“A plan?” Freddy almost laughed. “How do you plan for something so completely unknowable?”
She made a face. “I could describe Claire in half a thousand ways, Freddy Hightower, and none of the words I’d use would even suggestunknowable.”
“Joe said she was afraid of me,” he said, lowering his volume lest the Cotswolds overhear, “terrified. I didn’t know she was terrified, Ember.”
“She wasn’t terrified of you, idiot,” Ember said, nodding toward the inn doors as Joe emerged with a porter. “She was terrified ofherself.Of what she’d do if she was face-to-face with you again. Think about that. Why would that scare a woman in Claire’s position unless she’s afraid she’ll fall right back into your arms?”
“But I—”
“Hush,” she said with a breathy little hiss. “I don’t want Joe to frown at me later.”
And so he had, though hushing was always a bit of an effort for Freddy Hightower. The problem was that once he’d gone silent, he couldn’t dredge up his old song and dance again that night.
Joe frowned at him as they unloaded. He frowned again at dinner. And he frowned one more time when Freddy bade the happy couple good night.
“Ugh,” Ember said under her breath in that last moment in the hallway, once Joe had vanished into their room. “Now I’m in for it. He’s going to tell me he’s mildly concerned and it’s going to be the most violent outburst of which he’s capable.”
“My sympathies,” Freddy replied, more than a little delighted at the prospect. “Godspeed.”
“Oh, thank you,” she returned sarcastically, batting her lashes. “Don’t think you’re exempt, Freddy. If he frowns one more time, then you owe me again. I mean it.”
“I can live with that,” Freddy replied, the first genuine smile in a week’s span finding its way onto his face as she rolled her eyes and spun into her room like a little cyclone.
He didn’t mind owing his friends, he realized. It just meant they had another reason to keep him around.
He fell into the bed and didn’t bother to fish the book out this time. It was a good idea, he thought, stopping here, even so close to their destination. This inn had lovely soft beds and just the right amount of pillows.
White harts, he thought. Mythical. Once in a lifetime. A sign of sovereignty.
Perhaps it was a sign. Maybe the beast he’d seen through the mist this morning had been one? And even if not, here he was, deep in the belly of another anyhow.
He started to doze, Ember’s words tumbling softly in the space of his thoughts, both waking and dreamlike.
She wasn’t terrified of him. She was terrified of how she’d react to him.
That suggested want. It suggested love.
It suggested, Freddy Hightower thought, that the door was still a little bit open. All he’d have to do was step inside.
She’s afraid she’ll fall right back into your arms.
I’ll catch her when she falls, he decided with his final waking thought.This time, I won’t let go.
CHAPTER 3
She hid.
Every time a carriage came ambling down the drive, winding through the jutting deposits of limestone that made up the quarry that once stood here, Claire hid.
She wouldn’t apologize for it.
She wouldn’t admit to it either.
There simply was always a reason to go see to the nursery at just the moments carriages drew close to the door. That’s all.
Oliver’s little nursery room had the perfect vantage over the drive without being directly visible from the ground. A layer of gauze curtains helped, but so did its positioning near the corner of the house. No one would glance up, taking an innocent accounting of the house, and find Claire staring back down at them like some plotting spectre from Minerva Press.
It avoided making the wrong sort of first impressions.
