Because she’d spent most of her life around servants, she knew when one was speaking to his Master internally, though it was the first time she’d heard one be that rude. She waited, hand still clasped in his because he’d not yet let go. She didn’t take it as an impropriety, given that his mind was obviously engaged, so she had the opportunity to observe his fingers were strong and warm, his palm rough. She wanted to run her touch over it, feel the grooved lines. She quelled the inappropriate response.
“He said it didnae smell like rain today.” Niall snorted, giving Alanna an eye roll. “Aye, ye remember Seattle?” Dropping her hand, he circled around back, retrieving her suitcase. “Come on, he’s inside.”
She eyed the size of the cabin. “Where does he protect himself from the sun?”
“The back bedroom is inside the hill itself, but during daylight, that’s only adequate for early morning or just after sunset. The root cellar is below the house and accessible through the kitchen. It’s been modernized enough that there’s indoor plumbing, and electricity comes from a generator, but for the most part it’s a pioneer experience. The place is a couple hundred years old.”
“This is your . . . home?”
“A step down for you, princess?”
His narrowed look flustered her. “No. I didn’t mean it like that at all. I apologize. I’m accustomed to vampires who require more of their accommodations.”
“Aye, he’s not one of those. That’s all he requires.” Niall nodded toward the view. “As long as he can see the next great wonder, he could sleep in a hole in the ground. As for me, I just need a guid meal, so he keeps me fed. We all have our priorities.”
She followed him to the door, her cheeks pink at the idea he’d thought she was complaining. She didn’t know how to rectify such an unprecedented assumption.
“We’ve been here a couple o’ weeks,” he continued. “No telling when Evan’ll move on, but that should make it bloody hard for Stephen to sneak up on us. If he resorts to spy work, he won’t get very far. Evan willnae use cell phones, and these auld trucks don’t have GPS chips.”
“But I thought they want . . . him to find me.” She stumbled over the pronoun. After referring to him as “my lord” for so long, she had trouble calling him merely Stephen. She also couldn’t call him Master. Though technically he still was, she couldn’t make herself do it, no matter how much it underscored her failure as a servant. “My purpose is to be bait.”
Niall stopped, such that she almost bumped into him. When he turned, that stern set of his lips was back, giving her the impression she’d offended him somehow.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though she questioned why she was apologizing to a servant.
“So you should be, muirnín. Ye have value beyond bait, and you should remember that. Making it more difficult for Stephen to find you provides more opportunities to flush him out. A man on a long treasure hunt makes more mistakes than one on a short one.”
The logic was sound, but the first part had her confused. What value?