Page 36 of Hazard a Guest
Horrifyingly, she began to cry. Her eyes got hot and wet, and she could feel the redness baking into her face. She wasfuriousand she was broken too.
“Take me away from here,” she managed to say, a plea, pathetic and barely audible.
He did. He helped her to her feet. He shouldered her weight. He offered her his warmth. And he took her to safety.
He did it all without saying a word.
CHAPTER 13
Joe was in tumult.
He was not often one for more than one emotion at a time, much less the very strong ones, but as he guided Ember Donnelly down the halls of Blackcove, he thought perhaps he might need to peel his own skin away and crawl out of it for a time. Such was the strength of the storm raging inside him.
Jealousy? Yes. At first. Confusion. Panic. Rage.
So much rage. He couldn’t look at her without it spiking up again, threatening to spill out of his mouth and the narrow channels of his nose and ears. He was hot with it. Burning.
He stopped near her bedroom door only for her to shake her head, silent tears still dripping down her beautiful freckled cheeks as she made tiny gasps for air.
He took her to the next place that came to mind, that little corner of the back halls with the fireplace and three grotesques. There was still a little table there where he and Freddy had eaten dinner some nights prior, but this part of the house was justas empty now as it had been the night they’d arrived, dark and buried away from the windows.
The only light here was coming from the fireplace itself, cracking and low with red coals burning on the frayed edges of the firewood. It was warm here, at least. Much warmer than the conservatory.
He let her sit and rounded the other side of the table so he wouldn’t have to let her hand go if she didn’t want him to.
She didn’t seem to want him to.
She sniffled, pushing away the tears from her face with the heel of her free hand, trembling with the effort of it. She pulled in breaths that grew a little with each attempt, and looked up at the smiling faces on the fireplace with an expression on her face that melted from confusion to something like calm.
“Oh,” she said in their direction, “hello.”
She watched them for a long moment, like someone devoted to listening well might watch the other side of a conversation, and at the end of it she nodded and turned back to him. Perhaps they’d given her some advice.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said with an embarrassed little wince and a shrug. “I don’t know why I cried. I’m probably all puffy and red now, aren’t I?”
“You are beautiful,” he said, letting as much of the feeling in him out as he could without combusting entirely.
She stared at him, perhaps because he’d been out of turn, or perhaps because she thought he was being dishonest.
So he said again, “You are always so beautiful.”
She seemed to deflate just a little, though her hand tightened in his, clinging to him, holding him in place. “I was married once,” she said suddenly, cutting through the uncertainty of her own silence with a quiet revelation. “Did you know that?”
He shook his head. He hadn’t known it, but it didn’t surprise him. Of course he couldn’t be the only one who had ever wished to take her home and keep her forever.
“He died,” she provided, like she could see assumptions forming in the air. “He was old. I was very young. It wasn’t a love match, Joe, but I did love him in my way. I think he loved me too. But never like husband and wife, you understand?”
He nodded, though he didn’t entirely understand. It wouldn’t have mattered if he were on the wrong side of a century, he thought.
She sighed. “In winter, where I grew up, we have a festival. It isn’t like the harvest or May Day, because it’s so cold. We have it in the buildings around the church, to honor St. Brigid. That’s where he found me. I was seventeen and I was with my friends and I was tormenting some poor booth operator who was trying to run a good-natured scam as one does at these things.”
“What game?” Joe heard himself asking, even though it was likely irrelevant.
She paused, an actual smile cracking the edges of her sadness. “Find the pea. You know, with the cups?”
He nodded as she mimed the game, three cups moving around with a treasure hidden under one of them.
“He wasn’t bad at the sleight of hand part,” she told Joe, allowing herself the ghost of a giggle, “but he had a pattern, avery obvious one to me. My friends and I always did this to the traveling games. They’d let me watch first, then we’d go take them for every prize they had. I had an unseemly talent for it, and it was always fun for everyone but the poor sharper.
