Page 29

“Okay,” the three-year-old agreed shakily. “I had a vision. I wear the dress tomorrow.”

Owein didn’t believe her, but he nodded just the same. “Excellent choice.”

Merritt came up then, Ellis on his shoulder and clean diapers in his hands. Owein left the rest to him and headed to his own room. He didn’t want to leave Blaugdone Island. It felt like retreat. But if leaving kept his loved ones safe and saw Silas Hogwood behind bars—or better yet, dead—then he’d gladly sleep in Danielle’s house for the rest of the year.

He found a bag and started shoving shirts into it, not caring that they’d be wrinkled by the time he got to Cambridge. His packing proved easy; he didn’t have any special toiletries or petticoats to worryabout, though he did stuffFrankensteininto the side of his bag before cinching it closed.

A creaking floorboard announced Fallon’s arrival.

“You don’t have to come.” He glanced at his desk, but the Tanners had writing implements, should he need them. He snatched up Cora’s letter and pushed it under the stack in his wardrobe before securely shutting the doors.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

Shoulders slumping, Owein turned toward her. “Hardly. You’ve only just gotten back.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But it’s dangerous. And I don’t think you’re comfortable here.”

Fallon glanced into the hallway before stepping into his room and gingerly shutting the door. “I don’t think that’s really why.”

Owein paused. “I ... We need to talk.”

Nodding, she stepped away from the door. “Hulda treats me like I’m a woman of the night.”

“She doesn’t think that.”

Fallon shrugged.

Owein lowered himself to his bed. “I want you to have options.” He wiped a hand down his face. “I’m sorry. This is just ... it’s a lot.”

She perched delicately beside him. “I know,mo ghrá. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know that one,” Owein said. Fallon often called hima chara, meaning “my friend,” but he knew so little Irish he couldn’t begin to piece it together.

“That oneis what we need to talk about.” She squared her shoulders. “I’m not sorry I did it, Owein. And you shouldn’t be sorry, either.”

“I’m not,” he answered, cupping his hands around his knees. “I am, but I’m not.”

Fallon combed back his hair with her fingers. “They only want you as a breeding stud, you know.”

He flinched. “Please don’t say that.” Cora, her letters ... It wasn’t like that at all. At least, not anymore.

“I’m sorry.” And she sounded it, too, withdrawing her touch, though Owein leaned into it even as she did. “I’m just ... making my case.”

“You don’t need to make a case.” Reaching over, he clasped her hand in his. “If it weren’t for that ... I probably would have a long time ago.”

He knew he would have. Every time Fallon had left the island to fly back home, he’d wanted to sweep her into his arms, beg her to stay, kiss her lips. But he never had.

“You said it wasn’t absolute.” Clacking footsteps in the hall announced Hulda had come up the stairs. Fallon lowered her voice. “The contract, I mean.”

“There’s a mercy clause. Cora can end the betrothal if she chooses someone else her family approves of,” he explained, his own voice going raspy. A wizard, it meant, who could add to the family bloodline. “She hasn’t told me either way.” He’d learned that aristocrats had a hard time saying what they meant; they preferred to talk wide circles around a topic and leave everyone guessing. Cora didn’t seem like that—not with him, not in her letters—but there was simply no way of knowing.

Guilt swirled in his chest. He didn’t knowwhathe wanted the answer to be. If Cora werehere, this would all be so much easier. She’d feel real. He would be able to see her and touch her and understand his own feelings, his trepidation. But Cora wasn’t here, and Fallon was, and Fallon filled up so much of his heart and brain he couldn’t think clearly.

“Do you like me?” Fallon asked.

Owein sucked in a deep breath and let it out all at once. “Very much so.”

She touched his chin, coaxing him to look at her. When he did, she planted a whisper of a kiss on his mouth, sending shivers back through his jaw, down his neck, and across his shoulders. “Then just like me, Owein. It’s as simple as that.”

Was it?