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For long minutes, they lay there and breathed, while the fire cast shadows across the ceiling and walls.
Aodh felt a deep, hot hum inside him, as if he’d been filled with…music? As if a steel bar had been rung, and the reverberations were moving through him.
Katy’s slender hand trailed across his chest. He watched the idle movements a moment, then said sleepily, “We’ll sign today.”
“Sign what.” She leaned up to kiss his neck.
“The betrothal papers.”
“Oh,” she whispered dreamily as she ran her fingertips over his face, then snuggled into his chest. “I told you, I cannot marry you.”
Christ on the cross.
The smoke-blackened rafters were beginning to glow as dawn light came in. “Why not?” he asked, very calmly.
“Because I cannot. It would be treason.” She shifted on the bed, curled closer to him. “I hold Rardove for Elizabeth, Aodh. She is my queen.” Her hand slid over his chest, lazily tracing the swirls of ink. “Of course you can see that.”
More calmness. “You said you were mine.”
Her tracing finger stilled, then she pushed up on an elbow. Her face was soft in the aftermath of passion, her mouth swollen from his kisses. He reached up and brushed the hair back from her face.
“You said you were mine, Katy. When I was in you, as deep as a man can be, you looked in my eyes and said you were mine.”
She peered at him. “You are not the sole possessor of me, Aodh.”
He forced himself to breathe slowly. “What does that mean?”
“I too possess me.”
She was the most infuriating woman alive. “And so you do. But you said you were mine. I thought that meant…”
She straightened a little more. “I am not responsible for your thoughts. I am, indeed yours in…in that way.” Her face flushed a delicate color. “That does not mean I am not also my own. And I am not marrying you.”
She did this to him every time, tore him in half. He wanted more from her than she would give.
“Go to sleep, lass,” he said quietly.
She hesitated, watching him a moment, then lay back down. He pulled her into his side, his arm firm behind her. She sighed and kissed his neck and snuggled in. Soon, her breathing was soft and steady. She was asleep.
He slid out of the bed, threw on his clothes and boots, and left the room.
He locked the door behind him.
*
WHEN SHE AWOKE, Aodh was gone.
She lifted her hand and pushed the hair out of her face, then stretched languidly, her body warm and aching and…wonderful. Belowstairs, she could hear the sounds of the castle stirring. Today, she would join it.
Mayhap it was this, maybe some other conduit to clarity, but in the dawn, after knowing Aodh as deeply as she had, in every way, she knew now exactly what she needed to do: send a message to the queen.
But not the message she’d been intending to send. Not one alerting the queen to a rebel presence, nor a message informing her how best to launch an attack.
A message to inform the Queen of England why Aodh Mac Con was precisely what their marchlands needed.
She would throw herself on the queen’s mercy if need be. Surely Elizabeth would understand, could be made to see reason. She always had before, every time Katarina had written on matters of Ireland.
She plied her fingers through her hair, combing it, feeling each muscle stretch itself in a new way. On one particularly languid stretch, through a gap in the canopy that hung on all sides of the great bed, she caught sight of the oak door, and saw it was shut tight.
