King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

TADHG WATCHED HER rush away, his body filled with a low humming, heart hammering faster than any kiss should warrant.

He’d had no intention of doing anything remotely sacrificial—intervening had merely prevented them from entering the office and discovering the captain trussed-up like a Christmas boar—but when she’d been so exquisitely disconsolate, so fiercely foolhardy…well, a man had to applaud spirit. And sometimes, help it along a bit.

And thus, he was in precisely the sort of trouble that could from such a ‘small thing’ as a kindness done.

He turned back just as the officials and their guardsmen reached him.

“You scared off my doxy,” he complained in an accent reminiscent of the French court as they grabbed him.

He let them throw him up against the wall, but after searching him and not finding what they were looking for, they were quick to believe his story, that they’d erred, somewhat gravely, in accosting a significant count from a duchy in the south—they were never clear, later, exactly which duchy it was—a man who’d done nothing more wrong than hire a whore.

The reeve was especially penitent after Tadhg made a rather significant contribution to the town’s coffers, to ensure, Tadhg explained sternly, better protection for noblemen innocently strolling down the quay, looking for whores.

The reeve quite agreed. Bayard eyed him in suspicious, sullen silence.

The group spent a few more useless and confusing moments milling in front of the office, Bayard trying to explain what had happened, without actually explaining what had happened, in case his own machinations were revealed.

Tadhg contributed nothing to the conversation. He just watched the door. No one made a move toward it. Finally they marched off, still officious and confused as to what had in fact happened.

Tadhg melted back into the shadows and made his way into the town, to find the street of tailors, and locate Magdalena-Of-The-Complicated-Eyes, to retrieve the blood-red ruby dagger he’d dropped into her basket of greens when he kissed her like a whore against the side of a haberdasher’s shop.

MAGDALENA STOOD UNDER THE SMALL TOWER of the town gates, negotiating with Gustav the head gatekeeper for her little shipment of buttons and accompanying cloaks to go out without paying the port’s excessive and extortionate surcharges. Magdalena far preferred Gustav’s more moderately extortionate surcharges, and he was more reliable into the bargain. Moreover he never propositioned her; he was happily married with six children who needed feeding more than Bayard did.

“That will be a three deniers, mistress,” he said with gallant bow as he swept the satchel she’d handed over into a little wagon behind him. It was laden with other smuggled and untaxed goods, a hooded driver already in position. Gustav did a lively trade.

“It will go out before the bells chime,” he assured her as she handed him the money from the pouch the dark-eyed stranger had stolen for her.

She looked back over her shoulder, into the town, her heart still hammering from excitement.

It oughtn’t be hammering at all, or if it was, it should be from something far darker than excitement. She’d barely escaped a terrible fate at the hands of a very dangerous man. Oh, he had implied he was noble, and fooled Bayard forthwith, but not her. One only need look at him to know he was danger incarnate. All those weapons. The hard gleam in his eye. The thievery.

The kiss.

From start to finish, that stranger was naught but trouble.

And yet…

And yet, the mischievous glint in his eye, the roguish smile, his hopeful spirit…it reminded her of a time in her past when she had been filled with such things.

His kiss, on the other hand, filled her with something she’d never before felt. Her face flushed just thinking of it. The flush spread downward.

“You seem happy this eve, Mistress Thread,” Gustav observed, stuffing the money in a pouch under his cloak before nodding to his deliveryman. The man took up the reins and started off under the lifted gate.

She realized she’d been smiling. She turned around, assembling her face into something more befitting a poor merchant widow.

“It is nothing. A chance meeting that elicited some old memories.”

He beamed at her. Gustav was always happy when he made money. “They must be fine memories then, Mistress Thread.”

“Yes,” she said softly. “Very fine. And very old. Hardly worth recalling. Thank-you, Gustav.”

She swung her threadbare cloak out and started back down into the shadows of town, but this time, the shadows of the tall, encroaching buildi

ngs made no impression on her, for she was already long gone in her mind, remembering the kiss of the stranger and the way it had made her feel.

As if she was flying.

Chapter Four