Page 176 of The Pirate Queen

Lord Howth, you should take better care to be hospitable. I would be pleased to offer suggestions on how you might do so when you come to collect your grandson, young Christopher, from Rockfleet Castle in Clew Bay, Connaught.

It takes only a moment to find a dockworker. She pays him a shilling to deliver it.

“Remember,” she orders the young man, “Lord Howth is at dinner and does not want to be disturbed. Wait until this evening.”

Richard watches Gráinne bathe. Since she docked an hour ago, she has said little to him other than “Fecking Galway” and “Imagine paying for a bath” and something quite horrid about a man named St. Lawrence. He knows well enough to leave her be when she’s in such a mood, but he did secure her a room at the public bathhouse and now he stands inside, leaning against the door, keeping watch.

Watching her, mostly. This is not the most reputable part of the city, and the woman he loves is naked not three feet away. There is a window in the room, but it is high and grubby and he’s not worried about anyone seeing in.

“Have you changed your mind?” Richard asks.

She lifts one long pale leg from the water. Suds run down her thigh as she brushes it with a linen cloth. His mouth goes dry at the sight.

“About?”

“Marrying me.”

“We are married,” Gráinne says.

“Not technically. Not anymore.”

“Common law recognizes us as such,” she reminds him, as she always does when he brings this up.

“Not brehon.”

“Blame that on your mother. I wasn’t about to be her pawn.”

“My mother has been dead five years,” Richard says. “Don’t let that stop you from making an honest man of me.”

Gráinne laughs. “If it’s honesty you want, then know this: I like things exactly as they are.”

Moments after she divorced him, Gráinne came down from the ramparts of Rockfleet Castle and returned to bed, and to their newborn son. She’d ordered the doors unlocked and Richard had stormed into their privy chamber ready for battle. But she had simply patted the blankets and held Tibbot out to him. Divorce, it seems, meant something entirely different to her. Though she chafed against the restrictions of being the tánaiste’s wife, she had no particular desire to be apart from him. They have lived together—as though married—uninterrupted ever since. At least once a year, Richard revisits the subject, hoping to make their relationship official again.

“Thank you for bringing Tibbot,” she tells him. “I have missed the both of you.”

“I couldn’t have kept him at home if I’d wanted to. Not once he knew I was meeting you here.”

“Gutty will be in a rage knowing he’ll miss the meeting with Sidney to watch not one but two boys.”

Richard watches small drops of water run down strands of her soaked hair and drip onto the floor. If she were not so intent on having this bath—and having it alone—he would wrap that hair around his fist and tilt her head back so that he could taste the skin of her neck.

The thought makes his throat tighten. He clears it. “I think he’d rather play nursemaid, to be honest. Gutty hates the politics of it all. He only wants to sail and fight.”

“Then perhaps we should find someone else to mind the boys. Fighting is the last thing they need. Did I tell you that child nearly lit my cabin on fire during our first night at sea? Wouldn’t stop playing with the candles.”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you stole him,” Richard scolds.

“I did not steal him. I simply borrowed him. His grandfather is welcome to collect him whenever he likes.”

“And in the meantime?”

“Until then, Tibbot has a playmate. They’re both nine. No telling what kind of trouble they’ll get into. And anyway, Tibbot has been lonely since Edmund went to foster.”

“Has Christopher not asked for his parents?”

“They are in England,” she says dryly. “No one seems to pay him much mind at home. When I found him, he’d been shut out of the castle by his grandfather for stealing sweet rolls from the kitchen.”

Richard curls his lips between his teeth to stop from laughing. “He isn’t scared? Not even slightly?”