King's Warrior (Renegade Lords Book 1) Page 25

  He looked back at the Marshal. “I believe that you wish to reward Tadhg, and so I will tell you this: he went west.”

  The Marshal’s face lighted. “He is going home.”

  “After the handling of some business.”

  A few beats of silence, then the Marshal muttered, “Accursed Irishmen.”

  Fáelán smiled. “Aye, that we are. But as for treasure…methinks the only one you will find on him by the time you get there will be his woman.”

  “A woman?” The Marshal looked startled. “He has a woman in this adventure?”

  “Aye. The sort who does not mind adventure. Might even revel in a bit of it.”

  The Marshal’s eyebrows went up, . “That is a rare breed.”

  The smile fell from Fáelán’s face. He grabbed his cloak and threw it over his shoulders and walked out without another word.

  “I will not lock you up this time,” the Marshal called after.

  “You could not lock me up if you tried,” he said without turning.

  The marshal’s face tightened, then he turned to his men, who were now standing staring at him, awaiting more orders.

  “Well, what are you about?” he said in a complaining tone. “Let’s pack it up and move out. Take his body,” he said, pointing to Sherwood. “We’ll give it an improper burial, then we have deeds to do.

  “We’ve got an Irishman to find, and it shan’t be easy in the wilds of the western lands. There’s an inn or two, but otherwise, it’s moors and forests and caves. So let us ride.”

  Chapter Fifty

  “WHAT IS THIS PLACE?” Maggie whispered.

  Her words echoed off the walls of the cave at Renegades Cove. Slippery wet, the dark stone caught and bounced reflections from the torch in Tadhg’s hand, glinting back light in dancing orange-red bursts and darts, as if fairies were playing a game with the light, tossing it high up on the walls, then rolling it back down.

  Her words, too, reflected back down, soft and sibilant.

  Tadhg reached for her hand. “’Twas my portal to England, the place I first came ashore. Now, it will keep us safe, until we can go home again.”

  She let him draw her forward. They’d ridden two days following the fight with Sherwood, slipping in and out woods, skirting the edges of towns, until they were out in the wilds, far from anyone who care overly much about kings and crowns. Out here, they were more concerned with harvests and how hard a man worked, and that suited Tadhg just fine.

  For the first time in many years, he felt safe.

  In a hundred years, he would not have predicted such a feeling would have been come by striding into his old lair. Not with his heart trailing off the tips of his fingers, in the form of a clever Frenchwoman with pale skin, an abundance of hair, and an intrepid soul.

  He squeezed her hand then let her fingers slip free as he went forward alone. Carrying a torch lit from a hidden stash of pitch and waxed linens stored under a rock outside the cave, he held it aloft and walked in further, then stopped.

  Fifteen years, and he remembered it like yesterday.

  He stood in the middle of the wide center that had served as their ‘great hall,’ covered by a layer of fine sand. He tipped his head up and searched the walls, then strode forward decisively and thrust the staff of his torch into a hidden recess on the wall. It lodged, and extended at an angle.

  The light reflected and blossomed, illuminating the recess of the high-ceilinged cave in a golden russet glow. Smoke spiraled up in a grey plume and disappeared through the many hidden ventholes.

  He flung down the packs of goods he’d purchased in the last town before they veered into the wilderness, toward this remote, hidden cove. Blankets and clothes and food, all bought with coin in the pouch that had hung from the saddle on Fáelán’s horse.

  Tadhg had some debts to pay, there. A lot of them. He’d misjudged and generally been an arse. And still they’d saved his life.

  Because Maggie had gone to them.

  He turned to her. She’d hesitated in the entryway, her willowy figure dark.

  “Come in,” he urged softly. “You are safe here.”

  She came forward a few steps, her eyes widening in amazement as the light spread and revealed the cave. Then she paused and, fingertips pressed to the rock wall, removed her shoes and stockings and stood barefoot in the silky sand.

  How like Maggie, to move fully into this moment, let it be whatever it was and adapt. He’d never met a cleverer woman, nor one who so lit the dormant fires in his heart.

