The Silkie's Call

by Laura Browning

  Relief washed through her, and she smiled sadly. He looked surprised when she murmured, “Then that is at least something you and I agree on.”

  “Pardon me?” Carrick’s astonishment was plain to see.

  She blinked away the tears that threatened. “Your son has asked me to marry him. I don’t think he will take no for an answer.”

  “I cannot let such a marriage take place,” Carrick began stiffly. “Tradition frowns on it, but for someone like Cayden, my eldest and my heir, marriage to a human is forbidden.”

  “Then perhaps we can work out an arrangement. Would you be willing to help me get away?”

  Carrick arched a dark brow, trying hard to hide his surprise. “What do you mean get away?”

  She picked her chin up and faced him bravely. “Like I said, I don’t think Cayden will accept my refusal. So I need to disappear. Go someplace where he can’t find me. It’s the only way for him to move on with his life.”

  Carrick tilted his head, reminding her for a minute so strongly of Cayden that she nearly lost control of her emotions and began weeping.

  “You mention my son moving on with his life. What about you? I notice you don’t say anything about your life.”

  She gestured to her legs and her chair. “What life? This is all I will ever have. And it will never be everything that Cayden should have in a mate. Please say you’ll help me!”

  He looked at her now with grudging respect. “I’ve misjudged you.” Slowly he inclined his head. “I will help you in whatever way you ask, to the best of my ability. I find I owe you first for my son’s life, and now for the sacrifice you make so willingly for him.”

  “Then I’ll collect, and we’ll call it even, my lord. I put off giving Cayden an answer to his proposal, but I can’t do that for long. I can’t stay here, and I can’t go back to the city. He’ll look for me there.”

  “We have a small house we haven’t used since we got the Skerry. It’s along the Connecticut shore, and not too far by boat. I could offer you that as a place to stay until you decided what you wished to do.”

  Annabel met Carrick’s eyes without flinching. While she didn’t see actual liking in his eyes, she did see the glint of respect. “I’d like that. You don’t have to, but if you could help me get there, I’d be grateful.”

  “How soon do you wish to go?”

  Never . “Tomorrow or the day after,” she looked away from him out to sea again. “I don’t want to drag this out. It would be too hard,” she whispered.

  “We’ll plan on day after tomorrow. That will give us both a chance to figure out how to make things work.”

  “This feels strange,” Annabel said gazing into eyes that were both wise and cunning. “We should be enemies, yet both of us see that my being with Cayden is not what’s best for him, so instead we’re allies. I would never have guessed it would turn out like this.”

  Carrick’s mouth lifted in a half smile. “I would echo that sentiment. I quite liked you as a girl.”

  She tilted her head. “Just never as the girl for your son.”

  Carrick held out his hand and she put hers in it. He smiled at her and squeezed it gently. They received some strange looks from both Cayden and Catriona the rest of the evening. It was obvious they had come to some understanding and no one wanted to question Carrick’s apparent change of heart about Bell.

  Getting Cayden and his mother off the Skerry for the day proved far easier than either Carrick or Annabel could have foreseen. The two announced the following morning that they were headed into the city for the day. Catriona wanted to do some shopping and Cayden had agreed to accompany her.

  Annabel wished she would have had at least one more day with Cayden, one more day to build memories to last the rest of her life, but it was not to be. There was simply no way that she and Carrick could allow such an opportunity to pass.

  “Will you miss me?” Cayden asked softly, his brown eyes twinkling wickedly.

  For eternity . She touched his lean cheek with a gentle finger. “I already do.”

  “You could come with us,” he offered.

  She shook her head. “No. There are things I still need to get done at the house. I’ll spend the day working there.”

  And so it was arranged. Cayden dropped her off at the house before he and Catriona took the launch to the Yacht Club to pick up the car. Annabel kissed him lingeringly when he dropped her at the house. He smiled at her in a slightly bemused way.

