Again MacLugh advanced, his sword nicking Strongheart’s thigh, enough to draw blood but not enough to lame him. MacLugh’s breath became ragged, and sweat beaded on his head, mixed with the heavy mist, and trickled into his eyes. Since Strongheart appeared as composed as ever, clearly the two minor injuries were nothing she should worry about.
But she did worry. If Strongheart had deliberately allowed the other man a small victory to make him overconfident, her husband played a dangerous game.
Gaillard squeezed her arm and whispered in her ear. “Have courage. Strongheart’s just warming up, and already MacLugh tires.”
Just then Strongheart attacked, his broad blade flashing up, down, back, and across so quickly her eyes barely followed his lightning movement. He ended with a blow so powerful, he split MacLugh’s shield with a cracking sound.
Dara jumped; her chest tightened.
With a chivalrous gesture, Strongheart discarded his own perfectly good shield. Dara let out a small moan, then clamped her hand over her mouth, determined not to utter another sound.
“He knows what he is about,” Gaillard told her calmly. “He’s toying with MacLugh.”
“Then why is he bleeding?” Dara whispered.
“Both men are bleeding.”
Both men wielded their weapons with care, slicing and parrying. While a strong blow might disarm an opponent, the same powerful strike might cause one’s sword to snap.
Strongheart attacked, giving his opponent not a moment to recover from one strike before beginning the next. MacLugh slipped in the mud, rolled, and scrambled to recover. Damn Strongheart for letting him regain his feet. Why did he have to be such a gentleman? This wasn’t a tournament, but a fight for life.
MacLugh retreated toward Dara. Strongheart pressed his advantage. With a backhanded move almost too quick for her eyes to follow, he sent the Irish king’s sword flying from his hand and out of reach.
“Yield!” Strongheart demanded.
“Never!” cried MacLugh, leaping backward, pulling a dirk from a sheath at his back.
Within the space of a heartbeat, MacLugh grabbed Dara, spun her into the circle out of Gaillard’s reach, and held the knife to her throat. The sharp edge of the blade pricked her flesh, and hot liquid trickled down her neck.
Dara didn’t dare reach for the knife at her waist. She held perfectly still, but the tiny movement of each breath caused more blood to seep from her neck.
MacLugh sneered. “Lay down your sword.”
Strongheart’s face paled, fear for her glimmering in the depths of his eyes. “Do not hurt her.”
“Lay down your weapon,” MacLugh repeated, battle madness dancing in his eyes.
It was his fault she was in danger. He never should have permitted her to watch this spectacle. As he’d always known, there was no room in this life for weakness. Once again, Dara had used the gentler side of his nature to sway him into letting her go where she did not belong.
Lust dazed a man. Love killed him. This time his lack of judgment might kill his wife and unborn child.
He could face the possibility of his own death without flinching. But the thought of losing Dara caused a vigorous surge of fury to flood him.
Strongheart bent slowly, placing the sword in the mud without taking his gaze off MacLugh. Every muscle in his body quivered taut.
The man was simply too far away for him to grab. His heart leapt in his chest. If he dived, MacLugh would slice Dara’s throat. If he remained still, MacLugh would slice Dara’s throat.
Dara’s forefinger flickered, pointing to the dirk at her waist. She was waiting for him to make a move.
Obviously she thought he could do the impossible. While her faith in him amazed him, he would not fail her by refusing to make an attempt.
From a crouched position, Strongheart lunged, thrusting with his powerful thighs, a bloodcurdling scream on his lips. As if on his signal, Dara’s hands snapped upward around MacLugh’s wrist, gaining an instant of time.
Love and fear gave Strongheart’s legs the extra strength, catapulting him into MacLugh, knocking Dara free, but not before Strongheart seized her dirk for his own. Without hesitation, he plunged it into MacLugh’s black heart.
