They had their doubts: Aodh Mac Con invariably walked about the edge of the pot, always ready to tip things over, and had a careless disregard and almost hostile impatience for any and all proprieties that did not serve him. It made him dangerous in any number of ways.
This should have worried and infuriated the queen, too, but instead, he had found a sympathetic haven in the heart of a woman who’d done things no one expected—or wanted—her to do, right up to rulin
g a kingdom, unwed, for decades.
The queen swept her gaze down the line of the most powerful men in England, then threw down her pen. “Well, after all, I cannot simply give Ireland to the Irish, can I?”
A sigh of relief flowed over the table.
As one, they sat back and smiled, agreeing with her entirely, then began talking of other things, now that the matter of Ireland was taken care of.
Because in the end, really, what could the Irishman do about it?
Chapter Two
Northern Ireland, Beyond the Pale
TREASON WAS a dirty word. Especially when it ran in the family.
Which was why Katarina of Rardove found herself awaiting the queen’s man, bound to wed him to save her lands, her title, and herself.
“My lady, he is come!”
The cries went up from her soldiers all along the walls. A sharp gust of cold spring air rushed through the bailey while up on the battlement walls, soldiers pointed into the valley below. Wicker, her youngest man-at-arms, peered down at her, waving his arm and shouting.
“There must be sixty of them, my lady! Well armed enough to scare away the wind!”
All her guardsmen were young and hardly gentle born—not a single knight among the lot—but they were brave and possessed the pragmatic, unvarnished warrior skills known to those who bobbed at the edge of a sea of war. This made them enthusiastic about anything that could be used as a weapon in an unabashed, enveloping sort of way: swords; pistols; the redheaded lass from the town below. Wicker in particular rather burst with fervor for all three.
“You can see them now, lady, cresting the rise of the valley.” He crouched at the top of the stairway and stuck out a hand for her. “You’ll see when you come up.”
“Excellent,” she replied brightly. She did not come up.
“Right up here, on the walls, my lady.” He patted the stone parapet. “That’s where you’ll see them.”
There was nothing for it, then. Up she went, to witness the wondrous sight of her betrothed riding in with a small army to assess the degree of Rardove’s loyalty, and then to ensure it, by becoming the new Lord of Rardove.
Not as reassuring as one would think.
The English Crown had long ago given up on conquest, and settled on maintaining what it had in Ireland, erecting a veritable wall of forts and castles around the perimeter of the Pale, a small arc of English settlements that huddled around Dublin like kittens around a bowl of milk. Rardove was one of the few English fortresses outside this protected ring, the Crown’s longest claw, flung out far beyond the Pale. A lone royal watchtower over the edge of the wild.
It could be worse, she told herself as she lifted her skirts and started up the stairs. Bertrand of Bridge, the man the queen had sent to question her, and, assuming he was satisfied with her answers, the one given the right to wed her and assume the title Lord of Rardove, was a most excellent queen’s man. Powerfully built, fierce, ready to the fight.
He would fit perfectly out here.
Which, most assuredly, was not reassuring.
Queen Elizabeth had become increasingly brutal to those suspected of treason, and as it was ever a more simple matter to be labeled suchly, Katarina was grateful the queen had allowed her to be questioned here in her home, indeed to be questioned at all, rather than simply accused and dispatched.
But to be wed into the bargain…it was difficult not to see that as punishment from the queen she’d always served so loyally.
But then, such things were always in question, were they not, when one’s father had lost his head on account of treason?
Katarina would acquiesce. Again. It was the only way.
As she neared the top of the stairs, her men gave a shout and all but hauled her the rest of the way up, attending her with the sort of energetic devotion that at times left her exhausted and slightly bruised. They gently manhandled her to the nearest crenel opening and pointed over the wall.
“There, my lady.”