“I am not supposed to tell you anything.”
“So you have said.”
“But you will continue to return until I do, will you not?”
“Yes, and possibly even after.”
The corners of her mouth tipped, and she glanced down.
Maybe Nina wished him to visit as much as he wanted to come here.
“Very well. I will tell you what you wish to know.”
Everyone was going to be angry, but Nina no longer cared.
After taking a deep breath, she settled on the top marble step and waited for Orion to sit beside her.
The trees rustled as if a strong wind had swept in from the sea, but there was no wind. Her friends were trying to hush her, but Nina was no longer going to hold her tongue. Silence brought heartache and she longed for a friend, who just happened to be Orion Drakos. Had she not dreamt of him again last night, his reaching out to her, perhaps she would have kept her silence, but Nina suspected the dreams were from her really wishing to confide in someone who had not known her since childhood.
“If I were English, I would be Lady Nina Jourdain. My brother would be, and I suppose still is, a comte, which if he were English would be an earl ~ Seigneur or Lord de Rohan. The estate is gone…all is gone. He is simply Cassian Jourdain, and I am Nina Jourdain of no significance.”
Nina glanced at Orion out of the corner of her eye. As she anticipated, the information was a surprise as he simply stared at her, slack-jawed.
“Cassian is your brother?”
She nodded.
“I do not understand. He lives with my cousins—the Cardwells. I have known him since he arrived here, but just recently met you.”
She knew Orion would have even more questions. “It is easier if I just tell you from the beginning. Where we came from and how I came to be here.”
“Please do.”
Nina took another deep breath and began to tell him what little she could remember and what had been told to her by Cassian. “Cassian and I were born in a château in the Loire Valley. We had vineyards and even though our father was a comte, he was not political. He lived a quiet life and away from Versailles and Paris. Yet, that did not matter. He was wealthy and an aristocrat.”
Nina swallowed and wished that she didn’t possess some of her memories, just the happier ones with her family.
“My mother had been raised in Vannes and my father had a good friend there. When the danger came…the Terror…we had to flee in the middle of the night.” Maybe he already knew the story. “Did Cassian tell your parents already?”
“I am not certain how much they know, but we were told that he was traveling on a ship from France that went down in the storm and not to tease him about hoping to find his mother among the mermaids.”
Nina couldn’t help but smile. “When Mother used to take us to visit her parents, we would walk along the shore to look for mermaids. She had grown up hearing stories of mermaid sightings.” Nina had only been four, but that memory was so clear. One of the last happy memories. Then fear. “When it got scary, we had to hide in Vannes until we could find a ship. Father left me, Mother and Cassian in a small, dark room along the docks but he never returned. She told us that Father was hiding with the mermaids and that they were keeping him safe. She also promised that if ever something were to happen to either one of them that they’d be safe with the mermaids.”
Nina didn’t like to think of those nightmarish days and sometimes wished she’d been too young to remember. But because of the significance, and terror, those memories remained when she could barely recall her childhood home.
“When we first arrived here, I thought that I had finally seen mermaids, but learned that they were nereids instead.”
A warm hand closed over hers and Nina was surprised by the comfort she experienced from such a small gesture.
“They are not so different, and I have wondered if they are not the same, simply called differently depending on where a person is from,” he reasoned. “Though I have yet to see either a mermaid or a nereid, unfortunately.”
How was that even possible when he had spent so many years of his youth at Nightshade Manor?
“You also do not need to tell me any more if you do not wish to,” Orion added.
“You wanted to know,” she reminded him.
“Not if it brings you pain.”
