Page 16 of A Touch for All Time (For All Time #3)

“Y es, they fly and yes, kind of like a bird, but more like a dragonfly,” Miss Darling told him while they sat together on the woolen blanket strewn beneath them before the hearth in his solar. “They have long, metal wings on either side and—”

Airplanes. They sounded fascinating to Gray’s ears, but Miss Darling’s soft, sweet voice began to sound more like music to him and he became less attentive to her words and more to the music of her. Aria. The more he basked in the pleasing shape of her face, illuminated in the firelight, framed by her glossy chestnut locks, the alluring curve of her jaw, the beguiling shape of her lips, the ocean blue of her fathomless eyes—

“Gray? Did you hear a word I said?”

He blinked and tried not to look too guilty.

She smiled.

His heart began to race.

“Am I boring you? You asked about my home.”

“No, of course you’re not boring me,” he defended. “I was just…” He remembered that she was bold and honest enough to call his bluff if he tried to veer her from the truth.… “I was just admiring you and how you look in my poor eyes.”

Her face turned pink, and she lowered her gaze shyly. He marveled at the difference in her from when he or someone else fired up her temper.

He ached to touch her, to run his hand over her hair, his fingers against her creamy cheek. It made him feel as if he’d just finished dancing and needed to catch his breath. He stared at her, not knowing what to say, not caring if he ever spoke again. Feelings didn’t need to be spoken, did they? They were passed one to another by thoughts, gazes, and actions. But his staring made people feel uncomfortable. Now he understood it was because words were usually useless with animals. But Aria Darling wasn’t an animal.

“Miss Darling?” He softened his tone to one he thought sounded most soothing. “May I touch you?”

She lifted her firelit gaze to his. “Touch me?”

He nodded, never taking his eyes from hers. He lifted his fingers to a strand of her hair falling down her cheek.

Watching her for a sign of her displeasure, he moved his outstretched fingers closer. When she still didn’t protest, he touched the tendril. Instead of clearing it away, he ran a fingertip down it, touching her cheek, her jaw, her bottom lip.

He didn’t breathe. He couldn’t think clearly enough to tell himself to stop. Don’t touch her. But even as alarms were blaring in his head, he leaned in closer, slowly, dipping his gaze slightly to take in the ravishing sight of her waiting mouth. He wanted to kiss her. He hadn’t wanted anything so badly in years. To draw her close and close his arms around her. “May I kiss you?” he whispered, slowly moving closer.

She closed her eyes. He could hear her breathing echoing in his ears, seeping into his bones, his heart. His breath mixed with hers, warming him for an instant. Her eyes shot open. She moved away on the blanket. “Don’t kiss me,” she pleaded, holding her fingers to her mouth. “I’m afraid I could fall for you, my lord—Gray. I could fall so hard that when I return home, I won’t heal.”

His heart thumped hard in his ears, replacing the sound of her sweet breath. Was she saying that she might fall in love with him? He didn’t want her to go home broken again because of him. No, never that.

He didn’t want her to go, to disappear without a trace. He feared he might break this time. But he couldn’t ask her to stay and abandon her family.

When she stood from the blanket and gave her skirts a pat, he leaped to his feet. She was correct to get herself away from him. He wouldn’t stop her from leaving.

“Let me walk you back to your room.”

“You don’t have to,” she said, holding up her palm.

“I know,” he told her. “But let me. Please. I won’t try to kiss you or anything like that. I agree that it would be more harmful for both of us when you return home.”

She paused to stare at him, biting a corner of her bottom lip. He glanced there and felt the mad urge to groan out loud. He fought the urge the way he fought not to beat Cavendish and Harry Gable and the rest of their friends to bloody pulps every time they opened their mouths.

“You do understand why I have to return, don’t you?” she asked, pausing before she turned for the door.

“Of course,” he assured her. “I find your loyalty to your family commendable. I’m even a little jealous of them.” He didn’t realize he was smiling until she grew somber.

“I’ll look for your mother. If she’s in my future, I’ll find her.”

His smile remained but grew darker. “What will you tell her?”

“I’ll tell her the boy she left has grown into a remarkable dancer with more passion in the tips of his toes than a hundred men on their wedding night—”

His brows lifted in surprise and humor.

