A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [39]
“I’m grateful to you. I needed a respite, a repose from the worries of my day to day existence. I’m only sorry it took so many years for me to come to you.”
Another wave dismissed my qualms. “Never mind. You’re here now. That is all that is important to me. A drink? To warm you, take the chill from you?”
I nodded, the smile tracing over my face at the idea of a brandy or sherry after the arduous trip. He opened the decanter and with deft and skilled hands tipped it over the snifters, first mine, then his, and corked and settled the heavy glass container down. I took the drink he held out to me and he circled his below his nostrils, inhaling softly.
With another grin, he held the glass aloft in my direction. “To you! May better times lie ahead!”
“Hear, hear!” I said, and nodded and raised my glass to him. A tinkle of glass as they touched, then I took a long, warming sip of the amber fluid. I felt the sweet sherry run down my gullet and the warmth it provided spread through me. I closed my eyes and hummed in deep appreciation of the goodness.
“You must be hungry from your trip,” he said after a deep sip from his wine. “Dinner will be soon. Or would you rather take your rest instead?”
I sat, torn between the offers. Exhaustion weighted my eyelids, tugged on my chin. But hunger gnawed at my insides, and no food had passed my lips since my carriage left the Inn early that morn. I turned to my friend and smiled.
“Dinner would be lovely,” I whispered. “I shall retire shortly after, I think.”
His grin broadened again, and he gave a sympathetic nod. “I suspect you’ll sleep as the dead this night.”
I nodded, the alcohol already slowing my motions. “Indeed. I look forward to seeing the rest of your estate in the daylight. It’s magnificent.”
“A cottage, really. I’ve been quite successful in recent years. This house … it’s a place for me to escape the labor of building wealth.”
“Then you’ve made your own fortune? You’ve received nothing from the wealth of your family?”
He snorted a laugh. “No, no … my family is far from wealthy. All I have is inherited, provided to me, but not by my parents. No, I found a benefactor. He cares for my material needs—and luxuries!—and I do work he is no longer able to. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
I nodded, mute and slack-jawed, the warmth of the fire and sherry, the penetrating tone of his voice, the dancing light in his eyes. There again came the strange, slithering sensation, like the movement of a snake beneath a blanket, a subtle shift beneath his face, his very being. He drained his snifter and set it beside him on the table, and rose.
“We should dine, then. You’ll need nourishment after so hard a trip, so difficult a time in life, to refortify, and keep your strength up. Come!” He gestured grand and magnanimous, and caught me up in his hospitality. I drifted beside him up the stairs, still cupping the snifter of sherry in my hand, with a silly smile branded on my lips. He spoke of childhood memories, and times we shared. His memories, sharp and focused even over the years apart, amused and enthralled me. To hear of things familiar, things rummaged from dusty chests and cobwebbed corners of memory’s attic, carried me away down summer lanes and meadows, flowers and fields, streams running through tall grasses and soft mossy banks.
I watched him, entranced, my eyes captive in his gaze. Even in the hall, grand with long runners of exquisite carpet and carved furnishings, walls hung with magnificent tapestries and majestic towering paintings, sconces and candles aglow, the light much less stabbing than the licking flames in the parlor—even here, his eyes burned with a mysterious glow, rimmed about the irises with a dancing fire of their own. I could not look away, could not rip my gaze from