Deidre shot her brother a look. “Don’t. He couldn’t stay away from me before, and now he can’t even bear to look at me. He’s disgusted by the very idea of me.”
Tristan made a dismissive noise. “You don’t know that. Maybe it’s something else.”
“What else could it possibly be?”
Tris wandered around the room a bit, before he snapped his fingers. “He nearly died. Maybe he’s having a bit of trouble with his . . . you know . . . and he’s afraid to see you, in case he’s not . . . all in order.”
It was lunacy that Tristan’s suggestion gave her a burst of hope, but it did. “Do you think?”
“He hasn’t said anything to me, but I sure as hell wouldn’t if I were him.”
That was true. Men could be extremely sensitive about the workings of their manly parts. Fortunately for Ewan, Deidre was an expert at inspiring ardor. If that truly was Ewan’s trouble, they’d have it sorted in no time.
“I suppose I ought to at least be sure, before I start packing.”
Tristan smiled, switching back to English. “Good. Now eat your broth or Rose will feed me to the sharks.”
***
Ewan pushed himself, forcing his body to make it up the last of the stairs before he stopped. He took great heaving breaths that strained his stitches, but they held. Deidre was still confined to her bed. When she could finally move about, Ewan was determined to be strong enough to help her.
He had gone to see her, once, but she’d been sleeping. He’d watched her for nearly an hour before he’d mustered up the strength to leave her. It had been a close thing. He decided he wouldn’t visit her while she was awake until she was healed. That way, if she abhorred the sight of him and he was too weak to go, at least she’d be able to walk away on her own.
The long trip down the hallway marked the end of his daily physical trial. He made it back to his room and settled in to wait. When sounds did finally drift through the connecting door, it wasn’t Deidre’s hideously adorable snoring—it was a cry of distress. Ewan stood up, barreling through the door with a speed he would pay for later.
Inside her room, he found Deidre twisted up in the sheets, trapped in a nightmare. He hesitated, unsure if he should wake her. She cried out again. He couldn’t let her suffer, even if the fears were a product of her own mind.
“Shh, leannain. Shh. It’s just a dream.” He touched her arm.
Deidre turned under his hand, lashing out. She struggled against an invisible force.
Ewan sat down on the bed, shaking her shoulders. “Wake up, Deidre.”
She lurched awake. Her eyes were wild until they found Ewan’s face.
“Yer safe.”
Deep, heaving gulps lessened into more sedate breaths. “You’re here.”
“Aye, I’m here.”
Ewan stayed next to her, stroking her hair, until she’d settled. When he rose to leave, her hand on his wrist stopped him.
“Will you stay?”
He shouldn’t. The nightmare had made Deidre vulnerable and she would regret his presence in the morning, but he couldn’t deny her. Not when he craved being near her so intensely.
Ewan nodded. He slid in beside her, careful not to jostle either of their injuries. She curled up against his side and he tried not to think about how good it felt to be next to her.
“Are ye comfortable?” he asked to distract himself.
She hummed a sound of appreciation.
Every tiny movement, every rustle of the sheets, added to the bonfire of awareness going on in his mind. Ewan cursed his body. He cursed his desires. Even if he hadn’t failed her, neither of them were in any shape to be doing the things his imagination was suggesting. And then, there was the unavoidable fact that she would hate him in the morning if he took advantage of her weak moment. She needed him just then, but it didn’t mean she wanted him.
He tormented himself with a rotation of arousal and self-disgust as he waited for her to find her way back to sleep.
“Ewan?”
“Aye?”
“About what happened—”
“Shh. We dinnae need to talk about it now. Just get some sleep.” He could feel her poised to say more, so he pressed his cheek to her hair and rubbed slow circles into her scalp. Like the night she’d slept innocently beside him, it didn’t take long for the snoring to begin.
Ewan was a thousand kinds of coward. He should have let her say it—let her draw the line and tell him they weren’t lovers anymore—but he wasn’t ready to hear it yet. Soon, he’d be ready to let her go, but not quite yet.
***
In Deidre’s nightmare she’d been in bed with Teller. She was riding him while Alastair watched. It hadn’t mattered to her in the dream—just one more thing she had to do—but then Ewan had come through the door. He had looked so betrayed, and suddenly it mattered very much.
She wanted to go to him, wanted to follow him and explain, but her body wouldn’t make the motions. Her mind screamed out for her to do something, but she just kept on. The whole time Teller and Alastair had laughed. Laughed as Ewan ran from her.
When she woke up and he was there . . .
He’d said she was safe, she felt safe. She wished she could have told him everything and found out what he was thinking, but it was nice just to lie next to him. When she’d fallen back into sleep, it was peaceful. No nightmares came calling.
Waking up again in the morning, she felt Ewan’s warmth wrapped around her. She also felt a familiar protrusion at the small of her back. Tris’s theory ran through her mind. They were both too injured to do anything about it, but perhaps . . .
Deidre rolled over, careful not to wake him, and slipped her hand under the edge of his shirt. She brushed her hand up the length of him and felt him twitch in response. Thank God. Concern for their injuries faded to the background as her body responded to the feel of his thickening cock. She snuggled closer, burying her face in his chest, loving the smell of him. With light touches she brought him to steely hardness.
