Page 90 of Under Gorse and Stone

She huffs and flings herself down next to him. I smile at her. “You look cold. Let me get you a drink from the food truck over there. Hot chocolate?”

She stares at me. “Who areyou?” Her voice holds a chilly sneer.

“He is Cary,” Sigurd says, and there’s a lash in his voice—a warning. “And he is far too kind to be subjected to your temper.”

She winces. “I am sorry,” she starts to say, and I hold up my hand.

“No need. It’s a difficult situation. But I do find hot chocolate is a cure for most things.”

When I return with my hands full of cups, Melusine seems a little better humoured, although very animated. Her arms are going a mile a minute as she talks.

“He is the mostbeautifulman in the whole world,” she’s saying.

Sigurd has a rather long-suffering look on his face, and I conceal my smile, instead sitting next to her and handing her the drink and a croissant.

“Thank you,” she says gratefully. “I have found that human bodies can get so tiresomely tired. And thehunger. I seem to have an empty feeling in my belly permanently.”

“Are you human, then?” I say in surprise.

“I have renounced my tail,” she says grandly, and then glares at Sigurd as if he’s personally responsible. “And I shall not go back on that decision, dragon.”

“Sigurd,” I correct her quietly, and both of them look at me in surprise. “He is a person just as you and I. He’s not defined by his form any more than you are.”

She eyes me and then nods. “Sorry,” she says and then immediately launches into another torrent of passionate words. “You may throw me into prison and shackle me, but I shall never renounce my love.”

Sigurd can barely conceal his eye roll, and I bite my lip and turn to her.

“What love?” I ask.

“Melusine met a sailor and fell in love with him, and she has been living with him here,” Sigurd enlightens me.

“The one who had her comb?” I check.

He nods and I turn back to the mermaid. “So, how did you meet him? Sorry. What is his name?”

“Robert,” she says, breathing the name as if it were made of fairy gold. “He fell from a boat out at sea near the seals. He would have drowned if I had not been there.”

“And why were you?” Sigurd asks mildly. “That is not Mer land.”

She looks out to sea rather cagily. “Oh, I was just looking around.”

His lips twitch. “And taking pearls, I warrant. Fie on you, Melusine.”

She slumps. “Oh, okay. It doesn’t hurt them.”

“The Mer have a devilish love of pearls,” Sigurd tells me. “But the best crop can be found in seal waters.”

“It’s not as if the seals need them.” She sighs. “Anyway, Robert fell. He looked so pretty, with his mouth open and his hair waving in the current.”

“He looked pretty when he wasdrowning?” I say, aghast. Sigurd coughs, and I add quickly, “Sorry, do go on.”

“So, I rescued him, and the moment he opened his eyes, I gave him my heart.”

“Sometimes it really doesn’t take much,” I say in what I hope is a tactful tone, but judging by Sigurd’s crooked smile, not quite managing it.

“And Ilovehim,” she says passionately in an appeal to my dragon. “He is my soulmate. If any should know about that it would be you, Sigurd.”

Sigurd coughs, flushing, and I open my mouth to ask what she’s on about, but she sneaks a lightning-quick look at me, which I’m obviously not supposed to see, and carries on talking.