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“I would agree ye’re a fool.”
Another thin, unwell smile lifted the baron’s lips. “I think perhaps two a day,” he mused, peering at his fingernails. “One in the dawn and one before bed. Like prayers.”
“I’ll sign the treaty,” he said coldly. “Release my men.”
“Release them? I think not. We sign papers, get witnesses, turn over the dye manual, all that messiness, before they leave.”
Finian turned back to the wall in grim silence.
Rardove sighed. “Well, I didn’t expect much wit from an Irishman.” He turned to the guards. “Chain him to the wall and lay a few lashes against his back. We’ll see if he thinks differently then.”
They dragged him forward and shackled his hands in manacles dangling from huge metal braces bolted into the wall. A shield of dark hair fell forward as he dropped his head between his shoulders and braced his palms against the dank putrefaction, muscles contracted in readiness. He managed a brief prayer for survival, then one for vengeance, before the assault came.
It descended in screaming strips of leather, tearing open his flesh. Clamping down on his jaw, he scorned the agony, thinking only of what would happen to the spirits of his men if they heard him howling at Rardove’s feet. Battered back, stomach, ribs; he’d been beaten into a bloody mess twice already. Once more couldn’t matter much.
The assault was cut short on a shout from one of the baron’s men, who came slipping down the moss-covered steps to the prisons.
“Good, my lord,” panted the breathless courier. “Word has come. Senna de Valery arrives.”
“Ah, my…betrothed.” A pause. “Unshackle him.”
Finian spared a brief prayer of thanks to the woman who had saved him from this beating.
“How long until she arrives?” he heard the baron ask. The guards began unlocking the heavy iron cuffs from his wrists.
“Soon, my lord.”
“And?”
The simple but sinister question made Finian curl his lip in disgust. The soldiers jerked him around. A woman in Rardove’s care? She wouldn’t last a month.
“You will be disappointed in neither her face nor her form, my lord,” the messenger said.
“Yes, I’d heard she’s a pretty thing, if not so young. Twenty and five, if I recall.”
The soldier flicked a glance at Finian, then looked away. “She has a great number of heavy ledgers with her, should that matter.”
Rardove laughed. “It will not matter overly much, no. She will be…otherwise engaged.”
She will be like a lamb to slaughter, thought Finian.
The baron turned back. “We’ll have to continue our negotiations later, O’Melaghlin.”
Finian shrugged. “We’ve more to say?”
“I do not. You do. There is a great deal for you to reconsider. I will enjoy watching it.”
“I’ll reconsider the terms of my mercy if ye release my men.”
One graying, aristocratic brow inched up. “Mercy?”
Finian’s slow grin stretched from ear to ear. “I can make yer death a quick one or slow, Rardove. The choice is yers.”
The guards launch
ed forward and flung him face-first to the ground. The weight of a heeled boot against his spine kept him pinioned as Rardove stepped over his legs and sighed.
“Would that these beatings worked,” he said in a plaintive voice, “for I do appreciate their simplicity. But there you have it: they do not. One wonders whether it is due to the stubbornness or the stupidity of your people. Ireland is a strange land.”
