Page 22

“Birding.” Gryff gazed at him for a moment. “I’m damned glad to have you here again, Locryn, but I confess, I find you much changed.”

“It’s been eight years. I should hope I’ve changed.” Locryn dredged up a smile to go with the words and saw Gryff relax. “We all must mature sometime—and look at you, getting married. You’ve no room to berate me, old boy.”

“I suppose that is true. I just hadn’t expected you to be so . . . quiet.” His cousin pushed off of the balustrade. “Well, there will be plenty to stir you up. My father-to-be has invited half of England to these weddings. There will be dinners and tea parties and a Yule ball to go along with them, too. But for today, I’m to the quarry, to see about the new rail that’s been laid. Care to come along?”

“Thank you, but I’ve been hoping to walk in the woods—and the weather looks to hold.”

“Suit yourself, then. I’ll see you at dinner?”

Locryn waited until Gryff had gone, then he stepped out into the gardens. He bit back the stab of anger that his cousin’s words had raised—and that he would never let him see.

It was true. He was changed. He scarcely resembled the laughing, carefree lad he’d been when he was last at Lancarrow. Larks, wine, song—and most especially women—those were the subjects that had largely occupied that boy. Now he was a man, and his life was about his work, his studies of the natural world and his scholarly hopes—and the shift had begun right here.

Hadn’t it? He shook his head. He still could not explain it.

He’d suffered dreams at first. Tossing and turning, always the same. A shout. A whisper.Kisses should be magic. A brush of light and heat across his lips.

Most of the time he convinced himself that it was all just imagination. A tale his sleeping mind had concocted to explain away all the strange events since. Asleep he could imagine such things as a spell, or a fairy curse.

But awake? Awake he could not blame magic or the pixies that his aunt still left offerings for. He had to acknowledge that it was some lack in himself that caused his troubles. He’d become resigned to it. He was missing something, some indefinable element that attracted females.

It was the simplest, if most painful, explanation—and therefore the most likely to be true. There was no refuting the evidence, after all. For no matter how often he dreamed of a magic kiss, nary a true one had touched his lips in eight years.

Oh, women flirted with him. Even now, when he’d all but given up his own pursuit of the matter. They might bat their lashes or sway their hips, but they went no further. When it came to a kiss—they always balked. They changed their minds, they recalled other, important matters, sometimes they indulged in elaborate ruses—but they never let themselves go so far as a simple kiss.

He’d fought against acceptance at first. He’d been so young and so very interested in kissing—and everything it led to. But the more determined he’d been, the more convoluted the games had become. A girl would trip to keep her lips from meeting with his. She would slide sideways off her horse. One had tumbled off of a bridge and into the River Cam. He’d learned his lesson at last in London, when a young debutante had stumbled into a potted plant, knocked it into the dance floor and taken down half of a quadrille in a horrifying domino effect.

The incident had made him the object of gossip and scandal—and it had convinced him that he’d had enough. He’d withdrawn into his studies and work. He was older now. Mature for his years. Settled. No longer at the mercy of physical urgings.

And if he found himself to be a bit jumpy now? Nervous? On the path that led to the ancient oak at the edge of the pixie’s wood?

Well, that was just nostalgia, certainly.

Wasn’t it?

The question—and everything else—was driven out of his head when he heard something ahead.

Voices? Near the spot that had been on his mind since he arrived back in Lancarrow.

A voice—and feminine.

He stepped carefully, hoping to observe before being observed, and came up behind a slight figure standing directly beneath the oak.

A girl. She wore a cloak of rich, dusky blue and stood with her arms akimbo, facing the tree.

Actually, she appeared to betalkingto the tree.

“You are a fine specimen,” she said warmly. “So tall and strong—and such a canopy of leaves! Nary a black fungus or twig blight to be found on you, is there?” She took a step back and craned her neck, looking high. “You’ve a fine, thick crop of mistletoe up there, too. The first I’ve been able to find all day. Surely you wouldn’t mind sharing? If I could just . . .”

She turned and bent to pick up an absurdly long, dead branch. Locryn saw that she wore a warm woolen gown of a lighter blue, embroidered with silver and white designs along the bodice. Her hair was blonde and slipping a little on one side, which allowed the afternoon sun to pick out a few reddish highlights amongst the rogue curls. Her skin shone fair, her chin pointed delightfully and determinedly.

She didn’t spot him and he realized his form likely blended with the nearby border of tall yews. He held deliberately still. She was . . . enchanting. He wanted to see what she would do next.

The branch was easily twice as long as she—and unwieldy. But she fought to raise it high and aimed the end for the patch of mistletoe in the oak’s high branches. Unfortunately, even stretched as high as her slight form would allow, she couldn’t reach it.

With a sigh she drew the branch back and held it upright, resting one end on the ground like a spear. Glancing over her shoulder, she evaluated the low, stone wall. He breathed a sigh of relief when she shook her head, rejecting the idea.

“There’s nothing for it, then,” she declared.