Chapter Six It Blooms
We ride around the mountains and down into the town until the night begins to wane. June is my teacher, protecting me from my ignorance about so many things.
It’s strange to need help and protection, and it only makes my loyalty to her grow deeper roots.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” I murmur as we watch the stars fade. I test out my wings, running a little, jumping high—and feeling like the fibers inside my mended wing are stretching and ripping when I try to fly.
“Thank me? For dinner and the fudge? It’s nothing.
Daniel still hasn’t cut off my account access yet.
Well, he might have changed his login information, but he hasn’t closed my card.
Everything is on the bastard,” June sighs, and raises something called a “smoothie” as a toast. “After you go to sleep, I’m going back to the garden center and see what else I can buy.
Mr. Fenclan says I can landscape all the way up to the woods if I want. ”
“It would be magical.” I’m thinking of June walking to me through a grand garden, eyes soft, hands outstretched to take mine.
“Can you help me put up arbors? I’m going back over my vision boards and all the stuff I’ve saved on my laptop and in my sketchbook. I thought we could put a gravel path here, and then arbors every ten feet, and then—”
She’s so happy in her garden, out here in the wilds.
She belongs in an untamed place, like Gilcreedy—or like Gilgreedy was one hundred and thirty years ago.
Yet she lives in a little box in the city, a flat the size of the lodge’s living room and kitchen combined, she told me.
She works at a job where they often tell her to sit in a small room with angry children who just want to play and run, to be free—but since they are older, they get no playtime, and the school has no lawn.
June says it only has a small fenced-in area called a “blacktop,” and there are no amusements like swings or sandpiles.
“I bet you would be most welcome at the castle. You could do up the grounds,” I say, interrupting and forgetting my manners.
June’s mouth pops open in surprise, and her face sours.
For a second.
“I wouldn’t be able to do that. Even if your grand-niece pulls some strings, I’m not some fancy floral designer. No council is going to hire a girl who has never had anything bigger than a window box to plan as their landscaper. I wouldn’t know anyone. I wouldn’t have a job.”
“Your jobs would be to make the castle beautiful again, and you would know me. My clan would love you.”
June stares at me for a long moment. “Would they? Why?”
Because I love you, I want to reply. I don’t even have to think of the words, and there they come, rushing to my lips.
I’m only spared the embarrassment by the swooping of a rushing owl into the woods, distracting June and stopping me short.
“Because you are a friend to the clan. An ally that has shown herself good and true.”
“Aw, Duncan. You big softie.”
“I assure you, I am not soft!” I pat my middle worriedly. If I keep eating and not having any hard physical tasks to do, I will get soft, that is for certain.
“Softie means that inside you have a... A tender, kind heart. I love it about you. You look kinda scary, but you’re not.”
“Oh, I could be, my lady. Let any man ever trifle with you again, and I will scare the shite out of him, begging your pardon.”
June cackles and kicks her feet in her strange, low chair. “I approve of that plan. But sadly, I don’t think I could approve of the other one. I couldn’t go to Gilcreedy as anything more than a visitor. Oh. That’s what you meant, huh? I should visit you there, not live there?”
No, I mean you should live there—or anywhere that has wide spaces and surrounds you with flowers. “You belong in a place where there’s land. Lots of it.”
“I don’t need lots. Just a quarter of an acre. Heck, even a couple of metal troughs from the farm store filled with veggies and flowers would make me happy.”
My mind boggles at all I know of June and her broken romance. She wants so little, but gives freely and generously. She would be the easiest lass to keep content—and yet someone was ungrateful and squandered her love.
“I don’t want you to go back to living in the little flat in the city,” I murmur, feeling the pink and orange rays of the rising sun filling the sky. “Nor do I want you to work for such unkind people who keep you and the children caged.”
“It’s not so bad, believe me. Don’t worry about a thing. Just get some sleep. When you wake up tonight, I bet I’ll have a lot for us to do. Might as well thank Mr. Fenclan for being so nice to us.”
He’s been kind to both of us, but especially helpful to me.
In my heart, I know that June really owes him nothing.
Her efforts will bring him greater rewards, more money perhaps, from the people who will pay to let this lodge with its new floral splendor, and greater beauty, beauty my Lady June won’t get to see again.
