by Shayla Black
“True,” echoed Jana. “Is there a way out?”
All three of them turned to look at Maeve.
With a sigh and a strained smile, she turned away, her soft footsteps retreating.
“Good lady!” he called after her, feeling as if his last hope had left him. Jana, Fiona, and Brighid had not the mind between them to help him out.
“Maeve has a plan,” Brighid assured with an impish grin. “Maeve always has a plan.”
By God’s oath, he hoped so. Though he could do little until she decided to reveal what that might be. Zounds, he hated idleness.
“Why do men stare at Fiona’s breasts?” Brighid asked suddenly, much unexpectedly.
Kieran sent a wide-eyed glance up to the girl, then to Fiona’s…assets. How, by Saint Michael’s balls, was he to answer that?
He simply would not. Instead, he stared impatiently up at the afternoon sky and waited. Finally, Maeve reappeared, a castle guard trailing in her wake.
Wordlessly, she pointed to Kieran, trapped in the mud.
With no more than a nod, the guard retrieved a rope from the ground and tossed the end down to him.
He felt the smile break his face.
Now he could get out of this mud pit and begin to establish authority. He could meet the O’Shea sisters, pick one to wife, breed her, then leave this backward land and return to the mercenary life that called his name.
Such could not happen soon enough to suit him!
The rope made its way close enough that he reached out and grabbed hold. With a good tug, he established that someone or something held the other end in place.
He lifted himself by the arms, the mud making a loud sucking noise sound as his feet emerged from the sludge. Once they were free, he planted them against the wall and began climbing his way out.
In three steps, he made his way to the top and emerged into the sunlight, surrounded by four women. The castle guard disappeared. Flynn stood away from the women, glaring in his direction.
Kieran turned to his savior. Maeve crossed her arms over her chest and met his stare with a flat expression.
Still, he felt a charge of sexual energy leap through him.
She would be an interesting, spirited woman to bed, all calm and logical on the outside, all fiery need on the inside.
After a lingering glance, he murmured, “Thank you, Maeve.”
“Thank me not. I do not want your appreciation.”
Though her voice held contempt, her eyes held an awareness of him as a man. He saw it plainly. And he smiled.
“Nonetheless, you have it. Now excuse me.”
After executing a courtly bow, despite his muddy attire and squelching boots, Kieran made his way toward Flynn.
Now was the best time to show the Irish at Langmore—Flynn O’Shea especially—who was master here.
* * * *
Maeve watched Kildare stride toward her brother with long, purposeful steps. Flynn glared in return, stiffening as the Englishman came closer. Concerned, she frowned.
Before Flynn could speak, much less move, Kildare took the final step of his approach—and swung his fist into her brother’s jaw.
She heard an audible smack, a solid connection with his flesh. Flynn staggered back, head reeling as he clutched the side of his face.
Beside her, Fiona and Jana both gasped, while she felt herself gape in incredulity.
Kildare behaved as if he knew—or cared—not about their horror. He charged her brother again, this time planting a fist in his stomach. Flynn grunted and doubled over.
How dare the beast! She had convinced Flynn to release him from the mud pit, and he wasted no time in harming her brother in return.
How English.
“Touch him no more!” she shouted.
The rogue spared her not a word nor glance.
Flynn recovered from the last blow and swung at Kildare’s face. The rogue ducked, grinning.
“Hit me,” he invited. “If you can.”
“I’ll be doin’ it soon, I tell you,” Flynn promised, then charged with raised fists at Kildare again.
As Flynn rounded his fist in attack, the Englishman caught his wrist in a solid grip. The thwack echoed in the air as he spun Flynn around and hoisted the arm behind her brother’s back with a painful shove. Next, he grabbed Flynn’s hair in the other fist and propelled him against Langmore’s outer wall, face first.
With Fiona’s second shocked gasp in her ears, Maeve raced after the pair.
“I’ll not take this from you, I tell you,” vowed Flynn. “I’m promising it will be my pleasure to kill you.”
