Destroyed Destiny (Crowne Point 4)

I yanked my hand back.

“What was that for?” I snapped.

Thwack.

“You were daydreaming. You must always be present—”

She shot to her feet, so fast the chair scraped across the hardwood. “Mr. du Lac—I wasn’t expecting you tonight.”

“I thought I made my feelings on that ruler clear.” West’s deep voice drifted over my shoulder.

She shuffled past our little table, behind me. I stayed sitting, staring at the fine gold-inlaid porcelain. I knew I would get another thwack later for not standing and greeting him as I properly should—regardless of his feelings.

“Two weeks is not enough time,” I heard her whisper, low. “She won’t be ready.”

Whatever West did next, it made her leave, because I heard the antique door creak shut.

The silence grew like a thick heat.

I stared at the table until my vision blurred.

Until knuckles glanced beneath my chin, and I found warm brown eyes. “Did you get enough to eat?”

My hand still throbbed from the thwacking I got during dinner. I barely touched my food. I craved suckers. French fries. Things he could never give me.

“Yes.”

West probed me, his brown eyes too sincere. He’d taken my locket, I reminded myself, and for all I knew he’d chucked it into the nearest marsh.

But I was curious why after a week he was suddenly here, and as silence continued to thicken, so did my nerves tangle.

“Miss me?” he asked, lips curved.

There was no right way to answer this. I wondered where West went during the week, briefly, but not enough to say the words aloud, worried I’d jinx it. Break my luck, and he’d come back more often.

“You must have more questions,” he said.

I was overflowing with them, but not enough to talk to West.

“In a few days you won’t have a voice, Angel. You might as well use it now.”

That hit me, as though someone cracked my ribs with a baseball bat. I met his eyes, and I swear I saw pity. I looked away, looked at the floor.

West stood up, clearing his throat. “I think you’re overdue for a tour, Angel.”

We walked outside among the gardens. These weren’t like Tansy Crowne’s measured grass and severed hedges; it was savage and green with overflowing wildflowers and stalks of grass blowing in the wind. Birds perched on crumbling cobblestone walls, their seraphic melodies like the dappled green and gold world around them.

“Some birds know up to two thousand songs,” West said.

I trailed my finger along the weathered and cracking stone, memories of my uncle overwhelming me. “My uncle used to tell me songbirds were the original poets. He would have loved it here—”

I broke off, hating myself for sharing the memory. When West ghosted me and I shared my first poems with my uncle, he’d started to encourage dreams I’d always considered fantasy. I remembered the words he’d said to me, the look in his eyes.

Hope.

I looked back, finding West was looking at me strangely. In his riding boots and pea coat, he looked like a rogue on the marshes. All he was missing was a cravat.

My brow furrowed. “Why do you care so much about my uncle?”