Claiming Her

“Take an edge,” he said, giving her an excuse to rise. She rose with alacrity and helped unscroll it.

They did the same to the other panels. There were six of them, six sections, and when they were all unrolled and set together, candles burning along the top and sides, Katarina and Aodh stepped back and looked down at them.

Aodh waited with a strange sort of anticipation, recalling his interminable wait in the queen’s receiving corridor nearly two decades ago, a ragged Irish boy with nothing but a sword in his hand and cold determination in his heart: would his petition be well met?

Covered with gorgeous lines and shapes, the parchment was an explosion of color, in beautiful, vibrant sections, with scalloped and undulating edges, hues of red and green and yellow, with filigree-thin lines crisscrossing it, vertically and horizontally.

“It is beautiful,” she whispered.

“It is

a map. Of the world.”

The softest intake of breath passed across her lips, not quite surprise. A little higher pitched, a little more silvery, a little more feminine, nigh onto a gasp of…pleasure.

His map had pleased her.

Savage satisfaction roared through him. Standing in a great hall, looking down at a map, he felt blown back by a wind.

“There are six panels,” he told her quietly, as she bent over it. “Made by a friend of Mercator’s. Abraham Ortelius.”

They peered at it in silence a moment, then he tapped his index finger to a spot on the paper. “Jerusalem.”

She ran a fingertip across the page, near but not touching his.

“And here,”—he tapped again—“are the Canary Islands, where your wine came from.”

“It is not my wine.”

“It is now.”

Their eyes met over the map of the world. “Not yet.”

She was…testing him? Toying with him? Teasing him?

No matter; all stoked the flames of his lust.

She angled her face back down. “Where are we? Where is Éire?”

Ireland. She’d spoken the Irish word for the isle, and something moved inside him. Likely irritation; Irish was a convoluted language that no one cared for anymore. Outdated, unnecessary. Anything of importance could be said in another language. Should be said in another language. Any other language. Surely you would be understood by more people.

He slid his finger closer to hers. A tiny oval of green and blue sat quite near the edge of the world, high up, as if it were hovering above all the rest, and hadn’t quite descended.

“Oh yes,” she exhaled, smiling faintly. “Yes, that is we.” He looked at her sharply, but she was still staring at the map.

“And that…”—he pointed—“is the New World. America.”

She leaned so close, her nose almost touched the parchment and its bright colors. If he’d bent down too, Aodh knew he would see it all mirrored in her eyes.

She spread a hand over it, hovering half an inch over it, as if she were casting spells. Her corset, laced up tight and proper, pressed against her ribs as she took swift breaths. She was excited.

And this, that this lass banished to the edge of the world, wished to go farther yet, this was wildly…exciting.

“What do you know of it?” she asked, so soft she was almost whispering.

“’Tis abundant in wood and game and wild men.”

He saw the curve of her cheek. She’d smiled. “Somewhat like Ireland, then?” she murmured, a teasing tone.