“A while back. Some sort of accident at school. All very mysterious, all very hush-hush. But she moved on, found David, who is very nice if slightly . . . Well, he’s very nice. Human, unfortunately, but then so are you, aren’t you, my dear?” When Tamsyn didn’t reply right away, Annie reached over and patted her hand. “Oh, don’t be alarmed, this group is a mix of witches and humans, although I think we outnumber you quite a bit. Who invited you?”
Tamsyn had had her whole plan of calling herself a friend of Carys’s mother, Amelia, but thanks to Bowen’s little display in the library, she now had an even better and more plausible excuse. “I’m here as Bowen Penhallow’s guest,” she said, turning slightly so that she could rest her hand on Bowen’s arm.
He turned to her, flashing her a tight smile before leaning across her to say, “Nice to see you again, Lady Meredith.”
“Bowen Penhallow. Didn’t I catch you trying to use magic to steal apples from our orchard here at Tywyll one summer?”
This time, Bowen’s smile was genuine, and Tamsyn was struck yet again by just how much younger that expression made him look, how warm his brown eyes looked in the candlelight. “That was actually my brother Rhys. He’s still terrified of you.”
Annie gave a pleased huff. “Excellent. Too handsome for his own good, that one. Although that appears to run in the family. If you’d shave that pelt from your face, I believe you’d give him a run for his money.”
To Tamsyn’s surprise—and utter delight—she could see Bowen going a little pink at those words.
Bowen Penhallow blushing. Wonders truly never ceased.
A clinking sound caught their attention, and Tamsyn glanced back up at the head of the table where Sir Madoc stood, crystal glass and butter knife in hand. His tufts of white hair seemed even . . . tuftier, and his face was still red, bald head shining with sweat. Still, he smiled down the table at everyone gathered there and boomed out, “Get thee a wife! So said the Bard himself, and who should we mere mortals be to quibble, eh?”
“Is the Bard a guy down at the local pub?” Tamsyn asked Bowen in a low whisper, and was gratified to see the way his lips quirked up just the littlest bit.
“Don’t play the Dumb American, Tamsyn, doesn’t suit you.”
“Because I’m such a smart-ass?”
He looked back over his shoulder at her, their eyes holding just long enough for everything in Tamsyn’s body to slow down and heat up all at once. “Because you’re brilliant. Too clever for your own good.”
Bowen’s eyes flicked down, his gaze on her mouth, and Tamsyn felt that look like a touch.
Like a kiss.
“Too clever for my own good, too,” he muttered, and then he turned away again, leaving Tamsyn damn near breathless as Sir Madoc continued speechifying about the marriage of true minds, and love’s endless bounty, and all kinds of words that were beautiful and important and legendary, and all Tamsyn could think about was how there weren’t any words to capture how she felt when Bowen Penhallow called her brilliant.
“And so a toast!” Sir Madoc called out, raising his glass higher before noticing that it was empty. With a muttered curse, he gestured at a footman with his free hand, and the man—boy, really—rushed forward with a bottle of champagne, topping him off.
“A toast!” Sir Madoc repeated, and the rest of them stood as well, everyone except Carys and David. “To my future son-in-law, David, a gentleman of . . . of . . . great . . . temperament. And . . . and manly attributes.”
Clearing his throat, Sir Madoc turned to his other side. “And to my beautiful daughter, Carys,” he said, and now his expression softened. For whatever Sir Madoc’s faults, it was clear he loved his daughter, and that made Tamsyn like him just the littlest bit more. “The light of this family’s life. Our most precious jewel.”
Maybe everyone else missed the way Carys’s fingers strayed to Y Seren, still pinned to her dress, but Tamsyn didn’t. Carys was pale, and her plates had all been taken away untouched. In the candlelight, the violet shadows under her eyes were even more apparent, and when she raised her own glass, her hand was trembling.
