Page 121 of American King (New Camelot Trilogy 3)
“Wow,” I breathe. It’s like something that something out of a storybook—three stories stretching into the blue Virginia sky, sprawling symmetrically into cupolas and gables and conservatories. It’s white and many-windowed, so that the whole thing seems to shine and glitter, a fairy tale castle with all-American touches. The black shutters, the peaked roof, the Colonial architecture. Behind the house, I can make out the splashing glint of the Shenandoah River. A new-looking stone sign in the center of the drive proclaims the house to be called New Camelot.
Oh, Merlin.
We step out of the car when it stops, and when we get to the front door, it’s locked. I use the wedding gift key to unlock it; the lock is new and the key is new, and it clicks and slides open easily as we step inside.
Even though we knew Merlin had prepared the property ahead of time for us, I’m still surprised at how fresh and welcoming it feels inside. We step into the large foyer, marked by a gorgeous curving staircase, and the drapes near us flutter—the windows were left open for us. And on the tables and stands, fresh-cut flowers fill the space with the delicate smell of spring. We walk through the foyer to the back of the house and stand at the tall windows overlooking a sloping green lawn that ends at the river. Near the river shore, a groundskeeper is splitting wood, and I think of how lovely a fire would feel in the cool mountain evenings.
“Fuck, this place is pretty,” Embry murmurs, wandering back to the front door to help the agents with our luggage. I hear him talking with them about security arrangements, but I tune it out, choosing to gaze out at the river instead, and the trees, and the mountains, all of it. I think back to all the fairy tales I loved as a girl and decide those princesses can keep their musty castles and Baroque chateaux—I’d take the proud gables and flashing windows of this American Arcadia any day.
There’s a chair next to the window, as if someone else loved this view as much as I do now, and I wonder who it was. Is this Merlin’s personal property? Is it a place he loans out to different people? His diplomatic friends, perhaps, or maybe the senators or lobbyists he likes to woo behind the scenes. Either way, I can see myself spending the entire next week in this chair, when I’m not in Embry’s arms of course, and I’m turning around to tell him so when I notice the small table next to the chair. It has a Bible on it.
A very familiar Bible.
My heart hammers in deja vu and grief as I take in the worn leather spine, the dented corners. The gold script stamped at the bottom.
Maxen Ashley Colchester.
It’s Ash’s Bible, the same one on which Embry swore his oath. Merlin told us after the Inauguration that he’d sent it to Althea Colchester, and we all thought it a kind gesture, since she’d given him that Bible herself when he was confirmed as a teenager.
But the Bible’s not with Althea Colchester in Kansas City. It’s here, in Virginia.
In a house that Merlin sent us to.
I touch the cover with my fingertips, the pebbled leather soft and cool just as I always remembered it being. The baby inside my body stirs, as if answering the living reminder of his or her father’s piety, and unshed tears sting my eyes as I lift my gaze to the window, desperate to look at anything but that Bible.
Why does it have to be here? Why couldn’t someone have warned me, prepared me, told me that my honeymoon would start with my heart breaking all over again?
And now I see and feel Ash everywhere—in the strong mountains and the towering trees, in this majestic house furnished as cleanly and modestly as he furnished his bedroom at the White House, even in the muscled swing of the dark-haired groundskeeper down by the river, who is now burying the axe in the ground at his feet and taking a minute to stare at the river. Even from here, I can see that he’s rubbing at his forehead.
Rubbing at his forehead with one thumb.
I didn’t say it was a gift from me.
Merlin’s words echo through my mind as I’m pushing my way out of the back door and onto the expansive patio. And before I know what I’m doing, I’m tripping down a long set of shallow stone stairs to the lawn, I’m holding my belly as I half-walk, half-stumble down the soft, grassy hill. I know I’m being foolish, I know I’m being absurd and stupid, and part of my mind keeps thinking of what I’ll say to the poor groundskeeper once I reach him—maybe that I was simply wild to see the river. So wild that I’m crying with it, nearly blind with it.
But the other part of me doesn’t care, doesn’t care at all, because if Merlin can believe that I’m a reincarnated Brythonic queen, then ar
en’t I allowed to believe only for a few moments that a strange dark-haired man could be Ash?
Is that so aberrant, is that so wrong?
God, I can’t breathe. It’s like all the air has frozen into place, like the world is cut out of diamond, and above and behind me, I hear Embry call my name, but I don’t care, I don’t care. And oh God, at the sound of my name, the man on the shore turns, he turns and looks at me, and I don’t know what kind of cruel trick this is, what kind of magic, but that man has Ash’s shoulders and hips, Ash’s powerful arms, Ash’s black hair and strong nose and square jaw. That man is walking towards me like he knows me, he is running and I’m running, and then we are close enough that I can hear my name on his lips, I can hear the harsh draw of his own breath, and then his mouth is on mine, his arms are banding around my back and his hands are huge and possessive everywhere, as possessive as his mouth, which takes and takes and takes and never stops.
Until we break apart, panting. On every gasping breath I smell the smoke and leather smell of him, his mint taste still on my tongue, and when our eyes meet and I see the green eyes of my Sir, my knees buckle and I drop.
“Easy, easy,” he croons, catching me as if I weigh nothing and lifting me into his arms. “I’ve got you, angel. I’ve got you.”
“You—you’re—”
“I know,” he says, his eyes crinkling in a smile.
“But…how?” My hands are on his face, making him look at me, holding him still so I can look at him, and I’m so greedy for all of him, and my heart is still thumping hard against my ribs because I’m witnessing a fucking miracle and my Sir is here, my king is here, my husband is here—Ash is alive.
“Merlin,” Ash answers. “And a little bit my own work too. I thought I was going to die, but—and I hope you’ll forgive me for this—I wanted to plan on living too. Despair is a sin, and I’ve always preferred my sins to be more enjoyable.” His eyes darken mischievously. “As you might recall.”
I’m pressing my fingertips to every crease and rise of his face, the face I thought I’d never seen again, the face I last saw pale and near-dead on a gurney. Every part of him was and is so precious to me, and God, how have I lived without these full, soft lips in my life? The dark fans of his eyelashes? The faint cleft in his chin? How can I be in his arms right now? Cradled against his solid, muscled chest? With his child nestled between us—oh God, his baby, he doesn’t know—
“I asked Merlin,” Ash continues, gazing at me just as hungrily as I’m gazing at him, “that if I somehow lived, if there was a way he could hide me. Make it so everyone thought I was dead. I did manage to live—it was a near thing, though—and Merlin worked his magic and made it so the world thought I died.”
