“Paris?”
“Dangerous.”
“Constantinople?”
His nostrils flared slightly. “Exhilarating.”
She inhaled a cool breath. How wonderful, the word he’d selected. “Is it true the outer wall has over ninety towers? And the sea wall almost two hundred? Did you see the Hagia Sophia? Is it not the city where Marco Polo launched his journeys from…?”
A slow, knowing smile crossed his face. “I’ll make you a deal, Katy. You marry me, and I’ll tell you everything.”
Disappointment coursed through her. She sat back, affecting disinterest by means of a miniscule shrug.
A low rumble of laughter met this; he knew she’d been practically speared by the desire to know more.
“’Twas a mere curiosity,” she assured him.
“What I want isn’t mere, lass.” Low and lazy, it was a confident, masculine drawl, followed up by the immeasurably more confident, and equally masculine, command, “Come here.”
Heat swept through her, everywhere. “No.”
He gave a faint smile. “Getting tired of that word.”
Shivers, hard and pricking, like falling stars, rained across her belly and chest. Traitorous body, to turn into a night sky simply because this warlord had issued a command.
And he knew it. Knew every shiver that ribboned through her body, for he pushed to his feet and came around the table and lifted her out of the chair. He skimmed the fabric she still held to her chest with the back of his hand, then closed it around the silk and tugged it away, tossing it to the side, a slithery pile of silk by her feet.
Nothing lay between them now, nothing at all.
He tipped his head to the side, watching her. Waiting. She should walk away.
She did not walk away.
“Aodh,” she said, feeling strangely desperate. On his behalf. “You do not know what you have done here, by taking Rardove. Your arrogance will be your doom.”
“I am not arrogant. Rardove is. It sits, as we have said, on bedrock. With sea cliffs behind. It can hold off an army for years.”
She stared at him. “That is the extent of your plan? To hold them off for years?”
A shrug from the powerful shoulder. His gaze slid off hers, trailed down to her chest. “If all else fails.”
“Else?” A tendril of panic uncurled in her belly. “What else are you planning?”
“Negotiations. There are worse things than having an Irishman hold a castle in Ireland.”
“You cannot mean to try— You cannot think the queen will negotiate with you? Aodh, she will annihilate you. You must see— ” She stopped short as a new shot of fear went through her. “Does the queen know you are here?”
He nodded. “She ought. I wrote her myself.”
She felt flushed and feverish. “You wrote her? Oh no. Did you mention me?” She couldn’t keep the panic from her voice. “Aodh, did you mention me?”
His gaze came up from where it had been trailing down her body. “Is that what is worrying you, Katy?”
Her hands were shaking. “’Tis treason enough to harbor priests, but to harbor rebels…”
“I told you, Katy, I will protect you.” He turned his hand and slid it along her jaw. “I swear it, on my life. I will not abandon you.”
She stared into his eyes, dumbfounded, as if she’d never heard the word before: abandon. No one had abandoned her. Her father had been executed by the queen, her mother died of a broken heart, too swaddled in pain, perhaps too frightened of the queen, to stay alive anymore.