But Shrike and Wren were already gone.
Shrike and Wren returned to Blackthorn Briar with their plunder far too early in the morning after too long of a night for Wren to do anything but collapse into bed.Were it not for Shrike’s help he wouldn’t have even bothered to undress himself first.As matters stood, no sooner had he curled ‘round Shrike beneath the furs than he plunged into the relief of dreamless sleep.
He opened his eyes again to find the cottage bathed in the wisteria cast of dusk.
Shrike no longer lay beside him.Instead he sat before the hearth tending a simmering cauldron.One of his clever hands held the stirring stick.The other held a book before his dark gaze.The savoury scent of simmering morels filled the cottage.
Wren supposed he oughtn’t be surprised.A year of living with Shrike had showed him first-hand how fae required far less sleep than mortals.
What did surprise him was the book.He didn’t recognize that particular volume.At least, not from the modest collection of tomes they’d gathered in Blackthorn Briar.Yet something about its binding appeared eerily familiar in a way Wren couldn’t quite place.
“What’re you reading?”he enquired.
Shrike glanced up.A smile lit his eyes the moment his gaze met Wren’s.“The Castle of Otranto.”
A title not unknown to Wren.But certainly not one he’d brought to the fae realms.Trying very hard not to sound accusatory, he asked, “Where did you find it?”
Shrike hesitated.“Your ancestral library.”
Wren stared.
“I didn’t wish to disturb anything that had belonged to your mother,” Shrike added, abashed.“But I did take this, as you said your father deserved none of it.”
Wren hadn’t asked Shrike not to touch his mother’s books.Hadn’t even thought of it.For Shrike to treat her belongings with such respect, so long after her passing, and when he’d never even known her… Wren’s eyes burned as his heart brimmed over.
Alarm flashed through Shrike’s dark gaze.He set the book aside in a trice—gently—and arose.“Forgive me, I?—”
“Nothing to forgive,” Wren hastened to reassure him.
The croak of Wren’s voice around the lump in his throat did nothing to ease the concerned furrow between Shrike’s brows.
Wren smiled.A sincere smile, at that; a habit he’d only picked up in the fae realms.It’d certainly never happened under his father’s roof.“I’m just glad it’s notThe Vicar of Wakefield.”
Shrike blinked.“A precious tome?”
“A tedious one.”
A huff of laughter escaped Shrike.
Wren arose from the nest and gave Shrike a kiss on his way to retrieve his satchel.His mother’s books lay within, tucked up snug against the puzzle-purse of his own teeth and hair.His eyes stung unaccountably at the sight of them.Likewise his fingertips trembled without cause as he reached for the books.He withdrew them with as much tender consideration as if they might crumble to dust at his touch—and in that same moment, suddenly understood the pressing if unfounded concern which had seemed to guide all of Mr Grigsby’s movements throughout his acquaintance with the gentleman.This disquieting thought he set aside for later rumination.At present he took his satchel back to the nest.There at least the books would enjoy a soft landing if his grip failed him.
Drawing the first volume ofSense & Sensibilityinto his lap proved simple enough.Opening it was another matter altogether.Part of him didn’t want to touch it at all, lest the oil in his fingertips mar the pages or their binding.(It had taken only one instance of an antiquarian book-seller’s scolding to fix the lesson in his mind for life.) Another part of him wanted to clasp it to his bosom as if he could make a barrister’s book-case of his ribcage and enclose it safe within.A still more deranged part of him wanted to tear out the pages and devour them.
Steeling his nerve with a breath drawn through his teeth, he ignored all three irrational desires and opened the book.
To my dear wife, Eleanor.
The sight of his father’s handwriting on the title page proved only slightly more startling than the words themselves.One might take the book out of his father’s library, Wren mused bitterly, but evidently one could not take his father out of the book.He turned the page.
The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex.
He knew he ought to read the book in earnest; to pore over its pages with ponderous thought and consider carefully the prose which his mother had held so dear.
But his gaze could not focus upon the printed lines.Instead, his eyes roved ravenously over the text in search of his mother’s handwriting.At first he merely turned the pages with rapidity.Then, not finding her, he flipped through with frantic abandon like the greedy child he was.Surely his father alone had not scribbled therein.Surely the same mother who had encouraged his art had likewise passed down a habit of marginalia.Surely?—
There.Halfway through the book.A hand-drawn pencil illustration in the margin.
A strikingly beautiful rendition… of his father’s duelling pistol.
