A large job, overseeing so large a house, especially at a time like this. He wondered with sudden and piercing passion why she had never married. Past the age for it now, or so most folk would say. Mayhap she had not desired a domestic life.
Yet here she was.
Look at me,he beseeched her silently, and she did, just a glance that then switched to her father, still beside him.
“Come, Da,” she called. “I ha’ cleared the head table.”
“Sit wi’ me,” Anders bade Finlay.
They sat one on either side of the board and Katrin served them with her own hands. Better yet, she came and sat with them after, looking not again at Finlay or her father but gazing around the hall as if searching for tasks undone.
That gave Finlay the chance to study her, while striving to seem as if he did not. The clear skin, the ashen hair bundled in a simple knot with apparent haste. She was not a woman to fuss over herself. The strong yet delicate hands that showed the marks of hard work and scrubbing.
He longed to drop kisses upon those hands.
“’Tis raining,” Chief MacMurtray remarked to her.
“I can hear that, aye, Da.”
“And the Gallowglass are at practice.”
Indeed, they still were.
“I can hear that also.”
“A grand sight, it is.”
Katrin stared at her father, and Finlay wondered at the emotions astir in her eyes. Exasperation. Impatience.
“A fine thing it maun be, to be a man,” she commented, “and praised for having a sword in yer hand, though without enough sense to come in out o’ the rain.”
“Och, Katrin, do no’ start wi’ all that again.”
Anders had no time to finish. Katrin rose from the table and stalked off.
“My daughter,” Anders said then, “thinks she should be permitted to go to war like a man.”
Finlay said nothing, though wild feelings coursed through him.
“Her brother was foolish enough to begin wi’ training her. Before he died. Now she thinks she should step into his place.”
“Ye will nay let her?”
“Och, nay. Why d’ye think I went to the great expense o’ hiring the Gallowglass, but to remove her obligation? The thing is, master bard”—Anders leaned toward Finlay—“I am no’ entirely sure I can stop her, even though I try.”
Chapter Eight
The rain movedoff by noontime and the Gallowglass were still at work, so Katrin walked out to the field. The grass was high and very wet, but had been well tramped down in many places, so she did not bother sparing her skirts.
The men at work there had finally paused for a break. They stood in small groups talking and laughing. She heard at least three languages.
O’Hanlon stood on the far side of the field, which meant she had to wend her way, catching glances. She knew she was not beautiful, but men—especially men such as these, who took opportunities where they may—would look at anything in a skirt.
O’Hanlon turned those tawny eyes of his upon her well before she reached him. He was wet to the skin with rain and sweat, his half-loosed hair like a pelt down his back, mustaches drooping. He stood with one of his officers, but the man moved off as soon as Katrin walked up.
“Master O’Hanlon.”
“Mistress Katrin.” He gave her a slight bow and thrust the axe, which he gripped in one hand, through the loop in his belt. “Is somewhat amiss? I hope we have not been making too much clamor and disturbed your household.”
