Twelve

Rest had done the horses as much good as it had Madoc, and the careful attentions of Hallfield’s grooms had helped too. Rhuddem looked a few years younger when they were packing than she had when they’d reached Hallfield. Madoc would usually have thought Moiread’s placid gelding as stolidly unchanging as rock, but even he pricked his ears up and gazed over his stall with new energy when Madoc entered the stables.

Madoc had politely let it be known that he and “Michael” would handle the last stage of preparation on their own. He doubted that an assassin could have penetrated into the keep at Hallfield, where few travelers stopped and new faces attracted attention, but he’d gained a certain habit of caution over the past few weeks. Then too, he wanted to pack the last of his bags himself.

He secured the items carefully: two wooden chests, one the size of his hand and the other thrice as big, as well as one long pouch made of white silk and silver thread, all wrapped for travel in thick wool and then leather. He’d bound the chests with stout cords as well as locking them. The pouch was less important. The implements of his own magic might raise eyebrows or put Madoc in jeopardy if he entered a land with a truly strict priest, but they had no power of their own. He’d knotted the drawstring and left it at that.

Satisfied that the saddlebags were in place and wouldn’t fall, and that the edges of the chests would cause his mare no discomfort, Madoc bent to inspect the saddle itself. The leather seemed sound and whole, the smell of it as primitively reassuring as the other smells surrounding him, those of hay and horse, but he couldn’t let himself be lulled. He peered carefully at the straps for minute cuts, ran his fingers over the buckles to be sure they fastened tightly, and passed a hand under the saddle itself, checking for burrs.

Rhuddem shifted beneath his hand, and Madoc heard footsteps crunching the straw.

“Good man,” said Moiread from behind him. “Nothing amiss?”

“Nothing to my sight,” he said, straightening up and turning to face her. Light from the door fell slantwise across her face, so that one eye peered bright out of shadow, while the other reflected sunlight. “I’d not expected you here so soon.”

“I’d get questions if I left all of this to you,” she pointed out, gesturing to the horses. “It should all properly be my job, ye ken. They’ll likely be thinking me incompetent as it is.”

“Alas, ’tis true,” Madoc said.

“I know. I’m a dreadful failure as a squire, aye?”

“Dreadful.” Madoc pulled a face of exaggerated sobriety. “Continue in this vein, and you’ll never be a knight yourself. Bad enough that you’re given to drinking and dicing, bad enough that you start fights—”

“For your sake, and I never started it. Well, not really started it.”

“—but now you can’t even be trusted with our baggage.” Madoc leaned on the door of the stall and shot Moiread a reproachful look, clicking his tongue. “I could wonder why I took you on to begin with.”

“An act of charity, plainly. You took pity on a poor lad, and you’re convinced there’s good stuff in me yet, if you can bring it out. It’s noble of you, and I’m sure you’ll spend fewer years in purgatory because of it.”

“I shall put myself up for sainthood as soon as I get home.”

Moiread laughed and rested her back against the stable wall, folding her arms across her chest. “You might check my tack, then, out of the goodness of your heart. Shadow’s no’ disposed to mind me on his back, but neither is he overfond of me probing around his belly, and I’d rather not upset him more than I must.”

“Out of the goodness of my heart,” Madoc replied and left Rhuddem’s stall for the gelding’s. He glanced back over his shoulder. “You really named your horse Shadow?”

“I’ve got to call him something,” Moiread said with a shrug. “Black is confusing, and horse is worse. And I can’t name him like the ones I had in war, since we’re going to civilized places, wi’ women and children and all. It was Shadow or Fatty.”

The name didn’t seem to bother Shadow himself. He stood munching and drooling while Madoc checked his saddle, flicking his tail occasionally but otherwise giving no sign that he noticed the man’s company.

“All is well,” Madoc finally said and walked out into the main stable, looking around the large and mostly silent building. “Where do you suppose everyone is?”

“No supposing needed,” said Moiread. “They’re off breaking the colts today.”

“Ah,” said Madoc. “I’d no notion.”

Moiread smiled. With her shift of position, the sunlight fell full across her face, turning her pale skin golden. “I was eating with the guards and the servants, mind, while you were charming the Calhoun and his women.”

“Oh, you did your portion of that as well. Young Seonag’s too well-guarded, or too much the lady, to follow you about, but I’d wager she’ll picture your face when she hears a love song for the next month or two.”

“Truly?” Moiread chuckled, a low, rich sound, and one full of as much compassion as amusement. “Poor lass. But most of us must fall a few times when we’re young, and at least I’ll vanish and be forgotten.”

“Perhaps,” said Madoc, “you give too little credit to your charm.”

He’d been jesting, but as they spoke, he felt Moiread’s closeness, and his own response was almost inevitable. The stables were silent and empty around them. Her eyes were shining with merriment, and her lips were as full and tempting in this guise as when she wore no illusion.

They curved into another smile. “Flattering,” she said, “but I hope you took no insult. You’ve the rank, after all. Should I worry that I’ve thwarted a…deeper alliance?”

“No,” said Madoc. “The Calhoun would never marry his daughter to a wizard. Magic, you see, is no fit work for real men.”

Startled, Moiread threw back her head and laughed, her throat long and pale above the dark collar of her tunic. “Now there’s an insult, if you wish it. Does he suppose you a eunuch, do you think, or effeminate?”

