Marissa Day (23 page)

“Perhaps,” murmured Corwin. “We need to give Lady Thayer a dose of her own medicine.”

“What do you mean?” asked Miranda.

“They’ve been attacking us in exactly the way we do not expect.” Corwin spoke slowly but he felt the warmth of the strategies taking shape within him. Helplessness fell away. Here at last was the possibility of action. “Why shouldn’t we do the same?”

Darius narrowed his eyes. “You have a plan?”

I do, and it could work.
Corwin felt his confidence come welling back. “Miranda, you said your mother was near insolvent?”

She frowned at his seeming change of subject. “Yes.”

“What would she do to rectify that?”

Miranda drew back, the familiar haughtiness returning to her eyes. “You are not considering
bribing
my mother?”

“I am,” replied Corwin.

“To what end?” exclaimed Darius.

“To allow Miranda to move freely. To be an extra pair of eyes and ears in the Thayers’ house.”

Miranda sat back, clutching the sheets to her. Corwin watched her face shift as she turned the idea over in her mind. Gradually, he felt it settle deeper into her thoughts, then felt her realization spread and grow. “We’d have to tell her ... everything.”

“Not entirely.” He smiled and brushed her hair back from her shoulders. “But some things, yes.”

Miranda looked down at her hands. Her worry and sorrow were like a cold breeze around his heart. His first instinct was to reach out to offer reassurance, but a glance from Darius stopped him. He was right. She needed to come to terms with this freely, or not at all.

Miranda lifted her eyes. Whether she’d heard him or not, she’d come to her decision.

“All right.” She gave a small smile. “I’ve hidden myself as far as I could from her for so many years, I think in a way ... I think it will be a relief to be open with her for once.”

“And this time you won’t be alone.” Corwin took her hand as Darius moved to stand beside them both.

“No.” She smiled at him, and at Darius. “Not this time.”

“Not ever,” said Darius, sinking to his knees before her chair. “Not ever again.”

As Darius leaned to kiss Miranda and Miranda opened to receive him, Corwin felt his heart begin to sing with hope. Perhaps they could all of them cleave together. Miranda sighed and shifted closer to Darius, and Darius reached up to cup her beautiful breast.
Yes, oh, yes.

Miranda fell forward into Darius’s willing arms and Corwin could not prevent himself from dropping to his knees so he could wrap his arms around them both, pressing them together, reveling in the touch of their different skins, their different but complementary heats.

Images flashed from mind to mind. Sweet Miranda thought of them lying with her, one on each side, each sucking on one of her gorgeous breasts while she stroked their cocks with her heated hands. Bold Darius thought of Miranda against the wall with Corwin fucking her hard and fast the way she liked best, while Darius’s own cock fit snugly inside Corwin’s anus. His lovers’ erotic imaginings woke his own, and Corwin thought of the pair of them licking his rapidly hardening cock, tongues and hands teasing and tantalizing each other even as they pleasured him.

Vision and longing became heat, and heat became fire and lust flowing freely among them all. Corwin lay back, bringing Miranda and Darius with him.

He would see them all through this. If he had concerns about the future, the first of them should be to make damn well certain he
had
a future.

Of all the strange things that had happened to Miranda, surely sitting in her mother’s sunny morning room speaking of magic and the Fae was the strangest of them all.

Miranda was willing to swear her mother did not even blink as Corwin explained to her the bare facts of the case: that Miranda was a Catalyst, that her aid was required in the war against an unearthly foe, that Lady Thayer was quite probably an enemy of humanity itself, and that she, Daphne Quicke, was being asked to aid the fight.

When Corwin at last fell silent, Mother’s hard gaze went from him to Miranda. Miranda met her mother’s eyes proud and unafraid. She’d been right. It was a relief for her to know the truth at last.

Slowly, Mother got to her feet. She staggered, and Corwin reflexively held out his hand. But she cut him off with a sharp gesture and walked to the window. She stood with her back to them, staring out at the garden for a long time. So long that Miranda shifted in her chair and glanced up at Corwin, who stood on her left. Darius, from his position to her right, shrugged, and she felt the mild confusion running between them.

At last, Mother turned back around, her face and stance utterly composed. “I recognize that the proper form at this moment is to ask if you have all gone quite mad,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t follow the formalities.”

“You believe us?” The words burst out of Miranda in something close to a squeak.

“It is not the first time I have heard of such things.” She returned to her chair, sitting smoothly, folding her hands on her lap, just so, as if perfection of deportment could shield her from her own words.

Corwin frowned. “May I ask, madame ...”

“My second husband,” she replied coolly. “Miranda’s father.”

“Father?” breathed Miranda. “Father knew of the Fae?”

“He knew of magic. He knew he was ... different from other men. It was the root of all his scientific inquiries. He did not believe in the supernatural, as you well remember, Miranda. He believed all observable phenomena could eventually be explained. He wanted to understand himself, so that he could explain your own nature to you.”

Miranda sat stunned. Her father ... Her father had known what she was?

“Do you know, madame, if he was Sorcerer or Catalyst?”

“If I have understood your explanations correctly, I believe he was what you call a Catalyst.”

