“You’ve been here.”
He wasn’t entirely sure how to respond. “I believe so,” he said slowly. “If you want the entire truth, I believe I may have met your father’s father.”
“My father, or my step-father?”
“Your father, Niall,” he said carefully, “though he was a youth at the time. I’m sorry to say I can’t remember his father’s name, though I think we could find it easily enough. We’ll put my mother on the trail when next we see her.”
She took a deep breath. “I suppose my grandfather is no longer that, is he?”
“I think he would be heartbroken if you didn’t claim him as yours.” He thought she looked a bit ill, but he was afraid to ask her if that was from where she was standing or whom she was considering wedding. He decided abruptly that he didn’t want to know, so he cleared his throat and settled for the easier concern. “I could go in—”
“I’ll come.”
Sterling, beautiful, fearless gel. He nodded, then shot Sianach a pointed look. His horse turned in a circle a time or two, found himself a spot by the front door, and sat back on his haunches. Bared teeth gleamed brightly in the gloom, which Acair supposed was the best they were going to do for any sort of alarm. He took Léirsinn’s hand and walked inside her house.
It was as empty as he would have expected it to be given that the front door no longer hung there. He would have released her, but she didn’t seem inclined to let go of his hand and he certainly wasn’t going to argue. He supposed there would be nothing of interest to see—
“Look.”
At any other time, that tone and that word would have had him doing a little caper of delight over the thought of unexpected spoils where they shouldn’t have been, but at the moment they filled him with a particular sort of dread. He followed the direction in which Léirsinn was pointing and realized there was something on that rough-hewn mantel.
There was no reason not to look and innumerable reasons why he should.
He walked over to the hearth with Léirsinn next to him and looked at the missive sitting there. ’Twas so like that moment all those years ago when he’d found that spell sitting atop a different mantel, wrapped up and irresistible for a lad of eight summers, that he could hardly breathe.
Léirsinn looked at him, then reached out, but he caught her hand.
“In case there’s a spell of harm attached,” he said seriously.
She looked at him as if he’d lost his wits. “And ’tis better that you touch it than I?”
“I think so.” He took the missive, popped open the seal, and pulled forth a handwritten note. He considered, then looked it over for spells. He saw none, which he supposed was an improvement over his last bout of mantel razing.
“Well?”
He held it out. “We’ve been invited to a house party.”
“You meanyouhave been invited,” she said slowly.
He shook his head. “The two of us. In Tosan.”
“But it’s a trap.”
He would have called it a final meeting, but he was perhaps more cynical than she was. He nodded, then looked at her.
“Do you care to remain for a bit?”
She shook her head. “Perhaps another time.”
He understood. He walked with her out of the house and paused just outside the doorway. He released her, tore the missive in half, then cast it on the ground. He was utterly unsurprised to watch it catch fire and smoke terribly before it burned itself out.
“Reply sent,” he said with a shrug. He reached over and scratched his horse behind his ears. “Sianach, we need to go. Back up and into something with wings, if you please.”
“You’re very calm.”
He shrugged. “I am never, ever afraid. Well, I might be of horses, if you want the entire truth. And snakes. I don’t care at all for snakes.”
“Will we reach Tosan safely?”
