Yet his reaction to her now felt like a step backward.
“I thought,” she began, “we could continue our conversation, but if you don’t want me here …” She could leave, she didn’t need to say.
His gaze lifted, and what she met in his eyes arrested the breath in her lungs—a burning, a rawness. “Artemis,” he said, “you and I have only ever been alone in a room with a bed in it for one reason.”
Oh.
She swallowed against a suddenly parched throat.
She reached again for her ale and drank, deeply.
She’d come here to speak of the past, hadn’t she?
Except, notthatpast.
“Bran,” she began on a croak. The ale wasn’t helping.
He tore off a chunk of bread and dipped it into the thick mutton stew. “Yes?”
He didn’t appear half as bothered as she.
But then, he’d turned the conversational momentum around on her with that bed observation, hadn’t he?
“I think it’s necessary that we continue our conversation from earlier.”
“Necessary?” He cocked his head. “Necessary for whom?”
“Necessary for us.”
“There is no?—”
“Donotsay there is no us,” she cut in with more heat than she’d expected. “Therewasanus.” She let that settle into the air and bring the conversation back to the track she wanted. “There are yet threads that need to be resolved.”
His golden eyes shimmered with skepticism. “Artemis, we can leave the past where it is, and we can go our separate ways and never see each other again. Nothing defined or meaningful binds us.”
Nothing defined or meaningful binds us.
The words felt like lead shot to her gut.
And yet, the feelings she was experiencing felt meaningful and needed definition.
She must pursue this path.
“But what came of the twenty thousand pounds?” she asked.
The warm gold of his irises turned to flat granite. “What of it?”
“You agreed to train Radish because you need money for your sister.”
“Aye.”
“Do you have a problem with gambling?”
He snorted. “No.”
“Do you have a very expensive snuff box collection?”
“Of course not.”
