by A. B. Keuser
She lay on the fainting couch, the image of bliss, and his heart ached for what he’d done to her. He couldn’t keep her here; he didn’t want to send her away. All he knew was that he was going to hurt her. Whether it was physically again, or emotionally… he didn’t know.
They didn’t know enough about each other for her to possibly love him. He comforted himself with the fact she’d likely been as frustrated and as in need of release as he was.
He moved back to the work table and retrieved his trousers, putting himself back to a state that was at least somewhat acceptable if one of the boys broke in, and grabbed the washbasin that still sat on the nearby bench. Isabelle was sitting upright, her eyes less clear than they had been.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think.” He sank to his knees in front of her again and shivered at the memory of what they’d just done. He wet a clean cloth and pulled her forward again, this time, when he pushed up her skirts; there was no desire in his actions. Worry and shame were the only emotions that flooded through him.
She tensed before he’d touched her with the cloth and after a moment’s hesitation, he looked up at her. He didn’t need to see the emotion in her eyes to know she was angry. He should have expected that.
Ignoring the guilt that burrowed into his stomach and seemed to have no hope of leaving, he tended to the cuts he’d rent in her skin and forced himself not to kiss each one when it was clean.
He gently pulled her skirt back down and when she looked up again. She was staring at the ceiling, her lips pressed together in a straight line.
“Isabelle,” he said quietly. He needed to remind himself as much as inform her. “I shouldn’t have let that happen. I’m a man cursed to want many things and never be able to have them.”
She opened her mouth to say something before her face contorted and she closed it again. At least she wasn’t going to lie to him.
Even if he spent every night they had with her, he would never truly have her. They were both working toward the goal of freeing her, even if she didn’t know it yet.
“I think,” he said slowly, swallowing his own self-loathing, “that you should go.”
She stood without a word and turned her back on him. And though he hadn’t thought it possible, with each step she took, he hurt worse than he had before.
He didn’t love her. They’d only known each other for a handful of days.
But if that was the case, why did it feel like his heart was breaking?
The door shut with a heavy snap and he looked sharply up to Maynard as he finished buttoning his shirt. For once the cat’s impish grin was gone. His ears lay flat against his head as he stared at the closed door and said nothing.
“I have a plan,” Arthur said, drawing the cat’s attention away from the door. “But I’ll need your help as well as the children’s.”
Tail twitching, Maynard leapt down to the table top and padded his way to Arthur’s side. Brushing against his arm, Maynard sat and—tip of his tail still twitching—said, “We’ll have to hurry, you wasted a week sulking.”
The low growl rumbling in Maynard’s throat resembled the dread welling in Arthur’s stomach. They had to find a way to get her out. It was better to lose her as long as he knew she was still alive.
He plucked up the notebook that had fallen on his shirt and set it on the table as he redressed himself. When he went to move it—it was the one Isabelle had been reading, one he’d already dismissed—he noticed the quill stuck inside it.
Unsure what she could possibly have wanted to write, he flipped it open and froze.
A note in her handwriting that solved one of the problems he’d had with that particular mechanism. That silver clarity in her eyes…. “Oh no.”
He dropped the notebook back on the table and ran to the bookshelves in that back corner. Yanking the tomes from the shelves, he cursed his own stupidity. He had to find the answer to what he feared. His hand stilled over the third book as the second hit the ground with a hard thud. But it didn’t matter if he found this answer and she was still here. He needed to prioritize. His sister had tried to beat that into his thick skull time and time again. This was the first time he realized how important it was.
*
Isabelle could not remember a time in her life when she’d felt so ashamed. When she’d run from a problem so easily. Her eldest sister would have complimented her—would have patted her gently on the back and cooed in her ear that she’d done the right thing. She would have the many virtues of Jaquel Gaston over the appeals of a man who was….
Blinking back the panicky tears, she realized she had no idea what Arthur was; only suspicions that scared her more than they should have. His manners and the notations in his journals were not those of a layman. He lived in a castle, the prisoner of a dark fairy. No normal man would draw that attention or ire.
She’d fled the room out of fear, fear that the exhilaration of his touch, the trail of fire that remained when he kissed her… the kindness she saw in his sad eyes would distract her from her escape.
If running from the room had been the right thing, she knew she wouldn’t have felt so wretched. She hadn’t moved from the library door. Leaning against the hard, wooden structure was the only thing that kept her upright.
The sound of a cane tip clicking on the floor through the door behind her gave life to her legs and she fled down the corridor. She didn’t stop running until her own room’s door shut behind her. Then, she slid to the floor, skirt piled up around her and heart in her throat.
She couldn’t dissolve into a puddle of tears. There was too much work to be done.
Breathing, she went to the dresser that was set up against the door’s wall. There were no underthings hidden in amongst the sheets and blankets, so she was out of luck on that score.
She slammed the drawers shut and cursed herself for being upset. If he hadn’t been so apologetic. She’d asked for something and he’d given it to her. Neither of them had anything to be sorry for.
