Chapter 18

The next morning, Bowen sat at the breakfast table, drinking coffee and staring at his grandparents.

They weren’t speaking at the moment, just studiously ignoring each other while they ate their eggs, and he wished Tamsyn would

show up already, because she would surely know where to start with this whole “getting these two back together” plan.

Of course, he’d given Tamsyn plenty of reasons to sleep in this morning, he thought, hiding his smirk with his coffee cup.

It wasn’t like him to smirk—that was more Wells’s territory. But he’d spent most of last night making love to the woman of

his dreams, so a smirk felt well deserved. His brain was still spooling through images from last night.

Her in the bathtub, her skin wet, the room steamy from more than the water.

Tamsyn in the sheets, uninhibited as anything, her nails scoring his back, her fingers in his hair while he licked and sucked

at her, the breathless way she said his name, the way her hips bucked beneath his mouth...

Clearing his throat, Bowen distracted himself by refilling his coffee from a silver pot. The last thing he needed was a hard-on while he ate breakfast with his grandparents, even if they didn’t know they were his grandparents.

His eyes flicked toward the door again, hoping Tamsyn would appear, but no such luck. The only person coming into the breakfast

room was Emerald, another one of those velvet ribbons—black this time—holding back her golden hair and yet another book in

her hand.

She was so focused on the book she nearly collided with the Ming vase near the doorway, and saved herself only at the last

moment with a startled “Oh!” The vase wobbled on its stand, and Emerald reached out with one hand to steady it. As she did,

she lowered the hand holding the book, and an entirely separate book slipped out from between its pages, smaller and slighter.

Blushing furiously, the teenager stooped to pick it up, and Bowen pretended not to see. Probably something she wasn’t meant

to be reading, something “dirty,” no doubt—Rhys had had a similar habit of hiding girlie mags in his spellbooks when he was

a teenager—and Bowen wasn’t about to blow up her spot on that.

Harri and Elspeth didn’t seem to notice, and Emerald took her place at the table, reaching for the basket of toast that had

been set in the middle of the table. Once she’d slathered a piece with butter and marmalade, she went back to reading, the

book in one hand, toast in the other.

“Lady Meredith will have your head if she sees you reading at the table,” Elspeth commented, and Emerald shrugged.

“Madoc has locked himself in one of the hidden chambers, and no one can figure out which one. She’ll be busy for a while.”

“Do you know which one?” Bowen asked, and Emerald looked at him over the top of the book. She had big hazel eyes, and there

was no doubt that one day she’d be quite the beauty, but for now, she looked exactly like what she was: a teenager full of

attitude and more than a little mischief.

“Maybe,” she replied, taking a bite of toast and returning to her book.

Shaking his head, Bowen turned his attention back to Elspeth and Harri and said, “So, Harri, which branch of the Penhallows

are you?” as if he didn’t already know.

“The useless one,” Elspeth answered for him. “The one whose magic has started to fade, which is why they sent him off to woo

a powerful witch bride under false pretenses .”

“False?” Harri echoed, his eyes going wide behind his glasses. “I bloody well loved you, Ellie. That’s why I asked you to

marry me.”

“Huh, and your father’s edict had nothing to do with it.”

Throwing up his hands, Harri turned in his chair to face his erstwhile fiancée more fully. “Of course my father wanted me

to pick a powerful bride. Of course he’d like a strong line of magic reintroduced into the family, especially after Gryffud

bugger—” He stopped suddenly, his eyes flicking to Emerald, before amending, “After Gryffud left for America thirty years

ago. He was the last Penhallow with any real power.”

And he stole most of it from the Jones women there in Graves Glen, Bowen thought, but it was interesting, learning that his family, prior to his da, had been considered less powerful than they’d been. So weak, in fact, that Harri’s father had sent him off in search of a bride with enough magic to perk up the bloodline.

For the first time, Bowen looked at these people not as his grandparents but as his father’s parents. Was this why he was so obsessed with amassing magical power? Had they nearly lost

it, only for Elspeth to introduce it back into their DNA?

He could see his father in her, that haughty chin, the high cheekbones, the stubborn set to her mouth, and for the first time

in well over a year, he felt... wistful, maybe. Sad that Simon had never been the father any of them deserved, and had

it all started here? Had the great love story between his grandparents, the one he’d always heard about growing up, actually

been something darker, something more businesslike, than he’d been led to believe?

Hell, should these two even be together?

He was still pondering that when Tamsyn appeared in the doorway. She’d put on a black-and-white tartan skirt this morning,

nipped in at the waist with a white belt, and paired with a white jumper that clung to curves he now had hands-on—and mouth-on—experience

with, and she’d pulled her dark hair back into a low chignon at the base of her neck.

She looked pretty and proper, and he ached to muss up every perfect inch of her.

