The Irish Warrior (15 page)

“Did I frighten ye?”

No. I manage that quite well myself.
“'Tis naught. We lost our heads.”

“I didn't lose my head.” His low voice rode through the trees and over her shoulders.

“No?”

“Nay.”

“What was that, then?”

A pause. “That was hardly my head.”

“Indeed.”

She heard him take a deep breath, let it out. “I think we've to admit, Senna, that touching is a rash and dangerous thing.”

“Exceedingly.”

“We will not anymore.”

She nodded crisply. “Of course not.”

“And ye've to stop…” His voice faded away.

“Stop what?”

Silence.

She raised her eyebrows at the squirrel.

He gave what sounded like a ragged sigh. “Senna, ye have to see, I'm at yer mercy.”

She swallowed thickly. “One could be excused for not seeing it that way. Considering you have a bow and a sword and all sorts of muscles.”

“Aye, well, this is a more difficult matter than swords and bows.”

“Not to you.”

For a moment, he was quiet. “Aye. To me.”

She inhaled deeply, cool evening air. She let her breath out slowly, as he had, in measured degrees. “Not to me,” she said, lifting her chin that extra little bit. It so often helped. It failed so miserably.

“Nay?”

“No. I trow, I can hardly recollect what we were speaking about. Can you?”

The invitation to conspiracy came out sharply. Silence stretched out between them like an open range. Her breath sounded loud in her ears. She looked over. The bow hung from his fingertips as he watched her. She could divine nothing of what went on behind his eyes.

“No,” he agreed slowly. “What were we speaking of?”

“Muscles, itches, I can hardly recall.”

With the casual grace of a predator, he pushed off the tree. She realized she was trembling. Her hands, her legs. He stopped inches away.

“Bows,” he murmured. He swept his palm across her cheek, a swift, gentle touch, then dropped his hand. “We were speaking of being mean with a bow.”

She sniffed. “Were we?”

A small smile edged up a corner of his mouth. “I am certain of it.”

She met his gaze, his perceptive, ever-blue eyes, and she started to smile back.

“Oh, indeed, I am quite terrible with a bow, Finian. But then, you should see me with a blade.”

The easy, sense-damaging smile expanded across Finian's face. He approved. Jésu. She was lost. It was hardly his fault she'd fallen so hard. Was he to be disapproving, so as to call up her instincts for self-preservation? Those were bobbing in the Irish Sea, fifty leagues away.

“A blade, ye say?”

Was that incredulity in his voice? Better than pity, and she did appreciate a challenge. There'd been so few to live up to of late. Despite the constant struggle of keeping the business afloat, the last true, blood-pounding challenge had come when the business had been saved, twice, when she was fifteen.

But best not to think of that rescue just now. Or ever again.

“You sound doubtful,” she said instead.

His lips pursed, but his fine eyes contained a smile. An appreciative, if slightly incredulous one. “Not many people can toss a blade, Senna.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Watch,” she said, focusing on the goodness of his smile in this moment, not all the terrible things that could be, that had been, that would, no doubt, be again one day soon.

“Oh, lass. Ye've no idea how I watch ye.”

She turned away, her cheeks flushing.

“There's a meadow ahead,” he said. “Come sunset, it should be filled with—”

“Rabbits.”

She cut wide around the meadow, keeping to the wood, and emerged at the edge of the small clearing. Like a miracle, four or five hares sat in the center. They nibbled at the grass and hopped lightly about in the slanting golden light.

Moving stealthily around a tree trunk, Senna positioned herself in a crouch, squinting against the evening glow. The now-ubiquitous tall grasses hid her as she knelt and pulled the long leather thong from her pouch. Somewhere in the woods, Finian was also fitting his bow. Who would bring down supper first?

She lifted her face and felt the breeze while she pulled out the curved hilt from its sheath, feeling with her fingertips, unconsciously recalling lessons from her youth. Her injured hand healed apace since Finian's ministrations. And she hardly noticed it now. A long wavy reed brushed against her cheek as she made final adjustments to the curved wood handle in her palm.

Slowly she stood, lifted her arm, elbow bent, blade by her ear. One of the rabbits stopped, his black nose in the air, sniffing madly.

She half closed her eyes, all her attention narrowed into that one small spot. In her mind's eye, she sighted a line between the blade and her quarry. Her body hummed. The rabbit seemed to freeze. He looked huge. Unmissable.

