Page 42 of Trick of Light
“Open your eyes. You’re okay. Gabby, open your eyes.”
Something was wrong with Gabby. She was bucking up and down on Tamara’s ancient horsehair couch. Was it a seizure? Should he call a doctor? Or Luke? If he called the constable’s number, would they put him through to Tamara in the lockup? She might know what to do.
Finally, just when he was about to panic, Gabby’s eyes snapped open. She sat up with a long hoarse gasp for breath, as if she’d been underwater instead of asleep. “Where? What…” She looked around wildly, eyes unfocused, confused.
“You’re at Tamara’s cottage. You fell asleep on the couch. You must have been dreaming.”
She grabbed a throw pillow and clutched it to her stomach. “I was on a sailboat.”
“Was it crashing against some rocks?” he asked, bemused. “You looked like you were going through a shipwreck.”
“No no, the boat was fine. I was another person. A woman. I was Marianne.”
“Who’s Marianne?”
Her eyes finally focused on him squatting next to the couch. His damn knees were starting to ache. “Oh Barnaby. Hey.”
“Hey,” he said, mirroring her casual tone. “Whassup?”
She snorted and shook her head, still trying to clear it. One of her earrings was tangled in her hair, some of which had come loose from its twists. “I just had the most incredibly vivid dream. I think it came from Marianne’s journal.”
He raised one eyebrow, not wanting to repeat the question.
“Marianne is Tamara’s ancestor, the pirate’s mistress that he left on this island in the early seventeen hundreds. Your ancestor too, I suppose. You’ve never heard of her?”
“No. Why have you?” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously, and saw the instant that she realized she’d slipped.
“Fuck.” Then she covered her mouth with her hand. “Don’t tell my mother I said that. Not that you’re likely to meet my mother, but she really doesn’t like it when I use that word because I’m always supposed to be representing the family, and maybe even the entire Black community, so I usually avoid?—”
“Gabby. How do you know about this Marianne?” He could recognize someone babbling for the sake of distraction.
She sighed and pushed him aside so she could swing her legs over the edge of the couch. Long, slender, smooth brown legs. He kept his gaze firmly focused on her face, but he could still see those legs. Damn his peripheral vision.
“Haven’t you listened to our podcast?”
“Been a little busy,” he said dryly.
“Sasha Mackey found a journal in Denton’s safe. It was really old, like vellum-and-ink era, and some of it is illegible. But we pieced together enough to figure out who wrote it. Her name was Marianne Thatcher and she lived here on this land. Not this cottage, but a previous one that her pirate crew helped build. That’s what brought us to Tamara in the first place. We wanted to invite her on the podcast to talk about her heritage.”
He felt a slow anger burn inside him. “So that’s why you befriended her? For the podcast?”
The goddamn freaking podcast.
“No.” She pushed herself to her feet and brushed off her shorts—plaid and preppy, but still somehow sexy. “That’s not why I befriended her, you jackass. But it is why I first wanted to meet her. Is that a fucking crime?”
“I’m telling your mama,” he murmured.
“Oh, fuck off.”
Okay then. The guardrails were all the way down. He kind of liked it when she was glaring at him like that. “You should really swear more. It suits you.”
“What are you even doing here?” She set her hand on her hips. “I’m the one taking care of the place for her.”
“I know. I don’t get it, but I know. I came to get some things for Tamara for tomorrow morning.”
“Oh.” Her expression softened. “That’s kind of you.”
He groaned at that undeserved compliment. “It’s the least I could do. I should have kept her out of jail in the first place. She seems all right, though. Thanks for taking care of her last night.”
