Chapter Thirteen
With considerable persistence, Katrin persuaded Reagan O’Hanlon to move their private sessions out of his quarters and off behind the armory.
As her training progressed and what Geordie had taught came back to her, there simply was not enough room in the hut.
The area behind the armory—a kind of wasteland containing an ancient forge and cast-off weapons—was deserted after dark, the time when they met.
As a consequence of her dedication, she went through her days nursing a multitude of bruises and one or two sprains—all accidentally acquired—that she sought in various ways to hide. The household undoubtedly considered her inordinately clumsy.
She now thought of the Gallowglass as Reagan, for that was what she called him when they sweated and flailed at one another, just as he called her Katrin. When they met in the ordinary way, to be sure, she still addressed him as Master O’Hanlon.
She had learned much of the man during their time in shared company. Big and unyielding he might be, and fierce on the battlefield—though she’d never yet seen so—but he possessed a dry sense of humor compatible with her own. And more and more, he approved of her.
Just as more and more, she grew comfortable with him.
Yet—it was of the harper she dreamed.
Deep and disturbing dreams they were, brought on, so she first believed, by her exhaustion from the after-supper training sessions. The sort of dreams in which even her sleeping mind had rarely ever indulged. The two of them. Together. Naked and touching one another. Tasting one another.
So frequent grew these dreams that she awoke knowing the pattern of hair that grew on his chest. That he had a tattoo binding one arm, high on his bicep. She awoke still quivering, the flavor of him on her lips, and cursed herself.
It got so she could scarcely gaze into the man’s green eyes for fear he would see those dreams. For when he looked at her…
It seemed he could see everything. More of her than there was.
The days both dragged by and spun so swiftly that she could scarcely number them. The Gallowglass drilled eternally. A message from John Randolph did not arrive.
Father and the head of his guard, Robran, drilled their own men also, for when the call did come they would go with the Gallowglass in answer.
Katrin watched those sessions with critical eyes, knowing she could match many of these men who ordinarily spent their days tilling the soil or farming the sea.
Wondering how to approach her father on the subject.
One evening, behind the armory, she challenged Reagan over it. “How d’ye think I am doing, Master Gallowglass?”
He wiped the sweat from his brow with an equally damp forearm and she grinned to herself, pleased she had made this consummate warrior work so hard.
“Ye do well.” Even in the low light, aye, she once more caught the gleam of approval in his eyes. Or was that admiration?
“D’ye think me ready to accompany my father’s men?”
“Off to fight, d’ye mean?”
She took up an aggressive stance. “O’ course I mean off to fight.”
He turned away from her rather than answer and put up his sword. His muscles rippled when he moved, and Katrin experienced that now-familiar, purely feminine thrill. The man had scars. They detracted naught from him.
Yet it was of the harper she dreamed, and awoke with his tunes playing in her head.
When Reagan did not speak, she pressed, “I did hope ye might speak wi’ my father on my behalf. Persuade him I am fit and ready.”
“Katrin, I cannot do that.”
“What?” She’d been more than half counting on it.
Da respected the Gallowglass’s opinion. He might at last listen.
“Ye know full well I am as skilled as many o’ Da’s men—who will surely march off to die.
Ye ha’ seen them training.” She’d noticed him watching, just like her.
“They are clumsy and inept, and handle their swords like reaping hooks.”
“I do know it full well.”
“Then—”
“Katrin.” He turned and approached her, looming up out of the gloom. “Ye be a woman.”
That sent her reeling back a step. The last thing she’d expected from him. “Aye. So?”
“A beautiful woman. Ye cannot expect me to persuade your da to let ye go and die.”
Suddenly he was right there on top of her, his hands coming up to capture her elbows. He touched her but rarely in training, and then mostly by accident. Oh, he might adjust her grip or lift an arm to a better angle. None of that meant anything.
Now he touched her, his hands warm against her skin. His tawny gaze grew intent with a look she’d never received from him before. Not just appeal.
“Ye be beautiful,” he repeated, and bent his head.
His lips—twice as warm as his hands—had time to slip across hers, mainly because she was not expecting it. In the next moment, she stepped back from him, tearing away.
“What—”
They stared at each other. She knew what. He did not have to say.
His lips curled ruefully between the wings of his mustache. The mustache she had just felt so very intimately.
“Forgive me.”
She did not know if she could. Not the kiss or even the desire for it, but the violation of the trust she had found in him.
