Page 153 of The Pirate Queen

“You seem surprised?”

“Seems the more dangerous grip.”

And Richard laughs at that. “Everything I’ve taught you is dangerous, Gráinne. I’d think you accustomed to it by now.”

“Everything you’ve taught me would get me in trouble with your mother. That’s hardly a thing I’ll grow accustomed to.”

“Surely she doesn’t scare you?” he asks.

“More than my mother ever has. Every time I look at Finola I think she’s decided the course of my life but not bothered to tell me.”

Richard knows exactly what she means, so he doesn’t bother trying to reassure her. They throw in silence for a while, and when one of her knives goes wide, he moves to stand behind her, to guide her arms into the correct position, but he doesn’t move away afterward.

“And what have you decided?” he asks finally.

“About what?”

“Your life. Will it be Walter or O’Flaherty?”

“Neither.”

“Sure, your father will make you choose. Or my mother, as you’ve noted. You must have an opinion on the matter?”

“My opinion is that they are both odious pigs and I don’t want either of them.”

He is delighted to hear it. “Is there some…thing you want instead?”

“I want Spain and France and Portugal. I want a boat of my own. And a life bigger than any tower house can hold.”

Gráinne looks up at him then with such hope in her eyes that he doesn’t have the heart to quash it. So he smiles at her instead, and when his lips pull wide around his teeth, her gaze falls to them. Richard notes her slow blink and the color that rises in her cheeks, the way her lips part just slightly.

He bends his mouth to hers.

They are only a breath apart when Grace hears someone calling her name.

“Gráinne!” It’s O’Flaherty, stomping toward the byre. “Cook wants her eggs!”

The knives, she thinks. He cannot know.

“I am not sorry,” Richard whispers into her ear, then lowers his mouth so that his next words are a faint brush against her lips. “But I’ll be wanting your forgiveness anyway.”

Then he swipes her feet out from under her.

“Let them figure it out,” Donal whispers, placing his hand gently over Nora’s mouth. He can feel her smile beneath his palm.

She shifts her head slightly so that her mouth is free. “They were doing just fine until O’Flaherty arrived.”

Donal can feel her fingers run along the middle of his spine. He squirms, though not unpleasantly. It is never unpleasant when they meet like this. Quite the opposite, in fact. But he is loath to think what would happen if they are discovered—and not just in a stolen kiss. Their current state of entanglement is quite different. Though they are fully clothed, their position in the hay is inappropriate.

Their hands had started to wander when Richard and Gráinne came into the byre. At first, by the sound of things, Donal thought she needed rescuing.

“They do this often,” Nora said, laughing into the side of his neck as she rearranged her bodice. “Let them be.”

“Are they fighting? With knives?”

She explained their lessons as simply and quietly as possible.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”