Claiming Her

The clerk competently uncorked an ink bottle and laid it before Aodh. With a flourish, he set out a second pen. The bottle squatted above the papers, ready for dipping. The ink was red, like blood.

“But we must wait…three weeks…”

The clerk had taken his seat, a pouch of sand laid beside the parchment he was now scribbling on. Aodh stood looking over his shoulder, but at these words, he glanced her way.

“We shall not have the ceremony until three weeks.” He leaned close and murmured, “But to alleviate any concerns you may have, Katarina, know this: we shall consummate. Hard and well.”

Her knees almost collapsed. She curled her fingers around the back of the lord’s chair. In truth, the ceremony meant nothing. These papers were all. Her signature, on the papers, their union afterward, this binding to Aodh.

It could not be.

“What of witnesses?” she whispered. It was a hopeless gesture, a shot in the dark, for she knew nothing would slow this down. Aodh Mac Con meant to have her.

The rock she’d tossed into the air was coming down now, hard.

He snapped his fingers without looking over. “Call for Cormac and Ré,” he ordered the soldier who appeared, then turned to her. “Who do you wish for, my lady?”

“I— Wish for?” A list of patron saints floated through her mind.

“As witnesses. I suppose you’ll want the coward?”

“Walter?” No. “Yes. Of course.”

“Bring her steward,” Aodh ordered the soldier, and turned back to the clerk, murmuring something about jointure.

Her mind whirled as they talked through the time it took to round up several servants and Aodh’s grim-faced soldiers, who looked no happier about this union than she, then finally, Walter appeared, stern and disapproving.

A pen was placed in her hand.

His men stood arrayed around the front of the dais table. Walter stood like a monument of disapproval, his already prodigious brow quivering with disgust that the family had been reduced to this: marriage to an Irishman.

She stared down at the papers, covered in scrolling black scribbles. Words, surely these were words. But she could decipher none of them. Her heart was thudding too fast, the roar in her head was too loud.

Aodh’s clerk was speaking in Latin, saying something, saying their names…saying Aodh’s name…Aodh Mac Con Rardove.

Aodh, son of the Hound of…Rardove?

Another cold blast struck her. She dragged her gaze up from the parchment. “You are the Hound of Rardove?”

“Aye.”

She curled her hand tighter around the chair to steady herself, reeling. The Rardove clan was dead, or all but. Living on the fringes of Irish society for centuries, they were a pale shadow of their former selves, slowly dying out, notwithstanding a brief, if spectacular, resurgence a couple decades ago. But they posed no threat, they had no presence. Legend said the Rardove chiefs were doomed to die young, half from heartbreak, half from drink, half from…oh dear God save her, recklessness.

“I thought…I thought you all dead,” she whispered.

His icy eyes flicked her way. “Not yet.”

Her knees were bending now. Force of will was all that held them straight. She would not sit. She would not fall over.

The clerk’s voice droned on in Latin, and the Irish Hound was replying—in Latin—then the clerk read the terms aloud in French, and then in English, to ensure no confusion—oh, there was nothing but confusion—while Walter’s grim, furious, and yet vaguely triumphant face glared at her.

She had done precisely what she’d told him not to do: seriously underestimated Aodh Mac Con.

The pen was placed in her hand. She could not catch her breath. Everyone was staring. Silence spread through the hall. A boot shuffled, leather creaked, a burning log shifted, then fell into hot ash in the hearth. All she had to do was sign her name.

All she could do was stare at the paper.

If she signed this, she was doomed.