Farah’s hand skimmed across the still, clean water as his words pricked her with needles of guilt. “That’s not entirely true,” she acknowledged. “You know that I—kissed another man the night you and Blackwell took me from my home.”
“Aye, well…” If a voice could convey a shrug, Murdoch’s did so. “For a woman who, for all intents and purposes, had been widowed nigh on a decade, no one can blame ye for trying to fill the loneliness with company.”
“Your Mr. Blackwell certainly didn’t see it that way.” It disturbed her to think of the master of Ben More whilst naked. Suddenly needing a vocation, Farah picked up a bar of soap that smelled like heather and honey and began to vigorously scrub the past few days away.
“Blackwell’s as tied to Dougan Mackenzie as we all are,” Murdoch said cryptically. “He may be meaner than a coiled snake, and twice as deadly, but out of anyone alive, he’s the best chance ye’ve got.”
“That’s something else I don’t understand,” Farah began, lifting a leg above the water to rub the bar of soap all the way down to her toes. “You all seem to be convinced I’m in some sort of danger, but I can’t readily imagine what that would be, and no one is inclined to explain it to me.”
“Blackwell didna get around to that, eh?”
Farah pinched her lips together with a frown. “That was my fault, I suppose. I fled him before he was quite finished.”
“Ye wouldna be the first,” Murdoch grumbled, sounding more like an exasperated father than a loyal minion. A creak of furniture told her that Murdoch had risen and was coming closer. She tensed, but as soon as she heard him gathering her things from the screen, she relaxed again. “Mrs. Mackenzie…” he began.
“You might as well call me Farah,” she instructed, lifting her arms to pull the pins from her hopelessly disheveled bun and let her curls fall into the bath. “I feel we’re far beyond societal constraints at this point, Murdoch.”
His pregnant pause conveyed a shifting reluctance that piqued her curiosity. “When it comes to the danger, I doona want ye to feel like it can touch ye all the way out here. In this castle, ye have nothing to fear.”
“Yes, you’ve said that already.” Farah dropped her head back, wetting her scalp, and began to work the suds through her thick waves.
“I mean to say, I know it doesna seem like it now, but ye can trust him. The rest of us, we’d lay down our lives for yers, but Blackwell … he’d do that and more. He’d rip the beating heart from his chest. He’d give up his soul if ye’d only—”
“It is making a rather large and fallacious assumption that I have a heart to give … or a soul.” Dorian Blackwell’s smooth voice didn’t echo through the washroom as theirs did. He slithered into their midst with a serpentine stealth, striking before Murdoch’s words uncovered any of his secrets.
Gasping, Farah sank deep into the bath, thankful the water was now cloudy with soap, though she did draw her knees under her chin and anchor them with her arms, just in case. “Get out!” she insisted in an unsteady voice. “I’m indecent.”
“That makes two of us.”
He’d moved closer. So close, in fact, that Farah knew if she looked behind her, she’d find his mismatched eyes staring down at her from his towering height. Perhaps, despite the opaque water, he could see the flesh that quivered just below the surface. The thought sent bolts of heat and mortification through her.
“Leave,” Farah ordered, unable to face him for fear she’d lose her nerve.
“Stand up and make me.”
She sank deeper into the water, her rapid breaths creating ripples on the surface.
“Blackwell,” Murdoch cajoled. “If ye’d like to wait in the chambers, I’ll have her dress and—”
“That’ll be all, Murdoch,” Dorian said.
“But, sir.” Murdoch’s emphasis on the word was puzzling. “I doona think this is any way to—”
“You’re dismissed.” Only a man with a death wish would have argued, and Farah couldn’t bring herself to blame Murdoch one bit for abandoning her. The click of the washroom door felt like the slide of iron bars, locking Farah in her gilded prison with the most blackhearted criminal. Helpless, trapped, and naked.
If Farah had learned anything from her job, it was that those who took the offensive usually kept the high ground. “What could you possibly want that couldn’t wait until I was finished bathing?” she asked impatiently, proud that she kept any apprehension or weakness out of her voice.
Blackwell stepped from behind her, running long fingers along the rim of the tub. Dressed in only shirtsleeves, the dark kilt, and a vest, his lack of coat did nothing to detract from the startling width of his shoulders. He’d taken off his eye patch, she noted, and his blue eye glinted at her in the spring sunlight. “It occurred to me, whilst contemplating the unfortunate turn of our previous conversation, that our next communication might be better served if you are not in a position to run from me.”
Even in the steaming heat of the water, Farah’s blood turned to ice in her veins, but she stiffened her spine and lifted her chin. “You’re sadly mistaken if you assume that I will not run, or fight, if provoked.”
He positioned himself at the foot of the tub, the sunlight casting a blue aura over the thick ebony of his hair as he leaned down to grip each side of the basin. “Then by all means, consider yourself provoked, but do be careful, marble tends to be slick when wet.” His gaze touched the ripples of the water with suggestive interest, and Farah’s temperature swung wildly from chilled to overheated. A sheen of moisture bloomed in her hairline and above her lip.