Knight in Leather (14 page)

“She…said you’d recover.” The words rattled off Dasha’s tongue unbidden—without any approval from her brain. Her filter had been unhinged during the trek through the tunnel, apparently.

Mrs. Gotch lowered her eyelids. “I will. Who is
she
?”

“You mean, who said you’d recover?”

“Yes.”

“Mielikki. She stopped by earlier at the place where I’m visiting. In North Carolina. You know, in the other realm.”

“Is that where Ethan is?” Mrs. Gotch’s voice was feathery and weak, but she seemed wakeful enough.

“Yes. He’s been there for…oh, going on six months, I think.”

“He has a home there?”

“Home? Well, I think he and the rest of the crew have the closest thing to one they’ve had for a long time. They seem to think of their new digs as a home, anyway.”

“He’s still with Heath, then?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good. I’d heard that Heath… That he…”

“Defected? Yeah. He and the rest of the crew. They’re still together. I guess getting word from him is rare. Ethan hasn’t visited in a while, huh?”

“Visiting is hard…with things being—” Mrs. Gotch paused to pull in a breath. Something in her chest rattled, and the tugs on her lips from her grimace made the skin crack and bleed. “How they are.”

Shit.

Dasha rooted in her purse and found one of the five or six unopened tubes of lip balm she carried around like true cosmetics hoarders did. She broke the seal, popped the cap, and turned the base to push the product up.

“He sent you a note.” She dotted the balm across Mrs. Gotch’s lips, then set the tube on the nightstand. “You can read it whenever you have the strength. I don’t know what he said.”

“Read it to me, dear.”

Dasha gave her head a slight shake. “I…I’m sure whatever he had to say was personal. I don’t want to intrude.”

“Give me the note.”

At the sound of the unfamiliar male voice, Dasha started, and whipped her head toward the open window across from her.

A shirtless man with hair streaked half blond and half brown leaned onto the casement. She couldn’t tell how old he was—she could never tell with fairies—but if he wasn’t Ethan’s father, she would have eaten her flip-flop. Same tall foreheads. Same proud noses. Same masculine chins.

“Don’t clam up now,” he said. “You’ll talk to a wolf, but you won’t talk to an old man?”

Dasha gulped for the umpteenth time in ten minutes. “I guess you’re referring to yourself as the old man.”

“I am.”

“You saw me talking to a wolf?”

“I
was
the wolf.”

“Huh?”

He drummed his fingers on the windowsill and bobbed his thick eyebrows. “I guess Ethan didn’t tell you about me.”

“Well, in his defense, he can’t really be blamed for that. You’re…a
werewolf
?”

“No. Just a fairy who can change shapes as necessary.”

Dasha forced her mouth closed before she inadvertently caught a few flies.

“Didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said, “but I didn’t know what was going to come out of that tunnel. Tunnels don’t generally show up here like that unless Rhiannon’s dragged Fergus out of his cottage so she can come treat us to a
chat
.”

Mr. Gotch said “chat” in such a way that hinted that Rhiannon’s chats were the exact opposites of treats.

“Um. Fergus’s granddaughter made the tunnel. She’s waiting on the other end. I don’t have a lot of time and have to run back before it closes. I hope they’re not fighting off a bunch of fairy forest squirrels on the other end.”

Mrs. Gotch let out a quiet laugh.

“Here.” Dasha slipped the letter to Mr. Gotch, who took it and immediately moved away from the window.

“Fergus’s granddaughter…made the portal, you said?” Mrs. Gotch asked in a halting whisper.

“Mm-hmm. I stopped in to visit with her a couple of days ago. We’ve been friends since college.”

“She didn’t know…she was…”

“A fairy? No. Big surprise for both of us, I assure you.”

“I imagine.” Mrs. Gotch reached for the end of Dasha’s garish scarf and fondled the corner between her fingers.

“The pattern’s ugly but, believe it or not, the scarf is real silk. I can’t resist picking one up whenever I pass by a scarf rack in a department store.”

“It’s lovely.”

“I think your eyes might be bad, but if you really like this thing, you can have it.”

Mrs. Gotch gave no verbal response, but her soft smile prompted Dasha to undo the scarf’s knot and pass the length of silk over to her.

Mrs. Gotch clutched the scarf in one weak fist and let her eyelids droop.

What’s wrong with her?