“I’ve not had the opportunity to ask. Or,” he added, emboldened by her disguise and her way of speaking, “to prove otherwise.”

Moiread shook her head. “Oh now,” she teased him, eyes sparkling, “you’ve had opportunity aplenty. You’ve just no’ bothered taking the chance, unless the kitchen maids have kept their silence better than they tend to do.”

“The better part of diplomacy is not seducing the household. Speaking generally.”

“Wise advice. I’ll have to write it down when I’ve a moment.”

Flecks of hay spun through the air between them, shining like tame sparks. The horses shifted and sighed behind them, the sole witnesses to their conversation. Madoc was sure of it. They were alone in a way they’d never been on the road, where they’d been on constant watch for armed interruptions.

“Will that be a change for you?” he asked, stepping forward.

“Oh,” she said, “I’ve never been the envoy, have I? So it’s never concerned me before.” She tilted her head, mocking deep consideration, and placed a slim finger against her pursed lips for a moment. “Should I have been spreading rumors about your…capabilities? In the interest of diplomacy, that is? I’d not want to deprive you of the girl’s hand by my failure at intrigue.”

“No,” said Madoc. “Marrying a foreign rebel’s daughter would make the English too suspicious. Besides, my taste runs considerably older.”

Once he’d spoken, he wondered if he should have done so. They were alone; her father had commanded her presence at his side; and he had no wish to press that advantage, or to assume that her humor truly meant she’d accept liberties. About to draw nearer to her, he hesitated.

Moiread slowly straightened up until she was no longer leaning on the wall. Hips swaying in a distinctly unmasculine fashion, she took a few steps forward until her chest and Madoc’s almost touched. “How much older, would you say?”

That was enough evidence for temptation to win out over chivalry. Madoc cupped her cheek in one hand, resting his fingers on a soft patch of skin behind one of Moiread’s ears. “Old enough to know what she’s about.”

* * *

Moiread certainly qualified. She had for more than two hundred years. She’d first kissed a boy when she was thirteen, and had not been shy about acquiring experience in the years since. Mortal maidens might need to be chaste and demure. She’d only had to be discreet.

Yet even as she leaned forward to press her lips to Madoc’s, she felt briefly uncertain of herself. She almost held her breath, waiting on his response, and the sound in her throat when he wrapped his arms around her had relief in it as well as pleasure.

Pleasure there certainly was. Madoc kissed deftly, his mouth teasing hers, then responding to her reaction, giving her more pressure, more heat as she demanded it. His chest was firm against hers, and the arms that encircled her body were taut with wiry muscle. He splayed one hand across the small of her back and wound the fingers of the other through her short hair, tilting her head up.

She could melt into this man, Moiread thought, like iron at the forge. The heavy liquid heat of desire was already traveling through her body, as if pure lust ran in her veins instead of blood.

Running her hands down Madoc’s back, she pressed lightly with her nails and felt him shudder. His hips thrust forward, pressing his swollen shaft against her sex, a weight and contact that made Moiread groan into his mouth. She dropped her hands to his arse and squeezed, pulling him more firmly toward her and relishing the feel of the hardened muscle beneath her palms.

The hand at Moiread’s back clenched, fingers dragging the fabric of her tunic and shirt across her skin with a marvelous friction that rippled out into her whole body. Teasing was over now. The kiss was forceful, hungry, and almost bruising. Moiread leaned up into it, wrapped one of her legs around Madoc’s thigh, and arched her hips forward.

She was too distracted to fully control her strength. Madoc was too distracted to resist. The stable floor was not entirely even or level. Madoc shifted his weight too far back and stumbled, without letting go of Moiread, nor she of him. Moiread heard his head hit the stall door at around the same time her arse made contact with the straw on the ground.

“Damn!” Gingerly she got to her feet, rubbing her tailbone. “Are you, er, well?”

“I managed not to knock my brains out, yes,” said Madoc. His head wasn’t bleeding, and he was standing up as steadily as Moiread.

That was not particularly steady, but she didn’t think either of their injuries had anything to do with the situation. Her lips tingled, and even the feel of her shirt against her breasts sent pangs of frustrated longing all over her. She had a good enough opinion of her charms to imagine that Madoc felt similarly, though she didn’t let herself glance toward his groin.

This was not the place or the time for any further temptation.

“If you’d like,” Madoc said gravely, “I’ll make a pretty apology and promise to do no such thing again.”

“Would you mean it?” Moiread asked. These were dangerous waters, but she couldn’t resist dipping her toes. She did, however, move back to the wall she’d been leaning against before, putting distance between them.

“If you wanted, I’d hold myself to the promise,” Madoc replied with a smile. “And were you to ask an apology, I should be truly sorry for making you feel the need of it.”

Moiread shook her head and, reminded by the feeling of hair brushing across her cheek, ran her fingers hastily through the tangled strands. “That would be a great pity,” she said, “and I’ll ask no such thing. But wisdom, at least, demands it not happen again while I look like this.”

She gestured to her chest, flat to appearance if not, evidently, to touch.

“Yes, there is that,” Madoc said with a wry smile. He paused briefly, then added, “Do you know, I hadn’t been thinking of that at all.”

“That could either be very flattering or very not. I shall take it as the former.”

“Please do.”