Chapter 14
Fourteen
The dish of milk was empty.
Every morning when I awoke, I found that to be true.
Thomas kept me awake at night, distracting me from my housekeeping, plying me with kisses and wandering hands.
Never did I have a chance to sweep away the cobwebs behind the kist in the corner, or to clean up the pottage when it had boiled over on the hearth.
Yet in the morn when we woke, all was clean.
Thomas thought me a miracle worker and kissed me on the side of my cheek.
I alone knew I was not responsible. A brownie must be in this house.
I felt them there, their presence buzzing like a bee against my skin. And they must sense me, whether they recognized me or no, for fae does call to fae.
Then why did the brownie not show itself?
I was starved for fae company. The weight of things I must yet hide from Thomas fell heavily upon me, the questions I had about who I truly was, until it might break me in two.
I longed for someone I could confide in, and resolved, when the opportunity presented itself, to see this brownie with my own eyes.
If it was then offended and wished never to speak with me again, so be it. At least I had tried.
My chance came one evening when Thomas’s leg was acting up, and he had difficulty falling asleep.
In general, his leg was healing well, and I took a great pride in that, but the weather had taken a strange turn this day, the air growing thick and moist and gradually erupting into rain.
I did think Thomas might be sensitive to such changes from now on, thanks to his injury, and it secretly pleased me.
He would be attuned to the natural elements just like a fae.
For now, he needed a stronger medicine than usual. I prepared for him a special valerian elixir before bed, putting my faith in the teachings of Mairi Grieve. ’Twould not harm him if I had brewed it properly, only send him into a long and restful sleep.
But Thomas slept like the dead. His face seemed unnaturally pale, and his arms lay folded across his chest, as if he were in his tomb. I was reminded of those days I watched the body of Mairi Grieve, and my heart did a double beat. I gave him too much.
I plopped down on the bed so quickly it bounced, and Thomas, living, breathing, healthy Thomas moaned in his sleep.
What had I been thinking? His color was good; the pallor I had seen must have been all in my head.
I should have trusted my instincts, and the training Mairi had given me.
All the same, I reached out to touch his cheek, let my fingertips brush across the stubble, needing to touch his warm skin.
Do not frighten me like that, my shepherd king.
You will take part of me with you when you go.
Then I froze, for a familiar scuttling sound came from the corners of the cottage.
Cullen the dog began to growl, low and deep in the back of his throat, as he stared intently at the corner of the room.
I stood and restrained him with a gentle hand on his collar. “Easy, lad. Your master slumbers yet.” And I ushered him out into the yard, returning to peer into the corner myself.
A tiny, brown creature huddled there. Auberon knew what I’d do if it proved to be a rat.
She came out of the shadows, standing upright in the center of the room. “Took you long enough,” said Morven.
Had we been humans, I would have embraced her. I did reach my arms out, thought better of it, and let them fall to my sides. But I drank her in fully, from her thatch of ragged brown hair to her frowning face and tiny little feet. Such a gladsome sight she was.
“Oh, Morven,” I whispered. “I missed you so.” I dropped my chin, ashamed of the sentiment that had poured out of me, so very human it was.
“Humph,” said Morven, pulling her little stick broom out of her hair.
“And well you showed it, I must say. Did you make any attempt to tidy old Eamon Grieve’s house before ye left?
It was in a right state.” She leapt up onto the table, brushing off the crumbs with her little broom.
“Well, ye’re better off out of that wretched place—though your young man isna such a tidy one either, is he? ”
My young man. Warmth kindled in my breast. I didn’t have a family anymore, but I did have Thomas.
And Morven. Foul-spirited brownie, again, I have you.
“Mortal-lover,” Morven snorted, but there was something almost affectionate in the way she said it. Like she was glad to be back with me, too.
I ought to have defended the shepherd better, I suppose. But his cottage had an untidiness despite how small and bare it was: the house of a man who never slept at home. At least, he never had until I came along. It was not in me to worry about the women who came before.
Not so long as Thomas remembered he was mine.
“He is in need of a good brownie,” I said, to distract from the color now warming my cheeks. “That was why you came, then? Because of how untidy he is?”
Morven shook her head. “Well, and I am not here to be his brownie, remember. I belong to Mairi’s household, as did yerself, once. And if ever your shepherd sees me or tries to leave me some piece of clothing, then out I go. Them’s the brownie rules.” She’d oft repeated them to me.
I cocked my head. “You came for me, then? Though I am not Mairi’s true daughter.”
“In spirit, ye are closer to it than any of those ingrates she raised. While she were alive, I might clean their house, but now she’s gone, it’s you I mean to look after. She would have wanted it that way.”
But the way Morven emphasized the word “She,” I was not certain it was Mairi she meant.
I pressed my lips together, uncertain whether I dared ask the question that occurred to me then. But it spilled out of me, all but unbidden. “Did she—Was she—Did Mairi Grieve serve as midwife to the Faery Queen?”
Morven did not answer but applied herself with greater industriousness to her cleaning.
Presently she crouched down before the hearth, her rump sagging behind her.
She poked around in the soot and ashes, finally pulling out something flat and cream-colored, save where it was stained with soot or ink.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Summat yer man did try to burn, seems like.” With a great many creaks and groans, at least half of them feigned, she straightened and shook the ashes off. “Can ye read it?”
I took the parchment from her, shaking my head. “Correspondence of some sort?” I guessed, then frowned. “But why should he burn it?”
I stared at Thomas, whose sleeping form gave me no answers. When at last I crawled into bed beside him, it was a troubled sleep I had.
I worried about the secrets I kept from the shepherd. It never occurred to me he might keep secrets from me.