Riona (22 page)

“They’ll have to take my word that they’ll get what they deserve … at least until we can straighten this muddle of murder. I can offer them nothing at present.”

As if to challenge them, he looked from one to the other of the men. Neither answered at first, each carefully assessing the iron bulge
of Kieran’s jaw. The sound of Riona’s own breath was like a roaring wind to her ear in the tense quiet.

Dallan swallowed the piece of bread he’d chewed to mush in the interim and pointed to Kieran’s chest. “That brooch would make a fine show of gratitude,” he suggested in a matter-of-fact tone.

It was no different than if he’d asked for a loaf of bread or something as inconsequential, but the brooch of Gleannmara was hardly that. Its stones and metal were precious in their own right, but what it symbolized was even more so.

“Hah!” Kieran laughed, clearly not taking the man seriously. “Next you’ll be wanting my horse as well.”

Marcus shook his head. “Nay, not that one. He’s too much like his master. But the clasp now, that’s a fine payment.” He lifted his head, as if studying the brooch. “Sapphires and gold. Sure, it’d bring a pretty price.”

“You go too far, you prancing bucklet.” Face darkening, Kieran struggled upright, using his sword as a crutch.

Riona shot to her feet and stood between the two men. Her foster brother’s great frame looked even more so in the full drape of his brat. There was no visible sign of his earlier weakness. Braced with anger, he leaned like an oak into the storm brewing in his gaze. She seized at reason to waylay it.

“Kieran, the brooch is a small price to pay for our lives.”

The warrior looked at her as if she’d lost her wits, reminding her of what she already knew. “This is the brooch of Gleannmara, woman, presented to Rowan by Queen Maire. To give it away is to toss away my heritage.”

“I have jewels of my own that will bring a higher price,” she said, turning to Dallan.

“Milady, chivalry stands for you and the children,” the entertainer replied. “Besides,
you
are not accused of murder.”

“Accused, not guilty,” Kieran pointed out. “There is some foul plot afoot into which I’ve stumbled.”

Marcus gave Riona a sympathetic look. “Alas, milady, you know what you’re worth to this gent … or should I say, not worth?”

Before Marcus could sidestep Kieran’s charge, the warrior held him up against an elm, pinned by the neck with one hand.

Where had his strength come from? “Kieran!” Riona latched on to his arm until her weight and Marcus’s brought it down. “ ’Tis your foul temper that trapped you into this charge and that convicts you at every turn.”

Marcus scrambled away, and Kieran spun to go after him but instead fell back against the tree. Perspiration beaded his brow, squeezed out by his effort.

“A few precious stones … hardly the worth of a lady’s love,” Marcus rasped.

“Hush, Marcus, or I’ll choke you myself,” Riona warned him. She threw her hands up in exasperation. “I don’t know which of you is worse, the needler or the buffoon. Bricriu or the bull.” Disgusted with both of them, Riona picked up her skirts and stormed away to where the twins played nearby.

“Marcus will meddle one time too many and never sing again.” Finella approached Riona from the side of the wagon, shaking her head. “At least we know the lord of Gleannmara is much improved.”

“And overspent.” Riona glanced back to where Kieran refused to sit down but continued to lean against the tree. He and Marcus still eyed each other, not unlike wary dogs in a ring.

“He’s young and strong,” Finella remarked. “He’ll come back fast. As for Marcus, it serves him right.”

“What
could
he have been thinking, antagonizing my foster brother like that?”

“My husband’s brother is an incurable romantic. He revels in the part of Cupid.”

“Cupid! What in this world possessed him to think Kieran and I—”

Glancing at Fynn, who stalked some animal with his sling poised a distance away, Riona recalled Marcus’s coming up on them locked in a tender embrace the night before. The rest of her protest faded away. How had it come to be? One moment she spoke in earnest of matters of the soul, and the next she responded to Kieran’s kiss with equal fervor.

How had
any
of this come to be, she wondered in confusion.

“Are you going to marry Gleannmara?” Liex asked, glancing up from the sleight of hand trick he was teaching his sister.

“Of course not,” Riona answered. “He’s a godless, foul-tempered fool.”

“But he can carry us on his shoulders, like father used to do.” The child was serious, as if that were all the qualification required to make him happy. “And when he blows foul, we can just hide. That’s what we used to do when athair got mad, ’cause we knew he loved us.”