She snapped her arm forward. The blade hurtled across the clearing, tossing off orange glints as the blade caught and reflected the sunset. Its humming thrummed in her ears, then the rabbit thumped to the ground with nary a sound.

Senna was rather more noisy.

She leapt up and screeched. The remaining rabbits scattered like swarming minnows, and she danced in a wild, high-stepping little circle, laughing. After years of minimal practice, through the turmoil of the past few weeks, and before the uncertain future that was now her life, she could take care of her own needs and survive.

Beholden to no one.

Finian watched from beneath a tree on the opposite side of the clearing. As she floated back into the woods, rosy with pride and clutching the rabbit by the ears, he moved soundlessly to intercept her. Every so often she lifted the rabbit level with her eyes and stared at it with profound satisfaction.

Her grin stretched from ear to ear when he stepped into her path, bow in hand. The sandy yellow haze of sunset lit her in a latticework of golden green dapples.

“Good God, woman,” he said in a husky voice.

She nodded happily. “I know.”

“Ye're good,” he said. But what he was thinking was,
You're marvelous, magnificent, frightening.

He wanted to pull her to him, make her remember very well what they'd been talking about in the wood, relight the fire in her that would make her body melt for him again. Instead, he simply said, “Very, very good.”

She grinned.

“All I ask is that, next time, ye try to
not
alert the English garrison in Dublin as to our whereabouts.”

She blushed around her smile. He reached for the rabbit and she passed it over, long ears first.

“That was foolish of me, Finian. I was far too loud. I simply felt so, so…”

“Just so,” Finian echoed, smiling faintly.

She began to reach for the rabbit, but he lifted it into the air, just out of her reach. “Ye brought him down,” he said. “I will clean him up.”

She stood and stared, then her grin grew. “Irishman, I believe you are right.”

He strode back to their camp. “Usually.”

After cleaning and skinning it, he spitted and cooked it over their small fire. Senna leaned so far forward to watch she was practically sitting in his lap. Finian did not ask her to stop.

“Mmm,” she sniffed, her nose in the air. “It smells good.” She pulled her pack close and loosed the leather thong tie. She fumbled inside and extracted a small pouch. “Herbs.”

“Herbs? You've got herbs in there?” He tried to peer down into the dark, shapeless leather satchel, but she playfully snatched it away and held it close to her chest, as if to hide the contents. “What else have you got, Senna? I could use a pot, for boiling water.”

“Next time.” She slid the tips of her folded hands into the warmth between her thighs and leaned forward demurely. “For now, you'll just have to make do.”

With ye?
he thought. Make due with her vibrant, spirited, startling self?

This had gone beyond playful flirting; what he was doing with Senna had a rock-hard purpose. He had no idea what it was, but he recognized the feel of it. It was memorable. Like going to war. Like preparing for battle by painting himself for the journey to the afterlife. Like diving off the cliffs near his home into the churning blue sea below when he was fifteen, with his mates, and knew he was invincible.

But still, those moments took decision. The plunge had been intentional. And always, there was no turning back.

He did not want that. He could not swim back up from these depths.

Cutting several slits crosswise along the cooking hare, Finian shoved handfuls of the herb mixture inside the marbled meat, then smeared a thin layer over the outside with his palm. With a flick of his wrist, he turned the hare. A bit of fat dripped off into the fire, where it sizzled and flashed into a brief flame. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Senna lick her lips.

“Ye didn't seem afraid when the English soldiers came.”

“I wasn't.” She looked up. “I was terrified.”

He smiled faintly. “But now, now that ye watched me kill them, ye don't seem too terribly wrought up.”

She didn't meet his eyes this time. “I raise sheep,” she mumbled. “I've hunted rabbits. I've seen things die.”

“These weren't rabbits.”

“I did not learn to throw a knife in order to kill rabbits,” she replied in a clear voice, and looked at him. “But they make good practice targets.”

He turned the rabbit again, very carefully. “Have you killed a man, Senna?” He said it casually, like he might ask if she'd brought the wash in from the line.

There was a long pause. “I've done everything once.”

Once?
Everything?
What on earth did that mean?

He turned the rabbit again, unnecessarily. It would be the most evenly cooked piece of game on earth. He did not ask any more questions.

When it was done, he flipped it onto one of the bordering stones, and when it was cool, they ate with relish, licking their fingers. Then they sat in a companionable silence for a while, under the darkening trees.

Soon it would be time to leave the clearing for a few more hours of travel, but for now they sat, the world hung in a bleached transition, timeless and clear. The sky was laced with steel.

