Bran’s eyes crinkled at the corners, and I blinked as a wisp of memory floated up.
After slipping his mother’s medallion over his head, the little boy had taken her hand. He never cried as they ran deeper and deeper into the forest. But his blue and green eyes had looked so sad. After hours in the cold, the little girl wanted to comfort him. When she saw a cluster of snowdrops near the log they huddled beside, she had plucked one and handed it to him. The little boy had gazed down at the delicate white blossom for a long time. And when he looked up at her, his eyes had crinkled at the corners as he gave her a tremulous smile.
“Bran?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m . . . I’m sorry about your mother.” My voice broke. “Your real mother. In the institute, I—?I remembered what happened to her. I remember when you took this from her.”
I slid a finger beneath the leather cord and tugged it free of his shirtfront. The worn silver medallion felt warm against my palm as I clutched it tight. “I’m so sorry,” I repeated. “If my grandfather and I had never come to your village—”
Bran tilted his forehead against mine. “Shh,” he whispered. “None of that matters now. And if you’d never come, I would be nothing but dust in some forest grave. Your bones would lie in some ancient churchyard. We never would have met. Don’t look back, Hope. Never wonder. That path is closed to us now. But this one is just beginning.”
His breath warm against my lips, he whispered, “Now get some rest. I will see you tonight, no matter what. And Hope, promise me you’ll be careful, all right?”
Trying to be flippant, and failing miserably, I said, “You too.”
Bran’s fingers slid into my hair as he kissed me. It was a soft, sweet kiss that was over way too soon. Though not so soon that I didn’t feel the hunger waken and stretch inside me. Not so soon that I missed the growly moan that rumbled through Bran’s chest where it pressed me against the wall. Panting, he cursed under his breath as his hands trailed down my arms. He pulled away. In his absence, cold rushed in. By the time my eyes fluttered open, he was gone.
Inside our suite, a phalanx of servants waited to cater to our every need. The moment we entered I was draped in thick, warmed towels and whisked off to the elaborate bathroom. Before I knew it, I was stripped and immersed up to my chin in a clawfoot tub full of scented, steaming water.
While one maid worked lather into my ratty hair, rinsing it with cool rose water, another worked on my scraped and battered feet.
After helping me into an embroidered dressing gown and matching slippers, Lida, a round-faced, Prussian girl sat me in a low chair and combed sweet almond oil through my tangles. Lethargy dragged at me. In a half-fugue state, I drifted in and out as warmth from the fire soaked into my bones. Every once in a while, the image of Carson’s ice pick would glint over me and I would jerk upright, a scream trapped behind my teeth.
On a stool behind me, the sturdy Lida hummed quietly as she combed and twisted, combed and twisted, drying my hair into gleaming ringlets that flowed down my back like twirls of obsidian. With a final murmur of satisfaction, she arranged the mass of it on top of my head and secured it with a few jeweled pins. She passed me a silvered hand mirror. “Does miss like?”
Curls she’d artfully left unpinned brushed my cheek and tumbled down my back. I smiled, barely recognizing myself. “Yes, thank you, Lida.”
She picked up my filthy hospital smock with thumb and forefinger. “Is miss to be wishing this is washed?”
“No,” I told her. “Miss is to be wishing that is burned.”
Lida nodded. “Yes, this I would be wishing too.”
Mac had dismissed all the servants by the time I entered the living room.
“How can you even think of not telling the man?” Phoebe, ensconced in a robe of heavy silk the color of aged ivory, perched sideways on the couch with her feet tucked beneath Doug’s thigh. But her face was hot with anger as she snapped at the freshly shaved Collum.
“If your children were going to die because of some stupid mistake you could easily prevent, wouldn’t you want to know of it?”
Collum’s tight lips opened as he started to respond. Then he saw me and swallowed back whatever he’d been about to say.
“It’s not as simple as that, Phee,” Mac responded in a calm, reasonable voice. “Jonathan wants to know absolutely nothing of his own future or that of his family. You heard him say so yourself.”
“Aye, but you can’t seriously believe that extends to the accidental murder of his own babes, can you?”
Wearing black tuxedo pants and undershirts, Mac and Collum were ransacking a buffet, balancing china plates piled with crustless sandwich triangles and petite pastries.
Phoebe saw me. “Here,” she said. “Hope agrees with me, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. We have to find some way to tell him. We can’t just let it happen.”
While Phoebe graced her brother and grandfather with a triumphant see-I-told-you-so look, I was smiling at Doug, who grinned back so big, his cheeks lifted the wire spectacles. He started to get up but I waved him back.
“Don’t get up.”
I leaned down and gave him a fierce hug. Doug’s liquid brown eyes looked huge behind the magnified lenses as he shook his head. “Gah, Hope. I was that scared when you didn’t come down the chute after me. Then I heard you scream, and I tried to climb back up. But the damn chute was too steep. I—?I’m sorry for leaving you there.”
His face, guilt-ridden and miserable, tore at my heart.
“Douglas Eugene Carlyle.” I gave my best Aunt Lucinda impression, earning a smile from him and a massive, grateful grin from Phoebe. “I would have murdered you twice over if you’d come back for me. Besides,” I said, dropping the awful accent, “they would have gotten you too, and who knows what might’ve happened. I’d say we’re both pretty lucky.”
“Agreed.” Mac spoke through a mouthful of pastry. “We’re all here. We’re all safe now. And that’s the end of that. Now it’s time to discuss what comes next. We have”—?he glanced at the intricate clock on the mantel—?“seventeen hours and thirty-eight minutes until we must be back inside that dreadful cattle tunnel. And we haven’t even spoken with Tesla yet, much less convinced him to destroy the device. So let’s start—”
A knock on the door interrupted him. Collum, whose keen eyes hadn’t left me since I’d entered, gulped down the rest of his lemonade and went to answer it.
Sniffing the air, I moaned. “Is that coffee?”
Phoebe started to get up. “You sit. I’ll get it.”
“Och. Oh, no ye dinna.” In my most outrageous burr, I said, “You’ll be a-stayin’ right where ye are then, lassie. I’ll be fetchin’ a cup o’ the bean fer meeself, ye ken?”
She and Doug exchanged a look before bursting into roars of laughter. “Wh-what?” Phoebe wheezed. “What in blazes was that?”