“I am sorry, it was a mistake.”
Tears pricked the corners of her eyes. “Once is a mistake, twice is a choice.”
“I can fix this.”
“How?” she snapped.
“I would stay out of yer way.”
“Do ye really think that’s the only solution?”
Say something!she wanted to scream, but he watched his feet instead. Her only purpose was to marry and earn him his inheritance. Kissing was a mere deviation from that. Now, he had remembered.
“Of course, ye brought me here to trade me for wealth. Ye are satisfied as long as I am doing just that. Ye should have let me do just that.”
She did not say anything more. Her feet carried her out of the room.
15
“God, look at ye!” Cohen exclaimed.
Jenson stood in front of the open door, blocking the light. “What happened?” he asked after he returned from the corridor, protecting a lit candle.
“Be careful.” Cohen slowly stepped into the room, sniffing the air. His nose wrinkled at the pungent smell. His eyes scanned the bottles scattered on the floor in the little light the candle offered. “We daenae yet ken how combustible it is in here.”
Jenson looked away from the sconce that just lit up. Cohen threw open the drapes at the right moment, and the room alighted with the silvery glow of the risen moon. At the center of the mess was Darragh, slouched in his chair, cradling a glass of brown liquid.
Jenson hissed and drew his hand away when the wick burned his fingers. He blew out the candle and discarded it, then took the glass from Darragh’s hand.
“I thought we were past this.”
Darragh did not protest. He hung his head forward.
“How long have ye been in here?”
“Since the morning,” Darragh replied in an all too familiar voice.
His throat burned, sore and dry. But the pain wasn’t enough to distract him.
“Tell me what happened,” Jenson demanded calmly.
He stood opposite him, while Cohen stood beside him. He turned the chair, then cupped Darragh’s face in his palm and studied him. His cheeks were red and burned hot, his pupils were dilated, and he could barely hold his head up. If he were to bleed, brown would seep out before red.
“I daenae think he can answer ye in this state.”
But Darragh could.
He could tell him a vivid tale about that morning, how the air had gone from cool to hot, then stuffy. How the light had danced across her face from arousal, to anger, to hurt. He remembered the curve and fullness of her lips as she uttered every syllable, the weight of the tear that dangled beneath her lashes. He could describe the feel of her skin to perfection, its redness, its dullness. Her smell, her taste—he could make a catalogue of it, give new meaning to anything old and everything new.
He could do all of that.
But that was what he was running from. The alcohol did nothing but slow him down, rooting him to the bottomless pit of memories he did not want to relive.
“Let’s try to get him to bed.” Jenson crouched beside him, and together, they heaved his weight onto their backs.
His head fell limply, and the pain splintered from his neck to his chin. Cohen adjusted him, forcing his dark eyes to watch the carpet turn into hardwood and then tiles. The rapid change caused an ache that rolled his eyes back, till veins popped in his face and his lips parted in a groan.
“Hang in there,” Cohen urged.
