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“An extended state of shock,” she guessed.
“Right.”
“Then if that’s the case, he isn’t being a moron.”
He tilted his head in mild concession and took a sip.
“If that’s true” – and she was willing to bet it was; Reginald wasn’t the same man he’d been before the war started, that was for sure – “then why would mention of you trigger a reaction?” She glared at him. “So that brings us back to the original question: what did you do to him?”
“Gods.” He drained his glass off again, head tipped back, stubbled throat working. He set it down on the tray with a clatter and stretched his legs out toward the fire, scuffed boots dull in the orange flicker of light. “If I tell you, you’ll only think less of me.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible.”
He shrugged, an uncomfortable-looking gesture, and his shoulders stayed up beneath his ears. “Last night, I may or may not have suggested, being off on a dangerous journey, and without loving ladies to keep our beds warm, that we might keep one another company, man-to-man.”
“Connor. You propositioned him?”
“There’s a war on! It happens! Don’t act so surprised and innocent about it: you were fucking your man at arms.”
Every time Amelia thought of Mal, she started with a happy memory: his head thrown back in laughter, his gaze low-lidded and slanted toward her invitingly from across the stable yard, a secret, heated glance that spoke of what was to come later that night. But invariably, those memories twisted, morphed into her last memory of him: slumped with his hands tied behind him to a stake, chin on his chest, skin cold and waxy. Dead. He came to her that way in dreams that melted into nightmares: gray, skin sloughing off, breath reeking of rot. One moment, she’d be in his arms, heated and ready, and the next she was looking up into a skull, his once-lush hair in stringy tatters against her cheeks.
Connor hadn’t said his name, but he conjured him all the same. Mal, chin streaked with dried blood, eyes sightless and staring, head rolling on a limp neck as she reached to search for a pulse.
She bolted up out of her chair, its legs screeching over the hardwood.
“Amelia, wait.” Somehow, he was up quicker than her, deceptively fast, given his lounging posture, and he caught her forearm as she turned for the door.
Amelia didn’t hesitate. As she spun back toward him, she caught his cheek in an open-handed slap.
The crack of it echoed through the room. His head kicked to the side and he let out a quiet grunt of surprise or pain – she hoped both.
She tried to wrench away, but the leather of his glove bit into her skin. He didn’t hurt her, but he didn’t turn loose. He was no soft lord any longer; the Inglewood had hardened him. He turned back to her with his nostrils flared – but with his gaze full of remorse. “Amelia,” he said, softer. His near cheek was dark, her handprint clear along the plane of it. “I’m sorry. That was cruel of me.”
She ground her teeth and blinked hard. It would do no one any good to let her temper get the best of her…but that mental portrait of Malcolm, a spear thrust through his chest, couldn’t be wiped away with one sorry.
“How dare you,” she hissed. “You bastard.”
“I know, I know. I’m a bastard. I always have been. I think my second wife found it charming.” A fleeting smile touched his mouth, but only for a moment. “They took her, too, you know. My wife. We both lost someone to the Sels’ spears.”
She and Mal had stepped out of the drake cave and into a ring of torchlight studded with gold armor…to the sound of weeping. Connor kneeling in the moss, spine curled over the limp body of his child-bride, her sightless eyes staring into the abyss, blood soaked through her tunic.
Amelia turned her face away, fighting to catch her breath, trying not very successfully to calm her racing heart.
“Cruel times make cruel men,” Connor went on. “My father used to say so – and he should have known, cruel man that he was. I spoke without thought. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me,” she snapped. How could anyone hurt her worse than the Sels had, when they’d run Malcolm through? She’d had the last laugh, there, when Alpha roasted the soldier who’d done it, burned him to a crisp and chewed on his gristle, after.
Connor’s boots scuffed over the floor as he shifted in closer, and she became aware, with a sudden pulse of alarm, that he still held her forearm. “Amelia,” he said, his tone shifting lower – more intimate.
When she turned her head, she found his face very close, bent over hers, and his pupils wide and dark.
“Dear gods,” she said, finally pulling loose – he let her go this time. “You’re disgusting. If you’re this hard-up, go proposition someone’s horse out in the yard, you randy asshole.” He didn’t try to stop her as she turned and stormed from the room. Over her shoulder, she called, “You have next watch. I’m going to bed.”
On her way out, she heard him sigh.
~*~
The cold night air went a long way toward soothing Reggie’s jangled nerves.