“He ought to thank you for the beauty you gift him. I know I am thankful each night I gaze upon you,” I say, and then crouch in a fierce position in the garden as the sun sends me to sleep.
I LEAN AGAINST THE statue that just spoke, heart pounding.
Thankful each night I gaze upon you.
Okay, then. New kink unlocked—I love the old-timey sweet nothings. I don’t know if that was 19th-century flirting or just him being his sweet, sincere self.
I also know that Duncan's skin is instantly the warmest, smoothest thing I’ve ever touched, like gray mother-of-pearl.
It catches the light as if there were millions of crystals worked through the pores.
I don’t know if he can hear me or feel my touch, and I haven’t asked his permission to touch him.
But I figure a hug is okay. I nestle in between his arms, held up with their talons out, waiting to tear the enemy to shreds, and let myself rest my head on his chest.
Come to Gilcreedy. Design a garden for a castle. Don’t go back to your crappy job and your tiny apartment.
“You’re such a good friend. So sweet. So kind. So helpful. You don’t have any other motive, you don’t know any other women... Everything about you is solid and true.
“God, Duncan, why do you make me think about crazy things, like a life with you? We wouldn’t have much, maybe, but maybe we’d have wide open spaces in the Scottish Highlands, where I could wander the heather, and you could catch deer.
That’s something out of a bad Hallmark movie, right?
” I kiss his knuckles. I kiss his bicep and peck his chin.
My hand strokes gently over his broken wing.
“I wish you didn’t have to leave so soon.
Maybe... Maybe if we had another few months, this would have all worked out. ”
I HAVEN’T TOLD HER yet. I haven’t told June that right as we settle to sleep, and right as we awaken, we can hear and feel things, but distantly, as if someone is speaking in a dream.
Scottish heather. Catching deer. Nothing much—but us.
My dreams are rapidly turning from sweet, sunrise kisses, to tangled limbs and claiming her in the heather she deserves to wander through. When I wake up, I know that one part of me will still be stone.
Fortunately, when I wake, June is distracted, talking loudly on the phone as she stands out by the large, luxury car, hauling tall, arching bowers out of it. By her feet are stacks of soil and seeds.
“Daniel, what in the world are you talking about? No, I’m not going to give my garden statue back.
It’s mine.” She slaps the phone onto the edge of the open back of the car.
I know she’s picked the speaker function (something I used a great deal when trying to talk to many members of my clan at once the other night), because I can now hear Daniel’s voice.
“You’re being immature. You’re just punishing me for one little indiscretion. Don’t you understand that there’s about seventeen million pounds at stake here?”
“No, I don’t understand that. Are you saying my statue is some work of art? I mean, I agree, he’s one hunky gargoyle, but I wouldn’t put that valuation on him. For one thing, his wing is busted.”
She thinks I’m hunky. I don’t know what she means, entirely, but the way her voice dips into a lower, sultry tone, even for a second, makes my waking arousal worse.
“I don’t bloody care! I need it back. This woman from the Gilcreedy Town Council says we violated some historical preservation agreement, something about any artifacts found within the grounds that were of historical significance would be presented for assessment before disposal or sale.
Someone must have blabbed about the broken statue.
” Daniel’s voice turns low and accusatory.
“I’ll just bet it was the fellow I had put his wing back on, he’s not been on the job site since. ”
“Sorry about that.”
“Oh, I’ll just bet you are. If you were really sorry, you’d send it back! There are investors! People who plan to work at the resort! Between this problem and some of the construction equipment breaking overnight for no good reason...” Daniel groans.
June and I grin. “Sounds like it’s not going well.”
Daniel’s voice becomes cold and rushed.
I let out a low snarl, just imagining that this is the man who bedded her, who promised her marriage, and then abandoned her.
And does he call to beg forgiveness? No.
He has the gall to ask for her help. The gall to ask her to return a gift.
“Isn’t it enough he broke your heart? He doesn’t get to ask ye for any damned favors! ” I growl, stalking over.
“Oh, is that Mr. Fenclan, Junie? Telling tales, I see. Mr. Fenclan, I’ll thank you to keep out of this, it’s a private matter between June and myself. Now, look, darling. Listen. To reason. Let’s be sensible about all this.”
Daniel’s tone changes dramatically, and to me, that is a sure sign of his trickery, his faithlessness.
I only hope Lady June isn’t too stricken by grief to see it.
“I’m listening.”