Chapter Six Douglas
T he nice thing about both New York City and London is that no one ever sees a monster. Well, except for the people who know to keep their mouths shut and the raving, drug-addled masses on the less-traveled streets. There are so many strange things to see that most minds tend to glaze right over the presence of a tall, green man with pointed ears and tusks. I wear a glamour, just to be safe. Even with all of my precautions, I still feel a faint worry when I have to spend hours in close proximity with humans.
I needn’t have worried this time. Even as I sit through an interminable accounting department pre-audit meeting with people inches away, no one says a thing about the giant Orc in the room. (But you’d be surprised how many people feel they need to make a comment about my kilt and the fact that I have “nice knees.”)
During the entire meeting, I don’t speak, which suits me nicely. Neilson has my report. He uses my numbers and reports to slice through the list of inaccuracies, expenditures, and flagged items that various accounting teams need to fix prior to this big audit that has everyone in a panic. People are frantically typing and arguing. I’m not. I make an occasional note on my laptop and study the sky, my work already done, my branch already in fine fiscal shape—at least where I’m concerned.
I study the skyline—and try not to think about Georgia. Does she travel to the city often? I could have asked her to show me the sights. If she rarely comes to the city, I could have offered to show her around. The city would be far more entertaining and more enjoyable with her on my arm.
Of course, I would have no idea what to show her—not in a place like this. Or any place. Does she like the theater? Opera? Roller Derby? Table tennis? She could be the perfect tour guide. What an easy excuse to spend time with her.
But I can’t spend time with her. I shouldn’t.
Was I all thumbs at courting Nicola, too? Maybe. But we were close in age, grew up in the same part of the world, had some of the same friends...
“Mr. Wickstaff? Ham, turkey, or roast beef?”
“Oh. Uh. Roast beef.” I blink and rock back in the black, swiveling leather chair at the conference table. There’s a woman in a floral dress leaning over me with a legal pad in hand, taking lunch orders by the sound of it.
Thank God. We must be halfway done.
“Soda? Lemonade? Ice tea? Water—sparkling, bottled, mineral?” Floral Dress persists, pen scribbling.
“Sparkling water, thank you.”
“Your accent is beautiful. Ireland?”
“Scotland.”
“Ooh!”
The fact that I come from the rocky but gorgeous birthplace of stubbornness causes a surprising amount of oohing and ahhing, not to mention a flurry of people suddenly reaching for “dropped” pens under the conference table as an excuse to peep at my calves.
I don’t like the attention from the pretty, distinctly human, obviously blind women. I know plenty of “monsters” marry outside their kind—but their spouses were willing to learn and accept their differences. Shared culture is embraced.
I’m afraid that one of these simpering and over-perfumed flirts will suddenly realize my skin is a mossy green and cause a corporate panic on the 30th floor.
For years, any female interest has crashed against my awareness and bounced off with no more harm than a raindrop on a mountain.
Something changed.
Georgia.
She’s part-Orc. She already knows my culture. We’re from the same places—partially. Our family trees don’t intertwine, but their branches touch. Wickstaffs have fought by the Fenclans since the first Vikings landed. Fenclans have aided the Wickstaffs since Hadrian laid out plans for his bloody wall.
Mm. Georgia’s no raindrop. She’s a thunderbolt that can strike a mountain’s surface and cleave it in two.
Never had this feeling with Nicola. Never dreamed of her scent in a meeting, never felt my tusks gnash at the thought of her soft skin rubbing against them. To be fair, Nicola’s skin was soft and supple like suede.
I bet Georgia feels like silk. And she’ll melt like butter against me.
Hell’s teeth. Something is wrong.
With a curt nod, I excuse myself. There’s no way I’m going to commit the criminal embarrassment of visiting the expensive toilets and wanking at the thought of a relative stranger.
No. I’m going to walk down thirty flights of stairs in the odd, echoing stairwells with their pisspoor flickering lights and call the one person who can talk sense into me.
“Dougie?”
“Finlay! How’re ye keeping?” My accent slides into something thicker, broader, and more guttural.
“Ribs hurt like a bitch, but I can't complain. How’s our wee Georgie?”
“Strapping great youth—well, not so much a youth. High time he was married.”
The words leave a bad taste in my mouth. I heard them so often the year before I met Nicola. I wish I could take them back. Tune them out.
My brother’s voice cuts into the blackness in my mind. “Aye, high time. What about the sister? Why weren’t we invited to her wedding?”
“She hasn’t had one.” And bless you, Fin, for leading me just where I wanted to go. “Georgia’s not married. You’ve stayed in touch with Ian more than I have. What do you know about his family?”
