by Mia Marlowe
“Them titled blokes think they own the world and can’t none of the rest of us get our fair share. But for all his blunt, the bloody Duke of Camden can’t keep us from helping ourselves to his silver.” Oswald narrowed his piggy eyes. “And he can’t keep Meggie from us neither. Once we gets her back, we’ll be swimmin’ in lard, see if we ain’t.”
“Even before then. After we sells this stuff, we’ll kit ourselves out like gentlemen,” Meg’s uncle said as he began stuffing the gleaming spoons, three-tined forks and ornate knives into a burlap bag. In his excitement, he failed to keep the clinking to a minimum. “No shank’s mare for us. Mark my words, it’ll be respectable coaching inns and a stage all the way. We’ll be making the trip to that castle in Wales in style, my boy.”
The trip to Wales? Somehow they’d discovered that the duke had sent her to Lord Badewyn, but she’d have to deal with that problem later. Now she wished she could do something to thwart their thievery, but in her disembodied state, she couldn’t speak to the people she saw or move objects in the places she visited. She’d give anything to be able to fling the silver at them and send them shrieking away, crying out that they’d seen a ghost.
She was about to give up and flit back to Samuel and their cozy chamber in the Welsh inn. It was beyond infuriating to watch her family make off with the Camden House silver without being able to do anything to stop it. Although her sense of the passage of time was weak while she was in this state, she was certain she’d stretched the limits of her body’s endurance. But before she could make her exit, Gaston LeGrand walked into the butler’s pantry. He bore a look of utter surprise…and a glass of water.
To study the stars is pure pleasure. They are restful, orderly and, from a distance, serene. Thanks to the Italian astronomer, Giordano Bruno, we know that up close they are boiling balls of fire like our sun. A woman likewise can seem restful, orderly, and serene…but only from a distance.
Oh, how I miss studying the stars.
~ from the journal of Samuel Templeton, Lord Badewyn
Chapter Fourteen
“Meg, what are you doing? Stop it.” Samuel sat in the rocker, clutching her limp body on his lap. He gave her a little shake, but she didn’t respond. There was no sign that she was breathing and when he pressed his palm on her breastbone, there were wrenchingly long pauses between the beats of her heart. It was as if she were in deep hibernation, like a dormouse waiting for spring. He brought one of her hands to his lips. Her nails had a definite bluish tinge. “You need more air.”
Samuel tipped back her head and covered her mouth with his. He filled her lungs with his breath, but she still didn’t revive. Rocking as he held her tighter, he whispered. “Come back to me, love.”
When she came back—if she came back—he promised himself he’d never let her hie off on this Finding business again.
Meg felt a fresh infusion of strength, as if she’d taken a deep cleansing breath. There was still a strong pull to return to her body, but she resisted it. LeGrand had stumbled upon Rowney and Oswald in the middle of their burglary. He was alone and in grave danger. She didn’t know what she could do to help him, but at least she would serve as a witness when it came time to report to His Grace what had happened at his London home.
And like it or not, she’d have to confess to using her gift without the duke’s permission.
“You there! What is the meaning of this chicanery?” LeGrand demanded, his French accent thicker than usual because he was clearly upset.
“I got no notion what ‘shit-canery’ means, but we mean to take the silver,” Rowney said almost pleasantly. “If you’d be a wise Frenchman, you’ll turn around and toddle back to your room. Leave us be about our business so’s you won’t get hurt. It’s not like the duke will miss it if we help ourselves. He can always buy more.”
“Whereas you only got one head and last I checked ain’t nobody selling more of those.” Oswald slapped the flat of his palm with the pry bar in a slow rhythm. “O’course, if you want to make trouble, ain’t no skin off my nose. Been a while since I whipped a Frenchie. Expect I’ll enjoy it.”
Meg’s uncle and cousin moved steadily toward LeGrand. Each of them outweighed him by several stone. Amazingly, the wiry Frenchman did not seem the least intimidated. Instead he tossed the contents of his water glass at them.
