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Stung, she shot back with the first thought that came to mind. “Perhaps I’ve just found confessions and you aren’t my cup of tea.”
That drew him up short but didn’t stop the irritation from blossoming to full-fledged anger. The transformation obvious in the taut muscles of his face. The furious tapping of his hand against his thigh. “So you would jeopardize everything because I . . . because I might find it a bit troublesome you had not only bedded a man but bore his bastard child?”
She reeled as if struck. Froze him with as glacial a stare as she could muster under the chest-tightening ache of his hurled accusation. Had she really thought anything but disaster could climb out of the wreckage of their tumbled bed? Here was her answer, glaring at her in thunderous outrage. “Damn you!”
He crossed his arms over his chest, arrogance rising off him like smoke. “Don’t act surprised, Cat. It’s exactly what you knew I was going to say.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’ve got this scene all worked out in your mind. How I’m going to react. How you’ll respond to my reaction. All neat and tidy. Makes it easy for you to hide behind your outrage. Push everyone away. Push me away.”
How had their quarrel swerved so off course? How had they gone from Lazarus’s survival and the need to flee to a rehash of the same tired argument? But not quite the same. Aidan was treading onto dangerous ground. Turning her words back on her. Ripping into wounds never truly healed.
Her hands trembled, a rapid pounding rising from her chest into her head as she defended against this unwanted intrusion into what he could never possibly understand. “I saw the contempt in your face,” she fired back. “Heard your stumbling justifications. That wasn’t feigned.”
“Was I shocked? Of course. A babe was the last thing on my mind. But you saw only what you assumed would be there. Answer me this. Are you more furious over what I might think of you, or what you truly think of yourself?”
The first blow struck him on the chin. The follow-up doubled him over. “Agreement or no, I’m done here,” she snarled. “I’m leaving tomorrow for Dublin. Translate your own damned diary.”
“Can’t,” he gasped from his knees, his arm pressed over his stomach. “Need you still.”
“Get used to disappointment. I have.”
“You’re insane,” she spat. “Stark staring mad.”
Aidan peered at her over the top of his paper. “Needs must when the devil drives. And my personal devil may already be on our trail. You said yourself we had to leave immediately.”
“And this?” She offered him her wrists, bound with thin cord.
He winced, knowing he was killing any hope of a reconciliation with Cat, but seeing no alternative. “I need you.”
The whys of that need remained so twisted within his mind that he couldn’t separate the individual reasons any longer. It was easier to say it and let it end there.
She worked the cord at her wrists before slumping back against the seat of the coach. Gazing on him with that same injured expression he’d seen on her face the night he’d caught her in his library. He hardened the cracked and bleeding pieces of his heart against the familiar pulling-the-wings-from-a-butterfly feeling. She’d learn to understand.
That or take a dagger to him in his sleep.
First item of business upon reaching Belfoyle—hide all daggers.
He flipped back to his month-old Dublin paper. Pretended he didn’t feel her viper glare right through the newsprint.
“And Ahern?” she asked after a silence so laden with guilt and accusation he could barely breathe. “Maude? Has your callous behavior extended to leaving them to their deaths? You owe them after all they did to save you.”
His grip on the paper tightened. “Daz and Maude are safe enough. As for what I owe,” he paused. “Daz stole my brother’s life. He gave me mine. Our debts are clear.”
No reply. Hopefully he’d forestalled any further comments long enough to ease his jangled nerves. Swallow the very bad feeling he’d given up the promise of a future before he’d gotten a chance to see what that future held. What might have been between him and Cat would remain just that—what might have been.
Casting away useless regrets as one more victim in this undeclared war, he focused on the immediate—the next days. The next destination.
Belfoyle. His home. The origin of this spider’s web and the last line of defense in a struggle that would gain him the truth or lose him his life.
“We’re almost there. It’s just past this turnoff.”
His impatience was infectious. Cat found herself glancing out the coach window despite her resolve to ignore any and all conversations with the odious person seated across from her.
“There now. Just around this bend.”
She craned her neck as the coach slowed to make a turn past a vacant and overgrown gatehouse and rumbled through iron gates mounted with the Kilronan spread-winged bird and crooked sword.
