Page 155

“Hear me now,” I say, my voice dropping. “The next time I’ve my hands on you, no one will interrupt us.”

Her brows lift at that, and there it is, the spark returning.

“Who says there’ll be a next time? You assume a great deal.”

I look at her for a beat, then let my mouth curve. “Don’t play coy, little Rosie. I can tell you’re already thinking about it.”

She narrows her eyes, clearly determined not to reward that with agreement.

“You pout an awful lot for someone so sure of himself,” she says.

“And yet you stay content in the arms of such a man.”

That earns the smile she’s been trying to hide. I lower my brow to hers and give her my best wounded expression, exaggerated enough to make her laugh if she has any mercy in her at all.

“And aye,” I say solemnly. “If anyone has cause to pout here, it’s me.”

She gives in then, breaths dancing across my lips. “Is that so?”

“Most certainly. I’m the one being deprived of tasting the rest of you.”

Her expression gentles, though the spark in her eyes remains. “Poor Alexander.”

“Tragically wronged.”

She shakes her head, still smiling, but her fingers have softened at the nape of my neck. “Set me down before you drown us both in self-pity.”

“Cruel woman,” I murmur, though there’s no sting in it.

“Poutin’ man.”

“Only with great reason.”

She studies me; her face is more sincere and less playful than before. “You make it difficult to stay unmoved.”

“That sounds dangerously like encouragement.”

“Take it as you like.”

I hold her a little closer at that, unwilling to give up even these stolen seconds. “Then I’ll take it as a promise to take more of you.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ROBERT

Mannie found me in the library with this latest correspondence from Ireland still in my hand. I’ve stared at the same lines so long the ink may as well have burned itself into me.

8 September 1798. Battle of Ballinamuck:

After the earlier French-backed attack at Castlebar, General Jean Humbert tried to move east and link up with fresh Irish rebels, but he was closed in by a much larger British government force under Cornwallis and Lake. At Ballinamuck, County Longford, Humbert’s force was defeated and compelled to surrender before His Majesty’s superior arms.

This is the end of the rebellion. Not dead yet, but dying. The last of our French aid broken, and I am here reading of it after the fact.

Mannie told me to stay put in the library.

It’s a strange room to wait for more bad news in.

Castle Connemara has older rooms, grander ones too, but none I know so well as the library. We all drift here in the evenings, when the wind comes hard off the cliffs and rattles the glass in its frame.