Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
“Bastard left Tír na Lune yesterday to go gambling in Farlock’s Edge.”
Aowen’s shout precedes her into the parlor the next morning. She slams her bedroom door behind her, Vesper clinging to her shoulder against the rush of air.
“Careful, Wen. Ears everywhere, even if you can’t see them,” Lachlan mutters from the seat next to me at the dining table, where he’s been working on some kind of wood carving all morning.
He’s abandoned his armour today, instead choosing a close-cut grey jacket that’s doing the most wonderful things for his thick arms. And, to my utter delight, he’s wearing a pair of reading glasses.
The sight of them perched on the end of his nose is so charming that I wouldn’t dare ask about them for fear of their removal.
When I emerged from my bedchamber this morning, I thanked him for the drawing supplies, and he waved me off like it was nothing before his attention snagged on the bodice of my lilac linen gown.
Neither Aowen nor Vesper was around to help me dress, and I couldn’t lace the stays on my own.
Part of me does not miss the binding, while another part feels a bit naked.
I am keenly aware of every bounce of my breasts.
So is Lachlan, it seems, as his eyes slide to me every time I shift in my seat.
And I may or may not be doing a lot of unnecessary shifting.
“Where did you go this morning?” he asks Aowen, after prying his attention off me for what feels like the hundredth time and re-focusing on his carving knife. I hope he doesn’t nick himself. I smile against the back of my hand.
“This morning?” Aowen laughs, plopping down into the chair across the table. “I haven’t been back here since last night.”
Vesper chirps a greeting, her beetle-black eyes crawling over my frizzy hair. I haven’t done a thing with it since I woke. She smiles at me, that terrifying one full of razor-sharp teeth where I can’t tell if she’s pleased or about to nibble my flesh. “Food. Fresh food.”
Lachlan shaves a long sliver off the wood. “Bedpost notching or intelligence gathering?”
Aowen coaxes a bit of sunshine through the balcony doors, then flicks her wrist. A tray filled with fruit, coddled eggs, cold ham, and a basket of those cherry scones I love so much appears in the center of the table.
She reaches for a shiny red apple and sinks her teeth into it.
“Little of both.” She smiles at me as she chews.
“Didn’t know you had so many friends here in Tír na Lune,” Lachlan murmurs.
“Almost as many as you.”
Something passes between them. It looks like a challenge, but neither elaborates. She raises her brows and flicks her chin toward breakfast, encouraging me to eat. It’s the only invitation I need to pull a cherry scone onto my plate and slather it with clotted cream.
“Anyway, he wasn’t a friend. Just an amusing way to pass the time, with lips as loose as his regard for Duke áine’s secrets. And dumb as a bag of rocks. Just how I like them.”
Lachlan’s smile is exasperated, yet fond. He seems as close with Aowen as he is with Desmond. “What did we learn?”
“Well, for one thing, the men of Tír na Lune are surprisingly skilled with their fingers. He did this twisting mo—”
“Not what I meant,” Lachlan croons without a hint of reproach. Not like there would have been in Breton, if a woman dared talk of such things over breakfast.
“Spoilsport.” She shoots me a mischievous glance. “I’ll bet Charlotte wants to know. Once Duke áine returns, she’ll get well acquainted with his fingers.”
A tense curiosity shoots through me. I wonder what the duke looks like.
He sounded pleasant during the presentation ceremony.
Would I like to get to know his fingers?
Then again, given what Lachlan told me about the situation in Campan’s Vale …
I don’t know enough to judge yet, but something tells me that while Duke áine’s title is noble, the man himself may be far from it.
Lachlan’s grip on his knife tightens ever so slightly, but his voice is as calm as always when he asks, “And when will the illustrious duke be returning? Or was that not one of the secrets you learned from the gentleman who entertained you last night?”
Aowen snorts. “He was hardly a gentleman, praise Danu. But he did claim the duke will be back for dinner. I snuck down to the staff quarters before I came here, bribed one of the girls to show me this evening’s place settings, and we’re in luck. Charlotte will be seated right next to him.”
“Good,” Lachlan says, a vein in his jaw ticcing. “Hopefully he’ll make up for his absence last night. And for sending Lisande LaBeaumont in his stead. What’s she doing here?”
