Claiming Her (Renegades & Outlaws) Read online

  Claiming Her

  By Kris Kennedy

  http://kriskennedy.net

  © 2016 Kris Kennedy

  ISBN: 978-0-9971899-0-2

  Sign up for the Book Alert Newsletter and get first dibs on release news and sales!

  Cover image & Design: Jenn LeBlanc, Smexy Studios

  Editing: Linda Ingmanson

  All rights reserved.

  FIRST EDITION

  May, 2016

  CLAIMING HER © 2016 Kris Kennedy

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part or the whole of this book may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted or utilized (other than for reading by the intended reader) in ANY form (now known or hereafter invented) without prior written permission by the author.

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is not only illegal, and it makes it difficult to make a living. Help an artist out-don’t fileshare. If you’re dying to read the book, and can’t afford it, contact me, and we’ll work something out.

  CLAIMING HER is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and or are used fictitiously and solely the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, places, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  CLAIMING HER © 2016 Kris Kennedy

  Forward &

  Acknowledgements

  To my boys, the young and slightly older, because they totally ‘got’ that this story was wrecking me, and driving me, and devouring me, and gave me all the time I needed to do what I needed to do with it.

  To my Pixie Chick buddies, for plotting and inspiration and brains that are different from mine.

  To my Irish friend Richie and his Irish buddy Pól, for the Irish translations. Richie, buy that man another drink for me. I’ll come over myself and buy you both one, one day soon.

  Here’s to castle towers. And hard, hot, good men who know who they are, and know just what they want.

  I once told myself I was going to write a story comprised of two people in a room, alone, together, for the whole story. This isn’t quite the whole story, but it sure tried.

  Enjoy!

  Chapter One

  1589

  Whitehall, England

  “I’M RESTORING THE RARDOVE title.”

  The men of Queen Elizabeth’s Privy Council lifted their heads in unison at the queen’s startling announcement.

  Restoring the Irish barony was an unforeseen development.

  More to the point, it had been attempted several times before, but never with any success. The Englishmen who’d been granted the honor invariably sailed over to Ireland, enraged the countryside, then died in alarmingly violent ways.

  Simply put, Rardove could not be kept in Englishmen.

  Which honed the point to an ever-sharper tip: why was the queen doing so now?

  The Rardove title had been extinct for hundreds of years, since the thirteenth century, when the then-lord of Rardove quite lost his mind and tried to blow up half of Ireland by means of a legendary explosive dye—a ridiculous legend, that—but in the event of this madness, he had died without issue, quite violently too, at the hands of a vengeful Irishman and, the legend went on to say, a vengeful English merchant widow.

  Life beyond the Pale certainly was a vicious thing, even in legend.

  Elizabeth had tried restoring the title herself once, to one of her favorites. At first, it appeared to be a success, for Henri de Macie had not angered the Irish at all; indeed, he’d gone quite the opposite direction and fallen in love with one. Then married her. Then engaged in treason by defending her. The man had been overcome by passion, and entirely lost his head.

  It had been placed on a pike outside London Bridge.

  The Irish princess had fled, too frightened to face the queen’s wrath, leaving behind an eight-year-old dispossessed heiress. The title and lands had once again gone back to the Crown, but the queen had seen something in the young girl. She’d civilized her as best she could, then sent her back to Rardove under the protection of her stepbrother, the baron’s son from a previous marriage, a man intent on restoring his father’s titles and wresting the land back to England, once and for all.

  He was dead within five years. Slipped off a cliff one spring morning. While engaged in combat with an Irishman.

  The Council hardly batted an eye that time; such was the way with lords of Rardove.

  The lady ruled there now, and had for the past seven years, holding the desolate castle in the name of the queen. She had done quite well, to the Council’s surprise. Not to the queen’s, though; Elizabeth had seen a bit of herself in the young woman she’d allowed to hold her Irish marchlands. By all accounts, it had been a wild success.

  Until these recent rumors of treason.

  Which might be quite the answer to the question, Why now?

  But the potentially deepest puncture of this development was…whom would she grant it to?

  Rardove encompassed vast, sweeping tracts of land. Wild land, rich land, lands of legend and rumor, beset by wet and wind and Irish warriors.

  Surely she would not cede it to an…Irishman?

  Surely not the one who intermittently showed up to serve on the Council, when he was not out fighting the Armada or capturing Spanish treasure fleets, or engaged in any of the other deeds of derring-do he did so well, that so captured the queen’s fancy?

  Sooth, their sovereign had an unnatural affinity for male Celts.

  Tall, with long hair and unfashionable clothing—Aodh Mac Con dressed more like a pirate than a gentleman—he was rumored to be pricked by paint all over his body like the heathens Raleigh had brought back from the New World.

  But this Irishman was potentially even more dangerous than a savage, for he claimed he was the rightful heir of the exceedingly ancient line of Rardove, back further even than the English claim.

  No. She would never do such a dangerous thing as give Ireland to an Irishman… Would she?

