he ignored the urge to grab her by the shoulders and demand to know how much she knew and why she knew anything at all, because when it came to the Wishmés, the more one asked, the more one revealed. And it was worrying enough that this lick of English flame knew of them at all.

He resigned himself to saying simply, “The Wishmés have been forgotten for many years now.”

“But they are just legend.” Oddly, it sounded like a question.

Even more oddly, he answered it. “What do ye think, Senna? Do ye think Rardove would cause all this trouble for a lie?”

“I think Rardove is past mad.”

He laughed. “Be they truth or no, Senna, the Wishmés have a way of ruining people, and ye're better off far away.”

She looked over at him. Her eyes shone in the morning sunlight. “I've seen them,” she admitted in a low voice. “I have seen the Wishmé dye.”

His heart sped up. “Have ye?”

She nodded. “Rardove had a sample, a piece of linen dyed with the indigo. Have you ever seen the color, Finian?” she asked, her voice low and eager. “'Tis the most astonishing shade of blue…”

“'Tis alchemy,” he replied, unable to stop himself.

Something like enthusiasm was wending its way into her voice, lightening the dark sternness that occurred when she spoke of her business. “I can hardly describe it. If someone could recreate that color, it would be…”

He waited for the last word to slip from her lips, wondering what she might say. He'd grown up near these beaches, listened to the tales of the old dyers and their lost, secret recipes. Like alchemists of beauty, the wizened old Domhnall and sharp-tongued Ruaidhri were as legendary to Finian as Fionn mac Cumhaill, Tristan and Isolde.

Upon a time, the dyers of the Indigo Beaches had wrought such stunning shades of royal blue that the Roman Caesars heard of them. In the end, though, the Caesars were unconvinced a trip across the Irish Sea would be worth the additional warfare. And right they were, Finian thought grimly.