The Irish Warrior Part 16

A companionable silence stretched out between them. Finian glanced at the river. Not a villager in sight. He rose to his knees and fingertips, then unraveled to his feet.

"Let's go, la.s.s."

The sun burned hot on the top of Senna's head and upper back as they hurried forward, crouching at the waist. Everything seemed bright and close to hand. The world smelled fresh, like warm, clean dirt and pine, hot flowers and river-stirred air. Ireland's beauty was beyond her words, vivid and brilliant, like a drop of ink quivering on a ma.n.u.script.

The tall gra.s.ses closed behind them, rustling like eager, buzzing conspirators. Small puffs of breeze coasted down the river, which was such a shattering, smas.h.i.+ng shade of blue it almost hurt her eyes. The thought of getting in a boat hurt her stomach.

She plodded forward, looking neither left nor right, resigned to the fate of sickening all over the indescribably beautiful land of Ireland. Or its waters.

Closing her eyes resignedly, she put her hands on the edge of a worn wooden boat and threw her leg over.

"Senna, no!" Finian hissed behind her.

She turned, startled, half in the boat, half out.

"Not that one." He gestured once, rising slightly out of his crouch. "Come. This one." He pointed to a smaller teardrop-shaped craft, tucked amid the cattails, hard to see.

She sighed and lifted her foot back out again. She did not, though, remove any of her weight from her hands, which rested on the lip of the boat. In fact, she was quite used to leaning on things, things that didn't bob. Being incautiously unaware that her previous experience with one's leaning tendencies and the movability, or immovability, of things upon which one leaned, did not apply in the present situation, she pressed down on the boat, which was, by nature, a bobbing thing. Her foot was in the air.

The small craft sailed out into the river. The rope tugged it immediately and snapped it back to sh.o.r.e, but it had to bounce off Senna, who had fallen in the water with a hearty splash. One ankle still remained hooked over the lip of the boat.

She flailed as soundlessly as flailing in water can be done, trying to get her footing. Water lapped over her belly as she arched backward, her hands sinking into the soft, silky mud, one foot in the water, the other hooked over the edge of boat.

How she hated boats.

She tried to kick her leg high enough to free it. Her body having only so much bend, each kick up with her foot forced her head in the opposite direction which, in this case, was under the water. Her fingertips sunk deeper into mud. How long before the owner of this boat heard her racket and came to investigate?

"What do ye tink ye're doin' with me boat?"

Not long at all, apparently.

She tried to crane her neck around to see whom she'd perpetrated her highly embarra.s.sing but not-yet-criminal behavior upon.

Finian's legs walked into view. She tilted her face up to look at his, which appeared to be filled with disgust, if she was reading it properly. She was was upside down, of course. Perhaps she was interpreting it wrongly. upside down, of course. Perhaps she was interpreting it wrongly.

He put an arm behind her back, which gave her the leverage to get her foot out. He helped her slosh to sh.o.r.e where she stood, dripping wet, a length of sea gra.s.s stuck to her neck. She peeled it off, looking at the sullen, yet-surprisingly-unsurprised, aged face regarding her.

"Me boat. Why're ye climbing all over her?"

"I was only climbing there at the bow...the prow, the...edge," she said chirpily. "She's a bit wetter, but none the worse."

Finian and the old man scowled at her. Then Finian turned to the old man.

"Grandfather," he murmured, bending his head, and that was the last word she understood, because Finian lapsed into the most evocative, lyrical, deep-throated plumage of language she'd ever heard. Irish. It almost took her breath away. Finian surely did.

Watching his body, so powerful, restrain itself to bend into a pose of respect for an elderly man. Listening to him, whom she knew not at all, transform into some spellbinding creature before her eyes.

Wild, his language was. Wild, he was. Wild, she wanted to be.

Without warning, Finian was moving again, tossing a few heavy bundles onto the boat she'd almost capsized, speaking so she could understand again.

"We'll take these to Cuil Dubh Cuil Dubh for ye, grandfather. And ye've my thanks." for ye, grandfather. And ye've my thanks."

The old man stood impa.s.sively. He must have been sixty if he was a day, and more fit than men half his age. Compact, sinuous, and suspicious, he did not look happy, but he wasn't arguing. Finian was moving swiftly, tossing another sack into the craft, muttering for Senna to get on board.