—“and that he lives in the obscurity of abandonment. And I’ll ask Mrs. B., if I see her, why her seer sister didn’t see what would happen to you with the Gables and the animals. Why didn’t she stop it from happening?”

They left the solar together with Gray feeling glad that she would defend him to—he stopped walking and looked at her.

“How do you know my grandmother’s sister is a seer? I didn’t tell you. I didn’t even know.”

For a moment, she gave him a confused look, and then a guilty one. “Harper told me.”

He felt the blood drain from his face. “What else? What else did she tell you?”

“She told me this seer supposedly saw the possible mothers of your sons. Seven sons. I was one of them.”

“That must be why she gave you the key.”

She nodded her agreement and felt the pocket in her skirts. Her eyes opened wider, and she patted her thigh more urgently and then rummaged through the folds in her skirts and beneath. “Gray! The key is gone!”

“Gone?” he repeated quietly. She had to be mistaken. “Are you certain you had it with you?”

“Yes! I had it. It was in my room when I returned from the Gable’s house. I planned on checking the doors, so I went to my room to get it.”

“Alright, you had it up to that point. When do you remember having it last?”

She thought about it. “I had it when I checked in on you in your bed. After that, I went to the sitting room on the second floor above the cliffs, then I found Will, then you.”

He hurried back into his solar with her close on his heels. He lifted the blanket from the floor and seeing no key, hurried around the room moving everything out of its place. Not finding it in the solar, they backtracked, checking the stairs, and almost every inch of Gray’s room, and finally made it to the sitting room. Aria checked frantically in the chair she had been sitting in earlier. The key was not there.

“I’ll wake everyone,” Gray said. “Someone must have found it.”

Aria held up her hand. “No, please don’t wake everyone. If someone found it, I’m sure they’ll return it tomorrow.”

Gray felt an odd spark of hope where there had been only darkness before. “You don’t sound worried.”

She choked out a short laugh. “I’m terrified, don’t get me wrong. I miss my family so much, but…”

“Hmm?” he urged gently when she didn’t continue.

“But it’s been nice getting to know you.”

He couldn’t help the slow smile bubbling up from that newly illuminated place inside him. He hadn’t heard words like the ones she had just uttered since he was seven and his mother left him. This alluring woman, whom he’d known for a mere ten days, spoke them so easily, so honestly. She made him feel like a different person. A man who didn’t know he needed to hear someone tell him they enjoyed being with him. A man who wasn’t hated or mistrusted by all. A man. Even now, watching her rein in the terrible panic shining in her eyes, he wanted to step forward and take her in his arms. He wanted to protect her, comfort her and promise to get her home, despite something deeper telling him to beg her to stay.

“I feel the same way,” he admitted and stepped away from her. The sun would be up in a few hours, and it was safer to walk her to her room and bid her good night.

“Is that so?”

Gray heard the teasing lilt in her voice as she hurried to keep up with him.

“Then why are you running away?”

“I’m not running away,” he corrected coolly, then spread his gaze on her. “But if I was, it would be because I feared I might pull you into my arms to see what that was like next.”

“Huh?”

He glanced at her and shook his head. “Miss Darling, aren’t you sleepy yet?”

She stopped and put her fists on her hips and a playful smile on her lips. “Oh, so all of a sudden you want me to be sleepy. You just said it was nice getting to know me too, and now you’re being rude and aloof. What happened?”

“Nothing happened,” he said and kept walking. The last thing he wanted was to get into a discussion about why he was still running away from women at the age of twenty-five—or, more importantly why he was running from her specifically. Not just for her sake, but for his.

“Oh, right, Harper told me you were untrusting, unfriendly, and uncooperative.”

He stopped and turned to her. “You both had a long talk, hmm?”

She nodded.

“What else? Out with it!”

Her eyes widened. “Out with it?”

“Yes. If it was about me, I want to know what was spoken about.”

“You think everything is about you? There’s no way Harper and I just talked and got to know each other better?”

“I know as a fact that every time Harper has something to say, it involves me,” he told her and then scowled when she rolled her eyes and giggled. “Mock me if you like but test me tomorrow. Strike up a conversation with Harper about anything other than me. See what happens.” He picked up his steps again, but not before tossing her a playfully benevolent smile. “Rest assured, I’ll forgive you for doubting me.”

