Page 40 of The Falconer

I wish it did. I’m supposed to be destined and naturally gifted to hunt the fae – a Falconer – and I couldn’t even kill one when it mattered most. Some gift. I almost tell him that knowing makes it worse.

I turn my head, close enough that his wings fan my cheek with a soft, comforting breeze. Instead of answering, I say, ‘Kiaran said to take you when I leave the house. Why is that?’

‘I can shield you,’ he says. ‘So the others won’t know where to find you.’

‘Then come with me to the ball tomorrow, and you can worry over me there.’

‘A ball?’ Derrick brightens. ‘I thought you’d never ask. Ilovedancing!’

I laugh and continue my work. I build through the night, determined to finish my project. The hours tick by and I’m so consumed that I don’t prepare for a nightly hunt. I don’t want to see Kiaran again yet, anyway. The repetition of building is so much easier than dealing with what he told me. I find comfort in placing the metal components, in watching the fire-starter take form with each piece I add. Even when the flame singes my fingers, I continue working, determined not to think of our conversation in the gardens.

As I grow more and more tired, my resolve fails. My eyelids begin to close. And Kiaran’s words play again in my mind, a painful reminder that I was always fated for this. To be a killer.This is what you were born to be. Falconer.

Chapter 15

The following evening, Derrick escorts me to Catherine’s ball. I dance with my partner in a dress of silver-blue covered in pale French tarlatan, devoid of the sewn-on flowers that have become so popular at assemblies. My sleeves are delicate, slightly transparent and drape loosely down my arms. White gloves reach to my elbows and my hair is pulled back in curls that rest on one shoulder. My dress swishes with every step.

‘Good God,’ Derrick says. ‘I cannot believe I agreed to accompany you. I take back my words. Human dancing is dull! When is he going to throw you over his head?’

I smile at my dance partner as I grasp his hand in the reel. I’ve already forgotten his name – Lord F-Something. He has barely spoken to me, even when I tried polite conversation. His long face appears stuck in a perpetual scowl.

‘And when are they going to serve the bloody food?’ Derrick’s wings tickle my ear as we form a circle again. ‘Your friend intends to starve us, doesn’t she? How can she starve the guests at her own ball?’

‘Shut up,’ I mutter out of the corner of my mouth. I regret bringing him as much as he regrets being here.

‘I beg your pardon?’ asks the woman next to me in the reel, blinking wide blue eyes.

‘Lovely dance,’ I remark cheerfully. ‘Isn’t it?’

I grasp Lord F’s hand and twirl away, my slippers whispering over the hardwood floor. The walls are decorated with beautiful tapestries of scenes from the Scottish Highlands, and candles atop extravagant candelabras light the room.

Though electricity and floating lanterns are commonplace among the rich, Lady Cassilis has always shied away from technology. The steam-powered carriage is the most advanced invention on her property.

The dance ends and Lord F escorts me from the centre of the room to the refreshment table, where Catherine is standing.

He bows. ‘Thank you for the pleasure of your company.’

Then he turns on his heel to go and scowl at someone else. I breathe a sigh of relief.

‘Well,’ Catherine says brightly, ‘Lord Randall certainly appears . . . agreeable.’

Lord Randall? I wonder why I thought his name begins with an F. I’ll remember that and make sure never to accidentally accept any of his invitations to tea, should he send them. He’d probably glare at me until I’m forced to feign illness.

‘He acted as if he didn’t want to dance with me at all.’

‘Oh?’ Catherine says, a bit too innocently. ‘That’s unfortunate.’

‘You asked him to, didn’t you?’

She flushes. ‘Lord Randall had pulled out some snuff near the balcony, and this was your only unclaimed dance. You know Mother can’t bear snuff.’

I open my dance card and study the array of signatures scrawled across the paper. ‘Mmm. And you can’t bear to see me sit through a single dance, apparently.’

Every dance is filled, just as at the Hepburns’ ballroom. I suppose it didn’t matter that I missed several dances there and disappointed those gentlemen.

I look up from my card just in time to catch glares from a group of ladies across the room. They whisper to each other.

I wonder if they’re talking about Lord Hepburn’s ball and my five missed dances. To them, I can’t be counted on to fulfil even the most basic of my social obligations. That makes me a failure, a woman unworthy of any man’s attention, let alone a full dance card.

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