A Caress of Twilight (Merry Gentry #2)(11)

I drew back from Frost, shaking my head.
"What's wrong, Meredith?" he asked. He grabbed my hand as I moved it away from his face. He held my hand in his, pressing it, almost painfully, as if he'd seen some of my thoughts on my face.
If I couldn't talk about love in front of the others, I certainly couldn't talk about the price of being a princess in front of them. I had to get pregnant. I had to be the next queen of the Unseelie Court, or we were all dead.
"Princess," Doyle said softly. I looked past Frost's shoulder to meet Doyle's dark eyes. And something in those eyes said that he, at least, had followed my thinking. Which meant he'd also realized how I felt about Frost. I didn't like that it was so apparent to others. Love, like pain, should be private until you want to share it.
"Yes, Doyle," I said, and my voice sounded hoarse, like I needed to clear my throat.
"Wards of such power prevent another fey from seeing all the magic inside a place. Frost scouted it as best he could, but the strength of the wards means we do not know what mystical surprises might await us inside the walls of Ms. Reed's estate." He talked of normal things, but his voice still held that edge of softness. In anyone else I would have said it was pity.
"Are you saying we shouldn't go in?" I asked. I drew my hand back from Frost's grip.
"No, I agree that I find her desire to meet with you, with all of us, intriguing."
The van pulled to a stop outside a tall gate. Rhys turned in the seat as much as his seat belt would allow. "I vote we go home. If King Taranis finds out we've talked to her, he'll be pissed. What could we possible learn that would be worth the risk?"
"Her banishment was a great mystery when it happened," Doyle said."Yes," Frost said. He slid back in his seat, eyes distant, as if he was shutting himself away from me. I'd pulled away, and Frost didn't react well to that. "The rumor was that she would be the Seelie's next Queen, then suddenly she was exiled."
He moved his leg away from mine, putting physical distance between us. I watched his face grow cold and hard and arrogant, the old mask he'd worn in the court for all those years, and I couldn't bear it. I took his hand in mine. He frowned at me, clearly puzzled. I raised his knuckles to my lips and kissed them, one by one, until his breath caught in his throat. For the second time today I had tears in my eyes. I kept my eyes very wide and very still, and managed not to cry.
Frost was smiling again, visibly relieved. I was glad he was happy. You should always want the people you love to be happy. Rhys just looked at us, his face neutral. He'd had his turn last night, tonight was Frost's turn, and Rhys had no problem with that.
Doyle caught my gaze, and his face was not neutral, but worried. Kitto stared up from the floorboard, and there was nothing I could understand on his face. For all that he looked so sidhe, he was other, and there were times when I had no idea what he was thinking or feeling. Frost held my hand and was happy with that. Happy that I hadn't turned away. Of all of them, only Doyle seemed to understand exactly what I was feeling and thinking.
"What does it matter why she was exiled?" Rhys said.
"Perhaps it doesn't matter," Doyle said, "or perhaps it matters very much. We won't know until we ask."
I blinked at him. "Ask, ask outright, without an invitation to ask something so personal?"
He nodded. "You are sidhe, but you are also part human. You can ask where we cannot, Meredith."
"I have better manners than to ask such a personal question right out of the bag," I said.
"We know you have better manners than that, but Maeve Reed does not."
I stared at him. Frost's fingers rubbed along my knuckles, over and over. "Are you saying I should pretend to not know any better?"
"I am saying we should use all the weapons in our arsenal. Your mixed heritage could be a decided advantage today."
"It would be almost the same thing as lying, Doyle," I said.
"Almost," he agreed, then that small smile of his curled his lips. "The sidhe never lie, Meredith, but shading the truth is a long-honored pastime among us."
"I'm very well aware of that," I said. My voice held enough sarcasm to fill the van.
His smile flashed suddenly white in the darkness of his face. "As are we all, Princess, as are we all."
"I don't think it's worth the risk," Rhys said. 
I shook my head. "We had this conversation once, Rhys, I do think it's worth the risk." I looked up at Frost. "How about you?"
He turned to Doyle. "What do you think? I would not risk Meredith's safety for anything, but we are badly in need of allies, and a sidhe that has been exiled from faerie for a century might be willing to risk much to come back."
