Page 29 of Savage Blooms (Unearthly Delights #1)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Nicola
Nicola’s ears rang as she watched Adam and Eileen and Finley stand shoulder to shoulder at the desk, volleying theories back and forth as they peered down at the photograph.
Eileen had her palm pressed between Adam’s shoulder blades, leaning in close to speak in a low, urgent voice.
Like she had known him all her life, like they were just as close as Adam and Nicola were.
The hothouse haze of Finley’s lesson moments before had evaporated, sacrificed to more pressing matters. Nicola couldn’t help but feel like she had been forgotten.
“That’s got to be your grandfather,” Eileen said. “The name’s the same, and he’s the spitting image of you.”
“I always thought he spent time at Craigmar when he was older,” Adam said, eyes bright with the thrill of discovery.
“And maybe that’s the case,” Eileen went on. “But we can’t discount the possibility that he might also have grown up here.”
“He could have visited Craigmar one Christmas when he was a boy,” Nicola said weakly, although she knew in the pit of her stomach that it wasn’t true.
She knew exactly what was unfolding here, and she knew exactly what it would do to her friendship with Adam.
Wrapped up in this ultimate triumph, welcomed home like a prodigal son, he wouldn’t need her any more.
“Your grandmother and Adam’s grandfather are about the same age in this photograph,” Finley noted, tapping his fingers thoughtfully on the desk. “They almost look like siblings.”
“My grandfather was an only child,” Adam said.
“That’s what I always heard about my grandmother too,” Eileen put in. “Wouldn’t I have heard about a little brother, if she had one?”
“Maybe not,” Finley said. “Families keep secrets.”
“Yeah, but Robert and Arabella look nothing alike in this picture,” Adam went on. “Neither do me and Eileen.”
“Lots of people adopt,” Finley said, dropping his eyes to the carpet. It was as though Adam had unknowingly brushed a raw nerve, but before Nicola could ask what was wrong, Adam blazed forward with his exploration.
“My grandfather never mentioned growing up here, and he never mentioned a sister. He said he had no family at all.”
“Everybody has some kind of family,” Eileen said, casting a glance so hopeful towards Adam that it made Nicola sick to her stomach.
Adam, always a little slower on the uptake than Nicola, finally caught Eileen’s drift.
“You don’t think we’re related, do you? Like long-lost cousins or something?”
“Great cousins,” Nicola said, chewing on the inside of her mouth. She tried to remind herself that this was not about her, that she should be happy for Adam. But her stomach twisted all the same. “If Adam’s grandfather was Eileen’s grandmother’s brother, that would make you two great cousins.”
“We spent all morning looking through family records,” Eileen said. “There was no mention of a Robert anywhere.”
“Genealogical records can be scrubbed,” Finley replied.
“But birth records can’t,” Eileen said, eyes alight with inspiration.
She hauled another cardboard box onto the desk, then hoisted out a dusty black folder.
When Eileen opened the folder, the heavy cover slapped down onto the desk.
Inside, slipped neatly between sheaves of plastic, were dozens of birth certificates and marriage records.
“Old families have too much pride in their own names to destroy all evidence of any of their own,” Eileen muttered, flipping through the pages faster and faster. “Even if the records themselves have been erased, there will be a palimpsest.”
Nicola couldn’t help but be drawn closer, like a moth fluttering nearer to a flame that promised the scorching illumination of truth, even if it burned. She sandwiched herself between Finley and Adam, tied to reality by their solid warmth.
Eileen flipped through each page, scanning the name of every child, parent and newlywed. Nothing turned up. Until she got to the back of the book, and Nicola spied a sliver of paper slipped behind Arabella Kirkfoyle’s birth record as Eileen turned the final page.
“There’s something there,” she said breathlessly. “Go back, Eileen.”
Eileen carefully slid her nail between the birth record and the document behind it, retrieving a folded sheet of thick paper. When she unfolded it, Nicola’s world stopped turning.
It was a certificate of adoption.
“Robert Kirkfoyle,” Eileen read aloud, her voice shaking. “Adopted at two years old by my great-grandparents. It’s signed and dated by the courts.”
Eileen and Adam stared at each other for a long moment, and then Eileen, who Nicola had never even seen hug Finley, stepped forward and embraced Adam.
