The Irish Warrior

She met his gaze, his perceptive, ever-blue eyes, and she started to smile back.

“Oh, indeed, I am quite terrible with a bow, Finian. But then, you should see me with a blade.”

Chapter 26

The easy, sense-damaging smile expanded across Finian’s face. He approved. Jésu. She was lost. It was hardly his fault she’d fallen so hard. Was he to be disapproving, so as to call up her instincts for self-preservation? Those were bobbing in the Irish Sea, fifty leagues away.

“A blade, ye say?”

Was that incredulity in his voice? Better than pity, and she did appreciate a challenge. There’d been so few to live up to of late. Despite the constant struggle of keeping the business afloat, the last true, blood-pounding challenge had come when the business had been saved, twice, when she was fifteen.

But best not to think of that rescue just now. Or ever again.

“You sound doubtful,” she said instead.

His lips pursed, but his fine eyes contained a smile. An appreciative, if slightly incredulous one. “Not many people can toss a blade, Senna.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Watch,” she said, focusing on the goodness of his smile in this moment, not all the terrible things that could be, that had been, that would, no doubt, be again one day soon.

“Oh, lass. Ye’ve no idea how I watch ye.”

She turned away, her cheeks flushing.

“There’s a meadow ahead,” he said. “Come sunset, it should be filled with—”

“Rabbits.”

She cut wide around the meadow, keeping to the wood, and emerged at the edge of the small clearing. Like a miracle, four or five hares sat in the center. They nibbled at the grass and hopped lightly about in the slanting golden light.

Moving stealthily around a tree trunk, Senna positioned herself in a crouch, squinting against the evening glow. The now-ubiquitous tall grasses hid her as she knelt and pulled the long leather thong from her pouch. Somewhere in the woods, Finian was also fitting his bow. Who would bring down supper first?

She lifted her face and felt the breeze while she pulled out the curved hilt from its sheath, feeling with her fingertips, unconsciously recalling lessons from her youth. Her injured hand healed apace since Finian’s ministrations. And she hardly noticed it now. A long wavy reed brushed against her cheek as she made final adjustments to the curved wood handle in her palm.

Slowly she stood, lifted her arm, elbow bent, blade by her ear. One of the rabbits stopped, his black nose in the air, sniffing madly.

She half closed her eyes, all her attention narrowed into that one small spot. In her mind’s eye, she sighted a line between the blade and her quarry. Her body hummed. The rabbit seemed to freeze. He looked huge. Unmissable.

She snapped her arm forward. The blade hurtled across the clearing, tossing off orange glints as the blade caught and reflected the sunset. Its humming thrummed in her ears, then the rabbit thumped to the ground with nary a sound.

Senna was rather more noisy.

She leapt up and screeched. The remaining rabbits scattered like swarming minnows, and she danced in a wild, high-stepping little circle, laughing. After years of minimal practice, through the turmoil of the past few weeks, and before the uncertain future that was now her life, she could take care of her own needs and survive.

Beholden to no one.

Finian watched from beneath a tree on the opposite side of the clearing. As she floated back into the woods, rosy with pride and clutching the rabbit by the ears, he moved soundlessly to intercept her. Every so often she lifted the rabbit level with her eyes and stared at it with profound satisfaction.

Her grin stretched from ear to ear when he stepped into her path, bow in hand. The sandy yellow haze of sunset lit her in a latticework of golden green dapples.

“Good God, woman,” he said in a husky voice.

She nodded happily. “I know.”

“Ye’re good,” he said. But what he was thinking was, You’re marvelous, magnificent, frightening.

He wanted to pull her to him, make her remember very well what they’d been talking about in the wood, relight the fire in her that would make her body melt for him again. Instead, he simply said, “Very, very good.”

She grinned.