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She almost laughed. “Hardly. What I am is r
eckless and headstrong and I don’t listen particularly well—”
His arm wrapped around her shoulders. “I don’t need to be told those things, lass,” he whispered directly into her ear. “Ye’re the candle at night, nothing to hide. Ye also talk a great deal, and were ye to find it in yer heart to save a poor Irishman’s life, please do so now by shutting yer lush mouth a few moments.”
Her tongue was nailed to the roof of her mouth as she stared into the dark Irish eyes inches from her own.
Just then the outline of the two patrolling soldiers walked by in a circuit around the castle walls. Finian froze. The weight of his muscular arm, slung over her shoulders, was oddly comforting. They heard a rough laugh, then there was silence.
Senna inhaled a shaky breath and her life slowed to the pace of a languid breath of air on a hot summer day. She wanted to stand just as they were for a very long time. She wanted his hand to dangle, just as it was, barely brushing against nipples grown tingling hard.
How odd and strange everything was. Here she was, in a foreign land, fleeing a man who wanted to force her into marriage. Here she stood, shivering outside a prison wall, tucked under the arm of an Irish warrior, her body behaving as it never had before.
Strangest of all, this didn’t seem strange.
He removed his arm. She shivered, suddenly noticing the chill. They started for the gate, only to hurl themselves against the side of a building a moment later when a clamor of shouts and curses rang out. The two guards ran back to the guard tower, now ablaze with lights. Out on the rampart stood several dark figures.
“Bollocks,” came a hushed, almost reverent whisper, at odds with the crude curse. The penitent was bowed almost in half over the edge of the stone tower, gazing into the shadows below.
“By your balls indeed,” another agreed, his harsh voice bouncing down the ramparts to them. “The pricker threw Dalton right over the battlement!”
The shouts grew louder. Finian and Senna looked at each other.
“Break it up,” one voice broke through the mêlée. Balffe, the huge captain of the guard, waded through the mess evident at the top of the tower and stared over the wall. “Christ Almighty, Molyneux, you’ve killed him dead.” He looked back up and glared at the perpetrator. Hairy forearms folded over his chest as he waited for the pathetic explanation.
His patience was not tested. “He lost the wager and wouldn’t pay up.” The murderer’s voice lifted and fell unevenly, clear evidence of his overindulgence.
“And you’ve got more balls than wits or not enough of either, and I’ll not be paying for it. Go get him,” Balffe ordered, unfolding his beefy arms and striding forward, a mountain in motion.
“What?” The guard hooted and staggered backward out of the captain’s reach. “And be made into mutton by the Irish who stalk the castle walls?”
“Which would make you a sheep, you bastard.” The mountain took a step closer. “I don’t care if the godforsaken Saracens have left the Holy Lands and landed in Ireland.” He took another step forward. “I don’t care of they’re sharpening their scimitars and grinning at you, you rotting piece of dung—you’re going out there.”
Grabbing the man’s gambeson and mail covering between his thick fingers, Balffe hauled him up to eye level, a not average feat of strength. “You drag his body back inside, now, or I’ll hang you by your balls.” He flung the hapless guard down and pointed to several others. “You, and you, and you,” he ordered, “go with him.”
Muted curses followed the reluctant volunteers down the winding staircase.
“Come,” Finian whispered in her ear.
He gripped her wrist and tugged her to hover in the shadows by the crenellated barbican tower as the monstrous portcullis was raised. Creaking chains sounded and a dog barked. The men hauling the gate up grumbled contentiously—night duty was supposed to carry its own rewards, most notably an absence of tasks requiring attention.
The iron grate was finally high enough for the four men to pass under it and over the lowered wooden draw. What with their grumbling and cursing, and the gory interest in their morbid task from those above, neither the soldiers nor the watchers from atop the tower noticed the two hunched and hooded figures who glided out behind them. Nor did they espy the shadowy shapes as they turned away and dropped into a dry but remarkably noisome defensive ditch.
Senna felt Finian’s hand on the back of her head, pushing her down the side of the drop-off. She fell flat on her stomach. He dropped on top, covering her body with his.
“Hummphh,” she groaned as all the air was pressed out of her.
“Silence,” came his hissed reply.
“I can be nothing but, as you are lying on top of me—”
His hand snaked under her, sliding over parts of her body in the most startling ways, and came up by her mouth, which he overlaid with a broad palm.
She lay quietly as, above them, the soldiers grumbled in their efforts to retrieve the dead man. Grasping an extremity in hand, the foursome carted the mangled body over the draw and into the castle. The creak of heavy chains sounded again, and the barred gate clanged back into place. Silence descended.
“Up. Now, before their attention turns back.” Finian knelt between her legs and looked down at her flattened body, half submerged in the dirt. He pulled her out and turned her over.
Her face was covered with a fine film of dirt, her nose and cheeks red and creased. She was so covered with grime that the front of her tunic was barely distinguishable from the ground beneath her.
