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Patrick slumped on the sofa, his arms crossed in front of him, staring at the box of moving pictures across the room. The News, Clint had called it. To him, it was little more than an ongoing litany of war and mayhem. If this news thing was to be believed, not only had relations between the clans not improved, the whole of the world had slipped into madness, posting little stick figures on a board to indicate hundreds of men killed daily in their battles. This was certainly not the future he would have hoped to see.

Not to mention how his new knowledge of this bleak future was adding to his already dark mood.

He was all too aware of the intensely negative atmosphere building around him, but knowing did nothing to aid him in doing anything about it. Certainly, he could go upstairs to his room and hide his dark mood away from everyone, but he was unwilling to hide from the issue that had brought on that same dark mood.

Syrie would be out, after dark, unprotected, save for that pitiful excuse for a man that she insisted on seeing again.

Patrick felt his mood darken at least two shades. First, because she’d chosen to see any man that wasn’t him and, second, because he knew he was being monumentally unfair to the man in question. Gino wasn’t really a bad sort. For a fact, now that he’d spoken to Gino a few times, he was beginning to actually like the man. If Gino were escorting any other woman to dinner, Patrick would be the first to support him.

But he wasn’t escorting any other woman to dinner. He was coming to get Syrie.

Patrick’s Syrie.

Patrick huffed out a breath that sounded so much more growl than sigh that Clint, sitting at the other end of the sofa, started.

“What is your problem?” Clint asked, obviously irritated that Patrick’s demeanor had rattled him. “So what if she’s going out with some other guy? It’s just dinner, not some weekend getaway. You need to relax.”

“Would you relax if it were me?” Rosella asked as she handed him a glass. “Or would you be pouting just as he is?”

“I doona pout,” Patrick muttered, but loud enough that his friends could hear. “And it’s no’ just a matter of her having dinner with the man. She’ll be out there unprotected. I told you of the Tinkler’s warning the day we visited Boulder.”

Once they had arrived back at Ellen’s, Patrick had confided in both Clint and Rosella about the strange encounter. To Clint’s credit, he had helped Patrick keep watch whenever his classes would allow. Tonight would be the first time neither he nor Clint would be watching over Syrie, and Patrick didn’t like it one damn bit. The whole idea had him so on edge, he felt as if it would take only the smallest nudge to send him tumbling over into an absolute maddening chaos.

At that moment, the smallest nudge stepped from the bottom stair and into the room where he sat, bringing him immediately to his feet. Syrie, dressed in such a scant amount of cloth that he had to fight the urge to cover the eyes of every person in the room as she approached.

“And that, ” he choked out, pausing to catch his breath before he continued. “ That is what you propose to wear out in public this night?”

“It is,” she said, her chin lifting in the stubborn manner he recognized all too well. “It’s called a miniskirt and it’s quite fashionable. Not that I’d expect you to know anything of what women of fashion wear.”

A haze filled Patrick’s mind, dark and muddy, a nasty mix he didn’t at first understand. Much like the battle frenzy he’d experienced on so many occasions. But battle frenzy alone couldn’t account for the emotions tumbling through him now. Anger at an enemy could be controlled. Even fear could be overcome by a rational man. But the beast that gripped him now was very nearly beyond his control. A green, howling creature, threatening to swamp all that was sensible in him.

Jealousy.

He’d had a taste of this beast once before, the first night he’d seen Gino’s hand caressing Syrie’s shoulder. Now, with her arms and legs bared to the world in that tiny bit of plaid cloth she wore snugged around her privates, all the beast could imagine was Gino’s hands on all that exposed skin.

The vision, colored by the ugly haze of his emotions, was more than he could take. More than any warrior could take. And with it, he tumbled quickly over the emotional cliff he’d feared he faced all evening.

He’d been on his best behavior for weeks and tried everything he could think of to get into her good graces. Nothing had worked to remind her of what they had meant to one another. Or, more accurately, what he’d thought they had meant to one another. Whether or not it meant losing her and stranding them both in this time, he was done trying. Better she should be stranded here alive than that he should be returning home with her dead body.

It was time for him to take charge of the situation.

* * *

There was no missing how angry Patrick was. His face had mottled a deep red under the dark shadow of whiskers that appeared each evening no matter that he’d shaved earlier in the day. The man was clearly furious.

And Syrie was happy about that.

He was getting what he deserved for trying to take advantage of her. And then, when she’d almost fallen for his romancing, calling a halt to it and jumping to the assumption that, somehow, just because she’d kissed him, she belonged to him or something. Like some kind of property. Well, this overbearing foreigner had a lot to learn about life in America, and she was just the girl to teach him.

She picked up her lecture where she’d left off, ignoring the fact that he had begun to move in her direction.

“As it so happens, I bought this to wear for some special occasion and tonight is—oof!”

The oof was a natural response to his picking her up by the waist and tossing her over his shoulder like a bag of sheep’s wool.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she gasped, her face banging into his back as he took the stairs two at a time. “Put me down this instant!”

“So it’s down you want, is it, Elf?”

A door slammed open, hitting against the wall before swinging back and almost smacking into her as he strode into what appeared to be, from her upside-down vantage point, her own room.

“Then it’s down you’ll get.”

The room spun around her as Patrick flipped her back over his shoulder and into his arms like he might carry a baby. Too little time to make anything of that as, before she could even catch her breath to berate him again, she was flying through the air to land with a thump in the middle of her bed.

Surprised? An understatement. But Syrie was not one to give up a fight easily. She was on her feet and filling her hands with the back of his shirt before he could make it to the door.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded once again, tugging at his shirt to reinforce the seriousness of her question by pulling him toward her.