“Welcome home,” she said, voice muffled by his sweater.
Adam’s arms came up to wrap tightly around Eileen’s shoulders, and Nicola felt like she had just been shut out in the cold.
Nicola slept fitfully that night, when she slept at all.
She was acting like a jealous child who didn’t want anyone to be closer to Adam than she was, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something unsettling going on.
Everything over the last few days had happened very fast, and this bombshell revelation was no different.
She couldn’t imagine her gangly, annoying friend – the same boy who had flunked calculus freshman year because he flat-out refused to respect the attendance policy – as some sort of aristocrat.
Adam may be a Kirkfoyle, in name if not in blood, but he was nothing like Eileen.
And then there was the matter of that hug, tight and lingering.
Eileen had clutched Adam like she had been waiting for him her whole life, and Adam had held her tight as life itself.
Eileen’s eyes had been glassy when she pulled away, a euphoric laugh bubbling up, and Adam had clasped her shoulders and grinned at her, as happy as Nicola had ever seen him.
Eileen’s reaction Nicola could understand.
She had been alone in the world for years, and Nicola, who had never had any family to speak of, could find a bit of pity in her heart for the lord.
But Adam was spoiled for family, with not only one living parent but two.
He still grasped Eileen like she was his only hope left, like Nicola hadn’t been at Adam’s side for years as steadfastly as any family.
Nicola lay in bed feeling frustrated with Adam – not to mention worried about what Eileen would do with her now that Adam had been identified as valuable in a way Nicola was not – until the day dawned pink outside her window.
Then she threw back the sheets, sat down in front of her laptop at the writing desk, and pulled up a new JSTOR window.
Adam might be caught up in the heady euphoria of discovery, but Nicola hadn’t forgotten what was at stake. Eileen’s hospitality came with a clause: namely that Adam and Nicola would help her uncover a way to dissolve the supernatural contract that bound her family to their neighbors underground.
Nicola fully intended to earn her keep before Eileen got any ideas about discarding her.
Maybe she would find something to make herself feel better about this whole situation in the process.
She didn’t look up from her research for three hours, not until her birth control reminder rang and made her jump in her skin.
Not until her eyes were stinging from peering at scanned typeset from two-hundred-year-old books, and from flipping rapidly between pages to cross-reference the etymology of repeated names, or the frequency of mirrored symbols.
As she looked to the sun climbing ever higher in the sky, Nicola resigned herself to the fact that, if any of her growing suspicions were correct, she wasn’t likely to feel better anytime soon.
Nicola pressed her hands over her face and took three deep breaths. She was spiraling. It had been such a late night, and she had been feeling so many things at once: lust, longing, fear and jealousy. Maybe she was reading too much into things.
Or maybe, she was the only one who was putting the pieces together. And if that was the case, she would never forgive herself for not at least trying to tell Adam.
Nicola yanked on jeans, snapped on a bra, and wiggled into her sweater, then marched down the hallway to rap on the door to Adam’s room.
“Who is it?” Adam asked from inside, voice slurred with sleep.
“It’s Nikki,” she said, trying to sound bright and not at all panicked. “Let me in.”
“It’s unlocked.”
Nicola let herself into Adam’s room and found him dozing in a tousle of cream sheets and down pillows, his cheeks flushed as though he had just been woken from a dream.
He rolled onto his back, scrubbing at his eyes with a hand, and the morning light streaming in through the window glanced off the curve of his bicep and the plane of his bare chest, shadowed with blond hair.
He really does look like he belongs here, Nicola thought as agony pierced her heart. Like a prince resting after battle.
“You need to wake up. We’ve got to talk.”
“I’m awake,” Adam said, making no move to either become vertical or get dressed. “And we’re talking. What’s wrong?”
Nicola paced a tight circle, sinking into the carpet beneath her socks. She didn’t know how to get at what she wanted to say without sounding completely off her rocker, or worse, pissing Adam off.
“I’ve been doing some research,” she said, deciding that starting with a neutral fact was probably best. “Into some local folklore and other comparative stories from the region. Cross-referencing them with what Eileen’s been telling us about her family, and the faeries.”
“That’s great,” Adam said, still a bit bleary. “But it’s so early. It’s not even breakfast. There’s time for all that later.”