After giving us a final, contemptuous look, Baldwin stalked from the room. Verin stole an apologetic glance at Gallowglass and trailed after him.
“So . . . that went well,” Gallowglass muttered “Are you all right, Auntie? You’ve gone a bit shiny.”
“The witchwind blew my disguising spell out of place.” I tried to tug it around me again.
“Given what happened here this morning, I think you’d better keep it on while Baldwin is at home,” Gallowglass suggested.
“Baldwin cannot know of Diana’s power. I’d appreciate your help with that, Gallowglass.
Fernando’s, too.” Matthew didn’t specify what form this assistance would take.
“Of course. I’ve been watching over Auntie her whole life,” Gallowglass said, matter-of-fact. “I’ll not be stopping now.”
At these words parts of my past that I had never understood slid into place like jagged puzzle pieces. As a child I’d often felt other creatures watching me, their eyes nudging and tingling and freezing my skin. One had been Peter Knox, my father’s enemy and the same witch who had come to Sept-Tours looking for Matthew and me only to kill Em. Could another have been this giant bear of a man, whom I now loved like a brother but had not even met until we traveled back to the sixteenth century?
“You were watching me?” My eyes filled, and I blinked back the tears.
“I promised Granddad I’d keep you safe. For Matthew’s sake.” Gallowglass’s blue eyes softened.
“And it’s a good thing, too. You were a right hellion: climbing trees, running after bicycles in the street, and heading into the forest without a hint as to where you were going. How your parents managed is beyond me.”
“Did Daddy know?” I had to ask. My father had met the big Gael in Elizabethan London, when he’d unexpectedly run into Matthew and me on one of his regular timewalks. Even in modern-day Massachusetts, my father would have recognized Gallowglass on sight. The man was unmistakable. “I did my best not to show myself.”
“That’s not what I asked, Gallowglass.” I was getting better at ferreting out a vampire’s half-truths.
“Did my father know you were watching over me?”
“I made sure Stephen saw me just before he and your mother left for Africa that last time,”
Gallowglass confessed, his voice little more than a whisper. “I thought it might help him to know, when the end came, that I was nearby. You were still such a wee thing. Stephen must have been beside himself with worry thinking about how long it would be before you were with Matthew.”
Unbeknownst to Matthew or me, the Bishops and the de Clermonts had been working for years, even centuries, to bring us safely together: Philippe, Gallowglass, my father, Emily, my mother.
“Thank you, Gallowglass,” Matthew said hoarsely. Like me, he was surprised by the morning’s revelations.
“No need, Uncle. I did it gladly.” Gallowglass cleared the emotion from his throat and departed.
An awkward silence fell.
“Christ.” Matthew raked his fingers through his hair. It was the usual sign he’d been driven to the end of his patience.
“What are we going to do?” I said, still trying to regain my equilibrium after Baldwin’s sudden appearance.
A gentle cough announced a new presence in the room and kept Matthew from responding.
“I am sorry to interrupt, milord.” Alain Le Merle, Philippe de Clermont’s onetime squire, stood in the doorway to the library. He was holding an ancient coffer with the initials P.C. picked out on the top in silver studs and a small ledger bound in green buckram. His salt-and-pepper hair and kind expression were the same as when I’d first met him in 1590. Like Matthew and Gallowglass, he was a fixed star in my universe of change.