Still ashen, every sinew tense as a whiplash, Ciaran prowled before the silk-papered walls like a feral beast scenting its prey or, more disturbing, a promising mate. He paused to run his fingertips over the dull silver of her mother's hairbrushes, blew softly against the breath of lace at the window.
Edgy, Fallon caught her lip between her teeth, seeing her chamber as if for the first time. The suite of rooms had been little altered since she was a child. There had been no mother to wistfully tuck away abandoned playthings into brass-nailed trunks, no one to guide Fallon through the rites of passage as she became a young woman.
Ciaran's probing gaze skated to where a bedraggled doll, with one arm missing and a badly mended crack in her china face, lay beneath the canopy of Fallon's bed, the plaything resting where it had for seventeen years because the maid had never been given orders to place the doll anywhere else.
Even the bed itself seemed small as Fallon imagined it through this towering man's eyes, the mattress fashioned for a child's length instead of a woman's. What would Ciaran say if he knew the truth—that Fallon could never bear to be parted from it? It had been a gift from her mother, testimony to how well Margaret Delaney had understood her little girl's love of the wild lands beyond her window.
Bedposts, carved to look as if they were saplings, had guarded Fallon's sleep, the canopy draped in clouds of white bed curtains so that she could sleep in a sea of mist. Coverlets the color of heather were crowned with lace-trimmed pillows stuffed with herbs and dried flowers to carry the scent of the hills. Why did the sight of that innocent bed make her cheeks heat with something akin to embarrassment?
Worse still, Ciaran stopped beside a window seat, its cushions littered with books worn almost beyond repair. Legends and myths, ancient histories and epic poems, they had fed her soul.
Never, in the years since her mother's death, had anyone except the servants entered her room. Not even Hugh. It felt so strange, to have this towering man prowling about, reaching out to touch the gold-embossed cover of The Ulster Cycle, an epic tale, one of the oldest poems in the Irish language.
Ciaran had sprung from those pages, alive and vital in her imagination. A man powerful and vulnerable, gloriously handsome. But she'd never suspected he would be imperfect as well, flawed in a way that only made him more appealing.
Fallon winced, almost regretting her decision to bring him here to her room, feeling as if the very walls were whispering her secrets to him, secrets Hugh had begun to spill in the moonlit stable yard.
She set the candleholder on a piecrust table littered with an army of Gaelic heroes one of the cottagers had carved for her. Suddenly she was eager to distract Ciaran, and herself, from the whisperings of her room.
"I'll just get you settled, then summon up food and a hot bath—" Fallon started to say then stopped, aware of how intently Ciaran's green eyes were regarding her, his lips curved into a deep frown. She was still stinging from her encounter with Hugh. The last thing she needed was to be pinned by another man's condemning glare.
"What's amiss? You don't care for the color of my room?"
He withdrew his fingertips from the gilt lettering on the book's cover and shrugged. "I hadn't even noticed it."
No. He'd been too busy prying into everything else that belonged to her, touching, examining, sorting her things and her into some kind of order in his mind.
"Then what is it? You look sour as a green apple."
Ciaran's gaze darted to her face, and she wished she'd kept her mouth shut.
"He's right," Ciaran said.
"Wh-what?"
He turned to her, crossing thickly muscled arms over the breadth of his naked chest. "Your brother. He is right. You have no business wandering around alone at night."
It hurt Fallon in ways she hadn't imagined, Ciaran taking up sides against her. She'd summoned him back. Wasn't he supposed to have some sense of loyalty to his summoner?
She tossed her head. "I didn't see anyone objecting to the darkness when Hugh decided to go riding."
"That's different."
Her chin bumped up a notch. "Because I'm a woman?"
"No. Because you're a reckless little fool. For all you know, I could be a thief, a murderer just waiting for my chance to strike. Anything could have happened in the time it took us to ride down from that castle. You could be dead. Your brother was worried enough. If he really knew what mischief you've been up to—"
"He'd lock me in a convent school until I was ninety? Don't be fooled by Hugh's illusion of concern. I'm sure it's like an attack of biliousness. It'll be gone soon enough."
"He feels responsible for you. It was obvious."
"One more burden on the stalwart Hugh's shoulders, another cross to be borne. Bah! I can take care of myself. I've been doing it since I was six years old!"
Unexpected tears stung her eyes. Blinking fiercely, she stalked over to where the secret door was, wanting nothing more than to shove Ciaran inside the priest hole and lock the door. Her fingers trembled with irritation as she worked the hidden latch.
She slid the panel aside with more force than care, the jarring of the door setting the pictures on the wall rattling. "I didn't call you back fromTir na nOgthe fairy kingdom to meddle in my private affairs."
"Maybe you should have. It's obvious you're not doing a very good job of managing them yourself."
