Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) (36 page)

Katarina stood back, watching him clasp hands and clap backs, entirely at his ease. She felt stunned, confused…fascinated. The faces around her, the smiles, the rustling silks that her mother had dreamed of, became a blur. Katarina had never had such crowds here, had never been
able
to, with only ten men to hand and a questionable countryside to rule.
 

Katarina’s largesse, all her alliance work, had gone outward. Itinerated, so to speak. She’d traveled and visited and gifted large and small, but she did not entertain. She could not. She could not invite others inward, for it would be turned against her.

But Aodh had opened the gates and brought them all in, and they reveled in it. In him.

Such an irony: Katarina had opened the gates to him, and he’d opened the gates to all this…magnificence.
 

Aodh reached back for her then and pulled her to his side, into the light and the heat. Into the revelry.

Person after person was brought forward, grasping Aodh’s wrist or, more often, yanking him into a bear hug, then turning to her with a bow. Many were people she knew, Irish and English she’d known by visit or by letter. Irish tribe leaders who’d visited her or, as the case may be, shunned her, she thought as MacDaniels was brought forward and affected a clumsy bow.
 

There were a shocking number of Englishmen as well—or at least Aodh said they were English; one could hardly tell with some of them. Many English had become more Irish than the Irish, and some days, one could hardly tell who was who.
 

She began taking hands, returning nods and greeting and smiles and curtsies.

“Katarina!” called a voice from amid the deepest part of the horde. The crowds parted to reveal the barreling approach of the florid-faced, burly chested, exceptionally English lord, Geoffrey Bellingbloke, Lord of Wingotten.

Katarina stared in amazement. Wingotten was a loyal English marcher lord—or so she had
thought
—with three castles, one only a half day’s ride away. That fact had put her in close contact with him over the years. They’d shared troubles, contributed to the common defense financially. They’d worked together a great deal, albeit via money and messenger, not often seeing one another. But he’d always been steadfast in the queen’s cause, so Katarina felt shocked, now, as he took her hand and bent low over it, to note he had adopted the mannerisms and dress of the Irish.
 

Some things, though, had not changed. His cheeks were a rosy red under what had always been a rather scraggly beard, and his shoulders canted at a distinct angle to the right. And occasionally to the left. The odor of drink wafted off him like a fog.
 

Aodh had been drawn into conversation a few steps back so she had nothing to distract her from Wingotten’s quite surprising conversation.
 

“Lady Katarina,” he exclaimed, beaming at her. “How fine to see you! God grant you health.”
 

“And you, my lord. It is most good…” Her words faded. “I admit to being
surprised
to see you here, my lord.”

“Ahh.” He winked and waved his arm about. Wine splashed out of his cup. “As I am, to see
you
.”
 

“Well, after all, I do live here,” she began, but his next words cut her off.

“The Straight Lady of Rardove turns,” he announced cheerfully.

She was startled into silence. “I beg your pardon?”

He bowed slightly. “My lady, forgive my impertinence. It is this wine; quite fine, is it not?”

“No, please, my lord, tell me. This is all so…new and surprising.” She waved her hand at the gathering. “It is sometimes necessary to gain the insights of an outsider, one who sees things from a different perspective. You have found me…straight in the past?”

“Like an arrow, my lady, if you will. Surely a grand trait, but out here…” He made a sound. “You have always been so loyal to the queen. Unalterably. Unable to hear even a single complaint.”

“I did not know—” she said weakly, but he drank more wine and went on.

“Unable to even consider any differing views. Always following the straight and narrow,” he said, and stood his hand on its side in the air and pushed it forward, as if it were sliding along a track. “Whatever the queen says is right and proper.” He made a sound of disgust. “Which is why it is so surprising, and refreshing,” he added warmly, and drunkenly, “to see you’ve become a rebel.”

Heat flooded her cheeks. “I, a rebel?” she repeated.
 

The baron waved his hand. “Well, of course, one hopes it will not come to that.”

“In
deed
,” she agreed heartily.

 
“But then again, I’m all in favor of a good shaking up. Quite in the mood for it.”

“Yes, of course, a good shaking up.” Katarina felt entirely upended. Wingotten was in the mood for a shaking up? She’d never known.

What else did she not know?

“Aye,” confirmed Wingotten, the Englishman turned Irish. But he was also a good lord, one of the few permanent English landlords—most stayed absent, raped the land, and left their chaff behind for others to manage—so maybe this was the only way. You lived in a land long enough, and the next thing you knew, you were
of
that land.

Have
I
become Irish
, she wondered suddenly.
 

“In any event,” Wingotten went on, “it would be difficult to do a worse job than the English Crown.”

“Would it?”

He lifted his cup as if to drink, then held it in the air and gazed across the room with an expression she could only describe as satisfied. “We’ve been wanting this for some long time.”

“Have we?” Her replies had taken on the note of echo.
 

“In any event, your Aodh will do a better job than ever Elizabeth did out here on the marchlands.”

Her Aodh.

“What have Elizabeth or her agents ever done for Ireland but reap what Ireland sows?” Wingotten drank some more, seemingly unconcerned that this speech alone was enough to lose him his head. As if reading her thoughts, he dropped his gaze to her. It was rather fierce. As were all the other gazes in the room. Pleased, celebratory, but…fierce. Prepared. These men were ready for whatever came next. Wanted it. And it was Aodh who had stirred their blood.
 

“The English crown takes our harvests to fill her belly, takes our money to pay her bills, takes our men to fight her wars. What does she return? Laws and strictures and religions we do not want.”

