He turns to his mother, and the temperature in the room drops. “Enough.”
“I’m just making conversation, darling?—”
“Your thinly veiled innuendos don’t go unnoticed. You’re being rude to my wife.” He holds her gaze without blinking. “It stops now.”
No one moves. No one breathes.
Declan leans back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “Come on.” His voice is low, almost reasonable. “We all know this marriage isn’t real. It’s a sham. There’s no way you actually have feelings?—”
“She is my wife.” Cillian doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t have to. “And I will put a bullet through anyone who disrespects her. Anyone.” His eyes move to each of his brothers in turn, unhurried. “Including family members.”
Lorcan is the first one to move. He reaches for the bread basket, drops a roll on my plate, and says, “So, Nora. Got any hobbies?”
I pause for a long moment before answering. “I like to read. Cillian bought me a whole shelf full of books. He’s been very generous.”
“Yeah,” Lorcan grins widely. “He’s a prince that way.”
Declan snorts. Ronan cough-laughs then pinches the bridge of his nose.
“What’s your favorite genre?” he continues. “I’ve been trying to get into reading—Ronan tells me it’ll make me less of an idiot, which, honestly, I can’t argue with.”
I look at Lorcan—the charming, warm, trying-hard youngest brother—and feel my tense muscles loosen ever so slightly. “Mostly fiction. Some classics, some romance.”
“Romance.” He points at me. “Okay. Give me a starter one. Something I won’t fall asleep reading.”
“Lorcan,” Declan says flatly.
“What? I’m making polite dinner conversation. Isn’t that what we’re doing?” He looks around the table. “Don’t blame me just because you losers have no manners.”
I answer him and the two of us talk about books for the rest of dinner—him asking questions he probably doesn’t care about but asks anyway, me answering with more words than I’vestrung together all night. It’s the only genuine kindness that happens at this table, and I’m so grateful for it that I could cry.
After the plates are cleared, Kathleen rises and suggests we leave the men to their business and retire to the sitting room.
I don’t want to go. Every instinct I have—the ones honed by years of reading rooms, people, and the specific quality of danger—tells me not to go. But Cillian is pulled into a deep conversation with Ronan and Declan before I can catch his eye, and Kathleen is already moving toward the hallway with the expectation that I’ll follow.
So, reluctantly, I do.
The sitting room is all pale upholstery and antique furniture. Kathleen settles into a chair like a queen taking her throne, and I sit on the edge of the settee across from her.
She doesn’t waste time.
“You must understand,” she says, “this family has expectations.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m trying to meet them.”
“Are you?” She studies me with those green eyes. “Or are you simply trying to hold onto a lifestyle you never could have achieved otherwise?”
The cruelty of it is so clean, so surgical, that for a second I just sit with it. Let it settle.
“I care for him,” I say.
Her smile is almost gentle. “How quaint.”
She smooths a crease from her skirt. “My son has always had a savior complex. It’s an admirable quality in certain contexts. But you should understand—what he feels for you now is the novelty of rescuing something broken. It’s pity dressed up as affection.Once that wears off?—”
“I’d rather not discuss?—”
She ignores me and talks right over me. “Once the novelty wears off, there are women far better suited to stand beside him. Women with education, with connections, with the social fluency this life requires. The Sullivan family alone has?—”
