Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series Book 3)

by Cindy Brandner

  Young men sometimes made mistakes, said things beyond their ken and experience, and lived to regret it. She had a feeling Julian was not one for regrets. She removed his hand from her knee and placed it on the table.

  “Then perhaps it is fortunate that you are not yet a man, and will certainly never be the man your father is if you continue in this vein. In the meantime, do not make the mistake of putting your hands on me again. I have a husband, and whatever Philip may have told you, Casey is the only man in my life.”

  “That’s not precisely true, now is it? Or at least it hasn’t been in the past.”

  She froze, but kept her expression blank. Was it possible this boy knew about Love Hagerty and the sins she had committed in Boston?

  “I think you need to remember, Julian, that I am not alone. I might be the only one visible to you, but I am not alone.”

  “Yes, but if Lord Kirkpatrick does not return home, and it seems less likely with each day that he will, then it doesn’t signify how many people you have on your side. None of them will matter in the balance.”

  “He will return, Julian. I know what you’ve been told, but if you knew Jamie at all, you would know that he’s not an ordinary man and ordinary obstacles and events don’t apply to him in the way they do to others.”

  He smiled, but there was a dark fire in his eyes that spoke of a cold fury, long cultivated, something that went back farther than Philip’s tutelage of him. She realized with a chill that his mother had raised him to this and that she must have hated Jamie, for there was no hate deeper or more profound than that which was seeded first by love.

  “Philip warned me that you believed in the myth, not the real man.”

  “Philip didn’t know Jamie in the least, and if you believe he did, Julian, more fool you.”

  Julian took a swallow of his tea, sapphire eyes aglitter over the rim of the delicate cup. She wanted to look away but knew it would be a terrible mistake to do so. She had vulnerabilities with this boy that did not exist with the other people opposed to her. She knew she would never be able to look at him and not see Jamie on some level despite the fact that he was never going to be the man that Jamie was. There would always be that small hope there was some saving grace that genetics had bestowed upon him. There would always be a wish that the beauty of face and form might in some measure be matched in spirit and intellect. She wanted him to be a son that Jamie would love, would be proud of and would someday be able to build a relationship with. She had considered what she owed Jamie in this area, what he might want of himself shared with this boy. He had given her stewardship of his work and his home, he trusted her judgement and her heart, and so if he did not come home, what were her duties regarding his son?

  Julian stood, leaving his cup half full. “Hear this, and hear it well, Pamela. I always get what I want, however much time it takes. It would be better to just give it to me now, rather than hurting yourself in an extended fight.”

  She did not bother to respond, only rose as he left the room. Taking the tea things back to the kitchen, feeling the happy weight of her son clinging to her leg and hearing the gurgle of Isabelle in her cradle anticipating her mother’s arms, she recalled the final words in Jamie’s journal. And she felt that bittersweet loss and regret for the boy Julian might have been had he been able to be his father’s son.

  Chapter Seventy-eight

  Drawing Down the Moon

  On a sunny afternoon in October, Casey arrived home to find his wife and his son taking tea with his mother, and his daughter tucked neatly into the crook of her grandmother’s arm.

  To say he was shocked was to understate enormously the surge of emotion that went through him, but Pamela caught his eye with a glance that was half warning, half plea that he at least attempt civility for the sake of the children. He took a heavy breath in through his nose, wished violently for a cigarette and walked into the kitchen.

  Conor reached up automatically for his father and Casey swung him up neatly, tucking him against his side. He smelled of sticky apples and milk and the sweet green scent that was both reminiscent of his mother and entirely his own. Isabelle set to squawking as she always did when her Daddy hove into view. Where her father was concerned, Isabelle was a wee ten-pound tyrant with the face of an angel, but a tyrant nevertheless. She had established herself early on as Daddy’s Girl, and though perfectly content while Casey was away at work, once she knew her Daddy was home, she made no bones about wanting his full attention. Pamela stood, took Isabelle from Deirdre, handed her over into Casey’s free arm and took Conor into her own.

