Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (31 page)

But maybe…maybe they were
afraid
of it.

All this time, afraid… Afraid that she would do something.
Be
something. Something stronger than they.

The certainty of it stunned her. It was as if a flame had suddenly been lit in a dark room, and she was right up in front of it, staring into its blinding white-hot light.
 

Men did not disdain her.
 

They were scared of her.

Aodh was not.

The shocking, earth-shifting nature of the insight drove her over the edge, exploded her body. Wrecked and racked by deep undulations of pleasure, she keened in long, low moans, then collapsed atop him, her body shuddering, and he took her mouth, swallowed her cries of pleasure.
 

He took her then, carelessly lifted her up, and flung her back on the bed, pushed her legs apart with his knee and took her again.
 

She welcomed him, her body already broken by pleasure, a temple of their desire. He forced her to come again, weakly, almost whimpering. He drove her mad, took her over and over and over, until he roared his own completion, and collapsed atop her, barely held up on his elbows as he breathed onto her neck.

Aodh held himself over her until he could not anymore, then rolled away, pulling her with him, but also pulling out of her. She gave a little whimper of distress, but there was nothing either could do about it now; they were too spent.
 

For long minutes, they lay there and breathed, while the fire cast shadows across the ceiling and walls.
 

Aodh felt a deep, hot hum inside him, as if he’d been filled with…music? As if a steel bar had been rung, and the reverberations were moving through him.

Katy’s slender hand trailed across his chest. He watched the idle movements a moment, then said sleepily, “We’ll sign today.”

“Sign what.” She leaned up to kiss his neck.

“The betrothal papers.”

“Oh,” she whispered dreamily as she ran her fingertips over his face, then snuggled into his chest. “I told you, I cannot marry you.”

Christ on the cross.

The smoke-blackened rafters were beginning to glow as dawn light came in. “Why not?” he asked, very calmly.

 
“Because I cannot. It would be treason.” She shifted on the bed, curled closer to him. “I hold Rardove for Elizabeth, Aodh. She is my queen.” Her hand slid over his chest, lazily tracing the swirls of ink. “Of course you can see that.”

More calmness. “You said you were mine.”

Her tracing finger stilled, then she pushed up on an elbow. Her face was soft in the aftermath of passion, her mouth swollen from his kisses. He reached up and brushed the hair back from her face.
 

“You said you were mine, Katy. When I was in you, as deep as a man can be, you looked in my eyes and said you were mine.”

She peered at him. “You are not the sole possessor of me, Aodh.”

He forced himself to breathe slowly. “What does that mean?”
 

“I too possess me.”

She was the most infuriating woman alive. “And so you do. But you said you were mine. I thought that meant…”

She straightened a little more. “I am not responsible for your thoughts. I am, indeed
yours
in…in that way.” Her face flushed a delicate color. “That does not mean I am not also my own. And I am not marrying you.”
 

She did this to him every time, tore him in half. He wanted more from her than she would give.
 

“Go to sleep, lass,” he said quietly.
 

She hesitated, watching him a moment, then lay back down. He pulled her into his side, his arm firm behind her. She sighed and kissed his neck and snuggled in. Soon, her breathing was soft and steady. She was asleep.

He slid out of the bed, threw on his clothes and boots, and left the room.
 

He locked the door behind him.

*

WHEN SHE AWOKE, Aodh was gone.
 

She lifted her hand and pushed the hair out of her face, then stretched languidly, her body warm and aching and…wonderful. Belowstairs, she could hear the sounds of the castle stirring. Today, she would join it.

Mayhap it was this, maybe some other conduit to clarity, but in the dawn, after knowing Aodh as deeply as she had, in every way, she knew now exactly what she needed to do: send a message to the queen.
 

But not the message she’d been intending to send. Not one alerting the queen to a rebel presence, nor a message informing her how best to launch an attack.
 

 
A message to inform the Queen of England why Aodh Mac Con was precisely what their marchlands needed.

She would throw herself on the queen’s mercy if need be. Surely Elizabeth would understand, could be made to see reason. She always had before, every time Katarina had written on matters of Ireland.
 

She plied her fingers through her hair, combing it, feeling each muscle stretch itself in a new way. On one particularly languid stretch, through a gap in the canopy that hung on all sides of the great bed, she caught sight of the oak door, and saw it was shut tight.
 

A small note of discomfort rang.

But why? So a door was shut. Drafts ran rampant. So why was her heart suddenly beating faster?
 

Pushing back the covers, she got up and padded to the door. She turned the knob.

It wouldn’t turn. It was locked.
 

She was locked in.

Aodh had locked her in.