Kildare only shoved him against the wall harder, his shoulder pushing Flynn’s face into the unyielding stone. As Maeve approached, she saw the miscreant still wore a smile.
Such a fight made him grin? What manner of man—or beast—was he?
“I would not deem it likely now, would you?” taunted the Englishman. “Of course, if you wish to fight more, ’twill be my great pleasure to oblige you.”
The glitter in Kildare’s unusual blue-green eyes confirmed his taunt in a way that made Maeve shiver. She had no doubt he would enjoy besting Flynn into oblivion.
She had wondered upon first meeting Kildare if King Henry had finally chosen a warrior to defend the territory with his own hands, instead of one who would line the pockets of others for privilege. For Kildare seemed a man who would not tolerate much idleness. He would take matters into his own hands.
Seeing such so clearly displayed did not bode well for the rebellion’s future.
“Aye, now!” Flynn challenged.
With a laugh, Kildare released him. “I look forward to wiping the floor between here and the great hall with your backside.”
“’Tis welcome to try, you are,” sneered Flynn.
“Nay, both of you!” Maeve shouted.
The brash Kildare turned to her and actually winked. “’Twill not take long, love.”
Did he truly think that concerned her? Maeve wanted to slap him. Of all the arrogant, brazen…
She sucked in hard as the Englishman made another fist and glared at her brother with great intent. Flynn was most important now. She must help him, for he had not the experience to deal with a warrior of the earl’s ilk.
Grabbing Kildare by the crook of his elbow, Maeve tried to stop the next punch. He merely shrugged off her touch, then plowed his fist into her brother’s face. Squarely into his nose.
Blood spurted everywhere.
Behind her, Jana gagged. Fiona gasped again, wringing her hands. Brighid was wide-eyed with shock. No help there.
Maeve sprinted after the combating men again—a moment before Kildare snapped a fist from his side to Flynn’s gut faster than she could blink, then planted the other into his jaw once again.
With a snap, a crack, and a grunt, the fight ended, punctuated by the thud of Flynn falling to the earth.
As if sensing her approach, Kildare wiped the blood upon his knuckles on his hose, shrugged, and turned to her.
Again, he wore a smile. Clearly, such actions pleased him—to bully a man unprepared for such an attack.
Maeve approached the tyrant, fist clenched, and rammed it into his shoulder. “That was heathen and unnecessary, you ogre!”
With a momentary scowl, Kildare shrugged off her blow. “Of course it was necessary. Do you think, lovely Maeve, that Flynn O’Shea will question my authority so blatantly again?”
Knowing Flynn, aye. At least every day, mayhap more. But no good could come from telling Kildare thus.
Bending to her brother, she examined his face. When he woke, he would be bruised. His lip would need a stitch, mayhap two. His head would pound harder than a church bell on Sunday, but he would suffer no lasting damage.
Trying to rein in her temper, she drew in a deep breath and rose. “Have you considered that you might rule better with kindness?”
“Like O’Shea planned to kindly kill me? Thank you, but such interests me not, for o
bvious reasons.”
Again, he smiled. Maeve felt her heart pick up pace. Most like from fear at the coarse violence of his action. It had naught to do with the charm of that smile, no matter that it looked so natural, as if he’d been born with it…
She shook her head to clear the stray thought. “So, because you were but repaying his misdeed makes yours somehow more right?”
“War is not about fairness, Maeve. It is about domination, about the power to possess your claim. I have come here to do that.”
Maeve could not look away from Kildare’s face. Gone was the dangerous grin and easy charm. The man who stood before her with grim eyes and lightning-fast fists was all warrior. She shivered and resented her own hesitance.
Irish women bowed to no one, least of all English beasts.
“Then possess your claim, if you can,” she shot out with contempt. “But do not kill my brother in the process, you oaf.”
Surprise overtook his hawkish features. “Your brother? You are one of the O’Shea sisters?”
“Aye.”
“And these are the other three?” He gestured to her sisters still standing beside the mud pit, fighting illness, shock, and fear.
“Aye. What of us?”
