Chapter 12

Bowen wasn’t sure what it said about him, both as a witch and as a man in his thirties, that with everything currently going

on at Tywyll House—Yule, the now canceled wedding of his own fucking grandparents, a spell or more likely a curse that had

sent him and the woman he had only recently realized he was in love with hurtling almost seventy years into the past—the thing

that currently had him staring at the ceiling, worry churning in his gut, was that at any moment, Tamsyn was going to walk

out of the bathroom in this suite they now shared, and he was going to be alone with her.

In a bedroom.

With only one bed.

At night.

With her in...

Well, he wasn’t sure. Lady Meredith had had a bunch of clothing sent up for both of them after he’d made up a story about their luggage clearly not surviving their magical transit. Bowen was currently wearing a monogrammed set of black pajamas, an elegant “CMG” stitched in gold thread over his heart, which made him feel a bit like he was in a play or something. One of those old farces

where bedroom doors kept opening and closing, and the hero kept ending up in the bed of the wrong woman.

What had Lady Meredith given Tamsyn to wear? What did women even wear to go to bed in 1957? Hell, Bowen wasn’t that up to date on what women wore to bed now, so was it any surprise he didn’t have a great handle on vintage nightwear?

The water was still running in the bathroom, and he wondered if Tamsyn was in there wondering what he was wearing.

Christ, she was going to piss herself laughing once she saw him. Maybe he should at least take the shirt off? Or would that

just make it worse? Would he feel like a bigger tit wearing the full bloody costume, or would sitting out here shirtless make

him feel all the stupider?

Bowen had just reached for the first button of the top when he heard her call out, “If you laugh at me, I swear to god I’ll

kill you!”

With that she stepped out of the bathroom, and Bowen...

Well, he didn’t laugh exactly.

It’s just that...

“I know,” Tamsyn said, throwing up her hands. “They may claim Tywyll House no longer has a ghost, but I sure as shit look

like one in this thing.”

This thing was a white nightgown that went from her chin to the floor, complete with long sleeves that ended in lacy ruffs where her hands should have been. Her long, dark hair flowed over her shoulders, longer than he’d realized—she usually had it up in a ponytail—and Bowen found he couldn’t help but say, “You look like you should be carrying a candelabra and wandering the halls.”

Tamsyn lifted one hand, and Bowen assumed she was trying to flip him off, but all that lace obscured whatever rude gesture

it was, and she sighed, ineffectually shoving at her sleeves.

“At least it’s warm?” she said. “Downstairs was downright balmy with that Yule log, but it’s chillier in here, even with that.”

She nodded toward the small fireplace where the logs were merely glowing, and Bowen got out of the bed, crossing the slightly

threadbare carpet to stand in front of the embers. With a wave of his fingers, he muttered the words that should have made

the flames leap up instantly, but they stayed stubbornly smoldering, and he frowned, flexing his fingers again.

“Still no magic?” Tamsyn asked, and Bowen glanced over his shoulder to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, her makeup-free

face and all that long loose hair making her look younger, less... intimidating.

Which was actually more intimidating for some reason, so Bowen turned back to the fireplace, ignoring the growing tightness in both his chest and

his pajama pants, and picked up the brass poker.

As he nudged at the sad excuse for a fire, he said, “I haven’t done much research on the effects of time travel and magic. It’s an elemental thing, magic. Wild and strange. I used to think it was more like science. That’s how I treated it, at least. Hypothesize, experiment. Record findings, look for patterns. Try to suss out... I don’t know, rules, I s’ppose. Like if you could just figure out how it all worked, you could control it. But it doesn’t work like that. Read once that magic was like a naked blade. You can hold it, but you damn well better be careful with it, and even if you are, you are probably still going to bleed.”

Pausing, Bowen huffed out a breath, shaking his head at himself.

“I know, this kind of thing isn’t all that interesting,” he said, turning back around.

He expected to see Tamsyn watching him with one of those wry smirks and a smart comment just waiting on those pretty lips.

Instead, she was sitting in the middle of that giant bed with its paisley coverlet, her knees pulled up under that tent of

a gown, arms wrapped around them.

“Actually, that is interesting,” she told him, cocking her head to one side. “Maybe just because we’re in a castle at night, and there’s a fire,

and this seems like the kind of place where you should talk about magic, but that was almost like...”

She thought it over for a second, and Bowen fought a damn near desperate urge to run the back of his hand down that long fall

of brown hair.

“A bedtime story,” Tamsyn finally decided, then laughed a little, scooting farther up in the bed. “Speaking of, time travel

is exhausting, and we have an awful lot to figure out tomorrow. I’m hitting the... I don’t even want to say ‘hay,’ because

I feel there’s a non-zero chance this thing might actually have hay in it?”

