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The way he said it was so sad, so beaten, as if she'd once wanted him to forget her. Or as if he'd tried and failed. "Well," she said with a forced laugh. "You are all I have now. My only family."
Finally he turned and looked at her. "It's always been that way, Agnes."
They stared at each other for a long, long time, then slowly, Elliot turned away.
Selena stared out at the foreign, shadowy road stretched out in front of her and felt a sudden chill. "I am afraid," she whispered.
He drew both of the reins into his left hand and reached out to her, closing his big, gloved hand around hers. "I won't let no one hurt you."
She tried desperately to take strength from his quiet promise.
Chapter Twenty-three
Ian sat on the beach, his legs stretched out in front of him, his palms pressed into the gritty sand. Tongues of foamy water licked at his bare toes, tickled the sensitive underside of his feet.
It was a gorgeous summer evening. The kind of color-drenched night that would have drawn Selena from her bedchamber and brought her down here. A salty breeze caressed his hair and rippled the white lawn of his shirt. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine her here, beside him, her voice low and throaty, captured in the whisper of the wind, her laughter caught in the cawing of the distant gulls.
The wind could be her touch.
He sighed. Ah, if only he were a better dreamer . ..
He heard the unmistakable crunching of footsteps behind him, the smacking snap of branches being pushed aside and twigs being stepped on.
He didn't need to open his eyes or turn around to know who was coming. It was all of them, gray-clad bodies creeping behind him everywhere he went. They didn't know what to think or how to feel; all they knew was that life had changed, dramatically and badly, and they missed the way it had been. They thought, somehow, that being near Ian was like being near Selena, as if some invisible essence of her had lodged within him.
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Even Dotty had come out of her broom closet last night and stood with the others in the parlor.
As always, Johann was the first to speak. "She would have loved this night."
There was a clatter of agreement, and then the horde fell silent again. Waiting, always waiting for Ian to say something, as if by words he could make the horror less painful, spin the reality into a grand, elaborate fiction.
He slowly opened his eyes and was struck again by the beauty of the night, struck again by loneliness. In the two days that she had been gone, he'd spent hours upon hours sitting alone, trying to find the root of his grief. He kept thinking that soon-any second-he would hit rock bottom and it would change his life. He would either come out on the other side or he would sink into the darkness and never emerge again.
But there was no end in sight. The more he looked, the deeper he fell. Until now, finally, unless he thought of Selena directly, he felt nothing at all. Even drinking didn't help this time, and he'd only tried the one time. A half bottle of scotch-a drop by his former standards-and he'd curled into a ball in the shadowy corner of his room and wept. Tears that cleansed nothing, eased nothing.
Maeve sat down beside him, knees creaking. Her hair brushed along his cheek, brought with it the scent of lavender. She pressed her chin into the vee between her bent knees and sighed audibly.
Johann plopped down on Ian's other side, while the queen and Lara and Andrew sat down behind them.
"She was only here for a few months," the queen said, and he could hear the strain in her voice. How hard she was looking for solace.
"Ah," Johann said, "but what a few months it was."
Was.
Such a simple little word, nothing really, and yet it struck Ian like a slap. Was. Loved. They were speaking of her as if she were dead, grieving for her as if she
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were dead. Two short days and already she was slipping into the lexicon of a memory.
"She made me think about life again," Johann said with a sad laugh. "And just when I was enjoying my impending death."
"She was never very practical," the queen said. "You are dying."
