She shook her head. She’d cast it already.
“Be careful.” He looked at her one moment longer before opening the door.
It wasn’t until she crossed into the woods that she realized he hadn’t asked to check her hair. Perhaps he thought the spell he’d worked into it wouldn’t be easily overcome. Perhaps he simply didn’t trust himself to get so close.
She spent a distressing amount of time on the walk home thinking of him touching her. She jumped fallen branches, fed her chickens and fetched the mail in a thoroughly distracted state.
Then she opened the one letter that didn’t appear to be a bill, and that was enough to drive Blackwell out of her head.
My dearest Beatrix, it began. It ended,Yours always, Theo. In between was an outpouring that alternately exasperated her (“I know how bitterly you must regret how you spoke to me on Saturday”), angered her (“I hope you see now, in the light of day, that my advice about your sister was correct”) and flabbergasted her (“I appreciate your desire to become a well-educated mother for our darling children”).
Her first thought was that the letter represented one last try at manipulating her to do what the magiocracy wanted. But then she remembered what Blackwell had said—that Garrett really did love her.
If so, she had no idea whom Garrett thought he’d fallen in love with. This woman he was writing to did not resemble her in anything but name. Her vexation sharpened, then gave way, leaving pity in its place.
She sat down in the study to write a reply.
If there can be no way to deliver unwanted news without pain, I hope there is at least some kindness in delivering it clearly, so the intention cannot be mistaken.
I do not love you, and, in truth, you do not love me. Both of us fell prey to imagining in the other all that we thought we wanted, but neither of us understood the flesh-and-blood person we were papering over with our daydreams. Your idea of happiness is not mine. My idea of a just world is not yours. And you must understand I cannot trust you after what occurred on Saturday.
May you find the woman you’re picturing. For both our sakes, please do not contact me again.
Sincerely,
B. Harper
She took her letter to the mailbox, Peter Blackwell once again insinuating himself into her thoughts. The warmth of his hands. The taste of his skin. The sound of her name on his lips. Oh God, they were locked in the same temporary insanity that had caught her and Garrett, attraction overmastering rational objections.
She faltered on the way back to the house as it struck her that it wasn’t the same. There was no papering over of reality with Blackwell, dreamworld notwithstanding. Heknewher. Better than her own sister did, better in some ways than her best friend could.
She took a steadying breath.His knowledge was gleaned from being in her head and feeling what she felt. He understood so much about her because he’d forced the Vows on her.
She would not fall in love with this man who knew her too well. She would not.
This hadto be what going mad felt like.
At night—dreamside—she wanted him. She touched him with a fervor that matched his own. She talked and listenedto him with the same level of intense interest. She said, “I love you, too.”
Dayside, she averted her eyes. She pretended she didn’t know exactly how he felt. She behaved with impeccable professionalism and broke his heart.
It didn’t matter what their shared dreaming said about her desires. Peter wanted her, all of her, the realBeatrix, and she was absolutely determined to not let that happen.
“Why?” he asked her shade one chilly November night. “The Vow—the original Vow?”
“Of course.”
“Is there any way I could earn forgiveness?”
She gazed at him, regret in her eyes and the twist of her lips. “No,” she said.
CHAPTER 30
Mitchell Gray frowned at Lydia from across his desk. “You want me to do what?”
“Help lead the charge to repeal the Twenty-fifth Amendment,” she said patiently. “That’s the one that requires all candidates for national office be practicing users of magic.”
“Iknowwhich one it is,” the state senator said, and Beatrix bit her lip to stave off an inappropriate grin at his aggrieved tone. “Don’t be ridiculous, Miss Harper. Congress isn’t going to vote for repeal. You might as well ask them to all step down—you’d get exactly the same results, which is to say none at all.”