Her cheeks flushed a bit when she saw him, but then she spotted Harri and Elspeth, and with a bright smile and a cheery “Good

morning!” breezed into the room.

After filling her plate at the sideboard, she slid into the seat next to Bowen, her thigh brushing his under the table, and thank god they’d gone with the pretense that they were married, because it meant it was perfectly natural for him to lean over and press his lips to her temple with a murmured “Bore dai, cariad.”

Tamsyn blushed even more, but played it off with a little laugh as she fluffed her napkin in her lap. “One of these days,

I’ll learn Welsh so I can know what all you’re calling me. Cariad could mean old ball and chain for all I know.”

“It means my love, ” Harri supplied, and Tamsyn turned to Bowen with those eyes of hers filled with almost unbearable softness.

“Oh,” she said quietly. “That’s... well, that’s... nice, then.”

He hoped she didn’t remember everything he’d called her last night, because some of those terms were not appropriate for breakfast

conversation, especially when the other people at the table were his grandparents and a teenage girl.

“You called me that once,” Elspeth said suddenly, turning to Harri. “When you first proposed. I think it was the last time

I heard a term of endearment from you.”

“Not true,” he countered. “I called you blodyn tatws all the time.”

“That means potato flower, ” Elspeth said dryly. “Not exactly the most romantic description in the world.”

“It was what my grandda always called my nan,” Harri said softly, and for a moment their eyes met, held.

Bowen found he was holding his breath, and under the table, Tamsyn clutched his hand. He squeezed back, because he was definitely seeing what she was seeing. There was warmth there. Fondness.

Maybe even love.

Then Elspeth turned back to her plate and shrugged. “Well, that was a pretty piece of manipulation then, wasn’t it?”

With a muttered curse, Harri stood up, tossing his napkin onto his chair and storming out of the room.

“So dramatic,” Elspeth said to herself, then delicately dabbed her lips with her own napkin before rising and saying, “You

see why the idea of marrying that man in two days’ time was so abhorrent to me. He never actually loved me, and I deserve

better than that. I deserve... well, what the two of you have,” she said, gesturing between Bowen and Tamsyn.

With that, she also flounced from the room, and Tamsyn sagged back in her chair with a sigh. “Those two are impossible,” she

said.

Emerald spoke up from the end of the table. “You want the two of them to get back together. Why?”

Startled, Bowen looked over at the girl who was still reading her book while munching her toast. “How did you know that?”

“I’ve heard you talking about it,” she replied, nonchalant. “Yesterday, when you were in the hallway.” Then she lifted those

big hazel eyes over her book and added, “I hear lots of things.”

For a horrified moment, Bowen thought she might be referring to last night. Where in the bloody hell was Emerald’s room anyway?

But then she set her book and her toast down, folding her arms delicately on the table, and said, “You two aren’t here because

you were invited to the wedding and had some kind of magical travel accident. You’re from the future. Some spell sent you

here, and now you’re trying to get back to wherever you come from.”

She leaned in closer, the edges of her hair dragging along her toast crumbs.

“Do you live in space where you’re from?” she asked in a low voice. “Or have cars that fly? No, wait.” Emerald held up a hand.

“Don’t tell me, I want to find out for myself one day. I plan on living a very long time and being a very frightening old

lady.”

“You’re already a pretty frightening child, so I think you’re on the right track,” Tamsyn said, and Emerald smiled.

“Thank you. So you need to get Harri and Elspeth married because one of you is related to them, right? I’m guessing you”—she

pointed at Bowen—“since you and Harri have the same last name, and you and Elspeth make that same expression all the time,

like you just stepped in dog poo.”

Bowen scowled. “I don’t make that expression.”

“You’re doing it now,” Emerald argued, and Tamsyn leaned over to study him before nodding.

“Yeah, you kind of are.” Then she turned her attention back to Emerald. “You’re clearly a bright and terrifying person, so

do you have any ideas? How do we get those two to realize that they need to be together?”

Emerald screwed up her face, thinking. Then she said, “If I help you with this, will you teach me magic?”

“I’m not a witch,” Tamsyn answered, but Emerald shook her head, pointing at Bowen.

“I meant him. Will you teach me some magic?”

Bowen shifted in his seat, stretching his legs out underneath the table. “I can’t, love,” he told her. “It’s not a thing that

can be taught. You’re either a witch or you’re not.”

“Has anyone ever become a witch?” she asked. “Like... maybe it was inside them the whole time, but no one knew until suddenly

they could do magic?”

Tamsyn was right, Emerald was bright and terrifying, but as she looked at Bowen with those big eyes, he was reminded that

she was, in fact, a child. That was a child’s fantasy, the secret witch taking the place of the hidden princess, a fantasy

Bowen could understand but sadly knew was just that—a fantasy.

