The Irish Warrior Part 12

They were outfitted for war.

Pentony watched until the only upright figures on the landscape were the trees on a distant plain. He wondered what Senna had been wearing when she snuck out of the castle last night.

Chapter 17.

The gaping tear in her tunic was the first thing Finian noted through his half-opened eyes. The next thing he saw was the rounded tops of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

She was kneeling beside him, leaning over him, close to his face. Her hair, freed from its braid, tumbled down like a silken, if slightly dirty, curtain. Instinct kicked in and he stretched his arm out, to pull her down.

"Don't you think it's time we start for Dublin?" she asked.

His arm fell away. "What?"

She sat back, knees bent, feet beneath her b.u.t.tocks. She was bright, her cheeks a bit reddened from the sunshine of the day. "Dublin. Oughtn't we be on our way?"

He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked around, getting his bearings. Almost evening, closing in on Vespers. He took a deep breath, yawned, and pushed his fingers through his hair.

"We're not going to Dublin, Senna. I thought I told ye that."

She gave a clipped nod, as if she were barely up to the task of humoring him. "I recall something of the sort. I thought you were in jest."

"Is that so? If someone disagrees with ye, they must be joking?"

One pert eyebrow arched up. "When they say ridiculous things, indeed, I suspect a jest."

He leaned forward until their noses were barely a foot apart. "Listen well then, la.s.s, for 'tis no joke: we're not going to Dublin."

She practically flung herself backward. "But why not?"

He sat back. "Use yer fine-looking head. Do ye not suspect the king's highway is exactly where Rardove will go looking for ye?"

"Well, I-" she began, then paused. "It might be where he'd look for me, Finian, but do you not think this this way, deeper into Irish lands, is exactly where he'll go looking for way, deeper into Irish lands, is exactly where he'll go looking for you? you?"

He considered her a moment. "Ye must have been a sore trial to yer mum, Senna," he said, then lay back down and shut his eyes.

"I was a sore trial to me Da," she snapped, mimicking his Irish accent.

"We're not going to Dublin."

"You are serious."

"As mortal sin."

She was quiet, but in the ominous way a powerful wind might be, on the other side of a ridge, before it rushed over the top and bent trees beneath its fury.

"My business cannot manage without me," she warned.

"Then I suppose ye oughtn't have come to Eire."

He thought if she could have stabbed him in the heart just then, she might have. "I came for business," she explained icily.

"Ye came for money."

She sputtered, which he suspected was more due to an overwhelming excess of responses, rather than a lack.

He kept his eyes shut and tried to sleep. Tried to recapture the half-resting state of repose that marked his nights and subst.i.tuted for sleep.

He'd been up for regular reconnaissance throughout the day, and Senna had been awake, too. He knew, because every time he'd risen, her gaze followed him, although her body never moved, rigid as a post kicked to the ground, arms clamped to her sides. She ought to be tired. But just now, she may as well have been pounding on his chest with her fists, for all that her energy had abated.

He finally sighed. "Ye're like a spring wind, Senna. Ye never stop pushing. We're not going to go tripping down the king's highway to Dublin. Ye're mad to think so."

"No. I'm mad to have ever believed you."

"I never said I'd take ye to Dublin."

"But I asked you to!"

"Och, well, ye ought to have found another guide, then. One more well suited to being ordered about."

She drew back. "I do not order about. order about."

He watched as she ripped her gaze away and stared across the small clearing, her hands twisting around each other with great, unrelenting pressure. The edges of her palms turned white from it. She suddenly sat forward, her spine rigidly straight.

"I shall shall go to Dublin," she announced imperiously. "At once." go to Dublin," she announced imperiously. "At once."

"Is that so?"

"'Tis."

"Ye'll be going alone, then."

She swallowed but did not shift her gaze away from the no-doubt fascinating profile of a tree trunk. "How much will it cost?"

He gave a short bark of laughter. "What?"

"How much money do you want?"

He sat up slowly. "To take ye to Dublin?"

She gave a clipped nod, still staring away from him. But he stared at her very hard. The back of her hair was starting to glow from the dipping orange sunrays.

"Whatever ye've got, Senna, it would not be enough to make me go to Dublin." He threw himself down again, coiled anger pushing through him. "English," he muttered. "And their coin."

She sighed in a resigned way. He felt hope.

"So be it, Finian," she said in a reasonable, therefore highly suspect, voice. "I understand your reasons for not taking me. I accept them."

He examined her more closely. She looked exhausted, like she'd been...escaping from a violent, enraged baron. Her eyes looked wide awake and alert, though. Quite alert. A bit too alert. Hectic, in fact.

"What are ye saying?"

"You cannot take me to Dublin, and I cannot traipse about the Irish countryside. I must get home."

Indeed, her eyes were far too bright. She was losing her mind.

"Ye've lost yer mind."

She scowled. "I know where the highway is."

"Oh, ye do, do ye?"

She nodded. "I have that sort of mind. It remembers things."

"Oh, aye? And do ye also remember where the quicksand is?"

She looked startled. "Quicksand? I don't believe I encountered quicksand."

"Och, well, it'll be hard to find then. And the wolf den? Do ye know where that is? And how about Rardove's village, a few miles south, the one you'll pa.s.s through when ye're marching down the highway?"

