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,” Darrow 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.
“Deidre,” he said when he caught up to her. “Ye dinnae have to go.”
“No?” Her expression was impassive.
“I’ll go. We’d planned for ye to stay on without me, before . . .” Before they’d spent every waking hour exploring each other’s bodies. Before they’d fallen in love with each other. Before he’d let her get shot trying to save him.
Indifference dropped over her face like a mask. “Do as you please. I’m leaving either way.”
“Why? Ye’ve the run of the castle, and—”
“No good prospects,” she interrupted. “I should have realized it sooner, but staying here would be dreadfully boring. I’d go mad.”
She wouldn’t even let him give her this. He’d hoped he could offer her the security of a place to call her own, but she didn’t want it. There was nothing left for him to do but nod, and watch her walk away down the hall.
***
The dusty side room Deidre ducked into was the closest privacy she could find in time. She closed the door and leaned against it, sucking in great big gulps of air to stave off the tears.
Ye dinnae have to go. Idiot. For a second she’d thought he would tell her he’d been a fool, that he still loved her and he didn’t want her to go. Or even that he was still a fool, but he was willing to try to fix what was between them. She should have known he’d just throw more meaningless chivalry at her. Deidre didn’t want his damn castle, or his kindness. She wanted him.
She clenched her teeth against the emotions that were trying to overwhelm her. He hadn’t even tried to pretend he could stand to be near her. There had been no argument about one of them needing to leave—just which one. The man would rather give her a castle than sit across a table from her at supper or see her in the hallway.
It was time for her to face facts—Ewan didn’t love her anymore. Maybe he had never loved her. The ridiculous hope she kept resurrecting wasn’t doing her any good. It was making her weak, and it was time to put an end to it. She would pack up her belongings, get on her horse, and leave him and his memory behind. She would do it today, before some new theory diverted her from the truth.
She could do it. She just needed to stop crying, and start moving. When her father had died, it had seemed impossible to take that first step and get their lives moving again. This would not be harder than that. She’d lived without Ewan for twenty-five years. She could live without him again.