Colette steamed off ahead of them, obviously eager to go raid some peacock feathers. Tara and Declan exchanged a glance and moved fast enough to keep the designer in sight, but Declan slid his hand into Tara's as they walked, and she actually said, "We've got to get her dealt with so we can spend the rest of the dayenjoyingourselves," aloud. "This place is beautiful. I'd love to see it in summer."
Declan smiled down at her. "That's the best idea I've ever heard. All of it, both enjoying ourselves and showing you the grounds in summer. C'mere to me now, though?—"
Tara laughed. "That's at least the third time you've said that when I'm right here."
His eyebrows rose and she could all but see him reviewing what he'd said. "Oh! It's nothing to do with coming closer. It means 'listen.'"
"Does it! Why?"
"I've no idea. Probably something in the Irish that got directly translated into English. We've a lot of that, but I'd never know it until someone asked like you just did. But what did I want you to c'mere for, now?" He stared thoughtfully ahead, keeping an eye on Colette, then shook himself. "Dealing with her, yeh. I texted the lads and a couple of them can be here this morning, and one of them's got a mate in the guards and he'll ring him to have him come pick her up once we've got her dead to rights, if that's what we've got to do. I want to just scare thepiss out of her, though, like convince her the peacock gods will strike her down if she keeps this up."
"Now I want very much for there to be peacock gods to strike her down," Tara said almost mournfully. "That would be so cool."
"Oh, there could be." Declan sounded positively wicked. "I just can't decide if it's the kind of thing she'd need to be a little bit, ah,inebriatedto see, or whether it would be so entirely mad that she'd think she was losing her mind and wouldn't tell anyone anyway for fear of not being believed."
"I am now wildly intrigued," Tara murmured, then caught her breath as the pathway opened up onto a green where at least a dozen peafowl were exploring the grounds. There were more males than females, most of them with magnificently developed trains, although one or two were clearly younger and had only short tails, comparatively. "Oh, aren't they handsome!"
Colette Snootypants had walked out into the middle of the green, and even from the distance, Tara was pretty certain she could see the designer's hands twitching. "I swear, if that woman tries to pull a tail feather…"
"Peacocks are aggressive like," Declan murmured. "She'll have her hands full if she does. But why her damned project can't wait until they shed them naturally… I'm sure someone would agree to let her buy or take them in some way, and how many feathers can one person need? We have up to a couple hundred of them, and even some of those feckin' ridiculous all-feather dresses with the trains that go on forever only use a couple thousand." He paused, then admitted, "Which is loads, and you'd need extras to make up with breakage and the like, but still, never mind us shifters, you could get nearly enough for that kind of extravagance just from working out an arrangement to collect the sheddings here and at Anavee!"
"But not for an out-of-season dress," Tara said thoughtfully. "If you wanted to make a huge splash at one of the fashion week extravaganzas right now, or a major red carpet event or something, you'd either have to be planning on it from last year, which would be harder to hide, or do something like this."
"I don't think she's that famous," Declan said, and Tara smiled up at him.
"No, not if what I found about her online is any indication. But she might be trying to be that big. All right. You go hide somewhere and shift, and then come shed a feather or two for me so I can convince her I really am a peacock whisperer, and then…"
Declan looked cheerful. "And then I'll spook the others and she'll at least have to go chasing us all through the woods while we wait for my mates to get here. Oh,God." That last was at a sudden onset of childish shrieking in the distance. Tara and Declan both turned toward it, with Declan saying, "There must be a school outing at the castle today. I'm going to have to be careful. Children show up everywhere you don't want them to be."
"Sort of like women who catch you shifting behind the shed." Tara took a startled step back as Declan laughed out loud. "I didn't think it was that funny!"
"It's not," he said, grinning. "Except 'shifting' in Irish slang is kissing."
Tara frowned briefly, then worked her way through everything that implied and laughed, too. "Oh. Yeah. That's got a whole different kind of connotation to it here, then, doesn't it? Like I'm somebody's mom catching them making out behind the garage. Okay." She laughed again. "Okay, yeah, that is funny. But it's not what I meant!"
"No, I know. It just catches me out sometimes even when I'm just thinking about being a shifter, never mind hearing someoneelse say it like that. I'll be careful," he promised. "But I'm going to go hide in a bush and shift now—" They both started laughing, and he finally groaned, amused but trying to pull himself together. "I'm going to go hide andchange my own shape, so I am,and then see if we can rally the peacocks somehow. This would be a lot easier if I'd called Seamus and Brian earlier," he added in a mutter, then disappeared toward some privacy while Tara approached Colette.
"Well?" the designer demanded. "Make them shed!"
"You know, it's not that easy," Tara said with a sudden, rising sense of hysteria. The idea of trying to pass herself off as apeacock whispererwas absolutely absurd, but she thought she could actually have a lot of fun with it. She put all the snobby authority into her voice that she possibly could. "First you have to establish a connection. A sense of trust. Become someone they're comfortable with, so you can approach them. It's why I've taken up photography as a profession. It's slow-moving, not very loud, and therefore not alarming. It helps to develop abond."
She didn't think she'd ever told that many lies in a row in her life, but Colette appeared to be swallowing it all. Maybe it was easy to make someone believe what they wanted to hear. Maybe Tara wasn't exactlylying, anyway. What little she knew about building rapport with animals, especially wild ones, basically fell along the lines of what she'd just said. It wasn't her fault that the peacock she could most successfully 'whisper' to happened to be a man most of the time.
"I just want the feathers." Colette actually sounded briefly desperate. Desperate enough to distract Tara from the ploy at hand, anyway, and to examine the other woman curiously before deciding she should at least give Colette a chance. A chance to explain herself, Tara thought, and a chance to make better choices. Maybe shewould, with a little encouragement.
"Why do you need them so much? I know, they're for a project, but peacocks naturally shed their feathers…" She had no idea when, just that they did. "Later in the year. Why does it matter so much now? You could just wait, and maybe make some kind of legal arrangement to get the feathers you need, if real ones arethatimportant."
The desperation in Colette's eyes briefly glittered toward greed, and the sympathy Tara had just built up for her started to disappear. "It's my make or break project," the designer said. "Nothing less than perfection will do. I've got averyexclusive client, and they require themostexclusive materials."
Tara had never heard someone sound so self-centered or arrogant. Colette's tone put her own attempt at sounding snobby to shame, and the designer wasn't even trying. The rest of Tara's sympathy for her evaporated. "Including fresh peacock feathers in early March."
Colette fixed her with a hard glare. "Yes. Including fresh peacock feathers in March."
Well, all right,Tara thought. She'd tried. Not very hard, maybe, but Colette Saunier didn't offer very many ins. With an almost-sad sigh, Tara went deeper into the green with her camera and quietly sat down in damp grass, taking pictures. "You can join me," she said softly, "but you have to be slow and gentle andpatient. Aren't they magnificent animals?"
The designer did join her, but made horrible faces as she also sat in the damp. Tara personally admitted it would have been a good idea to bring a blanket or something waterproof to sit on, but it was too late now and she certainly wasn't going to make things easier on the ill-mannered woman beside her, who shrugged. "They're just birds."
Tara couldn't understand how anybody could look atmostthings and think they were 'just' anything, but relegating peacocks, of all things, to 'just' birds struck her as absurd."Seriously? You can look at those colors and those tails and think they'rejustbirds?"
