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“This is what happened.” He spread a hand. “He has been hunting me ever since.”
He breathed deeply, relaxing now that the memories had run their course, with Maggie astride him, her hair falling down like the tangled russet-dark crown of a nymph. She was a vision to his world- and war-weary heart. Her female heat and simple beauty, the slim hand brushing the hair back from his temple, the way both intelligence and compassion shone in the gaze she’d never taken off him, this was the balm of her. A balm on everything that had been shredded raw over the years. A bond into all the things that had been gouged out of him by seventeen years of death and destruction, the years of outlawry before coming into the light of Prince—then King—Richard, when Tadhg had been certain he’d reached the pinnacle, only to be plunged into two years of crusading, then crowned with a fortnight of being hunted like an outlaw, by a traitor, living in cold and darkness and hunger.
His desire for greatness had entirely run its course. All he wanted now was…Maggie.
So, the simple things were best after all. Clean, green earth. Blue skies. A woman’s cool hand, brushing back your sweat-dampened hair. Maggie’s eyes. A shame, that the knowledge had come too late to save him.
He tightened his fingers on her hips and slowly lifted his, rocking her forward.
“What are you going to do with it?” she whispered as she moved for him, then bent to kiss him, first his upper lip, then his lower. “This terrible burden your king has laid upon you?”
He didn’t answer as he flicked his tongue over hers as she moved across his lips.
Her gaze was somber. “Could it not be destroyed?”
Tadhg shook his head and pushed the hair away from her face with his palms. “I could polish the thing unto death, and the etchings would still be visible. I could let it rust, or toss it into a river or the deepest sea, yet rust can be polished off, and rivers change their course, as do seas, and upon time, nets can retrieve anything from their depths. And in any event…I would not do any of those things. Destruction was not the charge laid on me, and upon my life, it would not make any difference; they would hunt me still, because I know.”
She pulled back a little and peered down at him, full of concern. “Then what you are going to do?”
“I am going to deliver this thing to the greatest knight in all of Christendom, William the Marshal, and then I am going home.”
Her body stilled and her gaze locked on his, then as it had in her shop, when she’d first realized Tadhg had done naught but use her, it became a single thing: not fury, but hunger, and the truth hit Tadhg like a storm: Maggie had no home.
She had a shop, and a bed that lay above it, but no home. Maggie did not belong to Saleté de Mer, that dirty town filled with corruption and the butt-ends of lives. She belonged to hilltops and fresh air, to wildflowers and open spaces and elemental things.
She belonged in Ireland.
She belonged with him.
His chest felt tight, as if his heart was being wrapped in twine. Impossible. Maggie might belong in a great many places, but she most assuredly did not belong with him. And in no sane world did Tadhg belong to such innocence as hers. He was hard, guileful lines from beginning to end, and his mission was fraught with peril and almost certainly more death. Quite likely his own.
Nevertheless, she wanted it. That was the hunger he saw: she wanted it, wanted him, and whatever was to come.
Impossible. There was nothing to come. There was only right now.
Clever Maggie would know this as well as he. She would not say those dangerous words again, “I want more.” For there was nothing more, only this, right now, together in front of the burning fire, with her body atop his, wanting him, accepting him and the things he’d done.
It was enough. His entire life had been reduced to this moment, with Maggie.
It was better than all the thousands that had come before.
They moved
together and did not speak again. The hut was filled only with her slow gasps and low moans of pleasure as he took her again, and again, and she cried out his name from the pleasure. And the pain.
EDWIN NEEDLEMAN arrived home in a flurry of snow after a particularly inspiring miracle play put on by the blacksmith’s guild. One did not expect lurching folk to host such grand festivities, but grand it had been, in every way: the food, the wine, the new business contacts, more than enough to make up for the unfortunate ‘settling of debts’ that had occurred with Mistress Magdalena and her collection man earlier in the day.
Feeling pleased with himself and the copious amounts of wine he’d consumed, he did not care a whit for the snow falling down on his head. Nor did he notice his key did not need to turn in the lock before he cracked the door open, just wide enough of a wedge to pass inside, then he shut it swiftly behind him to keep out the cold.
He stopped short when he saw a figure sitting at the head of his table in the dark.
“Bonne nuit?” he said in tentative question, for could it possibly be a good night if some unknown figure was sitting at the head of his table in the dark?
“Good evening, Master Needleman,” said the figure. “Or rather, good morning, as it is quite late.”
Edwin brushed snow off the shoulders of his mantle and squinted into the darkness. “Yes, well, the miracle play… Do I know you?”
“Not yet. But I am always pleased to make the acquaintance of masters in their trade. As is the king.”
