Claiming Her

Traitor. Treason.

Dead woman.

At the tip of the pen in her hand, a drop of bright red ink hung, suspended. Aodh’s name was already on the page, scrawled in gorgeous, bold, educated letters, large enough to be read in Windsor.

He was afraid of nothing. This castle, this rebellion, Katarina—he claimed it all.

Trembling, she looked up into his eyes.

“Aodh,” she whispered. It had slipped out helplessly.

He went into motion. “Leave us,” he ordered, taking the pen from her hand.

And once again, the people in the hall dispersed like pebbles running down a hill. His clerk and hers, the witnesses and soldiers, everyone turned and left, until she and Aodh were, once again, alone.

Shaking, she stood, head down, staring at the ground, braced for his fury. That is what men did, vent their fury. It would be over soon enough. He circled her once; she watched his boots make the circuit around her body.

“What is it?” he asked while behind her.

She inhaled, shook her head. She looked at the papers, the signatures, then her eyes dropped to his sword. Everything about this was a conquest.

“I…cannot,” she whispered.

He’d followed her glance at his sword, and with a swift sweep of his hands, he unbuckled it and let it fall. It clattered to the ground. He stepped over it and came nearer.

“Why are you saying no?”

“Because I would lose everything.”

“Och, lass, you’ve already lost everything. All you can do now is gain.”

She gave a broken laugh. “That is not a good answer.”

His gaze roved over her face, then he took the last, natural step and drew up before her. “Listen to me.”

She shook her head. “No.” She could not listen to his low resonate persuasions, spoken in that dark Irish lilt, the one that tempted as if it were touch.

He curled a finger beneath her chin and tipped her face up. “You cannot think it would have gone well for you when Bertrand of Bridge arrived? The queen’s interrogator?”

She gasped. “Wh-what do you know of it?”

“In England, they are calling you a traitor. A priest-lover. An unwed dye-witch.”

Shock made her hands fly to his chest. Fear curled them into fists, bunching his tunic. “No.”

“Aye. So now, maybe, it is not so mad an idea.”

“Oh no,” she whispered as he curled his fingers around the back of her neck and guided her closer, up to the towering length of him, until they were touching from knees to stomach.

“I swear to you, Katy,” he said in a low rasp. “I will protect you.”

Confusion washed through her, an amalgam of shifting emotions.

Protect her? When he was the danger, England her salvation?

Protect her? No one protected Katarina. She was the protector, of Rardove, of the people within, of the queen’s rights in Ireland.

But that this warlord had offered…