She flushed an angry red. Her lingering suspicion of him was plain now—her anger with him betrayed it.
“The barbarian did not overcome me! He kissed me and I let him enjoy that kiss so that I could leave the mark of it on his face forever!”
Carse nodded, goading her. “And for a moment you enjoyed it also. You’re a woman, Ywain, for all your short tunic and your mail. And a woman always knows the one man who can master her.”
“You think so?” she whispered.
She had come close to him now, her red lips parted as they had been before—tempting, deliberately provocative.
“I know it,” he said.
“If you were merely the barbarian and nothing else,” she murmured, “I might know it also.”
The trap was almost undisguised. Carse waited until the tense silence had gone flat. Then he said coldly, “Very likely you would. However I am not the barbarian now, but Rhiannon. And it is time you slept.”
He watched her with grim amusement as she drew away, disconcerted and perhaps for the first time in her life completely at a loss. He knew that he had dispelled her lingering doubt about him for the time being at least.
He said, “You may have the inner cabin.”