Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
RORY
Rory had no idea where she was.
She blew out a breath as she stood on the hilltop, the wind blustering through her hair, and surveyed the midlands stretching out beneath her.
She could see the dark water of a loch glistening in the morning sun, the narrow inlet embedded with water-smoothed boulders through which the tumbling whitewater waves of the river poured into the lake, and far before them in the distance, the hazy outline of a craggy mountain ridge.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Locke asked from behind her. “I’ve always thought the sight of the green grass hills of Leinster in the early spring is the most beautiful sight in all éire.” He paused. “That was before I ever laid eyes on you, of course, my lady.”
“Charming,” she said. “But unnecessary, Lord Locke. We have already done the dread deed and our marriage bond is complete. There is no further need for flattery.”
“Believe you me, I well remember that night, my lady.”
She would never admit it to him, but so did she – and far more frequently than she liked.
Rory wasn’t sure if it was the whiskey or the residual emotions that her homecoming has given her – that feeling of rightness, of belonging, mixed with fear and longing for all she had lost – but their coming together had been like a firebrand, all-consuming and insatiable.
He had, somehow, overwhelmed her, as thoroughly as she had undone him, both of them reduced to an inferno of primal needs and insatiable wanting, and even now, she could not quite shake the feel of him, braced above her, their bound hands entwined, his bright hazel burning into hers, watching her with a knowing as intense and unsettling as one of her shadow-given insights.
Their binding had been cut in the first light of dawn, three days before, witnessed by Finn and two of his men – a mere formality, as she was certain most of the camp were reluctant witnesses to their union already, based on the noises they both had made.
And in the clear light of that next day, she found herself disinclined to ever again experience him consuming her, seeing her – knowing her in a far more intimate way than one confined to their marriage bed.
She brushed this unsettling thought away. “Once was enough,” she said. “Don’t you think?”
“Not even a little.”
“Well, it was enough for me.”
“To be fair,” said Locke, a devious glint in his eye. “It was more than once for you.”
A throat cleared behind them, and they both turned to find Finn looming over them, his face as unreadable as a stone.
“I need to speak with Rory,” he said, and she felt Locke bristle at the familiar way Finn spoke to her.
She was sure that Finn was very aware of the effect that such an address had on her husband and was deliberately trying to rile him.
Absurd, both of them. She hadn’t been lying when she told Locke that there had never been anything romantic between her and Finn – it had always been more paternal in nature, the affection and care he seemed to give to her.
She didn’t doubt that he would follow her unconditionally, would defend her even with his dying breath, but she was certain that he would rather eat red-hot coals than touch her in any way that was not strictly platonic in nature.
He really did not like Locke though.
Rory made a note to warn Finn against provoking him in the future. As amusing as it might be, she had no desire to watch the two of them brawling like two hounds over a bone, especially if she were the bone in question.
She reached out and laid her hand on Locke’s forearm. “Rest easy, Lord Locke,” she said. “I am your good and faithful wife, remember?”
His eyes narrowed. “Be quick,” he said before moving away to where his horse was tied next to hers by the stream, nibbling at the reeds.
“We need to be at Dún Ailinne by Imbolc,” he said, swinging himself into the saddle.
“By order of Lord Ironstring. He and his wife wish to greet my new bride personally.”
The Albion general, Richard Fitzgilbert – and his wife.
Rory’s stomach soured at the thought of smiling into their faces, allowing those hated lips to brush across her cheeks, to sit at their table and break their bread and drink their wine and listen to their miserable voices and breathe the same air as such murderous, evil monsters.
“I look forward to it, Lord Locke,” she said, turning towards where Finn stood, arms crossed over his chest as he watched them. “Truly, it will be a feast to remember.”
“Your birthday, isn’t it?” She froze, her back to him, shoulders stiff, as he continued. “Or so I have heard.”
“Yes,” she said after a moment. “On the feast of Imbolc, I will be two-and-thirty.”
“Then I will be sure to get you a gift,” he said, and even though she couldn’t see his face, she knew that it was a promise of some kind that she did not want to see come to fruition. “So as to celebrate you properly, my lady – and your brother, isn’t that right?”
Her heart twisted a little.