Mr. Gotch entered the room wearing only a pair of breeches and clutching Ethan’s note in one large hand. Blank-faced, he looked from Dasha, to his wife, back to Dasha, then cleared his throat. “You might have told us you were his mate.”

“Mate?” Dasha scowled. “I…”

Damn it, Ethan.

She shifted uncomfortably on the bedside and let her lips sputter. “Um. I didn’t see where that information was relevant.”

“Oh, good,” Mrs. Gotch said mysteriously without opening her eyes.

“You could have said something,” Mr. Gotch said.

“I guess, all things considered, I didn’t think telling you was pressing. After all, that wasn’t the reason I came here, and…I guess I didn’t want things to get awkward.”

“Why would things be awkward?” Mr. Gotch furrowed his brow. “Do you not accept him as your mate?”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

“That’s it, isn’t it? You’ve decided you’ll refuse him. Why would you? I know he’s rough around the edges, but he can’t help the way he is. He can’t help
being
what he is.”

Dasha groaned inwardly and rubbed her eyes.

Really digging a hole for myself here.

“Listen. Really, you’re jumping to conclusions. I haven’t refused him, exactly. The thing is, I’ve only known that I’m supposed to be his mate for the past couple of days, and I’m still trying to figure out what that means.”

“Should be obvious what that means, dear. You’ll live as man and wife. That’s simple sociology.”

“I understand that’s how the thing is supposed to work in theory, but, the problem is…I’m plain-old human. We don’t pair off like that.”

Mr. Gotch nodded knowingly. “Right. Right. You do that odd
courtship
thing. You waste a lot of time when you could just save your energy and accept the inevitable.”

“Okay, but staying together isn’t always inevitable with us. We find who’s best for us through trial and error, and usually, we make a lot of errors before we find The One…assuming we ever find him or her.”

Mrs. Gotch gave the hem of Dasha’s tank top a tug, so Dasha turned to her.

“Yes?”

“Maybe you don’t…know, but…he does.”

“You sound so sure of that.”

“You said your friend is of the Sídhe,” Mr. Gotch said. “Didn’t she explain to you what our mates mean to us?”

“Well, yes, but it wasn’t quite love at first sight for her and Heath, either. Her magic was suppressed.”

“Your friend—Fergus’s granddaughter—is Prince Heath’s mate?”

“Uh. Yeah?”

Mr. Gotch swore under his breath.

“I guess you didn’t get word of that, huh?”

At the slight movement on the bed behind Dasha, Mr. Gotch said, “Don’t try to get up, sweetheart, shocking as that morsel is.”

Mrs. Gotch sighed and put her head back down.

“We don’t get word about much way out here,” Mr. Gotch said. “This was the farthest away from Rhiannon that we could get without magical assistance, and even that doesn’t stop her from visiting on the rare occasion. We’d heard from a peddler who made his way through a few months ago that Prince Heath had married, but he didn’t give any specifics. All he knew was that Rhiannon was even angrier about the bride than anyone would have expected. I certainly understand why now. Of all the people he could take for mate, she—what’s her name, dear?”

“Simone.”

“Ah.
Simone.
Katie’s daughter Simone would certainly have been a slap in the face from the gods.” He chuckled. More than chuckled, actually. He doubled over at the waist and could hardly catch his breath from the laughter.

Mrs. Gotch laughed as well, but in the halting, breathless way of the sick, and not of the hale and hearty.

“Just goes to show you that the gods have a sense of humor after all,” he said.

“Well, good thing they actually love each other, at least,” Dasha said.

“Of course they do.” Mr. Gotch straightened up and wiped tears of laughter from his cheeks. “I don’t doubt that for a second. That’s the way matches are supposed to shake out. It may seem at times like the gods are pulling the puppet strings and far too often they get tangled, but the sane ones tend to think these things through much farther in advance than you could imagine. The Fates put a thumbprint on you from the time you were born marking you as Ethan’s.”

“You don’t think that sounds weird at all?”

He shrugged. “I’m a fairy.”

She groaned. “The guys in the crew say that all the time. Maybe one day I’ll learn to just roll with the punches.”

She rooted Ethan’s watch out of her purse and did some mental math. She had about twenty-five minutes to get back, and thought even that much time wasn’t nearly enough.

“I hate to cut and run,” she said, “but I need to get through that portal. It had a one-hour expiration and I’ve got about a fifteen- or twenty-minute walk ahead unless I can muster up enough energy to jog.” She didn’t think that was going to happen.