“Thon Georgie’s a great chef. Makes a scone you could weep for and shortbread that’d shame his own granny. Smart lad. He and Georgia own that wee coffee shop in their town.”
“The Pine Loft. It’s hardly a wee shop at this point. It’s got a bakery opening up and does a crackin’ trade. His bride is a cake maker—what d’you call them? Cake designer.” I shrug over the words that I never had use for until now.
“I’ve never been to visit Ian in his town, Dougie, you know that. Too busy with work and the bairns—and before you know it, my eldest will make me a grandfather. I can’t believe it.”
My brother doesn’t mean any harm—but the words cut hard. My nephew will have a son before I—
I didn’t really care if Nicola and I had a child, not when she said she wanted to wait a few years. If Georgia wasn’t keen on a family, I’d understand.
But the sudden wanting, the sudden empty aching in my gut scares me.
I want a chance for a family of my own. I want to clap my son on the back at his hunt and whisper words of fatherly wisdom. I want to dance with my wife at his wedding. I want to look at someone the same way Ian looks at Farrah, the way he’s always looked at Farrah.
Like he would kill for her.
Die for her.
Like she’s every precious thing.
Like she’s the one thing that makes him hard and bloodthirsty and tender all at once.
Fuck, something is wrong with me.
I never felt that way about Nicola. Never, ever.
“Doug? Something’s wrong with your mobile. Or the signal’s bad. Are ye in one of those blasted subways?”
“I’m... I’m worrying about nothing. I need you to give me a swift boot in the hole and tell me I’m havering,” I command.
“Wheesht, man, what is it?”
“Nothing. Like I said, I’m havering. That’s all. But... I’m here. Watching Georgie get married. Seeing him and his bride—lovely woman. Claire.” I swallow and try not to remember the snatches I’ve seen, stolen moments when Georgie backed her into a tree at the hunt before all the women went inside. The way she wound her fingers through his braid like she owned every piece of him—the way he dug his hands into her hips...
“Missing Nicola?” Finlay asks gently.
“No!” The word bursts out harder than I intended. “No. That’s just it, Fin. I remember being happy to get married, but I was just pleased to cross it off my list. She was beautiful and good to me. Good for me.” I swallow. “I don’t think I loved her, Finlay.”
There’s a long silence on the phone. I’m ashamed. My brother is likely ashamed. I can feel generations of Wickstaffs scolding from the immortal coil.
“I knew that, Dougie. Are you... Are you just now realizing it?”
Oh, decorum be damned. It’s New York City. If they haven’t seen anything worse than a man with tusks and a kilt raging long distance at his brother, they’re not fit to live here.
I slam out of the door at the first-floor exit, still moving at top speed, but now I’m shouting. Let people look. They won’t cross my path if they’re smart. “What the fuck d’you mean, you knew that? When? How? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I thought you’d know if anyone did! I thought you liked Nicola enough, but it was plain she wasn’t a mate in every sense of the word. Lots of people in the olden days married for reasons other than love.”
“It was the 2000s, you eedjit!”
“You said you were ready to be married! You made it sound like you and Nicola had it all sorted out, that you both knew it was the right time, the right person. No one ever mentioned love.”
“No one ever mentioned...” I have to lean on the building as I curse and pant in the alleyway. No one ever mentioned love? Did they have to? Is that a thing you have to mention?
I just assumed that was what it was, when you found the person you wanted to be with. That you needed to have to move on with your life.
“What’s wrong?”
“You have to ask?” I hiss.
“I mean that in the eleven years of you being a widower, I’ve never heard you say two words about love or marriage. You looked utterly heartbroken when Nicola passed. I thought maybe you two had grown into love.” Finlay’s voice is careful. “You weren’t married that long, but you always seemed happy when we talked.”
“I was! I was,” I say more softly. “I was happy to have a wife. I thought in a few years we’d have children. I thought she’d be happier—oh, hell, Fin. I thought a lot of things, but I didn’t know much. Now I’m afraid I understand things.” And my timing is all wrong. As usual.
“What’s so bad about understanding? Life is for the living. You’re not meant to sit around for the next sixty years without a thought in your head.”
Speaking of a head without thoughts—I wonder if my brother has always been this obtuse or if I’m the one who makes things so muddled and hard to understand. “I think I understand what love feels like. But I’m not able to pursue the woman I’m interested in.”
“Why not?”
I look at the sky. In the shadow of skyscrapers, it’s a thin line of sooty blue, and it matches my overcast mood. “She’s off-limits,” I whisper.
Not because she’s taken. Not because she hates me. Not even because of the difference in our ages.
