King's Warrior (Renegade Lords Book 1) Read online

  As if just recalling her, he jerked his head up, then strode toward her with such intense focus she took a step back. But her heart was still hammering with excitement and power, and she did not feel fear.

  He drew up in front of her and cupped her cheek with a gloved hand, then tipped her face up to the dim light of fire and oil lamps.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked in a gruff voice.

  “No. No, I am quite well, thank-you,” she said politely.

  A smile flickered across his face. “Den scoth.” Their eyes were close, so close she could see his were as dark as the rest of him, so deep a shade of brown they were almost black.

  “And you?” she stammered.

  Another flicker of amusement, this time in his eyes. “I am well, thank-you.”

  Their mouths were closer even than their eyes, and their whispered conversation was being held at such close quarters, she felt his breath gusting over her lips with every word. And hers skidded across his, until the air between their mouths became a small heated geyser of the warrior’s breath and her own.

  “I’ve never fought off soldiers before,” she admitted in a whisper.

  “One would never know it.”

  She smiled, recklessly happy. “I did rather well, did I not?”

  “You were magnificent,” he drawled, a low male sound, and the hand cupping her cheek tightened ever so slightly.

  Then, proof she’d turned entirely to a wild creature, she grinned into those hard, enigmatic eyes and said in an exultant whisper, “We did it.”

  This time, amusement appeared as a full-on, darkly handsome smile. “Enjoyed that, did you? I’ll have to see if I can’t find us a tavern brawl later.”

  She laughed, and his gaze dropped to her mouth. He was still cupping her face in his powerful, shockingly gentle hand. For seconds—three, four, five—he simply stared at her mouth, and all that had been fluttery and flushed in her became a veritable river of fast-moving heat and desire.

  He is going to kiss me.

  The thought made a wash of chills rise through her body as if she was a vessel being filled, then he brushed the calloused pad of his thumb across the corner of her mouth. “Your lip, lass. ’Tis cut.”

  As if in a trance, she lifted her fingertip to the corner of her mouth and felt the smallest of cuts. Her fingertips came away with a spot of blood.

  “Does it hurt?” he asked.

  “Oh no,” she whispered.

  His thumb still rested at the corner of her mouth while his gaze made the slow climb to her eyes, and her head tipped back the barest inch.

  Oh, yes, he was going to kiss her. And she was going to let him.

  With a muttered curse, he dropped his hand and strode away to the center of her shop.

  She stood, breathless and shaken by the power of what had just moved through her, watching as he lifted his sword and ran his finger almost lovingly down the blade, then made a soft, despairing sound.

  “What is it?” she whispered.

  “Nocked,” he muttered. “It needs a whetstone.” Then he sheathed it without another glance and strode to the front of her shop, where the downed soldiers lay, booted and bloody. “We’ve got some cleaning up to do.” He crouched behind the burly one. “We had best be quick about it.”

  “Indeed,” she agreed, entirely at a loss. How did one clean up soldiers?

  Striding through her shop, he grabbed the sturdiest fabric he could find, unsheathed one of what seemed to be an arsenal of blades covering his body, and cut the fabric into strips, then bound the soldiers’ wrists and ankles with it. Then he dragged their bodies to the back door.

  “What are we going to do with them?” she asked, hurrying after.

  He grunted at he pulled. “You’ve a Shitbrooke, aye?”

  “We’re going to dump them in the river?”

  “Beside the river,” he clarified as she unlatched the back door. “Unless you prefer to call the Watch about it.”

  She hesitated. “Ought I call the Watch?”

  Mid-hoist, he looked up. “Do you want to call the Watch?” he asked carefully.

  In Saleté de Mer, one did not call the Watch if one could avoid it, in part because, depending upon who was serving duty that month, and further upon one’s marital status, there were occasionally unpleasant payments attached to their assistance. But tonight, she did not need their doubtful assistance, did she?

  The Watch meant questions, and eventually, the mayor. The corrupt, stupid mayor of Saleté de Mer, always on the lookout for personal gain.

