Chapter Twenty-Six
After dressing the next morning, I arrange my threadkit and then step into the hallway, intending to search Conrad’s study before breakfast while everyone is occupied downstairs. The laird did not return home yesterday, and I can only guess he spent the night in Elfhame.
But I make it not five steps down the corridor before I hear a shout from Sylvie in the foyer. “Connie! You’re back!”
Biting back a curse, I toss my threadkit back into my room.
When I step out again, I see Sylvie dragging her brother down the hallway, showing him our cleaning progress from the day before.
He stops short when he sees me, his face grim.
My eyes search his hair and clothing for souvenirs of Elfhame—cobwebs or glittering bits of crystal—but if he did spend the night in Morgaine’s realm, he has brushed away all signs.
He’s wearing a rough tweed suit, and his hair is damp from the outside, his long, thick curls shining not with faerie magic, but with earthy dew.
Sylvie, still holding tight to his hand, glances between us curiously.
“Miss Pryor.” He inclines his head in a formal nod, but his eyes pierce me from beneath his dark lashes.
“Mr. North.”
“You’re still here.” There is nothing in his tone—no accusation, no inquiry, no disappointment. It is as if he doesn’t yet know how to feel about my presence, so he can only state a blank fact.
“So I am,” I reply. “It was raining yesterday, after all.”
We hold gazes a moment longer, and my heart quickens a pace.
This is the first I’ve seen him since Lachlan confessed his true plans, and I cannot help but see Conrad in a different light.
Oh, I’m still indignant over him interrogating me with a truth knot, and I still absolutely condemn his withholding Sylvie’s magic from her.
But I understand him a little better now, and know that he is not, perhaps, quite the villain I first cast him as.
If anything, I am more the villain in his story than he is in mine.
“Oh, Connie, come on!” Sylvie urges, pulling him away.
I trail behind the Norths as they stroll through the hallways. Conrad walks with one hand in Sylvie’s, his air distracted. He keeps glancing at me, as if to be sure I am there.
“And that,” Sylvie declares, “is where I killed forty spiders at once with a smack of my broom.”
“Forty!”
“And here,” Sylvie says breathlessly, “is our da.”
We stand before the great portrait in silence.
Conrad’s eyes soften. A curious expression passes over his face—sadness, regret, a little anger.
“I’d almost forgotten,” he murmurs. “The way he would scowl with his lips but laugh with his eyes.”
He raises a hand to touch the portrait’s frame, then pulls it back, his gaze falling upon the portrait of his mother I found and set out. He blinks, as if he doesn’t recognize her at first. Then his lips pull to the side, in either wry smile or grimace, I cannot tell.
“Fates be,” he says. “I thought this painting was lost years ago.”
He picks it up, the entire frame small enough to fit in his palm.
“She was beautiful,” I say.
“Aye. She was.” He seems held in a trance. “I have no memories of her but her songs. Her face I cannot picture, save for this likeness. But her voice . . . she sang traveling songs, of the lands her people had walked before they swept through this one, leaves on the wind.”
I am not quite sure how to respond. He seems lost to himself, speaking as much to memory as to me. Sylvie glances at me, her eyes wide, seemingly as unsure what to say as I am.
“She was like a bird that soared into a fisherman’s net, my da used to say,” Conrad murmurs. “She tried to adapt to a life without wings.”
“No wild thing can long survive a cage,” I say softly, and he glances at me as if startled from his reverie.
“Aye,” he replies. He studies my face, and though I try, I cannot discern the emotion behind his dark gaze.
His sister narrows her eyes. “What are you two talking about? I can tell you’re hiding something, you know.”
Conrad clears his throat. “Sylvie. Go and fetch a block from the woodpile, and I’ll carve you another wolf.”
“But I want to show you—”
“Go, now.”
She huffs but skips away, her hair swinging.
Then Conrad turns to me.
I draw myself up, meeting his gaze squarely. But my heart feels untethered, knocking against my rib cage like a frantic pendulum. Lachlan’s words slither through my head.
To put you in the path of that lonesome young man was my grandest stroke of genius.
“Why are you still here?” Conrad asks. “I thought I was clear. I thought . . . after that night . . .”
“That I’d be so terrified out of my wits I’d have been halfway to London by now? I hardly thought you cared. After your interrogation, you vanished entirely.”
