Page 74 of A Lady’s Guide to Mystery and Mischief

She gave him a small, sad smile. “Wait for magic to come find me.”

“Are you sure you’ve given up on finding it yourself?”

“I just—I know I can’t do things by halves,” she said. “I’ll do too much, exactly as you said, and I won’t stop until I’m satisfied. But it’s been exhausting, and I need time to myself. Time to think, time to bring what’s important back into focus. Time to learn how to find this middle ground you speak of.”

“I see.”

If she wanted time to herself, he wouldn’t take that away from her. It wasn’t his place and now that Francis was effectively out of the way, he could wait.

Even if it took years, he could wait.

“You needn’t look so disappointed,” she said. “At least I’ll know what to prioritize if and when I return to my search for a sensible degree of magic.”

“What do you mean?”

A furious blush rushed to her face at the question, but she responded to it all the same. “You gave me a taste of magic, even if it wasn’t what you planned. That you understand me so well is in itself a kind of magic, isn’t it? And that isn’t even to speak of how kind you’ve been to me and—and how gentle, inside—” She paused. “—inside the bedchamber and out. There’s so much I finally understand, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this handful of fairy dust lasts me until—well, maybe forever.”

Magic.

For her to pinpoint Grey as the source of all the enchantment she’d been dreaming of her entire life was enough to tear every possible response out of his throat and crumble it to dust before him. It didn’t suit him—it didn’t make sense.

Unless, all this time, he’d been unaware of his ability to give her exactly what she wanted, improbable fairy dust and all. It was near impossible not to be struck with the realization that he’d gone from doubting in his ability to love, to loving Farah with an abandon he hadn’t thought himself capable of.

With an abandon that had likely been lurking below the surface all these years.

She balled the paper up in her hands, having clearly given up on letter writing. “It’s a bit shocking to think of how much of Francis I was willing to ignore.”

“What changed?”

The trust on her face almost caused him physical pain. “I’m so glad Francis asked me to seek you out, Grey.”

“As am I, but—”

“If you want to know what changed, then—” She wrapped her arms around herself, the corners of her mouth dragging downward. “—I could never love someone who treats you the way Francis does. I knew he was a bit ridiculous, but I promise I never thought him cruel.”

“I can handle his cruelty.”

“I know you can,” she burst out. “I know you can. But that doesn’t mean you have to. You do know that you deserve some gentleness too, don’t you?”

She was speaking of something Grey had rarely experienced. He had vague memories of being well-loved by his parents, but that was so long ago they could have very well been the product of his adolescent imagination. Leila loved him, but that hadn’t been able to cancel out his grandfather’s wrath. Only after he’d died did Grey understand that gentleness was his to receive without condition, a result of his grandmother finally having been freed from her own shackles. And Francis—Grey had no idea what demon possessed his cousin, but if he had to guess, it was the specter of their grandfather.

The fact was that gentleness, even love, was not something he’d grown up with. It had been given to him in little bursts, the dam only breaking once the number of inhabitants of Montgomery House had been brought down to two.

But Grey, like every other person on Earth, deserved some gentleness. Something he hadn’t been able to give himself, even. Another thing he’d deprived himself of, a consequence of his ghost-like existence.

“Everyone does, I suppose,” he allowed.

“Perhaps,” she said. “But some of us need a little more than others, especially after going through hardship.”

“Hardship?”

“Like a difficult childhood. Like heartbreak.”

“Heartbreak?”

He knew he was mindlessly repeating after her, but he didn’t seem to have the mental capacity for much else. There was too much happening inside him, old and new emotions struggling for dominance and tangling themselves into an untidy knot.

“Mrs. Steele,” Farah clarified. She reached out to him, placing a hand on his forearm, the warmth of her seeping through the linen of his night shirt. “I can’t imagine how you coped after losing her.”