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They’ll want a chance to order their older brother around.”
I am. Evermore.
“Marcus MacNeil.” Marcus blurted out the name.
A wise son maketh a glad father, but a foolish son is a heaviness to his mother.
Since she had become a vampire, her memories were weirdly addled and unusually sharp.
giving me a rare, unguarded smile that came straight from the heart. He took my hand in his and pressed a kiss on the knuckles.
“Rules may teach you to be blindly obedient, but they’re no real protection against the world,” Marcus continued. “Because one day you will knock so hard against a rule you’ll break it—and you’ll have nothing standing between yourself and disaster then. I found that out when I ran away from Hadley to join the first fighting in Boston in 1775.”
I found a letter from Gallowglass.”
We didn’t often talk about the big Gael who had disappeared more than a year ago. I missed his easy charm and wicked sense of humor, but understood why watching Matthew and me raise our children and settle into our life as a family might be difficult. Gallowglass had known his feelings for me were unrequited, but until Matthew and I had returned to the present where we belonged, he had remained devoted to the job Philippe had given him, namely to ensure my safety.
Gallowglass to Philippe de Clermont
“Short-sighted mortals see not the numerous links of small and great events, which form the chain on which the fate of kings and nations is suspended,”
Davy Hancock,
I have returned to Cambridge on your other business.
Marcus felt Mrs. Buckland’s eyes on him as she studied his thin arms, the piece of rope that cinched his breeches to his narrow waist, the hole in the toe of his left shoe, the patches on his blue-and-white-checked shirt made from coarse cloth his sister Patience had woven from the flax grown on their farm.
By the time Marcus reached Cambridge, Harvard Yard was buzzing like a hornet’s nest.
“One of these days, Marcus MacNeil, you’re going to find someone whose authority you can’t wriggle out from under,” Pomeroy promised, “but today isn’t the day. You’re the best shot in Hampshire County and I need every gun I can get.”
and his bowels turned to water.
Lol Marcus can join my sweet babies over in SJM land <3
A stout woman, fiery headed with a pipe clenched between her teeth, appeared out of the smoky twilight, barring their way. “Mistress Bishop?” Jimmy said weakly, blinking up at her. “Is that you, ma’am?” “Who else?” Mistress Bishop replied tartly. “What fool let you come up here and get yourself shot? You’re not even fifteen.”
What if one breaks? Do vampire teeth regenerate?
Phoebe’s fingers still moved, repeatedly and rhythmically, through the cat’s fur, hoping for some further signs of yielding, of friendship. Of permission.
It was then that Phoebe knew that she and the cat would not be parted. Not by death. Not by another vampire. They belonged together.
“Another copy of the Physiologus, this one from the tenth century, to go with the six other copies I’ve found. How many of these did Philippe need?”
I looked down, searching for what had made the noise. A tiny silver arrowhead lay at Philip’s feet, its edges sharp. Once airborne, the griffin hovered by Philip’s head, attentive to his master’s next command. “Pollo?” Sarah frowned. “Doesn’t that mean chicken?” “Apollo.” Matthew looked at me in alarm. “The goddess Diana’s twin.”
A luminous green-and-gold smudge by the fireplace took shape and morphed into my dead father-in-law. “Gamper!” Becca said, showing him a horse. Philippe smiled at his granddaughter and waggled his fingers. Then his expression turned serious.
“Folks are always in favor of fairness, until they have to give up something they have to someone else.”
Marcus fired.
IT TOOK ZEB AND JOSHUA until the early hours of the morning to convince Marcus that he had to leave Hadley.
“Keep your head down and your wits about you, Galen Chauncey. And don’t look back.”
It was Françoise—and she was laughing.
“Mommy!” Philip hurled himself at my legs. Apollo joined in the embrace, wrapping his wings around us both, cooing with delight.
Marcus looked shy. Then he smiled. In the years I’d known him, I’d never seen such unalloyed joy on his face.
Joshua and Zeb were truer fathers to me than Obadiah. So was Tom.”
“But there were still so many rules, and so much death. And precious little freedom,” he continued, before falling silent. “Then what happened?” I prompted. “Then I met Matthew,” Marcus said simply.
For the first time since leaving Joshua and Zeb in Hadley, Marcus felt that he belonged.
“Watery bowels, like the itch, are fixtures of army life.
“You are like one of the Big Man’s dogs, always watching and listening. But these are good traits in a doctor, so we let you do it.”
“Take him to Trenton, of course, and see if we can make him a doctor in truth as well as in name,” Dr. Otto replied.
Instead, he saw something that made his hackles rise. A tall man in the deerskin hunting shirt and leggings of a Virginia rifleman was stalking silently through the beds.
Marcus had never crossed the threshold of such a grand house, but he liked to imagine what it would look like:
One day, Marcus promised himself. One day I will have such a house.
preternatural
Every fantasy writers fav word
Marcus bolted for the door but was barred from leaving the farmhouse by a stranger who cast a long shadow in the hall.
Is this my OG shadow daddy?
“I am the chevalier de Clermont—and
SD!!!
Matthew.”
Pierre.”
One of the aides was staring at de Clermont with open admiration.
“She was not a member of the congregation,
THE Congregation?
It had bothered him in Hadley, too, and in the army, that men could espouse the ideals of liberty and equality in Common Sense and yet still treat Zeb Pruitt or Mrs. Dolly like they were lesser beings.
If he ever married, and his wife asked him his true name, which one would he share with her?
“Stay with Dr. Otto and the army, Doc,” de Clermont advised. “They’re family enough.” For now, Marcus thought. For now.
