Elisabeth lifted her face to the sun, warmth seeping through her chilled body, though the limpid breeze fluttering at her skirts was more redolent of coal smoke and cisterns than green fields and shaded glades.
Killer pawed at the flower beds lining the trimmed garden path, his little nose twitching with excitement. At least someone was happy with the odors.
“Stop that, you naughty dog,” she scolded. “Miss Roseingrave and her grandmother won’t let us out here if you insist on destroying their narcissus.”
Was it her imagination, or did Killer pause in his digging just long enough to spear her with the same sneering contempt she’d seen on Brendan’s face last night?
The poor narcissus didn’t stand a chance.
She couldn’t blame Killer. In another moment, she’d get on her hands and knees to join him. What else was there to do? Inertia was driving Elisabeth mad. Unable to leave the house without an escort. No occupation for her hands but needlework, which she’d always detested. Helena Roseingrave didn’t even have a library to speak of. At least not the kind with books one would read for entertainment.
Boredom gave her far too much time to think. Never a good thing. Especially now, when thinking invariably led to Brendan. Then thinking about Brendan and last night. Then thinking about last night and her humiliating surrender. Thinking about the seductive kisses, caressing hands, a torrent of dizzying emotion and feeling that left her barely able to . . . think.
A circular roundaboutation bringing her right back where she started. The April sun wasn’t the only reason her cheeks burned and her gown clung uncomfortably to her back like a damp second skin.
All this not thinking was driving her mad.
Throwing herself to her feet, she stalked back into the house. “Killer, come along.”
The now-muddy terrier barely registered her command. He sneezed and lay down, squashing a bed of tulips in the process. Rolled over, exposing his muddy tummy. Eyed her in a way that said,
Try and make me.
“Oh, fine, then. No one else pays me any mind. Why should you?” she complained before stomping into the house, her steps leading her toward the study. Even a dull book was better than this infernal aimless boredom and the questions that invariably filled the emptiness.
Brendan’s actions last night could be interpreted in two ways: a noble withdrawal or a coward’s escape. She certainly had offered little resistance. Had practically thrown herself at his feet like some cheap strumpet. And what had he done? He’d walked away.
Had she done something wrong? Had he decided she wasn’t worth the effort?
No doubt in his years abroad he’d had women fawning all over him; dark, exotic, lithesome creatures with kohl-darkened
eyes and dusky skin. She’d never been lithesome in her life, and her coloring was far more strawberries and cream than café au lait. She swallowed the annoying lump forming at the back of her throat. Brendan wasn’t worth it.
She stutter-stepped to a halt just inside the library door. “Oh, excuse me. I didn’t know the room was occupied.”
As if conjured from her self-pity, Brendan looked up from his book, his stare seeming to cut right through her like a damascene blade before the light shifted and there was no more in his expression than mild surprise. “Come along in. I don’t bite.”
All as if last night had never occurred. As if he’d not shot her to the moon with a mere touch. As if she’d not made an ass of herself by letting him.
Butterflies big as vultures whirled through her stomach, warmth stinging her cheeks. If she wasn’t careful, she’d make a fool of herself over Brendan—again.
“I came for something to read.” Could she sound any more inane? As if he couldn’t figure that one out by himself.
He cast a swift pessimistic glance at the few shelves of books. “Unless you’re a devotee of Ogham’s more inscrutable writings or the art of killing a man in ten easy steps, I’d say you’re out of luck.”
“You’re busy. I’ll leave you alone.” She started to back out the door, happy to escape an awkward situation.
“Wait. You can help me. That is, if you’re not doing anything else.”
She didn’t move. This was a trick. He would lure her in here, shut the door, and have his wicked way with her. Though he didn’t look in a wicked mood. Not even in a very interested mood. More in a preoccupied, frustrated mood. And that irritated her as nothing else could.
“It won’t take long, I promise and you can get back to whatever you were doing.”
Which was nothing, though she wouldn’t tell him that. “You want
me
to help
you
?”
“I asked you, didn’t I? Here. Search the index in this one. I’m looking for anything to do with Arthur.”
