Page 130 of The Shadow Key

‘For a life that was never mine, the life that was and that I can never get back. The life I could have lived if not for Julian.’

She nods. ‘I can appreciate that, to mourn a life that should have been yours. To be denied it.’

He turns from the mirror, hesitantly closes the gap between them.

‘Rowena?’

‘Yes, Henry?’

The sound of his name on her lips thrills him. Before his courage deserts him he takes the lovespoon from his pocket, shyly holds it out to her.

‘I brought this for you. It’s only a small token, but I wanted to show you … to say …’

His nerves trip over his tongue and he cannot finish, but Rowena is reaching for the spoon now, is taking it almost reverently. He hears the little flutter of breath in her throat as she turns it over in her hands, runs her fingernail over the knots, the small heart set at the top.

‘It is lovely,’ she whispers.

‘I … I hoped you might like it.’

A pause. ‘No one has given me a gift before.’

‘No one?’

‘Not ever.’

‘Well, then.’ He feels himself flush. ‘I’m glad to be the first.’ Still she does not look at him, is as quiet as the woods outside, and for one terrifying moment he thinks he has offended her. ‘Rowena? Rowena, I—’

She is kissing him.

It is not like their first kiss, that fleeting moment of abandon he felt, the swift disappointment of her refusal. This kiss is freely given, laced with a passion that Henry could not have imagined ever coming from her, and he kisses her back fiercely, imprinting all his longing and lust into it. When she pulls away, he is panting.

‘Rowena …’ With his free hand he cups her cheek.

‘Come,’ she says, and heart pounding Henry lets her lead him up the stairs, his hand lingering on the banister in the wake of hers, Rowena’s fingertips a hair’s breadth away. At the top she crosses the landing into the room meant for him, takes the candle he holds, puts it down on the table beside the bed, the lovespoon with it. He watches her, already hard with need, but when she returns to him and begins to unfasten his breeches he wills himself to still her hands.

‘We don’t have to do this,’ he says thickly. ‘I said I’d never force you and I meant it.’

‘You’re not forcing me.’

She kisses him again, this time softer, gentler, and Henry knows in that instant he is incapable of refusing. Together, they sink onto the bed.

Her skin is satin-soft, her body pliant. She smells of lavender. Curling his fingers into Rowena’s thick hair he kisses the curve of neck where it meets shoulder, her cheek, her temple, her nose, her lips once again, drinking deep as if she were elixir. She rises into him, clutches his shoulders, nails digging in, and as Rowena sighs against his mouth Henry’s passion tips itself over, and he cries out her name in the dark.

CHAPTER FORTY

At that very moment Linette stands in front of her mother’s door, listening to the strains of harp music wend its way beneath. No discordant notes, no strange mixture of minors and majors. This is a melody she knows, and knows well. ‘Hiraeth am Feirion’. Enaid sang it to her as a girl, the pretty ballad of a homesick sailor, and the memory of it has Linette rooted to the spot. She has been standing here these past five minutes, unable to rouse the courage to knock for she knows Enaid will answer, and Linette is ashamed of herself for having treated her so cruelly.

I had just cause, she thinks, curling her hand into a fist. The hurt she felt at Enaid’s betrayal ran sharp and deep, a physical pain that tore at her lungs and has buried itself there these past days, burrowing further and further like a worm. But the clarity of enlightenment has instilled in her an all-encompassing guilt; Linette thinks of how Enaid cared for her as a child, when she read to her the old Welsh legends at bedtime, mended her wounds whenever she fell and scuffed her knees, the times she patiently teased the knots from her wild and tangled hair. In her heart Linette should have known the old woman would not have lied to her unless she had cause, but instead of trying to understand she had punished Enaid in the only way she knew how: with silence, shunning her at every turn. Linette had treated Enaid just as badly as Julian had treated her, and worse too for she knew that Enaid truly loved her, and now a hate courses through Linette’s veins like liquid fire; she was not lying earlier when she said she could kill Julian. Indeed, she can think of nothing that would give her greater pleasure.

Linette shuts her eyes, tries to calm herself, raps hard on the door before her courage deserts her completely. When Enaid opens it the old woman’s eyes fill with tears, and Linette’s guilt surges to the fore once more. The harp music stops.

‘May I come in?’

‘Of course,’ Enaid whispers, holding the door open wider. ‘Of course.’

Nervously, Linette steps over the threshold. The canopy of yellow gorse has wilted now, the petals shrinking into brown. As she passes, Linette raises her hand to touch a branch nestled in a vase. Protection, that is what Enaid used the plant for, she had never lied about that; no wonder she kept the plant so close, trying to press the flowers onto Linette at every opportunity.

She feels a lump form in her throat. That is all Enaid has ever tried to do. Protect her, protect her mother, and Linette turns in the threshold of the bedroom, the last of her reserve dissolving like ice in hot water. There is so much she meant to say, so much she feels needs to be said, but in that moment Linette realises there is only one thing she can say that actually really matters.

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