“She’s the duke’s current lover,” Aowen bemoans. “Her father introduced them. She’s been here for months, weaving herself into his life. You need to be careful, Lachlan. Desmond would call you back in a heartbeat if he knew she was here, given your history with their fam—”
“I know.” His tone is sharp, and Aowen takes the hint, crunching into her apple instead of elaborating.
“Do you think she orchestrated the snub last night?” I ask, glancing toward Lachlan and studying his arresting profile. The sharp line of his jaw, the fan of his dark lashes, how his bottom lip pokes out just a bit farther than the top one.
He’s a fascinating study. So much so that I nearly miss Aowen’s answer to my question.
Something about how it’s extremely likely that Lisande organized the trip that the duke and his closest male courtiers took to Farlock’s Edge—a playground of a city along the border between Tír na Lune and Tír na Dubh with vices to suit any depraved taste.
Aowen rises from the table. “I’m going to take a long, hot bath. Rinse the man stink off me.” Vesper squawks at her. “No, no. You help Charlotte with that rat’s nest atop her head.”
Vesper hisses, then zooms into my room.
I smooth a hand over my curls. Surely it’s not that bad. “Should she be—”
“She’s already stolen a few strands, right?
Few more won’t kill you.” Aowen winks. “After, you and I are going for a little tour around the castle. I’ll introduce you to some of the courtiers.
Since the duke isn’t here to share his clue, maybe they’ll be able to give you a hint of where to start looking for the fragment. ”
She glides into her room, humming a bawdy folk song that I recognize—something about a maiden and a horse and a bareback ride. Granny used to sing it to me when she was feeling cheeky. Which was often.
I chuckle at the memory while rising from my own chair, then pop one more bit of scone into my mouth. “If you’ll excuse me,” I say to Lachlan. “Apparently, I’ve got an appointment with a hair-eating pixie. What’s on your agenda today?”
He folds his knife and sets it upon the table next to his half-finished carving, which looks more like a shank than anything else at the moment.
“I’ve got a check-in with Sir Quinn, the captain of Duke áine’s celestial knights.
Reviewing the castle’s security protocols, plans to coordinate for the Wild Hunt, that kind of thing.
” He switches to the diamrhán. I’ll still be available to you, though. Check in whenever you need me.
“Actually, I will need you later.”
“Really?” His brows rise as he removes his glasses. A tragedy. “What for?”
“I’d like to start searching the castle grounds tonight.”
“Ah.” He breaks my gaze, begins fiddling with the edge of a napkin. “Yes. Yes, of course. That’s smart.”
It’s obviously not the answer he was expecting.
Oh, this will be fun.
“Why?” I drop my voice, focusing my attention on his side of the diamhrán, which he’s left open. “What did you think I was going to ask you?”
I catch flashes of teeth across skin, fingers dimpling flesh, mouths breathing against each other, and—
He slams it closed. “Nothing.”
And there goes his blush again. He really must stop doing that, or I fear I may fall in love with him. God knows I’ve fallen in love for less.
He coughs into his fist, still not looking at me. “Do you have an idea of where you’d like to start?”
“Well, Desmond’s piece was buried in a family tomb. Perhaps áine’s is as well?”
He meets my gaze once again, composed. The celestial knight, back in control. “I’ll ask Sir Quinn if we can gain access.”
I nod, and the movement draws his attention to the scarf I threw on this morning to cover my bandage.
“May I?”
I nod, and his fingertips brush my collarbone as he removes the patterned silk. A nanosecond of contact that crackles flames along my skin.
“Fully healed,” he declares, running the pad of his thumb across my jumping pulse.
A charged silence stretches between us, rooting me in place.
I am not some na?ve ingénue. I know when men want me. When human men want me, at least. But Lachlan is offering the same signals—looks that linger a moment too long, unnecessary (but welcome) touches, all that adorable blushing.
Old Charlotte would have slipped into his lap this very second, unbuttoned his jacket and started searching for more piercings.
But new Charlotte is going to play by the rules. Giving in to lust, confusing it for a deeper connection, well … That ended very poorly for me in the human realm. And I fear the consequences here could be even more dire. Besides, even if I wanted to—
An irascible squawk bursts from my bedchamber.
Lachlan straightens, breaking from a daze. “You’d better go. The longer you make her wait, the more hair she’ll devour as punishment.”
I expel a breathy laugh, and his answering smile is warm sunshine in a bitter wind.
“Later then?”
His eyes trail me into my bedchamber.
“I am at your disposal, Miss Fitzroy.”