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Asher’s mouth curled in a cruel mockery of a smile. “Bring this Other to me in one piece. I’d like to study it.”
Ellery came down in the morning, surprisingly refreshed and prepared to find the previous night had been a hallucination brought on by exhaustion and stress. Why her imagination would conjure watchers in the night and sword-wielding men, she didn’t know for certain. Mayhap her father’s fanciful camp tales had affected her more than she cared to admit.
The clock chimed seven as she left her room, but that was the only sound breaking the silence. She peered over the banister, but the parlor door was closed, and the dining room was empty.
“Mr. Bligh?” she called, her voice loud in the quiet cottage.
“Conor?”
No answer.
So she had imagined it. She squashed a twinge of disappointment. She couldn’t say she was upset to find that life was as uneventful as she expected. After all, that was how she liked it, wasn’t it? Tame, with no surprises. But there had been a tingle of excitement deep in the pit of her stomach when she woke this morning. A feeling that something was coming. For good or ill was unclear, but a change that would affect everything that came after. She descended the stairs, pushing those thoughts away. It was obvious her wild dreams had simply carried over into her waking.
The kitchen was empty, but folded neatly on a chair were a bundle of blankets. A basket of eggs sat upon the table with a note. She snatched it up, reading it through and then twice more, her stomach’s tingling back and growing.
Mr. Freethy brought them.
Conor
So it hadn’t been a dream. She had found a dying man on her doorstep. Conor Bligh was real and dangerous and—she clutched the note tighter—chatting with the biggest gossip in the village. In an instant, her excitement became anger, and she crushed the paper in her fist. Perfect. If Mr. Freethy knew there was a man staying under her roof, then the entire village of Carnebwen knew it. She’d spent two years trying to outrun her scandalous past. Mr. Bligh had ruined that in twelve hours.
Crossing the floor in a rush of frustration, she noticed a wink of gold caught between the stones of the hearth. Bending down, she discovered a ring carved in the shape of a wolf’s head, its tail caught between its teeth. She’d seen one similar on Conor Bligh’s hand last night. But this ring was far too small. Not his then, but obviously something he dropped and would miss. But would he know he lost it here? And would he come back for it? She wrapped it tightly in a handkerchief and placed it in her reticule. She would hold on to it for now.
She ate and washed up, focusing her worry on the more immediate problem to her mind—the overdue rent. Mysterious intruders scaring her with tales out of a faery book would have to wait. A tightness knotted her stomach. Her meeting with Mr. Porter hung above her like a cloud. She’d donned her best gown, hoping it gave her an air of respectability. Her landlord was a stickler for propriety, but she wondered if after last night she had any reputation left to protect. She tugged on her gloves. Mr. Porter knew her. He should know she didn’t entertain strange men in her home.
And Conor Bligh was as strange as they came.
Her cheeks grew hot remembering his kiss. After twenty-two years following the drum with her father, she knew men, how they thought and how they acted. Conor Bligh was a prime example of all the worst characteristics of the male species. The kind of man her father had always warned her about. After the heated kiss she and Conor had shared, she could understand why. It was far too easy to get lost in that swooping wild joining of lips and tongues. To be teased into thinking that heady pleasure signified something more.
The hazy blue sky and the twittering of larks in the hawthorn trees around the cottage had dispelled the last lingering shadows of the night before, but stepping out the front door, she was brought up short. The bushes and flowers beneath both front windows lay crushed and scattered. And in the lane and garden hundreds of footprints had churned the drying mud into ruts. A muddy handprint dirtied one windowsill, as if someone had stood and peered into the cottage. Waves of heat and then cold washed over her, and she swallowed over and over, trying to calm herself. Keun Marow, Conor had called them. Hunters from the faery world sent to find her.
Suddenly, the empty lane seemed ominous and the quiet morning felt oppressive. She needed normal. She needed people and the comforting surround of the village. She hurried down the harbor road toward Carnebwen, thinking even the dreaded company of Mr. Porter would be welcome now.
Chapter Four
By the time Ellery left the milliner’s, the day’s warm weather had given way to evening’s dirty gray clouds and a chill breeze. Disapproving stares and barbed comments followed her up the harbor road toward home, but she refused to feel ashamed. She’d lived her whole life in the shadow of such unjustified cruelty. At least it was her own supposed sin she was being scolded for this time and not the guilt of her parents.
A crowd of young women watched her pass, a flurry of whispers springing up in her wake. One girl, bolder than the others, spoke in a carrying voice. “Her brother, he says. I’m wishin’ I had a brother or two like him.”
The giggles that followed this jibe almost made Ellery whip around and answer the accusations. She was saved from doing so by the approach of a lanky, round-shouldered gentleman dressed in a fashionable coat of dark blue and a cravat tied up to his long jowls, a huge pearl nestled among the folds. “Haven’t you anything better to do, Miss Yeovil, than t
o mock your betters?” He shook a dismissive hand at the group. “Off with the lot of you!”
He eyed the women as if they had crawled from beneath a rock, his demeanor as well as his words scattering the group like a fox among hens. Shifting his attention to Ellery, he sketched her a bow. “Your pardon for that display of incivility, Miss Reskeen.”
Not sure whose incivility he was speaking to, she merely gave him a grateful smile while inwardly wishing him to the devil. “My thanks, Mr. Porter. I’m sure they meant no harm.”
“Low-born trollops, and no better than they should be,” he replied, adjusting his cuffs. “I heard you stopped by to see me earlier today. I was quite cast up when I found we’d missed one another, but I had ridden out early to collect the rents.”
Ellery wished her savior had been anyone but Mr. Porter. Her landlord had always been friendly, but since her cousin’s death, his kindliness had grown cloying, and his smile smarmier.
He made a show of flipping open an enameled snuffbox and inhaling a pinch from between his fingers. “I came to see you as soon as I heard about your…” He sneezed, then lowered his voice, “your problem. The talk in the village is quite salacious.” His eyes gleamed, and he stepped toward her, reaching for her hand. “I refused to believe it until I spoke to you directly.”
Feeling suddenly cornered on this lonely stretch of lane, Ellery backed up. “That’s gallant of you, but really it’s not what anyone thinks. A storm in a teacup.” She tried changing the conversation. “My reason for coming to see you was the matter of my rent on the cottage. I know I’ve been late—”
“I understand your plight, Miss Reskeen, and I sympathize. It must be hard to be a woman on your own with no family or connections of any kind.” He reached again for her hand and this time refused to let her elude him. His palms were sweaty and soft. “No one to lean on when times grow hard.” He squeezed her hand, his gaze resting on the neckline of her gown. “No one to offer comfort when you need it most.”
Had she not owed him three months rent, Ellery would have wrestled out of his grip and boxed his ears. Instead, she tried easing away from him without his noticing. “I think you misunderstand, Mr. Porter, but if you give me a bit more time, I’m sure I can manage to pay it.”
