Claiming Her

The room was silent under her musings. Aodh looked at Ré, who shrugged, then said, “That’s a great many men traipsing about the countryside on questionable missions.”

“You must risk large to gain large,” she countered.

Aodh thought a moment, then shook his head. “Ré is correct. We haven’t men enough to send a few to the main castle, a few to the Pike, and yet more to that godforsaken lough. Not with an army marching for us.”

She nodded briskly. “Then go only to TorRising. I am certain that is where he will be.”

“No.”

She frowned. “Why ever not? I swear to you, he is worth the risk. The time, the men.” She paused a moment, then added in a more musing tone, “You may have a point, though.”

A sigh of relief moved down the line of men seated along the tables. Aodh just watched her through faintly narrowed eyes.

“The O’Fail is notoriously unwelcoming to those he does not know,” she said, her tone thoughtful. “Sometimes violently so. It would not do to send low-level emissaries.” She got to her feet. “I will go.”

In startled unison, everyone pushed to their feet.

She reached for her cape. Spotting one of her servants in the distance, she gestured. “Emmitt, please instruct Wicker to saddle my horse and gather an escort. I shall require…seven,” she said decidedly, affixing the large Rardove pin to her cape

before stepping out from behind the table. “I shall not be gone more than three days—”

She walked directly into Aodh.

She stopped and looked up. He put a hand on her arm, gently, but most decidedly stopping her. The others stared in a silence that could be shock, or perhaps horror. It was difficult to tell, among one’s so recent enemies.

Aodh’s expression was the most unreadable of all.

“Leave us,” he ordered quietly.

“You are always clearing the room,” she complained as everyone left.

“You keep saying and doing such room-clearing things,” he replied, drawing her toward the fire. “Katarina, you cannot simply march off with my men.”

“I was going to take my men.”

“They are all my men.”

She stilled. Of course. What was she doing? The castle was Aodh’s. Her will, her orders, her desires, were secondary now. And if Aodh did not heed her, her will meant as much as a bag full of feathers.

He must be convinced.

She curled her fingers around his arm and said earnestly, “Aodh, I vow to you, The O’Fail is a necessary addition. He is greatly like…” She paused a moment, searching for the right words. “A beating heart. Through him flows a network of clans and loyalties. He is like the center through which the blood flows. If you gain him, you gain them all.”

He considered her a long moment in silence.

“Aodh, I thought it suited you for me not to be a thing to be done with,” she said.

“It does,” he replied gruffly.

“What makes Ireland so good to me is the freedom to be out from under anyone’s thumb. I must be able to do things. To think things, to be heeded.”

A dark scowl touched his features. “Have I not sat you in my council?”

“Indeed, you have. And then said we could not do what I suggested.”

“We do not always do as a man suggests.”

She leaned in closer. “I know Ireland, Aodh. I know these men. You asked how I survived out here? I did it through union. Relationship. Trade. That wood out there? Sent by The O’Fail, in exchange for a barrel of Rardove whisky. And the iron we melt for arrowheads and bullets came from a trade with O’Reilly that served us both. I know these men, their families, their petty wars, and their fierce loyalties. I believe I am them now, to Elizabeth’s chagrin.”