Because I’m the one interested—and it’s plain to me that I’d be a horrible husband. I never even realized I wasn’t in love with the woman I married until eleven years after she’d passed. Because I didn’t grow in love or inspire her to it.
“Dougie?”
There’s a long breath—mine—and then words spill out, clattering into the middle of a crowded, dirty, anonymous city. “Nicola never told me she was unhappy. She just kept telling me she was going off for the day, that she’d be back late. That she was going on longer hikes and swims. Said she was finding herself in nature. When I asked if she wanted me to come with her, she let me a few times, but then she said she was happiest when she was alone, just her and the empty places in the world.” My words are harsh and hard. It’s easier not to break down when you sound angry. “I should have told her not to swim alone. Not to go out in the lake alone...”
“We’re Orcs. We always go into the wilds on our own. Nicola was no exception. She’d been hunting and swimming alone for ages before she met you” Finlay soothes. “What’s—”
“Everyone knows she drowned, Fin. No one knows that she left our bed in the middle of the night and went into the lake, even though it was storming, even though it was pitch black... That cold, black water in the middle of a storm was more welcoming than me! Even though I’d sworn to love and protect her all of my days. I know it was an accident... But I’ve always felt like she chose her death over me. For fuck’s sake, Finlay! What kind of a husband was I if she’d choose to go drown her sorrows alone in the dark—and then just drown? Just... drown.” I punch the wall and watch cracks spiderweb in the concrete.
“Douglas. You can’t blame yourself for the fact that she didn’t tell ye her troubles.”
“She was my wife! Wasn’t she supposed to? Wasn’t I supposed to have known?”
There’s silence.
I spare my brother the answer. He and his wife can say whole speeches in one swift look. Ian and Farrah are the same. Georgie and Claire. Everyone but me.
“She needed my help, and I couldn’t help her.”
“Not for one moment can you think Nicola meant to drown, laddie. She had a fighting spirit. Swimming alone at night wasn’t defeat, it was defiance.”
“It was damn silly. She didn’t want me. Couldn’t help her. Couldn’t understand her. Must’ve been something horrible as a husband if she wouldn’t even talk to me... Or maybe she did, and I missed it. I probably missed it.” Another punch. My knuckles hurt but don’t bleed. It feels good to finally let out the words that I let torture me every night when I go to bed alone, every time there’s a storm, every time I see a lake or river, or even the sea.
“You are blaming yourself for something that was an accident. You’d only been married two years—lots of couples take longer to learn each other than that. I know you’re comparin’ yourself to other couples, and you shouldn’t. You’re looking at how they are after decades of marriage, not months.”
“Fine, fine. But usually it’s faster. There’s a connection, at least. Something that resonates between you. Something instant.” Like the strange pull I feel toward Georgia.
That careful, placating tone is back. “Aye, but only if it’s the right one. You said it yourself—that wasn’t you and Nicola. Don’t put off a second shot at love, Dougie, especially if you feel something stirring, something that you never felt with Nicola.”
I worry my thumb against one tusk, a nervous habit that I usually save for annual reviews and certification exams. Even if I never felt a pull with Nicola, I was still her husband. We slept in the same bed. She was my first, and I was hers. We talked about setting up a nursery in the second bedroom in a year or two and if we would go to Spain on holiday that summer.
And I still couldn’t read her.
Pull or not, I think Georgia needs someone better. Someone safer. Someone not as thick as two planks who only knows how to be a good husband after his wife is gone.
“You’re beatin’ yourself up. I can feel it all the way across the Atlantic, you wee scunner.”
I have to smile at that. I’m easily as tall as Finlay, but my big brother can get away with calling me that. “Please don’t tell anyone else that it was my fault, Fin.”
“It wasn’t your fault!”
“My heart says otherwise.”
“Jesus preserve us, what are you after, a role in one of them women’s television programs? The tortured soul in a kilt?”
My smile stays, listing to the side as I let out a long sigh. “If it fits. I have to go. Meetings.”
“I’ll let you go, then. Try to cheer up and not take all the blame. You’re living. You have a second chance to get it right.”
“I don’t—”
“I know, I know, you're not worthy or whatever nonsense ye’ve convinced yourself of. At least keep the Wickstaff clan honor intact and don’t go to the Fenclan wedding with a face like a smacked arse.”
A shout of laughter rips out of my chest. Painful. I haven’t laughed much since Nicola died—although I laughed a bit last night at the hunt. A tiny bit of me wonders if I am getting better.
I squash it down. Better is fine, but it’s not enough to convince me it’s safe to fall in love again—or for the first time.
“D’ye hear me, Douglas?”
I nod, steeling myself for some invisible battle. “I’ll do my best.”