Page 49 of Go, Rogue

Across the threshold hung a sign that read: An àite sam bith.

“It means Nowhere,” McGann told her, “in Gaelic.”

She remembers how she glanced up at him then and tried to settle her disorientation. But she couldn’t. He was still leaning against that wall, still staring at her with those eyes. And then she took in his dark hair, curled onto his forehead. And his long, muscular thighs. How he wore no overcoat and had his shirt sleeves rolled up so she could see his forearms.

“I know what it means,” she’d said and tried not to stare at those arms.

There were muscles she wasn’t even aware men had cutting through his skin. Not that she’d been privy to many masculine forearms, but she’d seen her father’s, and the earl’s weren’t even in the same realm as these. It was like the difference between granite and a pillow. Or a fat tabby lapcat and a lion. It was–

“Ahem.” McGann cleared his throat and she threw her eyes back to his face. “Do you mean to tell me,” he asked, “that you read Gaelic, lass?”

“I do,” she’d said, getting a hold of herself. “I took a fever in Scotland when I was a child. There was nothing else to do while I was bedridden but read whatever tracts the library held.” She shrugged. “To do that, I had to learn the language.”

Back in the captain’s cabin, Catherine glances down at that same man, laying on the deck beside the bed. “Why were you without an overcoat that night?” she asks.

“Because I’d been scrubbing the storeroom floor,” he says. “No better than a charwoman, down on my hands and knees.”

“You never said.”

He makes a small shrugging gesture and she can just make out the movement of his shoulders in the dark. “I wanted it to be clean for you. You’re an earl’s daughter.”

“An earl’s daughter you were about to knock down onto the floor.”

“Aye.” He laughs and it makes her insides feel just as melted and viscous as they had that night. “That I was.”

“I had no idea what was coming,” she says, “as I followed you into that storeroom.”

He’d reached for her hand so solicitously and helped her remove her gloves. His bear-paw fingers releasing tiny pearl button after tiny pearl button from their clasps.

She remembers how she held her breath, her skin tingling each time another part of the underside of her wrist was bared. Such that by the time he’d finished, she was near to shaking and she’d wanted there to be a thousand more buttons for him to undo, just so she could revel in the feeling.

A million buttons.

But instead, he’d slipped the gloves off her hands, leaving her feeling warm and liquid in the aftermath.

He examined her quietly for a moment before he turned from her and walked to the door. He fished a key out of his pocket and inserted it into the lock, clicking it closed. And then he turned back to her.

She hadn’t made a move. She’d been staring at him, still dazed from all those buttons.

She shook her head to get ahold of herself. “Now then,” she said, blinking briskly to cover her embarrassment. “What first? You said there were basics you could teach me tonight.”

“What’s first?” he’d growled, coming toward her. “What’s first is that you never, ever let a man lock you in a room.”

“Oh,” she said, “I—” but he had already crooked a foot behind her ankle and with just a tug on her slippered feet, toppled her onto her backside.

“Ow!” she cried, startled from the impact. She knew she’d bruise from that.

“My apologies.”

He held a hand out to help her up, which she grasped. But instead of hauling her to her feet, he used that hand to drag her across the floor.

“And second,” his voice dropped lower, to a more menacing register, “is that you never, ever trust a man you don’t know.” He paused and then added. “Best not to trust the ones you do know either.”

Now, moonlight limns McGann’s face in the captain’s cabin, where he still lies on his back and laughs at her re-telling. “You see why I cleaned the floor,” he says.

“I do.”

“I was trying to teach you the first lesson of fighting, which is to be careful. Always and in every situation. Watch your surroundings and trust no one, because you’ve no idea what a man will do when his back’s against a wall.”