Page 57

Norden knew his father well enough to recognize the quality of Magnus’s silence over the preceding days — not absence of opinion, but an opinion being sharpened, folded, and set aside until the moment it would land with maximum, deniable precision, the way he’d always operated. Evelyn Devlin, for her part, had called Romily twice to ask what wine Magnus preferred, which Norden recognized immediately as a woman arming herself with information rather than making conversation. Two mothers, from wholly different centuries, both preparing to go to war with warmth as the weapon of choice.

He’d have found it entertaining under different circumstances, on a different night, with far less riding on the outcome. Tonight, he mostly found himself calculating how many ways it could go wrong before dessert.

He picked Romily up himself rather than sending Victor, because some evenings warranted showing up in person regardless of how many other things needed his attention beforehand. She met him at her door already dressed, and he crossed the last of the distance before she’d finished pulling it shut behind her, one hand curving around her jaw, tilting her face up to his without asking permission first. The kiss that followed had weeks of restraint behind it and none left by the time he pulled back.

“That’s not fair. I just did my lipstick.”

“I’ll buy you more lipstick. I regret nothing.” He took the two seconds required to appreciate the sight of her properly before offering his arm. She took it easily, having stopped arguing with the gesture weeks ago.

“You look like a man walking into a hostage negotiation.”

“I am, technically. I’ve simply agreed to be both the negotiator and one of the hostages, a role I’m finding increasingly familiar.” He held the car door for her, the small courtesy she’d long since stopped arguing with. “My father has had two weeks to prepare a position. I intend to disappoint him.”

“Good. Disappointing difficult fathers is one of my specialties, truly. I’ve had a great deal of practice this month alone.”

“You’ll have company tonight. My mother’s had four centuries of practice disappointing him and shows no signs of slowing down, whatsoever, on any front.”

“That’s the most reassuring thing you’ve said to me all week, and possibly all month, honestly.”

He pulled out of her building’s drive and merged into traffic, one hand finding hers on the console before he’d consciously decided to reach for it, a habit that had become so automatic in the last few weeks, he’d stopped registering it as a decision at all.

“Your mother’s meeting mine tonight too. Officially. Not just in passing.”

“I’m aware. I’ve been aware since the invitation arrived, and I’ve been strategically not thinking about it since.” She turned her hand over in his, lacing their fingers properly instead of leaving them loosely stacked. “Two mothers who’ve never met, on opposite sides of several centuries and one deeply awkward power imbalance. What could possibly go wrong.”

“Nothing that four courses and a decent wine list won’t smooth over.”

“You have remarkable faith in wine.”

“I have remarkable faith in my mother. The wine is backup, in the event the diplomacy requires reinforcement.”

“That’s a very corporate way of describing your own mother’s charm offensive, you realize, and I mean that as an observation, not an insult.”

“We’ve discussed this before, extensively, and I’ll keep unveiling new ones indefinitely, whether you’re prepared for them or not, starting now.”

Her phone buzzed in her lap at the next red light. She glanced at it, showed it to him, and put it away without reading it out loud.

“Your friends are wagering on my father’s capacity for joy?”

“My friends wager on everything. It’s how they show love.” She shook her head, still faintly grinning at the screen. “They won’t win. This is a sacred, terrifying event, and I told them so. Just so you’re prepared.”

He found, against every instinct toward decorum the evening required, that he was smiling by the time he pulled into the estate’s drive.

The estate hadn’t softened for the occasion, and Norden hadn’t expected it to. What surprised him — mildly, pleasantly — was watching Evelyn Devlin cross the entrance hall beneath four centuries of judgmental Sharpe portraiture without so much as a flicker of intimidation, the same easy confidence she brought to her own kitchen, as though formal stone architecture were a larger, colder version of a curbside chair waiting to be re-loved.

“Lovely house,” she told Magnus, shaking his hand with the firm grip of someone who’d negotiated furniture prices with strangers twice her size. “Terribly cold, though. You should get a dog. Nothing warms a room like a dog.”

Magnus, visibly unprepared for an opening line that wasn’t a challenge, said nothing for a full three seconds, which Norden privately counted as one of his father’s more impressive achievements of the evening.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Magnus said finally.

“You won’t,” Evelyn said, warmly. “But it was worth mentioning. Every house needs something warm-blooded in it, in my experience. Even a cactus would be an improvement over the current arrangement.”

Selene, arriving behind her husband in time to catch the last of it, laughed outright — a genuine, unguarded sound that seemed to surprise even her, and one Norden hadn’t heard from his mother in more years than he cared to count.

She turned from Magnus without waiting for a rebuttal and found Romily’s arm instead, patting it once, a small private gesture aimed less at the room around them than at the fact that her daughter had spent the drive over visibly bracing for a fight. Norden watched Romily’s shoulders drop half an inch under her mother’s hand, watched the tension she’d been carrying since the car dissolve into a steadier calm, and made a private note to thank Evelyn for it later, however she’d prefer the thanks delivered.

Dinner proceeded, for the first twenty minutes, with the careful courtesy of two families circling a subject neither had agreed to name yet. Selene asked after the atrium installation with genuine interest, and Romily answered at length, visibly grateful for a topic that didn’t require reading anyone’s subtext.