Hero is a Four Letter Word Read online

  She closes her eyes and compares Liam to the late Mr. Selkirk, or whatever his actual family name was, and is amazed to understand that they are not only similar, but to her memory they are damn near identical. Creepy.

  A shiver crawls over her shoulders and Jen turns to fetch her shawl from the warming rack by the fire. As she swirls it over her shoulders, another flash of emerald catches in the corner of her eye. She turns to the small, hand-sized picture of the two men, the ones her Da called lovers. There, again, is a young man who looks so very much like Liam that he could have sat for the portrait.

  No. No, no, this is silly. This is just family resemblance. Like Margaret Selkirk and auntie Jane Carter, and Jennet. Jen clutches the shawl close around her arms, fingernails digging into the scratchy wool, and takes a step back. Then another. All the way to the wall between the windows, and narrows her gaze, lets it slide across the wall of family, really looking for the first time. There, in the first photograph, a twenty-something young man in a full formal dining suit, light hair and eyes and a cheeky smile. He is slightly apart from the family, perhaps an uncle or a brother-in-law, but one of the daughters is looking at him out the corner of her eye, and she is just the right age to be besotted. There, again, in a mid-century Polaroid, maybe the sixties judging by the hair styles, here is the green-eyed blond man holding up a stubby brown bottle of beer and grinning out at the antics happening on the loch. Under his face it says ‘Cousin Lin’ in someone’s blue, feminine penmanship. There, in a somber black suit among the military uniforms of the brothers Carter as they take one last family shot before half of them are sacrificed to the First World War; there, whispering with a young man in the back of a ballroom; and there again, in the early nineties, auntie Jane sitting on his knee, face half-obscured by the glass of wine in her hand.

  And all of them, every single face, is Liam.

  Liam has no mobile phone. He’s always just shown up, or met Jen at an agreed upon time and place. It is the middle of the night, there’s no way he’ll be in the woods, but Jen puts on her boots and a turtleneck and her pea coat anyway, clutches close a torch, and plunges into the woods.

  “Liam!” she calls. “Liam!” She turns in circles, doing her best to follow the path back to the well. She’d know it in daylight, have no problems at all. She was bloody near born in these woods, played in them all her childhood, but now they are close and cold and creepy. Her torch light cuts harsh streaks across the gloom, startling deer and foxes and ravens from their rest. The birds protest loudly. “Liam!”

  “Here, sweeting,” a voice like black honey says, and Jennet turns into an embrace that is suddenly right where she needs it to be. Which is terrifying in its own way. “What’s the fuss?”

  “The paintings!” she pants. “Oh, god, the pictures.”

  “Ah,” is all Liam says, and the way he says it means that he understands the rest.

  Jennet jerks back, trying to peer up at his expression in the dark, but unless she wants to blind him with her flashlight, she can’t make it out.

  A scream is building behind her larynx, confusion and terror behind her eyes. But Jennet is Lady of Carterhaugh and master of her own body. She swallows heavily. “Come back to the house,” is all Jennet says. It is rather more order than request. “We need to talk.”

  Liam takes her shoulders in his hands and bends down so their faces are a breath apart. “Be very certain, Jennet of Carterhaugh, that inviting me in to your home is what you really mean to do.”

  “I’m not scared of you,” Jen says.

  He searches her gaze, her face, eyes on her mouth, the lopsided dimple that only appears on her left side, as if testing the mettle of her resolve.

  He nods slowly, meaningfully, just once. “Then lead the way.

  When they reach Jen’s apartments, she heads straight for the en suite, plugs the tub, and opens the taps. Liam is filthy and shivering. He hasn’t washed since their tumble by the well and he stinks of rot and stale sex. They make love again in the bath. In the bubbles it is slow, and desperate, each clinging to the other, reaffirming that they are real, human, here.

  Then she swaddles them both in thick terrycloth robes fetched from the B&B linen cupboard, and presses a snifter of brandy from her Da’s private collection into his hand. She swirls her own, admiring the heady scent as Liam stands silent and solemn before the wall of Carterhaughs. Jen stands behind his shoulder, studying his face. Their hair leaves small wet spots on the carpet.

  “Tell me I’m crazy,” she says.

  Liam turns to face her. “I can’t.”

  “They’re all you.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re fucking with me.”

  He sets the snifter down on the mantle-place and cups her face in his hands. “My dearest Jennet, why would I lie to you? About this, the most important secret the Carterhaughs hold? I am the gift that one generation leaves to another.”

  “And did you sleep with all of them?” she spat, her confusion twisting into hurt and fury. “I mean, I thought … I thought I was special.”

  “You are. You are mine now, and now you are special to me.”

  “But these others. Her, and her! And Him, and aunt Jane? Did you love them?”

  Liam smiles sadly, then pries the brandy from her hands and sets it beside his own. “Are you jealous, my sweeting? I love you, now.”

