Realization flooded her. She liked him already. It was terrifying. And he liked her, too. He’d basically just told her so. But he had no intention of ever acting on it. In fact, he had every intention of not letting any feelings for her develop. If she was really going to take control of her own fate, the time was now, and it didn’t involve accidental seduction. It had to be planned carefully because by getting him to expose his heart, there was a chance she would lose hers.
She nodded and purposely unsheathed the daggers she’d brought for them to practice with. When she rose once more, his gaze was riveted on her. She swallowed back her fear. There was no time for the emotion.
“Tell me of the marking I saw between yer upper back when ye were fighting,” she said as she walked toward him and handed him one of the daggers. She’d been curious about it since she’d seen it.
He took it, his closeness nearly overwhelming. “It’s called a tattoo.”
She stole a glance at him from under her lashes. She could see he was somewhere else, likely thinking of the woman he had loved. No,stillloved. Deirdre bit her lip. What was she doing? He may never forgive himself enough to allow her in, and even if he did, could he ever love her as he loved Amanda? There were so many unanswered questions, but the only thing she knew at this point was that she wanted to proceed.
“What was she like?” Deirdre asked, lifting his arm and adjusting how he held the dagger. “Holding it like this will give ye complete control.”
He nodded. “She hated my tat,” he said with a laugh.
Deirdre frowned. “Why? Because it marks yer skin?”
“Yes and no. Because of what it said.”
“What does it say?” she asked.
He twisted suddenly and tugged his tunic up and over his head, and then he presented her his back. Her mouth went dry at the wide expanse of muscle, but his marking, which looked like dark ink set in his skin, did fascinate her. She reached out and touched the swirls, feeling him twitch under her fingertips. “What do these markings mean?”
“They’re letters,” he replied, his voice muffled by his tunic, which was still pulled halfway over his head. “They form a word that says ‘freedom.’”
“She didn’t like that ye wanted to be free?” Deirdre mused aloud.
“When I got the tat, I didn’t even know her,” Reikart said, pulling his shirt down and readjusting his stance and weapon.
“So who did ye want freedom from?” Deirdre asked, her heart suddenly beating hard.
Reikart’s blue gaze collided with hers, and she felt the hit all the way to the depths of her soul. “Myself,” he said simply. She nodded. He didn’t need to say more. She understood perfectly, for she’d felt the same way about herself.
She heard his breath catch in his chest as if he realized she understood. They stood there, gazes locked, not saying anything, not needing to, and it felt like the connection between them was growing, when Reikart’s gaze shifted from her, and he said, “Amanda was shy.” He opened and closed his fingers around the hilt of the dagger. “And she couldn’t make a decision to save her life. When we went to restaurants—”
Deirdre shoved the slight hurt she felt aside that he’d withdrawn from her. She arched her eyebrows, not knowing the word.
“A restaurant is like a great hall but smaller,” he said. “You go there to eat when you don’t want to eat at home, and you pay someone to cook for you.”
“Like you pay for food at an inn?”
“Exactly,” he said. “Anyway, Amanda could never make up her mind about what to order. She always just ended up ordering whatever I did. It drove me crazy. I wanted her to have her own opinions, but it was like she was scared to or she’d been conditioned not to. She grew up in the foster system, which is a home for people who don’t have one, who don’t have any family. I think all those years of bouncing around from house to house, not ever feeling loved, stole her confidence.”
“Aye,” Deirdre mumbled, thinking now of her own plight, “nay feeling loved can do that to ye.” Heat infused her cheeks that she’d revealed so much. In an effort to conceal her embarrassment, she held up her dagger and instructed Reikart to watch her. Then she showed him how to flick his wrist when throwing the dagger, and then she threw it.
He went to retrieve it out from the target, and when he brought it to her and she went to take it, he did not release it. Instead, his blue gaze bore into hers. “You’re not like her.”
Deirdre sucked in a sharp breath, her familiar barriers begging to be raised. She refused to do it, though—or at least not yet. “Are ye saying I’m lacking?” She tugged on the dagger, and he let it go.
“No. God, no. You’re just different. You’re confident and opinionated.”
Deirdre let out a laugh at that. “I have no one but myself to rely upon, so I need to be confident if I’m to survive, and I’ve spent all my life letting others, letting men—” she eyed him “—choose my future for me. I’ve recently decided to make my own future.”
“Ah,” he said, grinning. “An independent woman in a medieval time. You’d fit in perfectly in the twenty-first century.”
They stared at each other for a moment, and she motioned at him to try his hand at throwing the dagger. As he was lining up to do so, she said, “Yer mother says yer father appreciates her independence.”
Reikart laughed. “He does, but I also think her independence has driven him crazy at times. He likes to be in charge and feel needed, and she doesn’t always want him to be in charge or necessarily need him to.”
She didn’t quite understand why she wanted to learn what had drawn Reikart to Amanda, especially since she was apparently the opposite of her, but regardless, she wanted to know. “Is that why ye fell in love with Amanda? Because she let ye take control?”
