Claiming Her

Every man but me.

Do you see how we shall do it?

“Walter,” she said, watching the flames ripple across the top of the logs. “We float out on a sea here at Rardove, a sea of warfare and loneliness. We are surrounded by wolves and Irish tribes and mist, and little else. If they are not being injured or maligned, please leave the women be.”

Leave me be.

His gaze sharpened to a veritable point. “My lady, the Hound has not done anything to you, has he? Anything…untoward?”

She leaned back against the chair and tilted her face up. “He has asked me to stay on…as his consort.”

The words, once out, were not as shocking as she’d expected, but Walter flew up as if he’d sat on a pin. “He what?”

“Proposed a union.” Touched my neck. Entwined our fingers. Made me want.

“Goddammit!” he shouted, slamming the flat of his hand onto the table. His clerical face was as red as a holly berry. “That is madness!”

She assembled her expression into one of poised neutrality. “Is it not?”

He tugged on the row of buttons that ran the length of his velvet tunic. “To even breathe the proposal that Rardove should disparage herself with a commoner, a…a barbarian. An Irishman”—he was sputtering with rage—“why, ’tis unfathomable. Outrageous. Lunacy.”

“Is it not?”

Something about how she said it made Walter’s hands freeze on the gold-colored buttons. “You cannot— You cannot in all earnestness be considering…”

“How could one seriously consider such a thing?” she asked rhetorically. As rhetorical questions required no answer, she did not have to reply to its dangerous allure, of why she would turn herself over to Aodh Mac Con’s barbaric touch.

Walter breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Of course not.”

She peered into the recklessly burning fire. “And yet, there is some merit to the notion, is there not? To an alliance with the rebel?”

He gaped at her. “Benefits? To lie with a savage—”

“To distract him, waylay him, perhaps upend him, these things too. I do not mean a true union—”

I prefer to make you willing.

“—but a ruse. I shall feign agreement.” She looked up. “Think you he brought his own clerk?”

Walter started. “His own…? No, he is a savage. Why?”

“To prepare the betrothal papers. But if he has no clerk, and you were to suddenly take ill…or perhaps they were unable to locate you at all…”

Walter stopped talking. The proposal was worth it for that alone. She went on. “In this way, we can hold what we may until the queen can send reinforcements. Recall, Walter, this ‘savage’ took Rardove Keep without so much as a shout. No one knows he is here. No one may know for weeks, months. Therefore, I think we would be wise to consider the advantages of feigning an alliance with the outlaw over adopting a more…combative stance.”

Do you see how we shall do it?

Walter stared, dumbfounded; his jaw dropped. She’d exceeded even his expectations for recklessness. There was something madly gratifying about this. For a second, she wished she could do more to shock him. Fling off her shoes and dance. Suggest Walter fling off his shoes and dance.

“Never.” The word was a breath of clerical outrage. “I would see you burn on a funeral pyre first.”

She lifted her eyebrows.

“Bertrand of Bridge is on his way, and when he arrives, with his garrison, he will sweep this outlaw and his rabble from our steps.”

And bring in his own rabble, she thought. Vicious, wealthy rabble.

“You cannot do this thing.”