A Dangerous Damsel (The Countess Scandals) (15 page)

Chapter 18

Ewan was pulling the last of the bread out of the oven when Deidre found him. He felt her before he saw her. Something in the air changed when she was near.

“What’s all this?” she asked, leaning against the doorway.

“Yer all acting like ye’ve never seen a man make bread before.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man make quite so much of it. What’s the occasion?”

Ewan moved in close, framing her body with his own. “The occasion is that ye said ye wanted bread.”

He kissed the delicate skin behind her ear. She stretched her neck out to aid in his attention. For a long moment, he forgot all about the bread.

“Surely you’re not expecting me to eat all of it,” she said, laughing.

“Ye may do with it as ye wish, my lady.” He felt her freeze.

She pulled away. “Ewan.”

Damn it all. It was too soon. “I dinnae mean . . .”

Yes, he did. He did mean it, and at some point they were going to have to talk about it. He was surrounded by the bread he’d spent all day baking like a madman because he was ridiculously in love with her. It wasn’t going to keep much longer.

“I ought to go see about—”

“Tristan will see to it.”

“He can’t.”

“Darrow then.”

She leaned back, putting space between them. “Is that what you think? That I’m easily replaced?”

Bollocks. “That wasnae what I—”

Deidre slipped away from the door and him. “You don’t even know what needs to be done, but you just assume any random man will do?”

“Ye ken that’s nae what—”

“I know nothing of the sort. You called me your lady. Ladies don’t do much of anything. Is that what you’re trying to turn me into?”

“I’m nae trying to . . .” He didn’t even bother finishing. How did things get so turned around with her? He’d baked her bread. It was supposed to be a nice thing. They’d eat it and laugh and make love all afternoon, like they’d done every other day. Instead, she was angry and he wasn’t even certain why. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

No, he bloody well wasn’t. He might be, if he had any idea what for. “Can we just begin again? I dinnae mean to argue with ye.”

“That’s unfortunate because I mean to argue with you.” She picked up a loaf, breaking a steaming piece free. “Do you, or don’t you, believe I’m replaceable?”

Ewan prepared himself for a losing fight. “Of course nae.”

“Outside of your bed?”

He hesitated a little too long. The bread sailed toward his head.

“My God. You do, don’t you? You think I’m replaceable?”

“I dinnae—” A whole loaf flew through the air.

“Just say it, you great coward!”

“Fine,” he yelled back. “Yer right. Do I think yer good at what ye do? Of course. Do I think someone else could do it? Aye, I do.”

Loaves flew through the air like missiles. She cursed in Romani while she pelted him with bread. Ewan batted them away, trying to shout sense into her.

“What in bloody hell is going on down here?” Angus shouted. He stood in the doorway with Tristan and Darrow, looking at the wreckage.

Deidre continued to throw bread, her shouting reaching new heights.

Tristan’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “She’ll be at this awhile.”

Angus ducked a cinnamon loaf as it sailed past him. “Best leave her then, before she runs out of bread and makes it to the crockery.”

Ewan didn’t want to go, but he could see he didn’t have much choice. He wasn’t the sort of man who could tell her what she wanted to hear, and she was in the mood for a fight. If he stayed, they’d likely strangle each other.

***

When she was certain they were out of earshot, the fury left Deidre in a rush. They’d certainly have words—real words, not shouted curses—about his belief that she was replaceable some other time. For now, she’d been lucky to manage enough outrage to put some distance between them. If Ewan hadn’t insisted on saying all the wrong things, she would not have had the willpower to keep from melting into his touch and telling him all her troubles. The last thing she needed was him running off and getting himself killed trying to solve her problems.

She picked up one of the ruined loaves. A smile tugged at the edge of her mouth. He’d made them for her—just because she’d mentioned wanting some in sleepy passing. It had been so long since anyone had wanted to take care of her. Since anyone had cared enough to try. He had too much kindness. If she stayed, Alastair would kill him. The smile twisted as her face crumpled into the beginning of a sob.

Deidre was likely in love with Ewan, and there was no way she could keep him. He was fierce and intelligent, but Alastair thrived on cruelty. If she stayed, Ewan would suffer for it. She would suffer, even if it was only knowing that she’d been the cause of it, and it wouldn’t be. Alastair would take a price from them all.

