The Irish Warrior

“Off.”

“But—”

“I want ye on the ground,” he said sharply. She looked at him in surprise. This was the first hint of harshness from him. “On the ground. I want ye on the ground. Where ye’re safe.”

The ground, where she’d be safe, was about fifteen feet below. In truth, it wasn’t even ground; it was water, and, while shallow, still churning. “It’s an awful far way—”

“It’ll be longer if I push ye. I cannot jump with ye standing there. There’s no room. There are handholds on the far side, and cut-outs. Use them. Go.”

She did. As she slithered down the angled rock face—the rock widened at its base—using the copious number of footholds Finian had predicted, wiggly tendrils of weeds and roots scratched at her cheeks, but all she was attuned to was whether she heard Finian’s boots hit the boulder or the water.

At the hard clatter of bootheels on stone, her feet felt more solid in their footholds. She looked up just as Finian’s face appeared over the edge, peering down, long dark hair swinging beside his face. She smiled.

“Go,” was all he said.

As if she needed him to tell her to ‘go.’ The giddy truth of it hit her—the admission—and swirled in her belly like a miniature cyclone: all she’d wanted to do her whole life was go. Go somewhere, anywhere—anywhere other than home, watching the world sweep by through expensive leaded windows, alone but for servants and account ledgers, dying inside.

But should she require a reminder of the importance of taking care in her prayers, Senna thought as she scrabbled down the boulder, placing a foot just so, using her good hand wherever possible—here was her giddy life on the go: fleeing for her life with an Irish rebel, out on the wildside, beyond the Pale, past rescue, past safety, past any future she’d ever dreamed of.

In the end, the footholds gave out, and she was forced to hop into shallow water. Quickly she sloshed to dry land. Finian landed a moment later, splashing to the shore.

He stopped, the heel of one palm pressed against his ribs, his brow furrowed, his jaw tight. She waited silently, quelling a moment of panic. He’d obviously been beaten, and might be seriously injured. How would they make it if…? How did he find the strength—

He straightened, and any thoughts of physical vulnerability were swept away beneath her awareness of his total maleness. A chest firm with plated muscle, arms cut and carved in that defined musculature, legs thickly corded with sinew and strength, he was a specimen of raw masculinity. But her attention lingered longest on the sculpted features of his face, how they looked more haunting in the moonlight. Dangerous.

His gaze swept the land around them, plotting their next move. His eyes swept over hers once, unseeing, then came back again. He smiled faintly, but she could see the unrelenting steel behind the gentle gesture.

“Ye did fine, Senna.”

Some ridiculous pleasure rose up in her. Bubbly, like the small creek behind her manor house. “You weren’t so bad yourself, Irishman.”

No, not so, indeed. Dark hair fell back alongside his face to frame the easy, damaging smile he sent her way. The steel in his gaze was sheathed deeper for a moment, behind a roughish, seductive glint. “Ye’ve seen nothing of what I’m good at yet, Senna.”

Heat raced to her cheeks. “Well,” she retorted, “I know ’tisn’t tossing women across rivers.”

He grinned as he shifted his pack, the muscles of his body rippling even under that slight movement. “Senna, if ye can’t guess what I do well by now, I haven’t a hope for ye.”

That started the shivery ribbons through her belly. The look in his eye before he turned away started the heat in her groin.

“All we have to do tonight is make it across the king’s highway,” he explained, “and far enough into the hills on the other side.”

“Cross the king’s highway? That doesn’t sound prudent.”

“’Tisn’t,” he said as they headed into the woods.

“It sounds dangerous.”

“’Tis.”

She kept imagining Rardove’s rage when he discovered she was gone. Could Balffe have realized it already? And if so, wouldn’t they gallop directly to the highway, run like mad for Dublin, just as she was doing? Straight down the king’s highway.

“Isn’t there some other way?”

Finian skirted a tree trunk. “No other way now, Senna. Forward or back. Nothing in between.”

Chapter 14

They came to the edge of the king’s highway and ducked low. A breeze rustled the reeds, a low, seething sound, like a hiss through teeth. They stretched on their bellies side by side, peering out at the puddle-strewn, rock-encrusted, narrow, muddy path that marked the main passageway from the north to Dublin.