Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“Thank you,” Sorcha whispered, the strands like thin chains of silver and jade. Three strands from three different kelpies was more than anyone could hope for. “Thank you.”
She turned her basket upside down, making sure every crumb went into the sea. When she finally stepped back, Aidan plucked her up and charged for the beach. He wiped the sweat off the back of his neck. “We are not doing that again.” His hand trembled.
She held up her plunder triumphantly. “We’ve got him now,” she said darkly. “I think it’s time to send out the invitations for our betrothal ball, don’t you?”
The first step was to be seen taking a turn around Hallow. Not the University or the Library, but the main street, where the shops offered pots of strong tea and collections of love poetry.
Sorcha had not been a debutante for a very long time, but she had not forgotten how the game was played. To be seen was to be known.
A fact that made her internally shake her head. Debutantes were frequently seen and not known. But such was Mayfair and such was Lyonesse.
Aidan had put his spectacles back on as soon as they arrived in Hallow. His demeanor softened; even his walk changed. He was still taller and stronger than most of the other men, but he did not look threatening, only shy.
“Why do you do that?” Sorcha asked. “People must know by now that the Earl of Coventry is also a wolf when he has a mind to be.”
“They do.” There was no inflection to his words.
They peered into windows to admire displays of old books bound in faded leather, inkwells in the shape of gargoyles and lilies. Ink spelled to neaten the handwriting, or hide secret messages. Quills that remembered everything they had ever written.
They passed two women deep in conversation, clearly agitated. “Just awful,” one of the murmured.
Aidan’s nostrils flared. “What’s happened?” he asked them, tone controlled.
“One of the museums was ransacked! Can you imagine?”
“Which one?”
Sorcha’s witch knot tingled even before the reply came.
“The Museum of Teeth.” The woman shuddered. “Ghastly thing, but still. This is Hallow.”
Sorcha nodded in commiseration. Aidan waited until the women had walked away before adding, “This is not a coincidence.”
“Definitely not. Poor Barnabus.” She smiled at a passing gentleman when he tipped his hat to her. “We should keep strolling.”
“Will your grandmother be cross that you are not at the bakehouse?” Adian asked, also nodding a greeting to a passing professor.
“I’m superfluous. Granny has it all in hand. She would never let being dead get in the way of doing what she wants to do, which is telling people how to bake bread.” And selling the bread was for her to do—it was how she fed most of Nettlestone.
“That’s a relief.”
“Are you afraid of my grandmother?”
“Absolutely.”
Sorcha turned onto the boardwalk that ran along the beach, the wind full of salt and wheeling gulls crying a greeting. Aidan bought her a lemon ice from a nearby cart. There were also baked potatoes for sale, stewed pears, and, because it was Hallow, a poet offering to write a verse for a shilling.
“If we are going to make this betrothal believable, we should probably know more about each other, don’t you think?
” It was a sound and logical conclusion, but mostly she wanted to know more about him.
Everything about him. When would she get such a chance again?
He would be back in London before long, reticent and stoic. Polite.
She felt itchy at the thought.
“You’re right, of course,” he said. Politely.
She scowled up at him, the sun catching the strands of gold in his beard. “Stop it.”
He blinked at her. His eyes were whiskey colored behind the spectacles. No glitter of gold. “Stop what?”
“Being so…so…polite.”
The glint of amusement was infuriating but better than that bland smile. “You would prefer me to be rude?”
She sniffed, aware that she sounded ridiculous but also knowing somewhere deep in her bones that this was important. “Yes.”
“Then I’m afraid I must disappoint you.”
“Says the man who bit me in an alley.”
He swallowed. “Yes.”
She tilted her head. “That wasn’t a recrimination.”
“It should be.”
She waved it away. “Ancient history.”
He smiled briefly. “If last week was ancient history, might I suggest you not apply for a position at the museum.”
She ate another spoonful of lemon ice, licking a drop from the side of her palm. “This must be torture for you. All this leisure. Not a magical artifact in sight. No curses to unravel, or exhibits to criticize.”
“I much prefer this to watching you swim with kelpies.”
Sorcha shrugged. “I cannot swim, actually.”
He turned to stare at her so slowly, so accusingly, that she bit her lip to keep from chuckling. “I beg your pardon?” he asked.
“I cannot swim.”
“You walked into the sea to pull on a kelpie’s mane and you can’t bloody swim, woman?” He nearly roared it.
She grinned, pointing her spoon at him. “There.”
His jaw clenched. His eyes glinted, just a little.