Tamsyn patted the mattress suspiciously, and Bowen huffed out a laugh as he abandoned the fire and crossed to the bed.

“More likely about two centuries of feathers,” he told her, reaching down for one of the extra blankets before scooping up

a pillow. “Still, you’ll be comfortable enough.”

Tamsyn had been sliding under the covers, and now she stopped, the duvet still in one hand as she looked over at him. “Don’t

you mean we’ll be comfortable?”

Again, Bowen was thankful for his beard, shorter as it was, and the dim light of the room as a red flush spread up his neck.

“I was, uh, just gonna sleep on the sofa over there. Or settee. Whatever you call it.”

He gestured to the little seat beneath the window. It was covered in navy and gold stripes with a high curving back and rolled

arms, and while Bowen wasn’t as tall as his brothers, he was fairly sure his legs would have to hang over one of those arms.

Tamsyn sat up now, frowning at the sofa before looking back at him. “Okay, no. You’re not spending all night curled up in

that thing like a sad urchin. This bed is massive, and we’re both adults. I think we can handle sleeping next to each other

for a night or two, don’t you?”

Bowen did not.

In fact, the idea of sleeping next to her, even with the mattress equivalent of the English Channel between then, still had him hard almost immediately, his mind suddenly flooded with images of sliding those yards of snow-white fabric up her legs, slipping his hand between them, burying his nose in that space between her shoulder and her neck, and just inhaling her...

“Bowen?” Tamsyn said, still frowning. “Do you want to go down to the kitchen?” she asked, and the change of subject had him

blinking and stuttering out, “K-kitchen?”

She nodded. “You just looked like you were starving all of a sudden.”

Bloody fucking hell.

Clearing his throat and shaking his head, Bowen reached for another pillow. “No, I’m fine,” he replied, and nodded at the

sofa. “And I’ll be fine over there.”

“No, you won’t,” Tamsyn said firmly, tossing the covers back and giving the absolute acre of mattress a pointed look. “Stop

doing whatever this idea of chivalry is and get in the bed, Bowen.”

She was right, he knew. The bed was indeed massive, there was no way he was sleeping on that sofa, and the best thing either

of them could be was well rested because they were going to need to be sharp if they wanted to figure out a way out of this.

And for fuck’s sake, he could handle sleeping next to a woman without wanting to ravish her. He was a grown man fully in control

of his body and his thoughts.

With that, Bowen let himself slide into the bed. The mattress was cold and a little lumpy, but the sheets were soft with decades

of washing and carried the faint scent of the outdoors on them.

Tamsyn was still sitting up, tugging the extra blanket he’d dropped on the duvet up to wrap around her shoulders. “Can you freeze to death inside?” she asked him, then held up a hand. “Never mind. It’s bedtime, and I don’t need twelve examples of when that did happen to people.”

Chuckling, Bowen got back up and went to one of the massive posts at the foot of the bed. “I can only think of five examples

offhand, actually,” he told her, then tugged at the velvet cord holding the bed curtain in place.

It gave a soft whoosh as it gave way, and Bowen tugged until the panel of fabric made a deep blue wall on his side of the bed. He went around to

the other three posts, doing the same, as Tamsyn said, her voice muffled behind the curtains, “And this helps how?”

“Keeps the heat in,” he told her, pulling back the velvet on his side and sliding into bed.

The curtain swung into place, leaving them in near total darkness, the only light the dim glow of the embers that occasionally

showed through the spaces between the curtains.

It was immediately easier, lying next to her when he couldn’t see her. In fact, in the dark, Bowen could almost pretend that

he was alone.

That’s what he’d do. Lord knew he had plenty of experience with sleeping alone, so he lay on his back, his body still, and

closed his eyes.

Right.

Just like back at the cabin. Just him and his bed—cot, really—and no one else for miles and miles—

Tamsyn gave the softest of sighs, and Bowen’s eyes shot open, his body immediately aware of her.

The rustle of her nightgown against the sheets, the warmth of her body, the faint smell of woodsmoke that still clung to her hair mingling with the softer, but no less potent, jasmine scent of the soap she must have used in her bath.

“See?” she asked him, her voice drifting through the darkness. “Isn’t this nicer than folding yourself in a pretzel on that

couch? I bet no one’s ever sat on that thing, much less slept on it.”

“I’ve slept on worse,” he said, his voice gruff, and she gave one of those low laughs that made him squeeze his eyes tightly

shut so that he wouldn’t moan.

“Oh, I have no doubt,” she said, and he could feel the mattress dip slightly as she turned over, facing him now from the sound

of her voice. “You’ve probably slept... I don’t know. On the side of an active volcano. Or in some haunted lighthouse in

the North Sea. On top of a bear on a glacier.”

