Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (6 page)

“She is not yet done with surprises.”      

Ré pushed back his sweaty hair, then wiped his palm across his forehead. “Aodh?”

“Aye?”

“You are not…thinking anything, are you?”

“Thinking?”

“Planning.”

“Planning?”

“Anything reckless,” Ré said shortly, gaze still on the soldiers.

Aodh smiled faintly. Reckless as in marching up to Queen Elizabeth at fourteen years of age and offering his already-bloodied sword in exchange for his family’s ancestral lands? Reckless as in rising to the top of her councilors and captains, despite all odds being against a dirty Irishman? Reckless as in feeling fire for the first time in his life whilst pinning a mad, beautiful woman against a wall, with
his
blade in
her
hand.

Reckless as in planning to warm his hands over that fire?

“When am I ever reckless?” he asked quietly.
 

Ré stilled. “Ever and anon?”
 

Aodh snorted.
 

“But never foolhardy,” Ré added, and his gaze drifted to the keep. “One hopes this is not a first. Because if it were, I’d feel an overwhelming urge to caution you—”
 

“I’d tell you to resist it.”

 
“—that this is not the time to dally with ladies who steal blades.”

Aodh looked at him levelly as they finished circling the rounded tower of the keep. “‘Dally?’ When have I ever ‘dallied?’”

“When you are being reckless.”

“Ré,” Aodh said slowly, “I have countermanded orders, broken faith with the queen, sent false messages to misguide one of her men on a wild goose chase through northern England. I have sailed the Irish Sea and marched halfway across Ireland to take a castle explicitly forbidden to me. One would say recklessness has already been done on a rather grand scale.”

“Which is why a wise man might refrain from indulging in any additional bouts of the stuff just now.”
 

“A wise man might.”
 

Ré’s jaw tightened. “We are here to force the queen’s hand, Aodh. We are here because—”

“We are here because I am not the queen’s plaything.” Curt and hard, his words cut Ré’s short. “We are here because my cloth was cut to fit Rardove, and I will have it.”

Snow began to settle on the shoulders of Ré’s cloak, a faint winter landscape across the dark green wool. It slid off in a whispery avalanche as he gave a last exasperated shake of his head. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Ré muttered, then pointed. “There they are.

Ahead in the tilting yards, abutting the battlement wall, stood a group of young soldiers. Quite young. Were any above twenty?
 

They’d been disarmed and placed in the center of a ring of Aodh’s soldiers, who had their swords out. But despite the overwhelming odds and the fact that they’d been entirely disarmed, they appeared belligerent and unruly, not particularly willing to bend. But bend they would, if they cared for their lady.
 

“They are all yours,” said Ré.

“And I shall take them,” he said, striding forward. Soldiers required attention, but not a great deal. There were the swords and pikes and the occasional firearm, but all in all, soldiers were not a complicated lot.

Katarina, though…complicated.

In twenty-nine years of hard living, Aodh had seen much and done much. Little of it was pretty, much of it was brutal. As a child, his life had been a hedgerow of spears. His adult life had been much the same, except he was the one brandishing the weapons, and not all were wrought of steel; intrigue oft had the sharper bite. Queen Elizabeth expected nothing less from her most loyal men.
 

Little surprised or upended Aodh, and nothing, absolutely nothing, enchanted.
 

But Katarina had.

Granted, few men would find a woman laying a blade to their throat enchanting. But Aodh had always been the cross-grain, the thing that didn’t fit, and it had taken approximately two seconds in Katarina’s presence to know, without a doubt, she was just like him.
 

Katarina of the lonely castle. Katarina of the bright eyes and curving body, Katarina the flame, who knew very well she ought to have submitted but, in a moment of great passion, had not.
 

Lovely, reckless, hotheaded Katarina.

Aodh was hardly above a challenge.
 

Aodh
craved
a challenge. But the way to Katarina was not by breaking. It was by bending. Of her own free will.
 

Aodh’s specialty. Making people bend.

Chapter Seven

SHE HAD BENT. Dropped the only protection she had when the Irishman
ran his tongue over her ear.

Katarina shivered again, even now, hours later.
 

Fool. Unbridled, hotheaded, reckless
fool.

She stood in the exact center of the solar chamber where she’d been escorted hours earlier, her spine erect, chin up, gaze unmoving on the door, running through a list of self-recriminations, adding new and highly descriptive terms each time. It was a sort of paternoster.
 

It did not calm. Nor did it penetrate the true depths of her madness.
 

If one was going to be so
precipitate
and
idiotic
and
reckless
as to steal a man’s blade, one must then
use
it. Not be upended by his shiver-blue eyes and his…his
tongue
.

She stood motionless, gaze on the door. Motionless was the way to approach this thing. Akin to stone or steel. Untouched and untouchable.

It shouldn’t be difficult. She’d had a great deal of practice.
 

A single candle burned in the leaded glass window. Cold air moved in intermittent drafts, running through the castle like children, particularly here in the solar, which had been damaged in the fire. She hardly felt it. All her attention was pinned on detecting sounds from below.

