His breath caught.
She looked up at him then. He looked as surprised as she’d ever seen him, but his eyes were full of the terrible thoughts she’d already entertained.
“How do you know?” he asked, looking as if he wished they were speaking of anything else.
She held the book out. “Look in the back.”
He took the book with a hand that was no steadier than hers, then held it with both hands for a moment or two, as if he hardly dared open it. She watched him take a deep breath, let it out carefully, then flip the book over and simply open the back cover.
Marching into the middle of the fray instead of lingering on the edges. How like him.
He studied the childish drawing there, then looked at her. “Not much of an artist, was she?”
Léirsinn supposed she might have made a noise that sounded a bit like a sob, but she couldn’t be sure.
“She was only nine,” she managed.
He lifted his eyebrows briefly. “Then I’m being overly critical.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Did she look like you?”
“I think so,” she admitted. “I don’t remember any longer. My brother didn’t have red hair, if that lets you sleep better at night.”
“Got it from your mother, did you?”
“To my father’s horror, no doubt.”
He closed his eyes briefly, then handed her the book. “Did you think I’d murdered them for it?”
“Oh, Acair,” she said, and damn her traitorous eyes if they didn’t start up that ridiculous burning again. “Not in truth.”
He looked a little shattered. “Are you certain of it?”
“Would I be here if I wasn’t?”
He walked away. She watched him go rest his hand on the mantel over the elegant stone hearth and wondered if he planned to toss himself into the fire there, or toss her in instead. In the end, he simply stood there with his head bowed for longer than she would have thought possible, but the man was patient, she supposed.
She also supposed he would stand there all day if she didn’t make the first move. After all, she was the one who had suspected him of murder. She took a deep breath, stuck her sister’s book on a shelf, then walked over to stand next to him. She put her hand on his back as he had done to her so many times and thought she might understand why he did it. He smiled briefly at her, then looked back into the fire.
“I have done things I regret,” he said quietly, “and other things I’m not sorry for in the least. But I have never harmed a woman or a child.”
“And that, my lord, is why I’m still here.”
He looked at her then. “Of course that’s not the reason. You’re here because you’re mad for me and the thought of life without my sparkling self in it is just too tedious to contemplate.”
“That might be true,” she agreed. “Thank you for keeping her book safe.”
“We’ll read it to our children.”
“Aren’t you a presumptuous ass.”
He only looked at her as if he wasn’t sure what, if anything, he should do. She supposed that if he could march into the fray without edging up to the battle, so could she. She ducked under his elbow, then straightened and put her arms around him. If it took a moment for him to return the embrace, well, she supposed she couldn’t blame him.
“I am a vile man,” he said finally.
“Of course,” she said easily. She laid her head on his shoulder and sighed. “What is the worst thing you’ve done? Go ahead and confess. You’ll feel better if you do.”
“In what sense of the term worst?”
She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. What would I consider horrifying? Or put yourself in Prince Soilléir’s shoes. What would he want to know?”
“Nothing, given that he knows it all already,” Acair muttered. “Which list would you like me to make first?”
“Start with the worst things,” she said, closing her eyes. “We’ll leave the noble items for after supper.”
He sighed deeply. “Very well. I’ve wreaked havoc and made people miserable all over the Nine Kingdoms. I’ve left kings weeping over their favorite treasures that I nicked without so much as a twinge of conscience. I’ve vexed my brothers and several of Sarait’s children until I was almost satisfied they would lose their wits.”
She hadn’t met his brothers, but she imagined they might have deserved at least a little trouble.
“What else?”
“I brought an entire mountainside down on my half-brother Rùnach and his bride. Does that count?”
She pulled back and looked at him them. “Did they live?”
“Aye, but no thanks to me.”
“Well, that might qualify as something rather terrible,” she said. “Anything else?”
He sighed and pulled away, but she realized he had only gone as far as the chair set near the fire. He held open his arms and looked at her expectantly. She supposed she might have more answers than not if she kept him pinned in a chair, so she went to sit on his lap.
“Well?”
He looked more hesitant than she’d ever seen him. She considered fetching him a large glass of whisky, but she supposed that what he had to tell her might be too serious for even that.
“There was once a mage in Tosan,” he began slowly.
“Sladaiche?”
He shook his head. “Not him. Not a man without power, either, and one who favored my father’s magic.”
“Were you defending your father’s honor?” she asked.
“Hardly,” he said with a snort. “We were simply insulting each other with words and spells, as mages do absent anything else useful with which to amuse themselves, and I didn’t care for the way he treated his wife.”
“You?”
He smiled wearily. “Aye, me, the one always in the running for the mage everyone wants to slay.”
“Very near the top, I daresay.”
“Thank you.”
She smiled. “Go on.”
“I drove him mad until he lost all sense and ran off the edge of a cliff into the sea.”
“I see,” she said slowly. “And what did you do to his widow?”
“For,” he corrected. He considered, then shrugged lightly. “It doesn’t merit a mention.”