Page 17 of Hold Me Fast
“What was the language?” he demanded. “Where did you learn it?”
Tammie shrugged. “Who knows? It might be Welsh. Or Gaelic, perhaps.” She volunteered a little more, minding her words as if they were the gold coins of the old tales. Or knives. Didn’t one of the folk tales tell of a girl who was cursed to spit knives with every word she spoke? For certain, if she was careless with what she said, Guy would find a way to turn her words against her.
He leaned over from his seat and grabbed her chin, forcing her to face him. “What is it about, Tammie?”
“A girl who drowns and is lost, and the boy who searches for her,” she replied. “Or so I understand. It is a pretty tune, is it not?”
“Pathetic,” he replied, examining her eyes as if a different answer might have been written there. “True love and all that nonsense.” He must have been satisfied, for he pushed her face away from him, letting go as he did so.
“They enjoyed it,” she repeated. “All the sad songs. The estranged lovers who demand impossible tasks as a sign of true love. The lover who bemoans the loss of his fickle mistress. The lad whose sweetheart is lost and gone.” It was very sad.
She had made them sad, and they had loved it. All the bright and beautiful people, with their silk and lace and jewels. A host for the elf king. No, but they were not Guy’s people. They were the duke’s people. Was he, too, an elf king?
It made sense. Hermamm wynn, her grandmother, had spoken of the light elves and the dark elves. Guy was the dark king, so was the duke the light king? And if he was, could he save her? But no. The elf kingdoms avoided one another, if Mamm’s tales were to be her guide, and would not risk war for a human girl who had wandered into Guy’s clutches of her own free will.
Guy was still frowning, and his aura was even darker and muddier than usual. “Sir Jowan Trethewey is here,” he said, abruptly. He was still holding the laudanum out of her reach.
“I wondered,” Tammie replied, less interested in the conversation than in the glass of happiness he was withholding. “He was staring at me. I thought it could not be Jowan.” Guy would not believe a complete lack of interest. “What would Jowan be doing here, in London, I asked myself. But he kept staring. Was it Jowan, then? The man with the dark curls in the third row, near the middle?”
Guy handed her the glass. “Possibly. He doesn’t matter, Tammie.”
Tammie downed the drink.
“Perhaps he will call,” she suggested when Guy said nothing more.
“You will not see him,” Guy commanded. “It is for the best, Tammie. You loved him once. You don’t want him to see what you have done. What you have become.”
“No,” she replied, obediently, and added, “He loved Tamsyn. And Tamsyn died, long ago. Only Tammie remains.”
Guy pulled her to her feet and offered her his elbow. “Just so.” His voice was dark with satisfaction. “And Tammie is mine.”
“Yes, Guy,” Tammie agreed, keeping her eyes lowered lest Guy read the rebellion there. Tammie was Guy’s, but Tamsyn stirred within her, not nearly as dead as she had believed. And Tamsyn had always been Jowan’s, just as Jowan was Tamsyn’s.
*
Tamsyn was absentduring the auction but appeared briefly at the start of the supper. Jowan recognized the man with her as the Earl of Coombe, but he had changed over the past seven years. Then, he had been a gentleman in his prime, elegant, and sophisticated but also handsome and charming. To the sixteen-year-old Jowan, he had represented the fashionable world—that circle of superior beings who sometimes passed through their village, pausing only long enough to look down their noses at the locals. Jowan had hated that he found the man impressive and somewhat intimidating.
From a distance, he looked much the same, but as Jowan worked his way through the crowd to approach, he realized how much the man had aged in the last seven years. The firm skin beneath his eyes had become bags, his neck had relaxed into jowls, his waist had expanded, and his hair had receded from his forehead.
He was moving from group to group, introducing Tamsyn and stopping to chat for a few minutes. Jowan placed himself in a group with Lord Andrew and several others, waiting for the man to reach them, but Coombe turned the other way and was soon lost in the crowd.
No matter. Jowan would follow as soon as he had finished the conversation he was having with Snowden about inquiry agents. But when he did, he found that Coombe was on his own.
Jowan, having concluded that Tamsyn was nowhere in the ballroom, asked Lord Andrew to introduce him to Coombe.
“Not a nice man,” Lord Andrew warned him. “Aunt Eleanor decided to tolerate him for the sake of Miss Lind’s singing, but he would not normally be invited to any of her entertainments.”
“We met some years ago,” Jowan explained. “Miss Lind was a childhood friend. I had hoped to speak to her.”
Lord Andrew shrugged. “As long as you’re warned,” he said.
Coombe was holding forth to a group of men about his European tour. When Lord Andrew and Jowan approached, his eyes darted sideways, as if he was about to work another disappearance. He must have thought better of it, for he greeted Lord Andrew, saying, “Winderfield. I trust your belle-mere is happy with the performances this evening.”
“I believe Her Grace is well satisfied,” Lord Andrew replied. “Coombe, I wish to make known to you Sir Jowan Trethewey from Cornwall.”
“Lord Coombe and I met long ago,” Jowan said, with the minimum of polite bows. “You may remember your trip to Cornwall, my lord since you collected such a treasure there.”
“You were no more than a gormless boy, Trethewey,” Coombe replied. Up close, the signs of dissipation were even more obvious, from the threading of broken veins on his face and the discoloring of his eyes.
