How had the marquess known where the dead sparrow was under the snow? Could he truly communicate with animals? She now knew that anything was possible.
Chapter Six
2024?
Gray would have laughed but something in his belly twisted and knotted. It wasn’t just a random number, butsummer2024. It was a date. A year. She claimed she came from the twenty-first century.
He would have thought her mad, but didn’t he used to believe that his mother had disappeared into the future?
He’d seen Miss Darling appear out of nothing, just as he’d seen his mother do a number of times. If Miss Darling came from the future, then his mother might be there. Yes, he would have laughed at such a preposterous notion as time-travel, adding it to what was so unusual about Miss Darling, but her tears were convincing. Tears she shed for a bird.
She was convincing for certain. She wept over a family she believed she’d left in the future. A brother whose birthday she’d missed. Her students—she was a teacher. She’d mentioned an audition. Did she teach the deaf?
He didn’t care. He’d refused to care. It hadn’t been easy. He’d felt unfamiliar stirrings of pity, perhaps even traces of compassion and threw water on that fire quickly. He wouldn’t allow such damaging emotions to infect him.
Chasing Will Gable’s guest from his thoughts, Gray glanced up at the raven again. The creature was difficult to ignore.
A raven had followed him for two years after the Gable incident and then disappeared, until today. Gray wasn’t certain it was the same raven that had pecked George Gable in the temple until he died. They all looked the same, though the one that killed Mr. Gable was bigger than the others. The one flying above him now was large and loud, swooping low and cawing almost in Gray’s ear. Gray reached out at one point and practically pushed the creature out of his way. He wouldn’t take a swing at it. He didn’t hurt animals.
Why was it following him though? What did it want? If it was the one that killed Mr. Gable, he’d rather it didn’t follow him.
He ignored it as best he could and finally reached the castle. He wanted to find Harper and ask her if she knew anything about people traveling back in time, back from, say, the year 2024? Harper had denied any knowledge of a place called New York City. But the more he’d brought it up, the less he believed her. What did it all mean? Why would Harper lie to him? He hoped she wasn’t lying to him about this.
He nodded to the stable hand, then gave Ghost a pet between the eyes.Thank you for carrying me around all day.He didn’t express his gratitude out loud. No reason to set tongues flapping about him speaking to the animals again. He wasn’t expecting an answer from the horse, and he didn’t get one. He wasn’t a child anymore with childhood fancies. He looked up as he strode for the doors. The raven was gone. He wondered if Miss Darling had seen the huge bird following him.
He felt a flush of warmth flow through him at the thought of her name. Would just thinking her name forever bring color to his face? Was he a cat beguiled by a shiny object? He scoffed at himself and pulled the castle door open. Inside, he shrugged out of his coat, then took it by the shoulders and snapped it. Scattered snowflakes and cold air hit Timothy Cavendish in the face. Gray’s older stepbrother glared at him.
“Thankfully, it’s nothing that can kill you,” Gray remarked as he passed him.
“Grayson!” his stepbrother screeched. Gray stopped and turned to him with impatience slouching his shoulders. “What?”
“Father is looking for you.”
Gray really hated this ant calling the duke his father. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t hate Timothy Cavendish, but he couldn’t deny the rage he always had to fight back when Cavendish was around.
“You’re always the bearer of bad news, aren’t you?” Gray asked in a knowing drawl and gave him a stiff half-smile. “Where is the old boy?”
Cavendish gaped at the way Gray addressed his father. “I’m going to tell him exactly what a miscreant his son is until I’ve convinced him enough for him to strip you of everything—and then I’m going to sit in your chair.”
Gray looked heavenward and stopped listening. “I’ll find him myself.”
He left the babbling dullard and headed for the stairs. He knew if his father was in Dartmouth, he could be found in his private study. When Gray reached the study door, he took a breath to steady his heart and knocked.
“Come,” his father called out from inside.
Gray knew exactly where he’d find the Duke of Devonshire—at his desk behind the window, his gaze fastened on one of the many papers on his desk.
“You wanted to see me.” Gray stepped inside and sat in one of the two chairs on the other side of the duke’s desk. The other chair was Cavendish’s. It was the first thing Gray was going to burn when his father left this earth and the castle became completely his. Just seeing the chair, a place for someone who should not be there, darkened Gray’s mood.
“What is the meaning of placing thirty men around the Gable’s holding?” the duke asked without looking up.
What is the meaning of seating your second wife’s son in the chair beside the son of your loins?Gray wanted to ask him in return.
“The Gable holding is in the direct line of the band of thieves who have been raiding the three villages,” Gray said instead. “The three men I caught confessed to there being a group of at least twenty—the highest they could count—men in the band of thieves. Our villages are ripe for picking without any shield from us, the ones they pay for protection.”
There, Gray mused as the duke set his fiery gaze on him. That got his father’s attention.
“The ones who give them land on which to live,” the duke snarled.