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The night he told her she would be offered as the prize in a joust.
“You will be wed to one of the greatest knights in the realm,” he’d said.
And she’d thought, “I will be out from under your thumb.”
The notion had reconciled her to the reduced circumstances of marrying a knight without a title. Dreams of chivalry burned bright in her mind. A man to honor and protect her. To esteem her above all else.
After all, she’d consoled herself, once we are wed, he will indeed be noble.
And a chivalrous knight would not gamble her future away, as her father had.
She recalled how her father laid the huge sword on the dais table that night. How golden light flashed across its steel blade, even in the dim firelight of their cavernous, empty great hall, where echoes skidded along the stone walls, as if something were always running away.
She reached out to touch the beautiful thing, inlaid with lines of silver and the flat, black stone in the hilt.
“Where did you get this?” she asked. The echoes of her question chased the echo
of steel down the stone corridors. Always fleeing.
“A gamble paid off,” her father replied, pride in his voice.
She looked up sharply at that. It was not surprising her father had gambled; it was surprising he’d won. He was an inveterate gambler, but he was an even more inveterate loser. Thus the almost-empty castle with the running-away echoes. Thus the poverty masked by a title: Baron of Ware.
Sadly, all the title earned her father was another chance to lose something that mattered.
Once he’d come home shirtless and bootless. Once he’d come home without a hunting lodge. Once he’d come home without her dowry.
She much preferred when he did not come home at all.
But he’d returned just the same, six weeks ago, bearing this grand sword and news of a joust for her hand, and seemed happier than he had in a decade. Almost exultant. Hectically so. He chuckled and smiled, indulged in conversation with her as he had not done for years—“I am having the solar roof repaired,” and “There are rumors Prince John has been spotted in England,” and “I have ordered more peppercorn; you will like that.” Random, meaningless bits of information.
But the thing that assured her he was in some strange mood was how he’d been tolerant of her questions.
Incessant, he usually called them. “Must you know everything?” he would complain. But not that night. He’d indulged her questions, even as he kept eyeing the sword, reaching out to touch it over and over, as if it did indeed cast some spell.
“This will come in very useful,” he’d murmured. “A king’s ransom indeed.”
Which may explain why he had tried to murder the Irishman for demanding it back. The Irishman who now held her tunic—and her life—in his hands.
“I am sorry to disappoint, lady,” Máel said, “but we cannot go back to the castle right now, not with you looking like a ban sidhe—”
She blinked. “A what?”
“—In the dark, after curfew. We will never get in. The gates are locked. There will be questions.”
“I am the Lady of Ware,” she announced.
“Not tonight you’re not. Not until we get my sword back. Until then, you are mine.”
They looked at each other, then she lifted her chin. “Well then, where are we going?”
“I told you. Into the wild.” He swept out a hand, for all the world as if he was ushering her into a great hall.
She gathered her gown and took a regal step forward, then felt a wrenching pain in her ankle. She drew up.
He sighed and wiped his hand over his face. “If you’re going to run, my lady, do so now, so that we may get it over with.”
“I am not going to run,” she retorted, as if this were some absurd notion of his. “I am simply gathering my wits.”
