I swallowed hard, keeping my face neutral. Thomas had a past. There had been many, many women before me. I had resolved I would not let it trouble me. He hadn’t looked at anyone else since I came along.
Thomas belonged to me.
My fingers tingled with heat. Did I but let them, they might shoot out flame.
I clenched them into fists instead and took a perverse delight in the heat radiating against my palms.
“It appears she wished to renew your acquaintance.” The lightness of my tone made me ill; halfway unto a lie itself. And I held back the reminder that wished to follow:
You do not owe Margaret of Roxburgh your life.
And she is as nothing compared to me.
Ivor looked down his long, elegant nose. “You discarded the letter?” Thomas might as well have confessed to stealing His Grace’s warhorse. What had been in the letter?
“I did not expect the baron would ask Margaret to do his dirty work for him.”
The herald’s mouth clamped shut. He reached into his satchel and pulled out a letter. “There is another,” he said as he thrust it at Thomas. “From the baroness herself.”
Thomas wrinkled his brow. “The baroness? What has she...?” He broke the seal and began to read, his lips drawing thin. Dearly I wished I were privy to his thoughts.
“What is it?” I finally had to ask.
Thomas returned the scroll, his face troubled. “The baroness has taken ill, she and my brother both.”
The baroness was as naught to me. I had never even seen her before. And the boy—well, he had pushed the cuckoo’s egg out of the nest. I should resent him on Thomas’s behalf. But Mairi Grieve’s legacy pressed down strong upon me, and I would have said anything to wipe the worried expression off Thomas’s face.
“What are her symptoms?” I asked, without thinking. “Fever? Aches? Is her belly sore?”
Ivor squirmed inside his fine livery and addressed Thomas alone. “His Grace commands you return to the manor at once.”
To the manor. Away from the cottage, from his flocks and his hound.
Away from the life he had made with me.
I stole a glance at Thomas’s leg. He scarce even needed his cane anymore.
He scarcely needed me.
Thomas stepped away from the baron’s man, shaking his head. “No. ’Tis too great a hardship. I have only just gotten back on my feet, with the help of this one here.” He took my hand and held it, firmly yet gently, like a captive bird he feared would fly away.
And so you should fly, little bird, cuckoo’s child. Back to the nest where you belong. There await such revels as you have never known, wine to bring the ecstasy of forgetfulness, your people ungodly fair.
Faery still called. Even after the life I had made with my shepherd king, when the Veil thinned, it sought me out.
I squeezed Thomas’s hand, imagined my fingers twining like a thorny rose vine around his wrist.
Thomas squared his shoulders as he faced the baron’s man. “It is nearly Lammas, as ye have said. The harvest is nigh, the busiest time of the year. I have made a life for myself here, without the baron’s help. I have no mind to see it disrupted because the baroness has caught a summer cold—”
“Your brother Malcolm is on his deathbed,” said the herald, shifting his weight uncomfortably. “So does the baroness claim.”
Thomas’s eyes grew wide, his face pale. “My brother Malcolm...” He drew it out, as if he had never thought of the baron’s other son that way. They were never raised as brothers, after all.
It set me on edge, as if he slipped through my fingers, recalled to the family of his birth. My nails grew long, thornlike, and plunged into the heel of Thomas’s palm.
Back to Faery. You were never meant to live with this mortal so long.Come away, come away,the voices of the forest sang out.
But something deeper within me cried out,No.
