FIFTY-TWO #2
Ranalt’s knuckles whitened on the door, but he stepped aside and swung the door wider, directing them into a room to the left of the entry hall.
The walls were adorned with paintings, many of them coastal landscapes, the views interrupted by sconces shaped like ivy.
A tea service lay on a spindle-legged table next to Aly, and she pocketed some silver spoons and the sugar tongs while Torcall’s back was turned.
Ranalt entered, and Aly whirled round, a hand still in her pocket, but all Ranalt said was, “He’ll be with you shortly.”
Torcall returned his attention to the bookcase next to the mantel, and Aly swiped a marble ornament of a seal basking on a rock. Torcall’s grandfather seemed to have a thing for seals.
And the man was clearly wealthy, from the plush carpet and the gilt mirror over the mantel, not to mention that he had a butler, so she had no qualms about relieving him of a few trinkets if the money would help her find her way home.
Her focus slid to the mirror on the wall next to the door, her stomach clenching when she realised it wasn’t a mirror, but a portrait.
A portrait of someone who looked so like her that even Aly had thought it her own reflection at first. But now, looking closer, she saw that the portrait’s eyes, though the same shape as her own, were green, not blue, and her russet hair held more brown and less gold than Aly’s own.
Why did Torcall’s grandfather have a portrait of a woman who so resembled Aly? There was something he wasn’t saying, something that had to do with why he’d told Grant she was different.
The door swung open, cutting off Aly’s musing. A fae with the same cool brown hair and eyes as Torcall entered, his features so similar to Torcall’s they could be brothers.
“What do you want now?” the newcomer asked. He didn’t even glance in Aly’s direction.
“I’ve brought someone I’d like you to meet.” Torcall gestured to Aly. “Grandfather, this is Aly. Aly, this is my grandfather, the Marquess of Dachlan.”
Dachlan rolled his eyes, still not bothering to look at Aly. “And why should I care?”
“I encountered Aly in the mortal world, and I believe her to be a member of this house.”
Aly’s gaze snapped to Torcall, so fast it made her head spin.
This was her family? She opened her mouth to protest, to say she couldn’t have more than a fraction of fae blood, not with how long her father had lived in Mossburgh, and that she was at best so distantly related to these people as to make their connection inconsequential, but before she could say any of it Dachlan spoke.
“Impossible. None of us would”—he paused, his lip curling as he sought an appropriate term—“breed with a human.”
“I can feel it,” Torcall pressed.
“Ah yes, this ‘instinct’ of yours.” Dachlan’s expression told Aly very well what he thought of Torcall’s stated ability. “You’re a selkie, boy, not a homing pigeon.”
“Look at her.” Torcall threw a hand out towards Aly. “She looks just like Grandmother.”
Aly’s insides squirmed. Fae magic was strange and wild, but the idea that she was almost identical to a distant relation lifted the hair on the back of her neck. And the notion that she stood in the room with another relation, one whose disdain for mortals was clear, sent a shudder through her.
“Do not mention your grandmother to me,” Dachlan snapped.
Aly watched them through the corner of her eye, sliding a bronze candlestick into her pocket—whether to pawn it or to use it as a weapon, she wasn’t sure. She edged closer to the door.
“And put that candlestick back, child, or I’ll take your hand with it.”
Aly put the candlestick back on the table with a thud.
“I could just go home,” she said. Her voice was thin and not nearly as confident as she’d hoped.
Torcall shook his head. “No.” He turned to Dachlan. “Grandfather, please. I’m certain she’s one of us.”
Dachlan folded his arms. “Fine. If you’re so certain, you may call on each of your uncles and cousins in turn and ask them if they laid with a mortal, and don’t complain to me if any of them throw you out on your arse.”
Torcall turned and swept out without saying goodbye, leaving Aly alone with her possible relation. Dachlan’s gaze bored into her. “Where did you get that coat?”
Aly’s spine straightened under his scrutiny. “My father left it behind when he walked out on my mother and me.”
“Can you describe this father to me?”
“Same hair as me, but a little curlier. Much taller, too. He had blue eyes, as well, but paler than mine.” Her mother had always said she’d got her looks from her father, and only the colour of her eyes and height from her mother.
And from the portrait on the wall, her mother had been more correct than either of them realised.
“That could be Tearlach,” Dachlan murmured.
He opened the door, disappearing through it without a further word to Aly.
She crossed to the windows. Darkness had fallen while she was there, and the garden was filled with tiny flickering lights—no, tiny pixies, chittering away on the far side of the glass.
She could disappear into the darkness. She’d done as much before. But curiosity and heartbreak rooted her to the spot. If her father was here, truly here, she wanted to see him.
She wanted to ask him why he’d left.
The door swung open, the blood rushing from Aly’s head and leaving her weak and dizzy as she took in the face, unaged since she’d last seen him, of the man who had tended her scraped knees and consoled her when her gran died.
But the man who stood before her was a stranger, too, a man who had left with no word and who now looked at her with no recognition on his features.
“Dad?” she croaked.
Sunlight slanted through the open shutters, patterning the blankets of Calum’s bed. He pushed himself up on the pillows, the movement sending agony shooting through his right leg. He let out a gasp of pain and lifted the covers. Smooth linen bandages covered his wound.
Sorcha leapt up from the chair next to his bed, her clothes rumpled and her hair falling out of its crown plait. “The doctor said to apply the tonic and change the bandages twice a day for the next week, and it should heal fine.” She nodded her head at the amber bottle on the bedside table.