He moaned and rolled on top of her. It made her wound ache, but she didn’t care. She looked at his face to see if it had hurt him, but his eyes were still closed. Sleep-heavy hands spread her thighs and suddenly he was inside her. His mouth found her neck as he moved on sheer instinct. Deidre adjusted her hips, wanting to take him deeper. The shift brought a stabbing pain to her stitches and she cried out in pain.
Ewan froze. Consciousness dawned and she watched horror descend over his face.
“It’s okay. I’m not—”
He pulled out of her and fled the bed in a flash. “I’m sorry. I dinnae—”
“It’s not your fault.”
“I have to . . . I’m . . .” He didn’t finish his thought. He just turned and fled back through the connecting door, slamming it behind him.
Deidre looked at the closed door, realizing she’d made a grave miscalculation. The revulsion on his face was impossible to mistake. He didn’t want her—he’d only come because she was in danger. Only stayed because she had asked him to. Chivalrous Ewan, coming to rescue a damsel in distress. Nothing more.
***
He’d forced himself on her. He hadn’t meant to—hadn’t even known he was doing it—but that hardly mattered. If she didn’t hate him before, she certainly did now. There was a bullet hole in her stomach, for Christ’s sake. What kind of a monster was he?
The door sat on the edge of his vision, taunting him. She was on the other side of it, feeling God only knew what, and there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t take back what had happened. There wasn’t an apology that could be uttered for something like that. The only thing he could do was try to make sure it never happened again. That meant keeping himself well away from her.
Ewan dressed with little regard for his wounds. At the bottom of the stairs, instead of heading out toward the courtyard and
the cliffs, he turned toward the store rooms. He knew exactly where he was headed, but it was still unnerving to arrive at the doorless archway atop the basement stairs. The old dread welled up inside him as he stepped past it.
He fought the panic, making his way down into the dark room one laborious step at a time. Ewan followed the walls until he was as far in as he could go. Sliding down with his back to the wall, he sat and let the memories come.
They arrived in fragments. Rats skittering in the darkness. Her voice, strained, telling him not to be frightened. The metallic smell. The rattling, sucking sound as she struggled to breathe. Her hand under his, weak and clinging. Finally being taken by exhaustion. He’d thought the crackling sound of her breathing was the worst of it, but waking up to silence and her body cold next to him . . . Parts of him had broken in that moment and he’d never recovered.
This was what could happen—what would happen. He couldn’t keep himself from hurting her. No matter how much he loved her, he wasn’t good for her. Ewan had to let her go.
Chapter 24
“There’s nothing wrong with his manhood,” Deidre snapped when Tristan walked in on her shoving clothes into a bag.
“So you two . . .”
She slammed the bag down. “No, we didn’t.”
“Then how do you—”
“I know.”
“Oh,” Tristan said quietly, but he never had known when to stay quiet. “He turned you down? Truly?”
Deidre glared at him so hard it should have left a mark.
“I’m sorry, Dee.”
“You ought to be.”
Tristan’s brow furrowed. “Why are you acting like this is my fault?”
“Because it is!”
Ewan had actually run from her. She had resigned herself to the idea that he didn’t want her before Tristan opened his mouth. She had been prepared to leave quietly, with a small amount of dignity, and start a new life somewhere else. Now, she would forever remember his horrified expression at the thought of making love to her.
It was so much worse than she’d imagined. If she hadn’t tried, at least she could have kept some small lie in the back of her mind, that maybe it was some big misunderstanding. Instead, she was always going to have the memory of him literally fleeing from her advances.
“Whatever the trouble is between you two, it’s got nothing to do with me.”
“If you hadn’t been caught, Ewan wouldn’t have been tortured. He wouldn’t have seen me”—no matter how angry she was, Deidre would not subject her brother to details—“do what I had to do. He wouldn’t see it now anytime he looks at me and be repulsed.”
Tristan wasn’t having any of it. “Forgive me for being held hostage by the former lover you got us involved with.”
Deidre ignored him. She grabbed her belongings from tables, tossing them into the bag at random. “And if you hadn’t convinced me he’d been unmanned, I never would have made a fool of myself trying to seduce him.”
“I didn’t say he had been! I suggested it might be a possibility.”
“Why would you say it at all?”
“I didn’t realize you would irrationally latch on to it as a fact.” Tristan’s voice turned cutting. “But I guess you’re one of those women now.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she challenged, barely above a whisper.
“You know what it means. Crying all the time, pining over some man who doesn’t want you anymore. I’m surprised you haven’t taken up swooning.”
Some man who doesn’t want you anymore. The candlestick left her hand before she’d even realized she picked it up.
Tristan dodged, metal crashing against stone as it struck the wall with full force. “Your aim isn’t what it used to be, either.”
Deidre screamed at him. She started throwing everything she could get her hands on. Tristan responded in kind, sending books and trinkets sailing through the air as he shouted his own frustrations.
“. . . wasted my whole life taking care of your sorry . . .”
“. . . ruin everything. Why do we have to leave just because you . . .”
“. . . should have just left you in an orphanage . . .”