“I do believe that was the best meal I've ever had, Finian,” she said. He looked over as a deep sigh brought her lush mouth fully into a yawn. She sighed again and slid her hand down her thigh in an unconscious, highly sensuous movement. Finian wrenched his eyes away.

She was alone in the world, and far too easy to take advantage of.

Too stunning in spirit, too comely in form to trust his motives around. He might lose his wits, go mad like his father, let her tromp all over him, rip his heart out one day when she decided someone else had more of whatever it was she wanted.

Women wanted. 'Twas their nature. Their duplicitous, fomenting, desirable nature. He'd learned that the long, hard way. No more lessons, ever again.

They sat quietly in the growing darkness, Senna sitting with her knees clasped between her arms, Finian flat on his back as twilight took its flat, pale shape.

Shades of pearly gray and pale blue slunk across the bowl overhead, but under the trees, it was darkly shadowed. The birds had stopped chirping. A frog could be heard in the distance, searching for a mate.

An owl swept low over their clearing, his big round eyes reflecting moonlight as he searched for prey. A tiny bat skittered and clicked in a jittery trajectory overhead.

“What made ye come to
Éire,
Senna?” Finian asked, breaking the silence.

Senna jumped at the sound of his voice, although he'd spoken quietly enough, in that low, resonant voice which did not carry far into the air, but deep into her. Like it was made of earth.

She'd felt it the other night, too—it seemed a year ago—when he'd stood beside her in the bailey, his hand hooked over her shoulder. He'd murmured to her in that soil-voice, and it felt like he was breathing for her.

“Business,” she replied. “I came for business.”

He'd been leaning forward, and his arm paused in its reach for a stick on the ground, muscles stilled in their silky slide beneath his skin. He continued reaching forward. “Ye mean money. Ye came for money.”

“Why else would someone do such a thing as this?” she replied in a flat voice, carefully leeched of any emotion.

“Why indeed.”

“You don't understand,” she said angrily. Angry she felt the need to explain herself. Angry that he did not approve.

“I understand 'twas a piss-poor notion.”

She gave a snort of derisive laughter. “You've no idea. My family is famed for piss-poor ideas. We ought to have a chamber pot on our coat of arms.”

He sat back and uprooted a small plant near his hip with much more force than was necessary. Small clumps of dirt went flying. She listened to them land, tiny, swift, muted thumps falling on soft leaf fronds. A miniature army in sudden retreat.

It was getting harder and harder to keep the emotion from her voice. She snatched an innocent stick off the ground and began peeling it, cutting into the soft flesh under the bark with vicious stabs of a fingernail.

She felt Finian studying her face. “Had ye heard of Rardove, Senna? His violence?”

She waved the stick through the air. “No. Not enough to know all…this.”

All this indeed. How could anyone ever know what awaited her outside the door? It was a dangerous business, stepping out into the wide world, and she was sorely sorry she'd done so. Whether it was done to save the business, or her father, or her wretched, empty life, she was all sorrow now.

But mostly, at the moment, she was sorry for the way Finian was looking at her, with something akin to disappointment in his eyes. She squared her shoulders in the steely gray light filtering down through the trees. “You do not understand.”

An edge of his mouth lifted, but there was nothing amused in the grating voice he answered with. “Oh, I understand, Senna. My mam had the same choice to make.”

“What choice?”

“The one women always have to make.” He stared into the dying fire. “Her heart or the money.”

Senna almost couldn't see the earth below her anymore. Her eyes were filling up with shocking tears, fed by unfamiliar, impotent fury. What would he know about the choices a woman had to make, in the dark, when the papers were sitting there in the fading light, and no one spoke a word? When no one cared for the lifetime of moments before the decision, simply the consequences that followed behind?

“How fortunate for your mother,” she snapped. The emotions would not be contained anymore. Sharp and fast, they shot out. “To have a choice. Many women do not enjoy such liberty. So tell me, when she married your father, was it for love or his money?”

“She did not marry my Da,” he said in a cold, impossible voice.

Senna went still.

Finian shut his eyes. Why in God's name had he revealed that? He gritted his teeth. It would only mean curiosity, then questions, and perhaps sympathy, and from this homeless waif—

“I assume she had her reasons.”

Her voice was cool, but soft. The dirt under his fingers was cool. Soft, too, like silt. Like her voice.

What an unexpected reply. It barely stemmed his anger, though.

“Aye,” he retorted, feeling his mouth twist derisively. “She had her reasons. And fine ones they were. A beautiful big castle, a fine English lord, coffers spilling coin and jewels.”

