A Gift With Whiskers

The cat's fur, for one thing, was long enough to drag along the floor, and its face was round and flattened, with a wrinkled nose pressed so close to the skin it might as well have been embedded there. Whatever one might say about beasts resembling their owners, the cat in the box, oddly enough, brought to mind the spiteful old woman from a children's picture book. A check behind it confirmed the animal was female, too.

Compared to Ruby, who hadn't managed a single moment of stillness in his cage, the cat's temperament was positively angelic. It simply sat in its box, blinking eyes like fresh sapphires, and watched Davion with patient curiosity.

Even when he stroked its head, it neither scratched nor bit. Had he dared to stick his hand inside Ruby's cage, his fingers would have been shorn off and sent rolling across the floor.

Aside from the cat, the box contained nothing else of note. Davion tilted it and gently lowered the cat onto the drawing room floor before asking, "So why the sudden gift of a cat?"

"Everyone loves cats. We were going to keep her ourselves at first, but it turned out my wife's allergic to the fur."

Julian replied with a shrug, checking his wristwatch. The truth was that he'd brought the creature out of worry for a friend living all alone now — but he could hardly blurt that out as it was.

Davion, meanwhile, was turning the now-empty box this way and that, examining it. It was a relief that he seemed to show at least some interest.

"There's no collar or anything? Am I supposed to let her roam free outside?"

"Let a descendant of royalty run loose outside? You might lose her."

"My father kept his dogs in the yard."

"Wow, you really don't care about animals at all, do you?"

He couldn't deny it. Cecilia had found the same thing rather disappointing. Feeling as though he'd been reduced to an ignorant fool in the space of a heartbeat, Davion held his tongue.

By then the cat was already exploring the drawing room, nose to the carpet. Julian clicked his tongue and offered a helpful explanation. "She's a house cat — she won't last long if you keep her outside. She could get into fights with strays and hurt herself. How's a cat raised her whole life under a human hand supposed to beat toms who've been through the wars out there? Am I wrong?"

He raised his voice to ask. From behind the sofa, the cat answered with a meow, then padded back and curled herself up beside the box.

But when Davion merely waved both hands in the air and stood staring at the animal, Julian's feelings were finally hurt. He rose from the sofa with a complaint. "That's a pretty lukewarm reaction. Fine — if you don't like her, I'll take her back."

"No. Thank you."

Davion hastily cleared the box out of Julian's reach and smiled so his friend couldn't reclaim it. "My wife will love her."

With that, he gathered the cat clumsily into his arms to install her in Cecilia's bedroom and left the drawing room. Left alone in an instant, Julian narrowed his eyes and stared gravely at the door through which Davion had gone.

His wife?

A few seconds later, a familiar set of footsteps approached, and Liam appeared exactly where Davion had vanished. "Shall I pour you some coffee, Sir Redwick?"

A former lawyer, Liam neither saluted Julian nor addressed him by his rank of Major.

"Ah, I'll pass this time. Caffeine's been making my heart race lately, so I'm trying to cut back."

"Then I shall bring you some ice water."

"Thanks. Say — is something actually wrong with him? He seems to be missing a screw somewhere."

Liam chose to deflect the question with a smile. He had no way of explaining the delicate truth that Cecilia was alive, so it was an evasion born of necessity — but Julian, taking the smile as tacit agreement, only grew more grave.

He'd seemed perfectly fine last time. Then again, perhaps it was only natural, when the wife he'd treasured so desperately had gone and taken her own life. Keeping one's wits under such a blow would be difficult for anyone.

The last day Julian had seen Cecilia remained unusually vivid in his memory.

The charity gala last April, it had been. She'd been seated in a corner of the banquet hall, her face inexplicably furious, while Davion bent his door-of-a-frame body beside her, floundering helplessly.

Julian had suspected things were less than idyllic ever since their marriage — a union that had defied the gulf in rank. But confronted with the sight of them, the reality was more shocking than anything he'd imagined. Who could have guessed Davion would fall so far as to become that kind of besotted husband?

