I roll down the window and draw in fistfuls of fresh air.
And I dream: of ducking down before a pram of my own to stare at a baby boy. A son with his papa’s black hair and his unholy, glittering green eyes; of the solid weight of my husband standing behind me, his fingers playing with my hair as he stares down at the boy who is the perfect blend of us both.
Brave and stubborn and loyal, to a fault.
You are my first, Isla Quinn, and my only.
With my elbow planted on the open window, I press my mouth to my balled fist. There’s nothing but the hum of activity from the pub and the gentle wind blowing into the car, which teases at my hair. It’s quiet. Safe. Peaceful.
Inside my chest, there is nothing but chaos and desperation and aching need.
“I love you, Saxon Godwin,” I whisper, to myself, to the empty car, to the midnight sky with its diamond stars and faraway galaxies. I whisper the words like a prayer, as if, by saying them out loud, they might summon him to me.
They don’t.
By the time I pull up to the safehouse he plugged into the GPS, with Peter and Josie spilling out from the cottage and rushing toward me, I whisper another, “Please come for me, Saxon. Please, please come for me.”
He never does.
40
Isla
“How long do you suppose she’ll let the sadness get to her and go without bathing?”
“Oh, so that’s the stench I keep smelling. I thought you’d forgotten to take out the rubbish.”
“Peter Quinn, I’ll have you know that you’re a proper arsehole.”
“As opposed to what? An improper arsehole?”
“I can hear you both, you know.” Cupping a mug of steaming tea, I glance over my shoulder to where my brother and sister are hovering in the doorway. “Jos, no cursing. Peter, I’ll bathe when I feel like it.”
Which will be right around the time I swallow my misery and stop thinking about Saxon around the clock. At this rate, I’m looking at the prospect of never.
Red hair dancing behind her as she skips to the sofa, Josie swings herself over the arm and plops down beside me. She bends her knees and perches her chin atop them. “Tell me, since you’ve killed the king, I think I should be allowed certain freedoms. Like the right to say arsehole whenever I feel like it.”
I arch a brow. “Is that really the bargaining chip you want to use?”
“At least it’s creative.” Peter chuckles as he bypasses the sofa and props himself up on the coffee table, his gangly legs sprawled out. “Especially since you’ve dragged us to the middle of nowhere.”
Grimacing into my mug, I take another sip. “It’s Stokenchurch, not Thurso.”
“I wake up to peeping Toms staring at me through my window every morning.” When I gawk at him, concern swelling at the thought of us being discovered by the authorities, my brother takes pity, adding, “The deer, Isla. I’m talking about the deer.”
Oh, thank God.
Perhaps it was pitiful to return here, to a village I’ve only driven through, but the bed and breakfast I booked comes with a fully furnished wing, large enough to fit all three of us without always bumping elbows. Not that the quaint farmhouse is anything to drool over. The matching wallpaper from room to room dates back to the seventies, at least, and the furniture is threadbare and on the verge of passing over to wherever furniture goes to die. And, while I haven’t used the shower yet, there’s no mistaking the startled yelp I hear from Josie whenever the water suddenly turns cold mid-wash.
The benefits to staying here: it’s cheap and Stokenchurch is tiny.
And it’s close enough to London should there be any . . . news.
Josie’s elbow glances my side as she scoots closer, resting her head on my shoulder. “It’s been three days. Maybe we should venture out. I would die for some crisps right now.”
“Maybe I ought to go first,” Peter says, clasping his hands together in his lap. On the floor, his toes tap out an uneven rhythm. “No one knows my name”—he throws an apologetic look my way—“or my face. What if someone recognizes you from the telly?”
We’ve been lucky so far.
The owners accepted the banknotes without question, and we used Peter’s license to check in, instead of my own. Just in case. For three days, we’ve stayed far away from the news. No turning on the car for a listen to the radio or popping on the telly. Not that the latter works—I tried, that very first night we stayed here. Seventy-two hours after I fled London, and we’ve been cocooned in a bubble of ignorance ever since.
Shaking my head, I pass the mug over to Josie when she taps the handle, silently asking for a sip. “We go together, or we don’t go at all. Same as we did when we went shopping yesterday. I don’t . . . I don’t want us separated again.”
Lips flattening, Peter hangs his head forward. “If I’d known . . . if I’d known what that bloody bastard was prepared to do to you, I wouldn’t have allowed him to send us to Oxford.”
“Peter . . .” The sofa cushion squeaks under my bum when I stretch out a hand, settling it on his knee. “You can’t blame yourself. You can’t. He said I’d be following the next morning—how were you to know that wouldn’t be the case?”
“I should have known better than to trust a Priest.” He lifts his chin, his gaze finding mine. The blue of his irises is rimmed with remorse. “I told you not to trust them, and then I went ahead and did just that. You almost died!”
“Peter . . .” I rub my lips together, sliding my arse forward until I sit on the edge of the sofa. “Do you remember the time you threw yourself from the tree?”
Josie mimics me to my right, dropping her feet to the scratchy beige rug. “I do,” she announces, hooking an arm around mine. “He screamed bloody murder.”
My brother shoots her a dirty look. “I didn’t anticipate breaking my leg.”
“You thought you could fly.”
“And you,” he deadpans, “thought it’d be a grand idea to follow in my footsteps.”
I hold up my hands between them, making the universal gesture for time-out. “The point is, you had no idea how you might feel after you jumped. You just did it, because Mum and Dad always taught us to be brave and to take chances and to remember that there are no bad decisions. The prospect of consequences didn’t even enter the picture until you were limping around in a cast for months on end.”
Squirming beside me, Josie splays her hands out wide. “Killing the king was—”
“A bad decision,” I finish for her, “which is exactly what I’m trying to get at. Anger ruled my emotions. Revenge, too. I spent years watching the two of you struggle after Mum and Dad died, and never . . . Well, I should have shined the lens back on myself, perhaps, because I was the one struggling most of all. I assassinated him in cold blood, and I’ve spent months living in fear because of it.”
Peter drops his stare to his crossed ankles. “So, what you’re trying to say is, we should forgive Priest.”
My heart pinches at the memory of Saxon being shoved to the damp earth. No matter how much I try, there’s been no forgetting that moment. And I’ve tried, over and over again, since leaving London. Since reading the message that he sent me, only to realize that he’d purposely cut off all other communication.