Page 105 of The Pirate Queen

De Lacy is dressed for travel. Trews and leine and leather jerkin. A wool cloak pinned at his throat.

“Leaving us so soon?” she asks.

“With your permission,” he says.

“You hardly need that. You aren’t a prisoner here.”

De Lacy flirts. It is the thing Grace enjoys most about him, a large part of the reason she’s been in no hurry to help him find a way home to his own people. He smiles at her now, sporting one deep dimple beneath the beard on his left cheek. A quick glance down her figure. Another at her mouth. He shifts a bit closer. Leans his shoulder against the stone wall of the narrow stairwell and sets a hand to his hip. De Lacy taps his leather belt with one thumb. Tap, tap, tap.

“I thought I’d go hunting on Achill Island. Earn my keep.”

“We have plenty of venison in the smokehouse,” she says.

“I can help add to your stores. And it doesn’t feel right, just sitting about. But I’ll need to borrow one of your smaller boats, if that’s all right? Perhaps a yawl?”

“There are several at the dock. Take what you need,” she tells him.

De Lacy is taller than Grace, though a good bit younger. Ten years at least. He’s big and broad, though he still reminds her of a puppy in some ways, with those moony eyes and all that enthusiasm. She can barely approach a door without him rushing to open it for her.

“I’ll be back by sunset. I thought we might…” He pauses.

“What?”

“Have dinner,” he says, then clears his throat. “I would like to properly express my gratitude for what you’ve done for me.”

“We eat at six o’clock.”

His gaze lingers on her mouth longer this time. “Then wine afterward? Just the two of us?”

“I have been known to enjoy a glass of wine,” she says. “Or two.”

A flash of smile and he’s gone. Grace watches him go. She has been bedded, but never seduced. So this is an entirely new experience.

What a fun game, she thinks. Perhaps I’ll let him win.

“Are you fucking him?” Finn asks after Hugh de Lacy walks from the Great Hall.

He wants to break every tooth in de Lacy’s head. He wants to kill the man in the slowest, most painful way possible. Every time Gráinne looks at him. Every time her eyes run the length of his body and that smile—one he’s never seen before—lifts the left corner of her mouth, he hates de Lacy even more. But Finn hates himself most. If only…

No, he reminds himself. You are too ugly.

Gráinne laughs. “Hugh?”

“Would there be someone else you’re fucking?”

Her eyes flash with a dark indignation. Finally. She’s angry, and he’s glad, because at least he knows what to do with that. He is in familiar territory for the first time since they found that damned man on Achill weeks ago. Sometimes Finn wishes he’d seen de Lacy first, that he’d taken an oar and shoved his face beneath the water. Watched him drown. A better alternative than waiting for him to take Gráinne to bed. At least he’s gone hunting again today, a thing he’s done once a week since his arrival. Usually he’s gone the night, but the man swore he’d be back by sunset this time. More’s the pity.

“Speak plainly, Finn. I can see you’re bothered. You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

She pushes her tongue into her cheek, then says, “And no, I amn’t fucking him—”

He shows his relief too soon.

“Yet.”

Gráinne could be cruel and add, And what would you know about that, anyway? But she has never been cruel to him, and she doesn’t choose this particular morning to begin.