Chapter 6
6
brAIDEN
D inner is the single longest meal of my life.
Despite coming in on his day off, Fairfax has worked his usual magic. He serves up a full Sunday roast—leg of lamb, potatoes, the spring’s first asparagus, and Yorkshire pudding. I keep Aiofe in her place to my right and Samantha to my left. Birte sits by Aiofe, Madden next to Samantha. I put Fiona at the foot of the table.
She can report back to her da that she has a place of honor. And she can’t get close enough to put a knife between my ribs.
She claims she’s only here to learn how I run the Fishtown Boys. She says her da means to make her captain of the Boston crew after he’s gone, may that be many years in the future. She insists she’d be a fool to stir up trouble for me down here.
I don’t trust a word she says.
So for five full minutes, the only sound in the dining room is the scrape of silverware on plates. All six of us eat like we’re training for the Olympic gold medal in Family Meal .
No one looks up from Fairfax’s feast. I try to ignore the itch of my bandaged wound, pulled tight by the flex of my fingers. The more I try to forget the ache of the scar that frames it, the more my flesh burns.
Fiona fortifies herself with a massive gulp of Bordeaux before she finally says, “My, what lovely weather we’re having lately.”
Madden snorts as he forks a huge bite of lamb past his lips. The sound comes out liquid and clogged, and I realize his nose is swollen. It wasn’t that way when he arrived this afternoon, answering my summons when I realized there’s no way I can ship Fiona back to Ingram. Not yet, anyway.
“What happened to you, deartháir ?” I ask.
He scowls, as if my calling him brother is an insult. “Walked into a wall,” he mutters, savaging a roasted potato with his fork.
Aiofe giggles until Madden glares at her. I tap my knife to put him back where he belongs. He pours half a bottle of wine into his glass, but he keeps his mouth shut.
I can’t remember ever hearing Aiofe laugh before. Her color is high. She’s eating her vegetables without my reminding her. I don’t know what’s set her right—having Samantha back after five weeks of separation, eating with her auntie at her side, or basking in the novelty of Fiona’s cool stare from the foot of the table.
We pass another few minutes in silence before Fiona tries again. “Are the rumors true about that heroin bust? Did the police really pick up three of your corner men?”
I attempt to incinerate her face with my stare. “We do not discuss business at the dinner table,” I say.
“At the table,” Birte repeats. “On the cable. In the stable.”
Aiofe beams at her, as if Birte just recited one of Yeats’ finest poems.
“Fairfax!” I holler. When he glides in from the kitchen, I plead, “Have you made us a sweet?”
He carries in an enormous trifle, soaked in enough sherry that I can smell it from the doorway. The dessert proves entertainment enough to carry us to the end of our tortured meal. I can’t help but notice Samantha’s barely touched her food—dinner or dessert. My own appetite died with the first endless silence.
As Fairfax starts to clear the plates, Fiona looks out the window. “Anyone care for a stroll?” she asks. “I haven’t seen the grounds yet.”
“Of course you haven’t,” I growl. She spent the entire afternoon shadowing me.
Madden stands to accompany her, saying, “He only sounds like a bear with a sore paw.”
“I don’t know,” Fiona says, looking over her shoulder. “Those teeth he’s grinding look rather bearish to me.”
They laugh and head toward the mudroom. I trust Madden will get her a coat so she doesn’t freeze her arse off, first night on my watch. Then again, maybe she’ll go back to Boston under her own power if she suffers a little frostbite.
Birte is humming to herself, pleating and unpleating the napkin in her lap. I turn to Aiofe. “You’ve got half an hour before bed. Why don’t you show Auntie Birte the nursery?”
Aiofe beams, taking a willing Birte’s hand and leading her toward the stairs.
That leaves Samantha and me. Exactly as I planned.
“That wall Madden walked into,” I say. “Is it a problem?”
I see her start to lie, to tell me all is grand. I know how to read every line of her body. But this time she chooses the truth. Or something close to it. “I’ve got it under control. For now.”
I want to tell her she’s safe here.
I want to tell her I’ve killed for her once, and I’ll do it again, once my runners track down whoever sent the man to the freeport.
I want to tell her I hate having kept Birte a secret, that I should have told her the truth when I gave her my ring, the day I asked her to marry me .
I want to tell her I’m sorry.
Instead, I say, “You left something in the bedroom upstairs. Come fetch it before you go back to the pool house.”
She’s wary, precisely the way I knew she would be. “Fairfax brought me everything I need.”
“So now you’re scared of me?”
That gets her back up, just as I planned. She pushes her chair away from the table and throws her shoulders back, leading the way upstairs like she’s Washington crossing the Delaware.
Was it only last night that she was attacked at the freeport? That she ended five weeks of exile and agreed to come home? That I tied her to the bed and put her in a blindfold and made her beg for the slap of my riding crop?
Was it only this morning that she found Birte in the dining room?
This day feels like it’s lasted twenty-five years.
