Heart's Ransom

CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I would like to propose a truce,” Catherine said to Rafe over breakfast.

  He frowned at her suspiciously, bleary from the morning’s early hour, and grumpy from his aching head. “A truce?”

  She nodded, munching on an orange slice, eating the rind and all in what he had noticed was an odd, if not somewhat fascinating, habit. “I have been thinking about it, and seeing as how we are to be stuck like this until reaching Lisbon…” She gave a slight tug against the chains, as if he needed reminding of their circumstance. “…at least we could try to make the best of it.”

  He raised his brows dubiously.

  “I mean, there is hardly any point in us spending day in and day out sniping at one another and bickering,” Catherine said. “Do you not think?”

  He studied at her for a long moment. What is she playing at? “Well, I suppose not,” he conceded at length.

  Catherine nodded, smiling slightly at his agreement. “Precisely!” she declared. “And so I think it would be to our mutual benefits if from now on, we simply behaved as casual acquaintances might around one another, with neither of speaking about our fathers or anything else that might lead to hard feelings or sharp words.”

  She is toying with me, Rafe thought as again, she nibbled at her orange slice, clearly waiting for his response to her proposal. She is playing at something. But what? “You want us to be friends?”

  She laughed lightly, flapping her hand. “I would not go that far,” she said. “I said casual acquaintances. You know, people who demonstrate a modicum of common courtesy toward one another, and who exchange amiable discourse. Like we have met at a party or something, a dance, or some other sort of social function.”

  “A social function where we have been chained together,” he said dryly. There was no way in hell she could be sincere in her proposal. She meant to get something out of it, trick him somehow, even though at the moment, Rafe could see no benefit to her in it.

  He expected her to react to his comment; her eyes to flash, her brows to narrow, the angry patches of color he had come to anticipate in her cheeks blooming. Catherine was unlike any woman he had ever met―certainly different from Spanish noblewomen. They were bred to be beautiful, dutiful, if not oblivious wives to their husbands. They did not speak their minds; it was considered unbecoming. They seldom spoke of anything but idle topics with men, and never offered argument or dissention. Catherine did all of these, and more besides, and for the life of him, Rafe could not figure out why it was beginning to appeal to him.

  He expected her to react, because already, he had grown accustomed to it, but there was nothing. Only that fluttery, coquettish little laugh again, and another dismissive flip of her hand, much like the sort a typical Spanish noblewoman might employ. “Well, there is nothing that can be done for that,” she said. “But it could be much worse, could it not?”

  Rafe blinked at her, convinced now that he was having some sort of bizarre, wine-induced dream, that his befuddled mind had not yet roused, and he was still in bed asleep. “If you say so, Catherine,” he replied carefully.

  Catherine smiled at him wanly as she popped the last bit of orange―rind and all―into her mouth. “Splendid, then,” she said. “We can start with you calling me Kitty. No one calls me Catherine except for my dreadful, old, dowager aunt.”