Oh, no. Rowney and Oswald are even meaner when they’re mad.
“Now you’re for it,” her cousin said, swearing and swiping his eyes.
Then a strange thing happened. The water seemed to multiply. Instead of wiping away droplets, Oswald pawed at rivulets running down his face, far more liquid than he could get rid of with a quick knuckle across his eyes. He and Rowney both looked as if they were weeping torrents.
LeGrand raised his hand and called water from the very air. It condensed in a hazy cloud over her uncle and cousin’s heads. What began as a light drizzle soon turned into a drenching. Not so much as a drop reached the gleaming hardwood under their feet. As soon as the liquid reached the ragged hems of their trousers, it rose in fat droplets to start the cycle over again.
Meg watched in horrified fascination as her relatives were caught in a veritable butter churn of water, swirling in a long vertical oval to pour down on them again and again. The pry bar clattered to the floor. As the water volume increased, Rowney and Oswald lost their footing and were buoyed along by what had become a river of enchanted floating liquid. Their sputtering was punctuated by garbled yells for the Frenchman to help them.
Meg had watched Vesta use her skills as a fire mage, but she’d never seen LeGrand exercise his water magic before. Obviously, he’d been hiding his light under a bushel.
The undulating stream bore the kicking and screaming pair of burglars out of the butler’s pantry, through the adjoining chamber and back to the half open window. Rowney’s feet slid out of the window first, but his protruding belly became stuck and for a moment, Meg feared her uncle would drown in His Grace’s dining room. But Oswald gave Rowney a boot to the face and pushed him through before being borne out the same opening, his arms and torso scraping along the window ledge. Meg whisked through the upper sash to hover over the duke’s front garden. Her relatives were borne past the duke’s iron gate and down the cobbled street, still writhing and swearing as the charmed river carried them far from the scene of their intended crime.
Meg laughed or would have if she’d had any air to do it with in her spirit state.
It was enough to remind her that her body must be in desperate need of a breath by now. Quick as thought, she raced back to Wales and the little chamber above the taproom she shared with Samuel.
When she burst through the thatched roof, she found him seated in the rocker, holding her body on his lap. Pain was etched on his face. Her chest constricted at having caused it. She quickly re-entered her body and drew a deep breath.
Or tried to. He was squeezing her so tightly, she could barely expand her ribs enough to get a quick gulp of air.
“Come back, Meg,” he chanted.
I’m trying.
She wiggled in his arms. He jerked her to arm’s length away from himself so he could look down at her face. Relief flooded his features. It was followed hard by fury.
“What the hell was that?” he demanded. “What did you do?”
“I went Finding,” she said, her voice coming out a breathy fraction of itself. Now that he’d lessened his hold on her, she could draw a deep lungful. Her heart pounded. She didn’t try to rise. Even seated on his lap, she was so light-headed she feared she might topple over. She’d need more than a moment to recover after staying away so long.
“And you have to die to do it?”
“I didn’t die.” Meg still felt incapable of more than a three word sentence.
“You could have fooled me.” He stopped squeezing her close to him, but the way his fingers dug into her arms was likely to leave bruises.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, her voice a little stro
nger now.
He released her and settled his forearms on the rocker’s arm rests. “I didn’t hurt you as much as you hurt yourself. You’re still blue, Meg.”
“It’ll pass.” She drew another deep breath, willing her cheeks to pinken, but there didn’t seem to be any way to hurry her body along. All she could do was breathe.
“When you Find, what happens to you?” His voice was the soft rumble of a predator’s low growl before it erupts in a roar. “Exactly.”
“I…well, the easiest way to explain it is that I am able to leave my body behind for a time so my spirit can look for people and things,” she said, pausing every fifth word or so for another deep breath. “I can travel great distances in a short time and pass through locked doors to uncover secrets.”
He glared down at her. Why didn’t he think her gift was as impressive as the duke seemed to?
“And what did you Find while your body lay dying in my arms?”
