Chapter 42
Seamus stared agog at Asherton.
“Da,” Magdala said tentatively. “Can we please come inside?”
“You may,” Seamus said. “But that skat cannot!”
“Da,” Magdala warned. “I’ve been nearly blown to pieces, shot at, almost drowned. I don’t have time for your petty prejudices. Let us in, or I’ll force my way into the house and lock you out in the yard.”
Seamus was so dumbstruck, Magdala was able to push past him and hold the door for Asherton and Zephyr.
“Sorry,” Asherton said as he slipped past Seamus, trying to take up as little space as possible. Seamus stared at him like he was a possum or a troublesome raccoon who’d wandered into his house.
Fearful someone might peer in the window and spot them, Magdala shut the curtains and then pulled her father inside and locked the door. He stood in the cluttered living room, his shoulders stooped, gazing at Asherton in speechless horror.
Asherton leaned against the wall apologetically, his clothes dripping puddles on the floor.
“Why …” Seamus raised a shaking finger toward Asherton. “Why would you bring him here?”
Magdala decided that the direct approach was the best approach. “Da,” she said. “I’m Asherton’s bodyguard. Huxley is after us, and he’s trying to kill us, and we need somewhere to stay.”
“Of course Huxley’s trying to kill him!” Seamus exclaimed. “Did you hear what he’s planning to do? He’s going to embroil us in a pointless war!”
“No, Huxley is trying to kill us,” Magdala said. “Me as well.”
Seamus swallowed. “He wouldn’t do that.”
She gestured to the gash in her cheek.
A shadow passed over Seamus’ face. “No, no, this … this goes against my principles, my conscience, everything I believe and stand for … I cannot have that man in this house.”
Then his eyes traveled to Zephyr, and his face washed ghost-white. “No,” he whispered. “Not you.”
Zephyr looked just as stricken. “This is your father? You are Seamus Slorus’ daughter?”
“Do you know one another?” Magdala asked.
“We cannot stay here with this man,” Zephyr said, turning back toward the door, but Asherton bent over, coughing violently, and Magdala’s patience ran out.
“Zeph, you will stay in this house with him until I return.” She grabbed her father’s arm and pulled him toward the door. When he resisted, she said firmly, “I want to speak with you alone.”
Jaw set, shoulders like marble, Seamus followed her out into the dark yard.
She sensed his anger like an open oven, hot against the back of her neck.
Once they were tucked in the shadow beside the house, she spun on him and said, “Nothing you can say to me will change my mind. I am that man’s bodyguard, and so I will guard him. ”
Magdala couldn’t read her father’s face. He gazed at her, impassive, and where she thought she would greet a furious tirade, she met stony silence. The silence was worse.
But she knew exactly how to make him speak.
“And what’s more, I love him.”
Her father reeled back like she’d struck him. “Do not say such things!”
Magdala lifted her chin. “I will say whatever I like and you will listen.”
“He is living in your house!” he cried, advancing on her. She didn’t give an inch of ground, and he was forced to back up or shout directly into her face. He chose to back up. “He stole our title and our lands!”
“His father stole them. Did you expect him to give you the house back on principle? He was a child!"
“He is not a child now!”
“And neither am I! And I am coming here, to my home, to my father, asking you which is more important to you: your house or your only daughter?”
Seamus ground his teeth. “Oh, this is very disappointing. I did not raise you to …”
“YOU DID NOT RAISE ME AT ALL!” Magdala roared.
“My mother raised me, when I was allowed to be with her, before you stole me. And when I grew older, the stone yards raised me. Then, the royal guard. And all the while, I propped you up, put food on your table, and made bread for your soft-headed friends!”
“You ungrateful …”
“Enough.” Magdala swept her arm between them, and it felt as though she’d severed something that had long held them together. “If you will not shelter us, you may spend the night bound and gagged in the barn.”
“I will shelter you,” Seamus said, his voice trembling. “But not him.”
“Where he goes, I go, and so the reverse.”
“I don’t mean the king, I mean that mad water creature you brought with him.”
“Zephyr is harmless unless you anger him.”
“And have you seen him angered?”
“Zephyr stays with us.”
“And I suppose you want me to give the king something to ease his coughing? To set his broken arm?”
“Are you telling me that you will not?”
He looked away, his lips quivering.
“I want to respect you,” Magdala said. “But I’m too old to do it just because you’re my father. I’m grown now, and you must give me a reason.”
His eyes snapped back to her and his lips parted. He wilted and looked very old. “Magdala …”
“What?” She leaned against the wall. “What? You expect me to be proud of you? To join you? I bring a man here who is injured, in need of shelter and care, and tell you that I love this man, and you treat me as though I brought you some diseased animal. I should not have to tell you that Asherton saved my life tonight. That he is ill because, when Huxley offered him the opportunity to save himself and sacrifice me, he would not take it. I should not have to tell you that because it should not matter.”
“I will not let you manipulate me.”
“Then let me be clear—shelter us, or never see me again.”
Seamus’s jaw worked, and he glanced around the dark yard, toward the road. Asherton was coughing again, loud enough now that they could hear him through the closed door. Magdala’s anxiety rose and she turned reflexively, wanting to go to him.
Her father caught her arm. “He saved you?”
“Yes.”
“From what?”
“Death, da,” she said, earnest. “From drowning.”
Zephyr rounded the corner, his cheeks flushed. “Magdala, come.”
Leaving her father, Magdala hurried into the cottage. When she saw Asherton on the floor, leaning against the wall with his broken arm held tight against his stomach, she bit back a sob.
He was breathing heavily, shivering, his cheeks pink and his eyes glassy.
She slid to her knees before him.
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just tired.”
Magdala laid her hand on his forehead. He was oven-hot. She looked up at Zephyr, who was anxiously chewing his nails.
Magdala knew a little about field dressing wounds from training with the royal guard, but this was beyond her skills. She was not accustomed to helplessness, but in the past day and night, it had been ever the dark companion at her elbow, whispering cruelly in her ear, “You are not enough for him.”
“We need to give him something to ease his lungs,” she said. It was so painfully obvious, she winced. “And set his arm. The fever could stem from the break.”
“Is that typical of broken bones?” Zephyr asked. He hovered over her like a hummingbird.
“Yes.” This was Seamus. He had entered quietly and stood in the drawing room with his hands in his trouser pockets. He sighed, defeated. “Take him to my room; he won’t manage the stairs.”
With unrealistic optimism, Magdala asked, “Can you get him something for his lungs and the swelling in his arm?”
But Seamus shook his head. “I will not throw you out, but I will not help you either.”
Deciding that this was better than nothing, Magdala helped Asherton to his feet and led him into Seamus’s room.