The Glass Casket (17 page)

“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about him. Stay away from him, Ro. He’s dangerous.”

Rowan laughed. “Now, Emily,
you
don’t know
that
.”

“I do,” Emily said, standing up tall. “They’re all of them
dangerous, that lot with their sea god and their riches. He’s a member of the royal family, Ro. You don’t want to mess with those people.”

“I’m not messing with anyone. He was just asking if I might like to come and work there for a bit. He wants me to work on some translations.”

“Translations, eh?” Emily said, and putting a hand on her hip and thrusting out her jaw, she gave Rowan a look that could have withered an elder. Then she turned her attention to the sink.

Feeling strangely guilty but deliciously giddy, Rowan turned and left the room. She was set to meet Tom that morning, and she figured she’d better be on her way. As she walked by the sitting room, she caught sight of the duke again and smiled at him before she left. She couldn’t help notice his eyes following her as she went.

Rowan found Tom inside the tavern, wiping down the bar. He still wore his grief, but she was pleased to see that the color was beginning to return to his cheeks. The work, it seemed, really was doing him good.

“Hello, you,” he said.

“Are you ready for our walk?” Rowan asked.

“Nearly,” he said, and then, after really looking at her, he squinted. “Are you sure you’re okay going into the woods? I don’t want to put you in any kind of danger.”

Rowan’s mind flashed to the way Jude had left her on
the path back from the cimetière the previous evening, and she wondered what would happen if she told Tom. She knew he would probably beat his boorish brother to a pulp, and for a moment, she considered instigating just that, but then she shook herself from her musing.

“It’s daytime, and we can bring along a weapon if you like. It’s just through the woods a way to Seelie Lake. We’ve done this walk more times than I can count. I think we’ll be fine,” she said, leaning into the bar. “But what about you, Tom? Are you okay after … after everything that happened? If anyone has a right to be frightened of the woods, it’s you.”

He sighed. “That’s the thing, though, isn’t it?” he said, setting down his rag. “I am afraid of them, and I don’t want to be. Those woods are part of my life. I can’t go on hiding from them.”

“I’ll be there with you,” she said, her heart breaking to see him so distraught.

Smiling at her, as if he were slowly filling back up with life, he nodded. “Let’s go.”

The walk out was pleasant, and though steel-gray clouds lined the sky, the day wasn’t very cold, and it seemed to Tom that the forest was especially alive. Northern squirrels scuttled alongside them, and deer crossed their path more than once. Birds followed them, their song breaking the stillness of the air and reminding Tom that the forest at its heart was a beautiful place—his place.

He was excited to return to Seelie Lake, to the place of childhood comfort, but when it came into view, stretching
out like an icy maw, Tom fought the urge to recoil in disgust. It was as if someone had replaced a close friend with a terrible creature, a monstrous thing.

Tom stood there, considering the tableau—the icy gray nothingness before him, the bleakness, and suddenly he knew there would be no return to the kind of innocence and simple happiness he’d known before Fiona’s death. For Tom the world had changed, and he had changed with it. Inside, he was as much a wasteland as the icy landscape before him.

But Rowan seemed unaffected by it. She danced along the rocks and took a seat in their regular spot.

“You coming, slowpoke?” she called.

It seemed to Tom that Rowan stood somehow apart from the tragic emptiness of the place, as if she were lit by a different source. She appeared to glow, so full of life she was, and when she smiled at him, he realized that it wouldn’t get any better than this. Something inside him had died, and he now knew it was never coming back, but there was always Rowan and the happy strength that radiated from her. As long as he could be near that glow, life didn’t have to be completely bleak.

It was later that day that he spoke to his mother about marriage.

“You’re sure?” she asked, her eyes bright.

“I know it’s unexpected.”

“No,” she said, smiling. “No, it’s not unexpected at all. I must say, I’ve been waiting for this day … hoping for it for years.”

“You have?” he asked, surprised. “Then you think I should do it?”

“Yes, of course I think you should do it. Oh, my boy,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around him. “I can’t tell you how happy you’ve made me. Oh, my blessed boy.”

When Rowan arrived home that afternoon, she found the house to be uncharacteristically cold and quiet. Walking past her father’s office, she noticed that although the door was wide open, the room was empty. She stepped inside and saw that his desk was cluttered with papers, which was very unlike her father. Curious, Rowan made her way over to the desk to see what he could have possibly left out, and she was struck by what she saw. The top two pages—the ones her father must have been examining earlier—bore strange images. Pencil drawings. One was of a cage of some kind set upon wheels. For Pema, she wondered? To transport her to the palace city when they eventually set out? She lifted the page, and examining it, she saw that the dimensions were enormous. She set it back down and then focused on the other drawing—a circle within a circle, and between the two circles, seven spokes. She was lifting the paper to scrutinize it further when she was startled by her father’s booming voice.

“Put that down,” he snapped, and rushing over to her, he snatched the sheet away, quickly collected the other pages, and shoved them inside his desk.

Rowan, shocked by her father’s behavior, took a step away from him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know.”

“You never,” he said, turning on her, red-faced, “
ever
go through my things.”

At first she thought he was giving her a directive, but then she realized it was an observation, and that mixed with his anger was some other emotion. Fear?

“Father,” she said, “I’m sorry.”

