Shadowbound (The Dark Arts Book 1) (19 page)

Could this be what she'd been sensing all day?

Not danger, but something
else
? She didn't think so. Nothing ever happened to her, nothing exciting anyway. She was her father's Golden Goose, more precious than a solid-gold statue of Buddha. Her purpose in life was to while away her time here at Tremayne Manor until she was called to come predict something for her father or do a foretelling for one of the lords and ladies who paid him a small fortune for them.

Four steps to the rose arch in her father's gardens, and then she'd be downwind. She let the gravel crunch beneath her feet, counting silently.

A curl of cologne drifted past, all bay rum and bergamot with a hint of rosewood and lemon. A gentleman then. One that was well in hand, for that was a special blend she'd only smelt rarely, and only on the richest of her father's acquaintances. Those who spoke with crisp Eton vowels and went
hur-hur-hur
when they laughed.

Cleo lifted her head, the ends of her blindfold brushing against her throat as she paused by the rose trellis. She chewed on her lip, then made a decision. "Are you following me, sir?"

There came a choked silence. He hadn't expected her to be aware of him.

"Unless, of course, it is mere coincidence that you are going to feed the ducks in my father's locked and walled garden too?" Her basket brushed against her skirts as she turned. There was nothing but stillness in front of her, though she could still scent his cologne. "Now you're making me feel a little silly. I know you're there." She touched her blindfold. Nothing like adding a little mysticism, a little drama. "You cannot sneak up upon the Cassandra, did you know?"

"My apologies." The voice was deep. Not very old, she thought, though older than she. He sounded slightly French, and a little out of his depth, as though he were searching for words to say. "I did not mean to disturb you."

"Well, clearly. You were sneaking so quietly behind me."

An awkward silence ensued. "I'm sorry."

"For being caught, or for creeping around after me in the first place?" She'd long since learned that blunt questions often startled truthful answers out of people, or she could pick up little truths out of their reactions, anyway.

"I did not know you were a diviner." This fact sounded rueful, as though, had he known, he might have stayed away.

"I'm not. I'm
the
diviner. The current one, anyway."

"Are they all blindfolded? I had thought..." He trailed off.
He
was aware of rude enquiries, even if she considered them minor inconveniences.

"It helps to make the visions clearer. My father blindfolded me when I was five. I had a foretelling, saying that if I ever saw the world again, I would lose the Gift." And so she'd never dared take the blindfold off. It was the only thing that made her valuable to her father. She didn't want to lose that.

"You haven't seen a single thing since you were five?"

"Oh, I've seen a lot of things, some of them not very nice. Sometimes it's quite interesting. If I had my vision what would I see but roses and grass and trees? Whereas, without it, I can see all manner of things, sometimes even the world." She didn't give him time to gain his balance; instead, she stretched out her hand, gesturing for his arm. "Are you going to walk with me? Take a poor, blind girl safely to the water's edge?"

"I'm certain you were managing quite well enough without me." Movement whispered, as though he laced his hands behind his back. It was a subtle withdrawing, told in a gentle murmur of fabrics.

Cleo tilted her head on its side. "Don't you like touching people?"

"Not really, no. And something tells me that touching someone who can see the world might be a little dangerous. What if you could see all of the secrets inside me?"

She smiled. Touch often gave her insight into a person, sometimes even forcing a prediction or foretelling upon her. Oh, yes, he was very interesting. "Are there secrets to see?"

"We all have secrets." There were shadows in his voice.

"Well then, it seems you have set me a challenge."

The stranger took a step back, but she didn't reach out and grab him.

"Oh, don't be silly, that would be too easy." Cleo felt a wicked smile dawning. She didn't want to simply know his secrets. She wanted to unearth them. There was no fun in simply knowing them, and no guarantee that premonition would ignite at a single touch either. It took long hours of meditation for her to force a foretelling. Otherwise they came at will, and certainly not hers.

"That's what bothers me," he murmured.

"Are you going to stay awhile? I rarely receive visitors, and none of them interested in me."

"What makes you think I am?"