She hesitated. The old man was watching her with a canny regard. His eyes were bluer than the water, his eyebrows as wild grown as the gra.s.ses they'd crawled through, and his face was cragged enough for plants to take root. Old curmudgeon. She smiled. She'd once had a curmudgeon in her life, a laughing bear of a grandfather she hadn't seen since her mother disappeared. Senna liked curmudgeons.

Slowly, the old curmudgeon smiled back.

"And we're off, Senna," Finian said lightly. But underneath, he sounded rushed. As if he was worried. As if, at any moment, this old man might turn and start shouting to others. Younger, armed others.

Without thinking, Senna scooped deep in a pouch tied around her neck and lodged between layers of her clothes, and dug out a few coins she'd taken from the trunk under Rardove's table. She dropped them into the old man's hand. A few pennies gone from her future, but they were owed.

"My thanks, grandfather," she whispered, then held a finger to her lips, suggesting silence. She smiled at him over its tip.

His hand closed around the coin, probably sufficient to sustain him and his eight neighbors for a decade. His smile didn't grow an inch, but slowly, one eyelid came down in the most extravagant, flirtatious wink Senna had ever been the recipient of. She blushed to her hairline and got in the boat.

They floated off, the old man watching them, until the tall gra.s.ses swallowed him up and the only thing to be seen was the blue bowl of sky and the long, outstretched wings of a dark, silent cormorant that flew overhead.

Chapter 21.

"Ye gave him coin?"

At Finian's sharp tone, she looked down from the bird and nodded.

He snorted. "Ye bribed him. That's something ye English like to do."

She smiled loftily. "And something you Irish like to do is a.s.sume you understand the meaning of things. 'Twasn't a bribe. And if you cannot see that, then I am at a loss for words."

He snorted again. "That'll be a rare day in h.e.l.l."

"You snort a lot," she pointed out.

He stared at her. "Lie down."

"Pardon?"

"An Irishman in an Irish curaigh curaigh floating down an Irish river with a sack of skins is unremarkable. Ye, remarkable. Lie down." floating down an Irish river with a sack of skins is unremarkable. Ye, remarkable. Lie down."

"How am I remarkable?" she asked, already lowering herself.

He just looked at her.

She did insist on disrobing somewhat, rather than lying in wet leather, to be baked like a cod in the sun. He grumbled but she was resolute, and in the end, he relented.

A brief, disagreeable delay ensued, wherein she hitched and yanked at various wet clothes, disrobing down to a thin linen s.h.i.+ft. Then she lay down in the bottom of the boat.

The sacks of skins were not down here with her, she realized irritably, although they would have made perfect bedding. But they were perched on one of the benches, sunning themselves. Finian's sword and bow were down here with her, of course, out of sight but within easy reach. They were also poking her.

She shuffled around, trying to fit into the small cramped hull of the boat, which really was not where she wished to be, not even for a moment. She was squished, her arms tight up against her sides. It smelled. It was mucky. It was wet. Wet, as if a small pond held a secret life down in the basin of the curmudgeon's curaigh curaigh, or whatever Finian had called it.

"Finian."

"Mmm?" He didn't look down. His powerful arms kept up a powerful paddling. She could almost feel the river skiffing away not an inch below her body.

"I think there's fish down here."

"Aye. This river has many fish."

"No. I mean this boat. Swimming around me. Little tiny fish."

His lips twitched.

"If you laugh, I'm getting up," she warned.

"Hush." His voice went low, his lips hardly moved. Senna barely had time to feel a tingle of concern before she heard the shouts of men at the sh.o.r.eline. The rush of panic came flying for her. Englishmen. Soldiers.

They'd been found.

"Heave to, Irishman," one of the soldiers called.

Finian shoved the paddle deep into the mud of the riverbed, keeping the boat from sailing any farther, which would have sent the soldiers shouting for whatever others were billeted on the people and patrolling the lands. It also kept the curaigh curaigh from going any closer to the sh.o.r.e. from going any closer to the sh.o.r.e.

"That looks like O'Mallery's nubbin' boat," one of them said.

"That's so," agreed Finian easily. "He let me use it."

"Not b.l.o.o.d.y likely," muttered the shorter one. The two stared at each other a moment, then the taller one snapped his fingers.