He expected Dara to fling herself into his arms, but once again she surprised him. With her boot on MacLugh’s shoulder, she retrieved her dirk, calmly cleaned the weapon of blood, and thrust it back into the sheath at her waist. She held out her hand to him, and when he took it, she raised it over her head.
The Norman knights cheered and banged their shields with their fists as she led him toward the Ard-ri. The cheers died as she spoke to the high king in a voice that carried to most of the audience. “I would have you hold to your promise and legitimize our marriage.”
When she forced the high king to acknowledge his promise, Strongheart had never been prouder. Dara motioned a scribe forward to set the pact in writing.
The Ard-ri’s gaze flickered to the army of Norman knights and nodded agreement. “The bards will sing of Strongheart’s bravery for years to come.”
“You, sire,” Dara said, “will be remembered as the Ard-ri that united the Princess of Leinster with her Norman love.”
The high king signed his name to the document. “Your Norman has won a fine kingdom.”
“And conquered my heart,” Dara added softly, her face glowing with happiness.
Once the paper dried, Strongheart presented the document to her with a flourish. “’Tis time to go home, Princess.”
Home. The word sounded good to him. He hadn’t had a real home since his brother died. But home wasn’t a place; home was beside his fiery Irish princess.
“Aye. Let’s go home, my love.”
Epilogue
Five years later
DARA SAT CURLED in a chair by the fire and stared past the newly installed panes of glass, through the mist to the bailey below. The rain around Castle Ferns had let up this noon, and as if marking the momentous occasion and reflecting her happiness, the sun splintered through the clouds.
After securing Leinster and training Irish replacements, today her husband was sending the last of the Norman knights back to Britain. Waving good-bye to the knights, Gavin, her eldest son by two minutes, rode with Conor, while his four-and-a-half-year-old twin Geoffrey clung to Gaillard, the only other Norman besides Strongheart to take a bride and remain in Leinster.
Despite the persistent ache in her back, Dara shook her head with a grin as Strongheart handed their toddlers Daniel and Duncan to Sorcha. Her husband had carried all their children in slings before they could sit, one fastened to his chest, the other to his back. She had to admit her babes seemed to enjoy the rocking motion of a warhorse, and the time spent with their father gave her a dearly needed respite from her energetic brood.
The patter of little feet preceded Gavin’s headlong rush into her room, a posy of daisies in hand. “Beat you,” her eldest teased Geoffrey and climbed onto her lap.
“Did not,” Geoffrey muttered, then his face brightened when she made room for him, too. He handed her one large daisy. Her second child preferred quality to quantity, and while Gavin would race to gather handfuls of flowers, she imagined Geoffrey had spent hours choosing the perfect bloom.
“Thank you for the flowers,” she praised them equally.
Geoffrey rested his head against her breast, his cuddly warmth pressed to her side. “Papa said he would find me a pony.”
Gavin, never one to sit long, kissed her cheek and bounded onto the bed with a leap. “Me, too. A fast pony. The fastest pony in Eire.”
Before Dara could respond to this newest announcement, her husband entered the room with Daniel and Duncan. Fascinated by their elder brother’s antics on the bed, as soon as Strongheart put them down, they toddled to their brother, arms outstretch
ed.
“Up. Up.”
Gavin, intent on his own fun, ignored them. It was Geoffrey who scooted off his mother’s lap and lifted the younger twins onto the mattress. Soon all four boys were jumping in unison and giggling madly.
Strongheart bent and gave her a kiss, then scooped her into his arms and deposited her on the bed in the middle of their rambunctious and squirming children.
The cat that had been napping by her pillow attempted to slink off, but Gavin grabbed its tail. “Stay, kitty. Stay and jump.”
“Gavin, do not torment that cat,” Strongheart said sternly.
Her eldest turned hurt eyes on his father. “I didn’t hurt it. See?”
Gavin had a way with animals. Indeed, the tabby was curling up in his lap.
“No more jumping,” Dara scolded. The back pains she felt earlier had returned, and she rubbed her side discreetly, pretending to smooth down her gown.