  “What is this place?” she whispered again.

  Like light, her words danced in the cavern, then settled like dust. She walked in further, turning in a full circle as she came, gazing up the walls. She stretched out a hand and touched them; they were wet, sparkling.

  He watched her a moment, then backed up and leaned against the boulder, arms crossed. He said nothing, just watched her wander and explore. She trailed her fingertips over the walls, then bent, and put her nose almost to the wall, and made a little exclamation of surprise.

  “Tadhg, there are drawings here!”

  “Aye, that there are.” Almost to the ceiling in one section, the walls of the cave had been decorated with a multitude of drawings.

  “What are they?”

  “Etchings. Sketches.” He blew out a breath. “Stories.”

  “Stories?” She looked over her shoulder at him. “Of what?”

  He shrugged. “Journeys. Trials and tribulations. Failure and triumph. Lives lived and lost.”

  “Who drew them?” Her voice was soft, almost reverent.

  He followed the line of her fingertips as she began a slow circuit of the walls. “Everyone who’s ever passed through here.”

  Her eyes swung to his, her hand paused on the wall. “And who has passed through here?”

  “This is Renegades Cove, lass. ‘Tis a refuge for all the stark naughts of the world.”

  Her eyes held his. She was all deep contrasts, some vivid color—her hair, her complicated eyes, the curving line of her body inside her green gown–and pale, ethereal beauty, her fingertips, her face, the tips of her toes, poking out from under the damp hem.

  “You are not a stark naught, Tadhg. You are worth a thousand others who have been called ‘great.’” She turned back to the walls. “Where is yours? Your drawing?”

  He laughed once, softly, and shook his head, then pointed by memory, not needing to look.

  “Over there.”

  She followed his finger to where he and his brothers had scratched their drawings into the wall, all those years ago. It depicted four figures, in a circle, their hands thrust into the center. One for all… they’d said. And all for naught. They’d vowed vengeance on the world that day, their fury depicted by jabbing lines rising up out of their circle. Their fury, rising up, flying over the world like crows of war.

  But as he looked at it now, it looked more like light coming off them.

  But perhaps that was because Maggie’s fingers were on it, touching the old wound of a drawing. All he knew now was any light that came from him now, came because of Maggie. From being loved by her.

  Fifteen years ago he could not have imagined such a moment, coming to this place he’d vowed never to return to, with a woman like Maggie. Beautiful in mind and body and spirit, brave, bold, loyal, and good to her core. He felt as if just looking at her was like drinking a clear liquid, the elixir of some invisible god. Taking her inside him, filling him up with her goodness.

  “If I recall,” he said lazily, “I promised you a bath.”

  She turned to him. “I account you gave me half a bath,” she mused. “There was soap, and hot water, but then we moved very quickly to a bed, and how can one bathe in a bed?”

  He held out his hand. “Let’s have the other half, then.”

  “Half a bath in a sea cave?”

  “Come with me.”

  “That is no hardship,” she said, floating barefoot toward him. “I have been do
ing that since you kissed me on a quay.”

  “You’re an obedient woman.”

  She took the hand he’d held up for her. “I would not say obedient,” she demurred as he guided her toward the back tunnel, torch in hand. “Perhaps wise. Intelligent. Remarkably sensible…. Oh, Tadhg.”

  Her voice had gone reverent around the exclamation, and she dropped his hand to step deeper into the little stone chamber. “’Tis a spring.” She whipped her head around and looked at him in amazement. “A hot spring.”

  “Very hot,” he said, smiling proudly.

  “Do you think I shall be scalded?”

  He nodded to the dark little pool of water, edged by small, smooth pebbles and banked by flat stones. “Go see,” he said.

  She was already shedding her clothes. Hot springs were good for that.

  A shimmery ceiling stretched overhead, narrowing to a V high above, cathedral-like, which was entirely fitting, for when he thrust the torch into a knot in the stone walls, the walls glittered and shimmered all the way up to its towering height as if laid with tiny bit of stained class.