He heard her blustering behind him and something down deep inside some long-forgotten chamber of his heart compelled him to throw back his head and leap toward heaven.

It will help you heal.

He almost staggered. It wasn’t an animal he heard in his head, but a memory. A memory of his grandmother’s voice. What would help him heal?

With his heart thrashing, he turned once more to look at her. Aria, like the music he loved, was helping him heal. And all at once the weight of choices he would have to make hit him squarely in the chest.

What would happen to his healing when she left? Was he going to make a choice between feeling something other than…nothing? Of walking in the light of her smiles and his own, or in the gloom of loneliness and controlled rage? Would he send her home to her family, whom she loved or selfishly keep her to himself? “She would hate me,” he whispered so low he didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud until she reacted.

“Who would hate you?” she asked. “And why? What have you done?”

“I’ll get you home, Miss Darling,” he promised as they reached her bedroom door. “With or without the key.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” she pressed. “You know a way without the key? Why didn’t you tell me? Tell me the way.”

“Harper said that besides the ability to communicate with animals, I may possibly have other gifts. One of them is time-travel. But she warned me against trying.”

“Why?”

“Apparently the last Ashmore who could do it, did it wrong and was separated from his daughters for twenty years. I don’t know how to do it and I’m not sure Harper knows either. But I would find out. I would learn how to do it right, and I would send you home.”

She stared into his eyes, and he watched in wonder as something dawned on her, widening her eyes and parting her lips.

“It’s me. It’s me who you worry will hate you.”

He leaned over her and opened the door to her room. “I’m not worried, Miss Darling. I won’t keep you from your family because of some trickery of my grandmother’s. We’ll find your key tomorrow. Pleasant dreams.” He spared her a smile and hurried away before she could call him back.

He longed for the days when his heart was lost to dance, and dance alone. Now, thoughts of pirouettes, penché arabesques, and tours en l’air were replaced with images of Miss Aria Darling’s shining eyes when she blinked at him, memories of her graceful body moving across his dance hall, when she laughed and when she was busy reviling him. He thought of her and nothing else all his recent days as well as nights. Awake or asleep she plagued him.

When he reached his room and entered it, he wished someone was in the hall to lock him inside. He already missed her company. He didn’t want to be tempted to go to her.

He went to his bed, tearing off his bed coat and shirt underneath. He checked the room one more time for the key, then kicked off his boots and hose and went to stand by the glass window. He could see the moon outside, round and illuminated as a sunlit pearl.

“Grandmother, if you can somehow hear me, stop being a coward and come back. Of course,” he mumbled when he heard nothing back. “You never cared how I was. Not even on the days when I crumbled and wanted to give up was there even the slightest sign of you near me. You obviously came back to get the key to give to Miss Darling. Even then you didn’t come to see about me. So, don’t return. In the end, you were just another puppet master.”

From his window, he could see the castle turrets. Perched on the highest one, was a large black raven.

Toric.

Immediately the bird swooped down from the turret wall and flew closer, landing on another narrow perch.

Toric. Memories came flooding back of Toric, Gray’s clever protector always flying above him. When Gray found him as an abandoned fledgling, he took him home and cared for him until Toric could fly. He flew alright. Everywhere Gray went, Toric flew close by. For a long time, Toric thought Gray was his father, but even after the raven understood their friendship, he still called Gray “Father”.

Where had he been all these years while Gray chose to pretend he and the others didn’t exist?

Gray opened the window, then rushed to the other side of the bed to get his shirt against the cold.

Someone knocked on the door. He stopped on his way to the window. It could only be Harper knocking at this hour, or perhaps it was…he hurried to the door and pulled it open. He’d been correct. It was Miss Darling. He couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her. “I was hoping it was you.”

She looked nervous and shy for someone with a feisty spirit. Her gleaming blue eyes dipped to his bare chest and belly of his open shirt. She was already pale but at the sight before her, she grew pale gray, like a ghost.

She brought her arms around herself and tore her gaze off him to look at the window. “It’s chilly. Why is your—”

He heard the flap of Toric’s wings and sensed the raven’s presence before he turned around to look where Miss Darling was looking. She stepped back almost into the hall, her eyes wide.