The tears were Deidre’s first in years. Ever since Tris was old enough to understand, she hadn’t allowed herself to cry. She’d needed to be strong for him. She hadn’t realized, living their separate lives in Glasgow, how close he was to being a man in his own right. Spending so much time with him the past couple weeks, seeing how he was with Ewan and Darrow and how he handled himself—her brother was growing up. He was still a reckless idiot, but he didn’t really need her anymore.

Deidre slid to the floor. Everything was a mess. She’d finally gotten Tris away from Glasgow, but their problems had followed them. She’d finally found a man she actually wanted to be with but she couldn’t keep him. Was it ever going to get easier? She already knew the answer. Thinking it might get easier, wanting it to, was a trap. That was how you got in trouble. That was how you got hurt.

“Miss Morgan?”

Of all the people Deidre did not need to see right now.

Rose came around the table. “I—oh.”

Deidre stayed where she was, clutching her broken loaf of bread. “What can I do for you?”

“Nothing. I . . .” She hesitated. “I came to see if yer all right.”

“I’m always all right.”

“I meant—” Rose seemed to come to some internal decision. Without warning, she sat down on the floor next to Deidre. “Do ye want to talk?”

Bloody hell. “About what?”

“I dinnae ken. Just . . . whatever might be on yer mind?”

My ex-lover, a supremely violent lunatic, has tracked me down and now I’m worried he’ll find out about my current lover, your childhood friend, and dismember him
. Deidre doubted that was what Rose had in mind when she suggested a chat.

“It doesnae have to be about any of this,” Rose gestured to the baking carnage. “I just thought we might . . .”

“Talk?” Deidre supplied wryly.

“Yes. Like friends.”

Deidre wondered if Rose had managed to hit her head somewhere. “I don’t have many friends, Rose.”

“I dinnae have any.”

Deidre didn’t, either. “Don’t have many” had been an exaggeration. “You have Ewan.”

“Do I? We were friends as children, but it’s been twenty-five years. He’s a man now.” Rose folded a section of her skirt into perfectly ordered pleats.

“You’re not . . .” There was no delicate way for Deidre to put it. “You don’t resent what’s between us? He and I, I mean?”

“Why would I?”

Deidre had witnessed their reunion. Rose cared for Ewan, and she’d never married. “I thought you might have . . . been waiting for him.”

A tiny grin took over Rose’s lips. “No. My feelings toward Ewan are entirely brotherly.”

“Truly?” Ewan was so masculine, so full of vitality. It was difficult for Deidre to imagine.

“Truly.”

“Darrow?” It seemed extremely unlikely, but they
had
spent a long time under the same roof.

“No,” Rose laughed. It died off as she became serious. “I’m far more likely to be harboring a secret affection for ye than for Mr. Darrow.”

“Oh.”
Oh.
It wasn’t the most shocking thing Deidre had ever heard—she’d known women who preferred other women before—she just hadn’t thought Rose might be one of them.

“That’s nae why I want us to be friends,” Rose rushed to explain. “Yer certainly worthy of harboring affection for, but even if ye welcomed it, I wouldnae do that to Ewan.”

“Why then?” Deidre genuinely wanted to know. Rose was proving much more complex than she’d initially given her credit for.

“People listen to ye. They dinnae try to tuck ye away or ship ye off to some place ye dinnae want to go.”

Of all the days for Rose to come to that conclusion. “Women of your station don’t associate with women like me, generally speaking.”

“I dinnae associate with anyone, speaking generally or specifically,” Rose said quietly.

“I’m sure it’s—”

“It’s bloody lonely is what it is and I’m sick of it,” Rose exclaimed. The kitchen echoed with her outburst.

Deidre couldn’t help herself. She grinned. “Did you just say ‘bloody’?”

“Please dinnae tell anyone,” Rose begged.

Deidre put a hand to her lips, promising silence. The quiet settled in around them. “I’m a thief, Rose. And worse. You don’t want to be friends with me.”

“Worse than a murderer?”

There it was, out in the open. She’d already known but it still took Deidre by surprise to hear the word from Rose’s mouth.

“Sometimes that, too,” Deidre admitted. “But not often, God willing.”