  He gave her a black look. “A word if ye will, woman.” To his mother he said, “Ye’ll excuse us for a moment.”

  Pamela followed him out to the porch and into the yard, letting Conor, who adored being outdoors, down immediately. The boy tumbled happily into a pile of leaves, sat on his bottom and began to sort through them as though in search of treasure.

  Casey turned around and glared at his wife before the door even shut properly behind them. His anger was well stoked. Isabelle gnawed happily on one small fist, drool lending a shiny gleam to her ivory digits. She was quiet, as though she sensed the discord in the air between her parents.

  “What the hell do ye mean by havin’ herself in there to tea?”

  She arched an eyebrow at him and he saw that she did not feel the least bit guilty.

  “It’s only today. We’ve not been sneaking about behind your back so you can put the outrage in your pocket and keep it for another day.”

  “Still,” he said, “ye might have told her to go on her way when she showed up on the doorstep.”

  She drew in a patient breath, and fixed him with a green glare the match of his own.

  “I could hardly tell her to leave, Casey. If you wish to do so, you’ll have to do it yourself. Besides, she came to see Isabelle, and you can hardly fault her for that.”

  Isabelle cooed as though in agreement. Casey looked down at her tiny face to find her smiling a gummy sweet smile up at him. He sighed. He swore the child was in cahoots with her mother. A breeze touched the soft, downy curls on her head and she gurgled in delight. He could feel the tension at his core give way a little.

  “Casey, I don’t expect you to forgive her or to have some wonderful relationship with her, but she is the only grandparent our children will ever have and I think that’s worth making a few compromises for, don’t you?”

  He shook his head at Pamela, knowing she was right but not ready yet to admit it.

  She smiled at him and reached up to kiss his cheek. “Bring your son with you when you’re ready to come in,” she said sweetly, and went back into the house. He looked over at Conor, who was gleefully throwing up handfuls of leaves and watching them fall back down around him in a shower of amber and scarlet. He wished he felt even a small measure of that unfettered joy just now.

  He hoisted his daughter up onto his shoulder, where she promptly grabbed a handful of his hair and stuffed it into her mouth. She smelled of baby things: talcum powder, fresh laundry, and a flower newly emerged from soil. He breathed it in and allowed it to soothe him.

  “Yer Mammy is a wee bit in the way of a blackmailer, no, Miss Isabelle?”

  Isabelle gurgled again and he took it for agreement. A blackmailer Pamela might be, but he supposed she was also right. Damn the woman anyway.

  Deirdre stayed to dinner, and he managed to be polite throughout, though admittedly not his normally affable self. Her presence put the hackles up on his back, as though he had to defend himself against the slightest thaw toward her. It felt childish and, he admitted ruefully, it probably was.

  After dinner, he slipped away outside again, this time without the children, for he needed a lungful of chill air to clear his head. Phouka was in his stall, pewter coat gleaming in the dimly-lit barn. Casey gave him the apple he had tuck
ed in his pocket, hoping it would keep him from grabbing at the cigarettes, something the bloody-minded beast had done not long ago. He had eaten an entire pack and breathed out tobacco fumes for the two days after.

  Casey retrieved his cigarettes from their usual hiding spot and found them a bit damp, but, thank heavens, unchewed and still smokeable. He moved out into the night, walking to the edge of the scrim of pine that bordered their wood. He drew deep on the cigarette and let out the smoke in a long sigh of relief.

  “Yer wife thinks ye’ve quit that particular habit,” said his mother from behind him.

  “Pamela is nobody’s fool. She knows I keep a pack for particularly stressful days.”

  “I suppose ye’ll mean my visit,” she said, tone dry as a withered grape.

  “I suppose I will,” he retorted, tone every bit as dry as hers.

  He glanced to the side where her profile showed clearly, delicate yet stubborn. Her arms were crossed over her chest as though she were girding herself for what she had to say next.

