Chapter 12 #3
Lady Blackfen stepped over Braccus with a nimbleness that defied her years and crossed to the bed, where she lowered herself beside Verity with a creak of aging joints. She reached out and patted Verity’s hand with a touch that was unexpectedly tender.
“Welcome to the family, my dear.”
“I …” Verity swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “My lady, I am merely the paid companion. I do not?—”
“Not for long.” Lady Blackfen’s smile deepened, carving lines of amusement into the weathered landscape of her face.
Her eyes sparkled with a knowing light that bordered on mischief.
“The hounds have recognized that there is a new mistress at the castle. They do not bestow their loyalty lightly, and they do not err.” She glanced at Ronan, who had raised his head to observe the conversation with sleepy interest. “Even that skittish young fellow knows it. Their instincts are older and wiser than anything your rational mind might offer in contradiction.”
Verity’s protest died upon her lips. She recalled the ease with which the hounds had surrounded her in the snow, the way they had fallen into formation as if she had always been the one they guarded.
Something had shifted between them tonight, as though a barrier had dissolved, and she could not pretend otherwise.
Lady Blackfen’s gaze grew distant, and a wistful quality softened the sharpness of her features.
“I look forward to meeting the heir that you will bear,” she said, as casually as if she were remarking upon the weather.
“It has been too long since this house heard the sound of a child’s laughter. The nursery has grown cold.”
“My lady?—”
“Oh, do not blush so furiously, my dear. These things are perfectly natural.” The dowager’s expression turned dreamy, and she gazed toward the window where the moonlight spilled across the floor in silver pools.
“You know, there is a clearing beyond the south wood where the bluebells grow so thick in spring that the ground appears to have been draped in velvet. The late earl and I spent many a fine evening there in our younger days.” A soft, reminiscent laugh escaped her.
“A mistress and her mate can get up to rather a lot of mischief on the grounds of Blackfen, if they are so inclined. The gamekeeper learned to announce his approach with considerable noise.”
Verity felt the heat rise in her cheeks despite herself. Lady Blackfen seemed entirely untroubled by the intimacy of her recollection, her eyes bright with a fondness that time had not diminished.
“The moonlight is particularly fine near the lake,” she added, with an air of offering practical advice. “I recommend it.”
“My lady, I hardly think?—”
“Thinking is rather overvalued in matters of the heart.” Lady Blackfen patted her hand once more, then rose from the bed with a briskness that suggested the conversation had reached its natural conclusion.
She paused at the door to look back, and her expression held a warmth that Verity had not seen before.
“He believes he would face this curse alone, my dear. It took the right woman to make that assertion impossible to keep.”
With that, she stepped over Braccus once more and disappeared into the corridor, the sound of her slippers fading into the quiet of the sleeping house. Verity heard the faint echo of an amused laugh, rich and surprisingly young, before silence reclaimed the hall.
She sat for some moments in the stillness, her hand resting upon the coverlet where Lady Blackfen’s touch still lingered.
The dowager’s words circled through her mind, settling into corners she had not known were empty until they were filled.
Then she rose and changed into her nightgown with the mechanical efficiency of a woman whose body operated independently of her whirling thoughts.
She washed the snow and dirt from her hands and face, unpinned what remained of her coiffure, and braided her hair with fingers that had finally ceased their trembling.
When she crawled beneath the covers, Ronan shifted to accommodate her, pressing his warm weight against her feet. Braccus huffed from the doorway, and Eirin’s silhouette remained steady against the window, a faithful guardian painted in moonlight and shadow.
Verity lay upon her back and stared at the canopy above, where the play of light created patterns that shifted and merged like the thoughts within her overtaxed mind.
She was certain she would not sleep. There was too much to consider.
There were too many revelations, too many implications, too many questions that demanded answers she did not yet possess.
She would lie awake and plan. She would compose what she wished to say to Lucien when he returned. She would marshal her courage and her reason and she would?—
Sleep claimed her between one breath and the next, swift and total, pulling her down into a darkness that was warm and dreamless and kind.
The moonlight moved across the floor in its slow celestial arc, the wolfhounds kept their watch, and Verity slept with the deep, surrendered abandon of a woman who had, at last, come home.