His brows arched with worry. “Not once,” he sputtered. “Not once have you gone through my papers. Why now, Rowan? Why?”

Inside, her emotions were warring. She wanted to go to him, to apologize with all her heart for the wrong she’d done, but for the first time in her life, she was afraid of her own father. And yet he too seemed afraid. What could he possibly have to fear?

Dropping his eyes from her, he shook his head. “Go to your room,” he said. “Do not speak of this again.”

Rowan was stunned. She wanted to beg for her father’s forgiveness, but instinct told her to do as he asked—to leave quickly, and to try to put the unhappy experience from her mind.

Turning, she headed out of the room and down the hall. She took the stairs two at a time, and as she was rounding the corner to her chamber, she saw a small dark figure looming over her desk.

Merrilee stood very still, staring through the legs of the silver candelabra out to the woods beyond. What was she seeing there? Rowan wondered, but her curiosity was overwhelmed by frustration that the girl had entered her room
without permission. The fact that Rowan had just been chastised for the same offense only added to her ire.

“What are you doing in here?” Rowan snarled.

The girl stepped away from the desk and turned to Rowan, grinning at her. Rowan began to wonder if she might be slow-witted.

“You’ve a lovely room,” Merrilee said, and after adjusting one of the pearl buttons on the navy dress that fastened clear up to her throat, she clasped her hands behind her back.

“That doesn’t mean you can explore it whenever you like,” Rowan said, trying to seem taller as she strode into the room.

The girl looked up at her with her half-moon eyes. “I just came to see if you might want to play a game of cards with me.”

“Do I seem like I want to play cards with you?” Rowan snapped. “I’m not a child.”

Merrilee, her face suddenly contorted with disappointment, bowed her head and started toward the door. “I only want to be your friend,” she whimpered.

Rowan was hit with a wave of guilt. She stopped the girl. “Look,” she said. “I’ll play cards with you later, I promise. I just want to be alone right now.” Merrilee, seemingly on the verge of tears, nodded, and Rowan felt even worse. She realized she knew nothing of the girl’s past, but that it couldn’t have been a happy one. Otherwise she wouldn’t be a ward. Rowan took a step toward the girl and placed a hand on her little bird shoulder. “I promise I will play with you later.
I’m sorry I’ve not paid more attention to you since your arrival. I know you must feel out of sorts being in a new place. Tomorrow we shall spend some time together. Would you like that?”

“Yes,” the girl said, and a shy smile crept onto her lips. She turned to leave, but Rowan, a question suddenly upon her, stopped her just as she reached the threshold.

“Merrilee, what was it you were so intent upon when I came in?”

“Excuse me?” said the child, clearly confused.

“You were looking out the window. You seemed very focused on something.”

The girl seemed at a loss for words for a moment; then she shrugged. “I thought I saw something—something moving—among the trees.”

A cold shiver of fear swept over Rowan. “I see,” she said, and the child turned to go again before Rowan called out for her once more. “Merrilee,” she said. “Be sure to lock your door tonight.”

The child nodded and then disappeared around the corner. Quickly, Rowan went to the window and gazed out into the forest. But all was still. Whatever Merrilee had seen out there, it was gone now. Rowan shuddered to think that she and Tom had been deep in the woods only an hour earlier. From now on she would be extra careful about going into the forest—daylight or no.

Rowan was stepping away from the window when she noticed smudges all over her candelabra. The girl had clearly been fiddling with it while she was looking out the
window. Rowan sighed with frustration and started cleaning the prints off with the sleeve of her blouse. She would try her best to be nice to the girl, but she had to admit the child did not make it easy.

Rowan stayed in her room and worked on her translations for the rest of the afternoon. When she thought she might be ready to speak with her father, she went downstairs to join him in his study, but when she reached the door, she found him playing cards with Merrilee. The girl gave her a sad smile, but her father avoided her eyes, and the scene irritated and hurt Rowan so, she decided to spend the remainder of the evening in her room. Feigning illness, she took her supper up there, and although she wanted to speak with the duke again, wanted to discuss her trip to the palace city further, she didn’t dare interrupt when she heard him below talking with her father late into the night, their voices rising like smoke to her room, their words just out of reach. And when she heard the duke ascend the stairs to his room, she extinguished her candles with a heaviness in her heart.

I
T WAS LATE
afternoon the next day when Tom made his intentions known to Rowan. They were walking around the perimeter of the village when he stopped and held a hand to her cheek.

“Rowan,” he said. “Good old Rowan.”

She pulled away, unnerved by his behavior. He spoke like a drunk man, only he hadn’t been drinking, which somehow made it worse.

“Are you okay, Tom?” she asked, and he nodded, smiled even.

“I’m great. I’ve never been better.” He ran a hand through his hair and looked out into the trees. “I’ve been
stupid, really. Mooning around over a girl I didn’t even know. I see that now. You can’t fall in love with a stranger. You can’t build a family, a home, with a girl when you don’t even know how her mind works or what goes on inside her heart.”

He looked to Rowan for confirmation, but she didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t sure where this was going, but she was increasingly aware of a sick sensation swelling within her belly.

“Do you understand me?” he asked, looking more lost than ever. She shook her head, and he covered his eyes for a moment as if the action might help him to think. “I’m saying that I know you, Rowan. I’ve known you longer and better than anyone else in my life.”