That smile crept across his mouth again, inching up the ends by degrees until his eyes danced with mischief and challenge—and Maeve’s stomach began to flit, most certainly with anxiety. She refused to think of it as aught else.
“King Henry sent me here to take one of you to wife.”
Maeve felt certain she could not possibly have heard him correctly. Wife? Henry Tudor expected one of them to wed such a fierce, conceited, glib, handsome scoundrel?
Who, unless she had too many bats in the belfry, would willingly do such a foolish thing?
Besides, she could think of other reasons not to wed him. Many of them.
“You cannot do such a thing, for the Statue of Kilkenney prohibits the English from marrying the—”
“Irish?” he interrupted, still smiling. Somehow, though, it looked strained. “Yes, I believe that was mentioned to the king.”
“And he sent you anyway?” She frowned.
Kieran nodded, the smile now fading altogether. He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck and muttered an oath of disgust when he came away with mud.
“Aye, he sent me. My good friend Aric, who has the king’s ear, reminded his highness that my father was an O’Neill.”
Maeve blanched. She could not have been more shocked had he told her snow would fall come July. Him, of Irish blood?
There was no trace of his heritage in his dress, his speech, or his manner. Was such possible?
“Nay,” she breathed.
“Oh, aye. So you see, I can wed any of you I wish. And I will do just that, sweet Maeve. By week’s end.”
* * * *
Though Kieran was in no great rush to take a bride, the look of shock on Maeve’s fair face, her for-once-mute mouth, nearly made the moment worthwhile.
And over the next few days, he could relish the delicious torment of reminding her that he was expected to take a wife from among her and her sisters—and give no hint as to who he might choose. True, he knew little of Maeve, but he did know such teasing would drive her to fury.
All the better.
Smiling once more, he opened his mouth to bait the wonderfully stunned Maeve, when the other three O’Shea sisters came dashing up to her side.
“What?” demanded Jana. “You’re to wed one of us?”
“Aye,” he confirmed, then glanced down to the woman’s swollen belly with a grimace. So much for breeding this one soon. She was far ahead of him in that game.
The woman’s dark eyes flashed in her pale face. Her faded lips pursed with indignation, flaring them with color. “I would end my life before breeding myself to an English dog.”
“Did you not hear him say he was Irish?” Brighid asked, smiling happily, as if that solved everything.
Jana scowled at her youngest sister. “Being of Irish blood does not make him Irish of heart, you foolish girl.”
With that, the pregnant woman knelt to her unconscious brother with as much grace as a woman mere days from delivering a babe could.
Kieran glanced at the remaining three. Fiona wrung her hands, and her mouth curled up in an uncertain smile. She was a truly lovely creature with golden curls and honey skin, and silent. Mayhap she might prove blessedly biddable.
Then his gaze slid toward Brighid. She possessed Fiona’s golden curls, but they appeared brighter on her pink-cheeked face. He supposed her to be about twelve, give or take a year. Her face showed promise of the beauty she would be. Aye, she was young, but assuredly tamable. Thus far, she had been the most pleasant of the O’Shea sisters.
Finally, he looked to devious Maeve. There was little avoiding it. Her red hair, streaked with bits of her sisters’ gold, lit up like a blaze beneath the afternoon sky.
He guessed her younger than Jana but older than Fiona, which placed her somewhere about twenty, he surmised. Long past the time to take a husband. He frowned. How could it be that such a beauty had no husband? Were all the men in Ireland more addled than he thought?
Maeve cleared her throat. Her face revealed little, except that her shock over his announcement was hidden away.
“I do not wish to disappoint you, my lord, but your choices of a bride are limited,” she said, not sounding disappointed in the least. In fact, her mouth turned up in a ghost of a smug smile. “As you noticed, Jana expects a child any day.”
“Where is her husband?”
“Dead,” Maeve spat out in a hissed syllable. “Geralt was executed by the last earl of Kildare.”