She grinned wider. “Not so polite now. Much better.” She nudged him to make sure he was still breathing. “I can swim, just so you know.”
He exhaled roughly. “You are trying to murder me.” She nodded, well pleased. He shook his head. “Ask your questions, songbird.”
“What is your favorite color?”
“Green. Yours?”
“Red.”
“Naturally.”
“Your first kiss?” He raised an eyebrow. She refused to blush and raised hers back. “A couple would know these things about each other,” she pointed out.
“Aye. It was Molly Mackinnon, behind the blacksmith’s forge in a village in Orkney. I was fourteen. Her mother chased me with a broom. Molly threw a fish at her.”
“A fish?”
“There is an abundance of fish in Orkney. And she was very cross with her mother.”
“Over you.”
“Aye, but most of the time as well. We were fourteen, you ken.” His brows lowered. “Your turn.”
“I can’t remember.”
He growled softly. “Play fair, songbird.”
“No, I truly can’t remember. I traded the memory so I could buy the spell on my red cloak. And Turkish delight for the Pegasus. It turns out he doesn’t even like Turkish delight.” She shrugged. “Do you play any musical instruments?”
“Not a one.”
“I can play the pianoforte. Well, I could play it. It’s been many years. I might be rubbish now.”
“Do you miss London?”
“I miss the ices from Gunter’s and the ducks on the Serpentine. Do you miss it? Being here on Lyonesse?”
“No.” He did not elaborate. And he did not look away from her either. She felt rooted.
“When did you decide to become a curator?”
“When I was on a trip with my idiot friend from Oxford in the Black Forest. He found a box marked with sigils. And then he opened it.”
She whistled. “He was an idiot. I thought Oxford students were supposed to be frightfully clever.” Everyone knew you did not open a buried spell box or a witch’s bottle. And you definitely did not disturb the graves of old witches. They tended to be peevish.
“Now, what is it you really want to know?” Aidan asked. “I can smell the hesitation on you. It’s like dandelions.”
“Dandelions have a smell?”
“Everything has a smell to a wolf.”
“All right, then. When were you turned?” she asked. “Is it rude to ask a Lycan that?”
Aidan stared out at the waves. Several gulls landed nearby, waiting for Sorcha to provide them treats. “It can be, but you can ask me anything, Sorcha.”
“But you might not answer.”
He inclined his head. “But I’ll answer you now. It’s been four years.”
“Four years?” She was surprised. He wore the wolf as if he had always worn it. She didn’t know how she knew that; she just did. Or perhaps the wolf wore him.
“I was bitten.”
“Oh. I should have realized.” Lycan who were not born Lycan were turned. She wondered if he had sought it, as some did, but she suddenly did not want to ask.
“I was on an antiquarian dig, searching for Pictish singing stones,” he continued.
“They are very rare, almost impossible to find. Someone had stolen them from a grave, and the spell was curdling the milk in the nearby villages. And then well water turned to vinegar. Some magic does not like being stolen.”
“And they sent you.”
“No one else would go. I know why, now. He came out of nowhere. There was no fighting him off, not with spells or swords. He was moon mad.”
She swallowed. “What does that mean?”
“It means he was not a true Alpha. The power of it took him over. His wolf could not be controlled. Just like the stories you’ve been hearing. Only he had killed dozens by the time he found me.”
“You found him.”
“Sorry?”
“Aidan, I know you, and I would bet my ovens that you went searching for the wolf who was on a killing spree.”
He paused, just long enough that she knew she had guessed correctly.
“And I don’t understand. Because I’ve seen your wolf. Even if he took you over, you would still be Aidan. You would still be you.”
“Would I?”
“Yes.”
“You sound very sure,” he said. “There are superstitions among the Lycan that to be turned by a monster makes you a monster.”
“Rubbish.”
He glanced at her, half smiling. “Rubbish?”
“I know monsters.”
“Aye.”
“And I happen to prefer them. And, in my experience, they’re rarely the ones who are the actual monsters. But either way, you’re not one.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I know lots of things, Aidan Carnahan. For one, your wolf saved my life. Twice now.”
“What if I can’t trust him?” He said it so quietly that she nearly did not hear him over the waves and the squabbling gulls.
“I trust him,” she returned, just as quietly. “Enough for the both of us.”
She stroked the beak of a gull who had approached, head tilting this way and that. He sent her flashes of baked potatoes and abandoned dishes of fruit ices. Hunks of bread.
“Is that why you have no Pack?” she asked Aidan, as softly as she would have spoken to one of her birds so as not to frighten them off.
