Page 65 of Research with Rivals
Ambrose’s hazel eyes snapped to mine. I swear a glint of gold crossed them, the briefest snap of the wolf within. “He wantsto explain,” Ambrose said. “But I don’t feel qualified to pass on what I heard. I don’t want to repeat it if you don’t believe it, and I don’t want to seem like I’m endorsing it by doing so. You’re right. He is your father. And you deserve to hear what he has to say if you want to, but you deserve to hear it from him.”
“Fine.” His reaction, his understanding, proved too much for me. It hinted at something too deep, too disastrous to reach for. “Thank you for the information. I’ll take care of it myself.”
He shook his head. “Are you alright? Do you want to?—”
I turned the knob on the door. “Thank you, Ambrose, for explaining my absence and passing on the message, but as you said. This is my mess, I will deal with it.”
“That’s not what I?—”
I didn’t wait for an explanation. Ambrose was already too tangled in every other aspect of my life at the moment. I didn’t need to add him to this. We were colleagues. We were magically bound. We were competing for a position on which we both seemed intent. Worse—I wanted more. I wanted him to go with me to talk to my father. I wanted his calm, reassuring presence when my father’s words were sure to upturn all my carefully held beliefs. Which was precisely why I couldn’t accept what I knew he would offer.
I would deal with my father on my own. Before Ambrose could say more, I entered the room and closed the door behind me.
27
Evelyn
With the door closed behind me, I slid down its face to sit on the floor. Ambrose spoke outside the room. He apologized. He offered to accompany me to my father’s accommodations. Still I didn’t know what to do with any of it. As much as I wanted Ambrose with me, I knew that was a dependency I needed to break. We would solve this magical connection at some point. I couldn’t rely on him for things like this. I let out a breath when he finally grew tired of my lack of response and went into his room.
I needed to collect myself before our evening meal with the Vesten Point. In all my work, both personal and professional, with plants, I’d read a lot about the Vesten Gardens. I might not get another chance to explore. If a few minutes before the meal were all I had, I’d take them. It would give me something to focus on besides my current problems. If it meant I arrived at the meal separately from Ambrose, that was a fringe benefit.
The coast was clear when I peeked out the doorway. I slipped quietly down the stairs and let myself out the front door. The gardens were easy to find from there.
The natural beauty combined with the raw magic that surrounded me, and made the entire place spectacular. I adapted to the magic with every step, but the feeling from the study—that feeling of ancient magic—still lurked. It wasn’t imminently threatening, just obviously lingering. I tried to ignore it as I wandered the garden paths.
It was called the Burning Garden. All the flowers that grew here were bright orange or red, so that when the garden was in full bloom in the spring, it resembled the Vesten fire. Technically, it was winter, but this area never seemed to get snowfall. The flowers weren’t out, but greenery still overran the space.
The most prominent feature in the garden drew my attention—an aged willow tree, so large that I could slip beneath the branches and hide from sight. So, of course, that’s what I did. That feeling of ancient magic was even stronger beneath its boughs.
I squeaked as I finished a loop of the tree and found a veil cat watching my progress. Yellow-green eyes flashed up at me. I faltered, unsure what to do. Before I could decide, the veil cat was gone, and the Vesten Point stood there.
“Sorry if I scared you.” He glanced around the tree as if to see if anyone else was with us.
“What are you doing here?” I winced, realizing I needed to work on my tone. My hand was still at my chest, hoping that my heart wouldn’t burst from my rib cage.
He laughed but still didn’t quite look at me. “This is my garden. Some might ask what you are doing here. But I won’t.” His gaze finally met mine. “I think I already know.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” The Vesten Point circled me, the same way I imagined the veil cat would. My veil cat remained silent, though. She wasn’t on high alert, and part of me took that as a sign that I didn’t need to be, either. “That you had to come here—to Compass Lake?”
I wasn’t sure if that was a statement or a question, but I bristled anyway. If I hadn’t traveled to Compass Lake, I could have avoided that entire debacle with Ambrose last night. Maybe I wouldn’t have run into my father. I could have spared myself a lot of embarrassment, and a lot of needless emotional turmoil. “Lord Arctos said we had to come. He said we’d learned all that we could from the library.”
Carter laughed. “Of course he did. I should have known Arctos was meddling.”
“Meddling how?” I asked. The Vesten God was mischievous, but I didn’t think he meant us harm.
The Vesten Point swiped his hand through the air like a cat lazily batting away a fly. “Never mind.”
Silence surrounded us beneath the willow tree. I decided to fill it. Maybe I could make up for some of the missed conversation this afternoon. “We came up with an idea that we’d like to talk to you about at the meal.”
“I’m glad to hear it, but that’s not what interests me at the moment.” He touched the tree and shuddered. “Why did you come to this particular spot?”
“I...” Well, I wasn’t sure how to answer that. “I work a lot with plants. I’d read of the gardens and wanted to see them.”
The Vesten Point seemed to be speaking to himself more than to me, but I was startled at his words. “So Mr. Yarrow said. He went on for a while about your tests on living things before getting to his tests on inanimate objects.”
He had? I flushed, because a part of me knew, of course, he would. Whether or not he agreed with the methods, he’dprovide all available information. Another part of me said this was different. That Ambrose was someone I could depend on to be there for me when the load got too heavy—like it had this afternoon. That part of me thought that maybe I could expect things from him.
