Free Maire by Linda Windsor Page A

journey from Iberia.
    “Winter has yet to remove her icy fingers from the sea andits mist,” Maire replied at last, the tragic lines of the ancient epic forgotten. Her thoughts were no longer on horses.
    Brude said there was a presence about Rowan ap Emrys, and indeed, she felt it. It bullied her own despite the fact that he gave no appearance of threat. Be it spiritual or fleshly in nature, the force of his nearness set off every alarm in her body. With the length of a hostile sword between them, she hadn’t noticed so much.
    It wasn’t his size, she reasoned. She’d held her ground with sparring partners as big as he and felt nothing like she was feeling now. It was only through sheer willpower that she didn’t flee from her isolated spot at the rail to where her men celebrated over a keg of wine taken from the church.
    “How does it feel, then, to be made a queen of Gleannmara?” her unsolicited companion asked. “Your man Eochan told me you proved yourself worthy to rule the tuath this day.”
    “I earned it,” Maire declared proudly. She stared off at a window of stars where the heavy drape of clouds had thinned. “It feels good, I suppose, but not as good as beating you in combat.”
    Rowan didn’t rise to the feisty queen’s taunt but took it with a smile. “But you are not celebrating.”
    “I’m about to wed a stranger, a madman, who in the moment of his triumph offers me his sword. I wonder if I’m not as fey as you. Why did you do it? You’d everything to gain for your people and nothing to lose.”
    “Suffice it to say I couldn’t bring myself to remove such a pretty head from its body.”
    Rowan sensed rather than saw the color warming the girl at his side and was uncommonly pleased. If he could not explain fully to his Christian mother how God had answered his prayers, there was no way this pagan beauty could grasp his reasons. He wasn’t wholly certain he fathomed them himself,particularly when Maire had unexpectedly seized the victory from him and demanded he become her husband.
    Still, the decision to surrender to her hadn’t been a matter of choice. He’d known he could not kill her the moment she’d stepped out of the cover of her troops. Though he hadn’t thought it possible, that conviction grew stronger when she announced that she was Maire of Gleannmara. Surrender of his sword was the only option whereby they both might survive to see the purpose of this far from chance encounter.
    “So you think I’m fair to the eye, now that I’m rid of the war paint and grit?”
    Her question surprised Rowan. His future bride was proud enough without his feeding her pride overmuch…yet it seemed she was vulnerable with the age-old feminine desire to be admired. Surely she’d been complimented by her countrymen before.
    “Fair enough, I suppose.” The words hardly did her justice, Rowan thought, resisting the urge to stroke her hair as he had the horses’ manes. Damp from the bath that scented it, her untamed tresses tumbled like a wave of sunfire over the wrap of her multicolored brat. The ship’s lantern light was too poor for him to fully appreciate the gaze that chewed upon his answer as though its palatability were undetermined. He’d seen those eyes ablaze with the passion of combat and found, much to his surprise, emotion of another kind stirred within him.
    Not that he’d become so focused on his study of the faith that he’d become immune to the allure of the opposite sex. It was the need for constant nourishment of his animal nature that had changed. Instead of thriving on war and its sometimes carnal rewards, his nature was fueled bright by the studying of God’s Word and watching His blessings turn the efforts of the farm workers into fruit more plentiful than any imagined possible. He’d found more pleasure in cultivating the fruits of life than he’d ever known in plundering them.
    Maire drew her cloak tighter about her and shifteduncomfortably, moving a step away