Page 46 of Darkness Bound (Night Prowler 5)
“Your Highnesses.” Viscount Weymouth bowed low from the waist. He straightened and beamed at Jenna and Leander, who broke apart but stood with their arms around each other’s waists.
“Weymouth.” Leander cocked his head, narrowing his eyes. “You’re looking rather pleased with yourself this morning.”
A faint blush rose in the viscount’s cheeks. He glanced at his valet, standing stoically beside him, staring at nothing. “Just . . . er . . . just anxious to begin our journey, My Lord,” he stammered, walking stiffly into the opulence of the East Library. Prisms of fractured, golden sunlight reflecting from the crystal chandelier hanging from the gilded ceiling above glinted off his spectacles, and shone from the dome of his balding head. He paused beside the marble fireplace, staring pensively down into the dark hearth for a moment. Then he turned and said briskly, “Is everything in order?”
Leander slanted his wife a look. She blinked up at him, smiling coyly again, and he clenched his jaw, shaking his head. He exhaled hard, raked a hand through his hair, then gave her a gentle kiss on the temple.
He murmured into her ear, “Our discussion isn’t over yet.” To the viscount, he said, “Yes. We’re ready. Aren’t we, darling?”
“Ready as we’ll ever be.” She sent the viscount a long, searching look, under which he squirmed.
The blush in his cheeks deepened, turning them ruddy. “And how are you feeling this morning, Your Highness?” he asked, a little too brightly. “Any sign of the Sight returning?”
Jenna and Leander shared a knowing glance.
They hadn’t told anyone her Sight had returned once the children had been born because there was a traitor to be found . . . and nothing brought out the circling wolves like a whiff of weakness. It would be so much more convenient if the mind reading would return—she’d simply line everyone up and shake their hands, and it would be done—but at least they knew where Caesar was hiding. It would have to be enough for now.
“No, not yet.” Jenna sighed, pretending dismay and doing her best to look crestfallen. “All the other Gifts are intact, but the Sight . . . we’re still hoping, of course.”
“Of course!” the viscount enthused, rising up on his toes as if he were going to hop. He lowered himself immediately and nervously cleared his throat. “Er . . . well, then, if there’s not anything else, I’ll wait outside. My family is already gathered in the motor court, along with the rest of the Assembly.”
Jenna’s stomach squeezed to a knot. Once they left, Sommerley would be a ghost town. No one knew if they’d ever be able to return. For a woman who as a child had never lived in any one place longer than a few months, Sommerley had become more than a home. It had become a sanctuary.
Her arm tightened around her husband’s waist. Home is with him. Home is wherever he and the girls are. Nothing else matters.
“Thank you, Edward,” said Leander. “We’ll be down in a moment.”
The viscount and his valet bowed their goodbyes and left, and Jenna and Leander stood looking in silence around the grand, glittering room.
Leander turned to her. “It’s twelve hundred miles from here to Morocco—”
“Thirteen hundred sixty-eight,” Jenna correctly softly. “I know, love.”
He stared at her a beat.
“I looked it up.”
His eyes bored into
her. “How long have you been planning this?”
She stroked his cheek with her fingertips. “I’m going to be fine, Leander. I promise I won’t take any unnecessary risks. Caesar won’t even know I’m there . . . you know I can do this.”
As he stared down at her, a muscle in his jaw flexed, over and over.
“If I leave soon, I can be there before sunset. A bit of recon, then I’ll head toward Brazil.”
He shook his head. “You’ll be flying over open water on the way back. What is it? Two, three thousand miles from Morocco to Manaus?”
“Four thousand two hundred fifty.” Jenna pressed her fingers against that angry muscle in his jaw, willing it to calm.
Leander cupped her face in his hands. “This is insanity! You’ll be totally exposed! Over that distance, you’ll have to fly without stopping, for . . . how long? Days, likely! There’re airplanes, there’s radar . . . you don’t think someone will notice a huge white dragon flying over the Atlantic Ocean?”
“I can be Vapor,” she said gently. “I can be a bird—”
“What if you tire? What about food, water? What if, God forbid, you get injured? Jenna, think!”
She removed his hands from her face, and stepped back, out of his reach. She watched his face, his desperate, begging eyes, and steeled herself against them.