She looked down at Mrs. Gotch, whose soft smile had turned completely upside-down.

When she was smiling, Dasha could be confident Mrs. Gotch was going to recover. Not so much when she had that pain-stricken expression tugging at her hollowed-out features.

“Don’t remember her like that,” Mr. Gotch said. “She’ll be back to herself in no time.”

“What’s wrong? I know asking is rude of me, but—”

He waved a dismissive hand. “Doubt she’d mind. She suffers from her family’s curse. The magic was meant to kill them, but some sympathetic god cast a counter spell, and this is what remains. Happens every thirty years or so. The very first time I saw her, she was like that. Her father tried to hide her from me, but I knew she was mine and I didn’t care that she was ill.”

“That’s sweet.”

“
He’s
sweet,” Mrs. Gotch whispered.

Mr. Gotch shifted his weight and looked away almost as if talk about such things made him uncomfortable.

Awww.

“How long have you been in bed?” she asked Mrs. Gotch.

“A month.”

“And how much longer?”

“A month, perhaps.”

“You must be bored out of your mind. No cable television here, huh?” Dasha squeezed Mrs. Gotch’s hands. “I’ll come see you. I’ll bring you all the news and some pictures of Ethan, if you want. I imagine he hasn’t changed much since the last time you saw him. What’s time to a fairy, right?”

Mrs. Gotch smiled again. “Bring them. And the news.”

Brow furrowed, Dasha worried at her lower lip for a minute she couldn’t spare, but couldn’t shake one niggling question. She had to ask, and not just for Ethan, but for her own peace of mind.

“Is there any reason I can’t carry you out of here? Maybe not today. You’d probably need time to pack up, and—”

“We can’t leave, dear,” Mr. Gotch interjected.

“Today or ever? Heath has swiped people from the realm and relocated them to the outside.”

Mr. Gotch grunted. “Remember, Rhiannon’s magic keeps a tally of every fairy entering the realm. It also counts who leaves. If I didn’t think Rhiannon would immediately show up here demanding satisfaction, I’d tell you to take Moira and run as fast as you could. But she’ll come, and she’ll see who’s gone, and she’ll know exactly who to take her anger out on. I’ll not cause any trouble for my son on the other side. She has spies everywhere.”

“But—”

He put up his hands. “I appreciate you caring, but we’ll be fine a little longer. I’m convinced Prince Heath will figure something out.”

“I feel bad about just…
leaving
you here like this.”

“You came to deliver the note, and you can deliver something for us in turn. That’s all we can ask.”

“I’ll take something for you, for sure. Do I need to wait while you write a note, or…”

He shook his head and stepped through the bedroom door. “Not necessary. Meet me on the path in a minute, dear.”

Dasha gave Moira’s hand one more squeeze and said, “Should I lie to Ethan and tell him you look great and that he shouldn’t worry?”

“He’s going to…worry, anyway. Kind of you…to care.”

“Sometimes I care too much about things. A flaw I probably inherited from my mother.”

“And care too much about people, too?”

Dasha grimaced. “Sometimes, even when I shouldn’t.”

“Not a bad problem. I promise. Come…see me?”

“Of course. As soon as Simone can open a portal. Or maybe Katie will stop by and open one.”

“Tell Katie…hello for me.”

“I will.”

Dasha tied the scarf around Moira’s hair fortuneteller-style as that was what she seemed to want. She was probably cold. “Bad color for you. Hell, bad color for anyone. I’ll bring you something else.”

“I like it,” Moira said.

“Then we share similar bad taste.” Dasha left a few more tubes of lip balm on the nightstand along with a mystery novel she’d picked up in the airport and a couple of bars of decent-enough chocolate.

Moira was already slowly reaching for the chocolate when Dasha backed out of the door.

Out on the path, Mr. Gotch strode over with a sword in a leather scabbard. He cleared his throat and handed the weapon over.

He might have been holding the sword as if it were light as a feather, but it was heavy as hell and she nearly dropped the damned thing on her foot before she managed to grab the end with her other hand.

“Sheesh!”

“Uh.” He grimaced. “Ethan left that here the last time he was home.”

“You want me to give it to him?” She leaned the sword onto her shoulder and cringed.
Sucker’s going to slow me down, but at least I’ll burn some calories.