Crown of Shadows - C. S. Friedman [16]
She drew in a deep breath; he could sense her struggling to compose herself. “It isn’t you,” she said at last. “It’s just... I thought you were someone else. Someone I didn’t expect here. I’m sorry.” She shook her head slightly; the black hair rippled about her neck. “I shouldn’t have reacted like that.” She smiled then, and her expression softened. “Can I help you with something?”
He fumbled in his pocket for the papers he had brought, and somehow he managed to tear his eyes away from her long enough to make sure they were the right ones. “I need some custom work done. Here.” He handed her the drawings, a well-worn package. “It’s all there.”
She led him to one of the velvet-clad tables and pulled up a chair before it; he sat opposite, and watched her as she studied the drawings. God, but she was beautiful! In another time and place he would already have been making a play for her, if only for the sheer pleasure of the hunt. But in this time and place he felt strangely helpless, and he sat there quietly as she studied the drawings, watching as her slender fingers smoothed the papers flat for better perusal.
“A coronet,” she mused.
Something tightened in his throat. “Family heirloom,” he managed. “It was... lost.”
Lost in a pool of blood, shattered by sorcery. Shards of metal swimming in the red that dripped down chair legs, over tiles—
“Hey. Are you all right?” Her hand reached toward him.
He shivered as the vision receded. “Yeah,” he managed. “Just a little faint.” He forced himself to put his hands on the table, so that he might look a little more natural. “I wasn’t feeling well this morning.” There was an understatement! “I thought it had passed.” He managed an awkward grin. “Guess not.”
“Can I get you something?” When he hesitated, she suggested, “A glass of water?”
“No, I ...” He drew in a slow breath, tried to think clearly. “Yes. Please. That would be wonderful.”
Water. It meant a moment when she wouldn’t be watching him, a moment when he could struggle to pull himself together. Those visions... he should have taken something before he left his room, he knew that now. A few grains of tranquilizer to ease the painful interview along. How in God’s name was he going to get through this?
You have to, he told himself. Calesta says this has to be done, therefore you will do it. Period.
“Here,” she said, as she set down a small glass before him. Her voice was gentle, soothing; he could listen to it for hours. “I wish we had more to offer.”
“This is fine.” The water was cool and refreshing, and the glass gave him something to do with his hands. “Thank you.”
When she was satisfied that he was going to be all right, she returned to her seat opposite him. He noticed that her hair had one narrow streak of white in it, falling from a spot just above her left temple. A natural discoloration, or faddish vanity? For some reason he hoped it was the former. She seemed a wholly natural creature, more like the timid nudeer that wandered free on his estate than the painted beauties he usually dated. Though such women had never appealed to him before, this one had him totally captivated.
She was paging through the pile of sketches, studying each one in turn. One meticulous rendering of a’ county coronet. Ten pages of details, in perfect scale. Other drawings, other items. She shook her head in amazement as she went through them. “You did a beautiful job on these.”
“I traced the artist’s originals.” When she looked up at him in curiosity, he added, “My ancestor saved everything.”
How bizarre this conversation was, he thought. How utterly bizarre to be discussing the archival habits of Gerald Tarrant in this cool and offhand manner, as if men hadn’t wept and suffered and died for that very coronet.
“In sterling?” she asked.
“If that was the original metal.”
She nodded. “Silver was customary up