No Mark Upon Her

going to take your bed. I appreciate everything you’re doing for me. I really do.” He touched an exploratory fingertip to the bandage on his forehead, then winced. “But that’s too much. I’ll sleep on the floor. And as soon as they’ll let me, I’ll go back to the shed. I can buy another camp bed if I need to.”
    Remembering the flames and aware of how much damage the pumped water would have caused, Tavie shook her head. “Kieran, there may not be anything le—”
    “I have to see.” He sat up, urgency back in his voice. “It’s all I have. Whatever there is.”
    Tavie sank down on the edge of the sofa. Immediately, Tosh came over and rested her head on Tavie’s knee, looking up at her with her dark shepherd brows drawn in a V. She, too, seemed unsettled by the change in their household routine. Tavie stroked the soft spot on the top of her head. “The boat—the one under the tarp—you said you were building it for her . Did you mean Rebecca Meredith?”
    “I’d wanted to build a wooden shell since I first started rowing, as a kid,” he said more quietly. “My father was a furniture maker, so I knew about wood. It was— She seemed— I thought my boat might take her to the Olympics.
    “It was daft, a stupid daydream.” He shook his head. “Even if she’d wanted the shell, no Olympic committee would have let her compete in a wooden boat. She’d have had the best carbon-fiber racing single money could buy.”
    “Could she have done it?” Tavie asked. “The Olympics? Was she—was she that good?”
    Kieran rubbed his fingers against the stubble on his jaws and blinked hard. “I’d never seen anyone row like that. For her, it was like breathing. Perfection. But winning takes more than that gift. It takes obsession, and she had that, too.”
    “And you . . .” Tavie took a breath. She knew she was treading on forbidden territory, but she had to ask. “Where did you fit into that obsession?”
    Kieran’s smile was brief, self-mocking. “I was . . . convenient.”
    “How did you—I mean—” Tavie could feel herself blushing—“I know it’s none of my business, but how did the two of you—”
    But he seemed almost relieved to talk about it. “Last summer. I used to see her rowing when I was out on the river in the evenings. Then one day she had trouble with one of her riggers, and I stopped to help. We chatted.”
    Finn, having failed in his attempts to get Tosh interested in a rope tug, settled at Kieran’s feet. Kieran put his hand on Finn’s head, a mirror image of Tavie and Tosh, and for a moment she wondered if they would be whole without their dogs. Who had Kieran been with Rebecca Meredith, without Finn for armor?
    He went on, his words slowing as the memory caught him up. “After that, we seemed to take our boats out at the same time. We’d row pieces, but I couldn’t quite beat her, even with the advantage of my height. And we’d talk.
    “Then one evening I didn’t go. I was having—a bad day. She knew where I lived—we’d rowed upriver past the shed dozens of times. So she came to see if I was all right.”
    The silence stretched into awkwardness. “And after that, you were,” said Tavie lightly, past the tightness in her throat.
    Kieran shrugged, gave her the same half-mocking smile as earlier. “I always knew I was a diversion. I’m just not sure from what.”
    “Yesterday . . .” Tavie thought about how to put it, then continued hesitantly. “Yesterday you said she was too good to have had an accident on a calm evening. And then tonight—the boatshed. You said it was a petrol bomb. Why? Why would someone do that to you, unless it was to do with . . .” She suddenly had trouble with the name, although yesterday she had so blithely told the dogs to Find Rebecca . Rebecca Meredith had been no more than that to her yesterday. A name. “To do with her,” she finished.
    His face closed, like a shutter coming down. “I don’t know.”
    “Kieran—”
    Shaking his head at her, he put his hands on the arms of the chair and struggled to stand. “I should go, Tavie. It’s not—I don’t want to—whoever threw that bottle tonight could come back.”
    S o much for getting to spend the night in his own bed beside Gemma, Kincaid thought. He’d thrown his overnight bag back in the car and driven straight to Henley, without stopping to pick up Cullen.
    When he’d rung Cullen from his mobile, Doug had offered to take the train straightaway, but