Page 60 of Savage Blooms (Unearthly Delights #1)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Eileen
Eileen wiped the back of her hand across her mouth as she finished reading the shaky and fragmented diary entry from the night Robert ran away.
Eileen was shaking too now, although she wasn’t totally sure why.
Maybe it was the bottomed-out drop in her adrenaline levels after the fear, or all her illnesses conspiring against her at once, or just the way Adam was looking at her, like he wanted to take her to pieces in the most precise, clinical way possible.
“You knew. You knew exactly why my grandfather was here, and why he left.”
“Yes,” Eileen said, glad to have the secret out of her at last. No matter the consequences, at least she felt lighter.
“From what I can gather he travelled around Britain and the continent for some time before settling in the States. Taking up the name Lancaster in the process, of course. He would play War of the Roses with Arabella when they were small, pretending to behead each other in the garden. She was always York. He was always Lancaster.”
“Why would you keep this from me?” Adam asked. She had expected him to be angry, but right now he seemed more wounded. This, somehow, was worse.
“I needed time to convince you. It would have worked better if you had come to certain conclusions yourself, if you had believed they were your own idea. But time isn’t something we’re spoiled for at the moment, so—” Eileen dropped down on one knee, only swaying slightly, and held her hand out to Adam.
“Adam Kirkfoyle, will you marry me? Please?”
Nicola let out a high, delirious laugh, like she had stumbled into a carnival sideshow.
“Finley, what’s really going on here?” she demanded. “Say something.”
Finley just glared at the ground, unable to meet anyone’s eyes. Nicola took a step back from him, as though she had only just realized he might not be entirely trustworthy.
“Oh, be serious,” Adam scoffed. “Marry you? Stop this, Eileen. It isn’t funny.”
“I’m not joking. I’m asking you to marry me. Now. Please.”
“You’re not thinking straight,” Adam went on, leaving her there bruising her knees on the ground like an idiot. She knew she was twisting his arm, but she thought he might like the gesture of a formal proposal all the same. She believed that important things should be done properly, after all.
“You don’t love me. You don’t even know me.”
“Maybe I do love you,” she snapped, with a ferocity that surprised her.
Her head pounded, a blinding pain shooting through her ocular nerve.
“Or I could come to love you, in time. Love doesn’t matter right now, all that matters is that our family line survives.
Generally, the only way to make a new Kirkfoyle is to birth one, or adopt one.
Marriage bonds don’t hold the same weight, not to the fae.
But you’re already a Kirkfoyle, you’re already family, and I hope to God marrying you works just as well as having a child by you.
But for now, this is what I can do to survive. This is the only way.”
Adam stared at the journal, and he stared at Eileen, and then, he looked down at the ring of iron on his finger.
“Is this… a wedding ring?”
“It was my father’s ring. And he used it to make a promise to my mother, yes.”
“How long have you been planning this?” Adam demanded. “Since you and I first kissed, since the night we found that photograph, since—”
Now he was starting to get it. Eileen always got bored when people couldn’t keep up with the speed of her chess moves. It was a relief, even an ugly one, to finally have her strategy understood.
“Since before,” she said, ripping the truth up from herself like a weed. “Since I found that childhood picture of your grandfather in the attic months ago and hung it on the wall for you to find. It took you longer than I expected to put the pieces together, I’ll admit.”
“You…” Nicola took a shaky breath. Her hands were balled into fists at her side. “You planted that picture? You knew the whole time?”
“Who do you think called you both out here?” Eileen said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.
“Who do you think sent Adam’s mother that old letter, knowing it would make its way to him?
I’ve spent my entire life searching for a way out of this treaty, Adam.
Did you really think I wouldn’t have discovered you? ”
The room fell silent as a morgue. Both Adam and Nicola were looking at her like she was some kind of a monster, and maybe she was a monster, maybe she was the villain in this story, but she still deserved some small semblance of happiness, goddamnit. If not happiness, then relief.
“We can do it quickly,” Eileen said, rising to her feet.