Unfortunately, there were no sounds from below. At least nothing clear. Or human. Animals occasionally bleated or barked or whinnied, but the Irishman’s soldiers had clearly conquered, then gone indoors. The castle grounds were eerily quiet. The only sounds now were faint ones, creeping through the castle like winding vines, a steady low hum punctuated by occasional whoops and crashes.
 

Aodh’s men might be playing music, conducting races, or beheading people. There was no way to know. Until someone chose to tell her.
 

How…infuriating.

She shifted her gaze to the young soldier standing guard duty. He leaned against the wall, furs draped over his shoulders, arms crossed, hands shoved up into his armpits, watching her watch the door.
 

“You are an admirable guard,” she told him. “You have not once looked away from me.”

“Aye, well, my lord would have my head if anything happened to you, my lady.”

That sounded forbidding and utterly believable.
 

He watched her warily. He was only just coming into his youthful strength, and a rough spray of facial hair dusted his jawline. His gaze swept down her briefly, taking in her somewhat threadbare cloak and exceedingly hard, good boots.
 

“Are you warm enough?” he asked, sounding doubtful.
 

“Oh, very,” she assured him.

The tip of his nose was red-tinged. She supposed hers was as well. They examined each other’s noses.
 

“You should take my furs, my lady,” he urged with a sort of quiet desperation.
 

“So you have suggested.” Repeatedly. But Katarina’s old wrap was sufficient, and the thought of being indebted to Aodh Mac Con, or his men, for anything at all—even a wrap—was, well…infuriating.
 

“I think not,” was all she said.

“A fire, then.”

“There is no need.” Fuel must be kept for even greater need, which was always coming; he’d learn that soon enough.

He regarded her morosely. “My lord will not be happy.”
 

“That I will not take your wrap?”

“That you’ve been made cold.”

“Why ever should he care about such a thing?”
 

He shrugged. “You’re under his protection now, my lady.”

A terrifying thought, that. “And how would he know of our failed treaty over the furs?”

He looked at her red-tipped nose.

She touched it lightly. “Of course. And for this, he will have your head?”

“He might,” he replied grimly.

The terrifying thoughts continued to pile up, did they not? “So, he does this often, this collecting of heads?”
 

Surprise crossed his face, then was swept away, shuttered beneath a soldier’s mask. He rolled his shoulder slightly and definitely away from her, perhaps to distance himself from any more of her heresy. A gust of cold wind bore through the gaps in the stone around the window.
 

After a moment, he said quietly, “I’m sure he’ll call for you soon, my lady.”

She nodded in agreement. “But how will that help?”
 

To that, he had no reply.
 

Steps sounded outside the room, and a muffled voice came in through the door. “Bran, my lad, open up. He wants her.”

Pure, cold fear shot through Katarina.
He wants me.
       

Her young guard swung the door open. One of Aodh’s older captains stood on the landing, clad in his disguising English armor, but the shaggy hair spilling down over his shoulders was entirely Irish. He looked foreign and terrifying, standing on her landing.

His gaze flicked to her briefly. “Bring her down, Bran. To the lord’s chambers.”

A disconcerting buzz started in Katarina’s head, the sort that accompanied faints and watery knees, or so she’d been told. It was ridiculous and unnecessary. Katarina’s knees were made of steel. One did what one did, and then dealt with the consequences. She’d taken her captor’s blade and used it against him, in front of his men, and in the end, he’d prevailed.
 

It was like tossing a rock into the air. Eventually, it was going to land.

They circled the curving staircase, down into the shadows and glow of torches, her young guard in the lead, the stern-eyed captain behind, creaking with leather and clinking with steel.

She kept her fingertips on the curving wall. Composure and control were all in the moment to come, and Katarina was a master of such arts. She’d spent years honing them against the whetstone of the Irish wilderness, restraining and controlling anything reckless and fast-moving inside her, anything that might make her misstep and lose everything.
 

One did not maintain an English castle beyond the Pale by being reckless. Impolitic. Emotional. Tempestuous.
 

All things of Katarina.
 

She knew very well she was not fitted to rule. How many times had she been reminded of this fact? No, she’d learned the way through, and it was not her way. So, she’d hammered herself anew. She was akin to steel now. Tempered, capable of great harm.
 

To this dismal end.

It made one wonder why one hammered oneself at all. It made one reconsider…everything.

Even now, anger pushed at her. Anger was dangerous. It made her do intemperate things, like steal blades from warriors.

She pressed the anger down where it belonged, deep inside, with all the other dangerous things, like passion and hope.
 

And the madness downstairs? Naught but a misstep, a regrettable error in judgment, harkening back to the old ways. It must not be repeated.

It would not be. She was calmer now, prepared, reasoned. Leashed.
 

It was for the best.

All she had to do was see what punishment the Irishman thought fitting. The Irishman who had possession of her castle. The Irishman with eyes of blue ice, who had pressed his neck into a blade with terrifying intensity. Who had run his hot tongue across her ear and dared her to…to…