“Cease,” Geoffrey ordered the others with a perceptive frown. “Mother’s too fat to bounce. ’Tis bad for the baby.”
Dara ruffled Geoffrey’s hair. “I will be fine, but ’tis good of you to look after me like your father.”
Gavin poked her belly with his finger. “Her stomach wiggles like custard.”
“She’s sweet as custard,” their father agreed, his dark eyes twinkling with hunger as he stared at her mouth. “Now out, all of you. I’m suddenly in the mood for a sweet.”
As if knowing how quickly Dara’s children tired her out so close to the end of her pregnancy, Sorcha entered and carried the babies downstairs while Gavin and Geoffrey scampered off, claiming they were too old to take naps. Dara relaxed, knowing Sorcha would tell them stories and feed them tarts by the hearth until they fell asleep.
When the door closed behind them, her husband pressed a kiss to her palm. “I brought you a present.”
“You spoil me,” she protested, enjoying every minute.
He still gave her gifts every day, and he was teaching her children to do the same. She had a wonderful collection of feathers, bird nests, and rocks. In spring and summer, Ferns always carried the pleasant scent of fresh flowers, and in winter, she placed small flagons of dried flowers in every room to brighten their life.
Not that her life needed brightening. Her marriage to Strongheart had brought her what she most desired—protected by a powerful husband who worked to keep peace, Leinster was free of war, and their children were surrounded by love.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a velvet cloth with a gold drawstring. With shaking fingers she opened the delicate pouch and shook a necklace into her hand. Etched into gold was a scene of four boys holding hands around Castle Ferns. She laughed. “No wonder you sent the Normans back to Britain.”
At his puzzled frown, she placed the ornament around her neck and explained. “You are growing your own Norman army.”
He did not appreciate her attempt at humor. “After this child, you need a rest.”
“Ummm,” she agreed, remembering he’d said that after the last two pregnancies and how easily she’d changed his mind.
“I mean it,” he insisted.
“Yes, dear.”
With a sigh he raked a hand through his hair. “I do not want to lose you.”
Knowing it was impossible to reassure him, she changed the subject. “’Tis a beautiful gift.”
“Do I get a kiss?”
A pain seared down her back. She gripped his hand tight. “’Tis time.”
He knew that look. Without leaving her side, he bellowed for Sorcha to bring the midwife.
The birthing pain eased, and her hand on his relaxed. “You will not regret it if this time I give you a girl?”
His mouth twitched into an adoring grin. “I would adore a little girl with red hair and green eyes like her mother. I will even teach her to ride like a hoyden,” he promised.
She gasped as the pain lanced through her once more. “And throw a dirk?”
“Aye.”
Two hours later, she delivered red-haired Eva, named after the half-sister she’d lost so long ago. As the baby suckled her breast, her husband gazed down at her proudly.
“How did you know ’twould be a girl?”
“Woman’s intuition,” she said with a wide grin.
He leaned down to kiss her with a sweet tenderness that her tired soul wanted to melt into. She deepened the kiss, savoring the moment. “I love you, Norman.”
He smoothed back her hair. “I love you, too.”
Later they lay snug and warm in bed, as a light rain fell outside. By morning the air would gleam misty across the Wicklow hills. Dara cuddled happily against her husband’s broad chest. Just as he’d conquered county Leinster, he’d conquered her heart.
The End
(Please continue reading for an excerpt of The Challenge)
The Challenge
Read an excerpt from Susan Kearney’s
The Challenge, Book 1 of The Rystani Warrior Series
Chapter One
“HAVE I DIED and gone to heaven?” Tessa muttered.
Without opening her eyes, she could feel heat permeating the deep chill that stole her energy as if she’d been frozen. Except for shivers and the tingling that slowly returned feeling to her numb limbs, there was no pain. No gunshot wound.