“I wasn’t dying,” she said defensively. Well, technically she was dying, but she’d only be really dead if her spirit came back too late. Of course, the trouble with that argument was that she didn’t know exactly how late was too late. This time had felt chancier than most. She decided to change the subject. “If you must know, I picked up where your Watching left off. My spirit traveled to London and looked in on Camden House. You’ll be pleased to know the robbery was thwarted with no injury to my friends in residence there.”
“So no one was hurt. No property made off with. What you’re saying is that you endangered yourself for nothing. No wonder the duke has forbidden you to exercise this ridiculous gift.” He lifted her off his lap and prowled the perimeter of the chamber in an unconscious imitation of Camden at his most upset best.
“Ridiculous?” She latched onto the mantel to hide how wobbly her legs still were. Her vision tunneled uncertainly, but her breath hissed in over her teeth. Meg refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her faint. “How can you say my gift is ridiculous? Was it ridiculous when I Found a lost child?”
“You’re twisting my words.”
“No, I’m understanding you for the first time. You think I’m ridiculous. And maybe I am.” What was more ridiculous than a low born nobody pretending to be a lady?
“That’s not what I said.”
“Samuel, stop.” She placed a hand against his chest to bring his pacing to a halt. “I need you to hear me. I am not what you think I am.”
“Here’s what I think you are—stubborn, willful, and a danger to yourself. You’re all that and more.”
And less. He still didn’t know she wasn’t wellborn. She needed her gift. It was all that made her special.
He grasped her hands and held them to his lips. “Meg, you scared the life out of me.”
Her insides softened at the stricken expression on his face. She shouldn’t have stayed away so long, especially not the first time he saw her Find. “I’m sorry I made you worry.”
Samuel loosed a long sigh. “Well, it’s done now. It’ll be all right.”
He pressed a kiss on her knuckles. Relief washed over her. Everything was going to be well between them. Then he spoke.
“I trust it won’t happen again,” he said sternly. “I’m in total accord with His Grace. I forbid you to do that again.”
“You what?” Did he think her a child?
“You heard me. I don’t want you—”
“What you want doesn’t signify.” She pulled her hands free. “Only a father or a husband could give an order like that and expect it to be obeyed.”
“What about the Duke of Camden?” Samuel said, with narrowed eyes.
“What about him?”
“He ordered you not to Find, too.”
She laughed mirthlessly. “In case you didn’t notice, I haven’t exactly obeyed His Grace, either.”
“But you will obey me.”
“I will not.” He wasn’t her husband. He had no standing to order her about. And even if he was her husband, she couldn’t obey him in this. It would be like hacking off a limb. Finding was too much of who she was.
“Why won’t you do this small thing for me?” Samuel asked, his cheeks darkening with barely suppressed anger. “I defied my father for you. And since he’s a follower of the Dark One, that is no light matter. I deserted my estate for you. All I ask of you is one simple thing. Something that will keep you safe.”
“I might be safer if I stopped Finding, but I wouldn’t be me.” Meg straightened to her full height. “If you can’t accept me as I am and that means all of me, including my ability to Find, you may as well leave me right now.”
Samuel didn’t say a word as he set a new record for a gentleman dressing without the aid of a valet. Once he tugged on his last boot, he was out the door and stomping down the narrow stairs to the taproom below.
Stricken, Meg stared after him for a few moments. Then she retrieved her bowl of stew and sat down to eat. Grease had begun to congeal on the cooling surface. She took a half-hearted bite and then set it aside.
Drawing her knees to her chin, she rested her forehead on her kneecaps and wept bitterly. She’d given him a choice, which was more than he’d offered her. But he didn’t make the choice she’d counted on. He didn’t choose her.
She’d lost Samuel. And no amount of Finding would bring him back.
“Whisky,” Samuel ordered as he bellied the bar. He’d get roaring drunk. That was the thing. It always seemed to work for Grigori.
The innkeeper appeared with a half full bottle, poured a generous jigger and set it before him.