  The men of Elizabeth’s Privy Council exchanged uneasy glances.

  Cecil took the van. He cleared his throat and said casually, “And who is Your Majesty considering granting such a boon?”

  She glanced up from the sheaf of papers she’d been examining. “I am not considering it, I am doing it. Bertrand of Bridge.” She returned to the papers.

  The men exchanged another surprised glance. “Bertrand, your interrogator?”

  She nodded. “There are questions of treason out there beyond the Pale, again. I want them settled, once and for all. First her parents, then her… It is passing sad, really. I believed in her, when you all spoke against her. But she reminded me of myself.” There was the faintest tremble to the pen. “Ah well. What must be, will be. Bertrand will question her. If she proves loyal, she may stay and wed him. If not…”

  Silence fell.

  “And…Aodh Mac Con?” someone ventured.

  The queen paused over her paper, then set down her pen with a decisive click. “I will explain it to him. I will give him…I don’t know, a license for the wines. Or a monopoly on the nails. Or some such. He will be made whole. He will understand.”

  It sounded as if she was asking them if this could be so.

  They had their doubts: Aodh Mac Con invariably walked about the edge of the pot, always ready to tip things over, and had a careless disregard and almost hostile impatience for any and all proprieties that did not serve him. It made him dangerous in any number of ways.

  This should have worried and infuriated the queen, too, but instead, he had found a sympathetic haven in the heart of a woman who’d done things no one expected—or wanted—her to do, right up to rulin
g a kingdom, unwed, for decades.

  The queen swept her gaze down the line of the most powerful men in England, then threw down her pen. “Well, after all, I cannot simply give Ireland to the Irish, can I?”

  A sigh of relief flowed over the table.

  As one, they sat back and smiled, agreeing with her entirely, then began talking of other things, now that the matter of Ireland was taken care of.

  Because in the end, really, what could the Irishman do about it?

  Chapter Two

  Northern Ireland, Beyond the Pale

  TREASON WAS a dirty word. Especially when it ran in the family.

  Which was why Katarina of Rardove found herself awaiting the queen’s man, bound to wed him to save her lands, her title, and herself.

  “My lady, he is come!”

  The cries went up from her soldiers all along the walls. A sharp gust of cold spring air rushed through the bailey while up on the battlement walls, soldiers pointed into the valley below. Wicker, her youngest man-at-arms, peered down at her, waving his arm and shouting.

  “There must be sixty of them, my lady! Well armed enough to scare away the wind!”

  All her guardsmen were young and hardly gentle born—not a single knight among the lot—but they were brave and possessed the pragmatic, unvarnished warrior skills known to those who bobbed at the edge of a sea of war. This made them enthusiastic about anything that could be used as a weapon in an unabashed, enveloping sort of way: swords; pistols; the redheaded lass from the town below. Wicker in particular rather burst with fervor for all three.

  “You can see them now, lady, cresting the rise of the valley.” He crouched at the top of the stairway and stuck out a hand for her. “You’ll see when you come up.”

  “Excellent,” she replied brightly. She did not come up.

  “Right up here, on the walls, my lady.” He patted the stone parapet. “That’s where you’ll see them.”

  There was nothing for it, then. Up she went, to witness the wondrous sight of her betrothed riding in with a small army to assess the degree of Rardove’s loyalty, and then to ensure it, by becoming the new Lord of Rardove.

  Not as reassuring as one would think.

  The English Crown had long ago given up on conquest, and settled on maintaining what it had in Ireland, erecting a veritable wall of forts and castles around the perimeter of the Pale, a small arc of English settlements that huddled around Dublin like kittens around a bowl of milk. Rardove was one of the few English fortresses outside this protected ring, the Crown’s longest claw, flung out far beyond the Pale. A lone royal watchtower over the edge of the wild.

  It could be worse, she told herself as she lifted her skirts and started up the stairs. Bertrand of Bridge, the man the queen had sent to question her, and, assuming he was satisfied with her answers, the one given the right to wed her and assume the title Lord of Rardove, was a most excellent queen’s man. Powerfully built, fierce, ready to the fight.

  He would fit perfectly out here.

  Which, most assuredly, was not reassuring.

  Queen Elizabeth had become increasingly brutal to those suspected of treason, and as it was ever a more simple matter to be labeled suchly, Katarina was grateful the queen had allowed her to be questioned here in her home, indeed to be questioned at all, rather than simply accused and dispatched.

  But to be wed into the bargain…it was difficult not to see that as punishment from the queen she’d always served so loyally.

  But then, such things were always in question, were they not, when one’s father had lost his head on account of treason?

  Katarina would acquiesce. Again. It was the only way.

  As she neared the top of the stairs, her men gave a shout and all but hauled her the rest of the way up, attending her with the sort of energetic devotion that at times left her exhausted and slightly bruised. They gently manhandled her to the nearest crenel opening and pointed over the wall.

  “There, my lady.”

  The wind sliced through her cloak and burned her cheeks, but the shiver that moved though her was entirely unrelated to the weather. Wicker had not misspoken.

