Free The Irish Warrior by Kris Kennedy Page A

loomed before them, black and bone-like. Finian gripped her arm and, to ensure her silence, put his finger over her lips. She inhaled sharply at the touch. His eyes darted to hers. He shook his head in silent warning. Her head dipped in a nod.
    He disappeared for a few moments, then his hunched form reemerged out of the darkness. “The sloth of the guards is inconsistent. The gate is occupied, although perhaps not guarded too well.” She looked at him. “There is a fine argument brewing. Something about gambling. And a woman. They are drinking.”
    â€œA fight and liquor will bring even more puppets to the gatehouse,” she predicted glumly.
    â€œWell, then,” he murmured, “let us have a hope they are all as inept as their lord.”
    That was a dim hope. These were the baron’s men, fed on his evil, and while they might not be bright, they did not need to be particularly accomplished in their wits to notice two people slinking around the castle gates long after Lauds had rung. Especially not when one was a six-foot Irishman who was supposed to be shackled in the baron’s prisons.
    The cloud of gloom beginning to billow over her must have been noticeable even through the darkness, because Finian considered her a moment, then leaned close.
    â€œCourage,” he murmured.
    â€œI haven’t a bit of it,” she whispered in reply.
    â€œYe’re made of it.”
    She almost laughed. “Hardly. What I am is reckless and headstrong and I don’t listen particularly well—”
    His arm wrapped around her shoulders. “I don’t need to be told those things, lass,” he whispered directly into her ear. “Ye’re the candle at night, nothing to hide. Ye also talk a great deal, and were ye to find it in yer heart to save a poor Irishman’s life, please do so now by shutting yer lush mouth a few moments.”
    Her tongue was nailed to the roof of her mouth as she stared into the dark Irish eyes inches from her own.
    Just then the outline of the two patrolling soldiers walked by in a circuit around the castle walls. Finian froze. The weight of his muscular arm, slung over her shoulders, was oddly comforting. They heard a rough laugh, then there was silence.
    Senna inhaled a shaky breath and her life slowed to the pace of a languid breath of air on a hot summer day. She wanted to stand just as they were for a very long time. She wanted his hand to dangle, just as it was, barely brushing against nipples grown tingling hard.
    How odd and strange everything was. Here she was, in a foreign land, fleeing a man who wanted to force her into marriage. Here she stood, shivering outside a prison wall, tucked under the arm of an Irish warrior, her body behaving as it never had before.
    Strangest of all, this didn’t seem strange.
    He removed his arm. She shivered, suddenly noticing the chill. They started for the gate, only to hurl themselves against the side of a building a moment later when a clamor of shouts and curses rang out. The two guards ran back to the guard tower, now ablaze with lights. Out on the rampart stood several dark figures.
    â€œBollocks,” came a hushed, almost reverent whisper, at odds with the crude curse. The penitent was bowed almost in half over the edge of the stone tower, gazing into the shadows below.
    â€œBy your balls indeed,” another agreed, his harsh voice bouncing down the ramparts to them. “The pricker threw Dalton right over the battlement!”
    The shouts grew louder. Finian and Senna looked at each other.
    â€œBreak it up,” one voice broke through the mêlée. Balffe, the huge captain of the guard, waded through the mess evident at the top of the tower and stared over the wall. “Christ Almighty, Molyneux, you’ve killed him dead.” He looked back up and glared at the perpetrator. Hairy forearms folded over his chest as he waited for the pathetic explanation.
    His patience was not