Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (19 page)

So,
carefully now,
he counseled himself again,
or she will be gone
. Into the ash.

“Shall we wager?” he asked.

Her gaze drifted up from her downturned face. “Is that a taunt? I have nothing.”

“Aye, you do. Open the chest.” He nodded toward the chest beside her.

She cast a doubtful glance at the wooden box banded in thick iron, then flipped open its lid and drew in a sharp breath.
 

“Oh,
Aodh
.” It was a whisper, a breathy, feminine exhalation.

He shook his head in resignation as his cock swelled hard. Again.

She dipped her fingertips into the chest, sweeping through the piles of coin that lay inside. They glittered dully and clinked. He held his cards up, watching her warily over their tops. Sooth, he’d been unsure how she would respond to a chest of coins. She might be pleased or she might be…furious. It could happen. Women existed in a state of mystery.

Her head came up, her fingertips still dipped beneath the top layer of coin. “You mean to buy me?”
 

Ah, there it was. She was angry. This coin, purchased with much toil and pain and one dead man—Rudolph, the idiot—had been reduced to a simple insult. It wasn’t unexpected. To his surprise, though, he felt the bite of anger.
 

“I’m not buying you, lass. They are gifts. Or, do you prefer, negotiations. Rardove needs coin, aye?” He nodded toward the chest. “There is coin.”

She slid the gold between her fingers with a little clinking, then sat back, wrist still over the lip of the chest, watching him. Like a Roman queen. Like an army commander in her tent. “Very well, Aodh Mac Con. What shall we wager?”

He smiled slowly. “I can think of several things.”

“Say, an angel, to start?”

“Fine.”
 

She lifted out a handful of coins and laid them in a pile before him, then, very deliberately, took a single gold coin out of the chest and laid it on the table between them. He did the same from the pile she’d given him. They nodded at each other and sat back.

For a moment, they were silent, looking over their cards and preparing their respective attacks. Outside, another low rumble of thunder sounded. He cast a surreptitious glance across the table. Katarina’s head was bent. A few strands of hair lifted away from the confining braid she’d twisted her hair into, which hung down her back in a thick russet plait, under a pale green veil.
 

“How goes the rebellion?” she asked as she set down a card.

“Apace,” he replied absently, looking at it. “We’re building alliances.”

“With whom?”

“The MacMahon have sent someone, as did the O’Reilly tribe.” He set down a card. “Dalton rode in this morning. He is one of ours now.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “He was always one of yours. He has no love of Elizabeth.”

They each tossed in another coin. “I will be visiting the town soon.”

This earned a dark look from under her brows. “
My
town?”
 

“I’ll send your regards.”

“Who else?”

“Bermingham sent word.” He laid down a knave.

Her gaze, aimed at the card, flung back up. “
Bermingham?
He is more a snake than a man. I would not trust him in a rainstorm if he said I would get wet.”

“Sooth?”

“Sooth. If he requested a meeting, do not go.” She laid down a card as firmly as she spoke. “It is surely trickery, black and foul.”

He swept the pile up. “Interesting, for Walter seemed to believe it might be a beneficial alliance.”

“Walter?
Walter
said that?” She nibbled on her lower lip. “I would caution you on this matter.”

“Well now,” he murmured, throwing in another coin. “Your purposes are a mystery to me.”

“You think I would lie?”

“Think?”
 

A reluctant smile touched her mouth. “Well, I might. But I am not. These are things you will learn soon enough, and I would not see Rardove suffer for a few reckless deeds.”

“Such as yours?”

She arched a brow. “Mine are stubborn deeds.
Yours
are reckless.”
 

“Och, lass, you’ve been a bit reckless.”

A flush rose up her cheeks. “Yes, well, the hazard of being a marcher lord. It quite goes with the territory.”

“And you enjoy it,” he accused softly.
 

Startled, she widened her eyes, then another faint smile touched her mouth, lifting her cheeks. “I do,” she said fondly.
 

Outside a bright streak of lightning lit the sky, then a rumble of thunder followed almost at once. The storm was coming nearer. A few splatters of rain fell through the open window.
 

 
Aodh strode over and shut the outer shutters, latching them tight. Then he folded in the hinged glass windows too, battening them inside. As he strode back to the table, Katarina reclined in her seat, pulling the cards in toward her chest.
 

“No peeking,” she admonished.
 

He retook his seat with a smile.

“And what of The O’Fail?” she asked idly, tossing in another coin and setting down a king.

Half-bent to yank in the chair, he levered up his gaze. “Brian O’Fail is loyal to the queen,” he said slowly as he retook his seat, “a thousand years old, and hung with leeches most days. He has not ventured out for battle in two decades, and his sons from half a dozen wives have torn the clan limb from limb. The O’Fail has no central power anymore. They do naught but war, allying for minutes at a time to oust a common enemy, then falling upon each other again like a pack of wolves.”

She pursed her lips at the assessment. “Ah.”

“What do you know?” he asked grimly.

“More than you.”

In truth, he knew a good deal about the O’Fail tribe, for they’d once been the closest of friends and allies to the Rardove clan, surrogate families and foster fathers.
 

They were also disloyal, dishonorable cowards who’d not honored an alliance when it mattered most. Sixteen years ago, neither Brian the Elder nor his sons, nor any of the smaller tribes they claimed suzerainty over, came to the fight in Munster, and as a result, the Irish tribes had been wickedly outnumbered, and viciously defeated. Aodh’s cousins and uncles had died on that battlefield, his father and grandfather captured, condemned to die later as traitors.

