“Pardon me for breaking up thistête-à-tête,” a dry voice said behind them. “But perhaps you ladies could gossip about the weather at another time.”
Kieran turned to see the lieutenant entering the inn.
“We have rooms for the night.” The lieutenant nodded at Cuthie and Massey. “Please follow me. The next time I ask, I will not be so polite.”
The lieutenant spun on his heel, confident that Cuthie and Massey would follow.
“Better not keep your nursemaid waiting.” Kieran jerked a chin toward where the officer had just been.
If Cuthie found Kieran’s mocking words cutting, it didn’t show.
With a snort, Massey followed the lieutenant out the door.
Cuthie pivoted to follow, paused, and then turned back. He walked across the entryway until he was only a foot from Kieran. The smell of foul breath and stale tobacco smoke clung to him.
“No matter your choice—” Cuthie’s smile stretched wider. “—your precious Jamie will dangle from the end of a hangman’s noose. There is no escaping that.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Kieran shot back. “Think long and hard about repercussions should you decide to forswear yourself tomorrow. The truth ofThe Minerva’s sinking will come out eventually, and ye would hate to swing for it. That is, if Andrew and Rafe don’t prosecute ye first.”
Kieran kept his expression blank, but his heart hammered in his chest. His words were a bluff, and he knew it. If Eilidh never recovered her memories, the truth might stay hidden forever.
The gleam in Cuthie’s eyes said he understood this. The man took a step back, still grinning widely.
“Youse all can come after me, if ye wish,” Cuthie shrugged, “but it will make no difference for yourself. And that, MacTavish, is just one more thing that makes this situation so bloody brilliant. Because nothing ye do will spare her. Rant. Rage. Try tae hurt me all ye wish. But at the end of the day, Jamie will still be dead, twitching at the end of a hangman’s noose. And that is a reality ye cannae escape. She is lost to ye.” He chuckled and slapped the lintel of the inn’s doorway as he turned to leave. “’Til tomorrow, MacTavish.”
33
Would you care to dance?” Simon asked at her elbow.
Eilidh watched the crowd whirl and spin through the steps of ‘Strip the Willow,’ sunlight blazing nearly sideways along the horizon. She loved dancing but . . .
“Doyouwish to dance?” She flipped the question back at him.
“Not particularly,” Simon sighed.
Thatsent her gaze snapping to his face.
“I cannot say I enjoy dancing,” he continued, darting a glance toward the dancers. “It is inelegant, is it not?”
Eilidh frowned. Simon wasn’twrong, per se. ‘Strip the Willow’ was a whirlwind of swirling skirts and sweaty laughter. But not all dances were so vigorous.
Eilidh thought through the entirety of her relationship with Simon. Had she ever seen him dance? She thought not. He always sat beside his mother at local balls. Eilidh had considered it solicitous and kind of him.
But now . . . it begged the next question—what else did she not know about Mr. Simon Fitzpatrick?
She grimaced inwardly.
Were Lady Rose and Lady Aster correct? Was Simon simply . . . boringly boring? And had she taken this innate boringness and labeled it as ‘safe’?
Across the crowd, she noticed Ewan smiling and turning toward Kieran who had just approached him.
Ewan bent his head, nodding as Kieran whispered something in his ear. The men spoke for a few minutes. Kieran turned to leave and then paused, his gaze unerringly winging to hers.
For one solitary heartbeat, they locked eyes, setting Eilidh’s pulse to thumping.
Kieran flashed the barest slip of a strained smile and turned away. Eilidh felt the loss of him, an abrupt draining away of the energy he sparked inside her.
Security isnae the same thing as love.