Gray reached out and took her by the hand. “Why are you here so late? Are you unwell?”

She shook her head, reassuring him, but her gaze returned at once to Toric.

“Come inside. Toric won’t hurt you. He’s a friend of mine.”

At his words, Toric flew into the room and landed on Gray’s shoulder. Was that Miss Darling’s heart he could hear pounding? And harder still when Toric bent his glossy, black-feathered head and rubbed it against Gray’s cheek.

Gray closed his eyes and let out a sigh and a smile riddled with relief and joy to be reunited with his friend .

I’m sorry I stayed away so long, Toric. Forgive me.

There is no need for forgiveness, Father , Toric spoke in his thoughts. You have returned. We are all overjoyed.

Gray opened his eyes and found his smile resting on Miss Darling’s face.

“You’re talking to him right now, aren’t you.”

“Yes,” he told her.

“I’ll go then,” she said to Gray, keeping her eyes on Toric. “We can talk in the morning. It’ll be coming pretty soon anyway.”

“Aria.”

She stopped trying to free her wrist and waited for him to continue.

“Yes, like music,” he answered Toric out loud after he did so silently so she wouldn’t feel excluded.

She gave the raven an awkward smile. “Tell him I said it’s nice to meet him.”

Forgetting himself, Toric gurgled, piercing Gray’s close ear. Gray brought his fingers to it and closed his eyes.

Toric made a whispering sound and pressed his beak to Gray’s cheek.

“You really can communicate with them,” Aria said, sounding as if she had just discovered the truth.

“Yes,” he told her with the hint of a smile on his lips. “Didn’t you believe me?”

“Yes and no. I mean how many people do you know who can speak to animals? And it hasn’t been proven.”

That wasn’t a problem. “When you were at the Gable’s home, the mice heard you say that you had to leave, no matter how much of your heart was lost.”

Her eyes opened wide, and she gasped. He had the notion that he should have remained silent.

“They told you that?”

He nodded, not sure of what to say next, or if he should say anything at all.

“Did you ask them to listen in on me?”

Yes, she was angry and growing angrier by the moment. Her brows knit together, creating shadows in her eyes and she scowled hard enough to make Toric’s feathers ruffle.

Never ever cause her harm, Toric.

Yes, Father.

“I asked them to find you and make certain you were safe,” Gray explained to her. “It was the first time I’ve spoken to them in fifteen years.”

She nodded and he was glad he avoided her anger. He turned to go to the window to close it while Toric was here, but he felt a little lightheaded. What was this? He felt like laughing. He didn’t but the thought occurred to him. He remembered his friends and it seemed as if they forgave him for getting so many of them killed and then abandoning them—he had abandoned them. He stopped and turned to look at Toric still perched on his shoulder.

You are human, Father , the raven said before he spoke. You were very young—

Gray shook his head and said out loud as well as in his head. “That’s no excuse. Toric, I denied our friendship. I denied all of you.”

For our safety, Father. If you denied us, it was for our good, so that more of us didn’t die. As I said, you are human. It is what humans do. They sacrifice themselves for their children and their friends.

Gray looked to where Miss Darling still stood by the door. She knew he was communicating with Toric. He wanted her to stay the night. But she wasn’t his wife, and her name would be dragged through the filthy streets. If she didn’t find her door, she would have to live with whispers and pointing fingers. If she didn’t find her door, would he keep her close? Would he ask her to be his wife? He smiled and then chuckled softly at the preposterous thought. Him! Married! Never! At least, that’s what he told himself since he had become an adult. And now, to fall for a woman who was more welcome than the sun after a harrowing night on the battlefield, a woman who could disappear through a door, never to return.

No. He wouldn’t laugh or smile. Life didn’t deserve to see him happy.

“Gray,” she said his name softly across the room. “It was a heavy load for a boy to carry alone. Now your friends are back to help you.”

Damn it, he didn’t mean to smile yet again. How did she know the thing to say to give him hope and help him feel better? “Come,” he said, ready to do anything to help her find her way home, even if it meant breaking his barely held together heart. “You need to sleep so you can get an early start finding your key and your door tomorrow.”

He wasn’t prepared to see her leave, but it didn’t matter as long as she was happy.

It’s what humans did.