How did the captain miss this?
Miranda sensed the thought flash through Corwin’s mind.

I don’t think he did,
returned Darius.
Perhaps it was no coincidence we were sent to the party where Miranda was.

But this was not what concerned her, not now. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“I didn’t believe him!” cried Mother. “How could I? He was such a dreamer, so deep into his philosophies. I thought this was just one more of his mad notions. I didn’t know. I had no idea until now.” She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. And Miranda knew the apology was not to her, but to the place her father still occupied inside her mother’s heart. “I’m so sorry.”

“If you believed him so mad, why did you marry him?” Miranda felt herself trembling. Her mind was reshaping years of understanding, and it was almost too much. Her mother and her understanding of her mother had been a fixed point in her universe. To discover that Daphne Quicke had been keeping secrets from her all these years and that it was not Miranda who had been hiding. It was too much. It was as bad as the revelation of the household accounts. Miranda’s anger blazed, more at herself than at her mother even.
If only I had asked. If only I had not been so closed off ...

“You’ve been in society, Miranda,” said her mother. “You should be able to imagine how wonderful it was among all that glitter and greed to find a man who cared what one thought, what one believed, whose demands were of the mildest kind ...” The sentence broke off abruptly. “He worshipped me as his perfect goddess, and that’s what I wanted to be for him. I wanted to shelter him, to free him to pursue whatever path his intellect took. In turn he would free me from the loneliness and dependency society forces on a woman.” Her mouth trembled for a moment. “Then he died. He died and there you were, and my investments failed. I had to go back into that mill.” Mother drew a deep breath, bringing her body back under her ruthless control.

“I didn’t know,” whispered Miranda. “I never realized ...”

“No,” said Mother heavily. “And you never asked either.”

“And you never offered.”

They stared at each other, neither blinking, neither breaking.

At last, Mother looked away. “Very well. We are both at fault.”

Miranda opened her mouth to make a cutting remark, but Corwin’s hand fell heavily on her shoulder, restraining her and reminding her there were other issues at stake here than these very personal wounds.

“Will you aid us?” asked Darius flatly.

Mother drew another deep breath. “No,” she said. “Whatever she may be, I cannot afford to make an enemy of Lady Thayer. Miranda may not have told you this, but we are a fair way to being destitute.” She spoke the words with her frosty practicality. “If Miranda chooses to go with you ... I suppose I cannot stop her but I hope you ... gentlemen”—her gaze shifted from Corwin to Darius and back again—“are prepared to take over her maintenance, because I have nothing left for her.”

The words were coldly spoken, and Miranda felt her cheeks flush with anger, but only for a moment, for she became aware of something else, a crushing tide of sorrow. But it came not from Corwin or Darius. This sorrow was Mother’s, and it was so deep as to be all-consuming. Mother had failed, failed supremely, failed the man she had loved above all others, failed his child. She had permitted herself to become as hard and petty as the worst of the society wolves her husband had so pitied, and now she had nothing, nothing at all.

Corwin squeezed Miranda’s shoulder. He felt it too, whether on his own or through her, and he understood.

“You would not be expected to give your aid for nothing,” said Darius.

Mother tilted her head ever so slightly.

“Miranda is one of our number now, and she will be amply provided for,” said Corwin. “This extends to her family as well.”

“Why would you make me such an offer?”

“Because it is necessary to our efforts that Miranda maintain her position in society,” replied Corwin. “This means that nothing can be seen to change in your life or hers, or there will be talk that is best avoided. Rest assured, Mrs. Quicke, if you play your part in this, you will be doing the work of your country and you will be paid accordingly.”

Mother rose once more from her chair. She walked three paces across the room to the mantel. A square box of lacquered wood waited there. She opened it and drew out a golden locket. It was a small thing, and much plainer than any jewels Miranda was accustomed to her mother wearing. Mother opened it and stared at the contents for a long moment before she snapped it shut.

“Miranda, is this what you want?” She clutched the locket tight in her fist and Miranda was certain it contained her father’s miniature. “You join this ... situation of your own free will?”

“Yes,” Miranda answered. “For a host of reasons, but let this suffice: this situation, as you term it, permits me to be who and what I wish to be.”

“Very well.” Mother nodded, but her fingers did not loosen their grasp on the locket at all. “What must I do?”

Under other circumstances Miranda might have permitted herself to enjoy the drive through Hallowgate. The estate was beautiful in the thoroughly grand, thoroughly English style. Nestled under green windswept hills, its rolling grounds had been meticulously maintained by generations of dedicated gardeners. The main avenue lined with stately oaks was truly breathtaking. But the awareness that she was in enemy territory with her mother as a most unlikely ally robbed Miranda of any ability to relax. Nothing was made easier by the fact that neither Corwin nor Darius was with them.

“One of our men has been out to the estate already to scout the territory,” Corwin had said the day before they left. “There are wards in place—magical shields that can prevent a Sorcerer from entering the grounds, or at least give warning that he’s there. There are ways to breach such shields, but they are most easily done from inside.” He’d kissed her hand. “And that, my dear, is where you and your mother come in.”