Pausing, she blinked at that thought. It was not something her aunt would think. The woman would ship her off to an altar, or kick her to the streets to fend for herself. Nothing felt real here except for Arthur. Arthur and the damned pain in her chest whenever she was more than three feet from him.
She needed to calm down, she needed to think. Breathing deeply, she sat in the chair that faced her dusty window, and snatched the book from the side table. Even as she opened it, all she could think about was the man who had looked at her as though he wanted to devour her, and then had.
Even as she felt the distance between them lessen, she couldn’t be bothered to move. She wanted him with her, wanted to luxuriate in the pure bliss of their bodies joining.
A soft knock on her door and, even though she knew he was there, it startled her from the page she’d been staring at without reading.
Arthur entered without a word—either from her or of his own. He stood at the dusty window in front of her and she stared at his back, remembering him without the three layers he wore now. She didn’t move from the settee. She didn’t close the book on her lap.
“What was so important about the roses?” he asked his question quietly, gaze still on the world outside her window, hands stuffed in his pockets. “You knew the forest was enchanted, and you went after them anyway.”
Hesitating, she let a smile dart to her mouth before she bit her lower lip to drive it away. “My mother grew a rose that looked exactly like it, I was certain I’d found a wild variety. When she died, the bush withered and nothing will grow in its place. My younger sister loved those roses so much and she’s… well, she’s dying. There’s a lung ailment, it’s common in our family. My older sister has it as well, though not as severe. I just wanted to make her happy before my aunt sold me to the highest bidding prospective husband.”
He tensed, and she realized what she’d just said… after what they’d done.
“You haven’t come down with the same ailment?”
He nodded and stared silently out the window for a moment before saying, “You love your family very much.”
“They’re family. And if I disappear, my sister will only die faster. My aunt wants to be rid of us all. She sold Bryony to a silk trader, I’ll be handed off to Gaston assuming she doesn’t throw me out on the street for disappearing, and Heather…” she swallowed the ugly panic that fluttered in her throat. “My aunt has already bought the headstone.
“What would you do if I told you that you could leave?”
She clenched her hands over the smooth pages of the book. “I’d think you’d gone mad. You said it was impossible.”
“For us.”
The stress he put on the word “us,” was sickeningly harsh.
“You can leave. The cogs are what chain us here by invisible shackles. You have none. If we can find a way to get you out of the castle—out of the forest—you’d be free.”
She swallowed the guilt in her throat as she thought of leaving them all behind. “Tell me how.”
Eight
Arthur kept his pace slow. He couldn’t look at her, but he needed to keep her close by. Distance was more like a stab to the heart than a burn. Now that he knew what that startling silver sheen in her eyes could mean, he had to be careful.
He shook his head. Careful was what he should have been in the first place. Right now, his best hope was damage control.
When he pushed open the library door, she walked in and immediately went to the table, eyes darting over the drawings he’d left there. “What have you thought up that will get me out of here?”
The words sliced at him like metal thorns. She needed to go. He knew that, instinctively, but every fiber of his being told him that she also had to stay. It was impossible.
His heart didn’t care about impossibility.
He paused; looking down at the jumble of papers she leafed through and said, “It’s none of these. We’re just passing through.”
“So there are more secrets to the castle than I thought?”
Infinitely more, but he couldn’t divulge half of them.
Leading her through the stacks, he headed down a spiral staircase tucked into a dark alcove. Her murmured appreciation did nothing to distract the warring thoughts inside his head, and he pushed through the door at the bottom with a roiling sense of foreboding.
She gasped behind him and brushed past, going directly to the invention on which she’d made her notations.
“You implemented my suggestions.”
“It fixed a problem I’d been having for years.” He left her to inspect the mechanical man that would someday work to thwart the teakettles and went to the real reason he’d brought her to his laboratory.
The machine was a hulking mass he’d given up on after he realized they were chained to the castle by their cogs and lines of invisible magic. The fact that he’d never been able to get it to work was a secondary concern after that.
“Are these all enchanted?” She ran her fingers over a dusty glass case, eyes wide.
He turned away when a shiver wracked through her. “They’re family heirlooms, things passed down, and the only real option I have when it comes to fighting Agathina.”
She smiled at him, too brightly, as he reached for a wrench he had discarded and began to take the contraption in front of him apart.
“Thank you,” she said, too close behind him.
“I’m doing this to remove you from the equation. Don’t thank me. It’s a selfish act.”
She placed a hand on his arm, stilling his movements. “No, thank you for looking at my notes and taking the time to consider them. No one has ever cared that I…” she paused and let out a sigh that sounded too familiar to have been a first-time occurrence. “I have a notebook at home filled with ideas, and all I’ve ever been able to do was dream that someday I might be able to complete one.”
He fought against the tension in his chest and handed her the drawings for the device in front of him. “Help me fix this one, and you’ll get the chance to see another come to life.”