“To Papa,” she said, and then she turned slightly, her glass now lifted toward David, who was smiling, but Tamsyn could see that his knuckles were white where they clutched the stem of his glass.
“And to David, the man I’ll marry in just two short days,” she added.
Not “To David, the man I love,” Tamsyn thought. That wasn’t a toast, that was just stating a fact. She might as well lift a glass herself and say, To Bowen! A man with a lot of facial hair that I’ve had a not unconcerning amount of dirty dreams about.
Still, Tamsyn lifted her glass like everyone else with a murmured “To David.”
Maybe it was because she was still looking at Y Seren, or maybe it was because Tamsyn had just discovered a real soft spot for this girl who was so beautiful, so rich, and so obviously miserable that her eyes stayed on Carys, but Tamsyn was the first one to notice the way the bride’s lower lip started trembling, how the champagne sloshed over the side of the glass as she raised it even higher and said, “And to Declan.”
A low murmur started at the far end of the table, and David set his own glass down hard enough to make Tamsyn wince.
“If the world were a just place, he would be here tonight,” Carys went on in a high but unwavering voice. “And he would be standing across from me at the altar in two days,” she added, and now there weren’t just murmurs but straight-up gasps.
“Carys!” Sir Madoc barked, but his daughter was already out of her seat, fast enough that the chair itself clattered to the
parquet floor, and with a choked sob, Carys rushed from the room.
Chapter 8
Bowen knew multiple swear words in multiple languages, but he wasn’t sure if any of them were strong enough to express how it felt watching the woman Declan had loved rush out of her bridal dinner in a flood of tears.
He could hear Sir Madoc calling after her, could see David rising to his feet as though he might run after her, and—worst of all—could feel Tamsyn’s questioning eyes on him, but none of that mattered, because right now, Bowen was back in that attic at the very top of Penhaven College’s library, and Declan was standing in front of him, alive, real, vivid. There was a chalk circle drawn on the floor in front of them and a crumpled piece of parchment in the center. Declan’s eyes were so bright, unnaturally so, and Bowen had known then that he had to call a stop to this, that whatever magical knowledge could be gleaned from this was too much, too strong, but Declan was already saying the words—words Bowen had taught him—and there was a flash of light, and—
Tamsyn got up suddenly, her napkin landing in a heap near her plate, and before Bowen had time to think, she was out the door and after Carys.
Luckily, he did have the perfect curse for this, one Tamsyn herself had said multiple times.
Fuck a duck.
Throwing back the last of his wine, Bowen rose from his seat, tossing his own napkin down, and Lady Meredith beamed at him from behind her pince-nez. “Ooh, very nice, do enjoy a bit of drama before dessert! Your lady friend goes in search of darling Carys, you go in search of your lady friend, and hopefully someone ends up rogered in the library. Oh, it’s like the Yule Ball of ’75 all over again!”
Bowen didn’t know what that meant, and given that his father had referenced the Yule Ball of ’75 multiple times, usually while a bit squiffy at the holidays, Bowen emphatically did not want to understand the reference.
Instead, he stalked off toward the double doors and out into the foyer, while behind him, he could hear Sir Madoc saying to David, “It’s from her mother, you see, this penchant for theatrics. I met Amelia on a cruise down the Nile in the late eighties, and she was a performer, a glorious performer, but a performer nonetheless, so it’s to be expected . . .”
The dining room had been dim, but the hallway was positively gloomy, all shadows and flickering sconces, and for a moment, Bowen froze, trying to figure out where they might have gotten off to.
Then he heard the distinctive click of those ridiculous shoes Tamsyn was wearing somewhere off to his left, and he followed the sound down an increasingly dark hallway until he reached a set of French doors that led out onto the terrace. One door stood ajar, a cold wind blowing sleet onto the parquet.
Tamsyn was wearing a fucking velvet jumpsuit cut down to her navel, she didn’t have a coat, there was no way she would’ve stepped outside into—
