Claiming Her

She slid her gaze slowly over to him. “I am weary of being told what I cannot do.”

They looked at each other, a kind of tired sympathy in Walter’s regard. “That is the way of it, my lady,” he said gently. “We do what is necessary, oft as others command. To bend one’s will is no mean thing.”

“I hardly require tutoring on how to bend my will.” Hard as diamonds, the words spilled out of her as if tumbling from a pouch.

His eyes grew sad. “Katarina, child, I do but think of your welfare. Ever were you your mother’s child, rash and tempestuous. It runs in the blood. No fault of your own, but still, it must be tempered.”

“I have been tempered,” she whispered.

“I have seen the ravages of such states of high passion. Your father was imprisoned on account of your mother’s, and we saw how that ended.” Her face felt hot as he plowed on. “And when I was sent to watch over you, it was to guard against it ever lifting its head again.” He frowned. “But it already had, had it not, child? Yes,” he went on, pleased with his summary of the downfalls of the Rardove women. “Trust in me, then. Be as you are meant to be, quiet and circumspect. I shall guide us—”

For some inexplicable reason, she got to her feet.

Walter, mouth open to expound further, stilled.

More inexplicably, she started toward the door.

“My lady, what— Wait! What are you…” He hurried after. “You cannot mean… You are not capable of executing something so vast as— Why, you cannot imagine the plotting—”

“I just did imagine it, Walter. I recommend you do as well. We serve two masters now: Elizabeth, and the Irish savage.” She strode to the door, where she paused again. “And Walter? Please do bear in mind, there is nothing common about Aodh Mac Con. You have a habit of underestimating people. Please do not do so with him.”

Walter’s outrage froze.

They stared at each other. Then she flung the oaken door wide.

Young Bran, standing guard in the antechamber outside, spun. She gathered a thick handful of wool skirts in her fist and swept by him, saying coldly, “I need to see your master.”

Perhaps he was struck dumb. Or perhaps, when he looked into her eye, he saw the glint of determination that did not bear opposition.

In any event, he did not try to stop her. He did, though, turn and put a hand on Walter’s chest as the clerk tried to hurry after her.

“I’ll need to search you, sir.”

Bran would receive extra rations the moment she made it back into the kitchens.

“Good God in heaven, man!” Walter cried; he was becoming positively foul-mouthed in his desperation. Katarina heard them arguing as she went down the stairs.

“My lady!” Walter called after. “Heed me.”

She did not. Inexplicably.

“You are being reckless, girl!”

It was a last arrow, the hissed word flung like a curse. And in her life, it had been just that.

Still, she did not stop. She circled the lamplit stairs and stepped out into the great hall, then stopped short.

As Aodh Mac Con had done to the bedchamber, so too had he done to the hall. The room was, quite simply, alive.

Fires roared like dragons, gorgeously wasteful, in every hearth and down the huge center trough. Bright, leaping, wasteful, wonderful red, orange, and blue flames licked the air like beating wings.

The vast stony hall, cool even in the dog days of summer, had been made, in the cold coil of early spring, warm. Bright. Bustling.

People were everywhere, more souls than Rardove had held in its belly for many a year, milling and talking, hurrying to and fro, laughing, even her own people, intermingling. No formal, seated meal, this; it was the butt end of a coup, and there was only sound and noise and movement.

A portly industrious clerk with a pen in his hand gestured to a man running by with a sheaf of papers, while a group of soldiers near the door plucked hunks of bread and cheese off trays being hurried past before turning for the door and striding out again. Calls came from all corners of the hall, as servants, both his and hers, frantically set up long trestle tables and benches down the length of the room, their voices swept up the vent holes in the roof. It was a hum of energy. Squires hurried here and there, poundi

ng iron spikes into the walls, dangling tapestries down from them.