“. . . think you’re this irresistible goddess but what you really are . . .”
They switched to Romani, yelling every horrible thing they knew to be true about each other.
“Enough!” Angus yelled, silencing them with his roar.
They were both breathing heavily. Deidre felt a stabbing pain in her stomach and pressed her hand to it. It came away sticky.
Rose rushed in from behind Angus, putting her arms around Deidre and ushering her to the bed. “Ye’ve pulled your stitches.”
“Serves her right,” Tristan muttered.
Angus pointed at him. “I said enough. Christ on the cross, what the devil is wrong with the both of ye?”
“Nothing,” they said at the same time.
Tristan glared at her from across the room. She glared back.
“This,” Angus said, waving his hand at the wreckage of broken items littering the room, “is madness.”
“She started it,” Tristan grumbled.
Deidre pulled off her shoe and threw it at him.
Angus caught Tristan around the chest as he lunged for more ammunition, dragging him toward the door. “Outside.”
“She always—”
“I dinnae care. Outside, before I thrash the both of ye for acting like children.” He tossed Tristan out the door, watching to make sure he didn’t come back.
Deidre scowled on the bed as Rose tended to her. She knew she was being ridiculous, but her blood was up, and for the first time in a week she’d had something to do about being upset other than cry.
“That one’s still a lad,” Angus said, advancing on her with his stern scowl. “But ye ought to ken better.”
“You don’t know us.”
“The hell ye say. We’ve been through quite a bit now, lassie. I ken ye just fine.” Angus sat down on the edge of the bed. His tone softened. “I ken it’s my idiot godson and his fool notions that have ye all mixed up.”
She couldn’t look at him. Deidre needed Angus to be gruff and insensitive. She couldn’t take his compassion. She would not cry anymore.
“Dinnae go mucking it up with yer only living kin just because Ewan doesnae have the sense God gave a groundhog. It’ll sort out.”
Damn it all. She wiped her hand across damp cheeks. It was so much easier when she was throwing things.
***
Breakfast was an awkward affair.
Ewan hadn’t thought Deidre was well enough to risk the stairs, so he hadn’t expected to see her. Now he could see nothing else. She sat across from him, cloaked in icy formality. Tristan was similarly sullen and Angus was glaring daggers at Ewan anytime their eyes met. Even Rose and Darrow were pushing food around their plates and frowning.
“Have ye heard from yer fur merchant?” Ewan asked Deidre, attempting to break the silence.
“If I had, you would know about it.” Pure frost.
“I did,” Tristan said with a sideways glare at his sister. To Ewan, he said, “Not all of us have been sitting around feeling sorry for ourselves.”
Ouch. Ewan couldn’t disagree with Tristan—he’d done a fair amount of moping these last few days—and he deserved every ounce of ridicule they wanted to throw at him.
Silverware clattered as Deidre’s hand closed around a fork. Ewan followed the look she was shooting at her brother and realized he hadn’t been the intended target of Tristan’s dig. Tristan’s smile back at her was smug.
Angus cleared his throat at the end of the table.
Tristan went back to dissecting ham on his plate. Deidre relaxed her grip on the cutlery.
“Seems like you’re feeling much better,” D
arrow said to Ewan. “Saw you down by the cliffs earlier.”
“Oh yes,” Deidre responded for him. “He’s healthy as a horse.”
Christ. There it was, right out there in the open. Did everyone know? Did they all hate him? They ought to.
Tristan’s response immediately followed. “Unlike—”
“Darrow, have ye had any luck finding more goods to smuggle?” Angus interrupted.
Tom coughed, swallowing his toast too quickly. “Erm, no, not as yet. We were waiting for, ah—”
“Waiting for Deidre to quit moping and do her job,” Tristan cut in.
What in the hell was going on between the two of them? Ewan tried to intervene. “Yer sister was wounded. Ye should—”
“I can speak for myself just fine. I don’t need you to defend me, Ewan.”
No, she certainly didn’t—not that he’d even been able to. He hadn’t been able to defend any of them. Even Rose had done more in Deidre’s service. If Ewan had been better at taking care of any of them, Rose wouldn’t be a murderess twice over, Deidre wouldn’t have been laid up with a bullet hole, and she wouldn’t be fighting with Tristan now.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. It wasn’t nearly enough.
“At any rate,” she said, avoiding his eyes. “I am feeling much better now, so it’s high time I moved on.”
The air left his lungs, and for a moment he couldn’t convince them to take any back in. She was leaving. He’d wanted her to be able to get away from him if she wanted to, he just . . . hadn’t realized it would be immediately.
“Moved on?” Rose asked.
“I thought you were—” Darrow looked between her and Tristan.
Tristan’s shrugged, pushing away his plate.
Angus’s expression was ominous, all of its menace directed at Ewan.
“When?” Ewan asked.
“As soon as we’re finished with breakfast, actually.” Deidre put her napkin down and pushed back from the table. “Tristan, if you still mean to come with me, you should pack.”
She stood and left. Ewan shouldn’t have followed her, but his days of being a fool were apparently only reaching their middle.
A Dangerous Damsel (The Countess Scandals) Page 22