She said, speaking to herself as much as him, “We are friends.”
“And is it forbidden for a man to feel desire for a lass who is his friend?”
“Nay. No’ truly.” Most of the clan’s young people knew each other from birth. Those who grew up as friends or even while annoying each other might suddenly begin to see with new eyes and then to love.
“Ye cannot blame me,” he said, using a touch of that humor he usually kept under wraps. “I am but a man. And ye are”—he inspected her from head to toe—“desirable.”
Was she? Rarely in her life had she felt so. And it took a strapping Gallowglass warrior to tell her.
“I am flattered. Truly. But I am no’—”
“Interested? Most wise o’ ye, mistress. I am no’ the sort o’ man upon whom a young woman should center her interest. As ye have so clearly stated, I go off to fight. Maybe to die.”
A sudden pain, nearly overwhelming, gripped Katrin’s heart. She did not want this man to die. An old, old worry that seemed on some level to continually haunt her.
“Ye be a warrior,” she stated softly, again almost to herself.
“A path I have chosen knowing full well where it leads.” He did not attempt to touch her now, having also backed off a few steps.
“As a youth in Ireland, I was not good for much. I had nay aptitude for letters, for learning. But I grew as ye see me, and I did ha’ an aptitude for warfare. A lad turned man does as he must.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. Difficult to imagine him as a young boy struggling to learn aught. He seemed to have appeared as a warrior fully defined. Foolishness, to be sure. Did they not all struggle toward what they must be?
“I am sorry,” she said, not quite sure why. Was she sorry about his past? For the choices he had made? For what his future held?
For telling him she did not desire him.
Well, that was not quite true.
Part of her did feel a pull toward all that this man was. Strong and unflinching, relentless in his word given—for he was that. Hired or not, his sword would belong where he promised it, to the end.
Once, as a girl, she might have swooned at the feet of such a man. Leaned into his kiss rather than pulled away. That was before the fear had grown in her.
She said it aloud. “What is loved may be lost.”
He blinked at her. Backed off another step and sat on a stump, there in the yard. “That is so. Indeed, everything loved will be lost one way or another.”
A stark, cold truth. One they shared?
“My mother taught me that when she died.”
“And mine,” he agreed.
“And then my brother. There are risks.”
“Life is all risks, mistress.”
“A man who takes up a sword increases those risks.”
“As does a woman. Yet ye ask me to help ye do just that.”
That made her flare. “Ye who go out to fight, can ye imagine how it feels to ha’ a man put himsel’ forward to die on yer behalf? A man ye love?”
He shrugged. “So. Ye will marry some staid fellow who perhaps spends his time sitting sewing shoes or training ponies and never, never takes up a sword?”
“I do no’ mean to marry at all.”
She could barely glimpse his face now for the gloom, but she felt him eye her again, up and down.
“That would be a terrible shame.”
“I do no’ see why.”
“Mayhap that is because ye cannot see yourself.”
“You are permitted to choose the course of yer life. Why can’t I?” She leaned toward him now. “That is the heart of it, aye? Why am I no’ allowed to follow the same course in life as Geordie did?”
“Mayhap,” he said starkly, “because Geordie is dead. And ’tis the instinct o’ those who love ye to protect ye.”
She gave a derisive puff of breath, even though she knew his words made sense. “Does this mean ye will no longer train me?” It might be best, withal. Now that she’d been made aware of the desire, she was not sure she would feel quite so easy in his company.
But he answered equably, “Nay. It but means I will not speak with your father on your behalf, to send ye off the war.”
She grunted. “Well then, I do no’ ken how I am to persuade him.”
“Nor do I.”
“I might dress mysel’ as a lad, mayhap. Run awa’ and enlist my sword in Earl Randolph’s army.”
“What good would that do? Whom would it serve?” He laughed softly.
“Comfort yourself, Katrin, with the knowledge that if, by some terrible twist o’ fate, the armies in the south are overrun and the English bring the fight here, ye shall be well prepared.
Ye may stand upon the ramparts and defend yer home like the Celtic women o’ old. ”
“’Tis a comfort, aye.”
He got to his feet. “Well, then. The hour grows late and I am off to me bed. We do not know what the morrow may bring.”
“Aye.”
He slanted a look at her. “Still friends?”
“To be sure,” she said readily.
They clasped arms as two warriors might. His smile was rueful. “A good night to ye, Katrin.”
She doubted she would sleep at all, with so many feelings astir inside. She did not say so.