He settled his gaze on his sister. He was sorry he’d misled her. He knew she would have fallen apart when he told her. She didn’t fall apart now. In fact, she calmly popped a grape into her mouth then slipped her gaze to him. “You were correct not to tell me. So…do you feel the same way now?”
“No.”
“Because of her?”
“Yes,” he confirmed in a low voice. “Because of her.”
Prudence spread her warm gaze over her parents. “When she returns, let us welcome her as a sister and a daughter.”
Ben’s father nodded his head and kept his gaze on his shoes.
“Mother?” his sister surprisingly continued, “Give Ben your blessings. I know Fable. She makes him happy. She brought a light I thought long dead in Benjamin back to life. She’s quite thoughtful, but goes so far as to invite servants to sit with her and Ben. Just…be prepared.”
His mother’s eyes opened wider as she echoed two words–“be prepared?
“She thinks differently than the people of this world,” Ben’s father intervened. “You of all people should understand, Thea. You spent seventeen years learning to think the way she thinks.”
“I only want what’s best for him. He needs–”
“I need Fable.” Ben told her. “Mother, pray for that.”
“She found you, Mother,” Prudence reminded her. “No matter what kind of power thosewitcheshave, they could not find you. I think she belongs here.”
Ben had heard and eaten enough. With a slight bow to his parents he stared for the door.
His sister’s fingers closing around his wrist stopped him. “Benjamin, Mother and Father want to see Simon’s parents, so he is escorting us to Sudbury two days from now. You should come. You need a few days away.”
“You are assuming Fable will not return,” he said, sounding more hurt than angry.
“No, Brother. If I assumed that, I would have suggested we leave tomorrow. I’m praying that she returns by tomorrow.”
Prudence had forgiven Fable everything when she learned that Fable was the reason their father and then their mother were finally reunited and were able to return home. Ben couldn’t be more relieved that his sister finally stopped badgering him about marriage.
“I need a few days away from mother’s stepping into your footsteps.”
Prudence screwed up her face and whispered. “Was I that bad?”
He smiled and nodded.
She didn’t hold him back when he turned away and continued out of the dining Hall. Her recently betrothed stopped him instead.
“Chess?”
Ben tossed him a sedate stare. “So you can beat me again?”
Sudbury grinned. “This is the only time I get to do it. Will you deny me?”
Ben shook his head in mock disgust. “You take shameful advantage of your closest friend when he is not at his sharpest.”
Sudbury threw his arm around Ben’s shoulder and led him to Ben’s private solar. But even trying his hardest to beat his friend, Ben’s thoughts were filled with the sound of Fable whispering his name.
#
Fable came awake from a dream of laughing in bed with Ben, leaning in and whispering his name in his ear.
She sat up. It was the fourteenth day. Her last day here in 2024 with her father. She didn’t want to leave him. Over the last two weeks they had spent a lot of time together. Her father couldn’t do enough to make her happy, as if he needed to make amends for her past. He didn’t need to and she let him know it. It made them more comfortable with each other and helped them fit better into each other’s life. With his playful laughter over the smallest thing, his wide, easy smiles, as well as his pouting surrender when he couldn’t beat her at chess, Thoren Ashmore was easy to like.
He was honest to the core, letting her know that he wasn’t altogether innocent of piracy. He had, after all, popped onto that pirate ship when it was losing to the king’s navy. He saved the crew and made his way to land–to the garden of Colchester House.