She snatched the drawing and notations out of his hands and retreated to the workbench he’d dragged down here – back when cogs hadn’t crippled his joints.
He pulled the device apart, looking for what he’d done wrong. It was a depressing thought to know that the fairy blood in his veins—however diluted it was—was dark magic, more suited to destruction than creation. Even building this device, one designed to destroy anything in its path, was stalled because he couldn’t get to that final step. He knew it was more than that. Somewhere along the line he’d reached a point where he’d missed something, and no matter how much he added to the device, he’d never get it finished without knowing what he’d done wrong.
Isabelle hummed behind him and he heard the scratching of a pen on paper. “What did you plan to use to power it?”
“One or two of the teakettles’ internal clockwork.”
“I thought they couldn’t be dismantled. Lord Cat Chaser said he’s tried to blow them up.”
He pointed to the mechanical man she’d helped him fix. “Luckily, you helped with that part of the plan without even knowing there was a plan.”
“Oh!” She stood and circled the first invention she’d fixed. “Then, you’re welcome.”
Smiling down at her hands, she picked up the notebook and began reading.
After a minute, Arthur realized she’d work until she was done and he sat back, closing his eyes to listen to her quill scratch over the pages.
Hours later, she stood. The abrupt movement sent the bench legs clattering against the floor and startled him. She didn’t seem to notice.
Mumbling to herself, she moved to his side. He stepped away involuntarily and leaned back against the wall, hoping that she wouldn’t realize he was trying to distance himself.
She looked over the device, making notes as she peered inside and studied the handle in the front.
The thing was ugly, its low carriage made of a barrel he’d sawed through and left empty, awaiting the clockwork mechanism that would power it. There was an actuator inside that would drive the axe he had affixed to the front, and the wheels and axles he’d set the whole thing on were sturdy enough to carry it through the forest.
She readjusted the actuator, watching as the axe rose and fell, its chopping motion a lazy arc without a mechanical force behind it. “Is the blade enchanted?”
He paused, and glanced at the simple axe he’d taken from the gardener’s shed. “No.”
“Then it’s not going to work.” She made another note in the notebook and set it down. “When I was trapped by the forest, I tried to get out, but the branches were metal. An ordinary axe isn’t going to have any more luck than I did.”
He glanced to the cases and cursed. There was nothing in them that would help.
“Don’t look like I just stepped on your foot. I have a solution.” She smiled at him too widely and said, “I’ll be right back,” before she hurried out the door and left him in the relative peace of his laboratory.
When he felt the harsh tug of her distance, he allowed his shoulders to relax and moved to the workbench. Even as he looked down at her notes and reminded himself this was why he’d brought her to his workspace, his brows pinched together as he read her notes.
They could fix it, and she could leave.
Funny how having his goal within reach was the most hopeless feeling he’d ever experienced.
*
When she’d followed Arthur through the castle, Isabelle couldn’t help feeling exhilarated by the thought of freedom within her grasp. The pain that stung through her now felt bittersweet. Or maybe that was the harsh tug of her connection to Arthur. Either way it had left her breathless. Even now as she hurried through the corridors, avoiding teakettles and the boys alike, she could barely believe it.
She needed to get to her room and grab her sc
issors.
Slipping inside her room, she dug through her basket, her fingers sliding across the crinkling paper of her sister’s medicine. She had to get home for Heather if nothing else. Grasping the scissors by their blades, she returned the way she came, practically hopping down the spiral stairs.
Arthur stood at the table, both hands pressed to the wood as he looked over her notes with a grimace on his face.
“Is something wrong?”
“No, everything looks like it will work.”
She bit her lip to keep from asking silly questions like whether his black mood was due to her imminent departure. If it was, she couldn’t risk knowing.
Scissors in hand, she walked around it once more, inspecting the creation he’d made to give her back the life she wanted.
“We’ll need to remove the axe, pull these blades apart and attach them… somehow.” She hadn’t given that enough thought.
“I can sort that out. I’ll need you to find Lord Cat Chaser. The boys can attack the teakettles without causing suspicion, if I did it… I don’t know what would happen.”
“And I can’t because they’d see me before I could disable them.”
“Precisely.”
He didn’t seem as confident as he sounded, but she ignored the odd doubt that crept into her mind. Arthur took the scissors and turned away from her, so she turned her back on him as well.
The corridors were quiet, and when she finally found the boys, she realized they had gathered in the room where she read to them. She didn’t step inside, didn’t want them to notice her. Glancing at the window, she made sure her time with Arthur hadn’t crept into the night, and saw the bright pink of dusk bleeding up the sky. That was when she heard the boys struggling through the words on the page. They were teaching themselves how to read.
Taking a step back, not wanting to intrude, Isabelle walked away as quietly as she could. She wouldn’t disturb them.
Lord Cat Chaser wasn’t among them, so she continued her search, stepping out into the darkening grounds. She glanced toward the drive that would lead her to the main gate and turned away, following a meandering path to the small pond her little lordling had told her he loved to skip stones in.