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“Why do you think?” She gave a shuddering breath, her eyes bright with angry tears. “But Smith was there. Waiting for me. And he—if I’d succeeded, Geordie wouldn’t have suffered. Those men would have left us alone.”
“And the diary would be in their hands, not mine.”
Her face hardened. “I don’t care about your damned diary. It’s nothing to do with me.”
He held his temper, though it took much grinding of teeth and internal blaspheming. “You’re involved whether you like it or not. Those men won’t stop searching for you. And as long as you’re the only one who can figure out what’s so important about my father’s diary that people are willing to kill for it, you don’t leave this house without me glued to your side.”
She folded her arms over her chest in a last-ditch attempt at defiance. “And if I refuse?”
He offered her an acid stare. Or at least the best one he could muster through a rapidly swelling eye. “You’re smarter than that. You won’t.”
She bit her lip, the open rebellion bleeding out of her with each passing second, but her words when they came seemed to be choked out of her. “You win, Kilronan. I’ll stay.”
“It’s Aidan. Remember?”
Her mouth rounded in a moue of surprise. “But you and I—you didn’t mean it.”
“Unlike some I could mention, I don’t say what I don’t mean.”
Firelight and the lavender scent of perfume, or blood loss and the beginning of fever—Aidan couldn’t be sure, but the result had him captured within the depths of Cat’s jade gaze. And while his brain still seethed, the rest of him responded with a sweep of heat and a bone-deep ache that made him shift uncomfortably. What the hell was it about this damn woman that had him randy as a tom on the prowl?
“Very well . . . Aidan,” she said, her voice low and uncertain. She stepped forward, the air charged with all the potential of a summer storm. Just as he’d thought, the woman was a walking thundercloud. She held out a hand. “Whether you meant to or not, you saved my life. Thank you.”
He didn’t want to be thanked. Not with a handshake. Not even with a chivalrou
s graze of her knuckles. Not now. His traitorous body craved more. His gaze raked the long slenderness of her, the coral pink of her lips, the graceful column of her throat where her pulse fluttered, begging to be kissed.
What the hell was such a woman doing wallowing about in the back alleys of Dublin? And why did he suddenly want to punch Geordie in the nose?
He forced his lust back into a dirty little corner of his mind. Imprisoned it as if chaining a rabid animal.
“Don’t thank me yet. Before it’s over you may wish I’d left you to Smith,” he snarled, hating this unintended reaction to her closeness. She was trouble with a capital “T.” If he wanted a quick bang, he’d find another. He gave a bark of nonlaughter. Professional, unemotional ecstasy. That was his usual approach. He flashed her a menacing glare. “Send me Blake.” His gaze scoured her. “And for my sanity’s sake, get out of those bloody trousers and into something decent.”
She backed away before darting like a harried rabbit from the room.
And just like that, exhaustion undermined his guilty burst of anger. Closing his eyes, he sighed back against the chair. Concentrated on the steady pain in his side to exorcize the sudden pain in his heart.
Aidan leaned heavily against the corner of the house, trying not to double over. Perhaps Blake had been right. Perhaps he should have listened to the surgeon and waited to rise from his bed until tomorrow. But tomorrow might be too late. He needed to act now, stitches and multiple contusions be damned. His work was almost finished. One more laying of the ward, and he could crawl out of the drizzly rain and back to his mattress. Until then, he inhaled through his teeth in shallow pants. Kept his voice to an even, uninterrupted tempo as he released the spell. “Dor. Ebrenn. Dowr.”
The power speared him with a wrenching violence. Seared nerves already raw. Punched him with a breath-stealing whiplash that had tears collecting in the corners of his eyes. Mage energy had always claimed him in this way. A blistering volcanic burst of power seeming to suck the very essence from him. He’d learned to control it—no Douglas would be a prisoner of his Fey inheritance—but every draw upon his magic brought with it a moment’s unreasonable fear that this would be the spell to finally send him up in flames.
“Tanyow. Menhir. Junya.” He closed his eyes, focusing only on the words. On the need driving him to complete the house’s perimeter warding.
Whoever sought the diary knew it for what it was. A window into his father’s life and work. Into the secretive circle of mages who’d clung to the family’s seat at Belfoyle like malignant satellites. That had to mean he was dealing with Other. And to barricade himself against the magic of his own kind meant more than locked doors and primed pistols.
Mage energy flared in a chain of green and yellow light before dissolving into the early dusk. And Aidan slumped rain soaked and shivering against the house’s foundation. The remnants of his power curled back along his veins inch by fiery inch toward his heart. He lifted his face to the sky, hoping to cool the fevered burn, but the heat lay too deep within him. Only time and rest would calm the tempest boil.
“You know better than to fiddle about with magic while you’re ill,” a familiar voice scolded. An arm braced him upright.
“I’m fine, Jack,” Aidan answered through chattering teeth.
His cousin cocked an unconvinced eyebrow. “Well, let’s be fine in our bed, shall we?”
Aidan set his jaw against the clash of warring agonies as Jack helped him up the steps and into the house. “You’re treating me like a child.”
“And you’re acting like one.”
Aidan’s strangled laugh smothered the stream of swearing that followed. “That’s always been my line.”
