Claiming Her

A small note of discomfort rang.

But why? So a door was shut. Drafts ran rampant. So why was her heart suddenly beating faster?

Pushing back the covers, she got up and padded to the door. She turned the knob.

It wouldn’t turn. It w

as locked.

She was locked in.

Aodh had locked her in.

Fury burst from her like a dam crashing under the pressure of too much force. She hammered on the door, beat on it like an impotent, caged beast, her hands fisted, her feet kicking, shouting as loud as she could, “Aodh, you bastard!”

Her shouts bounced around the stone walls of the room. She battered senselessly and uselessly at the door until, finally exhausted, admitting defeat, she leaned against it, breathing heavily. It had been growing for three hundred years or more before it had been turned into a door; banging at it with her fists, or her shoulders or her feet, or even a battering ram, was not going to accomplish anything.

She had to get out, though. And for that, she had to be clever, for being stubborn had got her nothing at all.

Just as Aodh had predicted.

*

DOWN IN THE BAILEY, Ré was escorting a local Irish prince from the stables to the hall, when shrieks broke out and could be heard wafting down from the open window of the tower room.

Startled, the Irish clansman looked around. “What in God’s holy name…”

Ré hurried him along a little faster. “Singing,” Ré assured him. “English song. We heard a lot of it over in England, as you can imagine. Sounds a bit like caterwauling, doesn’t it?

“Sounds like a bahn sidhe,” the Irishman said with a shiver. “In full regalia.”

“You’ve no idea.”

Aodh appeared at the castle door, and they quickened their pace.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

UP IN THE TOWER, Katarina copied out two messages. That was the minimum, in case one was captured, the messenger drowned in a river, or some other all too common misfortune.

Hand shaking, she stuffed them under the pelt beside the fire, then went to the door and rapped softly.

The guard outside her room—there’d been one ever since the sword incident—opened the door. It was Bran. She brightened, but his face was sober. She issued her invitation for Aodh to come visit her that night.

“And send up whisky,” she added offhandedly. “There are barrels of very good stuff in the cellar, in the farthest chamber, on the northern side. Mind your head; the lintel is low.”

Bran seemed clearly torn between a desire to do as she bid, and great, abiding suspicion. “Whisky?” he repeated.

She nodded.

“Barrels of them?”

“Dozens. Pull from the barrel nearest the back. It is an oak barrel with the image of a clamshell burned into it.”

“A clamshell,” he repeated, stretching it out, the words filled with confusion and growing suspicion. Understandable. After all, she was locked in the tower. There had been sword-fighting. “Do you drink whisky, my lady?” he asked hesitantly.

“Upon occasion.”

He blinked. “I did not know.”