“Then I dunnae think ye ken what ye’re fighting fer,” she returned. “Ye follow commands like a hunting dog, and ye never get to enjoy the meal ye’ve fetched fer someone else.”
Whatever this conversation was becoming, he abruptly didn’t like it. Kissing and sex was much simpler than conversation. “Have you ever set foot outside the Highlands, Fiona?” he countered. “Outside Maxwell land, even?”
Her brow furrowed, and she moved back away from him. “Nae, I havenae. But what does that—”
“Then stop trying to judge the motives of people with whom you have nothing in common,” he suggested, standing to retrieve his breeches and shrug them on. She had no damned right to criticize how he lived his life. She knew nothing about it.
“I see what this is. Ye dunnae like what I’m saying, so ye dive in to counterattack. Sometimes a question’s just a question, Gabriel. It’s nae part of a battle.”
“Everything is a battle,” he retorted. Picking up his boots and the rest of his scattered clothes, he padded barefoot for the door. He wasn’t finished with her yet by any means, but he knew her well enough to realize that she enjoyed poking and prodding at him. His hard travel cot would give him a better night’s rest, though he doubted he would be doing much sleeping.
No, he hadn’t quite decided what he wanted of her, what he needed of her, but he had more than a hunch that it wouldn’t end with the capture of sheep thieves. But that wasn’t anything he could decipher in her presence. Not tonight. First he needed to decide who, precisely, he was becoming and whether either of them could live with this new version of himself or not.
***
Gabriel unbolted the door to Fiona’s bedchamber and inched it open—and was immediately grateful for the hard-learned lessons of caution. A figure strolled up the hallway, shadowed in the scant candlelight but silhouetted well enough that he could make out the frock coat and narrow-legged trousers. Silently he closed and bolted the door again.
“What is it?” she whispered from right behind him.
Gabriel nearly dropped a boot. Of course she’d followed him; she wouldn’t want him to escape with the last word. “Artur Maxwell,” he murmured back, gesturing her away from the door and lowering his gaze to her naked backside as she retreated toward the bed.
“His room’s on the other side of the stairs,” she muttered, pausing to retrieve her night rail from the footboard and pulling it on over her head. “What the devil is he doing here?”
Her door handle dipped and righted itself again. “I can guess,” Gabriel returned, his general annoyance with the arrogant fop deepening into a possessive hatred. Fiona belonged with him. His fingers balled into a fist. He’d been the one to bolt her door. If he hadn’t, Maxwell would have been in her room by now.
“That snake,” she exclaimed, her voice thankfully still hushed. Her tone mollified him a little, but didn’t make him want Artur any less bloodied.
The handle lowered and lifted again, more emphatically this time. Fiona had been with other men before him. Was Artur Maxwell one of them? Did she call their encounters bonny, too? Scowling, he glared at her. “Is this his custom when he visits, then?”
“What? Nae. He makes my skin crawl.”
Good.“You’ve been with other men, though.”
“Aye. And ye’ve been with other women. Shut yer gobber, Gabriel, before ye get both of us hanged. Ye can go on aboot being jealous later.”
Was that it? Jealousy? It felt far more… deadly than the word poets and novelists bandied about so readily. “What—”
A quiet knock sounded at the door.The bastard.Gabriel started forward, but stopped when Fiona grabbed his arm. “Nae. If ye answer that door, someone’ll end up dead.”
Gabriel narrowed his eyes. Nearly every encounter he had with people who counted themselves his enemies ended with someone dead. “It won’t be you, and it won’t be me.”
“Go hide under the bed, ye lummox.”
Under the bed.Him. “No.”
“Then…” She glanced around the room, then padded over to the tapestry hanging on one side of the fireplace. Swiftly she pressed a pheasant design on the wood panel beside it, and the tapestry swung out on one side. “Come on with ye, Gabriel. Please.”
He wouldn’t have moved, except for that last word. Still frowning, he slipped through the hidden door and she pushed it closed behind him. Damp, stale air settled around him, dust and wood chips and the devil knew what else rough beneath his bare feet. Even with the pitch-darkness he sensed space beside him, but moving now would mean making noise. And he had no intention of being caught half naked in a priest hole while holding his clothes in his arms. Letting her confront Artur alone went against every instinct he had, but she’d asked, and so he would wait. For the moment.
Distantly he heard her door click open. “Artur? What’s amiss?” Fiona asked, sounding believably sleepy.
“Naught’s amiss,” the male voice answered. “Ye’re a lovely lass, Fiona, and the night is long and cold.”
Gabriel clenched his jaw. Damned bloody interloper.
“I dunnae accept visitors to my bedchamber in the middle of the night, Artur, no matter how cold it is. Go to bed.”
“Ye’re a lass alone, Fiona. Ye could benefit from having a man nearby who’d look after yer interests.”
