Page 2 of Heir of Uncertain Magic

She swatted him with her free hand. “At least your deplorable sense of humor is still intact.”

A smile tugged on his lips, making him feel a little better. It just so happened that Merritt had—by accident—caught Hulda in her underthings on two occasions. Once during a private dance lesson she’d given to Beth, his maid, and again in that basement in Marshfield. Apparently dresses didn’t lend well to sneaking through canal drains.

He hadn’t minded in the slightest, but he did not tell Hulda that.

I’m going to cut down that tree,he wrote. He needn’t explain; this was not the first midnight—or midday—conversation they’d had via this notebook because he couldn’t speak. It took only a few spells for the island to rob him of his voice.

After setting down the pencil, he rubbed his eyes again.

“I’m sorry.” Hulda lowered herself onto the trunk and grasped his shoulder. “I thought that draft would help.”

He shook his head. The sleeping tincture she’d fed him before bed no longer worked. It only made his body feel heavy now.

Merritt flipped back a page and pointed at a dark passage written in capital letters from the night before.I’M NOT TRYING TO USE IT.

“I know.” She rubbed that same shoulder. She rolled her lips together. “Merritt.”

He shook his head. He knew what she was going to say.

“Youneedto go see him.”

Exhaling slowly, Merritt ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair, half-knotted from tossing and turning through the night.

“He may very well be a communionist, too. Or at least know one,” she pressed.

Nelson Sutcliffe, she meant. The man who was supposedly his biological father—an interesting fact Merritt had recently learned. A fun, jagged puzzle piece in the mess of his life. His secret parentage was the reason his father—Peter Fernsby, the man who had raised him—had hated him so much. Enough that he’d bribed Merritt’s sweetheart to fake a pregnancy, all so he’d have a reason to disinherit Merritt and throw him out of the house.

But Nelson Sutcliffe was in Cattlecorn, Merritt’s hometown. Merritt’s parents were also in Cattlecorn. And he hadn’t spoken to them—or any of his family—in thirteen years. Peter Fernsby had made sure of it.

Merritt was well aware that these new revelations needed to be confronted. That Sutcliffe and Peter needed to be confronted, too. He needed to—wanted to—take back the family that had been so unjustly ripped away from him. And yet the thought of stepping foot in that town made him sick to his stomach. Made his mind spin and stop working. He just ... couldn’t.

Wiiiiiiind.

I know there’s blasted wind!Merritt shouted without sound at the tree, then chucked the notebook at it. It thumped hard against the window and fell to the floor.

“Merritt.” Hulda set down the candle and took his jaw in her hands, making him look at her. “Focus on me. Listen to my words. Try to shut the rest of it out.”

Easier said than done.

The retort must have been in his expression, because Hulda added, “I know it’s a monotonous exercise, but do try.”

Merritt withheld a sigh and looked into Hulda’s eyes, which were almost brown in the poor lighting. She recited a children’s poem, and Merritt loosely followed it, more interested in the movement of her soft, full lips than the actual words. There was no way on God’s verdurous earth Hulda would let him kiss her here and now. They weren’t properly dressed, it was the middle of the night, and they were in Merritt’s bedroom. She was far too prudent for that, which was truthfully for the better. But still. Right then, Merritt wanted nothing more than to be close to her. If he couldn’t kiss her, he’d settle for laying his head on her breast, shutting his eyes, and maybe,maybe, falling asleep.

She finished the poem. Searched his face. “Any better?”

“Minutely,” he wheezed.

She managed a small smile. “Let me make you some more tea. Maybe it’ll help this time.” There was doubt in her voice, but she was trying, and he appreciated her efforts. Taking up the candle, she stood, checking that the tie of her robe was secure. “And there is also the matter of—” She paused and looked over him, slouched on that trunk and rubbing his throat. “Never mind. We’ll address it in the morning.”

“Thanks,” he said, but it came out rough and unintelligible. The sound of paws outside the door announced Owein, but Hulda slipped off and sent him back to bed. He’d spent the first few nights in Merritt’s room, but his thoughts only added to the nighttime cacophony, so Hulda had moved him to the sitting room.

Twisting on the trunk, Merritt laid his head down on the mattress, sleep pulling his eyelids closed.

A moment later, the soft worrying of a mouse trickled into his mind.

“So I can only court you outside the walls of this house?”

Hulda rolled her eyes—Merritt wondered if she realized how often she did that, and how inconsistent it was with her otherwise meticulous and proper persona. She ran her hands over the surface of the dining room table before pulling them together. “It’s not my intention to putboundarieson our ... courtship,” she said softly, like a young girl might. Like she still couldn’t believe that nine days ago she’d returned Merritt’s declaration and kissed him in the wilds of the island. Merritt tried to hide a smile, but he didn’t do a good job of it. “I’m simply stating,” Hulda went on, “that it’s inappropriate within the confines of our roles as master of the house and housekeeper.”

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