“Yes, yes, and no, but came close once,” he replied, hoping she might laugh that laugh again even though it killed him, and

sure enough, she did, and sure enough, he had to close his eyes again and wonder if anyone had ever died from wanting someone

like this.

She shifted against the sheets again, still far enough away that even if he stretched out his arm, he wasn’t sure he would’ve

been able to touch her.

That was still too close.

“If I had to break my rule about sleeping with clients, I’m glad it was with you,” she said, and now Bowen flipped over to

his side, facing her even though he couldn’t see her.

“This doesn’t count,” he told her. “Just sleeping, innit? Letter of the law may be broken, but not the spirit.”

He could imagine her raising her eyebrows at him as she replied, “I must be rubbing off on you if you’re so quick to look

for moral loopholes, Bowen.”

It was the dark, and the closeness of her without having to look at her, and the insanity of this whole mess they were in,

that made him say it.

That and his stupid heart, and his even stupider cock.

“I’m not having us break that rule on a technicality, Tamsyn,” he told her, his voice rough. “When we break it, it’ll be the

real thing, cariad .”

My love, he’d called her, because she was, fuck him and Saint Bugi and all his parts, but she was.

But Tamsyn didn’t speak Welsh, so it was another word she picked up on.

“‘When’?” she echoed, sounding breathless, and Bowen thought about playing it off as a mistake, turning it into the kind of

teasing flirt Rhys always seemed to be so good at.

But Bowen had never been good at that kind of thing, so all he could do was tell her the truth.

“I think about you all the fucking time,” Bowen heard himself say. “Every bloody day, Tamsyn. Your hair. Your skin. The way

you laugh. Especially when you’re laughing at me.”

She gave another one of those breathless sounds, but her voice was wry when she replied, “I do that a lot.”

“You do, and it drives me mad in the best way,” he told her. “Just like it drives me mad that I used to go days—hell, weeks —without talking to another living soul, and now if I don’t talk to you, the day never feels quite right. And...” Blowing

out a breath, he turned and stared up into the blackness. “Dunno. For me, that feels like a when and not an if, but maybe it doesn’t for you, in which case I’m a sad and delusional bastard, and you’re welcome to say so.”

Another laugh, softer this time, and then he felt her moving across the mattress, her hand tentatively resting on his chest.

Just that one touch nearly burned him, and it was dark, he was a muddle of a million feelings, and he couldn’t help but lift

that hand from his chest, kissing one fingertip.

Tamsyn sucked in a breath, and Bowen kissed another finger, then another, slowing making his way down to the pad of her pinkie,

hearing her breathing get quicker, her legs moving restlessly against the sheets.

“You’re not a sad bastard,” she murmured as he laid her hand back on his chest. “I think about you all the time, too. I can’t

see one interesting thing—not a book or a sunset or a fucking tree or some kind of weird crystal—without being like, ‘I should show this to Bowen,’ and...” Her voice trailed off, and she

sighed, pulling her hand back. “But I’m serious about not getting involved with anyone I work with. Even incredibly hot men

with whom I’ve somehow magically time traveled.”

“I take it there’s a story there,” he said, and he felt rather than heard her turn her head to look at him.

“No story,” she said. “Just self-preservation. I love this job. Or... I love parts of it. Never wanted anything to fuck that up for me.”

The sheets rustled again as she turned more fully toward him.

“But I take it there’s a story with Carys and this dead fiancé of hers. Every time anyone mentioned his name, you looked like you

were chewing glass.”

The reminder of Carys—of Declan—was what he needed. A metaphorical bucket of ice water before the warm, intimate darkness

of this bed made him lose his head altogether. Until Declan was released from the spell that held him in this strange place

between life and death, Bowen had no right to be lying here next to a beautiful woman, telling her the kinds of things that

became promises in the right light.

“There is,” he told Tamsyn now. “But it’s... it’s not a story I can tell. Not yet.”

“Not yet,” she confirmed, and then sighed.

He sensed her turn again, was fairly certain she was staring up at the canopy, too.

“It sucks,” she said. “Being virtuous. Having... a code or whatever. Rules. Especially when you’re over there, looking

like that—not that I can see you, but I see you with my eyes closed every night anyway.”

Christ.

Now it was Bowen closing his eyes, and this time, he couldn’t bite back the smallest groan.

“Don’t fuckin’ say things like that,” he practically growled. “Don’t tell me you think about me at night.”

“But I do,” she said, her voice low, and it was the darkness again, the way it pulled things out of him, its very own kind of spell.

“And what do you do, Tamsyn?” he asked, his voice not even sounding like his own, his accent thickening, the words rumbling

in his chest. “What do you do when you think about me?”

There was a heartbeat, then another. Five in all passed, and Bowen counted every one until her voice drifted out of the gloom.

“Should I show you?”