He didn’t respond.
Evie felt frustration become a living, breathing thing crawling under her skin. She fisted her hands at her sides and made herself speak slowly and carefully. “One week ago, I overheard a conversation between Lady Thurston, Mrs. Summers, and Mr. Fletcher, a conversation that culminated in the decision to send me a threatening letter so that a gentleman of their choosing might have the opportunity to play knight-errant. This, all of this…” She struggled for the right word and tossed up her hands again when she couldn’t find it. “This monstrous stupidity is nothing more, nothing more than an ill-designed, meddlesome, and arguably cracked attempt to see me wed.”
“Yet you can’t explain why Mrs. Summers sent you with me,” he said softly.
“There are a dozen possible explanations,” she countered, wracking her brain frantically to come up with at least one. “Perhaps it was merely for drama. Perhaps the man they’ve chosen will arrive at the cottage as a surprise and so it mattered not one jot with whom I rode off into the woods, so long as I was properly terrified.” That made Mrs. Summers and the rest sound positively diabolical, she realized. “Terrified might not be the right word. Convinced might be more accurate.”
“It might be, if you were right.”
She waited for him to say more. He didn’t. “You do realize that a mere ‘you’re wrong’ is not a particularly compelling argument?”
He considered her for a moment. “I’m not compelled to argue with you.”
She blew out a short breath. Now that he was back in the room, safe and relatively dry, the portion of her temper that had been fueled by worry—and she was beginning to think that comprised the majority share—was starting to fade. “I am not eager—”
“But perhaps it’s unavoidable.”
“Arguing?” She felt her lips twitch. “It would certainly seem so.”
He stepped over to take one of the chairs from the table and set it in front of the fire. “Sit down, Evie.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
He stared back. “I can’t imagine what you find offensive in that.”
“I find taking orders offensive.”
“Everyone takes orders from someone,” he pointed out.
“Yes, but I don’t take mine from you.”
She thought perhaps his jaw tightened a little, but the movement was so brief, she couldn’t say for certain. He gestured again to the chair. “Please, sit down.”
“I—thank you.”
A little wary at how easily she’d won that particular battle, she took her seat and waited for him to start the war.
McAlistair positioned the second chair facing Evie, not quite close enough to brush knees, which he would have found distracting, but close enough for a quick grab if she took it into her head to bolt. He didn’t really expect it of her, but then Evie, he was fast discovering, had a knack for doing the unexpected.
And he wasn’t certain how she would react to his questioning.
He sat down and resisted the urge to roll the tension out of his shoulders. “I need to know more of your work.”
“My work?” she asked, jolting a little in obvious surprise.
McAlistair nodded, relieved it wasn’t a jolt in the direction of the door. “I should have asked earlier.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“You were tired.”
“I’m tired now,” she pointed out.
“I wanted to…” He wracked his brain for the right words. “To give you time.”
She blinked. “Time for what?”
“To become accustomed to the idea.”
She looked utterly, hopelessly lost. “To the idea of telling you about my work? Fairly unlikely, as I hadn’t a clue you were interested. Although—” She broke off as the light of realization dawned. “Accustomed to the idea that the threat, the danger, is real—that’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
He nodded.
“I don’t understand. I told you I knew it to be a lie.” Sudden disbelief dimmed the light on her face. “Surely, you didn’t expect that simply because you said differently, I would—”
“Yes,” he cut in. He didn’t need his own mistake explained to him. “I did.”
She gaped at him in the way one does when one is uncertain whether to be utterly appalled or terribly amused. “That is remarkably arrogant.”
It wasn’t arrogance. It was experience. “I have cause.”
She sat back in her chair with a dramatic roll of her eyes. “Your sort always does.”
You’ve never met my sort. Because he couldn’t very well say that, he said nothing.
She waved her hand at him. “Well, then have at it. What do you want to know?”
He felt one eyebrow lift. “Just like that?”
“Certainly,” she assured him. “I’m proud of what I do, and I so rarely have the opportunity to discuss it.”
“Even with your friends?”