The Irish Warrior

She gave a bitter smile. “One of the few times he was right, and the only time he was not pleased. Gambling became his passion, after my mother left.”

His gaze flicked over, but he didn’t ask the question begging to be asked: What do you mean, “after your mother left”? Senna hurried on before he could. “Sir Gerald regularly raided the coffers. He has incurred debts to rather…unsavory men.”

“Your father has dealings with unsavory men?”

“My father has dealings with whomever will feed the beast. Noble thugs or dock workers, what matters that?” She flicked him a glance. “You are not afflicted by it, so you would not understand.”

“Unsavory, of what sort?”

“Of the manly sort, that comes to the house at night, sometimes in noble finery, sometimes plain as dirt.” She was distracted by his undressing and washing and his glistening, wet body and such, but beneath the glory of Finian, she realized she was speaking of things she hadn’t for many years. “The sort who visits late at night, and you hear their angry voices, but all in whispers, as if they are sharing great, angry secrets. The sort that is gone the next morning, your father along with them. Unsavory, of that sort.”

He crumpled his tunic into a ball. “Ye call yer father Sir Gerald.”

“Oh,” she said, flustered and irritated. Why did he need to be perceptive as well? Could he not be lacking in some regard? “I’m used to referring to him thusly. Our contractors. Business, you know.”

“Well, I’m fair surprised to find such a spirited lady coming from his seed.”

“Me?” she shouted in laughter. “You must mean some other.”

“Och, ye’re right, now. I’m talking about all the other fine ladies who stole me out of prison.”

Straightening, he stepped back across the stream and turned to reach down for his armor. The movement drew her eye. What she saw drained all the blood from her face.

“Mother of God,” she whispered, all of it an exhale.

His back was shredded. Long, deep lacerations whipped in a jagged orbit around his body, bisecting one another in a red fire and tortured map of brutality. Some were scarring, some spoke of more recent acquaintance with a leather strap. She rose slowly to her feet, her eyes fixed on the horror.

“Jésu, Finian.”

Gladiator muscles slid beneath his satiny skin as he turned to her. She could almost feel the razor-sharp whip snapping through the air, ripping open his flesh, tearing into the awesome strength beneath, like a knife cutting through a pear. Her trembling fingers passed a hairsbreadth above the ravaged flesh and she lifted her head to meet his steady gaze.

There are green flecks in his eyes.

“Ye suffered too,” he murmured, his eyes lingering on the fading bruises of her cheekbones.

“Oh, Finian,” she exhaled, feeling tears prick. Dropping to her knees, she dragged her pack over. “I’ve unguent,” she reported in a shaky voice, digging through the bag. In wild arcs everything came out, scattering on the ground around her: a brick of hard cheese, three small pouches, linen scraps, a rope, strips of leather.

She lifted her head, holding up a small container as high as she could, which reached to the middle of his chest. With an utterly unreadable look, he took it, and she scrambled to her feet. “Have they festered?”

He shook his head, resettling the damp hair across his shoulders. “They don’t feel to have.”

“Well, I’ll see about that,” she said in a clipped tone. The pricking of tears a moment ago was nothing, of course—simply understandable concern for the wounds of the man she needed healthy to ensure her survival. She put her hand on his arm to turn him around. “Stand fast.”

He allowed her to turn him, and she allowed herself to ignore the feel of his warm, wide shoulder beneath her hand. Clamping her tongue between her teeth, she began applying the thick lotion in slow, gentle movements that sent his muscles shuddering in response.

“Am I hurting you?”

“Aye,” he said gruffly.

She paused and peered over his shoulder at the profile of his square jaw. “Much?”

“Aye, that ye are.”

“Well,” she retorted, then said it again. “Well.”

He stood quietly under the painful repair work. When finished, she stepped back and looked with a critical eye at her handiwork. “I think I’ve got them all,” she muttered, angling her head to the side to see if the light had tricked her and she’d missed one. No, she decided, straightening, I’ve got them all.

His dark eyes were waiting for her.