Bowen gave him a tight smile and then lifted his glass, nodding toward the liquor cart set up near the fireplace. “Need a refill,” he said, and the man laughed again, holding up both hands.
“Say no more, say no more, I think I may—oh, now hang on a tick.” The man looked past Bowen, his jovial expression shifting into something sly. “Who on earth is that glorious creature?”
Bowen knew it would be Tamsyn before he even glanced over his shoulder, but that didn’t lessen the impact of seeing her there in the doorway in something black and slinky, pearls glowing against her tanned skin, and a neckline so low that his hands almost ached to slide inside of it. She’d be warm and soft, and her lips would part when his knuckles brushed—
“Finally, a fuckable woman who isn’t the bride,” the man said, his smile turning predatory, and Bowen was amazed the glass in his hand didn’t shatter into a thousand pieces.
He didn’t realize he’d made a noise until the man—not Peregrine, Bowen suddenly remembered, Perseus, fucking wanker—blanched slightly, his eyes blinking rapidly. “What?” he asked, then gave a nervous chuckle and took another sip of his whisky. “You already called dibs on her or something?”
“Or something,” Bowen growled, before crossing the room to Tamsyn.
She smiled when she first saw him, but the closer he got, the more her smile faded so that by the time he was standing in front of her, she was looking at him with the same wary mix of alarm and confusion Bowen felt the first time she tried to explain what a Real Housewife was to him.
“There you are,” he said, and before he could let himself overthink it, he slid an arm around her waist, pulling her in close. She was as warm and soft as he’d imagined, smelled just as fucking delicious as she had that first night they’d met, and Bowen couldn’t resist letting his lips graze her skin just the littlest bit as he leaned down to murmur, “Sorry, but—”
“That red-faced guy currently sweating alcohol and staring daggers at us said something pervy about me, and you’re letting him think I’m yours because even though it’s the twenty-first century, men are still Like That?” she replied sweetly, her expression loving as she reached up to pat his cheek, and Bowen grunted in assent.
She gave a low, throaty chuckle that went straight to his cock, and Bowen’s hand reflexively tightened on her hip.
To distract himself, he asked, “What took you so long? Was beginning to think you might skip cocktail hour altogether.”
Her expression clouded over, a wrinkle appearing between her brows as she shook her head. “Something weird—” she started to say, but before she could finish, there was a crash from just outside the library door, a sound so loud that Bowen’s brain struggled to even make sense of it.
And then someone started to scream.
Chapter 7
It was probably a sign of just how messed up things already were at Tywyll House that Tamsyn’s first thought upon hearing the scream was Oh, yay, that sounds like a person!
“And that’s a good thing?” Bowen asked, frowning down at her as some of the crowd began to move toward the big double doors.
Okay, so apparently that hadn’t been so much a “first thought” as a “first thing out of her mouth,” but those things were frequently the same, so she shouldn’t be surprised.
“It’s better than the ghost,” she murmured in reply as they let themselves be carried along with everyone else out into the hallway, Tamsyn practically glued against Bowen’s side. Her mind was still trying to process the sight of Bowen in a tuxedo, his unruly hair actually tamed into soft waves, his trimmed beard enhancing the line of his jaw and the firmness of his lips, so maybe it was a good thing they had this little screamy distraction, because otherwise, she might have been tempted to do something insane like lick his face or propose.
Tamsyn wondered if he was fighting similar urges where she was concerned, because she had definitely seen the way his fingers had flexed around his empty glass when he’d spotted her in the doorway, and she wasn’t sure if he’d needed to hold her quite so tightly when he’d appeared at her side, wasn’t sure that brush of lips against her temple had been strictly necessary.
Not that she’d complained.
Even now, as they spilled out into the huge foyer with the other guests, it felt natural to slip her arm through his, and she liked the way his elbow moved closer to his side, pulling her to him so that she had to rest her other hand on his biceps to steady herself, and . . .
Okay, whoa. Bowen had clearly been hiding a lot under those sweaters he wore, and Tamsyn felt like she probably deserved a medal—or, you know, a Fuck-Off Huge Magical Brooch—as a reward for resisting the temptation to squeeze that firm curve of muscle underneath her fingertips.
Bowen kept her close as he maneuvered them around a trio of women in gorgeous black evening gowns, and something crunched underneath Tamsyn’s high heel.
Glancing down at the stone floor, she saw a chunk of glass there, and then another. And another. The whole floor seemed to be shimmering and crunching, and Tamsyn suddenly realized that the hallway was a lot darker than it had been just moments before.
“Chandelier,” Bowen said, and yes, now that they’d moved closer to the front of the crowd, Tamsyn could see that it was indeed the massive crystal chandelier lying broken and crooked on the slate. That must have been the source of the crash.
As for the screaming . . .
It had stopped, but Tamsyn had a feeling it must’ve come from the ethereal-looking blonde in the white dress and tartan shawl currently shuddering just beside the staircase. One hand was clamped over her mouth, her gaze riveted on the broken chandelier, and Sir Madoc awkwardly patted her shoulder, while a tall black-haired man in a gorgeously tailored tux rested a hand on her lower back, his head low as he murmured in her ear.
Everyone was whispering now, the low voices surprisingly loud in the cavernous room, the soft sounds punctuated by the occasional whimper from the blonde, who kept looking back to the ruined chandelier.
They were close enough now that Tamsyn could make out Sir Madoc saying, “Darling, dearest girl, don’t talk such nonsense. It’s an old house, and you know as well as I do that not everything works as it should. Why, just the other day—actually, it was in October, now that I think about it, not quite the other day, but in any case, I was out in the—”
“This wasn’t the house, Da!” the blonde said, her voice ringing out.
Ah, so this was the bride, then, Carys Meredith. Which must make the man beside her David Thorsby, the groom. They were a good-looking pair, her hair so fair it was almost white, him all dark and brooding, but Tamsyn noticed the way that Carys seemed to be almost leaning away from his touch and how David’s jaw had clenched when she’d raised her voice.
“We’ve all been pretending this isn’t happening, but it is,” Carys continued, looking back and forth between her father and her fiancé. “It’s him. He—he’s here, and he’s unhappy. He’s furious. Otherwise why would he be doing all this?”
Next to her, Tamsyn felt Bowen tense up, and she looked over at him, confusion pulling her brows tight together. “What—” she started, but Carys went on, flinging out both arms, the shawl sliding from her shoulders.
“How much clearer can it be?” she asked, her voice almost pleading. “It’s Declan. He’s haunting me because he doesn’t want me to get married.”
Bowen took a deep breath, but Tamsyn wasn’t looking at him anymore. She wasn’t looking at the chandelier or scanning the room for any other possible Ghost Projectiles.
No, she was staring at the jewels pinned to the modest neckline of Carys’s evening gown.
The hallway may have been a lot darker now that the chandelier was down, but even in the dim glow from the sconces and the distant fireplace, the rubies, emeralds, and diamonds at Carys’s décolletage glittered.
Y Seren in the flesh, so to speak, but not locked in some jewelry box, not hidden away in a distant room where centuries of Meredith treasure gathered dust. Right here. In front of her.
On the bride.
Tamsyn jumped as Bowen’s hand covered the one she still had settled just in the crook of his elbow. He squeezed, but she wasn’t sure if that was a warning or just an acknowledgment that, yup, here was the thing she’d been planning to steal. Not some trinket the family never thought about, but clearly a treasured family heirloom, possibly something Carys was planning on wearing to the wedding itself.
