Page 81 of The Secret of the Three Fates
Ruan chuckled and brushed a filthy strand of hair from my brow, his warm fingertips lingering on my skin a half second too long. “You know, Ruby Vaughn. I wonder sometimes how you get yourself in the troubles you do. In the month since we met—”
“Seven weeks…” The truck hit another rut, throwing us against one another.
He took in a sharp breath at the impact. “In the lastsevenweeks… I’ve had to quell angry mobs, am now solving mysecondmurder, and have gotten myself shot. I think I’ve seen more action with you than I did during all four years of the war.”
“Blame Mr. Owen. I’d have never set foot in Cornwall if left to my own devices. Besides, your old life sounded boring.”
“It was.” He gave me a half smile before turning away and watching the miles tick away. I was glad he didn’t try to discuss what happened last night. No matter how muddied my feelings were for him, there could be no future for Ruan and me. Not in the stark light of day. He belonged in his old life—that boring one delivering babies, making teas, and tending the sick. Not here with me risking his life day after day. I was a magnet for danger—it just saunters up and falls in my lap like an overcurious kitten, begging me to stroke its ears.
Ruan laid his hand over mine, interrupting my thoughts and grounding me squarely in the present.Damn him.I grunted, snatching my hand back and folding my arms across my chest. The farmer would only take us as far as Glenrothes. From there we’d have to hire a car to get to the ferry out in Anstruther.
This was taking too long.
Mr. Owen could be dead before we got there.
The truck groaned to a stop as we neared the edge of town and I struggled to shovethatcheerful thought from my head. I hopped out, stumbling as I landed—and patted my pockets, taking inventory of what I had on me. We needed money to hire a car from here and I had only the clothes on my back.
My hand went to my throat and I started to unfasten my locket. There was no choice but to pawn it and come back later to retrieve the thing once we’d sorted matters on the Isle of May.Ifwe managed to sort them.
I’d unfastened the clasp when Ruan covered my hands with his own. “No. I won’t allow you to do that.”
My nostrils flared. “Allow me?While I might have let you into my bed last night, you are not my keeper.”
“My bed,” he corrected, his hand lingering over my locket. “I allowed you intomybed.”
I had to give him that. “Just look at us! We look like we’ve escaped from Hell’s operating theater. No one is going to help us out of the kindness of their hearts. We need money to get to the Isle of May. While I’m perfectly good at picking locks, I am not a thief, and my locket is the only thing we have of value between us.”
Ruan groused in Cornish, and shoved his hand into his own pocket, pulling out a fine silver-cased half hunter that he thrust into my hand. “Use this instead.”
“Where did you get a thing like that?” I gave him a bemused look. That was the watch of a dandy, not at all the sort of thing for my country Pellar.Mine.The thought flittered there at the edge of my mind and I swatted it back away.
“Perhaps I didn’t eschewallthe things Owen gave me when I left Oxford.”
I choked back a laugh.
“I’ll let you buy it back, mmm? You cannot lose that locket.You are your mother’s only living daughter.” He pressed the warm watch into my palm, closing my fingers over it.
“My… my mother?” Now that was a peculiar thing to say. I hastily fastened my necklace, hurrying to keep up with him. “Ruan… what do you know of my mother?”
He quickened his step.
“You know something, don’t you?” I called after him, hurrying along the road. He shook his head, eyes downcast. The fiend. I hardly knew anything of her. Only that she’d been in an orphanage, taken in by a childless farmer and his wife when she was three. We’d been told she was born to a poor Irish couple on their way to America, the sole survivor when their ship was broken apart by rough seas off the New York coast. My mother had been scooped from the wreckage and placed in a New York orphanage as a darling little thing. My grandparents had been charmed at once by a three-year-old girl with messy black curls and fathomless brown eyes. Always dreamy and distant—as if nothing in the whole world could touch her.
“Ruan…” I started again. “What do you know of my mother?”
“It’s nothing.” He kept his eyes trained on the shopkeeper’s sign in the distance, not daring to look back at me. The wind whistled through the narrow street.
“What do you know?” I struggled to keep up with him, gasping for breath. My lungs not fully recovered from all the smoke.
“Nothing. It’s only something Hecate said.”
“Andwhatdid she say?”
He paused, turning to me with a weary look. “You are your mother’s daughter, Ruby. You areMorvorenborn.” He said the word as if he was telling me everything I could possibly need to know. Except it was meaningless to me.
“Yes, but what does itmean? I’ve searched for it in every book I can find—?”
“Perhapsyouare not meant to know yet.” He pointed at a green painted sign across the street. “The pawnbroker is ahead.”