"You're suggesting that Maeve wants to help Meredith to be queen," Doyle made it half question, half statement.
"If Meredith is queen, then she could offer Maeve a return to faerie. I do not think that Taranis would risk all-out war for one returned exile."
"You really think a royal of the Seelie Court would be willing to come to the Unseelie Court?" I asked.
Frost looked down at me. "Whatever prejudices Maeve Reed might once have had against the Unseelie, she has been without the touch of fey hands for a century." He raised my hand to his mouth, kissed my fingertips, blowing his breath along each of them before he touched me. It brought shivers up and down my skin. He spoke with his mouth just above my skin. "I know what it is to want the touch of another sidhe and be denied. I at least had the court and the rest of faerie to comfort me. I cannot imagine her loneliness all these years." The last was said in a whisper. His eyes had gone solid rain-cloud grey.
It took effort, but I drew my attention away from Frost to look at Doyle. "Do you think he's right? Do you think she's looking for a way back into faerie?"
He shrugged, making the leather of his jacket creak with the movement. "Who can say, but I know that after a century of isolation, I certainly would be."
I nodded. "All right then, we're agreed. We go in."
"We are not agreed," Rhys said. "I'm going in under protest."
"Fine, protest all you want, but you're outvoted."
"If something really awful happens to us in there, I get to say I told you so."
I nodded. "If we're alive long enough for you to say it, knock yourself out."
"Sweet Goddess, if we die that quickly, I'll just have to come back and haunt you."
"If there's anything in there that can kill you, Rhys, I'll have died long before you."
He frowned at me; even through the beard I could see it. "That isn't comforting, Merry, that isn't comforting at all." But he turned around to face the big gates and leaned out his open window to press the intercom and announce our presence. Though I was betting that she knew we were there. She'd had forty years to bespell this land. Conchenn, goddess of beauty and charisma, knew we were here.
Chapter 7
Ethan Kane wasn't as tall as he seemed. He actually was about Rhys's height, but always seemed bigger, as if he took up more room in some way that had nothing to do with physical size. His short hair was a dark brunette, almost but not quite black. He wore glasses with no frames, so they were almost invisible on his face. Ethan should have been handsome. He was broad shouldered, athletically built, square jawed, with a deep dimple in his chin. The eyes behind the glasses were long-lashed and hazel. His clothes were tailored to his body so he'd fit in with the stars he usually ran with. He had everything going for him but personality. He always seemed to be disapproving of something; a perpetual sour expression stole all his charm.
He stood with one hand gripping the other wrist, feet wide apart, balanced. He frowned down at us from just outside Maeve Reed's large double doors. We were all standing at the foot of the marble steps that led up to those doors. Ethan's men were ranged among the graceful sweep of white pillars that supported the roof of Maeve Reed's narrow porch. It was huge and imposing, but there was no room to put out chairs and have iced tea on hot summer nights. It was a porch for looking at, not for enjoying.Four men, obviously hired muscle, ranged on the steps between us and Ethan, and the door. I recognized one of them. Max Corbin was nearing fifty. He'd been a bodyguard in Hollywood most of his adult life. He was an inch shy of six feet and built like a box, all angles, squares, including huge knuckled hands. His grey hair was cut in a long butch cut, which made it look stylish and cutting edge, but Max had had the same haircut for forty years. His nose had been badly broken enough times that it was crooked and just a little squashed. He probably could have traded his designer suit for a nose job and fixed it, but Max thought it made him look tough. It did.
"Hi, Max," I said.
He nodded at me. "Ms. Gentry, or should I say, Princess Meredith?"
"Ms. Gentry is just fine."
He smiled, a quick flash of humor, before Ethan's voice cut across us both, and Max's face went back to blank bodyguard stare. That stare says we see nothing and will remember nothing, and we see everything and will react at the blink of an eye. Your secrets are safe with us, and so is your body. Bodyguards do not work in Hollywood if they get a reputation for tattling to the press, or anyone else.
"What are you doing here, Meredith?"
Ethan and I didn't know each other well enough to use first names, but that was okay, because I was going to do the same to him. "We're here at Ms. Reed's invitation, Ethan. Why are you here?"