Chapter Fourteen
“Who’s ready to practice being incredibly uncomfortable?” Diarmid asked with a grin, rubbing his hands together as he strode into the hall.
Niamh giggled, shaking her head at his antics. “As much as it pains me to admit it,” she said, turning to Cara, “there’s none better to teach you to be charming than our Diarmid.”
“Hey!” Dallan poked his head inside from the door behind Diarmid to glare at his betrothed.
Niamh shrugged, then hurried over to give poor Dallan a goodnight kiss. “I’ll leave you to it,” she whispered, disappearing into her room.
“Finn and I will be wandering about the grounds,” Dallan told them. “Sitric took Illadan, Cormac, and Broccan down to the alehouse to try to win them over to his plan. If he comes back, we’ll signal you.” Without waiting for a response, he quietly shut the heavy oaken door.
Diarmid joined her in the seating area, this time sitting opposite her. He reclined in the chair, looking much like a wolf trying to pass as a dog. Even at rest, his powerful build and relentless charisma created a formidable presence. “So, how did it go?”
“You were there.” Cara knew it was a sharp reply, especially for someone helping her, but she felt the need to put some distance between them.
For the briefest moment, she could have sworn his face fell. But then that grin returned, mischievous as ever. “I meant how did you feel about it? Did you feel that practicing it here with me prepared you well enough to endure it with our gracious host?”
Cara raised an eyebrow. “Endure?”
“It would be unfair to hold anyone to my standards of charm, obviously.”
“Obviously.”
“Good, then we agree. Now,” he began, “we have two things that you should probably practice, and you’re going to loathe both of them.”
“Perfect,” she replied tartly. “What do you propose?”
“Since we’ve made some real progress with physical contact, we need to work on conversation. Do you know much of teasing and bantering to endear your partner? Or of hinting at intimacy?”
“What do you think my mother taught me of courtship? How to seduce a man, or how to impress him with my knowledge of domestic affairs?” Cara couldn’t believe she was even having this conversation. This wasn’t the sort of thing anyone was normally taught. Normal people simply knew how to do all these things. Not as well as Diarmid, she grudgingly admitted, but well enough to get the job done.
“I understand your point, but, I know your mother, and it could honestly have been either.”
Cara shot forward in her chair. “What?”
“I stayed at Thurles, remember?” he explained. “Dearest Illadan tasked me with keeping an eye on your mother so she couldn’t get into any more trouble. And we didn’t even know what she’d plotted with Aodh then. We just knew she was trouble.”
“What did that entail?”
Diarmid shook his head at the memory. “Following her around everywhere. Listening to her complain about everything. Not to offend you, but it wasn’t the most riveting assignment I’ve been given.”
The conversation was already making Cara uncomfortable, she decided. “What’s my other option?”
“Oh, we’re doing both,” Diarmid replied. “Probably at the same time. Then neither will seem so bad on its own.”
Cara pinched the bridge of her nose. “I suppose I have no say in this?”
“If you’re really, truly opposed to anything I suggest, we won’t do it. But I wouldn’t suggest it if I didn’t believe it a worthwhile exercise.”
She nodded her understanding. “And the other?”
“Hugs, of course. Have you ever seen that man enter a room?” Diarmid chuckled. “He even hugged Brian.”
Cara did not like it one bit, even though she knew he was right. “Can’t we work on smiling?”
“You should smile when you’re happy. Not when someone tells you to. That will come in its own time.”
“Fine,” Cara grumbled, rising from her chair.
“Really?” Diarmid stood as well. “You’re sure?”
“Everything you’ve suggested has worked,” Cara told him. “So, I suppose I should start doing whatever you tell me to do.”
A familiar warmth filled Diarmid’s brown eyes. “If you say that to Sitric, I think that will get you pretty far into his good graces.”
“I’m sure it would,” she shot back. She knew he jested, but it wasn’t a topic she found particularly amusing. “That’s all men want anyway, isn’t it? To bed women who tend to their every need.”
Diarmid sobered immediately, putting his arms out. “It sounds like someone needs a hug.”