Cleo swung her basket. This was a truth she wasn't certain she wanted to give him, but then she didn't want him to go away either. "People don't talk to me very often. They only ask me questions about themselves. They rarely answer mine. Thus, I suspect your interest lies in me, not in what I can give you."

There was a breathless moment of waiting. "I'll stay awhile," he said finally. He was watching her face when he said it, she could tell, and it made her heart lift a little.

"So what is your name? Am I allowed to know that?" Cleo asked, turning once again toward the pond. He was right. She didn't need his help. Sixteen years of traversing these paths blindly had ingrained them in her head.

He hesitated. "Sebastian."

Sebastian.
She mouthed the word, liking it. She hadn't heard that name before, at least, not in connection to her father. "My name is Cleo."

"I know."

How unusual. Cleo had thought herself a well-kept secret, except for within certain circles, but the surety of his tone led her to a suspicion. He had known whom she was, and he had come looking for her in the gardens. This wasn't just some stumbled upon assignation.

His interest was definitely in her.

Not her father.

Truth
, said her premonition, lancing through her like white fire.

Cleo hid her gasp in a muffled cough. "Well, what are you doing here? What is your purpose in trespassing?"

"Trespassing?" He sounded surprised. "I'm not trespassing. I was sent here to deliver a message."

"Oh, that." She'd heard the ruckus in the foyer and the cool masculine voice that had left her father sounding faintly subdued. It hadn't sounded at all like this quiet, gentle stranger who liked silences. An entirely fascinating situation, for the Earl of Tremayne was rarely subdued. He wore his anger like a coat, and the usual means of describing him were: blustery, pompous, loud, arrogant... a list that went all of the way to demanding. But something about this stranger made the earl cautious. "That was over an hour ago. Does my father usually allow messengers to linger on his grounds?"

There was nothing but silence.

"Cat got your tongue?" she asked.

"Are you usually so... outspoken? You should be more careful with strangers."

It wasn't a threat. He actually sounded somewhat taken aback. "Nothing's going to happen to me today. I'd have sensed it." She reached up and gestured to her blindfold. "I don't always see everything that's going to happen, but disasters, or catastrophes? Always. Alas, there are no major scandals in my future."

"Scandals?"

"Well, were you referring to a young lady being thrown over the back of a dashing young stranger's horse and carried away to be ravished, or were you referring to something else entirely when you warned me to be careful?"

"Someone reads those newspaper serials to you, don't they?"

"My companion," she replied cheerfully. "She particularly likes the ones where dukes do dastardly deeds. Nothing less than an earl will do." When he didn't answer, she tilted her head toward him. "Oh, I'm sorry. I've shocked you, haven't I?"

"I... was just wondering how to answer that." He sounded faintly amused. "After all, I'm not a duke. Or an earl."

"I won't hold that against you. After all, you look like an Adonis. Everything can be forgiven for that, apparently."

His coat rustled, as if he turned toward her sharply. "How did you—?"

"The maids are all aflutter. Even Cook commented about those pretty eyes, and the only thing I've ever heard Cook refer to men as is 'trouble,' or 'not worth it.' My companion seemed to prefer your thighs, though I'm not going to repeat any of that," she said firmly. "Mrs. Pendlebury should be ashamed of herself. She probably would be, if she'd known I was listening. There has never been a man like you at Tremayne Manor before, apparently, and considering the wealth of visitors streaming through the door inquiring after their futures, that is something to be said indeed." She tilted her head. "You're quiet again."

"I am actually wondering if there is some hole somewhere that I can crawl into and hide," he drawled. "You are... not at all what I was expecting."

"Were you anticipating a poor little blind girl, sitting in her attic, hoping nobody would pity her?" Cleo couldn't stop the tart hint to her tongue. Gravel stopped crunching beneath her feet, and she turned automatically, finding the path again. Another thirty or so steps to the lake and the folly.

"No, I—"

"And why would you be expecting anything at all?" she continued, hunting for truths. "I thought you were here to see my father. Why would you have even cast a thought my way? Most people generally don't. I think my father prefers it that way." Her voice roughened. "Then I can be his little secret, locked away in my secret garden."

