Clever, surprising, beautiful, reckless, roiling. “Very.”
“Well, I venture she’s done with surprises now,” Ré said.
The corner of the barracks came into view as they circled the huge keep. Gray and dark except where its dullness was sprinkled with cold darts of white snow, it was as monochromatic and cheerless and cold as everything else in Ireland. Except Katarina.
Red cloak, thick reddish-brown hair that seemed to glow as strands floating beside the fire in her eyes, she was like a lick of flame in a bleak, barren landscape.
“She held Rardove with ten men,” Aodh said quietly.
Ré glanced over. “Your meaning?”
“She is not yet done with surprises.”
Ré pushed back his sweaty hair, then wiped his palm across his forehead. “Aodh?”
“Aye?”
“You are not…thinking anything, are you?”
“Thinking?”
“Planning.”
“Planning?”
“Anything reckless,” Ré said shortly, gaze still on the soldiers.
Aodh smiled faintly. Reckless as in marching up to Queen Elizabeth at fourteen years of age and offering his already-bloodied sword in exchange for his family’s ancestral lands? Reckless as in rising to the top of her councilors and captains, despite all odds being against a dirty Irishman? Reckless as in feeling fire for the first time in his life whilst pinning a mad, beautiful woman against a wall, with his blade in her hand.
Reckless as in planning to warm his hands over that fire?
“When am I ever reckless?” he asked quietly.
Ré stilled. “Ever and anon?”
Aodh snorted.
“But never foolhardy,” Ré added, and his gaze drifted to the keep. “One hopes this is not a first. Because if it were, I’d feel an overwhelming urge to caution you—”
“I’d tell you to resist it.”
“—that this is not the time to dally with ladies who steal blades.”
Aodh looked at him levelly as they finished circling the rounded tower of the keep. “‘Dally?’ When have I ever ‘dallied?’”
“When you are being reckless.”
“Ré,” Aodh said slowly, “I have countermanded orders, broken faith with the queen, sent false messages to misguide one of her men on a wild goose chase through northern England. I have sailed the Irish Sea and marched halfway across Ireland to take a castle explicitly forbidden to me. One would say recklessness has already been done on a rather grand scale.”
“Which is why a wise man might refrain from indulging in any additional bouts of the stuff just now.”
“A wise man might.”
Ré’s jaw tightened. “We are here to force the queen’s hand, Aodh. We are here because—”
“We are here because I am not the queen’s plaything.” Curt and hard, his words cut Ré’s short. “We are here because my cloth was cut to fit Rardove, and I will have it.”
Snow began to settle on the shoulders of Ré’s cloak, a faint winter landscape across the dark green wool. It slid off in a whispery avalanche as he gave a last exasperated shake of his head. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Ré muttered, then pointed. “There they are.