  Her body, bare and curving, slipped into the water, first a pointed toe, then the other foot, then her calves and thighs, then she bent her knees and her rounded bottom slid beneath the surface of the water, and notwithstanding all the reasons he had to be too exhausted to be aroused, he was aroused.

  He pushed to his feet and stripped the tunic from his body.

  She leaned back against the walls of the little pool and sighed a long, innocently seductive sigh, her breasts slipping in and out of the water as it bobbed around her. Her hair floated all around her.

  She tipped her head back and looked at him, then held up an arm. “Come,” she commanded.

  He stripped off his mail shirt.

  They heard the sound from the main chamber of the cave at the same moment: the scrape of a boot on stone.

  Tadhg spun, his hand thrust out, silently cautioning Maggie to be still, then swept up his sword belt and moved into the cave. Then he let out a breath and dropped back, his heart hammering.

  “Rowan, Christ alive, you’ll be the death of me.”

  “Aye, if I can, I will,” he retorted, then straightened and clapped Tadhg on the shoulder. He hesitated for half a second, then pulled him forward for an embrace.

  Tadhg returned it. Rowan stepped back and cleared his throat, looking around. “Haven’t been here for years,” he muttered.

  Tadhg turned with him. “Nor have I.”

  An understatement of epic proportions.

  He heard more steps, then Fáelán himself ducked into the chamber. He came and stood beside them, nodded to Tadhg wordlessly and turned, equally wordless, and tracked his fingers along the wall for a few steps, just as Maggie had done. Then his knees bent, and he knelt in the sand.

  He’d found their old etching.

  Rowan crossed the sand too, his boots making no noise, and stood behind him, then he too dropped to his knees. Their bright torches burned in white-hot gusts of sea air. It was a chapel for a moment, for outlaws.

  Then they got to their feet and turned to him, as if nothing had happened.

  “Just wanted to make sure you made it here alive,” Fáelán said. “Wouldn’t want all our efforts to go to waste.”

  Tadhg smiled.

  “You made it out all right then?”

  “Because of you, aye. Your horse is up there, you can have her back.”

  Fáe nodded absently. His gaze strayed to the back of the cave. “Where is your woman?”

  “In the spring.”

  He nodded and for a moment, they stood in a companionable silence, Fáelán leaning against the black rock, Rowan walking the walls, occasionally mentioning an etching he saw, recalled from their youth.

  “I see there’s no…” Tadhg swept his hand out. “No chests, no barrel, no bundles, no booty.”

  “That is so,” Fáe said with a nod.

  “Decided we’d leave the cove to its natural unsullied state,” Rowan put in, and Tadhg felt a jab of guilt.

  “You are not sullied.”

  Fáe pursed his lips and shrugged.

  “Och, we’re a bit sullied,’ Rowan said. He and Tadhg smiled at each other.

  They were all quiet a second, then Fáe said, “Máel is a lot sullied,” and all three of them grinned. Fáelán ducked his head, his thumb caressing the hilt of one of his knives. “Máel could not come.”

  “A busy man,” Tadhg said lightly, ignoring the unreasonable stab of pain he felt.

  Fáelán shook his head. “I mean, he could not. He is not capable. He does not have it in him.”

  Tadhg looked down and nodded. The stab through his heart had been part guilt, part almost wrenching desire to see Máel again, tell him how much he meant to him, and how grateful he was. It would have to wait, then. But Tadhg knew, in his heart, he would see Máel again.

  “Tell him I owe him for saving Maggie’s life.”

  “I’m sure he’ll collect one day,” said Fáelán ruefully.

  They all smiled at each other then, and Tadhg said, “Maggie told me he vowed he would never be part of any godforsaken rescue attempt.”

  A smile touched Fáe’s mouth. “He says he was not part of one.”

  “Ah. Well, Sherwood would feel differently, could he feel anything at all.”

  “Och, I don’t know,” Fáe mused, sticking his hands in his belt and spreading his boots wider. “I think a man feels something when he’s roasting in hell.”

  Their low laughter echoed off the walls. It was almost like it had been, all those years ago.

