Lady of Conquest (12 page)

Nimbus started to speak, then thought better of it.

Gelina rubbed her aching temples with the tips of her fingers. “I am weary, Nimbus.”

“I’ll go,” he said, sliding off the bed.

Nimbus turned to bid her good night. She sat staring at nothing as if he had already left. He pulled the door shut softly behind him.

Gelina touched her lips. They felt hot and swollen beneath her trembling fingertips. She buried her burning face in her pillow, unable to understand why she could not cry.

Morning found Gelina sitting in the kitchen staring into a bowl of broth with her chin resting in the palm of her hand. Unable to bear the silence of her chamber and the loudness of her thoughts, she had crept down the stairs and over the snoring bodies that littered the great hall to seek the dubious comfort of the kitchen and Cook’s company.

“I’ve no sympathy for the lousy sots. Brung it all on themselves, they did. Fill their cursed bodies with poison and then expect dear old Cook to dish up broth all day like a bloody wet nurse. Got another think coming, don’t they?”

Cook punctuated her speech by slamming a naked chicken on the hearth and twisting its guts out with a wrench that would have put fear in the heart of the bravest of the Fianna. The rolls of fat on the back of her arms quivered in moral outrage.

Gelina murmured an agreement and twirled the wooden spoon in her broth. She glanced at the doorway and then back into her broth as Nimbus entered, followed by a scowling Conn.

“Good morning, pet,” Conn said, rumpling her hair. “Yours is the first face I've seen this morning untouched by the hardships of the night.”

Gelina knew the ways she had been touched did not all show in her face. She ducked her head and stammered a good morning.

Conn leaned back in his chair, one hand rubbing his beard. “I hope you slept well. I trust the noise did not trouble you.”

She raised her eyes to meet his piercing gaze, nodded, then shook her head. Her gaze fell, noticing for the first time how the crisp, dark hairs curled on the back of his hands. She brought the spoon to her mouth with a trembling hand.

Nimbus scrambled into a chair, his legs dangling. “I slept like a babe. The only noise that troubled me was someone stomping up the stairs and slamming into his room . . . alone.”

Conn glared at him. Gelina kicked him under the table. Cook sloshed a steaming bowl of broth in front of Conn, muttering under her breath, then slammed an iron pot to the hearth with a ringing crash.

Conn gripped his head in both hands and bellowed, “Must you wake the dead, Cook?” He grimaced. “I’m going to have that woman beheaded someday.”

“Temper, temper,” Nimbus said. “And to what do we owe the charming state of yer temper this fine morn?”

“At least I’m conscious,” Conn snapped, “which is more than I can say for most of the Fianna.”

“More’s the pity,” Nimbus murmured.

Gelina watched Conn from beneath lowered eyelashes, unable to pull her eyes away from the tiny lines around his eyes. The merciless sunlight beaming into the kitchen stole nothing from his good looks. The deceptive boyishness of Conn by torchlight had vanished, leaving in its place six feet of male strength and determination, wrapped in a lifetime of experience she could never match. Gelina felt herself go pale and small beneath the force of it. She stared at the mat of dark hair curling over the smoky linen of his tunic, knowing that if she was pressed to string two words together in a coherent sentence, she would fail.

Conn ran a hand through his tousled hair with an oddly pensive frown. “If you must know, I found the softest little beauty last night, only to have her stolen from my arms before I could even discover her name. I would seek her out this minute if I knew where to find her, just to gaze upon her sweet lips.”

Gelina choked a mouthful of broth back into her bowl, having never heard the words
soft
or
little
applied to her before.

Nimbus rounded the table and slapped her heartily on the back, knocking a bowl of broth into Conn’s lap with his elbow at the same time.

Conn rose with a curse, swiping broth from his lap with his napkin and never seeing Gelina’s color go from red to purple. When he looked up, she was as pale as a bolt of fine linen. The shadows beneath her eyes stood out like bruises.

