For the first time, Bowen looked at these people not as his grandparents but as his father’s parents. Was this why he was so obsessed with amassing magical power? Had they nearly lost it, only for Elspeth to introduce it back into their DNA?
He could see his father in her, that haughty chin, the high cheekbones, the stubborn set to her mouth, and for the first time in well over a year, he felt . . . wistful, maybe. Sad that Simon had never been the father any of them deserved, and had it all started here? Had the great love story between his grandparents, the one he’d always heard about growing up, actually been something darker, something more businesslike, than he’d been led to believe?
Hell, should these two even be together?
He was still pondering that when Tamsyn appeared in the doorway. She’d put on a black-and-white tartan skirt this morning, nipped in at the waist with a white belt, and paired with a white jumper that clung to curves he now had hands-on—and mouth-on—experience with, and she’d pulled her dark hair back into a low chignon at the base of her neck.
She looked pretty and proper, and he ached to muss up every perfect inch of her.
Her cheeks flushed a bit when she saw him, but then she spotted Harri and Elspeth, and with a bright smile and a cheery “Good morning!” breezed into the room.
After filling her plate at the sideboard, she slid into the seat next to Bowen, her thigh brushing his under the table, and thank god they’d gone with the pretense that they were married, because it meant it was perfectly natural for him to lean over and press his lips to her temple with a murmured “Bore dai, cariad.”
Tamsyn blushed even more, but played it off with a little laugh as she fluffed her napkin in her lap. “One of these days, I’ll learn Welsh so I can know what all you’re calling me. Cariad could mean old ball and chain for all I know.”
“It means my love,” Harri supplied, and Tamsyn turned to Bowen with those eyes of hers filled with almost unbearable softness.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “That’s . . . well, that’s . . . nice, then.”
He hoped she didn’t remember everything he’d called her last night, because some of those terms were not appropriate for breakfast conversation, especially when the other people at the table were his grandparents and a teenage girl.
“You called me that once,” Elspeth said suddenly, turning to Harri. “When you first proposed. I think it was the last time I heard a term of endearment from you.”
“Not true,” he countered. “I called you blodyn tatws all the time.”
“That means potato flower,” Elspeth said dryly. “Not exactly the most romantic description in the world.”
“It was what my grandda always called my nan,” Harri said softly, and for a moment their eyes met, held.
Bowen found he was holding his breath, and under the table, Tamsyn clutched his hand. He squeezed back, because he was definitely seeing what she was seeing. There was warmth there. Fondness.
Maybe even love.
Then Elspeth turned back to her plate and shrugged. “Well, that was a pretty piece of manipulation then, wasn’t it?”
With a muttered curse, Harri stood up, tossing his napkin onto his chair and storming out of the room.
“So dramatic,” Elspeth said to herself, then delicately dabbed her lips with her own napkin before rising and saying, “You see why the idea of marrying that man in two days’ time was so abhorrent to me. He never actually loved me, and I deserve better than that. I deserve . . . well, what the two of you have,” she said, gesturing between Bowen and Tamsyn.
With that, she also flounced from the room, and Tamsyn sagged back in her chair with a sigh. “Those two are impossible,” she said.
Emerald spoke up from the end of the table. “You want the two of them to get back together. Why?”
Startled, Bowen looked over at the girl who was still reading her book while munching her toast. “How did you know that?”
“I’ve heard you talking about it,” she replied, nonchalant. “Yesterday, when you were in the hallway.” Then she lifted those big hazel eyes over her book and added, “I hear lots of things.”
For a horrified moment, Bowen thought she might be referring to last night. Where in the bloody hell was Emerald’s room anyway?
But then she set her book and her toast down, folding her arms delicately on the table, and said, “You two aren’t here because you were invited to the wedding and had some kind of magical travel accident. You’re from the future. Some spell sent you here, and now you’re trying to get back to wherever you come from.”
She leaned in closer, the edges of her hair dragging along her toast crumbs.
“Do you live in space where you’re from?” she asked in a low voice. “Or have cars that fly? No, wait.” Emerald held up a hand. “Don’t tell me, I want to find out for myself one day. I plan on living a very long time and being a very frightening old lady.”
“You’re already a pretty frightening child, so I think you’re on the right track,” Tamsyn said, and Emerald smiled.
“Thank you. So you need to get Harri and Elspeth married because one of you is related to them, right? I’m guessing you”—she pointed at Bowen—“since you and Harri have the same last name, and you and Elspeth make that same expression all the time, like you just stepped in dog poo.”
Bowen scowled. “I don’t make that expression.”
“You’re doing it now,” Emerald argued, and Tamsyn leaned over to study him before nodding.
“Yeah, you kind of are.” Then she turned her attention back to Emerald. “You’re clearly a bright and terrifying person, so do you have any ideas? How do we get those two to realize that they need to be together?”
Emerald screwed up her face, thinking. Then she said, “If I help you with this, will you teach me magic?”
“I’m not a witch,” Tamsyn answered, but Emerald shook her head, pointing at Bowen.
“I meant him. Will you teach me some magic?”
Bowen shifted in his seat, stretching his legs out underneath the table. “I can’t, love,” he told her. “It’s not a thing that can be taught. You’re either a witch or you’re not.”
“Has anyone ever become a witch?” she asked. “Like . . . maybe it was inside them the whole time, but no one knew until suddenly they could do magic?”
Tamsyn was right, Emerald was bright and terrifying, but as she looked at Bowen with those big eyes, he was reminded that she was, in fact, a child. That was a child’s fantasy, the secret witch taking the place of the hidden princess, a fantasy Bowen could understand but sadly knew was just that—a fantasy.
“Sorry, love,” he said again, shaking his head. “And even if such a thing were possible, my own magic isn’t working at the moment. Time travel apparently fuc—messes those kinds of things up.”
