Chapter 7

It was probably a sign of just how messed up things already were at Tywyll House that Tamsyn’s first thought upon hearing

the scream was Oh, yay, that sounds like a person!

“And that’s a good thing?” Bowen asked, frowning down at her as some of the crowd began to move toward the big double doors.

Okay, so apparently that hadn’t been so much a “first thought” as a “first thing out of her mouth,” but those things were

frequently the same, so she shouldn’t be surprised.

“It’s better than the ghost,” she murmured in reply as they let themselves be carried along with everyone else out into the

hallway, Tamsyn practically glued against Bowen’s side. Her mind was still trying to process the sight of Bowen in a tuxedo,

his unruly hair actually tamed into soft waves, his trimmed beard enhancing the line of his jaw and the firmness of his lips,

so maybe it was a good thing they had this little screamy distraction, because otherwise, she might have been tempted to do

something insane like lick his face or propose.

Tamsyn wondered if he was fighting similar urges where she was concerned, because she had definitely seen the way his fingers had flexed around his empty glass when he’d spotted her in the doorway, and she wasn’t sure if he’d needed to hold her quite so tightly when he’d appeared at her side, wasn’t sure that brush of lips against her temple had been strictly necessary.

Not that she’d complained.

Even now, as they spilled out into the huge foyer with the other guests, it felt natural to slip her arm through his, and

she liked the way his elbow moved closer to his side, pulling her to him so that she had to rest her other hand on his biceps

to steady herself, and...

Okay, whoa. Bowen had clearly been hiding a lot under those sweaters he wore, and Tamsyn felt like she probably deserved a

medal—or, you know, a Fuck-Off Huge Magical Brooch—as a reward for resisting the temptation to squeeze that firm curve of

muscle underneath her fingertips.

Bowen kept her close as he maneuvered them around a trio of women in gorgeous black evening gowns, and something crunched

underneath Tamsyn’s high heel.

Glancing down at the stone floor, she saw a chunk of glass there, and then another. And another. The whole floor seemed to

be shimmering and crunching, and Tamsyn suddenly realized that the hallway was a lot darker than it had been just moments

before.

“Chandelier,” Bowen said, and yes, now that they’d moved closer to the front of the crowd, Tamsyn could see that it was indeed the massive crystal chandelier lying broken and crooked on the slate. That must have been the source of the crash.

As for the screaming...

It had stopped, but Tamsyn had a feeling it must’ve come from the ethereal-looking blonde in the white dress and tartan shawl

currently shuddering just beside the staircase. One hand was clamped over her mouth, her gaze riveted on the broken chandelier,

and Sir Madoc awkwardly patted her shoulder, while a tall black-haired man in a gorgeously tailored tux rested a hand on her

lower back, his head low as he murmured in her ear.

Everyone was whispering now, the low voices surprisingly loud in the cavernous room, the soft sounds punctuated by the occasional

whimper from the blonde, who kept looking back to the ruined chandelier.

They were close enough now that Tamsyn could make out Sir Madoc saying, “Darling, dearest girl, don’t talk such nonsense.

It’s an old house, and you know as well as I do that not everything works as it should. Why, just the other day—actually,

it was in October, now that I think about it, not quite the other day, but in any case, I was out in the—”

“This wasn’t the house, Da!” the blonde said, her voice ringing out.

Ah, so this was the bride, then, Carys Meredith. Which must make the man beside her David Thorsby, the groom. They were a good-looking pair, her hair so fair it was almost white, him all dark and brooding, but Tamsyn noticed the way that Carys seemed to be almost leaning away from his touch and how David’s jaw had clenched when she’d raised her voice.

“We’ve all been pretending this isn’t happening, but it is,” Carys continued, looking back and forth between her father and

her fiancé. “It’s him. He—he’s here, and he’s unhappy. He’s furious . Otherwise why would he be doing all this?”

Next to her, Tamsyn felt Bowen tense up, and she looked over at him, confusion pulling her brows tight together. “What—” she

started, but Carys went on, flinging out both arms, the shawl sliding from her shoulders.

“How much clearer can it be?” she asked, her voice almost pleading. “It’s Declan. He’s haunting me because he doesn’t want

me to get married.”

Bowen took a deep breath, but Tamsyn wasn’t looking at him anymore. She wasn’t looking at the chandelier or scanning the room

for any other possible Ghost Projectiles.

No, she was staring at the jewels pinned to the modest neckline of Carys’s evening gown.

The hallway may have been a lot darker now that the chandelier was down, but even in the dim glow from the sconces and the

distant fireplace, the rubies, emeralds, and diamonds at Carys’s décolletage glittered.

