King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

He immediately began nodding. “Of course, of course, and glad I am to do it. Very glad.” Edwin hopped off his stool with alacrity.

He stopped short when Tadhg’s arm thrust out in front of him like a tree branch. He looked up slowly, up the length of Tadhg’s mail-encased body,

to his eyes.

“Sir?” he whispered.

“Dame Thread shall also require repayment for the shipment last Epiphany.”

Magdalena opened her mouth, then shut it again. With lowered jaw, Edwin gave a swift nod.

“Plus interest.”

Another staccato series of nods.

Tadhg smiled. “Good.” He stepped back, letting Edwin pass by, which he did, keeping as close to the far wall as possible.

“Well then, go on, settle in,” the merchant said once he was safely past. “This shall take a moment, but only the one… I’ve a few writs on hand, as you might imagine.”

“Indeed I might,” Magdalena murmured.

“It will require just a bit of touching up, and some wax…” He began bustling about in an officious manner, now on his mission and much more certain of himself.

Tadhg stepped back, drawing Maggie to the back of the shop as Edwin flung open a small chest and took out a pen and ink.

“I’m fascinated by this turn of events,” Tadhg murmured.

“He is an excellent regrator,” she agreed.

They watched Edwin dig through a second chest, flinging papers overhead. “Do you know anyone not involved in an illicit trade?” Tadhg asked companionably.

She turned to him with a delicately arched brow. “No, I am entirely surrounded by them.”

That earned a grin from the rogue. It quite softened the resolute lines of his face, the lethal glint in his warrior’s eye. Tadhg was hard and endlessly capable, but he was not made for darkness, for all that it enshrouded him. He was made for the things he’d told her about under her counter, for springtime and fey magic and dallying with laundresses.

And tailors.

Her heart gave a hard little pinch.

“You will soon be done with my iniquity, lass,” he reminded her, the grin fading.

“Yes, and that is all I wish for,” she assured him with a sniff and stepped forward to oversee Edwin—he really was a terribly slippery eel—but she felt Tadhg’s attention alternating lazily between her and the outside, his muscled arms crossed over his chest, his shoulder to the wall, one boot crossed over the other, a moment of ease for this hard man who would soon be out of her life, thank God.

At one point she touched Edwin’s shoulder softly to ensure he included Cherbourg in his writs, a correction he acknowledged with a wave of his pudgy hand, not looking up from the parchment. Outside the windows, shoppers moved and soldiers stalked. But all Magdalena felt was Tadhg’s gaze on her. And the faint, very faint smile he watched her with.

She had not been watched, and approved of, in such a long time. Sooth, Tadhg could cause a nun to feel warmth in unspeakable places, but it was the sense of hope that spread through her, in tiny, spark-like bubbles, that was entirely unwarranted.

She’d been abducted. He was an outlaw. There was no cause for sparking bubbles.

Edwin sat up straight with a snap, startling her out of her reverie about unwarranted hope. He turned to her, a sheaf of folded, waxed parchments in hand.

“Here. Here you are.” He shoved them at Magdalena, and Tadhg pushed off the wall. “They are all done, for Cherbourg, a few more—that’s all I’ve have on hand, you know—but God knows writs of safe passage to five towns should serve whatever purpose you’ve in mind.” He adamantly did not look at Tadhg, just smiled broadly at Magdalena. “Well then,” he exclaimed, doing one of his annoying hand-claps. “I suppose that settles us up—”

“Epiphany,” Tadhg reminded him quietly.

Edwin closed his eyes. Without a word, he bent forward, dipped his hand into a chest at his feet, and came up with a pouch of coins. Turning his face to the wall, as if he couldn’t watch himself do this thing, he extended it without counting.

“For the Epiphany order,” he said thickly.