Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
Several hours later, Aowen and I are sharing a simple meal of roast beef sandwiches and salted tomatoes that she conjured from a spear of moonlight.
Vesper’s curled on a sofa pillow, snore-whistling off her earlier shenanigans.
After her hand healed, she went to visit family here in Tír na Lune.
Aowen informed me that when pixies get together, the results are never less than absolute debauchery.
She was surprised Vesper didn’t return with more broken fingers.
My concerns, of course, remain focused on a much larger creature.
“Do you think he’s alright?” I pick at my sandwich. There is too much roiling worry in my gut to fit much else, so I take a sip of long-cooled tea instead.
I have tried several times to reach Lachlan through the diamrhán, but if he can hear me calling, he’s not allowing the connection to form. I finally stopped trying, worried that if he could hear my calls, I might be distracting him while he needs to focus.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” Aowen says, looking far more confident than I feel. “Lachlan is extremely skilled at whatever he puts his mind to. And for the past nine years, that’s been protecting my brother and defending Tír na Strelle.”
“What was he doing before that?”
Aowen raises an eyebrow, her rosebud lips curving into an impish smile. “I’m not sure I should tell you.”
My teacup clatters in its saucer as I lean across the table, ravenous for any crumb of his history. “Well, now you must tell me.”
Aowen’s large blue eyes glitter. She adores gossip, despite the harm it’s doing to our cause. It takes no additional cajoling for her to spill.
“He was a courtesan,” she murmurs before licking a trail of tomato juice up the side of her palm.
My breath catches in my throat. Whatever answer I expected, that was … not it.
“The most in demand in the celestial kingdom,” she continues as I try to remember how to pull air into my lungs.
“He’s traveled extensively, most often in the company of a high-ranking lady—those who could afford his services, anyway.
All one need do is look at the man to understand how many people were willing to spend their life’s savings for a single night with him.
He was one of the most powerful figures in any court.
Even more powerful than he is now as a celestial knight. Especially given his specialty.”
My body finally forces me to breathe, but I am not yet capable of speech. The salacious imagery Aowen has brought to mind with this new information makes forming even the most basic sentences impossible.
I’ve never seen Lachlan undressed—my gravest misfortune—but I have felt the power in his beautifully formed body.
Plus, my artistic sensibilities have blessed me with a vivid imagination.
So it’s not hard to visualize, in striking, sensual detail, my bodyguard in a variety of sweat-soaked and extremely compromising positions.
I swallow, force myself to focus on Aowen, and barely choke out the question, “What was his specialty?”
Her responding grin is demonic, exuberant. “Domination. Pleasure control.”
I nearly fall out of my chair. I may not be entirely familiar with the practice, but I can grasp its outline. Still, I need more details. Many, many more details. “What does that mean?”
“His lovers gave him full dominion over their bodies. How they achieved pleasure. When they achieved it. Whether they achieved it at all, depending on what had been pre-negotiated.”
My face flushes as heat climbs my neck. Aunt Teddy shouts from my subconscious that this is not an appropriate conversation for proper ladies. I shove her into my mind-closet and nail the door shut.
Aowen continues, “There was one woman—a marchioness, I believe—who kept him in her employ for an entire year. Paid him such a generous salary that he took on no other clients.”
“Only a year?” I snort. “Why did she let him go?”
“Her husband put a stop to it. Threatened to divorce her and strip her of her title. Her rank was more important to her than whatever was going on between her and Lachlan.”
“Was it … Was she in love with him?”
Lachlan said he’d never been in love before, but didn’t specify whether someone else might have been in love with him.
Aowen shrugs, leaning back in her chair and stretching long limbs over her head. “She certainly loved whatever he was doing to her in the bedroom.”
And there go those prurient scenes in my head again. This one features Lachlan sinking his fangs into the ripe flesh of some faceless woman’s ass.
I shake my head to clear the image, which has spread the sour taste of jealousy across the back of my tongue. “He told me he’d been fired from his previous job.”
Aowen shifts in her seat. “There was some unpleasantness involving Lisande’s brother, the son of Lord LaBeaumont, and one of Lachlan’s former colleagues.
Lachlan got too involved. Things escalated.
He’s lucky Desmond was able to protect him.
I shouldn’t say anymore. Probably shouldn’t have even told you that much. ”
“How do you know this? Did you two ever—”
“No!” The noise she makes is halfway between a scream and a laugh.
“He’s like a baby brother to me. Treats me better than my own brother, sometimes.
” There’s pain buried beneath her gravelly sarcasm, but before I can probe it, she presses onward.
“Besides, from what I’ve heard, Lachlan’s swung to the complete opposite side of the spectrum. He’s practically celibate now."
She eyes me again with that sly smile, as if trying to gauge the level of my curiosity. Her fangs—more delicate than Lachlan’s—sit pearly white against her pink lips.
We sit in silence for several moments, though it’s certainly not silent in my head; my thoughts careen like harried sparrows.
He said he liked parts of his previous job—but which parts?
And just how good was he? I cannot imagine an impoverished orphan achieving such notoriety without a plethora of enthusiastic performance reviews.
Did his gift factor into it? Did the money ever make him feel pressure to consent to things he didn’t enjoy? God, I hope not.
“How are you faring, Charlotte?” Aowen asks, scaring off the sparrows. “I know the Season can be trying.”
Sweet of her to ask, but does she want the truth? Or the answer that will placate her?
“Well, I’m fine, of course.” I force a smile onto my face.
“You’re doing remarkably well, you know. Despite the circumstances.” She pats my hand and rises from the table. “You should try to get some sleep.”
An impossibility.
Before she and Vesper retire to her room, she flicks her wrist and a platter of powdered biscuits appear before me.
I may not have told her the truth, but it seems she heard it anyway.
Several hours, four biscuits, and two naughty sketches later, I’m crawling into bed when a howl of pain rips through my mind.
I hiss through gritted teeth, pressing my fingers against my temples as I crash to the floor. The intrusion drowns out every other sense—I cannot see, cannot hear, cannot speak. A sharp, stabbing pain pulses down my spine, pooling in my left flank.
It fades, replaced by a volcanic spurt of anger that I swear is coming from inside the castle. Then, just as swiftly, it clears.
Lachlan has been injured. Maybe even gravely. I’m sure of it.
I call down the connection, demand he tell me where he is, but it’s lifeless once again.
Blast.
I shrug off my chemise, change into my traveling clothes and riding boots, then swipe two more biscuits from the platter. For the energy, of course.
Butter and sweet lemon melt on my tongue as I exit my room, tearing across the parlor, and pound on Aowen’s door.
When there’s no answer, I haul it open to find her room dark. And empty.
Double blast.
The smart thing to do would be to stay put. Do what I’ve been told. Wait for someone more qualified to handle it.
It’s what old Charlotte would have done.
But what if I’m the only person in the castle who knows Lachlan’s been hurt? That he needs help?
New Charlotte slips out of the suite to rescue her bodyguard.