Claiming Her

His gaze dropped to the movement. “Och, Katy, it’s more than a bit.”

This little nickname he’d chosen for her, it fairly intoxicated.

“’Tis truly awful.” He shook his head sadly.

She lowered her hand. “How awful?

“Awe-inspiringly awful,” he assured her.

“I’m…breathless to know more.”

“Well then,” he drawled, and got to his feet, then flipped open another one of the chests and drew out pens a

nd paper and stoppered bottles of ink. My, he was a veritable chancery, this warlord.

He laid the parchment on the table, and, holding it with the edge of one fist, moved the candlesticks closer, swept up one of the pens and began sketching.

She stared in silence. Bent at the hips, sword dangling, muscles of his back evident beneath his shirt, he held the pen with strong, callused fingers and sketched her the likeness of a very pretty dress.

She made a little noise.

He tipped his face up, pen poised in the air, midway through the hemline of what appeared to be becoming a bodice. “Aye? You’ve something to say?”

Clamping her teeth together, she shook her head. Nothing. She’d said nothing. Aodh the warlord could sketch a very fine gown.

The room was silent but for the crackle of the fire and the scratch of his pen. Finally he straightened. “Aye?” He motioned to the paper.

She dragged her gaze from him, down to the page, which depicted a woman in a gorgeous gown, flowing skirts, a golden snood, and… “Good God,” she murmured.

He laughed.

The sketch, it was…ludicrous. The stiff circlet of lace, confining the neck, opening out like an angry, fluted flower to plume under the chin in the most unappealing of ways. And so wide…it seemed to go on, and out, forever.

“Well,” she said softly.

“Well.”

She cleared her throat. “After all…”

“After all that.”

The tempered amusement in his drawl made her smile. “How would one ever eat?”

“Well now, that is an interesting question. One lady, a very fine baroness, had a two-foot long spoon.” He demonstrated how she would lift it far out, away from her body, then bring it back in, the way a hawk might land on a tree limb.

She laughed out loud. “I thought it a jest.” She touched the ink. A tiny blot of green came away on her finger.

“I assure you, lass, in a thousand years, I could not have thought of that.” They considered the sketch, then he added, “And I’ve thought of some fine, awful things.”

This time, she tipped her head back and laughed, rustling the drape of whisper-soft silk still held to her body. He smiled at her, but repressed energy strained beneath the surface of him. Aodh was like the power under the waves, rolling through the world.

And now he’d rolled into her world, this warrior who gifted gowns and had known a fine baroness who ate dinner from a two-foot spoon.

How had he come to know such a person? How had he come by his treasures and his pretty playing cards and his very fine wine?

Aodh was not a simple man, and she realized with a shock that she knew nothing of him.

“Aodh?”