“You’re incorrigible,” she mumbled, walking over to him and letting him embrace her. It felt much like hugging a pile of stones, his body hard, rippling muscle. His arms reached all the way around her, clasping behind her back and enveloping her in his warmth, in him. In truth, it wasn’t terrible.
“I think you insult me every time you let me help you because it softens the blow to your pride,” he whispered into her hair. “Ask me something personal, something that makes you uncomfortable to discuss.”
Cara knew exactly what to ask. She’d wondered it many times in the days since they’d met, but she’d never had the nerve to say it aloud. “Why do you sleep with so many women?”
He took a deep breath, letting it out so close to her that she felt it like a summer breeze against her forehead. “Do you want the truth, or what I tell everyone else?”
“Both.” That he had two answers told her she’d likely underestimated him yet again.
“I don’t see the point in a life without fun, without making the most of each moment,” he said quietly. “That’s what I tell everyone, and it’s true, but the reason I haven’t ever once considered marriage is that I’ve seen too many bad ones. What if some poor woman ended up miserable with me?”
That didn’t sound anything like Diarmid. Cara pulled back just enough to look up at him, noticing for the first time that his short, well-kept mustache didn’t quite reach the stubble on his squared jaw. “Ironic, then, that you’re pushing me toward just such a marriage.”
“I suppose it is.” One side of his lips tilted upward in a sad smile. “Your turn.”
“My turn, what?”
“I get to ask you a question, so that you can practice sharing.” He shifted his arms, so that they hugged her more tightly. “Did he hurt you?” His voice was low, tense. Dangerous. “Because I will actually go kill him.”
She knew who he meant, though she’d not once mentioned Torna. And she believed him, though she had no idea what caused his sudden intensity. “He was a bit rough,” she admitted, her voice shaking in spite of her efforts, “but he didn’t hit me or anything like that.”
Diarmid’s body went rigid. “I’m going to be needing a name and a place, princess.”
“I don’t even know where he is,” she whispered, the corners of her eyes tingling. Luckily, she’d shed all those tears long ago. She buried her head in his chest as they stood there, embracing in the dim corner of the vast hall. Diarmid’s hand stroked her hair, his heart beating so loudly she could hear it in his chest.
“I see why you might have a few things to say about my dalliances.” He placed a finger beneath her chin, and to Cara’s surprise she didn’t mind at all. It didn’t make her flinch. It didn’t make her nervous.
It excited her.
He raised her face from his chest, staring at her so intensely she thought he might be reading her very thoughts. “I don’t bed women by leading them to believe I want marriage. They know it is for one night because anything else would be criminal. What he did to you is unforgivable.”
A tingle bubbled up her spine. She’d not even told him a thing and he’d been able to guess what had happened. What’s more, he was the first person who hadn’t tried to blame her for it. A weight she hadn’t realized she carried lifted from her as, for the first time since Torna left her, she considered that perhaps she’d not done something wrong.
Cara, mesmerized by his words, by his scent, by his gaze, nearly forgot that he was an utter rogue. And that not two days prior he’d held another woman the same way he now held her. “But you bed married women?”
His hand fell from her face but his eyes never left hers. “I didn’t bed the innkeeper,” he told her with a smile. “We kept guard for her.”
“But—” she’d berated him for doing so and he’d not corrected her. Indeed, he’d gone right along with her assumptions.
“It was more fun to prod your temper.”
An odd whistle sounded from outside the front entrance to the hall. Diarmid’s arms dropped from her waist, and he stepped away. Beside them, Dallan opened the back door. “Diarmid, out! Hurry!”
Cara didn’t feel up to a conversation with Sitric, particularly if he were as deep in his cups as she suspected. She scurried to her room, happily the nearest one, and quickly shut the door behind her. Melancholy crept over her as she settled into bed, realizing that while she had enjoyed her meeting with Diarmid and would even look forward to hugging him again, the thought of being in Sitric’s arms settled in the pit of her stomach like a meal gone sour. And though Sitric was kind and good-humored, he looked at her with either lust or disinterest, occasionally amusement or irritation.
Diarmid looked at her like she was his whole world. Every time.