The Lord's Inconvenient Vow

Not only my hair.

The answer, shockingly improper, hovered on her lips. She was quite certain she did not speak the words but his eyes caught hers and stayed there.

‘Come here, Sam. Please,’ he added very quietly and this time she came.

Chapter Ten

‘Why should I accept succour from the likes of you? There is not a glimmer of magic in you,’ scoffed the Sprite Queen.

Gabriel drew himself to his full height. ‘Because I am the only one who offered, Queen-Who-Misplaced-Her-Realm.’

—The Sprite Queen,

Desert Boy Book One

The bed was beautifully soft and warm, like being tucked into a cloud and gently roasted by the sun, but Edge knew without opening his eyes Sam wasn’t there.

He smiled at the memory of the pitcher of freezing water she’d upended on him. He’d deserved it. He’d known the day he left he was being a stubborn fool.

He would make it up to her. Once he found Rafe he would let her decide on the next step. But first he needed to find the fool and that meant admitting she was right—he needed help.

He yawned and stretched and lurched into a sitting position as his hand touched something soft and rumbling. A pair of round grey eyes that were most definitely not Sam’s glared back at him.

‘Inky. Keeping an eye on me?’

Inky bared pretty white fangs and Edge inspected the bed, but no dead mice were evident. The grey stare was becoming unnerving so Edge put back the blanket and hesitated. It would be carrying Sam’s accusation of prudery too far to worry about being naked in front of a cat. But he still looked over his shoulder when he reached the dressing room. The grey eyes were still on him.

Trust the Sinclair cat to be as unnerving as possible.

* * *

Edge found Sam in a large south-facing parlour and though she must have heard him enter she did not look up from her sketching.

‘Good morning, Sam.’

‘Good morning, my lord.’

He grimaced. It was perhaps too much to expect last night would erase her anger. She took a crayon from the box of drawing implements and her dark hair fell forward like a curtain between them. The urge to slip it back behind her ear so he could see her was so strong he put the table between them. It was not smart to manhandle his wife again within moments of being alone with her. He wasn’t desperate, for God’s sake.

‘Lucas and Olivia are leaving today. For her brother’s wedding in Yorkshire.’

‘I see.’

He searched for a safe topic of conversation and found none so he shoved his hands into his pockets and inspected the portrait that hung on the wall behind her. It was of a bewigged and ruffled man with a wicked gleam in his pale eyes. Though Sam and her brothers favoured the darker Venetian side of her family, there was a definite likeness to this specimen of the Sinful Sinclairs.

‘That was one of the worst Sinclairs,’ Sam said without looking up. ‘Lucas keeps it to remind us whence we came.’

‘I think I can remember well enough without having the likeness of my father glaring down at me. No doubt once Rafe takes possession of Greybourne he will toss my father’s portrait in the fire.’

She finally looked up.

‘I dreamt about him.’

‘About Rafe?’

‘No. Your father. Or rather of a great big bear with matted fur and red eyes looming over me and trying to push me into a shaft, like the ones in tombs.’

‘God, Sam... I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean...’ He reached for her but she moved away.

‘It is not your fault. My dreams have always been vivid; it helps my drawings. You and your brother were in the pit with me. You were playing spillikins.’

‘Spillikins?’

‘Yes, that rather ruins the horror, doesn’t it? You were losing, too.’

‘Rafe was probably cheating, then.’

Her mouth curved upwards and fell, as if the weight of the smile was too much. There were shadows under her eyes he had not seen last night in the dark. Guilt twisted his stomach.

‘Sam...’

‘Your mother was in a pit next to us,’ she continued, not looking up. ‘She said you may have another Dora if you won. I dare say she would have preferred someone like her rather than a Sinful Sinclair.’

He shrugged, uncomfortable. That was close enough to his mother’s words. ‘My dear Edward, naturally I am glad you have wed again, especially since poor Rafael is unlikely to, but must it have been into that dreadful family?’

‘Her opinion hardly matters.’

‘Doesn’t it? Did you ever ask her why she sent you away?’

Edge was having difficulty keeping up with Sam’s mercurial shifts, but he didn’t want her to stop talking with him so he tried for honesty.