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“You mean Caelan?” He blinked several times.
“I do, lad.” I went into accent again.
“I’d say he’s capable of anything, Flora. Whatever he puts his mind to… yeah. A slim possibility, but one he’d run with, nonetheless, if he really wanted it done.”
I knew he didn’t just mean the castle.
Chapter Fourteen
One thing that struck me the next day as we ate breakfast together, was that since his return to the UK from Ukraine, Eric hadn’t spent much time mourning his fallen blades. It occurred to me maybe this wasn’t the first time he’d lost people. Wouldn’t be the last. Still…
Perhaps they’d merely been soldiers he’d inherited from Caelan’s squadron—numbers, workers, means to ends. Maybe they weren’t really dead. Hamish, the oldest friend of my husband’s, gone? Seemed hard to believe a man wider, taller and even more brusque than Caelan might succumb. Yet perished he had, allegedly.
Or had he?
I didn’t know if he would react well to what I was really thinking. Maybe I didn’t want answers; I guessed he wouldn’t give me them anyway; or even, scary thought, I was enjoying the friendship we were beginning to build.
“You’re chewing your lip,” he said, tutting, “must be thinking about something.”
He was scooping scrambled egg up into his mouth like a man with no time to waste. Four eggs. Every day. Ugh.
“Don’t you mourn them, when they’re gone?” I said, feeling adventurous.
“The dead?” he said so flatly.
I was aghast at the way he spoke, but I kept a straight face. “Yes.”
“None of them were my friends, they hated me.”
Shocked by where this was going, I pretended to be concerned about Logan, stroking his face as he lay in the mobile cot right next to me.
“Why did they hate you?” I stared at my sleeping son.
“Because I was their boss, not their mate. It’s very rare for a boss to be liked in the way Caelan is.”
I looked up and felt my feminine intuition trying to tell me something. His silver eyes danced at my confusion… intrigue.
“Like Caelan is…?”
“Respected, admired… and loved.”
“So you were just respected and admired, I take it?” I deadpanned.
He snorted and finished his plate, standing up to wash it at the nearby sink.
“I never really wanted to do this job,” he said, washing an already clean plate, his eyes studying the world beyond the window rather than the bowl. “It was… my father. He wanted me to go into the military… and… I guess…”
“Then Caelan. He saw potential when nobody else did. He changed your life?”
“In a nutshell.” He finally put the plate on the drainer.
Then it was the egg pan, getting the scrubbing of its life.
I pushed the last of my soggy muesli around a bowl.
“We’d have those group get togethers, you know? Our weekends at the castle. But I’d endure them only because it’d mean time with Caelan and away from London.”
So, he didn’t entirelyloveLondon.
