“Yes, but—”
“But no. How can you even think that?”
I never had before, and I didn’t entirely know where it had come from now. Like pulling your sofa away from the wall and finding a squashed slug under there. “I’m tired,” I mumbled. “Fucked in the head.”
She was quiet a long time. And then, “I met your father, Ardy. At the wedding.”
My stomach did the wet-fish flip-flop it always did when he was mentioned: a physical manifestation of emotional nausea. I nearly asked her to stop, but I didn’t. I had so few perspectives on him. Just my own fear-distorted memories and the emptiness in Mum’s eyes.
“He didn’t have horns or goat feet, you know,” Hazel was saying. “He was charming. Had a way about him that made you feel like the center of the universe when he was focused on you. And he seemed devoted to Iris, absolutely devoted. It was like something out of a fairy tale.”
Yeah. If the fairy tale was Bluebeard. “But why Mum? Why did he choose her?”
“Not because of something she did, or was, that’s for damn certain, you stupid boy.”
I blinked back fresh tears. Hideously ashamed of myself. “You won’t tell her what I said, will you?”
“Never.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“I know you didn’t.” Her voice softened. “And I know it’s a hard thing to live with. The past is a dark place for you and your mum.”
I nodded miserably. I really didn’t want to risk saying anything in case it turned out to be awful again. Some nasty secret embedded in the underbelly of my insecurity unearthed by Caspian Hart’s carelessness and my own naivety.
Hazel leaned into my shoulder again, her hair tickling my cheek. “She would never have got away without you, love. You saved each other.”
I watched the beach. The endless wash of the waves and the gleam of the sky on the wet sand. “Okay,” I said at last.
“And the fact is, there’s a world of difference between a psychopath and a dickhead.”
That surprised a laugh out of me. Infinitely easier to think of Caspian Hart, not as some unreachable angel or a demon who had sadistically toyed with my heart, but simply as a bit of a cock.
“Come on.” Hazel clambered to her feet. “There’s crumpets at home.”
Oh, that sounded perfect. Mum made her own and they weren’t like the ones you could get in the shops: fluffier and yeastier, served toasty-warm, with the butter melting deeply into the cracks. “Yes. Yesyesyes.”
We gathered up my things and headed for Oran na Mara. Its crooked white chimney was just visible between the hills, a beckoning finger, calling us in from the cold.
Chapter 26
Welp, I was miserable.
It was hard work, getting over Caspian Hart. But at least being at home gave me time and space to do it. Endless amounts of both. I slept a lot, read every Georgette Heyer in the house in mad, weepy binges, and wandered the hills and shore in a fashion that would surely have made my Byronic locks and long black coat billow in the wind.
If I’d had Byronic locks and a long black coat.
Hazel must have said something to Mum and Rabbie because they didn’t bug me. Just let me come and go as I pleased. Talk when I felt like it.
The days moved very slowly.
It must have been a week later, I was sitting in the garden, on this swing Rabbie had strung from our gnarly old oak tree. It was the best spot because you could see all the way down to the sea. And if you went high enough and fast enough, it felt like you could drown in the sky. I’d probably spent hours out here when I was growing up, chasing clouds and daydreaming. Waiting for my prince to come.
Swinging was probably a pretty banal pleasure to most people, but I’d discovered it never got old, the rush of joy as I kicked off just as bright and clean as it had ever been. And thankfully it was a really good swing—well-made and sturdy, with a broad wooden seat suspended on well-tended chains—so there was absolutely no danger of pulling a What Katy Did.
I was just getting into the…hah…swing of things, enjoying the ruffle of the wind through my hair and the whoosh of the descent when the back door opened.
And there was Caspian Hart.