Conn leaned over the table and peered into her face. “Are you ill, child?”

His fatherly concern was more than Gelina could bear. She threw her napkin over her face, burst into tears, and fled the room.

“Women!” Conn cried in exasperation.

He sank back into his chair and slammed his elbow into the new bowl of broth Cook had put in front of him. He let out a slow breath and met Nimbus’s smirk of triumph with a black glare.

Conn had been roaming with the Fianna for almost a month when Gelina awoke from a forgotten dream one night, her body aching and tingling in ways she could not understand. She sat bolt upright in bed, clutching the coverlet to her tight throat. She scrambled out of the bed and ran to the window, dragging the shutters open with shaking hands. She leaned into the night; cold air rushed over her burning brow.

A lone horse plodded into the moonlit courtyard. Gelina drew back into the shadows of her chamber, fighting her first impulse to lean forward and cry out a welcome.

Conn dismounted wearily, running a halfhearted hand over Silent Thunder’s haunch. He tethered the horse to a post and started toward the faint light shining from the kitchens. He stopped and turned. His gaze lifted to her window.

Gelina hugged herself farther into the darkness, knowing he could not see her but feeling the searching caress of his eyes to the marrow of her bones. He stared at her window for a long time, his eyes shadowed. When he finally bowed his head and melted into the shadows of the hall, Gelina closed the shutters and pressed her forehead to the rough wood. Conn had come home for the winter.

A light snow dusted the ground one evening, giving off a dazzling brightness. The full moon hung low in the sky. Sitting with a woolen shawl draped over her shoulders before the crackling fire in Conn’s study, Gelina studied the chessboard with a newly practiced eye. Conn sat across from her, a predatory smile playing around his lips.

“Aha!” Gelina gave a short cry of triumph as she placed her knight between Conn’s king and queen. Despite their fragile truce, she still delighted in besting him at every opportunity.

Conn frowned, and she licked her lips in anticipation, blithely ignorant of his struggle to keep from grinning. With one casual motion, he whisked his marble rook in place of her knight.

He leaned back and crossed his arms. “Checkmate.”

Gelina glared down at the board, then up at him. Unable to resist his boyish smirk, she surrendered and laughed out loud, swatting him with a corner of her shawl.

“I must admit, Gelina, you become a more challenging opponent every day.”

“What can I say? My teacher was the most ruthless warrior in all of Erin.” She rose to sashay across the room.

“Flattery will get you nowhere. You look very lovely in that dress,” he said. She turned to smile at him; his voice lowered to a growl. “It suits you far better than those oversized breeches I saw you meandering around in this morning.”

She turned to the luxurious tapestry on the back wall, seeking to divert him and avoid another lecture.

“Look at these fierce battles! There’s a man with his head chopped right off. I’m surprised they didn’t run out of red thread.”

Conn came up behind her and laid his hands lightly on her shoulders, pulling her slender body against his in a casual motion. “Twas the battle of Loch Erne.” A frown touched his features. “A friend swore his allegiance to me, promising to send five hundred men to my assistance with the dawn. Eoghan Mogh surrounded us. We heard the trumpets and watched the reinforcements arrive. You can imagine our horror when the men my friend had promised turned their swords against us. They outnumbered us fifty to one but we defeated them. The rivers of Erin ran blood that night. I lost a thousand men.”

It was suddenly very important that Gelina speak, that she say anything to keep him from telling her more. Loch Erne. The name sounded an off-key note in her memory, like a harp crashing to the stones.

She twisted away from him. “Do my breeches truly displease you? I should hate to abandon them for skirts forever.”

“How shall I ever get you betrothed when all of your suitors persist in thinking you one of my soldiers?”

She bowed her head, unable to meet his teasing gaze. “You jest. I have no suitors. Who would want such a tall horse of a girl?”

Conn tilted her chin until she raised unblinking eyes to his. “Any man with an eye for a fine mare.” His lips brushed her brow. “But it will take a fine stallion indeed to steal my girl away from me.”

