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“I don’t want to go back to my room.”
Because Cranston would be hovering there. Couldn’t he replace the woman? That much at least? He would!
They slipped out the door and into a soft August evening. The air was drenched with the scents of lavender, roses, and the sea. Waves murmured in the distance. He took her arm to lead her along well-known pathways.
“It’s strange to be outside in the night,” Sarah said.
Not something that young ladies generally did, Kenver supposed. “It’s quite safe here.”
“I’m not afraid.” She looked up at the stars. “I like it. It feels…like a secret world revealed.”
But when a dark shadow slipped out of a side path and approached them, she jumped.
“It’s only Fingal,” said Kenver. “He walks with me.”
Sarah put out a hand to caress the animal’s curly head. “The dogs patrol the gardens at night?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a comfort, Fingal,” she said to the dog. “I’m sure you are very good at it too.”
The deerhound gave a soft woof, the sort of sound he only offered his official friends.
“Where are Tess and Ranger?” Sarah asked.
“They range wider. Fingal stays close to the house.” There was no need to speak of his age. “Come and see,” Kenver said. He led her along a path to the lookout point that jutted from the cliff where Poldene stood. The half-moon hung over the sea, making a shimmering silver pathway on the water. On this promontory, with the rocks receding behind them, they seemed to hang above it like birds.
Fingal whined briefly, not liking to see his charges so close to the edge. He sat down to wait for them to come to their senses.
“Oh,” said Sarah. “I feel as if we could step out and walk across the sea.”
“To the isles of the blessed,” Kenver replied to this echo of his own imaginings.
“Where the Greek heroes went when they died.”
He looked down at her. Moonlight silvered her face as she gazed over the water. “Of course you would know. Are you ever caught out?”
“I read a great deal. Too much perhaps.”
She sounded apologetic. He didn’t want that. “Not at all. I appreciate the…compendium.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“I do.”
The words seemed to shimmer over the sound of the waves, like an echo of their marriage vows.
“I’d like to live in a world of myth and legend,” said Sarah then. “A sorceress like Morgan le Fey or the Lady of the Lake.”
“Weren’t they evil?”
“They were complicated. There was more to them than could be seen from the surface. And they faced some thorny dilemmas.”
“Didn’t one of them betray Merlin and lock him away?”
“That depends on which tale you read,” Sarah replied. “And apparently he’s escaped and gone to live at Tresigan anyway.”
Kenver laughed. “When you say such things, I can almost believe them. Iwantto believe them.”