YSeren in the flesh, so to speak, but not locked in some jewelry box, not hidden away in a distant room where centuries of

Meredith treasure gathered dust. Right here. In front of her.

On the bride.

Tamsyn jumped as Bowen’s hand covered the one she still had settled just in the crook of his elbow. He squeezed, but she wasn’t sure if that was a warning or just an acknowledgment that, yup, here was the thing she’d been planning to steal. Not some trinket the family never thought about, but clearly a treasured family heirloom, possibly something Carys was planning on wearing to the wedding itself.

Definitely the kind of thing someone was going to notice missing pretty damn quickly.

Tamsyn caught herself pulling her lower lip between her teeth, but no, that was the kind of thing Tamsyn Bligh did, not Anna Ripley, so she schooled her face into an expression she’d seen plenty of rich people wear over the years, one where

you somehow looked both bored and hungry at the same time.

“Sweetheart, don’t,” David said, even as Sir Madoc pulled that handkerchief out of his pocket again and began mopping his

brow despite the chill in the air.

“What other explanation is there?” Carys asked, ignoring the crowd. “We haven’t had a ghost here in over fifty years. Now,

right before I get married, we’ve g-got cold spots and... and paintings flying off of walls, and bloody chandeliers crashing

down out of nowhere?” She shook her head, emeralds in her ears winking. “It’s Declan, Da, I know it is.”

“Your first fiancé? Well, even if it is, he’s dead, my darling,” David replied, his jaw a little tight even as he tried to

smile down at Carys.

Tamsyn didn’t like it, that little tic in the muscle of his jaw, the way his fingers were curling around Carys’s arm, and Bowen must not have, either, because the hand still holding Tamsyn’s clenched a little harder, and when she looked over at him, there was practically a storm cloud gathering over his head.

“Not loving David’s energy,” Tamsyn whispered to him, and Bowen made a sound nearly like a growl in reply before muttering

something in Welsh.

Tamsyn didn’t speak the language, but she did speak Bowen, and there was no doubt that whatever he had just called David was the kind of insult men used to fight duels

over.

Lips still trembling, Carys wrapped her shawl back around herself, covering up YSeren, and Sir Madoc gave her another one

of those awkward pats before turning to the crowd and saying, “Apologies all, apologies, but a bit of drama always livens

up a wedding, yes? Why don’t we head on in to supper now, I’m sure we could all use some good food and some even better wine,

yes, yes, just the thing, fix us all right up, come along, Carys, fy ngeneth i .”

“What did he just call her?” Tamsyn asked Bowen as the group began picking its way around the shattered glass on the floor

and heading toward the formal dining room.

“My girl,” Bowen replied, and Tamsyn had to work very hard to remind herself that he was just translating something an old

man had said to his daughter, so there was exactly zero reason for her to be so turned on by those two words in Bowen’s deep voice and lilting accent.

Zero. None.

And yet.

Ohhhh, and yet.

The group moved down another dimly lit hallway to a set of double doors opened to reveal a massive dining room. Huge portraits

of glowering aristocrats covered the walls, and a row of candelabras marched down a long table, the candlelight playing on

the pewter and china place settings. White and red flowers in tall vases filled the room with a smell that reminded Tamsyn

unpleasantly of funerals, and as they all began to take their seats, she was glad to see there were no place cards beside

the plates. That meant she wouldn’t be stuck making small talk with Baron Already Way Too Drunk or Lord Looks Like He Has

Wandering Hands. She could sit next to Bowen instead, and sitting next to him at a candlelit table while a winter storm raged

outside made the thought of a ghostly spirit drifting around somewhere upstairs... Okay, look, even a hot man and a cozy

setting straight out of a good Gothic novel couldn’t make her feel better about the ghost, but it didn’t hurt .

As a footman in slightly threadbare livery began pouring rich red wine into their glasses, Tamsyn leaned in closer to Bowen

and whispered, “So do you think Carys is right? Is the ghost this dead fiancé of hers?”

She’d expected Bowen to do his normal grunting thing, but when she looked up at him, a muscle was flexing in his jaw and his

fingers were curled tightly around the stem of his glass. “No,” he said, his voice so tight she thought that bow tie of his

might be strangling him.

Surprised, Tamsyn sat back, blinking. “How can you be so sure about that?” she asked, but before he could respond, the woman to her right said, “You’re supposed to be talking to me, dear.”

Tamsyn turned from Bowen to see a wizened old lady absolutely creaking under the weight of all the jewels she was wearing

and frowning at her through a tiny pair of spectacles held just in front of her eyes.

“Oh,” Tamsyn replied, startled. “Do we... do we know each other?”

