Page 23 of The General's Gift
He gave her a dry look, one brow lifting.
“Don’t you see? It is like Puck says, ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be.’”
Her heel snagged on the edge of his ink blotter. A squeak—too high for battle, too low for music—split the air. Her arms flailed, a riot of tulle.
Hawk lurched up from his chair and caught her. The momentum carried her down, across his thighs, so that when the world righted, she was sprawled in his lap, breathless, skirts sliding over his boots.
Silence reigned over everything but his pulse, drumming hard enough to rattle the desk. She was close. Too close. Her nose had no business becoming acquainted with his chin. Her copper hair tumbled forward, brushing his jaw.
Madness indeed. A general felled without a shot fired.
Hawk did not breathe. If he did, he would breathe her in—that faint trace of lilac, soap, and so much red. Better to suffocate than surrender.
Her lip trembled, and she shut her eyes. She looked like a creature who had placed herself in mortal danger, but had no willpower to escape.
“You should not wander the house at night.” His voice came low, roughened by restraint.
“But it is your house,” she whispered. “And you are my fairy godfather.”
The words struck harder than musket shot.
Fairy. Godfather.
A role stripped of desire, stripped of manhood. A safe, neutered guardian fit for storybooks and nursery tales. She had caged him neatly in her fantasy, and she smiled as though she believed it.
He did not smile. Godfather? A godfather did not burn to taste his ward’s mouth. A godfather did not imagine laying her down until she trembled for him. A godfather did not ache with every second she sat on his lap.
“In every story, there’s a character who watches the heroine. He appears just when she is in danger. Then he uses his magic—”
“I have no magic.” Every tool he offered was made of steel, not stardust.
“Don’t you?” She tilted her head, curls spilling over her shoulder. “You plucked me from the theater and turned me into a lady. And now you will help me find love… If that is not magic, I don’t know what it is.”
He set her on her feet, more abruptly than he meant. His hands lingered a fraction too long at her waist.
“Go back to your room, Celeste.”
The words were iron. Inside, he was ash.
Two weeks later
Hawk stepped down onto the gravel, every sense tightening. The afternoon air was still. Too still. Not the ordinary peace of a well-run house, but the heavy, unnatural quiet he had heard on battlefields just before the enemy’s guns spoke.
“I’m sure there is a rational explanation, Father,” Nicki said beside him.
“Indeed. Unless the French crossed the channel and made my house their headquarters, I don’t understand why my door is unguarded.”
The dogs came running into the courtyard, the infernal poodle at their heels. Surprise of surprises—the three were wearing matching tulle bows.
Nicki laughed. “You’ve got to give it to the little mongrel. Othello charges like a true dragoon. You should conscript him to the 13th.”
Hawk grunted. “Napoleon seems more fitting a name for this pest—small, territorial, and convinced he rules the world.”
“I’m off to the barracks. Good luck dealing with whomeveroverran the house.”
Hawk ignored his son’s sarcasm and strode into the gallery. No murmur of voices from the servants’ hall, no faint rattle of crockery from the kitchens.
If anyone had harmed Celeste—a muffled thud carried through the hush. Then another. Hawk followed the sound to the ballroom. The noises were clearer now—the scraping of footfalls, and some sort of footwork. Not the cadence of boots on a parade ground, but irregular, limping, punctuated by a discordant cascade of piano notes that seemed to flee the beat rather than hold it.
