A burst of light filled the barn, and then Gifford said, “As you wish.”
“G!” Jane spun around to find Gifford just pulling the cloak around himself. Impetuously she ran to embrace him, in spite of their awkward (and scandalous, though they were married, so did it really count as scandalous?) clothing situation.
“Jane.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head.
It surprised her, this sudden gesture of affection, but she welcomed it.
“We survived the day,” she said against his chest. “We both kept our heads. Hoorah for us.”
A laugh rumbled through him. “So we did. Hoorah.”
She pulled away to smile up at him, and felt a paper crinkle in her breast pocket.
“What’s this?” She vaguely remembered feeling a folded parchment in the shirt earlier, but she’d been too busy fleeing for her life to give it any attention. She took it out and instantly recognized her own handwriting.
It was the letter she’d sent to Edward before she’d left for her honeymoon.
“Peter Bannister slid that under my door in Beauchamp Tower.” Almost hesitantly, Gifford brushed Jane’s face and smoothed back her hair. “I thought you might want to keep it.”
“Thank you.” All at once she felt safe, for the first time since their last night in the country house. She was tempted to snuggle back into the circle of his arms, but the letter seemed important. “Why would Peter Bannister want you to have this?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I thought he was just giving me something of yours. To comfort me.”
She turned the paper over. On the back there was a single word scrawled: skunk.
Her breath caught. “This is Edward’s handwriting.”
Gifford frowned. “Edward’s?”
“Edward’s! I’d know his writing anywhere. You see how he shapes the s? When we were younger we had this one terrible tutor—Richard Cox was his name—and he was always going on about Edward’s ghastly penmanship. ‘You should write like a king,’ he always chided him. He made the king copy pages and pages of the letter s.” She smiled at the memory. “Poor, dear Edward.”
“Yes, poor, dear Edward,” Gifford agreed faintly. “So what does skunk mean?”
“I don’t know. I—” She gasped. “Our gran—my great-grandmother, his grandmother—turned into a skunk. She was banished to an old abandoned castle in the north years ago. I’ve visited her there. It’s called Helmsley.”
“Does that mean Edward is alive?”
“I think it does.” She hugged Gifford again, elated by the idea of seeing her cousin. “If Edward’s alive, then he’s heading to Gran’s and we can go there, too, and then everything will be all right, you’ll see, and you and I can—”
Jane turned into a ferret.
TWENTY-ONE
Gifford
Before G had time to be surprised about Jane’s transformation, something scratched at the barn door. G partly drew his sword from its sheath. (Not that he was really any good with a sword, but G was masterful at this particular bluff—to act like he could fight. Sometimes the act was all that was needed.)
“Who’s there?” he called out, his heart hammering.
There was an urgent whine in response.
G opened the door and Pet flew in. She let out a couple of shrill barks, ran out the door, ran back to Gifford, ran outside, and then stared out into the night, one paw lifted, frozen.
“What’s she trying to say?” G asked Jane-the-ferret. Jane responded by scurrying up G’s leg, then up his shirt, then snaking around his neck and ending up on top of his head.
At this point, G realized he’d just asked a ferret what the dog said.
With his Jane hat in place, G squinted into the darkness, trying to figure out what had gotten Pet in such a fluster. Pet ran a few yards out, turned, and panted at G. She leaned even farther away from the barn as if she would take off in that direction if only G would follow.
“Pet,” G said. “Remember the bad soldiers. Right now is not a good time to travel, especially when I’m not a horse, and therefore we have no speed.”
Pet darted back inside the barn, and with a flash of light, suddenly she was a girl.
A naked girl with long, tangled blond hair.
Naked.
With no clothes on.
“I caught His Majesty’s scent!” she exclaimed.
A soft tail swept across G’s cheeks and came to rest right in front of his eyes, but G could still see the flash of light as Pet transformed back into a dog.
He stood there for a long moment, flummoxed.
“Did you see the . . . less formally attired girl who was just here?” he asked Jane. She dug her claws into his head. “Did you have any idea Pet was a girl? Although she didn’t look very comfortable as a girl. She didn’t make any motion to cover herself.” This time, Jane scratched his face. “Not that I noticed.”
Pet emitted a high-pitched bark again and pointed her nose outside the barn, and it wasn’t until that moment that G remembered she had said words. While standing there. Naked.