Chapter 12 Friends #2
“Everything I used to have, that used to be mine, wasn’t really mine.
It belonged to the Marquess of Fordham. When I was the marquess, it was mine.
When I stopped being him, it wasn’t. But really, even before…
” Before he’d lost everything. “It wasn’t mine.
I was merely… safeguarding it for the Marquesses of Fordham who would come after me.
Not my worry any longer.” He may have drank a quarter of the bottle in one go.
He handed it over. “Do you know that, wherever you go the sky looks the same—sun and light and clouds, dark and moon and stars. But the plants, ah, they change. There are plants in China we don’t have here and in Spain and—”
“Have you been to those places?”
He nodded. “My grand tour started in France then quite took on a life and trajectory of its own. I wandered about the entire continent. And into other continents.”
“Really!” She took a contemplative sip of the wine. “Is that how you know about aloe?”
“Yes.”
She patted his hand where it rested between them, halfway on top of her skirts. “And potions? Did you learn about them as you traveled, too?”
“I did.”
“You have that, then, don’t you?” She giggled. Giggled. And grabbed the wine, took a large drink.
“Giggling, Sybil? I think you’ve had enough.” He wrenched the bottle from her grasp. “And what are talking about? What do I have?”
“You know. You said you own nothing but your mother’s book. But you possess your own knowledge, your experiences. That’s something. That’s everything. You shouldn’t have tried to hurt Diana when you had so much and she had so little.”
Feeling very still, he downed another quarter of the bottle then wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “So little?”
“She had to run, left everything and everyone she knew because of you, feared for her life. She had magic, but… what use was it? She didn’t know how to use it, and it caused her only pain.”
“It got her a title.”
Sybil shrugged. “You traveled the world. You had comforts. Why did you do it? Why did you try to—”
“Kill her?”
She sat upright, flinched, and brushed his hands away as he tried to help her. With what he had no clue. Her hands fluttered between them. Her eyes glittered with drink. “You held a knife to my throat to get to her. You would have killed me, too.”
He felt feverish. The same way he had that night in the ballroom about a year ago. Why had he done it? Used Sybil as a pawn to get to Diana, threatened to kill his cousin, turned his back on his soul to grasp everything he was losing?
He held the bottle up to the light streaming through the window and watched the glass shift from light to dark and back again as he moved it in circles.
“My first memory is of looking at a map of England. On it were several stars. They marked various villages and houses. Estates, my father told me, that would one day belong to me. ‘They may not call you it yet,’ he said, ‘but you are Fordham. You are chosen.’” Whatever the hell that meant.
“The servants called me master, though I’d mastered nothing.
And my grandfather preferred me above everyone else, except perhaps Diana.
He called me Future Fordham, even though I possessed a courtesy title, and carried me around with him everywhere—to visit the tenants, to inspect the fields, to meet with the estate manager.
Everyone about me told me I was better, best. And I did nothing to earn it.
Didn’t think I had to. Why would I have?
” He tipped his face to the ceiling with a groan.
“God, I sound pitiful. Why am I telling you all this?”
“Because I’m injured, and you feel bad for me.” She stole the wine and wiggled her good foot.
“There’s that.”
She nudged his shoulder with hers. “So you thought you were a little god on earth and had a right to harm your cousin? And me.”
“Something like that. I… I don’t think I was in my right mind. I didn’t know about Diana at first. All I knew was that my grandfather had died. And his talent had not come to me. I waited and hoped and… when it didn’t happen, I felt so fucking empty.” Soulless.
She leaned against his shoulder, nestled her head there, hiccupped.
He laughed and eased them both back down against the headboard, rested his head against hers. The wine warmed. Not to boiling as he’d been before. This was a comfortable heat, one you linger in forever.
“I don’t remember the night I”—he swallowed, finding it hard to say the words—“held a knife to your throat.” There.
Best to get the words out. A reminder. To her.
To him. “Not much anyway. My head hurts thinking about it. I’d been using a potion that simulated glamours.
Badly. I’d been smoking opium. I’d been drinking from the moment I woke up until I didn’t remember anything.
Better not to remember I didn’t exist anymore. ”
“You did exist. I felt the blade.”
A black void inside him threatened to swallow him whole. Somehow he kept it back. “But…” How to explain it? “If you suddenly found out you were not Sybil Grant, that you were, in fact, Mary Sullivan instead, what would you do?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I’d find out who Mary Sullivan is, and if she’s very different from Sybil Grant.”
“Yes, well, you are intelligent.”
“Ah. I see. You found out you are Mary Sullivan.” She took a drink of the wine and handed the bottle over. “But Mary was a stranger to you.”
“Precisely. Only I did not think about finding out who Mary Sullivan is. I obsessed over bringing the Marquess of Fordham back, even though he didn’t exist anymore.
I want you to know”—but didn’t know why he wanted her to know—“I don’t blame the opium and potions.