“Every other guest is meant to speak to the person to their right first. After enough time has passed, our host will turn

the table, and then you may speak to the man at your left.”

The woman peered harder through her glasses, holding them closer to her face as she studied Bowen, who was currently glaring

at a tureen of soup.

“I must say, though, I don’t blame you for wanting to talk to a specimen like that over an old bat like me.”

The woman gave a sharp laugh, causing several of the other diners to look over.

“Oh, eat your soup,” the woman said with a wave of a jeweled hand. When everyone turned back to their meals, the woman once

again leaned in close to Tamsyn and whispered, “They’re all terrified of me. That’s the one benefit to being old. Well, old

and rich enough to buy and sell them all a thousand times over.”

She gave another one of those cackles, and from his place at the head of the table, Sir Madoc called out, “Mother, you know

how sound carries in this room.”

“I do!” she cheerfully called back. “That’s how I once caught your father shagging one of the maids in here back in... oh, ’63 was it? Undoubtedly why his heart went out just a few years later. Well, that and my poisons.”

She laughed again, and Sir Madoc went a red that was nearly purple, while Carys gave a faint “Granny, please.”

The old woman only shrugged and then said to Tamsyn, “The part about the poisons was in jest, my dear, don’t be alarmed.”

Tamsyn had been giving her wineglass a closer look, but now she just smiled and said, “Good to know, Lady... I’m sorry, I’m not sure

how to address you.”

“Oh, it’s a beastly name,” the woman said, waving one hand as she took up her soupspoon with the other. “I was born Lady Angharad

Carys Catrin Carew, then when I married Madoc’s useless father, I became Lady Meredith, but now that I myself am a useless

widow, I am the Dowager Lady Meredith, or sometimes Angharad, Lady Meredith. It’s all a bit of a mouthful, really, so I usually

ask people to call me Annie.” She turned to Tamsyn with a bright smile. “You’re welcome to. For one, you’re American, so best

to keep this all simple, and for another, it will greatly upset my son to hear guests calling me ‘Annie’ all weekend, and

that brings its own degree of joy, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

Well, there was no doubt where Sir Madoc got the talking gene from, but Tamsyn found she liked Annie here a lot more.

Plus—and to be fair, this did make Tamsyn feel like kind of an asshole—she might have valuable information about YSeren.

“It’s a lovely place, Tywyll House,” Tamsyn said before taking her first sip of soup. It was cool and tasted like it had possibly been prepared next to a cucumber by a chef who had once heard of salt, but she made herself swallow anyway.

“Oh, it’s ghastly,” Annie said, still cheerful. “Whole west wing is crumbling to dust, there are bats in the turret, and just

last week, our gardener dug up two skeletons in my rosebushes. I’d always said there was something wrong with that patch of

earth, but no one bothered to listen.”

The flavorless soup somehow went even more bland in Tamsyn’s mouth before she managed to ask, “And do you think... do you

think that might be why there’s... well, the chandelier and the noises and all that?”

“The ghost?” Annie asked, then shook her head, teardrop diamonds in her ears swinging like pendulums. “Oh, no, I think our

Carys has the right of that. It’s that dead fiancé of hers, Declan McKenzie. Tywyll has had all kinds of ghosts over the years.

I cannot tell you how many times I had to tell our Headless Lady to either put her ridiculous head back onto her ridiculous body or accept

that never the twain shall meet again, because roaming around while holding it out in front of her like a plum pudding was

a bit silly. That seemed to do the trick, and we didn’t see her again. Now the Blue Boy, he was a little nicer, but we all

could’ve done without the nasty vomiting business. How can one even vomit when one is noncorporeal?”

She shook her head, while Tamsyn accepted that she was never going to eat another bite of this soup. Pushing her bowl away,

she asked Annie, “But this one seems different?”

“Hmm,” Annie agreed. “Very different. All this moaning and knocking things over, very unlike the others. Ruder, if you ask me. And that fiancé of hers was Scottish, so.”

She gave Tamsyn a significant look, but since Tamsyn had no idea what being Scottish had to do with any of this, she just

smiled and nodded before asking, “And he died... recently?”

“A while back. Some sort of accident at school. All very mysterious, all very hush-hush. But she moved on, found David, who

is very nice if slightly... Well, he’s very nice. Human, unfortunately, but then so are you, aren’t you, my dear?” When

Tamsyn didn’t reply right away, Annie reached over and patted her hand. “Oh, don’t be alarmed, this group is a mix of witches

and humans, although I think we outnumber you quite a bit. Who invited you?”

Tamsyn had had her whole plan of calling herself a friend of Carys’s mother, Amelia, but thanks to Bowen’s little display

in the library, she now had an even better and more plausible excuse. “I’m here as Bowen Penhallow’s guest,” she said, turning

slightly so that she could rest her hand on Bowen’s arm.

