His gaze trailed down her gown. “A few. Do you want a taste? ’Tis quite good.”
“I do not drink your uisce beatha.”
He sat back in surprise. “’Tis one of the finest things about Ireland, and you’ve never tasted it?”
She tucked a strand of hair back under her veil. It seemed they were eternally springing free from Katarina’s attempts at control.
“I did not say I never tasted it.”
He shook his head sadly. “Lass, you don’t know what you’re missing.”
“Yes, well, I have seen enough men facedown in the rushes to know what I might be missing.”
He laughed. “Aye, you’ve got to go easy.”
“I shall remember that.”
“Wine, then?” he asked, reaching for the jug.
“No! I mean…no.” Her fingertips skipped down her neck, to the V of her collarbone. His gaze followed it.
“’Twasn’t the wine, you know,” he said gently.
Like glass, smooth and almost translucent, her gaze lifted to his. “What was not the wine?”
“What happened. Upstairs. What you did.”
A little shiver disrupted the otherwise calm façade of her gracefulness, then she shrugged dismissively. “You know naught of me, Aodh Mac Con. Perhaps I am eternally flinging myself at strange warriors whenever I drink wine from Gascony.”
“Is that so? I shall inquire as to your habits at the first instance.”
She sniffed. “Gird your loins, my lord. You shall hear stories.”
He smiled and sat back and pushed out his legs. The tips of his boots, black and mud-stained, came to rest just beside the green hem of her skirts. “Why do you say Gascony?”
“’Twas a guess. Is that not where most wine is from?”
“Some. ’Tis fine if you like a claret.”
Surprise lifted her brows in a delicate arch. “And if I do not?”
“Then you will like my wine. ’Tis a canary.”
“Indeed?”
He nodded. “From the Canary Islands.”
Her lips parted, into the smallest O. “And where, pray, are they?”
”I will show you,” he murmured as the servant arrived back in the hall, wooden boots clattering across the floor. He was puffing slightly from his labors on the spiraling staircase, and carried a leather chest in his arms. He placed it before Aodh, bowed deeply, then scurried out, leaving the hall once again empty but for burning fires and Aodh’s marriage gift for Katarina.
Aodh’s blood was starting to churn; want fired through his veins, charging his blood, swelling his cock. Reveling in it and resisting it, he stood to unbuckle the leather straps lashing the chest, and creaked it open.
Beside him, Katarina straightened her spine as far as it could go and yet remain sitting, feigning disinterest while craning her neck to peer inside, practically vibrating with curiosity.
Claimed.
He removed the long, rolled parchments from within and began untying the laces that bound them. He set the first on the table and reached for candles, setting one at each top corner, to weight it down and hold it open, unrolling it as he went. Then he reached for another.