Fine. If he wasn’t going to bring last night up, she certainly wasn’t. Wrapping her shredded dignity round her, she crossed to where he sat, taking the book from him. Thumbing the pages.
Every time she’d sought to assist Gordon with his work, he’d patted her on the head—in much the same way she patted Killer—and told her too much reading would give her pretty face wrinkles and dull the sparkle in her eyes. As if the strain would simply be too great for her little pea brain to assimilate without exploding. All right, that might have been unduly harsh, but the sentiment had certainly been there, if couched in sweetness and consideration.
One thing she never had to worry about with Brendan was consideration.
“Are you certain you—” she began.
“If you don’t want to, fine. I simply thought two heads might be better than one. Go back to checking your face for unwanted freckles or practicing fan semaphore or whatever it is women do when left to their own devices, and I’ll look for it myself.” He grabbed for the book, which she pulled out of his reach.
“I’ll help. No need to be snippy about it.”
She sat across from him, opening the book to the index. Running a finger down the page until she spotted a reference. Turned to the chapter in question.
“What, exactly, are we searching for?”
“References to Arthur’s encounters with the true
Fey
. A curse, specifically. A
Fey molleth
placed on the king.”
“Why would the
Fey
curse—”
He leaned over to tap on her open page. “Fewer questions. More reading.”
If her book had been thicker, she might have been tempted to bring it down on his hard head. Instead, she gritted her teeth and allowed herself to be silenced. Simpler while she came to grips with her embarrassment over last night. Though Brendan’s apparent unconcern made it easier.
They sat together in silence, flipping pages and taking notes, the clock’s hands circling its face, sunlight from the open window moving over the floor. The noise of a fine spring afternoon an upbeat tempo to the companionable quiet within the study.
At one point, she glanced up from her reading. He sat bent over his book, long fingers plowed into his dark, unruly hair, the sweep of downcast lashes against his cheek. Girl’s lashes. Thick. Black. He chewed the end of his thumb as he read. Shifted in his chair. His shoulders moved on a deep breath.
No tension in the set of his jaw. No silence fraught with bitterness. No shadows from the past dimming the beauty of those finely hewn features. It eased her apprehension. She could make herself believe all was as it should have been. This was where she was supposed to be. Who she was supposed to be with. That her life had not veered disastrously off course.
“Unless I have broccoli sprouting out my ears, you need to stop staring and get back to work,” Brendan griped, never lifting his eyes from the page he was reading. “The answer won’t jump up and bite you.”
Elisabeth pursed her lips against a giggle. Considerate? Brendan? Hardly. Yet, there was something genuine about all his acerbic sarcasm that no amount of sugary sweetness could rival. It made her want to prove herself. Gain his grudging approval.
Either that or she’d simply lost her mind.
She dropped her gaze back to the book.
All this reading, no doubt.
Brendan stared with sinking heart at the roped-off ruin. A blackened chimney speared the gray sky, birds flitting in and out. Weeds sprang tall and scraggly amid enormous piles of debris. Broken tiles, heavy charred beams, the cracked and melted arms of a chandelier. Water stood in oily black pools. He dragged in a breath laden with a sour stench of soot and mildew.
Ducking beneath the rope, he kicked through the rubble. Plucked up the charred crackling remains of a book, its pages glued and soggy. Tossed it aside. Dug free a mud-caked shard from what might once have been a bowl or pitcher. A dim metallic shine reflecting off a bent and pitted candlestick.
Hours cooped inside, analyzing obscure essays by scholarly theorists with Elisabeth’s tantalizing presence a few frustrating feet away, had finally driven him to clear his head with a long stroll. A few more seconds of breathing in that perfume of hers and he’d have completed last night’s seduction on the library table. To hell with his noble intentions or Helena’s furniture.
How he’d ended up here, he couldn’t say. He’d never realized where his walk had led him until he looked up to see the charred lot. And then he’d been unable to simply pass by without pausing as if it meant nothing.
“You there! Can’t you read? Sign says no trespassing!” A somber, official-looking character eyed him from the pavement.
“Just poking about.”
The constable’s scowl deepened. “No trespassing means no poking.”