He turned to her, flashing her a tight smile before leaning across her to say, “Nice to see you again, Lady Meredith.”

“Bowen Penhallow. Didn’t I catch you trying to use magic to steal apples from our orchard here at Tywyll one summer?”

This time, Bowen’s smile was genuine, and Tamsyn was struck yet again by just how much younger that expression made him look,

how warm his brown eyes looked in the candlelight. “That was actually my brother Rhys. He’s still terrified of you.”

Annie gave a pleased huff. “Excellent. Too handsome for his own good, that one. Although that appears to run in the family. If you’d shave that pelt from your face, I believe you’d give him a run for his money.”

To Tamsyn’s surprise—and utter delight—she could see Bowen going a little pink at those words.

Bowen Penhallow blushing. Wonders truly never ceased.

A clinking sound caught their attention, and Tamsyn glanced back up at the head of the table where Sir Madoc stood, crystal

glass and butter knife in hand. His tufts of white hair seemed even... tuftier, and his face was still red, bald head shining

with sweat. Still, he smiled down the table at everyone gathered there and boomed out, “Get thee a wife! So said the Bard

himself, and who should we mere mortals be to quibble, eh?”

“Is the Bard a guy down at the local pub?” Tamsyn asked Bowen in a low whisper, and was gratified to see the way his lips

quirked up just the littlest bit.

“Don’t play the Dumb American, Tamsyn, doesn’t suit you.”

“Because I’m such a smart-ass?”

He looked back over his shoulder at her, their eyes holding just long enough for everything in Tamsyn’s body to slow down

and heat up all at once. “Because you’re brilliant. Too clever for your own good.”

Bowen’s eyes flicked down, his gaze on her mouth, and Tamsyn felt that look like a touch.

Like a kiss.

“Too clever for my own good, too,” he muttered, and then he turned away again, leaving Tamsyn damn near breathless as Sir Madoc continued speechifying about the marriage of true minds, and love’s endless bounty, and all kinds of words that were beautiful and important and legendary, and all Tamsyn could think about was how there weren’t any words to capture how she felt when Bowen Penhallow called her brilliant .

“And so a toast!” Sir Madoc called out, raising his glass higher before noticing that it was empty. With a muttered curse,

he gestured at a footman with his free hand, and the man—boy, really—rushed forward with a bottle of champagne, topping him

off.

“A toast!” Sir Madoc repeated, and the rest of them stood as well, everyone except Carys and David. “To my future son-in-law,

David, a gentleman of... of... great... temperament. And... and manly attributes.”

Clearing his throat, Sir Madoc turned to his other side. “And to my beautiful daughter, Carys,” he said, and now his expression

softened. For whatever Sir Madoc’s faults, it was clear he loved his daughter, and that made Tamsyn like him just the littlest

bit more. “The light of this family’s life. Our most precious jewel.”

Maybe everyone else missed the way Carys’s fingers strayed to YSeren, still pinned to her dress, but Tamsyn didn’t. Carys

was pale, and her plates had all been taken away untouched. In the candlelight, the violet shadows under her eyes were even

more apparent, and when she raised her own glass, her hand was trembling.

“To Papa,” she said, and then she turned slightly, her glass now lifted toward David, who was smiling, but Tamsyn could see that his knuckles were white where they clutched the stem of his glass.

“And to David, the man I’ll marry in just two short days,” she added.

Not “To David, the man I love,” Tamsyn thought. That wasn’t a toast, that was just stating a fact. She might as well lift a glass herself and say, To Bowen! A man with a lot of facial hair that I’ve had a not unconcerning amount of dirty dreams about.

Still, Tamsyn lifted her glass like everyone else with a murmured “To David.”

Maybe it was because she was still looking at YSeren, or maybe it was because Tamsyn had just discovered a real soft spot

for this girl who was so beautiful, so rich, and so obviously miserable that her eyes stayed on Carys, but Tamsyn was the

first one to notice the way the bride’s lower lip started trembling, how the champagne sloshed over the side of the glass

as she raised it even higher and said, “And to Declan.”

A low murmur started at the far end of the table, and David set his own glass down hard enough to make Tamsyn wince.

“If the world were a just place, he would be here tonight,” Carys went on in a high but unwavering voice. “And he would be

standing across from me at the altar in two days,” she added, and now there weren’t just murmurs but straight-up gasps.

“Carys!” Sir Madoc barked, but his daughter was already out of her seat, fast enough that the chair itself clattered to the

parquet floor, and with a choked sob, Carys rushed from the room.