  “If you keep that up, I’ll have to stay so we can fuck until we both pass out from it,” he whispered in her ear and then kissed her nose. “I’ll see you this afternoon, Beautiful Bell,” he told her reassuringly.

  “I know.” She watched him turn and head to the door. “I love you, Cay.”

  He turned and grinned. “I love you, too.”

  She was okay until she heard the boat engine start once more, and then she lost it. Taylor had gone sailing with friends, so she was in the house alone, crying as if her heart would break. At least this time she’d been able to say goodbye. Seven years ago, she’d just thought he’d left her…

  After Cayden rejected her offer to spend the night with her, he hadn’t shown up the next night. When he was also a no-show the second night, Poppy’s grief turned to anger. At least he could have told her he was dumping her instead of just disappearing. She thought they were friends. He said he loved her! Was he really so fickle that he would just disappear without even a word to her?

  She asked her father again the following morning if she could take the Silkie out. This time he said yes.

  “Thanks, Daddy.”

  Her dad squeezed her tightly for a moment, his blue eyes searching her face. “I love you, Poppy, you know that. I only want what’s best for you, even if it doesn’t seem like it to you right now. There are just some things…some things I can’t explain to you.”

  Poppy packed a lunch and some water and then headed out into the sound. Most of the time she kept the dinghy in the quieter waters of the bay, but today she wanted a challenge to help get her mind off Cayden. The sound was rough and the wind strong. It was exactly what she needed. But Poppy realized as soon as she turned for home that she had made a mistake from the very beginning. When she set out, she headed upwind to practice tacking, but now she was faced with sailing downwind on the way home, and conditions were a lot tougher to handle. She had spent a fair amount of time practicing sailing in conditions where the boat was heeling while she was with Taylor, but now she was on her own, and she felt overwhelmed and exhausted.

  The other problem she had to contend with was the amount of wind. The Silkie heeled so sharply that Poppy leaned out the port side as much as she dared without a harness to help balance the boat, and the waves were brutal. She knew she needed to reduce sail, but the size of the waves made her afraid she’d lose control of the boat.

  Poppy tried to remember everything she’d learned about conditions like this. She knew she needed to secure the boom before she began reducing sail. God! If she only had one of those newer boats that would do it automatically!

  Calm down! She told herself that over and over, but her hands still shook, making it almost impossible to work. How could she have been so stupid? Why had she gone out without looking at the weather? And to go out into the sound! Her father and Cayden were right. She was an ignorant, irresponsible child!

  Just please, please let me get through this!

  At last, she managed to reduce sail enough that she felt the Silkie would be okay. She had just untied the boom again so she could get back to work when a sudden gust of wind ripped it out of her hands.

  It swung wildly away from her and just as she leaped up to catch the rope it came flying back, catching her along the side of the head. Time slowed as she felt the crack against her skull and then the sensation of being lifted by the sheer force of it. Her body flew, arcing up into the air when the boom delivered one more blow, catching her across the back of her hips as it sent her over the
edge of the Silkie and then down, down into the rolling, roiling waves of the sound. As consciousness faded, she saw another wave catch her dinghy broadside, capsizing it.

  Annabel had known nothing of the search for her or how Cayden and Carrick had gone into the water and pulled her broken body out of it. She had been spared all of that, and when she had finally woken up seven years ago, Cayden had simply been gone and she had been left with a broken body and a shattered life.

  She had cried then like she did now. But tears, even ones that rip a world apart, don’t last forever. When she was through, she went into the bathroom and ran a washcloth under the cold water so she could wipe her face. She dared not look at her reflection, knowing she would see swollen, red-rimmed eyes and blotchy cheeks. Instead, she packed everything she knew she’d need and had the cases waiting when Carrick arrived an hour later.

  He stared at her pale, averted face.

  “I’ll take your bags down to the ski boat and then come back to help you.”

  She stuck her chin up. “If you can get the bags, I can get myself down to the dock.”

