The gods help her, she actually did. She took a deep breath and nodded.
“Then let’s go.” He helped her off his lap, then took her hand and pulled her toward the library door. “What do you fancy?” He slid her a look. “In shapes, of course. We can discuss the other later, after we’ve returned.”
That, she decided abruptly, was what leaping straight into the fray got a woman. Commitments to activities that merely thinking about left her almost speechless with terror.
“Perhaps I should wait by the fire.”
“Oh, nay,” he said, continuing to tug. “This is why one should be careful when negotiating with a ruthless worker of evil.”
“Acair,” she said miserably.
He stopped and turned to her, pulling her into his arms. “A poor jest, darling. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t care for. I braved horse work, of course, but if this is too much for you…”
She pulled back and tried to find something in her not-so-limited collection of slurs to call him that wouldn’t hurt his feelings but might put him in his place. Unfortunately, all she could do was stare at him, torn between terror and a rather unsettling twinge of something she might have termed curiosity if she hadn’t known where that sort of thing led.
He looked at her seriously. “You do love me.”
“At the moment, I can’t remember why,” she said, finding her mouth appallingly dry. She searched frantically for a reason why she couldn’t do what she’d agreed to do, then hit upon her salvation. “How will we come back through your spell?”
He blinked a time or two, then swore. “Damnation, but that’s inconvenient.”
“My heart breaks over it, but there it is,” she agreed.
“I suppose you’re then left with my stew.”
She could have been left with much worse than that, she supposed.
She walked with him from the library to go in search of supper and reminded herself that if anything held true in Acair of Ceangail’s world, it was that he didn’t lie.
Not that she would have needed to have heard him confess anything. She had seen what lay in his soul.
It was enough.
Apair of hours and a decent bowl of stew later, she sat with him on the floor in front of his fire in the study. He was stretched out next to her, his cheek propped on his fist, watching the fire. She reached out and brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes.
“I am sorry,” she said quietly. “About before.”
“Would you like to know what the worst part of it was?” he asked, still watching the flames. “Well, aside from the fact that you think me capable of murder.”
“You boast about it endlessly.”
He shot her a disgruntled look. “You needn’t take me that seriously.”
She wrapped her arms around her bent knees. “What is the worst part?”
“That it hurt,” he said with a sigh. “Me, the lad with no feelings to wound.”
“Does it still hurt?”
He looked at her. “Thinking to make it better somehow?”
“Are you always this unrepentant a flirt?”
“’Tis wooing, Léirsinn. A different dance entirely.”
“And how many times have you danced that dance, my lord Acair?”
He pursed his lips. “This is my first turn on that particular ballroom floor, which is likely why I seem to be doing it so poorly.”
