Claiming Her

He’d known it. She was fire. He had teased it out, set it aflame, then she’d snuffed it out again.

Women were from Lucifer.

Relacing his breeches, he swung open the door and hollered for Ré and Cormac. They appeared, bleary-eyed, lacing up their hose. They stopped short when they saw his dark, furious face.

Ré closed his eyes and blew out a breath as he took a seat.

“How goes the wooing?” Cormac asked more bluntly as he dropped into a chair. “Can we rely upon her?”

Aodh strode to the fire and began throwing in wood. “We’re going to need more allies.”

They met until late in the night.

In the morning, another round of emissaries rode out bearing the news: the Hound of Rardove had returned and was seeking allies.

Chapter Twenty

SPRING RECALLED ITSELF with a vengeance, and as the sun rose the following morning, winter was forced to relinquish its hold. The air was almost balmy, although spring breezes intermittently frisked up skirt hems and blew through the high tower window.

Katarina stood at the window, inhaling the scent of heather. In the distance, at the edge of her vision, she could see the sea, churning and unstoppable.

Closer to hand but sharing the same characteristics, Aodh stood on the battlement walls, amid a group of men engaged in animated conversation. Their armor glinted in the sun, swords hung from their hips, and pistols were strapped across their bodies. They looked like l

and-borne pirates.

The spritely spring breezes tugged at their hair and brightly colored capes, snatching the occasional deep-throated voice and winging it through the air, high up to her tower window, where Katarina tried, unsuccessfully, to decipher the words.

But eavesdropping on rebels was not the only reason to lean one’s elbows on the window ledge and poke one’s face out into the sun. The stones were already warm and sea salt was in the air. She knew why the horses being put through their paces were kicking up their heels, tossing their heads with such spirited abandon: spring had sprung, with all its riotous, intoxicating fuel. The day seemed made for rebels.

Katarina leaned out as far as she could and squinted at the small group on the walls. Several of them were unfamiliar Irishmen…not Aodh’s…not….

Her eyes narrowed. Why, was that…MacDaniels?

For a decade now, the clan leader had shunned all of Rardove’s overtures of peace and treaty. With a castle of stone and hundreds of far-flung warriors he could bring to hand at a moment’s notice, he’d barely responded to some of Katarina’s missives over the years, and not at all to the others. He was not actively hostile, but neither was he docile; he boldly trespassed just inside the borders of Rardove land with his hostings on occasion, when easier routes lay south and east, as if he’d decided the English barony was in need of silent reminders of his might.

He did not balk at more overt reminders either. He was responsible for half the raids on the Rardove cattle herd.

Yet here he was, being entertained by Aodh. Laughing with Aodh. Joining with Aodh.

Just as Aodh had said they would.

Clad in leather and steel and his loosely swinging sword, Aodh was carved from essential things, impenetrable, unbendable, wrought-by-fire things. Iron and steel and stone. It was very disconcerting, for her to be standing in old silk and have Aodh be so much a castle in his clothes.

To be so much more of what the Irish marches truly needed.

Bred here, Aodh Mac Con clearly belonged here. Far more than she and her worn velvet and lying title. But then, who cared for titles and names when the winds bore down and the nights grew cold? One wanted heat and might and certainty, and Katarina did not have those things.

So she wove lies. She acted certain when she was unsure. She exuded calm when she wished to rage. She demanded rents she could not possibly have collected if her tenants refused to pay. She pretended it was not a crushing blow to find half the sheep fold dead, or Spanish soldiers washed up on her shores.

She wore the lies like a gown, donned them by day, discarded them at night when the wind blew and darkness came down like the inside of a cave, and she was all alone in her bed, unsure if breaking the lies out again would suffice for one more day.

Or, if instead, someone like Aodh would show up.

Or Bertrand. Or the Queen of England. Or the Irish.

Or all of them.

And yet, she loved Ireland so, loved Rardove with the desperate, fierce love that came from having—and wanting—nothing else. Rardove was worth pulling out the lies for every morning. It had pierced her, like a dart laid in her heart, the love for this scarred, wild, windswept land, and the notion that Aodh Mac Con belonged to it more than she, was…infuriating.