He nodded. “The only Packs that would have me when I first turned were not Packs I would ever join.”
“See?” she said. “You’re proving my point. If you were the kind of monster you feared, you wouldn’t have hesitated. But you did.”
“I suppose. What about you?” he asked. “What brought you to Lyonesse from London? Why monsters instead of gentlemen?”
She snorted. “Have you been to London? I mean, outside of the museum?”
“Fair point. But even I heard about the Duke of Gloucester’s granddaughters, all Incomparables and Diamonds of the First Water. You could be a marchioness, or a duchess.” That stoic, neutral tone again. She was beginning to see through some of his disguises. Curator, earl, wolf.
“I could have been,” she agreed. “But the duke who proposed to me was more interested in how I might train his hunting hawks. There was one marquess and two earls, but they were not from witching families. And a viscount who was very kind, but also in love with someone else. Someone he could not marry.” She recalled the dancing and the gleam of silver candlesticks and crystal chandeliers.
Rides through Hyde Park in carriages that looked like cakes swirled with icing.
The pigeons on the Greens that she insisted on feeding every morning. “It was lovely for a while.”
“And then?”
“And then it wasn’t anymore. My cousin loved it all so much. She still does. It took me a long time to realize I didn’t love it. Not like that. But I loved Lyonesse and the moors and my grandmother’s rambling old house, which she left to me when my family disowned me.”
“They what?”
“They really liked that duke.” She shrugged because it had taken her a very long time to be able to shrug about it. “More than they cared for me, as it happens.”
His eyes glittered.
“Thar’s hardly shocking,” she pointed out. “Debutantes are meant to marry dukes and have ducal babies.”
“Parents are meant to care for their children.”
“I have Granny. And anyway, when they hear I’ve got myself an earl, they might even invite me for supper.
” She would decline. And when the betrothal was inevitably broken…
Well, she could just imagine their reactions.
Best to stay on the island. She’d rather deal with a Black Shuck and a temperamental unicorn. “Were you close to your family?”
“For a time.”
She could see it in his face, the lines at the corners of his eyes, the way he swallowed. “Before you were bitten?” she guessed.
“Aye. My mother thought she could cure me.”
Sorcha wrapped her fingers around his forearm. “You’re not sick.”
“Wolf cures don’t work anyway,” he said wryly. “No matter how much vinegar she wanted me to drink. Or how many times I swam across the Serpentine until I choked.” He glanced at her hand, closed his own warm palm over it. “You’re growling, love.”
Sorcha cleared her throat. “It was a cough.”
“My mother likes things orderly.”
“You are not a thing.”
“Wolves are not…couth.”
Sorcha was not feeling particularly couth either.
She was used to feeling anger. She raged at the way the Collector treated magical creatures, at the spectators who thought it was entertainment, at puppies abandoned at her gate, horses turned away because they weren’t fast anymore. At the way people treated pigeons.
This was a new kind of fury.
Pieces of Aidan were falling into place. The stoic, iron hold he had on his magic and his wolf.
“Sorcha?”
“Yes?”
“Did you just summon a Stymphalion marsh bird?”
Someone on the beach screamed.
A giant bird with sharp metallic feathers soared above them, its shadow stretching over the sand. The stink of stagnant water and old blood followed. He shook a wing, sending one of its feathers like a dagger, nearly taking out the poet. They were not gentle birds.
And they were a tiny bit poisonous.
“Oops.” She tossed the last piece of bread from her pocket and sent it flashes of a nice, marshy nest. Far from here. The giant bird flapped its wings once, twice. Dagger-feathers sliced through the water. Please, Sorcha added with a push of her magic. I’ll bring you teacakes.
With a screech that boiled the water in a nearby tide pool, the bird flew away.
“I’ve decided I don’t like your family,” Sorcha declared.
He smiled. “But you hide it so well.”
“They are not invited to our pretend wedding.”
His smile faltered. “Aye.”
Something changed, dimmed. Had she pushed too hard with her questions? She had brought up bad memories. And she had summoned a Stymphalian marsh bird, for goodness’ sake. Not exactly countess material.
And to think there was a time when she knew exactly what to say, what dress to wear, which modiste to frequent. How to flatter, how to flirt. How to act demure.
Now she just chatted with gulls and poisonous marsh birds that smelled like rotten grass.
Pitiful.
“We should probably get back,” she suggested before she could make things even more spectacularly awkward. Or accidentally summon a winged seaworm. They smelled even worse than marsh birds.
“Aye.”