“Are you well, man?” Padraig demanded. “Do you hear me? I’m here for my brother’s body.”
“Gone,” the man whispered. “Gone, gone, gone. Everyone’s gone.”
He dropped to his knees, and rocked back and forth. His gnarled fingers slid back into his hair, slowly twisting, pulling. A long, low moan came from his throat, a strange singsong chant in his lilting Welsh tongue.
Another man emerged from the keep. He was disheveled, dirty, and had the thick nose and watery eyes of a drunk. He must have been tending the bonfire, for his sleeves were singed and his shirt bore sooty smears.
“Your brother isn’t dead,” the man said. “His body was brought here, intended for autopsy, but he was alive. The woman of the house, this man’s daughter, took him and fled.”
Padraig lowered his pistol. “My brother lives,” he said softly. He remembered the sense he’d had, the feel of Aidan, and relief had his heart thudding hard against his breast. “Of course,” he said to himself. “Aidan lives.”
“I don’t know where she took him,” the man said simply. “She has only one horse, an ancient nag that won’t take them far. She has your brother in a wagon, and took provisions.” Inclining his head to the wildly muttering madman, he added, “Mercy for him, please, my lord.”
“Forget it. I care only about finding my brother.” Padraig scanned the horizon. There was a storm coming, but it would not stop him. He’d send word to his parents and gather trackers. Wherever Aidan had been taken, Padraig would find him.
Chapter Eight
England
Night drew in around the hut, a thick shroud of black without so much as a single star to break its absoluteness.
Olwyn’s teeth chattered as she tried to keep her back from touching the stone wall. She huddled beneath a fur and a woolen blanket, but they felt thin and inadequate against the damp, frigid wind that blew easily through the cracks.
The fire burned low; they did not want to risk too much of their provisions. Lóchrann sat in front of it, the flickering light sending licks of shadows and burnished gold across his face in equal measure. She saw his frown, the narrow look he sent her way.
“Olwyn, I’m finished with asking you to come share this meager warmth. You’ll come sit beside me, or by God I’ll drag you over by your hair.”
“Try it.”
“You’ll dare me?”
“Aye,” Olwyn said, trying to keep her teeth from rattling together like a child’s toy.
“I wish you wouldn’t. I’ve no wish for things to grow unpleasant between us.”
“I’m fine here,” she managed to say between clenched teeth. “Don’t think to manhandle me or you’ll test my blade.”
Lóchrann changed tactics. He cocked his head to the side, and Olwyn wondered if he knew how handsome he looked with the firelight shifting through his dark, gold hair. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re behaving very strangely.”
“We aren’t acquainted well enough for you to make that claim.”
Lóchrann shifted and turned the full weight of his regard to the fire. He poked it with a thin stick, stirring up glowing embers and causing the flames to flare up. Olwyn watched as he clumsily laid another square of dried peat on the top. It smoldered then, banked for the moment in a way that could cause it to burn out.
“You did it wrong,” she said, and she heard the incredulousness in her tone. What sort of man could not lay a proper fire? “You must allow some air to circulate.”
Lóchrann moved to the side, gesturing to the pit. “I’ve never burned peat before. Show me how, Olwyn.”
Unwilling to risk what little warmth they had, she scooted forward and knelt in front of the fire. The warmth touched her like sunshine, like life, and she knew she was daft to stay away from the heat that she needed.
But he was large and male, and his presence unnerved her. She’d seen him naked. She’d nursed his body, fed him drops of honeyed water like an infant. She’d cradled his head in her lap, stroked his hair, and confessed her darkest secrets and fears.
She had not, however, been prepared for him to wake and be so virile, so alive.
“Like this.” Using two long sticks, she adjusted the dried pungent square so that it would not smother the embers beneath it. “Are you so rich, then, that you burn nothing but wood?”
Lóchrann laughed a bit. “Well, I got you by the fire, anyway.”
So he’d played her as a fool. Before she could react, his hand grasped her upper arm and held it in a grip from which she knew she could not break free. So much for sickness. She turned her head away, staring into the darkness so he could not see the effect he had on her.
“Stay by the fire,” he commanded softly. “I will not have you freeze in the corner rather than sit beside me. Look at me,” Lóchrann urged her. “In my eyes. Look at me.”
He shook her a bit, gently enough, but with an urgency that she felt in her bones. Olwyn dragged her gaze to his face, and yes, she met his eyes.
In the dim light, they glistened dark and limpid. The slant of them was compelling, fringed by long lashes beneath slashing brows. He had a sensual languor in his eyes, belied by the strength and insistence of his hand on her arm.
“I see I unsettle you.”
Olwyn hadn’t had a friend since her brother died, hadn’t had a kind heart to trust in since her mother left, hadn’t had a single soul in the world to view her as something other than evil since the villagers found out what went on in her father’s keep. Neither had she had a suitor. Ever.
And so she said nothing, her silence her only protection. If she were to speak, the truth might come pouring out. Unsettled? How about undone, uncertain, and unnerved? He was attractive to her in a way she feared, and she had a painful longing for him to think well of her, to maybe respect her in a way, and yes, perhaps to even grow to like her.
“We’re strangers of a sort, true,” Lóchrann continued. “You have no reason to trust me. But I give you my word, you will not come to harm. I owe you my life, and I’ll repay that debt in full, of that you can be certain. I’d lay mine down before I let anything happen to you.”
His word shouldn’t mean anything to her. It was true. They were strangers. Olwyn had no cause to think him honorable, no reason to trust him. But she saw no threat in those dark blue eyes, felt no violence in the warm, strong hand that held her arm.
In fact, she felt only his heat and vitality.
“Let go of me,” she whispered. He did, with a sudden release. Her arm grew colder again. She glanced back to her chilly, dark corner. Returning to it was insanity. “I suppose it only makes sense that we share the heat.”
Lóchrann lifted the corner of the furs that he had draped over his legs. “Share all of it, Olwyn. Let’s see if we can keep from freezing to death, aye?”
Capitulation didn’t come easily to Olwyn, but neither did stupidity. Giving in, she slid beside him and let him tuck the blankets and furs around them.
“I’ve questions for you, Olwyn.”
The words inspired dread in her. He must have felt her stiffen, because he sighed heavily and decided to relent. “Very well, never mind for tonight. I’ve no wish to chase you back into the corner. Stay here, and I’ll leave the subject alone.”
She