King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

Maggie, left behind.

Left behind, safe, he told himself sternly.

In her cold, dark shop.

Safe.

Alone.

Safe. Safe, safe, safe.

Didier’s voice pressed on. “…not the tide. We’ve got to leave now, fast and quiet. We can push out with poles, stay close to the shoreline, cut away once we hit the trees.”

Tadhg’s gaze snapped away from the nighttime sea. “Why would we do that?”

“Because they’re shutting down the docks. Word came just a while ago; some great lug of an English lord is back in town, and the mayor’s letting him shut us down again. They’re swarming everywhere, searching everything. Some of his men here at the docks, some’s back in town.”

Coldness swept through him.

Not safe.

He could take her now.

Something punched through him like a fist through glass, breaking all the illusions of mission and purpose he’d clung to until now. He knew, with breathtaking clarity, what his mission truly was: to keep Maggie safe. To protect her.

To take her home.

At the least, he would ask her. Beg her. Plead with her to come make a home with him. Madness, no doubt, for she was too wise and smart to say yes, no matter how her heart might yearn. Too wise to agree to follow an outlaw through perils unknown, hoping to find a quiet life on the other side.

But then, Maggie did not want a ‘quiet’ life, did she? Sweet, innocent Maggie had the heart of an adventurer. She wanted to leap off cliffs.

His own heart leapt.

Danger fore and aft, yet his heart was lifted, because his path was finally clear, after all these years. Maggie was his mission.

Maggie was his home.

And after all, he reasoned with sudden, reckless good humor, how much harder could it be to sneak two people across a hostile land, rather than only one?

He turned to the cheerful, smashed-up face of Didier. “How long will you give me?”

Didier frowned. “Give you? For what—?”

“I must go back.”

“Well God’s truth—”

“How long?”

Didier regarded him, his bottom lip thrust out, then swung his tree-limb arm up and pointed at the sky. “When the moon hits the spire of St. Germaine’s, I leave.”

Tadhg positioned himself where Didier stood and looked up. A church spire, sharp-edged and black, poked up into the night sky, half an inch to the right of the huge, round, mottled white moon.

“I’ll be here,” he vowed, turning.

“I’ll not wait,” Didier called after softly.

Tadhg was already running.