Margo Maguire - Celtic Bride

Keelin stepped away from Marcus and went to Adam’s bedside. She knew that Tiarnan was anxious to know what she’d seen, but the vision was still too raw to speak of those things. She would talk to him later, after her heart and mind settled down.

She lit a tallow candle and listened. Adam’s breathing was soft. There was no unhealthy sound or irregularity to it. His forehead was not hot when she touched it, but seemed to be of normal temperature. She pulled the blanket down and peeled the dressing away from the wound. It looked just as it had the day before.

As Keelin made a new paste of lady’s mantle and spread it over the wound, she heard sounds of the men outside rousing themselves. There were wounded men out there, too, she remembered, men whose injuries she should tend.

After viewing Adam’s wound, and seeing that all was well in hand, Marcus let himself out of the cottage and went out to the area where the men were camped. No changes there, so he went on to the river where he sat down with his back against an ancient willow.

He felt shaky this morn. ’Twas not so much from lack of sleep, but from hours of lying thigh to thigh, and breast to chest with Keelin O’Shea. The most alluring woman he’d ever met, she was the only one he’d ever slept with—and ’twas a far more intimate experience than the one shared with a harlot years before when he was with King Henry’s army in France.

They’d been camped at Troyes, just before King Henry signed the treaty that should have brought peace to the two countries. Marcus and all the rest of the English knights were jubilant. Victory was theirs. Henry would wed the daughter of the French king, and be made king of France upon Charles’s death.

The wine flowed, and women made their way into the victors’ camp. Marcus drank more than he ever had before, and more than he had since. And, he allowed himself to be seduced by a woman who wanted his coin.

Marcus had not been entirely naive. He’d spent a whole night learning what a woman expected of a lover, from a cocotte who did not particularly care for him, nor he for her. Though he had experienced a great deal of physical pleasure, he’d gone away with an intense emptiness inside. He had chosen not to share himself so cheaply again.

Until Keelin O’Shea, not that any sort of conjugal sharing with the Lady Keelin would be a cheap affair.

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