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He felt perilously close to being a fool, for it turned out she’d never intended to sign the betrothal papers at all. The whole thing had been a ruse.
Ré lunged forward, forcing Aodh to jump back. Ré pursued, sword cutting through the moonlight with swift strokes. “So what happened back there, to land her in the tower and us out here, fighting in the moonlight?”
Aodh let himself be backed up, engaging in swordplay by rote, reflecting on all the things that had happened in the firelit hall. Maps and long lingering gazes from dark eyes, throaty feminine laughter. The high curve of her breasts, the depth of her insights, the way she smiled at him, so that he felt as if fresh air had entered into his lungs, and when had he last felt that way?
Never.
“Aodh, do as you will,” Ré said shortly, stepping back and lowering his sword. “But if you want her, and have somehow made her not want you, you shall have to…do something about it.”
It was perhaps the most unhelpful advice he’d ever received. He lowered his sword as well. “Something?”
“Aye.” Ré shrugged again. “Something.”
Ré sounded as helpless as Aodh felt.
He suddenly realized his jaw ached from being clamped down so tight.
Do something?
What more did he have?
Thrice now, he’d touched her—in the entryway, in the bedchamber, and in the hall—and each time had been more intense. Gone deeper. Burned hotter. Why did she have this effect on him?
’Tis her eyes, he decided grimly. They saw too much.
Or mayhap her smile. The secret home of it.
Her mind. Quick, clever, insightful.
Her indomitable spirit.
The way she’d responded to his map.
Whatever the hell it was, Katarina had prised him open and tapped into some wellspring of passion and emotion he hadn’t known existed in the world, let alone within himself.
And that was not enough?
He had nothing more.
A yawning chasm seemed to open beneath him as it had not done for years, sucking at him with cold winds of fury and…emptiness.
It infuriated him.
He had no time for cold sucking winds. He had a rebellion to conduct.
“Call the men,” he said curtly, sheathing his sword with a vicious thrust and turning to the castle.
*
THEY ASSEMBLED in the great hall, before the huge hearth, sitting at tables with flagons of ale and wine and trays of bread and cheese, talking until late in the night.
They discussed the strategy of engaging the nearby town, and at the far end of the table, an argument broke out over whether it was worthwhile to send an emissary to entreat the town, or simpler to merely overrun it.
“We’re not overrunning the town,” Aodh said, moving his gaze down the long table to some of the younger soldiers who’d been involved in the discussions. “I told you before we sailed there would be no plunder. We are to live here. It will be our home. It is not our prey.”
Cormac leveled a warning glance down the table after Aodh’s words, and the men subsided.
“The town is rich, and its goodwill important,” Ré explained calmly. “We will not squander it by a show of impatience.”