Should I be the one to take him to a sanatorium?

Blake wouldn't like it — a stain on her son's reputation — but in Julian's judgment, the Davion of today was unquestionably not well.

Julian was smoking a cigarette in the flower garden, where it tasted especially bitter, when Davion appeared beside him, rummaging in his breast pocket, entirely unaware of the worries churning through his friend's head.

"Hey, I've been wondering about something."

As Julian eased into the topic, Davion looked up at him, his lighter's flame still burning unattended.

There were deep shadows beneath Davion's eyes. Out in the open light, his pallor stood out all the more starkly, making him look for all the world like a living corpse.

Perhaps it was still too soon to broach questions about his wife's death. Fearing he might poke at his friend's rawest wound, Julian swerved the direction of his question at the last moment. "Do you ever keep in regular touch with your brother?"

"What?"

Davion gave a hollow laugh. Then, tucking the oil lighter back into his pocket, he answered. "Think about it. How would anyone keep in regular contact with a man in prison?"

"Hold on — what was your brother arrested for again?"

"Assault with a firearm. He shot the man in the genitals."

"Wow. The Rake of Thistledown, through and through."

As Julian whistled in admiration and shook his head, the space between Davion's eyes twisted savagely. Whenever conversation turned to Theodore, it seemed every nerve in him went taut, whatever the subject.

"Do you need connections inside the prison? If so, I can introduce you to someone."

"Ah, no, nothing like that. I heard a strange rumor recently and wanted to see whether anyone I know has ears inside. Criminals are always the first to hear what moves through the back alleys."

"A rumor?"

Julian glanced broadly around the quiet flower garden, then leaned in close to Davion and lowered his voice. "They say some woman has been going about near the border, rescuing kidnapped girls all on her own. And strangely enough, nobody knows her age, her name — not even what she looks like. The rescued children, every last one of them, refuse to breathe a word of information, as if they've been brainwashed. Quite a magical affair, isn't it?"

The furrow between Davion's brows deepened further at the tale.

A woman, kidnapping, and magic. Picking out only the most unsettling words to describe something was a talent in its own right.

Davion sighed. Come to think of it, the day to re-interrogate the man locked in his basement was not far off.

"No harm in a hero's tale now and then."

"I know. That's why I said — I only wanted to check whether you knew anyone. I didn't mean to burden you, so forget it."

Julian added the words with a pat on Davion's shoulder, a gesture of encouragement. "And I get that you and your brother don't see eye to eye, but still — keep in touch with him. With both your parents gone, the only people you can lean on if something happens are your wife and your family."

"My mother will live a long time yet. She took plenty of abuse from the servants who used to work here — my wife included."

"What? You're joking."

But unlike Julian, who laughed cheerfully, Davion only exhaled gray smoke through a face carved from plaster.

"And there's one thing you've got wrong. My brother and I are more alike in our tastes and our temperaments than you think."

When Davion lifted his head, his gaze caught on a flock of birds flying in formation, following the direction of the clouds. But his black eyes had already left this place, boring relentlessly into the brother locked away in prison.

"So alike that it became the problem."

Cecilia went to work without having slept a wink.

For all his shouting that she shouldn't worry, Ruby hadn't come back until morning. Which meant, naturally, she had no idea how things stood with Davion either.

Just in case, she'd bought the same daily paper early that morning, but there was no follow-up article.

Ruby was a bird capable of tormenting others, certainly, but he was never one of a size to be tormented himself. Could he possibly have gotten lost on the way home? She knew there was no chance of it — but if he wasn't lost, then there was no way to explain why Ruby had vanished so suddenly.

Or did he run away from home on his own?

After living in a vast mansion, to find himself out on the street overnight — the grievances might well have piled up. Unlike Nagi, Ruby was a romantic, a free spirit of a bird, after all.

And if he never comes back like this... how am I supposed to explain it to Nagi?