Would that it were that simple.

“I see an able, strapping man, noble of heart and unable to express what lies within it,” Finella observed without invitation. “And therein lies the source of his anger, not as much at others as at himself.” She stared off at where Fynn entered the forest’s edge. “Where force fails, ’tis love that tames the beast.”

With an ample dose of self-pity, Kieran watched the women as he rested against the rough bark of the tree. They’d kill a horse in this condition to put it out of its misery. The fever had retreated, taking the throbbing head pain with it, leaving in its place a dull ache. He’d sweated his strength away. His wounded leg gave him thunder and a limp. And all from a vicious swipe of a stable fork wielded by a hysterical wench.

Though his physical weakness plagued him, the feelings gnawing at his insides were far worse. Pride demanded the most of him. It shamed the jealousy that had reared upon seeing Marcus’s familiarity with Riona and fueled indignation. His foster sister had spurned his proposal, not once, but twice. She didn’t deserve jealousy. But he had every justification as a gentleman to be outraged by the impudence of a lowly gleeman toward a lady of her station. So what did Kieran gain from coming to her defense? Disdain.

He forced his breath through his lips in frustration.

“If you have half a brain in that thick head of yours, you’d go after the lady and blame love for acting the bullish buffoon.” Sitting on a
branch of a nearby tree, Marcus looked down at Kieran, chirping like a smug magpie.

“Leave me be, gnat.” Kieran leaned on his sword and walked the distance to another tree in the opposite direction. Faith, it hurt, but at least he could move on his own without having to rely on the brothers Tit and Tat.

“You’d think she knew how you felt, wouldn’t you?”

“I’d think you’d know not to press me by now.”

Marcus leapt down, landing light as a cat. “Declare your love, sir.”

“I did!” Kieran caught himself. “And the last person I’d discuss matters of the heart with is the likes of you. I see no wife in your court.”

“An artist of story and song needs no wife. I have the tried and true words of Erin’s greatest lovers at my disposal to make the ladies more than kind with their favors. But a lord of the land, who cut his teeth on steel rather than words—” Marcus tutted—“he can’t beget heirs alone.”

Too tired to argue, Kieran threw his free hand up as if to wave away a worrisome insect. “Why do you plague me?”

“Because I feel sorry for you.” Taking care to stay out of Kieran’s reach, Marcus circled around him, finger poised on his cheek as if in thought. “And I stand to gain if you really wish to show the lady that her love means more to you than … say … that brooch.”

“I’d give my life for Riona but not my brooch.”

“Yes, yes. The brooch will do you much honor when your bones rot beneath a cromlech.”

“As much as the lady.”

“How many times, do tell me good warrior, were you smitten in the head during your training?” Marcus grimaced. “Can a brooch give you an heir? Can a brooch warm your bed and heart? Can a brooch return your love? Will a brooch risk her life to free you from captivity?”

Kieran’s brow shot up. “What do you know of that?”

Marcus nodded toward the spot where the women and children chatted. “Young Liex is quite a storyteller. He even makes you out to be a hero. Myself, I fail to see hero meat. I’d be challenged indeed to compose a song for the ages about a bearish brute who speaks by clanging
sword and pounding fists. The women will not long to hear about you and will pity your lady.”

Kieran grunted, a skeptical tilt at the corner of his mouth. What did he care what women thought of him? He was a warrior.

“You see, my friend—”

“You’re no friend of mine.”

“You see, my good man, for I believe you are noble of heart even if you are challenged by its matters,” the jongleur said, “your training as a warrior was exemplary, but you are sadly lacking in expertise where the heart is concerned.”

“I’ll not stand here and listen to the drone of a gnat with a waspish tongue. Count yourself on thin grace that I haven’t cut it out.”

“That would really impress the lady.”

Never was Kieran more tempted to tear a man apart muscle by muscle. The faint smack of truth was all that saved Marcus’s light-footed hide. And it was only faint truth.

“I can have all the women I wish. Faith, they swoon in my path at fairs or in court.”

“But not the woman you want.” At Kieran’s silence, Marcus went on. “Tell me, how did you first ask the lady to wed you?”

“I told her I was now king and needed a wife and heirs.” Why was he even answering this fool?