He turned around quickly, pulling the cloth from her grasp as easily as if she were a child. He stood toe to toe with her, leaning down so that his face, a furrowed road map of emotion, was only inches from hers.

“What am I doing? I’m putting you where you belong wearing naught but a…a scrap of cloth to cover yerself like that . No’ even the lowest strumpet would be seen in public as naked as you are.”

“How dare you?” she shouted, though, in truth, she was having a hard time working up a great deal of argument for what he said.

She’d debated over the skirt and top for quite some time before deciding to wear it. She’d even changed out of it once, but put it back on again, simply because she’d hoped to make him jealous.

Apparently her plan had worked. Maybe a little too well.

“Fine, then. I’ll change before I go out, if you find my outfit so repugnant.”

But only because she hadn’t really wanted to wear it from the beginning.

“No,” he said, turning back toward the door.

“What do you mean, no?” she asked, following after him. “If you think it’s so bad, then, like I already said, I’ll change before I go out.”

“I mean, no, as in yer no’ going out tonight. I forbid it.”

“You forbid it?” Syrie all but strangled on the word. “Who do you think you are, anyway? You don’t get to forbid me from doing anything.”

Jealousy was one thing. But this? This was completely unacceptable behavior.

“I do,” he said, calmly now, an eyebrow arching in a way she found particularly irritating. “I can, and I did. Yer no’ to leave this room tonight and that’s the end of it. On the morrow, when you’ve come to yer senses, then we’ll talk.”

“When I’ve come to my senses?” Syrie yelled. “You can’t keep me in here. You haven’t any right to even consider such a thing. I’ll call for help and Ellen or Rosella will come open my door and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

There. See how he liked some good, old-fashioned logic.

His smile, the one she’d thought so beautiful earlier today, now struck her as more irritating than the arched eyebrow.

“But I can keep you in here, dearest Syrie. I’ve but to spend my night outside yer door. No one comes in and no one goes out. Simple enough.”

With that, he stepped outside and pushed the door shut behind him.

“No you can’t!” she yelled after him, actually stamping her foot in her outrage as she pounded on the closed door.

All protests to the contrary, it would seem he actually could do what he threatened.

Syrie waited at the closed door, certain that he would shortly see the error of his ways and open the door. When that didn’t happen, she turned the knob and pushed.

Nothing happened.

The second time she tried, she put the whole of her weight into her effort. Still the door didn’t budge.

“You might as well give up yer efforts and take to yer bed for the night. Yer no’ passing through,” he called, his voice muffled by the wooden door. “I’ve made myself comfortable here on the floor and yer hardly strong enough to move me.”

He was leaning against her door?

She fumbled for words, and when she found none that could break through her fury, she stamped her foot again before pacing the room to calm herself down.

Clearly, she was no match for him in a contest of strength. But wits? She had little doubt that she could best him there.

“What about my dinner, then?” she called out, leaning against the door so that he couldn’t pretend not to hear her. “I haven’t eaten since lunch.”

“You’ll survive until daybreak,” his answer came. “From what I felt in hefting you up the stairs, there’s little enough fear of yer starving any time soon.”

“Oh! You…you great slavering man-beast!” she cried out, pounding her fist against the door. “You worthless piece of Mortal man-flesh!”

With her back to the door, she sucked in great gasps of air, consciously slowing her breathing as she fought back her anger. Anger such as this was no solution to her problem. It could only lead to more rash behavior that would end in little more than her own embarrassment.

Almost as soon as that realization settled in her thoughts, a strange little spark of acknowledgment followed, as if she’d just experienced a great breakthrough. Perhaps her temper had always been a problem for her. Perhaps it was even behind her having lost her memory. She pushed at the fuzzy edges of those thoughts, seeking any bit of that missing memory that might be hidden from her, but all she found was a hard wall of darkness beyond which she couldn’t tread.

Fine. Temper didn’t serve her purpose any more than strength would.

Her back against the door, she scanned her surroundings for any suitable alternative. There was the window, but, in truth, she didn’t want to win this conflict badly enough to drop two stories into the bushes below. Her eyes lit on the bathroom door. That was it! She hurried over and opened her door and grabbed the knob to his.

Locked.

Just her luck. The man who never locked a door in his life had suddenly learned how to twist that little key.

She crossed back to the bedroom door and tried once again to nudge it open, unsuccessfully.

“I don’t want to stay in here,” she said, hoping to appeal to Patrick’s better self.

“I know, mo siobhrag.” He answered so quietly she had to strain to hear his words. “But it’s for yer own good. Go to bed now. We’ll discuss the whole of this on the morrow.”

Obviously, the man had no better self to appeal to.

Syrie leaned against the door, feeling as if she were a hundred years old. The fight—heck, the whole day—had taken its toll and she simply didn’t want to fight any longer. She didn’t even care what kind of awful name Patrick had used for her in what was obviously some foreign language.

Crossing to her closet, she slipped out of her boots and the tiny skirt that had so infuriated the man barricading her door. Once in her nightgown, she went back into the bathroom to wash off her makeup and brush her teeth. Everything, every move, seemed to take twice as much energy as usual, so climbing into bed was more relief that capitulation.

Or so she told herself.

Their battle could wait for morning.

That great hairy brute could spend his whole night on the hard floor, cramped and miserable, guarding her door if he wanted. She hoped he had no sleep at all. And if he did manage to doze off, she hoped he awoke with a sore neck and an aching back.

As for her, she wanted only to escape into her dreams and into the arms of the man with eyes of blue meant only for her.