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They’d arrived in Dublin during a downpour, the soot-stained buildings and wet streets beneath a smear of charcoal sky a welcome sight. From outside, the tidy Duke Street town house with its bright green front door, marble steps, and gleaming black railing could have been any well-to-do merchant’s home. Carriages and hackneys clattered up and down the street. Next door a costermonger stood upon the area steps speaking with a housekeeper. Two smartly dressed women hurried down the pavement, a loaded footman bringing up the rear. Life went on around them as usual.
Yet, within, the signs of Other were palpable. Almost as if the Fey-born could not completely hide what they were. Or, in Helena’s case, took pride in that heritage. A book left open upon a table written in some sort of cryptic rune. An odd figurine upon the mantel, carved so that from any angle it took on a different aspect, the very atmosphere charged by the unseen.
A compact version of the same faery-steeped radiance Elisabeth had experienced upon every visit to Belfoyle. And, as at Belfoyle, she experienced the same combination of excited fluttering and cold dread in the pit of her stomach.
“Drink?” Rogan offered.
Brendan shook his head. “None for me.”
Rogan shrugged. Took it for himself.
“Have a seat, Douglas. We’re all friends here,” Helena said.
“Are we?” He crossed to the fire, his gait careful, body bearing the stiffness of the recent invalid.
He’d shed his sling yesterday, claiming it was deuced uncomfortable. Shrugged off Elisabeth’s warnings he was taking things too quickly with one of his infuriating smiles and a sarcastic comment that made her fists itch. She’d not experienced such violent urges since her tomboy childhood. Come to think of it, Brendan had been the usual reason for them then as well.
He warmed his hands for a moment before turning his attention back to the group. “I think it’s long past time we stopped ignoring the elephant in the room, don’t you, Miss Roseingrave?”
Wariness darkened her eyes.
“Am I prisoner or guest? I like to know where I stand.”
“One would think it was obvious after all we’ve done to see you arrive in Dublin safely.”
“One thinks all sorts of things, but I like to know.”
The tension thickened. Even Rogan paused in the act of pouring another whiskey to watch the game of one-upmanship.
Roseingrave eyed Brendan as one might a recalcitrant child. “Máelodor’s searching for you. And he’s made sure the price on your head is exceedingly tempting. On your own, how long will you last with so many on your trail?”
“Long enough, I hope.”
“And Miss Fitzgerald?”
Elisabeth stiffened, feeling the eyes of everyone in the room suddenly focus upon her.
“I’ll protect her,” Brendan answered. “She’s no reason to fear.”
“As you did in Loughrea? She may want more assurances than that. After all, it’s her life we’re talking about. Elisabeth? What say you?”
This was their chance to escape. What she’d urged Brendan to do days ago. And now? She’d run through the options in her head, counting debts and credits as she might balance a tally sheet. Her conclusion always the same. “I say we stay,” she pronounced.
Brendan’s face darkened, his body stiff.
Elisabeth plowed ahead, before she changed her mind. “You said yourself, like it or not, while your shoulder is poorly, we’re safest in Helena’s company.”
“Safety might be going a bit far,” the Amhas-draoi answered with a cold angry light in her eyes.
“If you wanted Brendan dead, you’d have done it already,” Elisabeth replied smoothly. “We’ve nothing to lose and all to gain by remaining here as long as you’ll have us.”
“And if I choose to rid the world of Douglas perfidy once and for all?”
Elisabeth allowed herself a sly smile. “You’d have a hard time explaining away a dead body. Servants talk, Helena. Murdering one’s guests just isn’t done.”
The three of them stared at her as if she’d grown horns, when all she’d done was point out the obvious. Digging her hands into her skirts, she pressed her lips firmly together and faced them all down. It didn’t take a gift for Other magic to grasp the core of their current situation. Merely reasonable intelligence and plain common sense. And she was tired of being treated like the thick-skulled Duinedon among a bevy of Fey-born.
Brendan recovered first. Laughter sparking his luminous gaze, he eyed her as if seeing her for the first time. “I believe I have the answer to my question.”