“And she didn’t fall into your arms? I’m astounded. What woman wouldn’t want to take up caring for a foul-tempered man and his household, seeing to cooking and cleaning and sewing …”

“It’s a wife’s duty.”

“And growing to monstrous proportion while carrying
your
child, not to mention spending hours, if not days, in agony giving birth. I know if I were a woman, I’d jump at the prospect,” the man remarked laconically. “Oh, and then there’s the caring for the child, the filthy—”

“By my mother’s eyes,” Kieran interrupted, “I haven’t asked
you
, so stop your whining.”

Marcus’s gaze twinkled. He did a dancelike turn. “But that’s what you asked the lady to do.”

“I said no such—”

“And the second time, how did you ask her?”

Scowling, Kieran recalled the scene. “I said I made a promise to her dying brother to marry her and take care of her.”

“Who wouldn’t promise anything to a dying man?”

Throttling was too good for his companion. Had Kieran felt better, he’d have doled out the penance anyway. “I meant what I said. Heber was my foster brother, dearer than my own life to me.”

“Of course you meant it,” Marcus told him. “But promising her brother to marry her does not move a lady’s heart. Not once have you mentioned love.”

“I have loved Riona of Dromin all my life … since she was a toddling child. She
knows
how I feel about her. She just doesn’t care. All she thinks about is her church and now those halflings.” Yet her faith and compassion for the gleeman’s orphans were part of what he cherished about Riona.

“If
she’s
the one you’d marry, then you’d best amend your regard toward them as well.” Marcus shook his head from side to side. “I don’t know if you’re even trainable when it comes to wooing the heart of such a lady. I can only offer my advice—”

“And the price for such advice is the brooch,” Kieran cut in. “I am strides ahead of you, you greedy gnat. I can certainly tell her I love her.”

“Actions carry more weight than words. If she sees you part with something she knows to be dear to you, she’ll know you are in earnest.”

“An earnest fool, you mean.” Kieran fingered the brooch in question. “This is more than six sapphires set in gold. The gold is our Erin, beautifully shaped by a masterful hand. The dark stone is that of Gleannmara, Uí Niall mother to the six septs pledged to her. ’Twas designed by Queen Maire for her king, symbolizing the unity of Gleannmara’s tribes as one people.”

“I can see how much it means to you,” Marcus assured him. “But it’s an earthly thing. Love is spiritual. You possess the earthly thing and yet you are empty.”

“You speak like a priest.”

“I am a priest of the heart,” Marcus declared with a sweeping bow. “The clergy are priests of the soul. Both are empty without the spirit of love.”

It was food for thought, Kieran had to admit … at least to himself. He’d admit nothing to Marcus. How he missed Heber to share his innermost feelings and thoughts with, or even Bran—anyone but this greedy, self-appointed druid of love.

T
he fair loomed ahead of the travelers, spread out upon a great green mound. Banners of all manner and tribe fluttered against the sky, now ablaze with the fire of the setting sun. Looking as if thatched with gold rather than straw, domes of newly erected buildings were interspersed among tents and cottars—portable dwellings made of woven wattle. Lesser in number were the shingled roofs of yew. Livestock of all kinds were carefully tended on the town’s outskirts lest the law be broken against them running free and destroying the landscape.

It must have taken the groundskeepers months to prepared the land so that those attending might walk on freshly cropped green grass free of mud and wallow, Riona thought, glancing askew at the dust on her skirts. She needed a bath before even entering the grounds. She knew she’d have one before seeing the high king to appeal Kieran’s case. The good burgundy dress she wore under the soiled one would do for that, even if it too was a tad worn from her service at the abbey. Before she did anything else, though, she wanted to seek out the chapel and give thanks for the safe arrival of their eclectic ensemble.

Kieran, who insisted on riding the blue Gray Macha the last half of the day, had not throttled Marcus. Clearly unhappy with the color of his warhorse and the tattoos on his face, which Finella said needed to wear off, he’d ridden in brooding silence. The twins napped peacefully, cheeks rosy with health, on the travois he dragged behind the stallion. Finella drove the cart, while Dallan, Marcus, and Fynn, who opted to lead his pony that he might walk with the jongleurs, carried on merrily in song and story beside it.