“Valerian.”He recorked the potion and brought the bottle of wine to the bed.He settled on the mattress beside her, the headboard propping them both up.
“Yes, that.”
He took a swig from the bottle and passed it to her.“My grandmother kept a journal of all the plants in the garden, their properties, their uses.My father was going to throw it out when she died.I guess that sort of thing usually goes to daughters, but she had no daughter.Nor a granddaughter.I stole it.Still have it.The only thing I consider my own.”
“What do you mean?”
“Which part?”
She took a sip of wine and handed the bottle back to him.“About not owning anything but for the journal.”
“Everything I used to have, that used to be mine, wasn’t really mine.It belonged to the Marquess of Fordham.When I was the marquess, it was mine.When I stopped being him, it wasn’t.But really, even before…” Before he’d lost everything.“It wasn’t mine.I was merely… safeguarding it for the Marquesses of Fordham who would come after me.Not my worry any longer.”He may have drank a quarter of the bottle in one go.He handed it over.“Do you know that, wherever you go the sky looks the same—sun and light and clouds, dark and moon and stars.But the plants, ah, they change.There are plants in China we don’t have here and in Spain and?—”
“Have you been to those places?”
He nodded.“My grand tour started in France then quite took on a life and trajectory of its own.I wandered about the entire continent.And into other continents.”
“Really!”She took a contemplative sip of the wine.“Is that how you know about aloe?”
“Yes.”
She patted his hand where it rested between them, halfway on top of her skirts.“And potions?Did you learn about them as you traveled, too?”
“I did.”
“You have that, then, don’t you?”She giggled.Giggled.And grabbed the wine, took a large drink.
“Giggling, Sybil?I think you’ve had enough.”He wrenched the bottle from her grasp.“And what are talking about?What do I have?”
“Youknow.You said you own nothing but your mother’s book.But you possess your own knowledge, your experiences.That’s something.That’s everything.You shouldn’t have tried to hurt Diana when you had so much and she had so little.”
Feeling very still, he downed another quarter of the bottle then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.“So little?”
“She had to run, left everything and everyone she knew because of you, feared for her life.She had magic, but… what use was it?She didn’t know how to use it, and it caused her only pain.”
“It got her a title.”
Sybil shrugged.“You traveled the world.You had comforts.Why did you do it?Why did you try to?—”
“Kill her?”
She sat upright, flinched, and brushed his hands away as he tried to help her.With what he had no clue.Her hands fluttered between them.Her eyes glittered with drink.“You held a knife to my throat to get to her.You would have killed me, too.”
He felt feverish.The same way he had that night in the ballroom about a year ago.Why had he done it?Used Sybil as a pawn to get to Diana, threatened to kill his cousin, turned his back on his soul to grasp everything he was losing?
He held the bottle up to the light streaming through the window and watched the glass shift from light to dark and back again as he moved it in circles.“My first memory is of looking at a map of England.On it were several stars.They marked various villages and houses.Estates, my father told me, that would one day belong to me.‘They may not call you it yet,’ he said, ‘but you are Fordham.You are chosen.’”Whatever the hell that meant.“The servants called memaster, though I’d mastered nothing.And my grandfather preferred me above everyone else, except perhaps Diana.He called me Future Fordham, even though I possessed a courtesy title, and carried me around with him everywhere—to visit the tenants, to inspect the fields, to meet with the estate manager.Everyone about me told me I was better, best.And I did nothing to earn it.Didn’t think I had to.Why would I have?”He tipped his face to the ceiling with a groan.“God, I sound pitiful.Why am I telling you all this?”
“Because I’m injured, and you feel bad for me.”She stole the wine and wiggled her good foot.
“There’s that.”
She nudged his shoulder with hers.“So you thought you were a little god on earth and had a right to harm your cousin?And me.”
“Something like that.I… I don’t think I was in my right mind.I didn’t know about Diana at first.All I knew was that my grandfather had died.And his talent had not come to me.I waited and hoped and… when it didn’t happen, I felt so fucking empty.”Soulless.
She leaned against his shoulder, nestled her head there, hiccupped.
He laughed and eased them both back down against the headboard, rested his head against hers.The wine warmed.Not to boiling as he’d been before.This was a comfortable heat, one you linger in forever.