“Indeed,” she echoed weakly. That was an entirely novel way of looking at it.
 

“And who better to lead a rebellion than one of the queen’s own?”
 

“Indeed,” she said, quite taken aback.

“Your Hound.” He nodded his chin toward Aodh, who stood in conversation with a long pace off, “used to be the Queen’s man. Councilor, sea dog, all that. A second Dudley, they say, only better, for Aodh was ready to the fight.”
 

She opened her mouth—to say what, she did not know—when a small, darting figure, ducking under a tray being set on the table, smashed into Wingotten. It was a glancing blow, but the baron stumbled backward, as one does when one is drunk, and banged into a trestle table.
 

Katarina reached for him, as did a few others, and she had a chance to see the shooting star who’d caused the damage.

Dickon.

Excusing herself, she made her way after him, dodging people as she went. She caught up with him just as he was trotting up the stairs at the front of the hall.
 

“Dickon.”

He turned and, seeing her, his face expanded into a smile and he started toward her in a headlong run, arms out, then stopped short, quite suddenly, and straightened. Katarina felt the bite of disappointment—she’d been bending over and putting her arms out too—but yes, of course.
 

She straightened and said brightly, “You look well, Dickon.”

He gave a clumsy bow. “Milady.”
 

“Dickon, I wished to…thank you for all that you did for me.” His face flamed red. “And to tell you you shall never be asked such things again. I promise.”

Her solemn words made him look directly into her eyes. “Milady, you saved my life. You know I’d do anything for you.”

She smiled warmly. “I know, Dickon.”

“And so, I’m awful sorry I could not…”

Her eyebrows lifted.

“…deliver your message.”

She blinked. “You did not deliver my message?”

“Well, I delivered it to the
master
.”

“Well, yes,” she agreed weakly. “Of course you did.”

“I pledged an oath to him, you see, milady.” His little face was tipped up earnestly. “He told me I must be as loyal as the garrison was to you. That is exactly what you always told me too, milady, about loyalty, so it seemed right.”

She stretched out a hand and squeezed his shoulder. “And so it is. One must honor one’s vows, or what is the point of making them?”

Relief lightened his features, and as he darted off with a jaunty salute, she straightened and turned to the hall.

So, Dickon had been the one who’d delivered her message to Aodh. She’d assumed it had been Walter.

She saw the steward now, across the hall, sitting at a low table and tapping his foot to the music. She made her way over and stood behind him for a moment. People were slowly making their way to their seats, now that Aodh had arrived. She could see Aodh, looking around for her.

“Good evening, Walter,” she said.

The steward started up out of his seat, then put his hand over his heart and shook his head in exasperation. “My lady.”

“Please, sit.”

He did.

“A fine night, is it not?”

Walter harrumphed and began drumming his fingers. “If you are partial to barbaric music.”

“Some are.”

His fingers stopped drumming.

“Walter, did you deliver my message to the queen?”

“Did I not say I would, lady?”

“And did you bring me my sword wrapped in bath towels?”

Silence, then he huffed, “The boy said you wanted it.”

The entire conversation took place with their gazes pointed at the hall. “I thank you,” Katarina said quietly. “It was bravely done.”

“My lady, I am well aware of all you have lost and given up, and how little you have received in return over the years. The urchin said you wanted it, and loath as I am to see a woman handling weaponry, it seemed a small enough thing to give you, after all that has been taken away.”

She drew in a large breath. “I thank you, Walter. I believe I may also have underestimated you.”

He tossed a startled glance at the hand on his bony shoulder, then at her face. If he had a reply, she did not hear it, for Aodh came up then, put a hand on her hip, and nodded toward the dais. Walter’s gaze fell to the touch of his painted hand on her body.

“They await us, lady,” Aodh said, leveling an unreadable look at Walter. She let him guide her away.

They partook of the feast, but only for as long as was absolutely necessary. The entire time, she felt Aodh’s leg near hers, occasionally, and intentionally, brushing up against it. Every bit of food he laid before her became a transmission of sensual intent, every passing of the shared goblet between them an excuse to touch.
 

Aodh lifted her to her feet before the sweet cakes were brought out.

They went to the bedroom and reveled in each other all night, talking and touching, whispering mostly of nothings, although Katarina felt compelled to offer a few somethings.
 

“MacDaniels is a cheat in all things,” she informed him quietly after he took off her gown and knelt at her feet.
 

“Inform Cormac, not me,” he replied, unlacing the little ribbons at the back of her knees. “I ne’er gamble with men who display the food they eat as they are eating it.”

She nodded in sympathy. “Thank you for setting him far away from me.”

The stockings came sliding off, and as he tossed them aside, she rested her hand on the side of his head. “And Aodh, heed me, you cannot deal with Wingotten directly on matters of state. It is a lost cause.”
 

“Fine.” He laid her back on the bed.

“He is ever in the drink.”
 

“I could tell.”

“You must deal with his wife. She is wise and reliable, and far more steadfast. At the least, she remembers things.”
 

He knelt on the bed. “Fascinating. And what do you know of Dunn?”
 

“Garrett Dunn? In my experience, he…” Her words drifted off as he pushed her knees apart. “Aodh?”

Propped up on an elbow, a hand around his erection, he paused and looked at her. “Aye?”

“Are we going to…talk? While we…?” She angled her head to the side.

He grinned at her slowly. “You like when I talk,” he said in a sly tone that quite made her heart speed up. “I’ve watched what happens to you when I talk.”