Fury burst from her like a dam crashing under the pressure of too much force. She hammered on the door, beat on it like an impotent, caged beast, her hands fisted, her feet kicking, shouting as loud as she could, “Aodh,
you bastard!
”

Her shouts bounced around the stone walls of the room. She battered senselessly and uselessly at the door until, finally exhausted, admitting defeat, she leaned against it, breathing heavily. It had been growing for three hundred years or more before it had been turned into a door; banging at it with her fists, or her shoulders or her feet, or even a battering ram, was not going to accomplish anything.
 

She had to get out, though. And for that, she had to be clever, for being stubborn had got her nothing at all.

Just as Aodh had predicted.

*

DOWN IN THE BAILEY, Ré was escorting a local Irish prince from the stables to the hall, when shrieks broke out and could be heard wafting down from the open window of the tower room.

Startled, the Irish clansman looked around. “What in God’s holy name…”
 

Ré hurried him along a little faster. “Singing,” Ré assured him. “English song. We heard a lot of it over in England, as you can imagine. Sounds a bit like caterwauling, doesn’t it?

“Sounds like a
bahn sidhe
,” the Irishman said with a shiver. “In full regalia.”
 

“You’ve no idea.”
 

Aodh appeared at the castle door, and they quickened their pace.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

UP IN THE TOWER, Katarina copied out two messages. That was the minimum, in case one was captured, the messenger drowned in a river, or some other all too common misfortune.

Hand shaking, she stuffed them under the pelt beside the fire, then went to the door and rapped softly.
 

The guard outside her room—there’d been one ever since the sword incident—opened the door. It was Bran. She brightened, but his face was sober. She issued her invitation for Aodh to come visit her that night.
 

“And send up whisky,” she added offhandedly. “There are barrels of very good stuff in the cellar, in the farthest chamber, on the northern side. Mind your head; the lintel is low.”

Bran seemed clearly torn between a desire to do as she bid, and great, abiding suspicion. “Whisky?” he repeated.

She nodded.
 

“Barrels of them?”
 

“Dozens. Pull from the barrel nearest the back. It is an oak barrel with the image of a clamshell burned into it.”

“A clamshell,” he repeated, stretching it out, the words filled with confusion and growing suspicion. Understandable. After all, she was locked in the tower. There had been sword-fighting. “Do you
drink
whisky, my lady?” he asked hesitantly.

“Upon occasion.”

He blinked. “I did not know.”

“Now you do.”

“Yes, my lady.”

She blew out an impatient breath. “Or have Aodh bring his own if he prefers, to ensure I can’t put a dropper of henbane in it. It is all the same to me. Honestly,” she said, turning back to the tower, “if I’d wanted to kill him, I have had a thousand chances thus far.”

*

“AND I AM TO BRING…whisky?”
 

Aodh repeated the message slowly, in case something had been misunderstood.

He’s spent the day in council with too many lords to count, and it was certainly possible that he was simply suspicious of everything. But something about this seemed…very suspicious.

Bran nodded. “That is what Lady Katarina said, sir. You’re to bring it yourself, to make sure she does not poison it.”

He sat back. “She said that?”

“Aye, sir.”

“That she’s thinking of poisoning me?”

Bran looked horrified. “No, sir! She suggested it to allay any concerns, you see, so you would know she
hadn’t
.”

“And were there concerns?”

Bran shuffled uncomfortably. “I might have asked a few questions about her request. Caused her to think I was suspicious.”

“And were you?”

“Well…it is unusual, sir. I mean…whisky. In barrels. In the cellar.”

“Why did we not know of them?”

Bran looked shamefaced. “I saw the barrels, sir. I thought they were wine.”

Aodh nodded thoughtfully. “But they are whisky.”

Bran started to smile.

Oak barrels of whisky, in the cellars of Rardove.

His men would bow down at her feet.

“But,” his squire went on, “she said not to worry, that she could have slayed you a dozen times already before now.”
 

Aodh’s head came up swiftly.
 

“If ’twas truly her goal. I suppose that means it is not her goal?” Bran framed it as a hopeful possibility.
 

Aodh turned and looked though the open window at the sunset, reddish gold and stretched to the edge of the world. “Do not fear, Bran, her danger is not of that sort, even if we do have to keep her locked in a tower to prevent her from ruining the plans of a lifetime.”

“Yes, sir.”
 

Aodh got to his feet. “Send for the whisky. Take it from the barrel with the clamshell mark.”
 

He picked up two glasses and went upstairs.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

 
THE ROOM WAS lit with candles, and a fire burned bright. She’d pulled the windows shut and shuttered them, so the room was warm, rolling in shadow and flickering, amber firelight.