Rose stared at her hands. “Ye kenned already.”

Deidre didn’t bother wasting an answer.

“Ewan told ye?”

“Angus.”

“Does Ewan . . .”

“I don’t know.”

Rose nodded slowly. “Now ye have two secrets of mine.”

Deidre should keep her own secrets to herself, but suddenly she needed to say it, if only just one time. Rose had trusted her with a great deal and what did she have left to lose? It was all going to be gone soon anyway. “I’m in love with Ewan.”

“Have ye told him?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it will likely get him killed.”

***

After shaking off the bread crumbs, Tristan and Ewan retreated to the outer bailey. It seemed safer than remaining within the castle. There was no telling what the radius on Deidre’s temper might be.

“It’s nothing you did,” Tristan told him.

They were walking the walls, noting places that needed repair or would soon.

Ewan checked a group of stones with moss growing down a thick crack through the middle. “Tell that to my bread.”

“The bread was a nice touch.”

“Yer sister dinnae seem to care for it.”

They moved down the line, checking the next group.

“She liked it. That’s why she ruined it.”

Ewan stopped, standing up to stare at Tristan. “Is everyone in yer family completely mad?”

Tristan shook his head. “Just the women.”

He went back to his stones—at least they adhered to some kind of predictable logic. You could tell what was wrong with them by looking, and you knew what you needed to do to fix them. With Deidre . . . “Who ruins a thing
because
they like it?”

“I told you in the woods. She doesn’t like people to know she’s vulnerable.”

Ewan could spend a lifetime trying and never completely solve the puzzle that was Deidre Morgan. It ought to terrify him. He’d lived his whole life around complicated women at Dalreoch Castle. Ewan knew the kind of torment they could put a man through, but still he wanted her. He wanted to spend the rest of his days being confounded and infuriated by her, letting her throw things and shout at him and make wild, erratic love to him in the middle of the day.

He just didn’t know how to convince her to want it, too.

“Just let it blow over,” Tristan said. “She’s been in a mood all day. Almost ruined the meet-up.”

“How do ye mean?”

“Merchant took a liking to her. Not unusual, but instead of sweet-talking him, she gave him the sharp side of her tongue.”

Ewan tried not to be pleased, but he couldn’t. He was hardly a stranger to the way Deidre conducted her business, but it didn’t mean he liked it. “What happened?”

“I made the deal. She went for a walk.”

And Ewan had told her she was replaceable. He felt like an ass. He couldn’t have known, but his timing certainly could have been better. “She started throwing things when I said I thought ye or Darrow could replace her.”

It was Tristan’s turn to stop and stare. “Why would you say a fool thing like that?”

“Because she asked.”

“And? Why didn’t you just lie?”

Why, indeed. “It’s nae my way,” Ewan said.

“Your way is going to get you brained with a chamber pot—you know that, right?”

Ewan chuckled. “Aye, that seems likely.”

Of course, in order for that to happen, they’d have to be in the same room together. Ewan suspected it would be a while before that happened.

They finished their inspection and headed back toward the castle.

“She likes you, you know,” Tristan said when they reach the main doors.

Was everyone going to assure him of Deidre’s affection? Everyone except Deidre. He didn’t know the language she’d been shouting in, but some of her hand gestures had been extremely easy to interpret. “Perhaps she did before today.”

“She still does. She only throws things when she cares.”

Well, that was comforting. At least he knew, if he was struck by a fire poker when he came through the doors, it would be because she had affection for him.

They crossed the threshold—no pokers were forthcoming. The greatest danger they faced was Rose coming from the direction of the kitchens.

“Are we all out of plates? She’s partial to plates,” Tristan explained.

Rose frowned at him. “Ewan, may I have a word with you in private?”

“Do ye mean to throw anything at me?”

“No.”

“Then aye, ye may.” He left Tristan behind, following Rose to the study. “Is she all right?”

“For the most part,” Rose answered. “I’ve asked her to be my friend.”

“Is that wise?” Ewan couldn’t help doubting that alliance meant anything good for him.

She turned in the center of the room, lifting her chin. “I can decide who I will and will not be friends with.”

“I never tried to say ye couldn’t.” It was already spelling trouble. He and Tristan hadn’t been gone long. How friendly could two women become in an hour?