  “I’d like to know the children, if ye’ll allow it. I know, Casey, that I can’t make amends for not being there for your growing years. No one can turn back time, as much as one might wish to, but I should like to know ye now, as a man. And I should like to be a part of the children’s lives, if ye think ye can manage it.”

  He took another drag off the cigarette, wishing he could block his ears, wishing he could stop being so angry. He wished more than anything that he didn’t feel six bloody years old in her presence.

  “No one ever tells ye that ye’ll make mistakes that ye can never take back in yer life. That ye’ll do things that have no remedy to them, ever. And they’re done so quick that it’s too late before ye even understand the damage those things may incur. That’s no excuse. Only I don’t think I understood fully that day I left, just what I was doing. I’ve never stopped regretting it. I was a fool an’ maybe ye cannot forgive that. An’ no blame to ye if that’s the case.”

  He took a deep breath in through his nose. “Give me a wee bit to think about it, will ye? I think ye owe me that much, at least.”

  “I owe you far more than that,” she replied, and he heard the first quaver of real emotion in her voice.

  He did not reply, for she spoke only the truth. The debt between them could never be repaid and they both knew it. Denial would merely be politeness at this point. He took another drag on the cigarette, crushed it out on the woodpile and looked up at the sky. It was better than trying to make small talk when he felt as though he were half choking.

  Above their heads, the moon was on the wane, a delicate crescent like a crystal goblet, center poured soft with hazy golden mead.

  “Yer Daddy used to do this thing,” she said quietly, “when ye were just wee. He’d circle the moon with his thumb and forefinger and then get ye to look through the circle so that it seemed he was pullin’ the moon down to ye. Ye truly believed he was doin’ just that, drawin’ down the moon for ye.”

  “Aye, well, the man knew how to make magic,” he said gruffly. Talk of his father was always a weak spot for him. Whatever else he might think of this woman, his Daddy had loved her, and she had known parts of him that Casey could not. There were questions that itched under his skin like a nettle rash but he could not find the words to form them. He could not ask the questions for which only she held the answers.

  He felt a bit like a mule in her presence, truth be told, balky and stubborn. But he knew Pamela was right. For the sake of their children, he needed to construct some sort of a bridge with her, even if it was built out of shaky materials.

  “We’ll start with maybe a day a week when ye can see them. Will that do?”

  “Aye,” she said, and the gratitude could be heard clearly. “That will do.”

  The frost came down hard in mid-November, and the entire countryside took on the appearance of an enchanted fairyland with frost bejeweling the hedgerows and tree roots, and spangling silver threads across eaves and chimneys and round about the skeletons of decaying plants.

  The moon rose full as a wind-billowed sail over the hills, shimmering with that deep-forged silver that came only this time of year. It was so bright and big that it looked near enough to touch. It was the night Casey had been waiting for.

  “Will ye come outside for a bit, Jewel? I’ve something to show yerself and the wee ones.”

  They bundled the children and themselves up against the cold. Isabelle’s face, topped with a pink bonnet, looked like a petal slowly emerging from the heart of a flower, and Conor in his corduroy coat and blue woolen cap so resembled his grandfather that it sent a shaft of sweet pain through Casey’s being, to see him so.

  Outside, a deep calm held the night in its hand, and the entire universe was distilled in silver spirits down to this small corner. To breathe in was to take some part of that distillation into one’s very cells, to recall the beauty of it for years to come. With it came the sharp delineation of scents that cold enhanced and brought bold upon the senses: peat smoke and earth, the amber of pine and the soft decay of late autumn.

  Rusty sat atop the peat pile, gazing up at the moon, his ragged ears lit so that they resembled cuts of worn lace. Casey ruffled the cat’s head, and Rusty gave him a derisive feline look before returning to his lunar contemplations.

  Even Isabelle, known to squawk at any change in temperature, was rendered silent by the strange atmosphere of the night and the great swimming orb that rode the horizon.