She slid open a drawer in her father’s desk and pulled out the yet-to-be-signed marriage certificate in a manilla folder, the one she had her out of town solicitor draft up weeks ago.
“We’ve got two witnesses, and I have the paperwork right here.
We’ll handle the courts later, and the Church, if you care about that sort of thing.
But I’m hoping this will be enough to hold them at bay, for now.
Then we can all decide what to do together. ”
“I’m not doing anything with you.” Adam spoke each word with vehemence. She could practically see the poison drip from his mouth.
“You don’t have much of a choice,” she said, feeling rotted from the inside out.
“It was always going to be you and me. It’s in our blood.
And I do like you, Adam; I like you an awful lot.
There can be a happy ending here if you just try and see it.
I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted, I will forbid you nothing, I will indulge your every fantasy and wish.
You can have Nicola if you want, and Finley, if he’ll have you.
You can have full run of the land and full rights to the house and unlimited access to me in any way you want me. I just need you to stay.”
“That’s not how this works, Eileen. You can’t just barter people away, and you can’t just force me to marry you, for God’s sake. You let me believe we were friends! You let me think that I… that I belonged somewhere, that you wanted me for myself, not to use as leverage.”
“I let you believe what you wanted to believe,” Eileen said quietly. “I gave you a gift by letting you think that you were a chosen one. What man doesn’t want to be a hero? You can still be a hero, Adam. Please. Save me from this. Save us both.”
“Did you know about this?” Nicola demanded. Not to Eileen, but to Finley. Eileen’s great forbidden love and the golden girl who Eileen had come to begrudgingly treasure stared at each other for a long, miserable moment, the truth settling around them like iron chains.
“Nicola—” Finley began, soft enough to betray himself.
“God, you knew!” Nicola said, barking out a mean laugh.
He opened his mouth to explain, but she didn’t let him.
“This whole time! Since the pub, isn’t that right?
Since you invited us out here and into Eileen’s sticky little spiderweb.
You’ll really do anything she asks you, won’t you?
She calls and you come. She snaps her fingers, and you crawl like a dog. ”
“Nicola,” Finley said, more firmly, raising his voice over hers.
“You were happy to get close to me, to fuck me, and then turn around and sacrifice Adam and throw me away like trash!” Nicola shrieked, her composure shattered like glass.
Her fists trembled at her sides like she wanted to hit him.
“I let you chase me and hurt me, I let you inside me, I let you make me believe that you cared about me and it was all a trick!”
“It wasn’t a trick,” he said quickly, taking a step towards her. “Nicola, please, I truly admire you, I love being with you, I didn’t mean—”
Nicola picked up the nearest item, which was one of the thick history books Finley carried around like security blankets and left scattered around the house, and hurled it at him with impressive force. Finley managed to catch it, but not before it clipped him hard in the chest.
“Don’t come a step closer,” Nicola said, holding out a menacing finger. “Don’t you touch me.”
“Will you please just let me explain myself?” Finley snapped. “There are things going on here you could never understand, and I just—”
Nicola kept shouting at him, screaming really, and Finley matched her volume, doing a piss-poor job of trying to calm her down.
Eileen didn’t much care what they had to say to each other; that could all be sorted out later.
She herself had an explosive temper that settled down quickly, transgressions forgotten with a sweet kiss and a smile, surely this would be the same.
The ringing in her ears was so loud she could barely hear anyway, and she had a job to do.
Eileen picked up her father’s fountain pen and signed her name with a flourish at the bottom of the marriage certificate.
It felt a bit like signing her death warrant, but Eileen ignored the dread in her stomach.
Any life was better than a slow death, than watching her family home and her own mind succumb to faery torments.
“Vivere militare est” was her family motto after, all. To live was to fight.
“Your turn,” she said, holding the pen out to Adam. A single drop of ink dripped from the razor-sharp nib, like blood from a wound.
“Fuck you,” Adam said. He ripped the iron ring from his finger and threw it at her feet.
Then Adam Lancaster turned from her and stormed out of the room, and Eileen watched her final hope in the world run from her.