Not really. Everything I did was my fault.
It’s why… after that night…” He closed his eyes.
He’d never told anyone this. Had hoped to go to the grave with no one else finding out. “I asked your brother to kill me.”
She inhaled, a soft little gasp as she tilted her face to him. Pale still, mostly, cheeks flushed warm from the wine. “He didn’t. Clearly.”
“A great difficulty for him. But apparently becoming a murderer didn’t suit him as well as it suited me.”
“I’m glad he refused.”
“Bah.” He crossed his arms and glared at the ceiling.
“I am! How would I have made it out of the dungeon if you’d been in the ground? I mean, in a graveyard. We were both in the ground at the moment, just—” She sighed. “I think I’m drunk.”
“That was the goal.” He placed the bottle on the floor by the bed. “You would have figured a way out of there on your own. Eventually.”
“Perhaps. I’m still glad you’re alive.”
And what did one say to that? So was he. But he wouldn’t have thought anyone else was. “I think I’m drunk, too.”
She squeezed his arm, digging the tip of her chin into his shoulder. “You’ve shrunk. Your shirt fits now.”
But he wasn’t shrinking everywhere. Not with her curled up beside him. Not with those hazy blue eyes blinking at him and her breasts pressed innocently against his arm.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I should leave.”
She caught his wrist. “Please don’t.”
He returned, stretched out on the mattress beside her, stared at the ceiling. His brain was buzzing. His body was eager. The wine had primed him for something that would never happen.
She laid down beside him, their bodies parallel, touching only lightly along the arms. “Thank you for helping me find a doctor today.”
He grunted. “I caused the injury.”
“That’s taking a lot of credit for an accident.
” After a pause, she said, “It was nice to have someone take care of me today. I’ll be sure to tell Temple you took extra good care of me.
” Another pause. Then: “I know that’s… that’s why you did it.
You don’t want my brother to kill you, so you carried me all the way to a doctor and—”
“That’s not why I did it.”
A rustle. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, but he felt her regarding him. “Why then?”
“Because… You’re…” Something squirmed inside him. “Oh, hell. I can’t say. I did it for you, I suppose. Because we’re… I mean, I suppose you could call us— Shit.”
“Friends?”
“That. Yes. That’s fine.”
“Apollo, will you kiss me?”
He held his breath, unable to look away from her upturned face.
The kiss at the gate had been experimental. A means to an end. Or the gate had been an excuse. He liked kissing, hadn’t done it much lately, and with all the wild wanderings of his mind Sybil-ward—he’d given in to curiosity.
The truth? He’d been boiling in the bathtub because of the kiss as much as anything. Because he’d not been able to shrug it off as he’d thought he would be able to. It had consumed him in an instant, and he’d given in to it so freely, reveled in the flames.
He sat up and slung his legs over the side of the bed, his feet hitting the floor with a cold thunk. This time, she let him go. He moved the potions closer to the bed, setting them on a small table, and he moved her notebook closer too, the one she’d been looking at when he came in.
The handwriting scribbled between sketches was familiar. He brought it closer.
“Give that back.” She reached for it.
He moved out of swiping distance. “Is this Stone’s handwriting? I recognize it.”
She was gnawing on her bottom lip, more worried about this than her foot, useless creature.
“Yes. I stole it. It’s why he stole me. Wanted me to figure it out because he could not.
” She preened then waved her arm at him.
“Give it back.” High red cheeks, slurred speech. She was done for. Charmingly so.
He studied the notes because he wanted to continue studying her. “What’s he going on about lead and gold for?”
He’d never seen a brow scrunch up so much before. “Lead? And…” When he gave her the notebook, she studied the page he’d been looking at. “I can’t read his scrawl a bit.”
“There.” He pointed. “Lead, and there, gold. See? Pb and Au? The alchemical symbols for lead and gold.”
“Alchemical symbols… I don’t know them.” She chewed on a fingernail. “Huh.”
“What is it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I don’t care you stole it.”
“Of course you don’t.” She was too busy studying the book to look at him.
She’d known he wouldn’t mind. And she’d still not told him. Of course she hadn’t. Why would she? They were playing at partners. Nothing more. When they’d gotten from one another what they each needed, whatever tethered them would dissolve.
He nudged the potion bottles closer. “For sleep. Drink it. This one for pain. Put it on the foot. This one’s for general healing. Do both or either. Doesn’t matter.” He made for the door. With his hand on the doorknob, he said, without turning around, “Call if you need me.”
“Good night, Apollo.” Her voice distracted.
She’d already moved on from that small request for a kiss. Good. Perfect. As it should be.
“Good night, Sybil.”
The hallway was dark and narrow, and his room cold and ruined. He stripped off his shirt and dunked it into the washbasin. He knelt by the now frigid bathtub and cleaned up Sybil’s blood.