  When these men had burst into her shop, they’d been brigands. When their insentient bodies were strewn across her shop, it became less clear who had done what to whom.

  She looked at the stranger who was responsible for two-thirds of the insentient bodies. “No,” she said softly. “I do not want to call the Watch.”

  Relief swept across his features but he only gave a clipped nod and kicked the door open with the back of his boot. Night streamed in, carrying wood smoke and the odor of the sea, salty and dirty.

  “But the river…?” she said tentatively. “It will be cold.”

  He grunted. Apparently this was not a looming concern for him.

  “They may be seen.”

  He blew out an impatient breath. “Have you another plan?”

  “There is a…stew, just ’round the end of my alley. It does quite a lively trade, with men just like these. They will not be noticed.”

  He frowned. “You want me to drag three men into a whorehouse, bound and gagged? I think they will be noticed.”

  “I know the owner, Master Roger.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Do you now?”

  She frowned. “I repair the women’s tunics and ribbons at need, at no cost should they require it. Tell Roger these men are a delivery of mine. He will ensure they are tended to ’til morn.”

  “The whores it is,” he said, and dragged the brute over the threshold into the alley.

  She stepped out too and pulled the door shut.

  Low humps of dirty snow mounded around the edges of buildings all down the street. Pale blurs of warm, orange-yellow light shone though the shuttered windows on the upper floors along both sides of the alley. Everyone was inside now, warm against the cold, joining with friends and companions in the merriment of the Yuletide season. Indeed, from a few windows came the faint strains of song, with an occasional lute to be heard amid the revelry.

  No one would notice someone dragging bodies down the street.

  “Hurry,” she whispered. “I’ll prepare the others.”

  He looked up, his face a blur of dark facial hair and gleaming eyes. “I shall be back.”

  Shivers of excitement rolled across her breasts. This worried her, that she would experience chills of excitement because a stranger had promised he’d return after he dragged the bodies of rogue soldiers to a whorehouse and dumped them for her.

  She turned inside to stuff rags in the other men’s mouths.

  Chapter Six

  ROGER THE WHOREMASTER WAS EASY to find. An aging, venerable, good-spirited churchman bordered on all sides by scantily-clad women, he seemed quite willing to settle his debt to Magdalena by tending a few insentient soldiers, so Tadhg left them in Roger’s tender care, bound and gagged in a back room, naked, stripped of their Sherwood livery, after he and the churchman had soberly agreed it would be for the best.

  “It will slow down their leaving in the morning,” Roger explained gravely. “If that would be of any use to you.”

  It would.

  Tadhg returned to Magdalena’s shop and stepped through the back door quietly. The shutters had been pulled tight, and the interior was dark and warm, lit by a few candles, and swinging oil lamps, and a low-burning fire in the kitchen grate.

  Magdalena knelt in the front room, amid the shattered pottery. She held a damp rag in one hand and was picking through the remnants of her broken goods.

  Tadhg felt an emotion he was fairly
certain was guilt. That had been a long time. But seeing this innocent with her dark golden hair, kneeling amid the wreckage of her life, a wreckage entirely of Tadhg’s making, did something to him. Something uncomfortable.

  And when, on hearing the tread of his boot, she turned and smiled at him, it placed a dimple in the creamy skin of her cheek, and that, well, that awakened an entire host of unwanted and unnecessary emotions: guilt; desire; and the strange, saw-toothed gnashing of some kind of wanting for which he had no name.

  He washed his hands in the basin she pointed to, then made his way over, righting a bench as he passed by. In silence he crouched beside her, reaching out to finger the broken shard of what had once been a decorated plate.

  She sat back on her heels, brushing hair off her face. “My mother made that,” she told him softly.

  Wonderful. He looked around the room and said in a casual voice, “What do you think they wanted?”

  “I do not know. One of them mentioned a blade of some sort.” She dabbed at her neck with the damp rag.