“I had business in Elfhame.”
“What, did you have more innocent maids to kiss for your queen’s amusement?”
His lips curl at one corner. “Would you be jealous if I had?”
I scoff, hoping he can’t see the blush that heats my ears.
His expression turns grim. “I cannot guarantee your safety here once she realizes I lied about us.”
“Why must you serve her? What hold does she have on your line?” Lachlan and Morgaine had both made it sound as if the position of Elfhame’s Gatekeeper were a hereditary one, passed through the North generations like a bad heirloom. But why? Did Conrad have any choice in the matter?
He shakes his head. “I only stopped by the house to eat, and now I must go out again and see how the south planting is proceeding. I do have an estate to run, ye ken.”
I’m torn for a moment; him leaving will give me the opportunity to search his study. But the chance to glean more information from him is enticing too. If he were to let slip some secret, perhaps how he learned to Weave the portal spell, it could be as useful as finding the pattern itself.
“I’ll come with you,” I say at last. “We can talk as we ride.”
He gives me a doubtful look. “Last time, you rode as if you’d never even seen a horse before.”
“But I have ridden one, now, haven’t I?”
“I wouldn’t call what you did—”
“Will you lend me a horse, or shall I be forced to run alongside you? Because this conversation is far from over. It’s no use putting me off, sir. My seventh fault is stubbornness, you know.”
He groans. “Don’t be absurd. You can’t ride dressed like that anyway. All those skirts and skirts under your skirts—you won’t fit in the saddle.”
“I’m sure you can scrounge something up for me. Besides, we’re supposed to be getting married, are we not? What if Morgaine is watching? Shouldn’t we let her see how blissfully inseparable we are?”
His lips thin; he looks ready to argue it further. I put a hand on his arm, feeling his skin contract at my touch.
“After that night,” I say softly, “you owe me an explanation.”
“After that night,” he returns, “you owe me your life.”
I only stare at him until he relents, his hands tossing in the air. “Ach, all right! But I won’t hear a single complaint about sore legs or the damp, because I’ve got a great deal of ground to cover, and I won’t be slowed down.”
Muttering about the stubbornness of city lasses, he stalks off to recruit Sylvie’s help, then goes to ready our horses. She is more than glad to hunt through the wardrobes of Ravensgate, assembling a riding kit for me.
She pulls out clothes from various drawers and armoires—riding skirts and gloves and a straw hat with a gray ribbon around the brim.
When she’s done, I have to admit Sylvie has more than one way of working magic.
I regard the stranger in my mirror, a well-dressed, if slightly out-of-date young woman ready for a day of upper-class sport.
Washleather trousers beneath a voluminous charcoal skirt and matching habit, the straw hat, chamois gloves, and gleaming boots that, though a bit big, look as if they’ve never been worn, and even a little pocket tucked in the bodice of the habit, where a skein of thread might be kept and quickly accessed.
Whatever North woman wore this dress last was a Weaver too.
I tuck a bit of waxed white thread into the pocket.
We walk down the hall, toward the stairs, and Sylvie slips her hand into mine.
“Are you in love with Connie?” she asks.
I blink, startled. “What?”
“You’re going riding with him. And you two always seem to be whispering.”
“Sylvie . . . I am only a guest for a short time. I must soon leave, you know.”
“You can’t leave us,” she says, dragging me to a stop and planting her small frame in front of me. “Don’t you see you make us better?”
“Better?”
“You gave me magic, and you make Connie laugh. Anyway, I know he’s in love with you.”
My stomach lurches; it’s as though I can hear Lachlan’s insidious laughter in the back of my mind. “You—you do?”
“Oh, aye. He’s played his pipes more in the past week than in the last year altogether.” She smiles with satisfaction. “He’s just busting with feelings. What other explanation could there be?”
“I—I’d better go on out there,” I say, rattled. “Before he rides off without me. Sylvie, don’t talk of this again. Please. I’m not . . . I’m not what you think I am, all right? And I cannot be what you wish me to be.”
I rush past her before she can say another word, pressing a hand to my twisting belly.
In the drive, Conrad holds the reins of two horses, Bell and a white gelding with a proud head. He’s beautiful, more sculpture than horse, with a white mane and a tail raised like a banner, his gleaming coat specked with gray flecks.