Gelina laughed to hide the thrill of joy that set her hands to trembling. She hooked her arm in his, and they sashayed back to the chessboard.

Setting up the pieces with care, Gelina asked, “This spring, Conn, can we go on a picnic? Just you and I and Mer-Nod and Nimbus? Moira will pack a lunch and we shall find the softest, grassiest hill in Erin.” She lowered her lashes over shining eyes. “You may bring Sheela if you like.”

“Why? You detest her.”

Gelina shrugged. “I just don’t fancy weak, simpering females.” She devoted her attention to figuring out which square the king and queen should be placed on, switching them three times.

“You just don’t fancy women who wear dresses consistently. And she only simpered when you and Nimbus put the ants in her rice powder.” He swapped the position of her king and queen. “This picnic may never take place anyway. I’m going away in the spring.”

Raising startled eyes to his, she sat back in her chair. “Away? On a raid?”

“I’ll be gone longer than that. I am going to Britain.”

“Why? The Romans hold Britain.”

“That is precisely why I’m going. We are going to ensure that they get no similar ideas about holding Erin.” Conn looked away from her face, unsure of the naked emotion he had glimpsed there.

“How long will you be gone?”

“For three months. Maybe longer.” He sighed. “I don’t wish to discuss it.”

Gelina wisely clamped her lips together although she ached to question him further. They played in silence for a while.

“Then the first warm day, we will go on my picnic before you go.”

Conn shook his head and laughed. “How I pity the man who must face those pleading eyes someday. As you wish, Gelina.”

“Do you give your word?”

“Have I ever broken a promise to you?” His gaze penetrated her concentration, forcing her to lift her eyes from the chessboard.

“No, you haven’t,” she murmured, averting her eyes downward. Casually moving her queen, she blinked and added, “Checkmate.”

On that same winter evening in another firelit room, a different kind of game was being played. Barron Ó Caflin sat with forehead resting in the palm of his hand, an oddly pensive look on his face. Two men sat across from him, awaiting his answer.

He finally rose and began to pace in front of the fire. “ ‘Tis a serious thing you ask of me. When we began, you mentioned nothing of this. ’Tis one thing to spy on my king and quite another to arrange his murder.”

“We do not ask you to murder your king,” murmured the taller of the two men, “simply to help us make him disappear. All you have to do is deliver him into our hands so we can deliver him into the hands of the Roman slavers.”

The hooded figure Ó Caflin had come to know only too well in the past few months drew a knife from the folds of his cloak and tested its blade against the pad of his thumb. A thin crimson welt blossomed in its wake. “Why waste time selling him to the Romans? I’ll cut his throat myself if you’ll give me leave.”

His companion’s melodic voice sharpened. “ ‘Tis not for either of you to question my orders, but to obey them. I will not have Conn’s blood on my hands. Or on yours. I have my reasons. I just do not choose to share them with you.”

The hooded man tucked his thumb in his mouth, sucking away the blood like a petulant child.

Barron planted his palms on the table. “What if Conn escapes the slavers and comes back?”

“He’ll never escape. If the whip doesn’t kill him, the shame will.”

“It won’t just be Conn I’m betraying,” Barron said. “ ‘Twill be men I’ve known since I was a lad. Some of my own clansmen will be on those ships.”

“And I promise you that they won’t be harmed. Once you’ve drugged Conn’s precious Fianna, my men will be free to board the ship and steal their king out from under their noses. We will spare as many lives as we can. Those that are lost along the way will be lost for a worthy cause. Conn must be banished from Erin. I must claim the throne.” The tall man unfolded himself from his chair. “Will you stand with me as you vowed, Ó Caflin, or with Conn and your . . . childhood friends?” His mocking sneer turned the phrase into something unpleasant.

Barron met Eoghan Mogh’s glittering eyes, then bowed his head in defeat. “I stand with you. You will be Ard-Righ of Erin and sit upon the throne at Tara.”