Brendan allowed himself to be shepherded away from the ruin. “Must have been quite a fire.”
“Went up like a torch, it did. Lit the sky from the Liffey to Mountjoy Square. I was workin’ that night, and seen it meself.” Pride rang in his voice. “You know the family what lived here?”
“A long time ago.”
“Word is they’re accursed. Old earl murdered by his own son. New earl in queer street, with the creditors on his tail. I’d not be one of them for any amount of blunt.”
Was it true? Were the Douglases cursed? He drew a breath, seeing once more Aidan’s face among the dead, the king’s warning carried on an acrid thread of wind
,
Sabrina’s weeping as she fought to save the man she loved, and the imagined vision he carried with him always—Father’s execution at the hands of the
Amhas-draoi
. The final moments when the truth of his son’s betrayal was made clear. When love twisted in his chest with the same killing force as the blade that felled him and he died damning Brendan’s name.
Would Aidan, like Father, go to his grave believing Brendan had betrayed them all?
He hurled the candlestick back into the blackened ruins, where it landed with a ping and a flash of gold before sinking out of sight forever.
Then, swinging away, he strode back down Henry
Street and away from the charred hulk that had once been Kilronan House.
“Madame Arana said you’ve been out here for hours.”
Brendan’s voice behind her slid along Elisabeth’s nerves like a spark to a fuse. The flush of awareness simmering just below her skin. Her stomach tightening with pleasure.
She looked up from the book in her lap, relieved to put aside the brain-snarling confusion of the thesis she’d been reading. Something about time travel and the effects of past and future on the present. It might as well be ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs for all the sense it made. But she was trying. That should count for something.
Brendan stood haloed by a late afternoon sun, gold threading his dark hair, the rest of him left in shadow. All but his eyes which, as always, burned polished amber. He leaned down to slide the book from her hands, reading the title.
“Ouch. If you’re trying to bore yourself to sleep, you couldn’t have chosen better.”
She snatched it back. “I’m not bored in the least. It’s been highly informative. Did you know the
Unseelie
—those are
Fey
demons, by the way.”
Amusement danced in his eyes “Yes, I think I may have heard of them once or twice.”
She shot him a dirty look. “But did you know if one of the Dark Court possesses the body of a human host, they can gain permanent entry into our world?”
His expression hardened. “Yes, though I didn’t know you did.” He glanced at the pile of books beside her. “Have I created a monster?”
“Actually, all that searching intrigued me. I was hoping
you might explain a few things. There’s a chapter in one of these”—she rummaged through her stack until she found the one she searched for, flipping pages as she spoke—“that sounds like it’s talking of Arthur and the curse, but then it doesn’t, and I can’t make heads or tails of it.”
He eyed her curiously. “Who are you, and what have you done with Elisabeth Fitzgerald?”
She slammed the book closed. “I knew you’d tease.”
“I’m sorry, Lissa. I’m just a little stunned. You’ve never liked nor wanted anything to do with the
Other
. You seemed almost fearful. Why the sudden interest?”
She dropped her gaze to the book as she grappled with the question he’d posed. Difficult to explain, if she even could. After all, there had been no defining revelation. It had been a slow creeping awareness that between dread and wonder was a margin almost indefinable. Perhaps that narrowest of gaps had finally closed. Or perhaps she merely grew tired of being kept in the dark about events that impacted her in an intimate and life-altering way.
“It seems only sensible to try and understand what I’m getting myself into by marrying you.”
He sank onto the seat beside her, and for the first time she noted the dust speckling his boots, the sour whiskey and smoky smell of him as well as the tired smudges beneath his eyes, the grim angle of his jaw. Her heart skipped annoyingly as he raked his hair out of his face. “Is that what this is about, Lissa? This marriage? You and I? I can say the words, I can put the ring on your finger, but it doesn’t make us any more than we were before.”
“Which is?”
“Which is two people trapped by circumstance. I may not even—” He broke off, massaging his damaged hand as
if it pained him. “I just wouldn’t expend a lot of effort in making this into anything more than a face-saving marriage of last resort.”