  “Now, son,” Casey said in a quiet tone to Conor, “we need to be quiet an’ go canny through the trees, for nighttime is when the fairies are abroad an’ we don’t want to disturb them.” Conor’s eyes were wide and dark, and Casey squeezed his hand in reassurance. The child did not frighten easily though, never had. He had an inner core that made him seem far wiser than his years ought to allow. In this way too, he reminded Casey of his father.

  It was a small way into the wood, this thing he would show them and they heeded his words to stay hushed and not disturb the creatures of the night, fey or otherwise.

  It sat in a small clearing, framed by dark pines that rose against the moon in inked shadows. At first it seemed part of the landscape, the remains of a tree long fallen. But then the outlines came clear: the turreted towers, the winding staircases, the lines that followed the crooked ways of wood and moss and lichen and stone, of feather and leaf and moonlight.

  Pamela gasped and Conor said, “Da?”

  “’Tis a home for the Auld Ones,” he said to Conor, kneeling beside his son and taking him in the curve of his arm, relishing the warmth and solidity of him against his side.

  “Here, Jewel, give me the baby so ye can have a good look.”

  Pamela handed Isabelle over and he propped her carefully against his chest, mindful of the wobbly head.

  Conor stepped forward from the shelter of Casey’s arm and gazed at the fairy house with pure wonder while his mother dropped to her knees in front of it, clasping her hands together in delight.

  “When on earth did you find the time to make this, man? It’s amazing.” Her face turned toward him, flushed with cold under the brim of her red cap, eyes lit with wonderment.

  Casey shrugged. “It just sort of grew on its own in the way things sometimes do, ye know? As if they were there waitin’ to be built, hoverin’ in the air.”

  It was built from old branches, mosses, lichens, found things: a chair made from a fossilized stone, a bed canopy cunningly constructed of the seed vessels of translucent lunaria, blankets made from the veins of leaves and tumbled delphinium petals, bits of vine twined around wee staircases leading up to each floor and two turreted towers. The roof was shingled with bark from windfalls and it glimmered, frost outlining the rough edges. There was a kitchen with pots and pans made from acorns, a stove constructed entirely of birch bark and small shel
ves chock-a-block with jars formed from empty seed pods. The floors were strips of driftwood as were the stairs, which twisted and twined around the castle like a vine growing round a tree. There was a laundry room with a scrubbing board of tiny stones and sticks, an ironing board made from a crow’s feather, ash bark dressers in little low-ceilinged bedrooms, a wheelbarrow in a potting room built of seashells, a cradle made from a walnut shell and lined with pussy willow buds. One tower was an observatory and Casey had even fashioned small telescopes with discarded ends of brass. The other tower was a library, the shelves crooked and loaded with books made from leaves, and paper threaded with summer blossom. There were titles stenciled on the spines and Pamela read them one by one, understanding dawning in her face and bringing tears to her eyes. There was not, of course, a nail to be found in it as Casey explained to his son.

  “Iron has neither mercy nor warmth, and so it is that the Auld Ones cannot bear the touch of it. So ye must never bring it near them nor build them an abode with other than wood and moss and water and bark. And ye must always bring a wee bit of moonlight down to bless the house.”

  He held his hand up, making a circle of forefinger and thumb, wrapping the moon there in his fingers to give as a gift to his son. Small and straight-backed, Conor stood with his face tilted up toward that great round, cupped now and floating all dusted pearl within his father’s palm. It appeared, Casey knew, as though he were setting it gently on the roof of the fairy house.

  They stayed for a time in the wood, watching Conor investigate each room of the house and all its wondrous details. Casey sat back on a stump, joggling Isabelle on his knee in an effort to distract her from the cold.

  Later, when Isabelle had been nursed and put to bed, and Conor was tucked up snug in his, Pamela came to him and put her arms around him, looking up into his face. He put one hand to the delicate line of her jaw, her skin still flushed shell-pink from the cold.