Gwen stared at them both, openmouthed with surprise. “You know about her?”
The two women exchanged glances . . .
“Yes, I remember that. But what I want to know is why you are both looking so guilty now
The first mother made a gesture that could only be described as wringing her hands. Their faces expressing their distress, the second mother blurted out, “It’s all our fault that she’s chasing you, Gwen. We weren’t going to tell you because you were safe here in Anwyn, but if you say she’s here now . . .”
“It’s not your fault in the least,” Gregory told them. “If anything, the blame lies with me, since I am the one who made sure that Gwen didn’t stay dead.”
The mothers gawked at him. “You mean she was telling the truth when she said that she died and came back to life?”
Quickly, Gregory explained the pertinent events.
“Honestly!” Gwen slapped her hands on her thighs. “What is the world coming to when your own mothers don’t believe you when you tell them you’ve died and been mysteriously resurrected!”
“The issue of the loss of time is why Death’s minion is after Gwen,” Gregory added when the two women looked doubtful.
“Er . . .” Once again the two mothers exchanged a telling look.
“Er what?” Gwen stopped looking annoyed and switched back to looking suspicious. “What aren’t you telling us? Does it have something to do with the reclamation woman?”
“We might as well tell them,” the second one told the first. “It’s better if they know, Mags.”
“Yes, but . . .” The first mother fretted with the apron she wore, giving Gwen a doubtful look. “Gwenny will be so . . .”
“Angry? Annoyed? Irritated? Because I’m quickly getting to all three,” Gwen told them sternly. “Spill.”
“The woman may say she’s coming after you because of dear Gregory stealing the time to save your life— and really, that was terribly sweet of you, and Alice and I will always be grateful to you for it, because we just couldn’t be without our darling girl—but it’s not exactly the truth.”
“What is the truth?” Gwen asked, taking his hand. He twined his fingers through hers, a sudden sense of contentment stealing over him. Whatever the problem was, he told himself, he and Gwen would handle it together.
“Well . . .”
“No.” Gwen shook a finger on her free hand at them. “No more of those pregnant looks you’re giving each other. Just tell us how bad it is so we can set about fixing the situation.”
He was even more pleased that Gwen now included him in the mop-up duties of whatever mess her mothers had created.
“I love you more now than I did five minutes ago, and that’s saying a lot,” he told her.
She squeezed his hand. “No distractions from the peanut gallery. Mom? Tell us.”
Her mother took a deep breath, and said so quickly that the words tumbled over each other, “Death is annoyed with us because about three hundred years ago we sold him a love charm that . . . er . . . went awry.”
“Instead of attracting the lady he desired, the spell was intercepted by a behemoth. One that had unconventional tastes,” the second mother confided to them.
“He enjoyed unsavory methods of sexual engagement,” the first mother said, waving vaguely toward her derriere. “Very unsavory when you consider just how large behemoths are. And when Death demanded that we fix the situation—you know full well we never offer guarantees when it comes to love charms because they are so unreliable—we tried to reason with the behemoth (his name was Carl), but he escaped us and locked himself in Death’s bedchamber with Death while he was sleeping in order to have his wedding night—did we mention that Carl wanted to marry Death? I thought that was sweet, really, although what Death said happened that night . . . Well, we won’t go into details because that sort of thing is better not mentioned in mixed company, and really, it wasn’t our fault, but Death didn’t see it that way, and he got a bit stroppy and said that he wasn’t going to rest until he made us as miserable as he was the morning after his . . . I suppose you could call it his nuptials, although he had another word for it, and we knew that he would target you once he found out you’d been born to us because you are so very dear to us both, my darling Gwen, and it was all very upsetting and we didn’t want you to know because you make the biggest fusses about things that really aren’t that dire, and you wanted to go back to the States so you could continue your work, so we didn’t tell you.”
Gwen stared at them for the count of seven before turning to look at Gregory. “I’m going to give you the chance right now to retract your offer of marriage. It’s the honorable thing to do, and I just want you to know that I wouldn’t blame you in the least for not wanting to be connected to my family.”
He flicked his thumb over her lower lip to keep from kissing the breath right out of her. “Not even a violated Death would keep me from your side.”
“OK, that’s going to win you some bonus swoon points,” she told him, her eyes warm with admiration. He wanted badly to get her into the nearest bed so he could show her just how much he appreciated that look. “As for you two . . . you are so grounded.”
“Gwenhwyfar,” the second mother said sternly, “I will not have you speaking to your mother like that. We are not children.”
“You sure act as irresponsible as kids sometimes,” Gwen said with a sharp edge to her voice that softened when she added, “Regardless of what you may have done—and don’t think we aren’t going to have a little talk later about hiding things from me—we can’t lay the blame for the reclamation woman on your heads. She’s here for me because she thinks I owe her my soul.”
“Don’t give it to her. You’re not done using it,” the first mother said, picking up a bottle from Ethan’s desk and giving it a sniff. “You’re going to have need of it when you marry dear Gregory. Alice, pink roses or yellow for the bouquet?”
Alice eyed Gwen thoughtfully. “White. With pale pink carnations. And perhaps a carpet of matching pink rose petals.”
“You have such a good eye for details like that.”
Gwen gave him a long-suffering look before turning back to her mothers. “That’s enough premature planning. And before you blast me, yes, I will marry Gregory, but we have more important things to do now. We have to find that bird.”
“What bird?” the mothers asked.
She turned to him, nodding again at the two men on the floor, both of whom were now moaning, fainting, and making jerky movements with their arms and legs. “Can you take care of them? And by ‘take care,’ I mean get rid of them in some nonlethal way so that they don’t come back and try to hurt my moms again?”
“Yes. Because I love you.”
She rolled her eyes, then leaned in and bit his lower lip. “You’re adorable when you’re being sexy. My moms and I will tackle the folks around the camp about the bird. Maybe one of them remembers it and knows where it flew off to. Maybe we can find a descendant of it, too.”
“We don’t have any time to go bird-watching,” the first mother said.
“The sooner we find the bird, the sooner we fulfill Aaron’s demands, and the sooner we can get out of Anwyn.”
“Who’s Aaron?”
As he was leaving to find a couple of strong-looking lads to help him truss up the two hit men, he heard Gwen explaining about Aaron and Ethan’s war.
Everything was going to be fine. He’d have to find a way to get rid of Death’s minion, but he had an inkling of how that might be accomplished, and he was never one to back down from a challenge. He’d make sure Gwen was safe from the reclamation agent, get rid of the two hit men, and then deal with the situation regarding her mothers and the Watch . . . and the vendetta that Death evidently held against them.
Yes, it was all going to work out to his satisfaction. Gwen might not want to admit yet that she loved him,