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“Och, you’re a merchant at heart, lass.”
She gave a little shrug. “It is in the blood.”
“Eventually, repayment shall take the form of clothes, jewelry, anything else you desire. More directly to hand, a very fine meal.”
She looked over swiftly. “I am perhaps the smallest bit hungry,” she admitted.
It felt as though she’d stabbed him. He tamped down the sharp blade of guilt and said lightly, “A meal it is, then. Excellent, hot food. Bacon and pork pot pie. Pigeon and roast chicken slathered in butter. Stewed plums.”
“Pigeon slathered in…butter?” she repeated skeptically. “In winter?”
“Truly? You have followed me this far, woman, and your faith is strained upon the matter of a pigeon?”
She sniffed. “’Tis the butter that strains credulity, sir.”
“Mmm. Well, let me test it further: there will also be a hot bath.”
Her eyes lighted. “How hot?”
“Exceptionally. You will probably be scalded.” She laughed. “It will be set in front of a roaring fire. With rose petals in the water.”
She was smiling at his outrageous fantasies, he knew, because she had never had such things, and so could not imagine them. But Tadhg had. He’d once had such things, been surrounded by men who considered them not a luxury but a necessity, men of high privilege and unending wealth. And now, Maggie would have some of it, too.
“You are mad and ridiculous, Tadhg.”
“And wine in silver goblets, and slippers for your feet.”
She was clearly uncertain if this was a playful jest designed to uplift her spirits, or simply an outrageous lie. But it was neither; he meant for her to have these things, all of them and more, from the pigeon to the bath, if he had to steal a castle to make it so.
“And cushions and velvet and gold buttons on anything you could imagine a gold button being set upon.”
Her smiled faded. “I do not need all those things,” she told him gently.
“Yet you shall have them, all the same,” he said fiercely as they drew up outside a tall, high building, set apart from the others, behind a walled gate.
She turned to examine the three storey building, with all its expensive stone and the equally extravagant slate roof. “Is this where the pigeon with the butter resides?”
“And the scalding bath.”
She tipped her head back further, her lips parted as she stared up its impressive façade. “Methinks I believe you about the rose petals.”
“Did you not?”
“Yes,” she said softly, almost to herself. “Of course I believed.”
Tadhg felt a powerful knot begin to unwind in his belly. Because whatever she said, surely she had doubted, at least a little. It would be madness not to. There must have been some small crevasse of doubt inside her, gouged through the middle of her incredible faith in him, a stranger who’d brought nothing but peril to her life, about whom she had no proof but his own word.
So now she would be given the start of she was owed: some proof of his word, after all she’d done for him on faith.
He ushered her up the fine, stone steps to the door and rapped on it. No one answered. He hammered harder.
No guards came running, no stablehands appeared from the inner courtyard. The house appeared deserted, as if the entire household had packed up and left.
But William the Marshal would be here. He must be. He was one of Richard’s chancellors while the king was on crusade, helping rule in the king’s absence and keep men like Prince John from igniting any more mischief.
He would be here. If not in person, then someone from his household would be here. Someone who could get him a message…
Tadhg hammered again.
