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He lifted his hand, silent invitation.
Her heart began hammering, hard, fisted punches against her ribs.
“Heed me,” he said in a rasp, as if the words did not want to come. “To come means naught but danger and peril. If you were wise, you’d say no—”
“Yes.”
He exhaled slowly, as if he’d been holding his breath. “Then come, love. Let’s go home.”
Heat suffused her, followed by a giddy sense of being…lifted, right up off the floor. Weightless, buoyed, as if swept away by a strong wind or tide. By Tadhg.
As if she’d finally leapt off the cliff.
She floated down the stairs.
At the top of the landing, the mayor stared down, wide-eyed and stunned, clearly unable to cope with the enormity of the awful events that had transpired under his watch. A vital mission thwarted. A nobleman attacked. Dead soldiers lying everywhere. The goodwill of King Philippe…oh, it was all in ruins.
And yet… he straightened a little. He had drawn a sword in protection of a demoiselle in distress. That did not happen every day.
Maggie reached Tadhg’s side, and as he reached for her hand, he looked up at the mayor.
“Not a word about the ship till dawn,” he warned.
The mayor shook his head with a jerk. “Not until nightfall.”
Then, as if it was a dream, Tadhg took Magdalena’s hand and led her away from all the possible things she had but did not want, into a world full of impossible dreams she’d always been told she could never, ever have.
Chapter Thirty-Six
CAPTAIN DIDIER WAS WAITING, all the ropes thrown off but one. The moment Maggie’s toe touched the deck, he threw that one too and they were off, pushed by men with long poles, drifting silently out onto the dark water, as moonlight rippled across its silky black waves.
She stood, trembling with the aftereffects of confrontation and escape. Tadhg threw his cloak around her shoulders as the captain came and stood beside them. The shoreline quickly receded but they could see all along its edge, dark soldierly figures, hurrying from ship to ship.
“You made it by the skin of your teeth,” the captain said in approval. “They were coming on fast.”
“They always are,” Tadhg agreed.
“Do you think—” Maggie began shakily.
Before the words were out, he’d pulled her to him, dug his gloved fingers into the thick fall of her hair, cradled her head and kissed her ragged and breathless and perfect. Then he tore his mouth free and said in a rough, almost angry voice, “You are certain you are not hurt?”
“Barely,” she whispered.
He cursed softly and held her face, studying her in the clouded moonlight. The hilts of his weapons bumped against her as he tipped her face side to side, his warrior’s gaze traveling over her features. “Sherwood did this to you?” he demanded, almost a snarl.
She touched her face in surprise, remembering the pain, the fear. The joy when she’d heard Tadhg’s boots. Saw him surge out of the shadows to save her.
“It does not hurt,” she assured him. Much.
His jaw tightened. “Jesus God, I am sorry to have brought this all upon you.”
“And now you are taking me away from it,” she reminded him.
“Into peril,” he pointed out grimly.
But despite the peril and the oncoming storm, or perhaps because of it, all Magdalena felt was…excitement.
Wild, reckless little threads of it unfurled through her body like sea grass being struck by lightning. Salty, wet wind blew against her face, and as the lights peeking out of buildings back on shore twinkled into nothing but little pinpricks, they looked like little golden stars fallen to earth.