“Sorry, love,” he said again, shaking his head. “And even if such a thing were possible, my own magic isn’t working at the moment. Time travel apparently fuc—messes those kinds of things up.”

“You can say that word in front of me,” Emerald said brightly. “I’ve heard it lots of time, and I also heard the two of you

performing that word last night.”

“Well, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go throw myself on the Yule log now, be right back,” Tamsyn said, standing up from

her seat, but Bowen caught the edge of her skirt, tugging her back into her chair.

“It’s not polite to eavesdrop, much less bring it up at breakfast,” Bowen said, doing his best to channel his da or, at the

very least, Wells.

It must’ve worked, because Emerald looked a little chastened, dropping her head before looking back up and saying, “I apologize. But I’ll still help you. Even if you won’t teach me magic.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Tamsyn asked, but before Emerald could answer, there was a high-pitched shriek from somewhere

in the house, and Bowen heard Lady Meredith say, “Well, for Rhiannon’s sake, Madoc, at some point you have to use your own

common sense! Yes, yes, Caradoc, I know he’s only four, but that’s no excuse! How on earth does one get trapped in a painting anyway?”

There was a pause, and then, in an imperious shout that could’ve brought down the entire castle, Lady Meredith cried, “EMERALD!”

“Neither of you have seen me, and we’ll talk later,” Emerald said quickly, gathering up her book and rushing from the breakfast

room.

For the first time since last night, Bowen was alone with Tamsyn—well, as alone as anyone ever was in a fuck-off big house

like this—and he wasn’t about to let the opportunity pass him by.

Hooking his ankle around the leg of her chair, he yanked, sending her tumbling against him, and she laughed even as she let

herself be pulled onto his lap.

“Someone needs to talk to you about your tendency to manhandle women, Bowen,” she said, but since her hands were already moving restlessly over his shoulders, her lower lip tugged between her teeth as she looked at him like perhaps he was the one on the breakfast menu, he didn’t think she actually minded all that much.

“Don’t manhandle women,” he told her, nuzzling the side of her neck, sucking in that scent she wore, the one that smelled

like orange and cloves, like she was Yule itself. “Only you.”

“Only me,” she mused in reply, sitting back to look into his eyes. “Only me for now?”

She was teasing him, or at least trying to, but he saw that flash of vulnerability in her eyes, that real question, so he

answered it.

“Only you,” he said again, looking into her eyes, making sure she understood what he was saying.

Bowen saw her throat move as she swallowed hard, then she leaned forward, kissing him entirely too filthily for this early

in the morning, but not like he gave a single fuck about what was appropriate or proper when it came to this woman.

He was just letting his hands slide up her sides, testing the softness of that white jumper, when he heard a discreet “Ahem”

from somewhere near the door.

Pulling himself away, he saw one of those endless servants standing awkwardly in the arch that separated the breakfast room

from the hallway, and Tamsyn went to scramble off his lap.

Holding her in place with firm hands, Bowen channeled all the icy arrogance of his ancient bloodline to say, “What is it?”

Tamsyn’s hands tightened a bit on his shoulders, so apparently she liked that side of him.

Something he definitely wanted to explore later.

The butler lifted a gloved fist to his mouth, coughed into it, and then said, “There is a visitor asking for you. The both

of you.”

Tamsyn looked down at Bowen in confusion, but he could only shrug, then gently help her off his lap. Taking her hand, he led

her from the room with as much dignity as two people who’d just been caught groping each other before nine a.m. could muster and walked out into the grand foyer.

Upstairs, Madoc was still shrieking, and Lady Meredith was saying, “It’s a painted goose, darling, how scary can it possibly

be?”

But Bowen was looking toward the front door where Lowri stood, still wearing that same moth-eaten-looking cardigan she’d had

on the day before and carrying that basket with that infernal cat, who blinked his eyes slowly at the pair of them.

“Lowri!” Tamsyn cried, dropping Bowen’s hand and hurrying to the older woman. “Did you find anything out for us?” she asked,

her voice barely a whisper.

Yesterday at the pub, the old woman had seemed cheerful, even amused by their situation, but now she clutched at Tamsyn’s

hands, her ancient face somehow even more creased with wrinkles.

And worry.

And, Bowen realized with a sinking stomach, fear.

“Oh, darlings,” she whispered hoarsely, her eyes darting around as though she were afraid someone might be listening. “Yesterday, after we talked, I went back to my cottage and consulted my books. It took ages—as I said, not a usual type of magic, time travel, and I’ve only ever known the one—but I fear I gave you some dreadfully bad advice.”

“What do you mean?” Tamsyn asked, her hands falling away from Lowri’s, and the old woman looked back and forth at them, her

lips trembling.

“It’s better that I show you. Come with me. Both of you.”