  He looked at the cool curve of her throat. “Why would they think you had such a thing?”

  She gave a rattled laugh. “I hardly know; they were not entirely clear, by design I am sure.”

  “Of course,” he murmured consolingly and ignored the way she was now dabbing at her ankle. It was a very shapely ankle.

  He looked around at the shop, coffers overturned, fabric and greens and holly berries scattered everywhere, and hesitated only a moment. “Did they find it?”

  She dabbed again, then went still.

  Firelight shimmered along the now-loose tendrils of her hair, making it glint with shades of burnt-red and peach-gold, the ‘brown’ he’d used to describe her hair previously now revealed to be a glorious amalgam of reds and blondes and deep rich browns. Alchemist’s hair.

  Alchemic eyes, too. Quite remarkable, really.

  And the way she’d suggested he dump the soldiers at a whorehouse…. Well, he did like a woman with brains.

  Inconveniently, though, she was using them now, putting together the meaning of his questions with the events of the past several hours, and he could see the moment comprehension dawned.

  “Did they find what, sir?” she said sharply.

  He hedged. “What they were looking for.”

  She narrowed her fire-eyes at him. “What do you know of it? How…. Why…?” She looked suspiciously at the door. “How did you come to be here?”

  Nothing for it then, the truth. Or part of it. “I followed you.”

  Her breathing quickened, lifting the yellow tunic molded tightly over her breasts. “Why?”

  “For the same reason those soldiers did.”

  “And why is that?”

  “To get the blade I slid into your basket.”

  “The blade you slid into…?”

  She untangled her legs and shoved to her feet, backing up so fast she banged into the bench Tadhg had righted barely a moment ago. It squealed as it toppled over. The one thing righted in the room, already overturned again.

  Isn’t that the way? Tadhg thought, rising. He did nothing by half-measures, not even ruination.

  “How dare you?” she demanded, the words soft but furious.

  “You don’t know the half of it, lass. Now if you’ll just—”

  Her arm snapped up, straight as an arrow, a veritable yew of feminine fury, terminating in a slim, trembling fingertip pointed directly at the door. “Get out.”

  “Once I have the dagger.”

  “Get out.”

  “Lass—”

  “Get. Out. Now.” She looked ready to start screaming.

  Alchemist eyes or no, that could not be allowed.

  He was on the move, striding toward her, and she was smart enough to back up, but there was nowhere to go, so she backed into the wall. He folded a hand over her mouth and slid the other around the back of her head, trapping her, fixed and immobile. Her complicated eyes stared up at him, not at all complicated now. They were glinting with a single overweening emotion: fury.

  “Heed me now, lass,” he counseled softly. “You’ve no notion what you’ve got mixed up in here, and for that I am rare sorry. I’d never have involved you if I thought it would go this way. But it has, and now, I need that dagger. Give it to me, and I shall be gone, and all this will pass away like so much smoke.”

  Which wasn’t entirely true.

  Her hair spilled over his hands and her breath panted hotly into his palm.

  “Mmff fmmp mmppft,” she said into his palm. Judging by the glint of fury in her eye, she wasn’t telling him the location of the dagger.

  A loud hammering exploded at the front of the building.

  Under his hand, her body jerked. Her eyes cut to the door. Tadhg’s heart slammed inside his chest as he stared at the door too.

  A muffled shout came from the building next door. Through the wall, they heard the unmistakable rumble of a male voice issuing orders, then the loud thump of objects being overturned and crashing to the floor, then a single cry of impotent outrage, cut short into silence.

  The shop next door was being searched.

  Tadhg stared down into her wide, frightened eyes, and for a moment, his hard heart faltered.

  Forgiveness.

  The single word wafted through his mind. He could have wished for any number of things just now, the wisest being that she would pass out cold from fear. But that was not what he wished for.

  For this witch, with her earnest intentions and her fire-struck hair and the lost cause of her life in the middle of this rotting dung heap of a city, had conjured a whole host of emotions in Tadhg, sentiments that had nothing to do with his mission. And the one marching through him right now was an irrelevant, unnecessary, and almost aching desire, deep and powerful as a flood in spring, to be…forgiven.

