Page 16 of Kilty Until Proven Innocent
Slowly, he nodded. “Aye, that would work. I’m the bad one?”
“Please, ye’re ever so much better at it than I am,” she noted with a sweet smile.
The twitch of his lips told her he was enjoying this just as much as she was.
They both swung on Matthias as if this interlude hadn’t happened, to see the lad staring up at them,mouth agape, wide-eyed. His head swung back and forth between them like a spectator in atenismatch.
“See?” Brigit whispered conspiratorially to the lad. “A monster. A complete brute. Ye should tell him where yer crossbow and bolts are before he becomes truly angry.”
“He’s no’ angry now?” Matthias squeaked.
With a roar, Drum swept the candelabra off the desk, thrusting it forward until the flames were right beside the lad’s temple. “Tell me!” he growled, as Matthias leaned away from the heat. “Where’s yer weapon?”
“I dinnae ken!” the guard blurted.
Drum thrust the flames closer; not close enough to burn, but the light from them bathed the lad’s pimply face. “Tell me!”
“I dinnae ken!” Matthias wailed, as the door burst open and Bartleby charged through, clearly intent on saving his man from Drum’s rage. “I dinnae ken! I lost it!”
Immediately, Drum straightened and Brigit stepped in, holding her palm out to stop Bartleby’s confused charge. “Ye lost it, laddie?” she murmured, tone full of sympathy. “Och, that’s horrible. When did ye lose it?”
“Almost a fortnight ago,” Matthias sniffed, as if close to tears. “I was on patrol, and I put the thing down on one of the parapets—all the lads do it! When I came ‘round on my next circuit, ‘twas gone!” He was speaking only to Brigit now, his words tripping over one another in their haste. “I thought it had fallen to the ground, but when I looked for it after my shift, I couldnae find it.”
Even as Brigit patted his shoulder, making small, murmured noises to console him, she lifted her gaze to Drum’s.
There was triumph in his dark eyes, which she was certain matched hers.
Behind her, Bartleby growled, “Yelostyer weapon, laddie, and didnae think to tell me?”
The guard cringed, and for the first time, Brigit felt truly sorry for him. “Up ye go, Matthias,” she commanded, helping the lad stand and turn to face his captain. “Fess up bravely, like an adult.”
With that, she gave the lad a little nudge. He stumbled toward the captain of the guard who grabbed his elbow and hustled him out the office, muttering under his breath.
As the door closed behind them, Brigit felt the breathwhooshfrom her body, her veins filled with the jittery sort of energy which always came on a mission. Smiling hugely, she turned to Drum…only to find him wearing a huge grin of his own.
She clapped her hands. “Well, that worked well.”
“Well?” he whooped, surging forward and grasping her waist to lift her and swing her around. “Well? ‘Twasbrilliant. Brigit, ye were brilliant.”
Laughing lightly, she patted his arm when he set her down. “We work well together.”
He was smiling down at her, none of the earlier worry visible in his expression, and she had another spike of guilt.
“We do work well together,” he murmured. “A team. Partners.”
And all that guilt?
Suddenly replaced by something better. Something worse.
A longing for a partner like Drum. Someone she could rely on, the way she used to rely on her Angels.
Oh no.
He was a mission, naught more.
And she knew what she needed to do in order to get close to him, to learn any of his remaining secrets.
Luckily, it wasn’t a task she minded at all.