  From the wall, dark gold hair shining in the torchlight, Rowan clarified. “Máel says he was not involved in any godforsaken rescue attempt. He was involved in a godforsaken rescue. No attempt; ’twas a deed done.”

  Tadhg laughed softly. “Which changes everything.”

  “It does,” said Fáelán. “For me.”

  Their eyes locked. Tadhg’s jaw worked and he tipped his head to the side, looking away, a bit aghast at the emotions rising up in him.

  “I owe you all my life,” he rasped, still looking at the ground. “And Maggie’s. Jesus, Fáe you’ll never know—”

  His brother reached for his hand, pulled him into an embrace. “I know,” he said, his low murmur a rasp of pain.

  They held a moment, then backed up. Fáelán stared at the cave wall a moment, then nodded and looked at Rowan, who nodded back and pushed off the wall.

  Fáe glanced at Tadhg. “Got your trinket?”

  Tadhg laughed. “The dagger? Aye.” He hesitated. “Why did you do it? Maggie said she offered the dagger in payment, if you aided her to rescue me.”

  “We did not do it for the dagger,” Fáe said, at the same moment Rowan snorted. “That dagger wouldn’t have paid for our troubles if anything had gone wrong,” he scoffed.

  “Then why did you do it? Why rescue me? Why return the dagger to me? That’s a lot of things for me, not so many for you.”

  Rowan’s gaze slid to Fáelán, who pursed his lips and tipped his head to the side. Then Fáe said simply, “Your woman offered us something else.”

  Tadhg’s forehead dropped forward a little, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Is that so? What?”

  Fáe smiled and lifted a hand in farewell. “Be safe, little brother.” Rowan lifted a hand too, and they turned to the cave entrance.

  Tadhg took a step with them. “Come with us.” He looked between them. “Come home with me.”

  Fáelán shook his head. “Cannot go home, brother. I’ve got a price on my head.”

  “That is not why you’re not going.”

  Fáe didn’t answer, just looked at the walls one last time. “You going to draw your new tale, Tadhg? ‘Tis the way of the cove, aye? You come, you leave your mark.”

  “Aye, I shall tell a new tale. You?”

  Fáelán and Rowan both laughed at that. “You cannot wish into something we are not, brother,” Ro
wan said.

  Fáelán just turned to the cave entrance, Rowan at his heels. They both stilled as Maggie came up the stone stairs.

  She glided into the main chamber, her feet bare, her hair long and dark, her gown rumpled and sandy. She looked like an elfin princess.

  Fáelán halted and did something Tadhg had never seen before—give a small bow—then without a word he strode off down the tunnel and out into the night.

  Rowan touched his fingertips to his forehead and followed after, silent as an exhale.

  “They will not come?” she asked softly, pain in her eyes as she came to stand beside him.

  He shook his head. “They cannot.”

  “They can,” she insisted. “They can come with us, we will build a home—”

  “They cannot,” he said again, and reached down to pat her chest. “In here, they cannot.”

  She stared a second, then nodded. “I understand. It would hurt too much.”

  He nodded. “What did you offer them? They said they did not do the deed for money, which I have never heard any of them say before.” He crooked a finger breath her chin and tipped her face up. “What did you offer them, Maggie?”

  She looked at the cave entrance. It was empty now. “I think a moment of redemption.”

  Tadhg released a thoughtful breath, then smiled faintly. “Only you would think of that.”

  “Do you think that will it be enough to save them?” she asked, putting her cheek against his chest.

  “I do not know.” His hands skimmed down her back. “Certes, you have saved me.” He cradled her hips as her slim body pressed up to his, she looked up, her eyes bright, her body pressed to his.

  “And you, me, sir. In any number of ways.”

  “I’m going to save you again, right now,” he whispered, and drew her back to the steaming spring.

  She slipped into the water like silk, and he’d just got the light linen chainse dragged over his head when they head another scrape on stone in the outer chamber.

  They froze, staring at each other in stunned silence. Then Tadhg heard a voice so welcome, so familiar, he closed his eyes and dropped his head in relief.