Page 63

She’s staring fixedly at my face, pointedly not looking lower. Her mouth twitches, torn between concern and something far more dangerous.

“Are you…,” she begins, then stops. Clears her throat. “Are you entirely without clothing?”

“I’d prefer not to inventory myself aloud.”

She exhales through her nose, a sound halfway between a laugh and disbelief. Then her gaze drifts, mercilessly observant, taking in the rest of the scene.

My boots, neatly placed on the embankment.

The empty branch split and sagging like a failed accomplice.

And then, downstream, my clothes now floating away in a loose, mocking cluster, already too far for her to reach without sacrificing herself to the creek.

She watches them go.

I watch her watch them go.

“Well,” she says finally, voice bright with impending cruelty, “that answers that.”

Then laughter. The kind that tries to be polite and fails spectacularly.

“Oh,” Róisín says. “Oh, this is⁠—”

“Turn around. Send anyone else. Literally anyone else.”

“This is too good to walk away from,” she says, still pointedly facing my direction.

“Rosie.”

She folds forward, one hand on her stomach, shoulders shaking. Her laughter rings out over the creek, bright and unrestrained, and I have the deeply unfair thought that even now, even like this, she looks lovely.

“Of all the people on the estate, of course it’s you who come upon my ruin.”

“I go to fetch water,” she manages, breathless. “I come back to an unclothed American in the creek.”

“I was working. It’s not as if this is some leisurely activity.” I say.

“Entirely in the nude,” she retorts.

“Against my will!”

“Saints above, yer face. You look like ye’re reconsiderin’ every choice ye’ve ever made.” Her joy would be contagious if I weren’t the subject of her smug delight.

“I am,” I mutter. “Beginning with emigrating.”

That makes her laugh harder. “Don’t blame us for this. This was a combination of yer poor choices.”

“I trusted that branch, and it forsook me.”

“Left alone to do one simple task,” she says, gesturing helplessly at the water, at me, at the disappearing trousers, “and you end up naked in public.”

“This is not public.”

She lifts a brow. “I’m here.”

I close my eyes and tip my head back, letting out a long, wounded half-groan, half-shout, aimed squarely at the heavens. It comes from somewhere deep in my chest, the sound of a man questioning every decision that’s led him to this moment.

“Oh for the love of—” she says quickly. “Lower your voice.”