Just wondrous heat, like the touch of sun-kissed virile flesh. Toned, smooth skin sharing blessed warmth, rocking her. No, carrying her? A large gentle hand smoothed her hair from her forehead, and a deep masculine voice assured her that she would soon be warm.
“You will recover.”
Expecting the dream to fade, expecting to see a hospital room, a doctor, beeping machines, Tessa delayed opening her eyes. She didn’t want to face her fellow agents who would tell her the sad news that she’d failed her assignment and that the president was dead.
But she’d never been one to hide from reality. Tessa forced open her eyes.
Instead of a hospital room and her detail, she found herself in a space she didn’t recognize, alone with a stranger, her head pillowed on his shoulder. Her gaze locked stares with the amber eyes of a dark-haired giant, her hand curled intimately under the vest that didn’t fully cover his broad chest.
A bare chest? She must be hallucinating. Out of her head from painkillers, the result of a bullet ricocheting through her skull.
She blinked, expecting him to vanish. He didn’t.
Okay. He was real. Seriously real. Or she was crazy. She preferred the first option, but did a double check. Beneath her hand, his heart beat with disturbing regularity, and her fingers had somehow twisted around his crisp chest hair. She took a deep breath, and his scent reminded her of exotic spices and sandalwood soap.
He might be a dream man, but he was no fantasy. He was quite the living, breathing alpha male, carrying her as if she weighed nothing. No woman in her right mind could fail to appreciate such a gorgeous specimen. Yet no human naturally possessed eyes the color of his Tupelo-honey ones, the irises ringed with fiery gold, and framed by a perfect crescent of thick black lashes. He sported a strong nose, a square jaw that suggested stubbornness, carved cheekbones of a highborn savage, and flawless bronze skin of a hue that could knock a woman flat on her heels for a second look.
His generous mouth curled with a touch of sympathy, and yet his eyes shot off hints of irritation and impatience. “Are you warm?”
Hell, no.
She was cold, already craving a scalding cup of coffee. And naked. Naked in the strange man’s arms. In a room that resembled no hospital she’d ever seen, he laid down with her on a shimmering metallic platform.
Had she been taken hostage? Where the hell was she?
Before waking up in his arms, she’d leapt between a traitorous Secret Service Agent and POTUS. Sh
e recalled the driver’s betrayal. Was this man or his group holding the president, too?
Tessa suspected she was a prisoner, kept naked to make her feel vulnerable. Or had she somehow ended up in a sanatorium? But then where was her hospital gown? Where were her clothes and her gun? Her detail?
She tried to speak, but her dry throat only issued a weak croak.
The stranger briskly rubbed her arms, creating a friction that heated her numbed limbs. As he tended her, Tessa searched for an exit in the shimmering silver walls, floor, and ceiling, all bare of any adornments and constructed of an unrecognizable luminous gray substance that made her question her eyesight. During her years in foster homes, she’d seen some strange decor but nothing like the other-worldly walls that surrounded her.
She must be hallucinating.
But when she held up her hand that he’d finished rubbing, she clearly counted four fingers and one thumb. And the hunk was still there, watching her with those strange eyes, efficiently and briskly rubbing her other arm. Even into adulthood, she’d had nightmares of abandonment, of losing her parents and her home—but she’d never had a dream this weird.
Again, she tried to speak but managed only a soft grunt.
He picked up an odd-shaped vessel and held it to her lips. “Drink.”
She peered suspiciously at what appeared to be water. Hell, if he wanted to drug her, in her weakened state, he’d have no trouble. She parted her lips voluntarily.
Cool water slid down her parched throat. Greedily she emptied the vessel, and refreshed, her mind kept working. Where was she? What had happened to the president? Why had this stranger carried her? What was going on? Why was she so stiff? Her vocal cords so rusty?
As badly as she longed to ask questions, she followed training protocol. For fear that she might help the enemy, she didn’t ask her first questions out loud.
Think.
Assess the situation.
Gather information.
She forced out words that wouldn’t betray anyone. “Who are you?”
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