Aodh would never call upon the O’Fail. Past betrayals aside, they could not be trusted.

But Katarina, it seemed, knew some things too.

“The O’Fail princelings did indeed battle for years,” she said, examining her cards, “and the land was torn to bloody pieces, but a year or so ago, one of their number took hold of all the warring pups and assumed command.”

“Who?”

“Keegan. He is now
The
O’Fail. He keeps to himself, occupied mostly with preventing his brothers and cousins from killing each other off.”

Aodh smiled grimly. Keegan. Clever, powerful, dishonorable Keegan. Just coming into his own sixteen years ago, he’d been twenty-five years old and intent on safeguarding whatever he could for himself. He’d been his father’s chief councilor, the chief voice urging the O’Fail not to fight, not to send troops, not to honor old alliances.
 

Aodh had not heard Keegan had taken control of the tribe. The queen surely did not know it either. She believed the old man Brian was still their feeble leader, and dissention among the historically rebellious O’Fail ranks served her well.
 

“I am surprised you do not know this,” Katarina said.

His gaze met hers slowly. “Did Rardove treat with him?”
 

“Never,” she assured him, swift and certain, the swiftest and most certain she’d been thus far except when she was telling him ‘no.’
 

He smiled. “Now, why do I not believe you?”
 

A flush spread across her face. “Perhaps because you have me locked in a tower, and feel I cannot be trusted?”

“That would be why.” He flipped a card down, which won the game, and swept up the coins, leaving one behind to begin the new trick. “Deal.”

She reached at once for the pile and shuffled, then dealt. He immediately set down a nine. “Katarina?”

“Yes?” she murmured in distraction.

“How long are you going to hold out?”
 

She looked up slowly and their eyes met across the table. She examined her cards, plucked one out, and set it down. A ten. “Aodh, I have seen the queen’s wrath.”

 
“When?” he said, moving the cards they’d laid down to the side, making a little pile. Her win pile.
 

She laid down a knave with a snap. “When I was a child. Unleashed on my father. And mother.”

He countered with a two. “Tell me.”

She swept the cards to the side—a pile for him—and he immediately laid down his last card, a king. She stared at it for a second, then laid down her last card, a two, with a smile.

“Take it, Katarina,” he murmured. “And tell me what happened.”

She scooped the coins into a pile before her, dipped her hand into the chest, removed one more, and they both laid down their wagers. He dealt.

“My mother and father had a great searing passion,” she told him, fanning the cards in her hand. “It quite burned through them. The love of a lifetime, which was just as well, for it was the death of them. My father been sent to subdue the Irish, and found himself quite subdued. The queen sent for him when she heard he’d had a liaison with my mother, and when she discovered they’d actually wed, her wrath carried us all across the water.” She looked up at him. “Your turn.”

He set down a nine. “Go on.”

She glanced at her cards. “My father was locked up for a multitude of reasons, then executed for them. Treason, conspiring with the Irish, making the queen angry. I suppose congress with an Irish princess constituted all three. As for my mother…When we first arrived in England, and things seemed most hopeful for my father, she was quite happy to be away from Ireland, whereas I felt I could not quite breathe.”

Her fingers fluttered over a card, then pulled back. “You and my mother had something in common, Aodh: Irish folk who are not so fond of Ireland.”

“’Tisn’t Ireland, lass,” he said quietly. “’Tis the dying or being subsumed.”

Her gaze swung up, dark and penetrating. “Yes. Of course. I understand.”

It was a low murmur, but she might as well have shouted at him; he felt pushed back by her words.
 

She set down a king. “In any event, when my father died on the block, my mother died of a broken heart. Or perhaps was frightened into death by the queen’s wrath. One can hardly blame her. I was eight.”
 

Eight. Aodh had a sudden vision of her, her beloved parents gone, alone in the world, with a vengeful queen hovering like a wasp.

“Your turn.”

The gentle prompt jarred him, and he laid down a card without thinking.
 

“I’m surprised you do not know this history, Aodh,” she said quietly. “It is Rardove’s.”

“Who says I don’t know it?” A flash of lightning could be seen around the edge of the shutters, then a few seconds later, a long roll of thunder rumbled into the room.
 

 
“Then if you know it, you must know I cannot turn to you. Don’t you see?”

He wiped his hand along his jaw. “The queen killed your father, so you will be loyal to her. I confess to being confused.”

She shook her head impatiently. “The queen was
good
to me, Aodh. Kind to me, despite what my parents had done.”

He plucked a card out of the fanned assemblage in his hands and laid it on the table. “And what had they done, lass? In truth, what had they done?”

Her jaw dropped at this assessment in the form of a query, and she stared at him, her cards on the table, her shields dropped, her defenses gone down like a drawbridge hitting the earth, and he simply strolled into her heart, through the pathway of her eyes.

Hurt. Scared. Betrayed. Abandoned.
 

All the things one was wont to feel after the careless, selfish choices made by others smashed through your heart like a cannonball.

Upon a time, such feelings had lurked within him too. They did not now—he’d gone as cold as the emptiness scalding his heart. But dimly, he recalled them. The horror, the fear. The screams. The endless, aching chasm of loneliness and fear, and knowing you were alone in it, forever alone.

Then, quick as a flash, it was gone, and she was Katarina the Bold again, Katarina the Fierce, sitting tall in her chair and regarding him with an expression pinned at the intersection of affection and desire and anger, which was debilitating in and of itself, to know affection lurked there too, tangled with desire.

The anger bothered him not at all. Katarina was fire. Fire burned.