Holly Court
. She explored her new home from the attic to the root cellar, noting all the crannies and hidey-holes, should she need to use them in her campaign against her new collaborator.
Rushford was foul tempered and imperious, but she had never once felt in physical danger. His touch was resolute, insistent, but never harsh. The girls would be safe, but she would keep them away from the main house—keep Aunt Tattie busy with their schooling when she couldn't, and send them on outings.
Mairey smiled as she thought of the terror her sisters would bring down upon Rushford's sensibilities should he ever venture out to the lodge. Anna had become properly shy in recent months, but Caro and Poppy still had no sense of shame, and thought bathtime was playtime. So the sight of naked little girls squealing down the hallway—their auntie fast on their heels with towels to dry and cover them—was everyday normal in the Faelyn household.
It was good that her family would remain distant from the rest of Drakestone House. And if things didn't work out, she could always send them home to their village and its ancient peace.
She'd never been allowed to live there; she'd been exiled by her father's research. She would miss the girls fiercely, but they would surely thrive there.
Heaven alone knew how long it would take to find the Willowmoon Knot, or how long Rushford would persist in his search before he gave it up and let her go. The Willowmoon had been missing for two hundred and fifty years; she might be bound to the man forever! The quest stretched out before her as bleak as any prison sentence: Anna and Caro and Poppy grown and moved away, with families of their own . Mairey's hair gone gray and her heart lonely as Jackson Rushford tore up the countryside looking for the glade of silver.
She found a pen, a pot of ink, and a pad of letter paper in the parlor desk.
Dearest Aunt Tattie ,
I have found lodgings near my work and wish you to join me here at Drakestone House, as soon as you can pack the girls and all their things.
And may the dragon beware.
----
Chapter 5
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D odson. Christ, he'd forgotten. Had another June come already? This one had crept up on him, forgotten in his quest to find Miss Faelyn and her silver mine.
No, not altogether forgotten. Never that. It was an everlasting echo in a heart gone hollow.
Jack made a detour into his private office, not yet ready to face Dodson and his partners. This meeting took more and more out of him every year, sapped his strength for days afterward.
It had become a dreaded reckoning, an acrid accounting of his failure. He had a file drawer packed with reports and assessments. Eighteen years of searching for the family his father had left to him.
Protect them, Jack. The girls, your mother. They'll need you, son.
But he hadn't protected them: he'd never seen them again. Not after the savage violence of a miner's strike gone horribly wrong. He had lost track of his family even as his father lay dying in his arms.
He'd been sent away that night, exiled to Canada , with the law on his heels and a price on his head. He'd spent his first shilling searching for his family; he would gladly spend his last if he had to.
Dodson and his lot had found little trace of them—only rumors and unverified sightings. Eighteen years was a lifetime of waiting, of stark loneliness and phantoms.
And hope was a heavy burden.
Jack emptied his chest of the pain, of his fury, and dimmed his memories so that they wouldn't flare up and overcome him in the midst of his meeting. He took a steadying breath and then shoved through the adjoining door into his office.
"Your report, gentlemen," Jack said sharply and without preamble, because he'd never found any other way to begin this annual farce. Every year it grew more difficult to talk through a tightening throat. "I haven't time to waste."
The firm of Dodson, Dodson and Greel , attorneys at law, had been sitting like
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