Samuel knocked back his drink in one gulp. His eyes watered, and his tongue went numb, but his chest still ached. Until that stopped, he hadn’t had enough. “Leave the bottle.”
“That bad, is it?” The innkeeper refilled Samuel’s jigger.
Samuel promptly emptied it and held it out for more. “What do you mean?”
“Whatever it is that’s happened with you and your bride.”
“She’s not my bride.”
“Oh, so you’ve been married long then,” the innkeeper said, misunderstanding him. “Women are the brightest and best of God’s creatures, but they’re devilishly difficult to understand sometimes.”
“Make that all the time.”
The innkeeper cast him a sly smile. “Not all the time. The walls and floors are thin hereabouts and that bed of yours creaks something fierce.”
Samuel hadn’t noticed. He’d been too caught up in the wonder of Meg. He took the bottle from the innkeeper and poured himself another drink. Then he offered some to the innkeeper, too.
“Don’t mind if I do,” the fellow said, setting a clean jigger before him and letting Samuel pour. He sipped his whisky, savoring the drink instead of bolting it. Samuel subconsciously imitated him.
“That’s smooth, that is,” Samuel admitted, feeling a bit calmer now. He didn’t know if it was the whisky or the company, but the ache in his chest had subsided a bit. “How long have you been married?”
“Me and the missus have been together a little over thirty years.”
“That’s a long time.”
The innkeeper nodded. “Sometimes it feels longer than others. But sometimes, it feels as if we just started. D’ye mind if I offer you a bit of advice, one married man to another?”
Samuel refilled both their jiggers. “Go ahead.”
The innkeeper leaned forward and whispered, “The secret to wedded bliss lies in three little words.”
Samuel nodded. “I love you, you mean.” He hadn’t told her. He should have.
“No, not those. O’course, they’re important, too, and every woman wants to hear them, the oftener the better, but the ones I mean are even more powerful for curing what ails a marriage.”
“What are they?”
“I. Was. Wrong.” The innkeeper took the bottle back from him. “Mark me well. Those words will save you, lad, when nothing else will.” Then he moved down the bar to serve another
patron.
Samuel tried the words for size. “I was wrong,” he whispered.
But he wasn’t wrong. He’d only insisted she not endanger herself. What was wrong with that?
Then he began to wonder how he’d feel if she demanded he stop Watching. His gift came to him as natural as breathing and was just as essential. On those rare occasions when he hadn’t taken the time to Watch the images that rose before him in still surfaces, he’d felt agitated. Incomplete. He didn’t feel himself again until he went back to his scrying vessel, emptied his mind of conscious thought, and let the image rise again.
He was a Watcher. He hadn’t asked for it. Couldn’t help it. Wouldn’t change it. It was who he was.
Maybe it was the same with Meg and her Finding. Maybe he was wrong.
Gravity binds planets in their orbits. It sends the stars on their nightly circular dance. But love is what binds people and sends them to do things they never expected.
It is by far the more powerful force.
~ from the journal of Samuel Templeton, Lord Badewyn
Chapter Fifteen
Meg hadn’t expected to sleep, but a person only had so many tears in them before they cried themselves dry. She’d finally winked out, collapsed across the bed, exhausted in body and spirit.
She bolted upright at the scrape of a booted foot on the threshold. Framed in the open doorway, Samuel stood motionless. Firelight tipped his hair and broad shoulders with gold. His face was shadowed, but when he stepped inside the room, the whites of his eyes gleamed, flashing feral in the dimness.
Her heart skipped a beat. Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she ached to run to his side, but stopped herself short.
Steady, girl. He may only be back to tell you he’s leaving for good.
“Meg. My Sunshine.”
That was all he said as he moved toward her, but it was enough. The words were both validation of what she was to him and since they were the agreed upon code, it confirmed he was himself and not Grigori in disguise. It was almost enough to send her rushing toward him but she forced herself to remain motionless. When he reached the side of the bed, he ran his palm over the crown of her head with such tenderness, her insides melted.