Kieran absorbed that bit of unfortunate news with a nod. No wonder the O’Sheas had given him such a dangerous welcome. Still, he had no doubt this husband of Jana’s had been brewing rebellion—and had known the penalties for such.
“Aye,” said the pregnant woman as she rose to her feet. “My babe will never know his father, thanks to you and your king. He’s very nearly an orphan before he is even born, you English scum. Don’t think I’ll be marryin’ the likes of you. I’d plant a blade in your back first.”
Jana’s face was flushed with anger, and Kieran actually acknowledged that she had once been very pretty, before grief and difficulties of pregnancy. As a wife, she would be trying, though he believed he could keep her from stabbing the life out of him. And ’twas clear she could breed. If she could prove beneficial to his post here, his wife she would be. Though he knew wedding a woman already with child would mean a longer wait until he could return to his life as a mercenary.
“And I am promised to another.”
Kieran heard those words, and heard them in Maeve’s voice.
A surge of denial slid through him as he whipped his gaze back to the flame-headed O’Shea.
“You are promised?”
Her gaze looked cool and smug as she nodded. “I became betrothed November last.”
Kieran vowed no such wedding would take place, at least not until he had decided which O’Shea sister to take to wife. Matters of the state would come before the matters of Maeve’s heart. He would choose her if it suited him, betrothal be damned.
“And when is this propitious occasion to be?” he asked, wondering at a rise of his anger.
“She and Quaid will wed when he is freed by the English in Dublin,” blurted Brighid.
Frowning, Kieran remembered Maeve’s earlier words. “Did you not say Quaid would be at the mercy of the hangman’s noose soon?”
Maeve’s wide red mouth pursed with a frown. “He did naught wrong.”
Kieran raised a brow at her. Did she really believe that, or did she merely see rebellion against the English as right?
“That leaves me and Fiona, my lord,” offered Brighid.
A quick glance at the two fair-headed sisters revealed Fiona trying to hide her grimace with a false smile, and Brighid’s mouth turned up in a hopeful gri
n. He nearly smiled at the absurdity of it.
“I will wed you, my lord,” Brighid offered. “For then I could learn of men and women and how babies are made…”
Babies? Brighid was little more than a child herself. ’Twould be some while before he would think her grown enough to take to his bed. But again, if wedding the imp would further his cause here, mayhap he could bring himself to do it and get a babe on her soon.
Kieran turned his gaze to the other blond girl. Her smile was too bright, inciting his curiosity.
“Fiona?”
Kieran could swear he saw her flinch when he called her name. But that fixed yet tense smile remained in place.
“My lord,” she murmured, not quite looking at him.
“Come here.”
He wasn’t sure what possessed him to issue the command, but he knew his instincts were right when she complied, hands shaking so hard he wondered if she was ill.
“My lord,” she said again when she stopped before him. This time her voice shook like her hands as it clawed its way up her throat. No doubt he terrified her.
Mayhap he should not have beaten her brother so senseless.
But it had felt too good.
Kieran regarded Fiona. “I don’t bite.” Then he smiled, hoping she would respond in kind. “Unless you ask me.”
Fiona blanched instead. Kieran frowned and waved her away. She retreated, face relaxing with relief, hands pressed into a white-knuckled clasp.
Sighing, he gazed over the bunch once more as Jana rose to face him. Flynn moaned in the background.
With a glance down, Kieran found his hose and boots a bloody, muddy mess, his tunic torn, his dignity challenged, and his knuckles sore from punching Flynn.
And he had yet to even enter the castle.
Such ill beginnings did not bode well for any stay in Ireland.
Kieran cursed. He must get on with wedding and bedding a wife as soon as possible. Only then could he leave. Only then would he know pleasure in life again.
“Beginning tomorrow,” he began, regarding the four sisters, “I will spend one day with each of you, even those widowed and promised.”
Maeve objected, “But—”
“You are unwed at the moment, and that is all I require,” he interrupted, then went on, “At the end of those four days, I will inform you and your brother, as well as the king, which of you I will take as my bride. Until then, I want a bath, a meal, and a soft bed.”
