The Irish Warrior Part 21

"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? Everything? What on earth did that mean? 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.

Chapter 27.

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 eire, eire, Senna?" Finian asked, breaking the silence. 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 p.i.s.s-poor notion."

She gave a snort of derisive laughter. "You've no idea. My family is famed for p.i.s.s-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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 G.o.d'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 a.s.sume 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 a.s.sume 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 managing?"

"I most certainly do."

A sad pride filled her voice, which under normal circ.u.mstances he would have heard. But just now he barely noticed it, because anger was foaming so high against his own sh.o.r.es.

"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 pa.s.sion. 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 s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.ds, 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 s.p.a.ce between them. "Ahh," was all he could say, surprised to hear his voice had gone hoa.r.s.e.

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 s.p.a.ce 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 he wanted to rescue wanted to rescue her. 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, 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? 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.

Chapter 28.

Battered, weary, and waterlogged from crossing yet another river-"Stream, whichever," she'd snapped when Finian tried explaining the difference-Senna would have praised him as a G.o.d, if it were required, when he halted them after another two hours of hiking. She was literally stumbling from exhaustion.

They came to a small clearing, he stopped moving forward, and her knees slowly buckled. She looked up at him.

"We're done for the night, Senna." His tone was gentle.

She half smiled, rubbed her shoulders wearily, then threw her bag on the ground and slumped on top of it. She cried out briefly as her fingers took some of the impact, then was asleep before she could finish the cry.

Finian watched her, curled around the satchel-a pack full of k.n.o.bbly objects and sharp edges-like a nestling cat. Her knees were by her chin, her arms clutched around the bag, hair tugging free from the braid and spilling over her face until only the profile of a small, delicate chin could be seen.