All she could hear were the ducks, the buzzing of insects, and someone, perhaps one of the gardeners, yelling something in the orchard a mile away.

"Well, considering we're to marry, I did give you some thought."

Cleo dropped the basket. "
What
?" She couldn't have heard that correctly. Could she? And why on earth could her Divination not warn her that there was a handsome, taciturn stranger in her future, one who felt like danger?

Gravel shifted. He was picking up her basket and the items within it, kneeling at her feet she suspected. She couldn't move. She wasn't entirely certain what she was even thinking, or felt at this moment. She should have been angry. How dare her father do this to her? Not even a mention of it! Not even a by and by... Or at least an introduction.

She didn't know this stranger, this Sebastian. And now he was going to own her and make her decisions for her, and oh, my goodness, she hadn't thought it before, but he was probably going to expect heirs from her.

Mrs. Pendlebury's mutter about those thighs sprang to mind. She hadn't quite understood it at the time, though she had some idea, and now she was going to find out exactly what Mrs. Pendlebury had meant.

Knock me over with a feather...

"I'm sorry. My mother said a special license had been prepared, so I thought your father had told you that you were to marry, but you had no idea, did you?" Sebastian knelt at her feet, and she could feel his gaze on her face.

It
was doing its best to rival a sunset, judging from the heat in her cheeks.

"I'm–I'm..."

"Speechless," he said. "Well, there's a first."

Cleo shut her mouth. Premonition had fallen willfully silent. There was not a single itch along her skin at all.

"I wanted to see what you were like," he murmured. "Might I enquire how old you are?"

That made the floodgates open. "What, you didn't ask? What kind of marriage is this?"

"This... wasn't entirely my choice. I discovered the fact only hours ago, when my mother sent me to deliver the letter agreeing to it. I forgot to ask about you. I was too furious, considering the wedding is set for tomorrow."

"
Tomorrow?
But— When... I don't—
"
She was speechless again. And livid with her father. Did he intend to simply inform her on the day and expect her to happily don her wedding gown before marrying a stranger?

There was nothing to say to that. Absolutely nothing. But her father was going to hear about it, oh yes. Taking a deep breath, she rubbed her temples. It wasn't Sebastian's fault. Nor hers. And he had asked her a question, hadn't he? "I am one-and-twenty. I've been here at Tremayne Manor all my life, so it may seem I'm more sheltered than most. No doubt I am." In some ways. In other ways, she had Seen quite enough of the world—of disaster and blood and torn bodies, of changing weather patterns, sorcery, maliciousness... visions that woke her up at night and left her with no rest.

The worst one was the one that seemed to recur, over and over again. London's Doom, she liked to think it. An enormous hovering cloud of roiling darkness that crept over the horizon of London, with flickers of lightning dancing within it. Only, she wasn't certain it was lightning, after all. She'd seen so many horrible things, and this was but a cloud, and yet it was the most frightening thing she'd ever predicted. There was... so much emptiness to it. So much pain. It made her heart bleed, even as she wanted to run screaming.

Cleo shook the thought away. If she dwelled on such things, she'd spend most of her life crying. Bad things happened. If she let them, they would make her life nothing but a nightmare, and she refused to live like that.

"Well, that is some relief," Sebastian said, standing and delivering her basket back into her hands.

"That I'm sheltered?"

"That you're not a child."

He was, no doubt, referring to her figure. With her blindfold obscuring most of her face, her age could be difficult to predict, and her form was somewhat insignificant. Plus, her father liked to dress her in white lace that drowned her. No doubt Tremayne liked the idea of some pure, virginal foreteller, and thought it played up to the image some people had. If unicorns existed, he'd have probably chained one to the lawn.

"So... You didn't ask what age I was," Cleo said slowly. "You evidently didn't ask much about me at all. Did you ask if I were pretty?"

"No."

That could be interpreted in two ways. Either he didn't care, or it didn't matter to the situation at all, for there was no changing it. Perhaps both.