Twins, she heard Niall’s voice echo in her memory, back when they were children – one of them innocent and wide-eyed, and one of them an unregretful murderess. Now we must be friends!
Niall had loved it, that bond between them, but Rory – Rory had never found the joy in it.
She had lost what little childish innocence remained to her when she was six years old and stolen away from her home by a father she’d never wanted to be claimed by, when she had learned that she needed to be strong enough, cruel enough, ruthless enough to defend herself, because she had not been born to be shielded from the bite of the wind and the lash of the rain, not to be kept warm and secure, not to live safe and sheltered from the storms.
She had been born to be the storm, and she had always known that it was only a matter of time before Niall – sweet, softhearted Niall – would wind up being crushed by her her.
It was the summer after they turned nine, her and Niall, during one of those all-too-brief visits to the vale, nearly two years after the witch, before Rory was called upon to save her brother again. Not his life this time, but a significant saving, nonetheless.
She had been busy helping Kieran with the sheep-shearing, one of her favorite tasks from those early days of her now-distant childhood. “We’re a bit late for it this year,” he’d said when he’d asked for her help the night before. “Should’ve done it months ago, before the lambing season.”
“Why’d you wait?”
He’d ruffled her hair, that small, secret smile of his tugging at the corners of his well-worn mouth. “Why do you think, now, Rory mine?”
She slipped her hand in his and squeezed, pleased with his remembering how much she had loved it, this small show of stalwart affection.
Rory wasn’t sure what appealed to her so much about the task, but it soothed her somehow – the steady, repetitive nature of it, the smooth sound of the clipping shears, the low bleats of the ewes separated from their half-grown lambs, the easy silence between her and her uncle as they worked in tandem with one another in the pen.
He would tip the ewes and pin them between his knees, leaving the bellies exposed, and she would snip the thick white wool swiftly and carefully – the stomachs first, and then the hind legs, and then he would flip the mewling ewe around with a single deft motion, gripping her chin and holding her steady as Rory went to work, clipping a straight, smooth line down the neck and across the left shoulder down the spine, the wool falling down in a sheaf of rough, greasy white.
“Does it hurt them?” She asked after he had patted the latest ewe on her shorn hindquarters and sent her into the pen to be reunited with her bleating lamb. “To be shorn?”
“Och no,” said Kieran, reaching up to wipe his brow with his sleeve before moving to pin the next ewe cowering in the corner. “No doubt it’s a relief to them, being shorn. Feel the heaviness of the wool – they swelter under it, in the summer months. We’re doing them a favor now, don’t you know.”
Rory eyed the ewe’s quaking legs, the whites of her wheeling eyes as Kieran flipped her back to pin her between his knees. “She doesn’t look particularly grateful.”
“Well, she’s an old fool, and fools rarely know what’s good for them until it’s already passed them by. Come along now, my back can’t hold her all day, girlie. Get to it.”
They were just finishing up when Rory heard the tell-tale flutter of wings from behind her. She swiveled, and saw Molly perched on the wooden fence, a small scrap of parchment tied to her leg. She wiped her hands on her skirt and reached for the letter, unfolding it there in the pen.
She frowned, a twinge of unease in her chest.
uncle Kieran straightened. “What’s the matter, Rory mine?”
“Niall’s in the village – says to meet him there.” She glanced at her uncle, brow furrowed. “He shouldn’t be going there alone.”
“Now, Rory, no one will bother the boy. The ill will to the king notwithstanding, everyone knows Niall is your grandmother’s guest – they might be a bit distant, give him a cold eye, but he won’t be plagued.”
“Still.” She clambered over the fence, hitching her skirt high. “I should go after him.”
“The boy will be fine, Rory!” Kieran called after her as she trotted away, heading towards the nearby stable. “Who’s to help me with the washing if you leave?”
“You’ll manage,” she called back before bursting into the barn and heading straight for the stall of her mother’s favorite mare, saddling her with an inexplicable urgency coursing through her veins.
Niall would need her, and soon – how or why, she wasn’t sure, but she knew this feeling, recognized this rising sense of dread. Not as urgent, not as dire as the two times before, but an insistent alarm bell that clanged in the back of her mind as she rode towards the village, impossible to ignore.