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He slowed his steps. “Changed your mind?”
“I . . . that is . . . they might . . .”
He kept his expression purposefully bland. “A definite risk. The keepers at Newgate aren’t known for their chivalry. A female on her own . . .” He shrugged.
Her face blanched white.
“So what’s it to be? Answer to me or answer to them?”
If looks could kill, he’d be dead thrice over. “You,” she spat.
Aidan eased his stranglehold. “I knew you’d come to see it my way. Well?”
“I was hired to find a book. A red cover. Funny picture on the front.” Her words came fast and shaky.
“Who hired you? What was his name?” Aidan prodded.
“Said his name was Smith. Said to steal the book. Leave it at Saint Patrick’s. That’s all I know. Honestly.”
He tossed her back into the seat with a muttered oath. He’d two choices. Summon a constable and write the episode off as one more instance of Dublin’s pervasive crime. Or lock her in a windowless room until morning when daylight and a few snatched hours of sleep might make sense of a situation that hinted at more than simple housebreaking. A jangling unease tickled the base of his skull. Made the first choice untenable.
“Come.” He yanked her back to her feet. Took grim pleasure in the bitten-off groan as she staggered against him. “I’ve got the perfect place to hold you for the night.”
The two of them headed down into the kitchens, the passage growing narrower and dustier the farther they walked.
“Here we are.” Aidan swung a creaking door wide.
The woman ducked inside, studying her surroundings. A row of shelves, empty now but for a few mismatched pieces of crockery. No windows. One door.
Still clutching her upper arm, she looked questioningly back at Aidan, those damn green eyes blinking back tears.
“You’ll stay here tonight,” Aidan said, hating the heavy knot settling in his chest, as if he tortured a kitten or tore the wings from a butterfly. Pushing the thought aside, he growled, “Enjoy it. It’ll be the cleanest cell you’ll have for a good while I expect.”
Before he could change his mind, Aidan slammed the door on his prisoner, turning the latch to lock it behind him. Made it halfway down the dark passage before an idea struck him with such force that his bad leg buckled beneath him. Sent him lurching for the door like a drunkard.
A wild, stupid, ridiculous idea. It wouldn’t work. Couldn’t work. But once the thought had planted itself in his brain, it refused to be shaken.
If this woman knew enough about her Other abilities to manipulate perception, who knew what else she might be capable of? Aidan had been sure he’d seen not only interest but comprehension in her eyes as she’d flipped the pages of his father’s diary. Something he would have thought impossible had he not witnessed it for himself. But there it was. A thief who could read the headache-inducing writing that had stymied all his attempts at translation for months.
Once again Aidan dragged back the lock. Felt the grudging give of the ancient metal. Pushed wide the door. And stopped dead in his tracks, the air rushing from his lungs in a gasping string of curses. Great bloody goddamn. Womanus Exoticus had shed her plumage.
If there was any mercy in the world, let the gods strike her to cinders right now.
Cat fumbled with her shirt to cover her nudity, the gash in her arm throbbing with every pound of her heart. Prayed for the bolt that would end the humiliating torture of his shocked stare. His curses ringing in her ears like a death knell.
Nothing. She was doomed.
He recovered almost instantly, his gaze darting from her blood-soaked shirt, now draped near her lap, to the bloody score running across her upper arm where the pistol ball had raked her with the sting of a hornet.
“You’re hurt.”
His statement of the obvious snapped her out of her daze. She dragged her shirt over her head as if somehow he’d unsee what had been staring him in the face moments before. If she’d had her wits about her, she’d have made a dash for the open doorway while he stood gawking. That chance had vanished. He shouldered his way into the room, his tall, rangy frame effectively blocking escape. His bronze brown eyes pinning her where she crouched with the force of a spear point.
“It’s naught but a scratch,” she argued.
“I’ve seen men sicken from lesser wounds.” He knelt beside her, easing her clamped hand away from her arm. The combined scents of bay rum and cheroot smoke tickling her nose. “Let me take a look.”
Was this his way of getting her to drop her guard? And once it was down, what then? She went rigid in his grasp. “I’m no man’s whore.”
