Claiming Her

Cormac threw up his hands. “When do I ever do a thing I’m no’ explicitly invited to?” he demanded. “Explicitly.” He settled back with an indignant shuffle of his shoulders. “And frequently.”

“I do not think she is a common serving wench. She looks finer than that.”

“Aye, that she does,” Cormac agreed, and folded his arms across the bulk of him, which was significant, and not an inch of it fat. He was hard, burly, Scottish muscle from chin to shin, and he was one of Aodh’s most trusted councilors and captains. He also had what some might call rustic manners. Others might call them loutish.

Aodh resigned himself to not receiving any ale until a less comely lass passed by.

Cormac yanked forward one of the low benches and threw his boots up on it. “Word came in not an hour past, while you were ‘busy’.”

Aodh’s clerk came up, pen in hand, with questions about the trunks in the office chamber. After he hurried off, Cormac went on.

“Lucius arrived.”

Aodh felt a little quickening. “How did he get here so swiftly?”

“Chartered a boat, a cricky old thing, almost sunk him. We’ll be hearing his complaints on that score until Michaelmas.”

“And? Did he find Bertrand?”

Cormac’s grin grew. “That he did. Found the fool sitting on the coast,” he said, then added in a tone of gleeful derision, “waiting for the storm to pass.”

They grinned at each other.

“Anyhow, Bertrand took the bait. Got your message, hightailed it out of there almost before he finished reading it, as if the hounds of hell were on his tail.” He angled Aodh a sideway

s glance. “What did your message say, anyhow?”

Aodh shrugged. “That the queen was going to put the hounds of hell on his tail if he didn’t find his way back to her right quick. In York.”

Cormac roared in laughter at the idea of one of the queen’s favorite interrogators being sent on a wild-goose chase to the north of England.

To Aodh, satisfaction was a pale but welcome sensation.

Putting his elbows on the table, Cormac gazed across the bustling hall with satisfaction. “Aye, well, good. He’s taken care of for the time being, seeing as the queen is in Windsor. Elizabeth, o’ course, now she’s a different matter,” Cormac went on with almost ghoulish glee. “She’ll be deep in her royal passion by now. Send an army, she will.”

“This pleases you.”

Cormac shrugged. “’Twas inevitable. ’Twas the point, Aodh. She wouldn’t give you what you rightfully earned, so you took it. And in fine fashion too. If she wants it now, she comes for it. With an army.”

He shrugged again, pounding the subtle intricacies of political maneuvering on the anvil of his simple logic. He rubbed his chin with the side of his hand, reflecting. “A massive large one, if I’m any judge.”

Shockingly, the comely maid reappeared, mugs of ale on a tray. She set the tray down with a curtsey, her pretty face tipped to the floor, but not far enough to hide the swift, appraising glance she took of Cormac before hurrying away.

Cormac grinned his thanks, handed a mug to Aodh, then sat back, his comfortable and dire predictions carrying on apace.

“The queen’s going to want your pretty head, Aodh, and a few other body parts as well.” Cormac eyed him appraisingly. “Your frightfully big bollocks, to start with. Dangle ’em right off the Tower if she gets a chance.”

Aodh nodded. “Your insights are fascinating. Recall to me why I bring you with me?”

“Because I tell you what you need to hear, no’ what you want to hear, like those English boys do.” He sniffed. “In any event, you’ve naught to worry on. We shan’t let her have your bollocks, nor your sorry arse, nor any other part of your sorry self, so don’t get all worrisome now, Aodh.” Cormac eyed him with a mixture of compassion and pity. “You worry too much.”

Aodh drank. Aodh had not worried for sixteen years, not since seeing his father hanged until he was half-dead, then taken down, bowels cut from his body and burned, his arms and legs torn from his body, his head cut off—it had taken four blows—and thrust on a spike outside Dublin Castle.

What was there to worry on? You grabbed what you could, and then you died.

It was a motto that had served Aodh well, and, in turn, the men who followed him through all manner of exploits. It remained true, though, that his men had tried to make him see the mad recklessness and potentially self-destructive nature of his plan to capture Rardove Keep.

Aodh had never disagreed. He’d also never wavered. And, as ‘reckless’ was generally the sort of plan he devised anyhow, and always the sort they participated in, in the end, they had followed him. As they always did. Honor, dauntlessness, a lack of other options, and a great deal of money ensured it.