  It was gone again, as quick as it had come, and he was once again rock-hard, steel-edged, and utterly determined.

  She stared up at him, panting against his palm, clearly terrified, but her fear meant nothing. Could mean nothing. Heeding fear meant death, certes his, and likely hers now too. They were past the point of running. She was in too deep for escape. He simply had to drag her along after him.

  It was not only their lives at stake, but a kingdom.

  “They will be coming here next,” he told her in a low murmur.

  She nodded, once.

  “’Tis them or me, lass.”

  She nodded again.

  “And up to you.”

  He felt her swallow.

  “I’m going to let go now.” He dropped his hand and backed up a step. If she screamed.... From the alleyway in the back, they heard more boots and voices.

  A hard pounding came at the front door, then a shout to open up. She jumped, then looked between him and the door.

  “It is not much of a choice, is it?” she whispered, looking at him.

  “A rotten one indeed,” he agreed. “Now make it swiftly, lass, ere you get hurt.”

  Chapter Seven

  MAGDALENA’S HEAD SPUN, in equal measure from exertion, fear, and whatever she’d seen flickering in the hard eyes of this hard man. Something had shone there, for just an instant, swift then gone, something that snapped like a whip into the recesses of her heart and rent it open.

  No. Not this. Not now.

  Not to be fooled again by excitement or charm, to think the world could be something other than grey and endlessly flat.

  Twelve years ago, such dreams were to be understood. She’d been young then, and piteously poor, and he’d been handsome, Augustus had, charming, full of laughter, exciting, and marriage to a tradesman had been fortuitous. A blessing.

  Then he’d started drinking. In truth, he’d been drinking for years, but it grew worse, as such things were wont to do, and the laughter fell away, as did the money, and although the charm remained, it became a pale, cold shadow cast over the empty larders that followed all their lost contracts. Soon, it was
nothing but loss: income, reputation, clients. Then he’d died, funny, charming, shiftless Augustus, frozen to death out back of a tavern.

  Somehow, she’d rebuilt. Regained customers. Regained a reputation. Became safe again.

  Never to lose herself in false hope or windy hilltops again.

  At the ripe old age of twenty-nine, Magdalena had to finally admit that hope was a lie, that life was made for toil, and she was thankful for it.

  And now this…this outlaw had entered her life, and for all that he conveyed ‘danger’ with every breath, something about him made her burn from the inside out.

  Something about him made her hope.

  She heard herself say, “Get under the counter.” Without waiting to see if he did, she strode to the door and swung it open.

  A nobleman stood there, dark against the dark night. He was tall and wore an ermine-edged cloak and leather gloves. Steely rivets affixed in an orderly fashion down the front of his blue velvet tunic, as if he’d been hard at revelry when he got the call that her place needed searching and had turned, mid-merriment, to ensure the deed was done.

  “May I help you?” she asked coldly.

  “I sincerely hope so, Dame Thread,” he said, ducking his head to step inside. “I am Lord Sherwood.”

  Chapter Eight

  TADHG DUG HIMSELF a space beneath the front work counter, silently pushing aside containers full of the tools of her trade: iron and bone needles, pricked through thick strips of leather; lucets; a small collection of spindles; heaps of thread wrapped around wooden dowels; and one extremely large, monstrously heavy linen crisping iron. He eyed it appraisingly. Too bad she hadn’t used that to bash Sherwood’s soldier on the back of the head.

  He let fall the linen covering that hung in front of the tools and tugged it along its thread rod until it curtained him from view. He left a narrow slit open, and through it he watched Geoffrey d’Argent, Lord Sherwood, stride into the tailor’s shop.

  “My apologies, Mistress Thread,” he said as he removed his gloves and took a quick, visual sweep of the room, “for disturbing you so late. It is my understanding my men had reason to visit you, and may have caused some disruption.”