I’ve spread her gray nightshirt on the hunter-green duvet. She stiffens when she sees it. “Fairfax must not have realized it was here,” she says, crossing the room and snatching up the soft jersey garment.
Or I ordered him to leave it behind when he collected the rest of her belongings. Faced down his most fierce frown about it, too.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” she says, turning toward the door.
“You’re never a bother, piscín .”
She flinches at the pet name. Kitten . Mine to hold. Mine to tame. But I always have to mind her claws.
“Let me go, Braiden.” Her voice trembles.
“I’m not stopping you.”
She can walk past me. Through the doorway. Down the hall. Back to the pool house.
She doesn’t move.
When I close the distance between us, I can smell her shampoo—honey and berries from a bottle Fairfax carried out to the pool house. I see a mark on her throat, a red welt as if she’s pressed the handle of last night’s crop into the soft hollow beneath her ear.
I touch it with my fingertip, and her pulse takes off like a flag fighting a hurricane. I cup her jaw, and she leans into my hand.
“Stay,” I whisper.
She nods, once.
I hate to pull away, hate to lose the heat of her cheek against my palm. But I close the door before she changes her mind. When I shoot the lock, my fingers are strangely clumsy.
There’s one more thing I kept from Fairfax when he packed up all her belongings.
The velvet box is in my top dresser drawer. When I open it for Samantha, I feel like I’m displaying the contents the very first time. The emerald at the heart of her collar catches all the light in the room, gathering it and concentrating it and distilling it into something more.
It’s too much. Too fast.
She crosses her arms, her fingers still knotted in her nightshirt. The gray fabric bunches across her chest like the most fragile shield in the world.
“I can’t,” she says. Then she shakes her head like I’ve challenged her. “I won’t.”
I close the box.
“I trusted you,” she says.
“I know.”
“It was all too easy. You said you’d marry me, and I said yes. I thought it was the perfect way to avoid Russo. To be safe.”
“It was. It is.”
“It isn’t !” She’s loud enough that I’m glad I paid handsomely to soundproof this room. “You lied to me!”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“Bullshit! ”
“Samantha,” I say, pitching my voice to the level I wish she’d use.
She may not realize it, but she lowers her voice. “You found a fake priest to marry us. You let me stand in that church and say my vows and believe it all was real. You actually thought that wouldn’t hurt when I found out?”
I prayed she’d never learn the truth. But now I say, “I was trying to protect you.”
She snorts in derision. “You wanted to make sure I have no claim on you. So you can walk away whenever you want.”
I shake my head. “I never want to leave you.” In my head, in my heart, I was trying to do the right thing. I was trying to keep her from wedding a married man. “What do you want?” I finally ask. “How can I make this right?”
“You can’t!” She spits the words. That venom’s intended for me, but there’s a healthy dose of loathing for herself.
“None of this is your fault,” I tell her.
“I want to believe that.”
“It’s the truth. You didn’t know. You couldn’t have done anything different.”
“But I can now.” She says the words like they’re a curse. “I should leave. Walk out that door and never set foot in this house again. I should sleep in my car or go back to the freeport or stay in a fucking hotel. I should…” She swallows the rest of her sentence, as if there are too many words, as if they’re too hard to say out loud.
She has too many options. Too many choices. Too many decisions to make.
She became my sub because I told her exactly what to do. I gave her one clear path. I carried all her burdens for a while, giving her a chance to rest.
And I can do that again.
So I say, “Drop that goddamn shirt.” I use my Captain’s voice, carving away every path but one .
She hesitates for long enough that I think I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life.
No. It would only be the second biggest. Hiring Father Brennan was worse.
Still no. Third biggest mistake. The worst was failing to tell her about Birte from the very beginning. And I’ll live with that for the rest of my life.
But then Samantha drops the shirt, and I glimpse a narrow path toward redemption.
“On your knees,” I order, pointing to the floor.
She’s about to do it. Her face clears. Her knees sway.
But she pulls herself straight before she gives in. She closes her hand over my wrist. “If I do this,” she says. “You have to do something for me.”
“I’ll do something for you,” I growl.
She shakes her head. “Promise,” she says.
This isn’t right. She’s my sub. I’m her Dom.
But she isn’t wearing her collar yet. And she’ll never put it on if I don’t ask, “Promise what?”
“If you won’t get a doctor in here for Aiofe and Birte, bring in someone they can trust. A priest. A real one. Not Father Brennan.”
I start to protest. I need to protect the Fishtown Boys, keep prying eyes from Thornfield.
But there are two reasons I’ll do it. One: Samantha is the one who asked. And two: It’s the right thing to do.
“Fine,” I say. “I promise. I’ll bring someone in tomorrow.”
She stares at me, like she’s trying to read my mind.
I’ve lied to her before. But my arm is still bandaged from that bullet. I’m not lying now.
“Fine,” she says, carefully matching my tone. And she sinks to the floor, her flowered skirt floating prettily around her knees. She looks up at me, her face open. Honest. Free.
“I need my collar,” she says. And then, after the slightest of pauses, she adds the word my heart covets most. “Sir.”