“Noah, stop, please,” Jack said. “Grace needs to do it because the bands never left her. They’re resting within her flesh.”
Noah stared at him. She’d just made a total fool of herself, and for no reason. She wanted to be angry at Jack (he should have told her earlier, he should have said instantly why it was that Grace needed to be the one to hand over the bands), but all she felt was more stupidly foolish than ever.
That was a little outburst befitting Cornelia, not Noah. Not Eaving.
“I had no idea, Grace,” Noah said, wincing internally at how stiff that sounded. “It seems there is so much I have no idea about.”
With that she rose with as much dignity as she could summon, and walked to the door.
Jack spoke before she got there. “I should have said something to you earlier, Noah. I meant to, before that damn bomb fell. I do apologise.”
Noah nodded, and put a hand on the doorknob.
“Nonetheless,” Jack continued, his voice a little firmer, “I want Grace.”
Having been silently congratulating his son on his apology, Silvius drew in a silent breath at that last. Jack had phrased his response in the same way as Noah had originally objected, and, when all was said and done, Silvius knew that neither had been referring to the kingship bands of Troy.
Well, well, so now it was all out in the open. Silvius met Ariadne’s eyes. She was very watchful, very careful. One of the greatest, if most difficult, alliances in history, that between Brutus and Cornelia, had just been shattered. A new alliance would need to be built, and soon, if there was even the slightest chance that they could win out against the Troy Game.
“Grace will do very well,” Ariadne said, as if everyone had been talking of nothing more dramatic than who should arrange the flowers for the Sunday church services.
Noah finally opened the door, and walked out.
Grace started to rise, but Weyland waved her down.
“No,” he said, shooting a baleful glare at Jack, “let me talk to her.”
EIGHT
Faerie Hill Manor
Friday, 20th September 1940
“I can’t believe I said that. I just can’t believe it.” Noah had retreated to the downstairs cloakroom, and it was here that Weyland found her.
He leaned against the wall, arms crossed, looking steadily at Noah. He didn’t know what to say, or rather, Weyland didn’t know how to phrase what he was feeling without making the situation infinitely worse.
“I’m sorry,” Noah said again, barely able to look Weyland in the eye.
“I didn’t realise you still loved Jack so much.”
Noah closed her eyes briefly. What could she say?
“I don’t love him, Weyland. Not in the way I love you.”
Weyland’s face twisted. “Ah. That makes it all better, then.”
“Weyland…” All Noah really wanted to do was walk back into that drawing room and deliver Jack a stinging slap across his face. Telling her in front of everyone else, with no warning, all stated so baldly (“I want Grace”) was vintage Brutus. Damn it! She had deserved some warning, surely?
What Noah knew she needed to do was repair all the vast cracks which had appeared in her relationship with Weyland with that one, stupid remark.
You can’t want Grace…
“Weyland.” Noah thought about reaching out to touch him, then reconsidered it with one look at his stony face. “My pride has been hurt today, Weyland. Not my heart.”
“Really.”
Noah couldn’t blame him for being so hurt, for closing himself off. Had that been scripted she could not have done a better task of ruining the fragile trust existing between them.
She twisted her mouth ruefully. “I don’t love him, Weyland. Not as Cornelia once did. Not as Caela did. Not even as I did before I’d come to know you. I think what has happened,” she gave a rueful laugh to match her expression and hoped it sounded genuine, “was that I had grown used to the idea of Jack pining for me. Jack had fled England after I’d rejected him for you. Then he’d spent almost three hundred years yearning for me. He’d come home, desperate for me. And what does he do? Toss away all of that tradition for our daughter.”
Noah stopped there. She hadn’t even come close to thinking about that. Jack wanted Grace. Their daughter…
“Aye, it is dented pride, Weyland. Nothing more, although that is hard enough. One of the pillars of my life has been Jack’s useless yearning for what he could not have—me. Now I discover he yearns for something, someone, he can well have. My world is out of kilter, both as a woman and as a mother.” Please believe me, Weyland. Please. I don’t want to lose you.
Weyland, who had caught her mind-sent message, more than anything wanted to believe her. His entire world depended on believing her. But could he?
And Grace. Jack wanted Grace. Like Noah, Weyland hadn’t even come close to thinking about that, and he didn’t think he was capable of doing so right now.
“I do not want to lose you, either,” Weyland said very softly, “but I am terribly afraid I already have.”
Jack stood beside Grace on the terrace outside the drawing room. It was cold, and they were well wrapped in coats, but their pale faces and pinched cheeks had less to do with the weather than with what had happened earlier.
“I didn’t do that very well, did I?” Jack said tiredly.
“I feel so guilty,” Grace said. “My mother…I feel as if I shouldn’t even think of stepping into her shoes.”
“Grace, don’t say that. Please. Don’t feel guilty.”
Grace gave a small, hollow laugh. “I am a daughter, Jack, and daughters always feel guilty when it comes to their mothers.”
Jack didn’t know what to say. He had meant to talk to Noah beforehand, but then came the bomb, and he hadn’t thought before he’d mentioned the bands, and then Noah spoke up…
He lifted a hand, sliding it under the collar of Grace’s coat so he cradled the back of her head.
“Are you all right?” Now the fingers of his other hand were running lightly over the abrasions on her temple. “The bomb didn’t hurt you?”
Grace was looking at some vague point over Jack’s shoulder. “I’m fine, Jack.”
“Ariadne said you’ve done well with your training.”
“Yes.”
Christ! This was going badly. “I wish we’d had a chance to speak earlier. I wanted to talk to you about Thursday night last week. You know. On Lambeth Embankment.” Now he was sounding like an insecure teenager. “I meant what I said about Noah. I meant what I said about you. But I wonder…I’m afraid that…perhaps after some time…I meant to talk to you earlier, but didn’t get the chance and…oh Jesus, I am not doing well here.”
At least now she was looking at him, her eyes brilliant in her pinched face.
“Is it still okay with you,” he said, “that I get to know you better?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Are you happy to hand the bands to me?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
“Don’t worry about Catling,” Jack said. “Between Malcolm and me, we can wrap Ambersbury Banks in so much druidic magic even Catling won’t be able to penetrate it.”
“I wasn’t worried about Catling,” Grace said.
“There is something else I need to tell you. Something good,” he added. Jack was reading Grace better now, and he recognised her instant wariness whenever he mentioned he needed to talk to her about something. He wondered what series of childhood grave “talks” had so inhibited her.
“When we danced together on Ambersbury Banks, Grace, you shook my entire world. As a Mistress of the Labyrinth you are my perfect match. Your power not only matches mine, but it fits in beside it so seamlessly that together any Game we danced would be so flawless, so powerful, that nothing could ever attack it. Grace, our labyrinthine powers and abilities are entirely, harmoniously matched. Your mother and I together are good, but you and I…you and I will be legendary.”
“Oh.”
Jack realised suddenly what that must have sounded like. “Grace” was immaterial. All Jack wanted was her power. “And, oh,” he said, very softly, both his hands cupping her face now, “to find this in a woman who is…so…damn…beautiful. It is not the Mistress I want to get to know, Grace—I already know her—but the woman. It is those brief glimpses of the woman that you allow me that tie my tongue in knots.”
“Oh,” she said again, but at least that time she sounded a little happier than the last.
“Can I take you out to dinner some time. Some time soon?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
Grace looked so sweet at that point, and her face felt so warm under his hands, that Jack found himself leaning slightly towards her.