  His eyes narrowed and then he nodded his head. When he picked the cases up, he paused to look back at her. “You’re doing the right thing, you know.”

  “I know,” she choked, “but it hurts like hell.”

  A few minutes later, he lifted her onto the boat and then carefully stowed her chair below along with her crutches and her bags. Carrick glanced over at her to see she had buckled up her life vest and was staring resolutely away from the Skerry.

  “Ready?” he inquired gently.

  “Yes.”

  He untied and fired the engines before pushing the throttle forward. As they moved away from shore, he turned to look at her. ”You are doing the right thing. Don’t doubt it.”

  Yeah. Sure. It was the right thing to do. Cayden needed someone who could stand proudly at his side and that was something she would never be able to do.

  ****

  Cayden glanced at his mother as they rode in the back of the limo Catriona had hired to take them into the city.

  “I just don’t see why we need to go all the way to New York to buy this ring, Momma.”

  “We’re not buying a ring, Cayden. We’re going to my safe deposit box there so I can get my mother’s ring. It’s perfect for Annabel.”

  He smiled and squeezed her hand. “Thanks. You’ve been wonderful about this since you brought us back to the Skerry.”

  She glanced at Cayden softly. “There are hurdles you will have to face, Cayden, objections you will have to overcome, but seeing how she was willing to risk her life for you made me reconsider things. I want you to be happy, and I will do everything I can to help.”

  “I just don’t understand why Dad wouldn’t just tell me about the marriage prohibition,” Cayden began, a hard edge in his voice.

  “Don’t be too harsh on him, Cayden,” Catriona said. “You’re his heir, and for all that he is your father, he’s also bound as a Silkie Lord to uphold the traditions that have kept the Silkie strong for generations. We face critical times, one of which is a shortage of females for mating, and ultimately that may help you.”

  Cayden looked at his mother curiously. “She is my mate as much as you are his. You were not a Silkie. You’ve told me that before, but you are now. How did that happen?”

  Catriona smiled sadly. “Carrick and I had our own set of troubles, Cayden. It wasn’t easy. You’re right, I was not a Silkie. My family is descended from the Faerie folk, so the Council gave us a choice. We could choose to live as Faeries or as Silkie but not both.”

  “So you made the sacrifice, naturally,” Cayden said with an edge of bitterness he couldn’t keep out of his voice.

  “Son,” Catriona said softly, “it was no sacrifice. It was a choice I had to force Carrick to accept. You claim to be Annabel’s mate, so then you understand how it feels when you perceive any obstacle to you being with her. He was ready to give up everything. I couldn’t let him do that, so I let the sea take me.”

  Cayden looked at his mother, puzzled by her almost pained expression. “What do you mean you ‘let the sea take’ you?”

  “I drowned.”

  “What!”

  “I walked into the water and swam out to sea. I never intended to come back.”

  “But how?”

  Catriona’s dark green eyes took on a faraway look. “Carrick brought me back. I was all but dead when he shared his breath with me, and eventually the Council of Lords took pity on us both. Although by then, they didn’t need to.”

  “Why was that?”

  Catriona’s eyes sparkled. “Magic, Cayden. In sharing his breath with me, Carrick changed me. When he brought me back from the brink of death, I was no longer a Faerie. I had become a Silkie.”

  Cayden turned away from his mother’s face and stared out the window, a frown marring his broad forehead. His mother had nearly died to become a Silkie? He could not ask such a thing of Annabel. He didn’t even want her to know of it. Bell would try to do something similar; he knew it. But she was not strong enough for that.

  He turned back to his mother. “Please don’t tell Bell that story. I could never ask that of her, but she would want to try it. I know her. There must be another way. I’m afraid she’s not that strong, Momma.”

  Catriona smiled at him. “Perhaps not, but perhaps you also underestimate her. She is a very determined young woman, and she was a very determined young girl.”