He pushed abruptly to his feet, surprised to find his head was a bit spinny. Up too quick, in a prison too long. That was all. Soon he'd be right again.

“And that's enough of that,” he said firmly.

She swallowed. He could see her slender throat work around it. “I assume she did what she felt she needed to do,” she said stiffly, as if he hadn't spoken. “The…taking care of things. One takes care of things. One manages them.”

“Is that so?” He stared at her. “Ye call it
managing
?”

“I most certainly do.”

A sad pride filled her voice, which under normal circumstances he would have heard. But just now he barely noticed it, because anger was foaming so high against his own shores.

“Tell me, Senna,” he asked in a low, steel voice. “What do you think of yer masterful managing now, sitting here on the Irish marches?”

She yanked her head up, a jerky movement. “An error.” Her lips barely moved. “A terrible mistake.”

And as he stared longer into her beautiful, staring eyes, sense finally routed anger. He muttered a curse. “That was wrong of me, Senna—”

“No. You're right. Absolutely correct.” She gave a brittle, bright smile. Each of her words had a precise point, and her voice was hard like stone. He could climb all over it and never find a way in. “We both had mothers who left. How peculiar. And sad. And, as I observed about your mother, so it must be true of mine: they had their reasons. Your mother left for pennies. Mine for passion. Reasons, nevertheless. How old were you when yours left? I was five. My brother Will was but a year. My”—she gave a tight little laugh—“was he heavy. To me, at least. But we managed.”

She looked over. Her eyes had turned into bright, staring gold stones. “Although, as you've pointed out, not so verily well.”

“Senna,” he said slowly in a voice he hardly even recognized.

“But then, one does what one can.”

“Senna.”

“Did your mother ever return? Mine did not.”

“Senna.”

“Did she, Finian?”

He crouched down in front of her and pressed his fingers under her chin, turning her face up. Small tendrils of coiled curls shivered by her cheeks; she was shaking, very slightly. Her eyes were staring straight ahead, bright, shimmering.

“Senna, heed me.”

The shivering coil of amber stilled. Her hard gemstone eyes slid to his.

“Did she, Finian?” she asked, but though her words were as brittle as before, he heard the plea inside them now: she very greatly wanted to hear a tale different from hers. “Did your mother ever come back?”

Something heavy dropped off a cliff inside him. “Aye. She came back, and killed herself. I found her hanging from an oak tree.”

Everything went still.

“Oh, this accursed world,” she whispered. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and he dropped to his knees before her, their heads bent close, pocketed by her outstretched arm and falling hair. For a while, they just breathed together.

“She oughtn't to have done that,” she whispered.

“Nay.” He cupped the nape of her neck and, in the small pocket of space between them, felt their heat mingling together. “I'm told she's paying for it now.”

“Do not say such things. She is not.”

“Ye think not?”

She rested her forehead against his. “I have a heresy in my heart, Finian,” she confessed quietly. “I have met ever so many priests and abbots in my travels. Some have been gentle hearts, others with a brutality to depths I cannot fathom. At times, I was of the opinion they must worship different gods, because they have told me such different things.”

He smiled faintly. Senna would have an opinion about dirt. “They all said the same to me,” he said. “Ye think some of them may be wrong?”

“I think,” she replied slowly, “if there is a place in Heaven for each of them, how could there not be a place for each of us?”

He scooped up her free hand as it dangled off her knee in the small pocket of space between them. “Ahh,” was all he could say, surprised to hear his voice had gone hoarse.

Her free hand, the one he wasn't holding, scuffed and dirty, rested on her knees. Her braid fell over her shoulder, trailing into the space between them like a rope lowered down the side of a castle.

She was succoring him, and all he wanted was to rescue her. It was enough to make you weep. He, who was filled with so many holes he didn't know why his ship hadn't sunk thus far,
he
wanted to rescue
her.
A woman who shone like the sun. He'd bared his deepest shame, the horror in his dreams, and all he could think was,
How could your mother have left you behind?

“You see?” she asked.

“I see.” Lifting her delicate hand in his callused one, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles, then let her go.

“Finian—”

He got to his feet. “Ready, Senna?”

She had her mouth open, as if to say something more, then she closed it and got to her feet. Wise woman. “I am ready.”

“Just another hour or so.”

He turned and began trekking a path into the woods. He heard her swing the pack over her shoulder and follow behind. They didn't speak of missing mothers again. They didn't need to.