He stopped at the doorway to what was apparently theworkroom and released her hand. She would have protested that, but saw soon enough that he had simply gone back out in front for a candle and a match. He paused next to her, bent, and struck the match against the stone floor. She would have asked him why he didn’t just use a spell, but the sudden sight of his minder spell standing behind him almost left her shrieking. She stood, shaking, in the tailor’s back room and decided that while there were many things she didn’t care for, that list was topped by shadows, things that made loud thumps in the dark, and lingering in a shop where the owner was no longer present in the current world. The sooner they were gone, the better.
“Did Master Odhran hide a record of your foul deeds here?” she wheezed. She wished she could have sounded a bit more irritated and quite a bit less terrified, but things were what they were. She supposed Acair was fortunate she was still on her feet.
“Oh, his workroom is hardly large enough for that,” he said, setting his candle down on a tall worktable. “A brief list of the more notable pieces of mischief, perhaps, but nothing more.”
Léirsinn would have advised him to look instead for a hook on which to hang that light, but a pair of things stopped her. First, she had absolutely no desire to look around Master Odhran’s workroom for anything on the off chance she saw many somethings she wasn’t going to care for. The other thing was, there was apparently no need for worry. Whatever else the tailor had done with his time—several unsavoury and dangerous things came more easily to her mind than she would have liked—Master Odhran had been extremely tidy. His worktable was spotless.
The rest of the room was less so. The wall to her left was lined with shelves on which were stacked an endless number of boxes and many piles that listed in various directions. The wall to her right boasted row after row of various threads and tools, someof which had definitely not been put back properly. She was fairly certain if she’d wanted to plunge a pair of shears into Acair’s chest, though, she would have managed to find whatever she required over there without too much trouble.
Another long workbench was pushed up against the wall facing her, and the window above it ran almost the entire length of that bench. One of the panes of glass there reflected the light of the candle, something she found thoroughly unsettling. Who knew who might be standing outside that window in the shadows, watching them?
She looked at Acair to see if he might be just as bothered by it only to find him standing in front of a shelf, still as stone.
She ignored the window and moved to stand next to him. “What is it?” she asked. “Nothing here to suit your finicky tastes?”
“It occurs to me,” he managed, “that one of my brothers has no doubt decided to have a good laugh at my expense by filching some of my spare cravats.”
She realized at that moment that she had seen several expressions on his ridiculously handsome face, but genuine surprise had never been one of them. It wasn’t a pleasant surprise, though, which was more alarming than she would have thought it might be. Worse still was the icy nature of his fingers when he casually laced them with hers.
She looked at the empty box he had laid down on a workbench and couldn’t begin to imagine how he had decided one unmarked box amongst dozens of unmarked boxes was his, but perhaps the idea wasn’t so farfetched. She knew when tack went missing, so why not neckwear?
“I’m sure you’ll shed tears over their loss,” she said.
“Buckets,” he agreed. “One never knows when the right bit of silk at the throat will turn the tide of a seduction.”
She would have smiled, but found that she simply couldn’t. “You are an honorless bastard.”
“I’m offended,” he said, squeezing her fingers gently, then releasing her hand. “I have a great deal of honor when it comes to exploits in and out of the bedchamber and taking my place in the center of any dance floor. You are at liberty, of course, to inquire about any of them.”
“I’m not sure I want to,” she said seriously. She looked at him as casually as possible. “Are you certain you have the right box?”
“There’s one way to tell, isn’t there?”
“I imagine your tailor is too dead to care whose goods you rifle through,” she muttered, “so search away.”
He lifted his eyebrows briefly, then nodded. She had no idea what to look for, so she settled for putting boxes back in their places after he’d searched them. She couldn’t help herself. Riding was so much more pleasant when one could easily find one’s boots and gloves.
He came to a stop near the window and looked at her. She thought he looked a bit as if what he truly wanted was to find somewhere to sit down.
“Gone?” she asked.
“Every last bloody piece of anything I left here,” he said with a heavy sigh. “A travesty, truly.”
She didn’t bother to ask if he were certain or not, because she’d just watched him go through an entire wall of goods. He sighed heavily as he walked over to the other side of the chamber where his tailor’s tools were stored. He pulled a stool over to a cabinet in the corner, then stepped up onto it and opened the uppermost door.
Léirsinn watched him take a deep breath, then reach inside.She half expected something to leap out at him, but apparently the only thing to be flying at the moment were curses. Those curses were soon joined by the things that Acair started flinging onto the table. She made a grab for the candle and held it out of the way scarcely a moment before a pattern—or so she supposed it was—landed atop the flame. She was rather surprised by his sudden change of mien, but perhaps he saw no reason to be subtle any longer. Whoever had chosen his gear from all the things in that work chamber obviously hadn’t done so by accident.
If she had expected him to stop flinging once the cabinet was empty, she would have been mistaken. She tidied the piles of patterns on the worktable as she watched him continue to feel around inside the cabinet as if he actually expected to find something still there.
“Is this not everything?” she asked finally.
He swore enthusiastically, then stepped down off the stool and came back around the corner of the worktable. He started shuffling through the patterns there, but with an unusual lack of care. She put her hand on his arm to stop him.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Something besides an invitation to your wedding to Mansourah of Neroche,” he said grimly.
She smiled in spite of herself. “I don’t think you’re in any danger there.”
