He studied her again, silently, his eyes returning to the mud on the edge of her boots. There was a lot of it, but not enough for travel on foot all the way to Moore. Her hands were not soft enough for a noblewoman idle in drawing rooms. One thumb bore a small healed prick near the nail, as if from a needle. A linen bundle lay outside the cell, confiscated by his men. She had fought harder to keep hold of it than to save the cap on her head, he had been told.
“Who sent ye?” he asked.
She exhaled. “Nay one.”
“No woman crosses me halls alone for sport.”
“Well, perhaps yer walls are less impressive than ye think.”
He stepped closer to her. “Perhaps ye want to leave this cell in chains.”
“Perhapsye should stop threatening me and ask better questions.”
Connor went still, and he saw the very moment some sense entered her expression. She felt the shift and understood she had touched something sharp. Her lips pressed together, but she did not look away.
Who in God’s name is this woman?
He stepped even closer, but she retreated before he could even say anything. He watched the back of her shoulders meet the cold stone wall. Her fingers pressed against the rough surface, then curled into fists again as he stopped near enough that the torch threw both their shadows against the wall beside her.
“Better questions,” he repeated. “Very well. Were ye paid?”
“Nay.”
“Was it MacAdair? Did he send ye?”
Her brow creased. “Who?”
“Was it the English?”
Her mouth tightened.
There.
He let the silence work. The dungeons made it easy. Low light, damp stone, iron, and nowhere to run. He had broken armed men in kinder rooms. This woman’s fear showed in the quick pulse at her throat, but she held her answer behind her teeth.
“An Englishman,” he said.
“I said nay one sent me.”
His eyes narrowed on her. “Are ye the bairn’s mother?”
Her face changed before she could master it. The hurt came first, then anger so swift it brought color to her cheeks.
“How dare ye ask me that?”
“Because a nameless bairn was left at me gate, and two weeks later, a woman sneaks in to steal him.”
“I didnae come tostealhim.”
“Then what did ye come to do?”
She clamped her mouth shut.
Connor looked her over again, colder this time, weighing fact against possibility. If she were the mother, she was either a superb liar or grief had cut her strangely.
Her eyes had flashed, but not with exposed shame. It was with offense, as though the accusation had landed on someone else through her.
He studied her face again. Was she one of the women he had bedded? Was she here to ask for some kind of reparation? Itwasn’t the first time a woman had wandered through his halls, asking for another night with him.
