Page 109
He saunters closer to Róisín, leaning an elbow against the mantel with lazy confidence. “Rosie.”
Gods, they are terrible actors. Why did I ever rope them into this?
Róisín lifts a brow. “Aye?”
“I was thinking,” Alex says, voice too casual, “we could go for a little walk? Stretch the legs. Get out from under all this… womanly governance.”
She lets out a soft scoff, and her eyes sharpen into slits. “You? Walkin’?”
“Of course,” Alex says with exaggerated sincerity. “I’m a man made for fresh air and virtue. Quite full of it, actually.”
Róisín’s laugh is short and vicious. “Full of somethin’, that’s for sure.”
But she slides from her perch, slowly, as if humouring him is its own entertainment.
“Fine. A walk.”
Róisín steps close, gathers his cravat in her fist, and pulls him in with a softness that would fool a weaker man. Then she smiles. “But if you’re usin’ me as an excuse to escape your own duties, I’ll tell Maeve you volunteered to take mine for the rest of the week.”
Alex blinks. “You are trouble.”
Róisín’s grip tightens enough to steal a proper breath.
His mouth quirks even as he fights for air. “I love it,” he rasps.
“Grand,” she says pleasantly, loosening only a hair. “Now move.”
Ellen’s gaze darts to Alex, then to Róisín, and her confusion deepens. “What on earth—” she begins.
Róisín doesn’t answer. The sharpness in her fades. She crosses the room, bends, and presses a kiss to Ellen’s cheek.
Ellen stills, surprised by the notion.
Róisín murmurs something I can’t quite hear, and Ellen swallows as though she’s taken the words in whole and they’ve stuck on the way down.
Then Róisín straightens and heads toward me. She reaches up, pinches my cheek with no warning, hard enough to sting.
I flinch like a man struck.
Róisín smiles like an angel, and whispers under her breath. “Don’t you go bein’ an eejit and ruinin’ this.”
My jaw tightens. “Rosie—”
She pats my cheek once more, as if I’m a bairn, then sweeps out with Alex at her side.
As they pass, I catch Alex’s eye and murmur, “Good luck.”
He gives me a wolfish grin, all teeth and trouble, and lets Róisín drag him to whatever fate she’s planned.
The door closes behind them.
And then—
Silence.
Ellen looks around, slowly, as if she’s expecting someone to leap out from behind a curtain.
Her brows are drawn together, and her eyes—hazel at their heart, ringed in honeyed gold and deep brown like light caught in amber—narrow until I can feel the weight of them on my skin.
