Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (12 page)

Aodh shrugged. “That the queen was going to put the hounds of hell on his tail if he didn’t find his way back to her right quick. In York.”

Cormac roared in laughter at the idea of one of the queen’s favorite interrogators being sent on a wild-goose chase to the north of England.

To Aodh, satisfaction was a pale but welcome sensation.

Putting his elbows on the table, Cormac gazed across the bustling hall with satisfaction. “Aye, well, good. He’s taken care of for the time being, seeing as the queen is in Windsor. Elizabeth, o’ course, now she’s a different matter,” Cormac went on with almost ghoulish glee. “She’ll be deep in her royal passion by now. Send an army, she will.”

“This pleases you.”

Cormac shrugged. “’Twas inevitable. ’Twas the
point
, Aodh. She wouldn’t give you what you rightfully earned, so you took it. And in fine fashion too. If she wants it now, she comes for it. With an army.”

He shrugged again, pounding the subtle intricacies of political maneuvering on the anvil of his simple logic. He rubbed his chin with the side of his hand, reflecting. “A massive large one, if I’m any judge.”

Shockingly, the comely maid reappeared, mugs of ale on a tray. She set the tray down with a curtsey, her pretty face tipped to the floor, but not far enough to hide the swift, appraising glance she took of Cormac before hurrying away.

 
Cormac grinned his thanks, handed a mug to Aodh, then sat back, his comfortable and dire predictions carrying on apace.

“The queen’s going to want your pretty head, Aodh, and a few other body parts as well.” Cormac eyed him appraisingly. “Your frightfully big bollocks, to start with. Dangle ’em right off the Tower if she gets a chance.”

Aodh nodded. “Your insights are fascinating. Recall to me why I bring you with me?”

“Because I tell you what you need to hear, no’ what you want to hear, like those English boys do.” He sniffed. “In any event, you’ve naught to worry on. We shan’t let her have your bollocks, nor your sorry arse, nor any other part of your sorry self, so don’t get all worrisome now, Aodh.” Cormac eyed him with a mixture of compassion and pity. “You worry too much.”

Aodh drank. Aodh had not worried for sixteen years, not since seeing his father hanged until he was half-dead, then taken down, bowels cut from his body and burned, his arms and legs torn from his body, his head cut off—it had taken four blows—and thrust on a spike outside Dublin Castle.

What was there to worry on? You grabbed what you could, and then you died.
 

It was a motto that had served Aodh well, and, in turn, the men who followed him through all manner of exploits. It remained true, though, that his men had tried to make him see the mad recklessness and potentially self-destructive nature of his plan to capture Rardove Keep.

Aodh had never disagreed. He’d also never wavered. And, as ‘reckless’ was generally the sort of plan he devised anyhow, and always the sort they participated in, in the end, they had followed him. As they always did. Honor, dauntlessness, a lack of other options, and a great deal of money ensured it.

He would make it worth their while.

For a moment, they drank in silence as the hall bobbed with life around them. Soldiers came and went on various tasks, and food was eaten as soon as it was brought, pulled off trays by celebratory soldiers.
 

“So, we send her off and settle in for a fight,” Cormac concluded comfortably. “Keep your balls and pretty arse safe.” He grinned and lifted his mug in toast.
 

Aodh returned the gesture but didn’t drink. “Send who off?”

Cormac hooked a thumb at the ceiling. “The lady.”

“Ah.”

Cormac stilled, much as Ré had earlier, then turned his bearded face to Aodh and blew out an ale-gusted breath. “Christ on the Cross, you’re planning something, aren’t you?”

Aodh sighed. “When I have a plan, do I not tell you?”

“’Tis precisely what I’m sitting here wondering:
‘What in God’s holy name is he about to tell me he’s planning?’
”
 

Aodh drank. “I asked her to marry me.”

Cormac opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, then flung out a hand in wordless astonishment and fell back in his chair. It rocked under the impact.

“Only the saints could persevere in the face of you, Aodh,” he muttered. “How your mam did, I’ve no notion.”

Aodh looked away, across the room, into the hearth. “She did not. She died when I was nine.”

Cormac eyed him darkly. “You killed your mam,” he muttered, then downed his entire mug in silence. It took three swallows. Aodh wondered idly how many it would have taken Katarina.
 

“Ré is not going to be happy,” Cormac warned darkly.

“Nay, he is not,” agreed Aodh, just as Ré himself appeared at the top of the stairs.

“I’m not telling him,” Cormac said peevishly.

“You won’t have to.”

The Scot snorted. “Aye, he’ll see the madness in your eyes himself.”

They looked across the bustling hall at Aodh’s second-in-command. Companion in intrigues that covered the map from Paris to Cadiz, Ré knew Aodh’s predilection for mayhem better than anyone. Surely, if anyone would be prepared, it would be Ré.

Now, dirt-stained, sweating and smiling, Ré came to them, grabbed one of the mugs, and sat facing them, straddling a small bench. He drank deeply, then wiped his mouth with his forearm and grinned.
 

Neither of them returned it. Aodh kept looking at the fire.
 

Ré’s grin faded. He squinted into the silence. “What?”

Cormac gestured across the table with his elbow. “Aodh’s lost his bleeding mind.”

“How this time?”

A beat of silence. “Says he’s going to wed her.” This, despite his earlier vow.

