“Aye?”
“Where did you go?”
His eyes came up, pale blue and burning. “What?”
“When you left Ireland, where did you go?”
For a moment, surprise shone in his expression, then it was shuttered. “Many places.”
“I was hoping for more particulars,” she said gently.
“Aye? And I was hoping to have you laid out on the bed by now, crying out my name.”
Her cheeks flared with heat. “Yes, well,” she said mildly.
“Aye, well,” he drawled back.
They smiled at each other.
He sat back down and picked up a cup, with whisky in it, most likely. “What do you really want to know, Katarina?”
Oh, the way he said her name was seduction enough. She would have to tell him to stop, but then he would know how much it affected her, and would say it endlessly.
She sat down too, silken fabric in her lap, for she could not quite bear to set it aside yet. “I want to know about the treasure chests. And the Latin…”
“The Latin, is it?”
“Yes, the Latin.” Because the Latin had told her something, confirmed something that had been growing in her mind, a cord of thought strummed by the clerk and Aodh’s huge, scrawling signature.
She’d known he was intelligent. Now she was sure he’d been educated too. Or else in the company of cultured, expensively educated folk.
An uncommon course of events for dispossessed Irish warlords.
“I’ve been to Rome,” he said, so dismissively, so casually, it took a moment for the words to penetrate.
When they did, she sat forward sharply. “When?”
He shrugged, as if he could not be bothered to recall the dates. “Years ago.”
“Where else have you been?”
“Paris. Venice. The Netherlands. Constantinople. Bohemia.”
“No,” she whispered, enchanted.
“The Canary Islands,” he added with a flourish of his hand. “Where your wine is from.”
“What did you do in Rome?”
A brief, but very definite, pause. “Met with people.”
“Catholics?”
He tipped his head to the side. A hedging affirmation, then.
“What was Rome like?” She flung the question like a dagger.
“Dirty.”