She looked rattled, but determined. "I wasn't going to walk down the middle, waving my arms about," she said sourly.

He wiped his palms over his face, a few vigorous strokes, to bring blood to his head and help him sort this out. "Senna, ye've lost yer mind." He got to his feet. "I cannot go to Dublin. And therefore ye ye cannot go to Dublin. And I think ye know that." cannot go to Dublin. And I think ye know that."

She stared away from him with great purpose.

He sighed. "Ye look determined."

"A bad habit."

He leaned his b.u.t.tocks back against a large rock. It was warm from a day of sunshine, heating the backs of his thighs. "I'd have to bind ye if ye tried, Senna," he said in a reflective tone, "and that would slow us down considerably."

The smallest flicker crossed her face. More determination? Laughter? The urge to haul off and hit him? He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck, then flung it down.

"Fine, then," he announced curtly. "Go. The way to Dublin is fair lined with swords. What road does every Saxon knight use? Upon what highway does yer fine king's governor travel? And tell me, which is the easiest road up north? Soldiers, merchants, cows cows travel the road to Dublin, Senna. And the first two would spit and roast a monk as quick as turn ye over for the reward Rardove's sure to put out on ye." travel the road to Dublin, Senna. And the first two would spit and roast a monk as quick as turn ye over for the reward Rardove's sure to put out on ye."

"They'll never recognize me," she insisted. "I can blend in."

He eyed her head skeptically. "With that hair?" Her hand shot up to touch her scalp. "Och, not a bit of it, Senna. That sort of magnificence will mark ye like a scent across the path of a fox. And a ship? Ye think ye'll gain berth on a ship?" He snorted, ignoring the bright pink blush rushing over her cheeks. "Ye'd be raped before ye hit the end of the quay. And anyhow," he added, more mildly at her shocked gasp, "I like yer company."

She jerked, startled, he was sure, by the rapid succession of compliment, threat, and veiled admission of...something.

"Cannot yer father manage your terribly important business for a bit?" he demanded irritably, to shove off the...something.

"I manage the business." manage the business."

"Och, ye've made that abundantly clear, la.s.s. And what does yer father do, while ye're managing his business so awfully well?"

"Gamble."

Finian felt his mouth opening in amazement, not so much from the news, for that was common enough, but from witnessing the brittle pain it nailed onto her spirit like a stake. Her body had gone stiff. Hard, no dents, she suddenly looked impermeable, like stained gla.s.s. Many bright colors, all seared in place.

He pursed his lips, then said gently, "Ah, Senna. That bug stings hard."

A blindingly bright smile ripped up the corners of her lips. "I know."

His heart did a little tumble. She was a woman-child, and whatever hurts she spoke of now, he was certain many more lurked in the shadows of her heart. Every penny that came in, counted in her silent ledger, must have been a coin measured against the rest of her life.

And her father was a fool.

"Senna," he said carefully.

Woodenly, she looked over, the edges of her mouth still tipped up in that false smile, like a painted marionette.

"Men are fools," he said in a low voice. "Ye're to remember that, above all other things."

She was quiet for a moment; then, to his surprise, she laughed. And such a laugh it was. Quiet. Pretty. Natural.

"Truth, Irishman, I suspected as much," she said, a smile dipping into her words like an oar, pushing them along. "But 'tis good to have it confirmed by one of their kind."

Ah, this one was a keeper. For someone.

"I suppose I can spare a few days," she allowed in a regal tone, as if it were up to her whether they came or went from Dublin. "But I can't spend too much time with you, traipsing about these hills. My reputation, you understand."

"Before the next full moon, I'll have you bundled on a ship, Senna. My reputation cannot stand the strain of it either. Being seen with an English wool merchant?" He gave a little shudder.

She laughed, but his gaze lingered on her dirty face and limbs, her hair, long free of its confining braid, and her bright, intelligent eyes. A cord of worry unraveled in his heart. This woman had more wits, more bravery, more ingenuity than most battle commanders he knew, yet there appeared to be no one to seek her out, worry about her.

Just someone who, in all likelihood, wanted to kill her right now. And the man who'd abandoned her to him.

And Finian was to sail her away to England? To what end? Her father's home couldn't be an option any longer, not after this escapade. Neither was wandering the Ulster hills for twenty years. Travel, then? To where? With what money?

With no resources, no family to hand, and no connections, she was in a more precarious situation than if she'd stayed in the squalor of Rardove. She belonged nowhere.

Still, he decided as he reached for the leather straps of the bag she'd shoved on his back before leaving the prison, to say she was without resources was to be more foolish than the swiving b.a.s.t.a.r.d who had beaten her beautiful and burning body.

"Now, tell me, la.s.s," he said, hoping to entertain her, whatever was required to keep her smiling, because it was a travesty what someone had allowed to be done to her, so that she could ice over with such chilling efficiency. "What have ye put in these bags ye've made us carry all these miles?"

She moved through the springy turf, her footsteps soft and muted. She stopped in front of him. He looked up, trailing his gaze over her filly-long legs, hugged tight by the hose, over her curved hips, and up the length of untamed curls.

"Rocks?" he asked. "All yer pretty baubles?"

One chestnut eyebrow arched up. Indomitable. He grinned.