Ré continued to stare at Cormac for a moment, then turned his clear gray eyes to Aodh. “I understand the lady holds certain…charms.”
 

Aodh dragged his gaze off the fire.

“But can we not focus on the battle at hand?” Ré finished, his words and gaze hard.

Aodh smiled grimly. “You are not paying attention. She
is
the battle.”
 

Chapter Twelve

KATARINA WATCHED Dickon, her young page, leave. He’d braved the Hound’s wrath for her, and she’d been charmed, heartwarmed, and vaguely unsettled by how
pleased
he’d seemed after his encounter with Aodh Mac Con.

Outside the walls, the winds were picking up. A sudden gust moaned past the window and blew down the chimney, lifting the fire into hot roaring flames. Then it died away again to a lower burn.
 

She crouched in front of it and laid another of Aodh’s pieces of precious wood atop, then carefully arranged the grate in front. It was only then she realized her hands were shaking.

Voices sounded outside the door. She pushed to her feet as it swung open, and noise drifted in from the hall belowstairs, then Walter stepped into the room.
 

She exhaled a breath of…relief, of course. She was relieved. Who would not be relieved to see their advisor of many years?

“My lady,” he said, sweeping into the room. “Are you well?” Tall and angular, he stepped back and frowned as Bran, her guard, poked his head in behind and swept a wary eye over the room, then nodded to her and backed out again, shutting the door.

“Has the Hound hurt you?” Walter asked crisply, moving across the room. He glanced at the hot, roaring fire and lifted his bushy eyebrows, as if surprised to see such a thing in her chambers.
 

“Of course not.” She felt for the arms of the lord’s chair. The chair Aodh had occupied. She sat down in it.

“Threatened you in any way?”
 

“No.” The cushion was still warm from Aodh.
 

“Taken anything?”

“Aside from the castle, Walter?”
 

Her curt replies seemed to recommend him to a different course. He sat in the other chair and folded his hands together as if he were about to begin a prayer.
 

“This must be very trying for you, my lady.”

She sighed. He was about to instruct her on herself.

“Such events tend to muddle the brain.” He rolled his hand in the air to demonstrate muddling. “It can make one”—he pursed his lips thoughtfully—“less careful. Less discerning. Less capable of clear thought.”

“More likely to run away?”

She hadn’t meant to say it so sharply.
 

He stilled, then swallowed and nodded. Prodigious brows steepled, and his brow furrowed. “I swear to you, my lady, I was but trying to help. I thought if I could get away, perhaps rally a few of the servants…”

 
She admitted this was like as not true. Walter, if pompous, had also proven himself stouthearted, at least as much as her guards. Proof came in the form of his continued presence out here on the brutal Irish marches, when he could surely find employ anywhere as an experienced, eagle-eyed steward or clerk.
 

And that was Katarina’s best gift: the ability to earn far more loyalty than was her due. She ought to be appreciative. She
was
appreciative, deeply so. But Walter had a way of making even the deepest appreciation pale beside the depths of irritation he aroused.

“In this, my lady, my past is to your good fortune. I know well how to manage an excess of passions of the sort Aodh Mac Con is exhibiting, the sort your mother exhibited—”

She could endure much, but to endure another recitation on the torments suffered by her father on account of her mother was quite beyond her at the moment.

“Tell me, Walter,” she interrupted sharply. “How does it fare belowstairs?”

The angular steward laid his fingers on the table. “The Irish Hound has prevailed unequivocally. His men are ensconced in the hall with drink and meat”—he sent her a scathing look, as if she’d known they were to be conquered and had had the meat delivered specifically for their captors—“and are showing untoward interest in the women. The women do not…” He sniffed. The sniff was a word. “Seem properly distressed by the men’s attentions.”

The men’s attentions
. “Do they not?” she asked softly.
 

“Indeed, they return the interest, I warrant, if smile and glance tell the tale.”
 

I do not disapprove.

Every man but me.

Do you see how we shall do it?

“Walter,” she said, watching the flames ripple across the top of the logs. “We float out on a sea here at Rardove, a sea of warfare and loneliness. We are surrounded by wolves and Irish tribes and mist, and little else. If they are not being injured or maligned, please leave the women be.”

Leave me be.

His gaze sharpened to a veritable point. “My lady, the Hound has not done anything to
you
, has he? Anything…untoward?”

She leaned back against the chair and tilted her face up. “He has asked me to stay on…as his consort.”

The words, once out, were not as shocking as she’d expected, but Walter flew up as if he’d sat on a pin. “He
what
?”
 

“Proposed a union.”
Touched my neck. Entwined our fingers.
Made me want.
 

“God
damm
it!” he shouted, slamming the flat of his hand onto the table. His clerical face was as red as a holly berry. “That is madness!”

She assembled her expression into one of poised neutrality. “Is it not?”
 

He tugged on the row of buttons that ran the length of his velvet tunic. “To even
breathe
the proposal that Rardove should disparage herself with a commoner, a…a barbarian. An Irishman”—he was sputtering with rage—“why, ’tis un
fathom
able. Out
rage
ous.
Lun
acy.”
 

“Is it not?”
 

Something about how she said it made Walter’s hands freeze on the gold-colored buttons. “You cannot— You cannot in all earnestness be considering…”