  ****

  Carrick kept glancing at Annabel Barton’s profile as they traveled along the sound up the coast. There was a determined tilt to her chin and the set of her shoulders, but on those occasions when their eyes met, he saw the depth of the grief in her eyes. He had to look away from it because it reminded him too forcefully of the way Catriona had looked right before… No, he wouldn’t think of that. He was on the other side of the issue this time and he had to do what was best for his son. Carrick forced himself to keep his attention on guiding the big ski boat on its way to the house in Connecticut.

  He had called last night to have the house opened up and aired out, so he knew it would be ready for her when she arrived. He had even hired a crew to complete the necessary ramps for her to get in and out of the house. Those would be done when they arrived. Additional modifications would take longer, but Carrick was more than willing to make them. He owed Annabel Barton and he knew it.

  He owed her for saving Cayden’s life, and now he owed her for giving that life back to the Silkie.

  ****

  The farther they traveled away from Cayden and Barton’s Point, the more Annabel tried to gather the shreds of her determination around her. She was doing the right thing. She kept telling herself that, but her conviction lessened. Instead, she felt some of the despair she was sure her father must have felt at losing her mother. She had packed some of his journals, hoping she could find insight there into how he survived, because even though he had eventually succumbed to that despair, somehow he carried on for fourteen years.

  Maybe she could find something that would make it worthwhile for her to continue to live.

  The house sat in a sheltered cove. It was smaller than Barton’s Point. She was glad about that. She waited patiently while Carrick Clifton tied up to the dock, and then retrieved her chair. As he set her in it, she glanced up and saw the obviously new ramps leading up to the house from the dock. Her eyes widened.

  “You had this built just since last night?”

  “Yes,” the older man said quietly. “I know how much you like the sea, Annabel. I didn’t want you to feel you couldn’t get to it.”

  She stared down at her hands, fighting to control her emotions. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  She was very quiet as he wheeled her up to the house. They paused on the porch while he opened the door. She wheeled past him hesitantly unsure of what she might find. The inside of the house was light and airy. Its furnishings were almost Spartan, and she was glad of t
hat. It would make it easier for her to maneuver through.

  “I only had them open the downstairs,” Carrick explained from just behind her. “There’s a living room, kitchen, a study and the master bedroom and bath. I believe you will be able to access everything, but look through it. There’s a couple, Mr. and Mrs. Cooper who live at the end of the lane, they will help you with anything you need.”

  “Thank you.”

  He stopped somewhat awkwardly and then drew himself up, looking suddenly, formidably like the royalty he was. “It is I who owe you my gratitude, Annabel. I have never thanked you for saving Cayden’s life. For protecting him. I can never repay you.”

  She looked up at his harshly formal expression. “You owe me nothing. I didn’t do it for you. I did it because I love your son and for no other reason.” She lifted her chin. “I can’t remove what Cayden gave me, but I assume you can.” She pointed down to her ankle. “Take it off me. Give it back to him. It’s his seal skin, isn’t it?”

  She saw his shock as he looked down and noticed for the first time that she wore Cayden’s anklet, his pelt. It was the one thing no Silkie ever parted with. His dark eyes searched Annabel’s face. She knew what power she held, but she gave it up willingly, just as she gave Cayden up. Carrick brushed his hand over her ankle as he murmured the words that would release it.

  “I will return it to him.”

  Annabel nodded and turned her chair away from him, unable to look at him. After just a brief moment, she heard his steps leave the room, and a few minutes later the sound of him bringing in her cases. He left without another word, and she was relieved. Her composure was gone, shattered just as surely as her heart was shattered.

  She had left a letter for Taylor, with a note stuck inside for him to give to Cayden, but she had told neither one where she was. In order to do what was right for Cayden, she had also had to cut her ties with her brother. She heard the ski boat’s engines start, heard the sound fade into the distance, leaving behind the wind in the trees, the hum of insects and the lapping of the water against the dock. And when she was sure she was finally quite, quite alone—she cried.