  Her soon-to-be-betrothed traveled at the head of a fearsome-looking contingent, large and bristling with armaments. They rode at a leisurely pace over the sere grass, for even the maddest of the mad Irishry would not dare attack such a group. All bore long swords and a legion of other steely weapons. Armor peeked through long woolen cloaks and hoods, glinting in the dim, cloudy morning light.

  One of the men riding in the van lifted his helmed head and swiveled it slowly. It stopped when it was aimed directly at the walls where Katarina stood.

  She pressed her palm to her temple, pressing her hair down. Her skirts blew out to the side. After a moment, she lifted her hand in case he was watching.

  His rose in reply.

  A smile tugged at her lips. Silly, to smile over such an exchange.

  The small army started down the hill, and she turned toward the stairs. Her guards sprang to assist, but Wicker won and grinned back up at his companions as he preceded her down the stairs. He looked back at her, still smiling but his gaze full of silent questions.

  Katarina, fingertips touching the wall as she descended, lifted her brows in equally silent permission.

  “He’s brought a proper force, hasn’t he, my lady?” he burst out. “We didn’t expect so many, did we?”

  “No, we did not,” she agreed.

  “’Tis a bold force.”

  “Very bold.”

  “And their armor, did you see their armor?”

  “I most certainly did.”

  “Toledo, do you think?”

  “At a distance of several hundred yards, I found it difficult to assess. It was exceptionally…steely.” It had reflected the pale sun in sharp daggers of light.

  Wicker’s grin never faltered. “Toledo,” he assured her. “And their horses.” His voice crossed over into the territory of reverence. “Warhorses.”

  “Yes, their horses,” she echoed. It seemed Bertrand of Bridge had brought everything but a cannon.

  At the bottom of the stairs, Wicker, so nicknamed because he was so tightly wound, his energy braided but ready to burst, turned and put out a hand for her, tilting his helmed head up, his exuberance suddenly extinguished. “We are fortunate, are we not, my lady? Now that he is come?”

  Things will go easier now? Things will be better? You will be safer? Aye?

  He would never say such things aloud, but he was thinking them. They were all thinking them. Beyond the Pale, one was either a wife, a warrior, or dead.

  Thus far, Katarina was none of those things.

  Everyone knew it was only a matter of time.

  God knew life was harder than stone out here, and this last year had been boulder hard. Everyone was past ready for life to become a simpler matter, by any means necessary. Even if it meant Bertrand of Bridge.

  Everyone except Katarina.

  She patted Wicker’s mailed arm. “Fortunate, indeed. Now go tell Sir Roger you need to be relieved of your post. I want you to roll up the wine barrels from the cellars.”

  His exuberance rushed back. “Very good, my lady! Wine and mayhap…butter?”

  She gave him a level look, intended to censure such bold forays into their larders, then said, “Of course.”

  He emitted an improper whoop, all but swung her off the bottom step to the ground, gave an irreverent salute, and bolted off to do as he’d been told.

  She was still catching her breath and righting her skirts when a voice came in from the side.

  “You ought make them show more respect, my lady,” the voice said.

  Katarina closed her eyes briefly. “Walter.” Her clerk and steward. “What have they done now?”

  “They do nothing, my lady. You allow much. Wicker ought not treat you as if you were his sister. And your maidservant ought not tug on your sleeve when she is excited, and chatter inexhaustibly at all other times.�
��

  “Susanna is…ebullient,” Katarina admitted about her sole lady’s maid.

  “She is a bubble,” he said dourly. “A great, noisy, impudent bubble.”

  “She is vibrant, Walter. In these dark times, we need all of that we can get. I am surprised to hear you disapprove of such things.” She started toward the gate. Walter stepped with her, taking her arm to assist her over the rutted cobbles.

  How she hated being assisted over rutted cobbles.

  “I disapprove of maids acting like ladies, soldiers acting like councilors, and men and women of all ages forgetting their place.”

  “Just so, Walter. I will counsel Susanna to flatten herself forthwith.”

  Gray-browed and disapproving, he regarded her levelly. “You should rein them in, my lady.”

  A fissure of irritation opened up inside her. “They are not horses, Walter.”

  “They most certainly are. Stallions too loose on their lead. They need restraint.”

  She looked away. He was right. The boundaries of propriety had broken down rather tragically at Rardove. It simply seemed so…unnecessary. So unhelpful. So ungrateful.

  And there was the truth of it. Her men, most of whom were barely men at all, were steadfast and loyal when they need not be. There were far richer, less remote, and less dangerous gates to guard south and east. She had no notion why they stayed with her, but in consequence, in gratitude, she gave them a great deal of meat, a great deal of ale, and a great deal of leeway when it came to matters of propriety.

  She relied upon them. She cared for them. And they knew it.

  No doubt she was in error with this approach. But it was the only one she could think of short of shouting, and Katarina knew very well her voice would not carry far in the wilds of Ireland.