Claiming Her

“Never heard of it.”

She glanced up absently. “I am unsurprised. He was an Englishman, so how would you? And he was desperately…” She pondered the correct word a moment. “Well, desperate. But bold. Oh, exceedingly bold.” Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial tone, the sort used for secrets and bedrooms.

A long quiver unfurled inside Aodh, a misericorde-thin, daggerlike thrust through his chest, comprised of interest and…jealousy?

Good God. What was that doing inside him?

“Humphrey, was it, then?”

“Yes. Gilbert Humphrey. Tall and charming, full of tales of faraway places and derring-do. Oh, half were lies, no doubt, but I was fooled. He was a dreamer.” She gave a helpless little shrug, her shoulders lifting under the force of her inability to fully express the charms of the most excellent Mr. Humphrey. “A dreamer, and a talker, and an…”

“Exceedingly bold man?”

She straightened away from the map. “Perhaps bold overstates the matter. Better to say…” She touched her lips, and he felt it as if her finger had been laid upon his own mouth, the pad light, hot, pressing an oval onto his bottom lip. For a moment, everything, even her voice, faded away, while he imagined coaxing the tip of it into his mouth with his tongue.

“…be a more accurate description.”

He dragged his gaze from her finger. “Pardon?”

“Mr. Humphrey was a cony catcher in the guise of a poet in the guise of a ship’s captain.”

He laughed, pleased with this tearing down of the bold and excellent Mr. Humphrey. “All ship captains are cony catchers, lass. Deceit and trickery are the wind under which they sail.”

She laughed. “Yes, well, this one was that indeed. Foolhardy. Reckless.”

Their eyes met.

“Stubborn?” he suggested.

Her eyes slid away. “He is dead now, if that is what you mean.”

“And you miss him.”

Her gaze arrested, stilled at some point in space between him and the map of the world. “Sir, I lost over a hundred pounds and my reputation because of him. ‘Miss the man’ hardly describes my feelings. His dream was not carefully dreamed. He was wild and careless and—”

“Exceedingly bold.”

She looked at him sternly. “Reckless.”

“And stubborn.”

“And now he is dead.”

Good. “So be it,” was all he said.

She sighed. “So be it. ’Twas a waste of everything but the dream.”

He smiled grimly. He knew the waste of dreams, far too well. Then, because he’d learned to listen deeply, he said softly, “Is money all you lost to Gilbert Humphrey, lass?”

She took a long inhalation as color flowed across her cheeks, down h

er neck, and her chin dimpled. The response was gone in an instant. “I was seventeen. It was a mistake,” she said quietly.

“I’ve made a few.”

She gave a little laugh and shook her head while she traced the lines on the map, outlining Bohemia. “Such things are never the same for men.” Her finger migrated west, into the Holy Roman Empire.

He reached out and swept up her hand, lifted it to his mouth. “I do not care for such things. They do not concern us.”