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Ahead was darkness and a distant shoreline, the vast unknown and…adventure.
And right here at her side, Tadhg. Warrior who’d been through darkness but somehow not become the darkness. Outlaw who’d broken open the shell of her life and said, “Come home with me.” Man who’d come back for her when everything—safety, reason, royal orders—bid him leave her behind.
“I am not afraid,” she whispered.
Tadhg looked over her head at the black shoreline too. Wet, salty sprays of water splashed across their faces as the boat rolled and sank on wave after ceaseless wave. He slung King Richard’s heavy mantle off his own shoulders and wrapped it around Maggie’s, then put his arm around her shoulders, holding her close.
“I will keep you safe,” he said, as if she’d asked.
“I know.” She didn’t seem to mind the pitching rolling waves. “I am not afraid.”
No, she didn’t look afraid. She looked magnificent, bold and excited. Which was good. They would need brave spirits in the days and weeks to come. The boat rolled over another wave. And strong stomachs.
“I have one last deed to do, Maggie, and then we go home.”
“Very good.” She snuggled into the warmth of his chest and mantle as the winter wind blew against their faces. “What is this one last deed?”
“I must deliver the dagger.”
“To your ‘greatest knight in all of Christendom,’ William the Marshal of England??
??
He nodded. A gust of crosswind blew her hair up in fluttering arc before falling again. “And do you know where this fearsome marshal is?” she asked.
He pulled the hood up over her head. “Yes. I know precisely where he is.”
“Then this should not be too difficult,” was her bright prediction.
He stared into the darkness, beyond which was England, a land had never been anything but complication and trouble to him, for all that he’d served her king.
“Let us hope,” he said.
“Oh yes, hope.” She tipped her face up and smiled at him. “That, I can do now.”
AS THE SUN STREAMED through the windows of Mayor Albert’s hall the next morning, Albert stood in a beam of the bright light, staring dolefully at Baron Sherwood, who had returned not an hour past with his remaining men, the lot of which now stood warily watching their master’s face get stitched up.
No one in the room was happy. Least of all Albert.
He had awoken that morning feeling quite the swashbuckler, after his adventure with the Irish outlaw. Indeed, his own role had taken on the overtones of sacrifice, so resplendent in his mind, so chivalrous, that he’d been inspired, gone so far as to buckle his own sword belt around his waist, which he hadn’t done in years.
It was a rather a small sword, but made him feel stalwart. Brave. The sort of man who would save a demoiselle in distress.
Then Sherwood and his men had marched in, all shivering from the cold and quite bloody, and Albert’s bubble of self-approving bonhomie had been pricked.
It deflated entirely when Sherwood stalked past him, snapping, “Where the hell did you go last night?”
“Came right back here,” Albert assured him, nervously touching the hilt of his sword.
Sherwood saw the movement and his mouth twisted derisively, then he waved his men in to sit at the mayor’s table.
“You are certain you do not know where the outlaw and Magdalena went?” Sherwood snapped as his men took their seats.
Alfred shook his head firmly. “They simply dashed off.” He slid his hands in an accompanying motion, to emphasize the dashing.
Sherwood stared at him.
The mayor felt his face grow flushed. For the demoiselles, he reminded himself in a silent whisper.
