Claiming Her

He mirrored her every move, as she dodged the table and hopped back behind the huge bed.

“Do you know what I said?”

“No, Katy, what?” Slow, calm, tautly controlled, he was beginning to terrify her.

“I praised you,” she breathed, circling onto the other side of the bed.

“Did you?” He sounded absent, as if he were barely listening. His gaze drifted between her eyes and her hips, as if deciding which to pay attention to. She tried to move neither.

“I did indeed. I said you were a good man.” He stepped forward, and she swung around the corner of the bed, her hand gripping the post for support. “A good master for Rardove. I told her I had come to care for you. That I had fallen for your charms.” All the truths were falling out of her now. “Aodh, regard: I told her she was wrong.”

His gaze caught on hers. “You could have done nothing worse.”

A tremor of unease, deeper than her fear of Aodh’s wrath, moved through her. “Why?”

“Elizabeth is jealous. She does not want to be shown up, she does not want to be told she was wrong, and she surely does not want to be told a rebel is right. Such things do not matter. Moreover, telling her you cared would have been the worst thing you could have done. She does not want to be told that.”

Katarina’s heart surged, then tightened at the words. She knew precisely how the queen felt.

“It would have revealed to her that I, too, care for you. That is why you are fortunate this letter was brought to me.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “There is another.”

“Another what?”

“Missive.” Her voice dropped lower. “I gave one to Walter, and one…to Dickon.”

“Oh, Katy.”

Her heart sank. It was a cold progression down her chest and belly, a musical scale of coldness.

“You made a mistake, lass.”

Cold straight down to her toes.

“You went behind my back.”

Cold, into her bones.

“You were seen. People know you snuck out, without my leave.”

“Aodh.” It was a pleading exhale.

His demeanor was level, almost detached. Inscrutable. He held out his hand. “Come here.”

“No. Why?”

His gaze, unflinching and impassive, told her everything she needed to know, so in truth, she did not need any words. “I’m going to punish you.”

“No,” she whispered.

Tall and resolute, he watched her. “You can leave, Katy, I’ll see you to that ship, or I can punish you, but it’ll be one or the other. I cannot have you going behind my back, countermanding me. You are mine, or you leave. This is your last chance to

choose.”

“I do not want to leave.” Leave Ireland. Leave you.

“Then come here.”