King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

TADHG AWOKE WITH A START in the early morning hours. The fire in the little hut was dying. Maggie was gone.

Dammit.

He rolled to his feet before the curse was fully out. How in God’s name had he slept soundly enough for her to shift in her sleep, let alone rise and leave, without him knowing?

He threw on his boots and tunic, not bothering to lace either, and snatched up his sword as he strode to the door. Drawing near, he saw it was ajar. Through the narrow opening, he espied Maggie, leaning against the frame, looking up at a blue-black night sky.

He yanked the door open. She turned and smiled at him. “I disturbed you. I am sorry.”

“What are you doing?” he demanded, shocked to find his heart was hammering.

She gestured at the nighttime proudly, as if it were some creation of hers. “Looking. Smelling. Listening. It is so quiet. There was a deer in the clearing earlier, and…. Look. Look at the stars.”

He did look, at her. The moon hung low in the sky, behind the trees, so Maggie’s upturned face was bathed in star shine and the remnants of moonlight. Her hair flowed in rivers around her face and throat, disappearing beneath King Richard’s heavy, fur-lined hood and mantle. Her eyes were bright, the corners of her mouth faintly uplifted as she surveyed her small, snowy dominion.

He realized grimly this is how the lot of them were supposed to look in church.

Maggie’s beauty went through to the marrow of her bones. She was beautiful in the way a river flowed; deep-down, long-standing, capable of carving itself into hard things, into earth and mountain. She’d surely carved herself into him, a delicate tracing into the hard rock wall of his life.

She saw him staring at her. “The stars are up there,” she teased, reaching out to tip his face up with a set of chilled fingertips.

He glanced up obligingly, then swung his gaze down. “We have to go back.”

She kept looking up, as if he hadn’t spoken. “I know. Saleté de Mer is the closest port, and Sherwood will be long gone by now, hunting after you. You must get on with your journey.”

“I must get you home.”

Her eyes slid to his and, star shine notwithstanding, they were dull. “Yes. Of course. Home.”

She let him fold her body into his chest. He slung his arms around her shoulders, over the thick mantle. “It is a clever plan,” she admitted, her words muffled, drifting up through the fur lining.

“He’ll never expect us to go back,” he agreed.

“Moreover, tomorrow is Twelfth Night. The town will be mad with revelry. We shall be one of many in the streets. It will be no matter to get through the gates: I will speak with Gustave.”

“Again with Gustave,” he muttered, but her voice had grown excited with the planning. “And then we shall visit Baselard….”

His eyebrows flew up in surprise. “Visiting? We’re going visiting?”

She nodded absently. “Baselard, the blacksmith.”

“Why would we do a mad thing like that?”

She looked up with a distracted frown. “Do you not recall? You said you needed a whetstone.”

He smiled slowly. “Beautiful and smart.” He ran his hands up the cloak, feeling her warm body wrapped beneath it. “So, the blacksmith is a friend of yours.”

“Baselard used to be a friend of mine,” she replied archly. “A long time ago.”

“And now?”

“I have no…friends.”

Torn as to how to feel about this, he finally shook his head in disgust. “Men are fools.”

“Yes, they are,” she agreed.

He laughed and slid a palm under the heavy hood, into the warm pocket between her hair and the nape of her neck. “’Tisn’t without danger, you know. There are good reasons to press on. Sherwood may have left Saleté de Mer, but he’s a dangerous proclivity for informants. They could be anywhere: the gates, the quay, everywhere in between.” He looked at her. “As he told you, he pays very well.”