“You’re a barbaric lout and I think you have sense enough to know it. You like behaving in this offensive manner! You don’t even try to rise above it.”
That just made him laugh. He even folded his hands behind his head. So relaxed, so unofficial, so darn handsome. She closed her eyes and counted to ten.
“Thinking about my bed?”
“No!” she exclaimed, opening her eyes.
“I’m disappointed.”
He didn’t sound it. He sounded as amused as he looked.
Stiffly she said, “I think I’ve entertained you enough for one day. If you will show me to a room?”
He took his legs off the table and sat forward. Suddenly he was all business again. “You already know where your room is.”
Nothing could have deflated her more. She was going back into a cell? She really was a prisoner. . . .
But then he surprised her by adding, “Boris will have made the room much more comfortable for you by now, including adding coverings to the door for privacy. Hopefully he found some drapes to hang instead of musty blankets.”
Comfortable but still alone back there, Alana thought. That stirred some panic inside her. Anyone could yank those coverings down and send a well-aimed dagger through the bars at her, and the captain wouldn’t know about it until the morning when they found her dead!
“There’s no normal room I can have instead?”
“I can be convinced to let you share my room. . . . No? Then I bid you good night.”
“What about in the palace? Surely there must—”
“You really are tired, aren’t you, to make that suggestion?” He frowned. “Do try to remember the seriousness of the charge made against you.”
She drew in her breath. “You’ve actually made a charge? That I’m an assassin?”
He snorted over her conclusion, clarifying, “That you’re an imposter.”
He could still say that after everything she’d told him today? “Why don’t you just shoot me and have done with it?” she almost snarled.
“I haven’t had your confession yet.”
She started laughing brittlely. Her frustration was getting to her. He was getting to her. Why the devil had he even let her out of that cell if he still thought this?
“Why are you delaying, as tired as you are?” he asked. “I will not be accused of taking advantage of your exhaustion.”
“I have returned to the place where I was meant to die. You can’t leave me defenseless here. At least give me back one of my daggers for the night. I will return it to you in the morning.”
“I think you should say no more. You are no longer thinking clearly, or you’d know that isn’t going to happen, not for any reason.”
“But—”
“What you’re doing is making a very good case for me to keep you by my side tonight. You don’t have to come up with excuses for it, wench. The invitation is open.”
That didn’t deserve an answer. “What about this? You lock the outer doors—”
“They will be locked.”
“—but give me the key to the cell.”
He laughed. “You want to lock yourself in?”
“No, I want to lock you out,” she snapped.