"O'Mallery don't let his wife use his p.e.c.k.e.r," he growled. "Come over here, boy."

Senna could almost feel Finian rise up in the boat, like a huge wave uncoiling itself close to sh.o.r.e. She grabbed his boot. His steely gaze snapped down. With her free hand and an open palm, she mimed going softly down. Sit Sit down, down, calm calm down. down.

"For me," she whispered.

He fired his gaze up again. "There's only two of them," he said, not moving his lips.

"Now there's only two," she whispered. "You said you enjoy traveling with me. I enjoy traveling with you. Let it go." there's only two," she whispered. "You said you enjoy traveling with me. I enjoy traveling with you. Let it go."

"I've let a lot of things go," he said in a calm voice. That worried her. He was still squinting toward the sh.o.r.eline, locked, she supposed, in mortal eye combat with one of the English soldiers.

"I'll make it up to you," she whispered urgently.

The faintest trace of a smile lifted his lips.

"Boy, git over here."

It was the whisky that made her do it. She was fairly certain of that. The hot, uninhibiting flush the drink had sent coursing through her limbs simply floated into her brain and melted her wits.

She took a deep breath, gave her tunic a harsh tug so it tore further, exposing an immodest curve of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and the valley between. Then she sat up. Unraveled, really. Or so she hoped.

Finian's jaw dropped, but not so far as the English boys' did on the sh.o.r.e.

"Jay-sus!" one of them shouted, jumping back as if she were one of the fey. fey.

She smiled as l.u.s.tily as she could and draped her arms over Finian's thighs, her face close to his groin, implying she'd only just lifted her mouth away.

"h.e.l.lo, lads," she said in a confident, husky tone. Or did it sound like she was sick? She didn't quite know how to sound seductive, and hoped this would do. "Are we disturbing ye?"

She tried to sound as much like Finian as possible, the rocking cadence of his speech, the slow, seductive dropping off of the sharp-pointed ends of words, as if he couldn't be bothered to stab so at a thought.

The soldiers gaped. Finian adapted immediately. He put his palm lightly but possessively around the back of her head, exerting the slightest pressure downward, bringing her lips just slightly closer to what was now, partially, an erection. He was obviously familiar with the move. A fiery rush shot through her body, down to her womb.

The young soldiers turned their gapes to Finian, then burst out laughing, smacking each other on the arms, as if they'd accomplished something great and worthy. All pretense of being on opposing sides fell away in the face of getting a woman to suck their-.

Holding her stiff smile, Senna said through unmoving lips, "You may attack them now."

Finian didn't remove his gaze either. "Shall I? And yet, we like traveling together."

"Let's try this, then." She lifted her voice. "Have a good day, lads," she sang out, lifting one hand to wave. "I know we will."

Finian yanked his paddle up and the boat began slipping downstream. One of the soldiers stepped forward, a concerned look on his face. He raised a hand, half roused from his voyeuristic stupor.

Again, it was the whisky that gave her the idea. She was quite certain this time.

She bent her head and brushed her lips over Finian's erection.

The soldiers' jaws dropped, then they exploded into whoops and hollers, jumping up and down like they were standing on a beehive. Nothing about Finian changed, except that his hand tightened almost imperceptibly around the back of her head.

The river sluiced away beneath the boat, but Senna, to her own dim surprise, did not move. The bottom of the boat was hard and wet, with a rib bone-like wooden beam jutting into her as she knelt between Finian's legs. But she didn't feel a thing.

All she was aware of was Finian's hard thighs beneath her arms, the heat of him engulfing her chin and cheeks, the hot sun on the top of her head, and the powerful rising up of his chest. His was looking down, his face shadowed, his dark eyes unreadable but watching her. And his hand was still on the back of her head.

She must never drink whisky again.

"I'm feeling reckless," she murmured. Reckless indeed. She felt like she was flying.

"That is a very bad idea," Finian replied tightly.

He took a moment to say it, trying to compose himself, but every moment of looking at her unraveled him further. Her hair was still damp, tangled and drying in small, dangling curls, like a rainstorm of burnished amber gemstones beside her face. Her lips were plump and wet, and her mischievous eyes worried him. He removed his hand.

"A very bad idea," he said again.