  “But this is impossible,” Jennet protests. “What are you?”

  “Yours.” He kisses the tip of her nose sweetly and she tries to fight off the way it makes heat pool low in her belly, desire crackle along her flesh. “And all the children of Carterhaugh. However few of you there may be. I begged your father to take a wife.”

  “My dad was gay,” Jen says.

  “And yet, there is you,” her lover replies, a grin splitting his face.

  “He was gay, not a dead fish,” Jen counters. “He wanted to be a father, he could. It is the twenty first century.”

  “That it is,” Liam agrees, his words amiable, his tone light, but something in his eyes grew dull and the sparkle ebbs for a moment. “Do you have another father, then?”

  “Dad had a lover —” Jen began, but then stops herself. “I never met him. They were together before me, and after …” she trails off and shrugs. “They’d meet up now and again, out this way, but I never knew him.”

  “Eventually David’s desire to be a father overrode all other loves,” Liam says gravely. “I pushed too hard.”

  Jen snaps her gaze up to his face. “How did you know my father’s name?”

  “The Lord of Carterhaugh?” he mocks. “Everyone knew him. Or of him, at least.”

  Jen groans. “That old acorn? Really?”

  “So you do know the gossip?” The glimmer returns to Liam’s eyes.

  Jen rolls her own.

  Liam presses her close against his chest, his green gaze intent as he studies her face, sweeping down to take in the roses in her cheeks, the red blush on her chest. “The song, the fairy tale, it’s famous. Everyone knows how my story began. But the rest of it?”

  “What the old ditties in town say? About father being the last heir of Margaret and Tam Lin?”

  “Well, that would actually make you the last heir now, wouldn’t it?” Liam says.

  Jen pauses, startled by the realization that he is correct. She’s never thought of it like that before. The superstitious old folks always talk of boys when they make mention of fae lovers in the woods, of traditions and cutting the corners off houses to leave room for fairy paths, of bowls of milk and honey-soaked bread left out for the kind folk. Or at least to bribe them to remain kind.

  “I suppose,” Jen allows.

  “It is the twenty first century after all,” Liam mocks.

  Jen scowls. “Not that it matters. They’re just stories.”

  “Ah, but stories hold a truth. And what about you, my darling Jennet? Am I the only man in your life? In your bed?”

  Jen jerks out of his grip. �
�How can you ask that? I’ve been dating you, only you!”

  Liam smiles. “I have not asked you for monogamy. It is the twenty first century.”

  “Well, I’m not poly,” Jen says.

  “So then it is up to me,” Liam replies darkly and reaches for her again, burying his nose in the damp strands of her hair. “I’m sure I can get you with child.”

  “I’m sure you can’t,” Jen says, grabbing the small tender hairs at the back of his neck and tugging hard, forcing him to meet her eyes. “And I think you need to slow the hell down. We’ve just established that you’re not fucking human. That you’re what, a fairy?”

  “Fae-touched, please,” he corrects with a moue of distaste. “I was not born so cruel.”

  “Fae-touched, whatever that means, so I think you can hold the hell up on the kids talk.”

  Liam grinds his hips forward, and Jen wouldn’t be human if she didn’t admit it got her a little hot under the collar.

  “Why? You want me, and it’s very easy to do. Your father managed an heir. Surely you could.”

  “It’s not that easy,” Jennet deflects. She presses her lips to his neck, tasting sweat and bath soap and well water.

  “Sure it is,” Liam says with a grin. “Just lie back and think of Carterhaugh.”

  “Shut up, Liam,” Jen says and reaches down to tug on the belt of his robe, spreading the halves and pressing into the warmth between them. “Just can the kids talk. It’s not erotic.”

  Liam inhales heavily through his nose, animalistic, strong, so damn hot, but then he ruins it by biting her lobe and saying, “But don’t you want my children, Jennet? I will fill you with my seed, I will fuck a baby into you and our son will be beautiful.”

  Jennet shoves him back so hard, so full of disgust, that he actually ricochets off of one of the wingback chairs. It falls over, whacking the wall, and one of the brandy snifters topples, smashing on the hearth and spilling alcohol into the fire. It flares and crackles, spitting indignantly as Jen shoves her hands into her robe pockets to keep from putting Liam’s stupid, insensitive head through the goddamn wall.

  “Jen, what have I —”

  “Don’t you dare try to override my desires with your own! Don’t you dare try to change my mind when I have already told you what I do and do not want. You don’t know better than me!”

  “Jennet I —”

  “I’m not a child you can just talk around to it!”

  “Please, Jennet,” Liam says, scrambling to get upright, wincing as he jostles his hard-on when he gets his rump back under him. “I didn’t mean it like that. Only that I want —”

  “I can’t have kids!” Jennet fumes, refusing to allow him to continue. “I’m all messed up inside, okay? Happy now, Mister Sticks-his-nose-where-it-doesn’t-belong? Bloody hell!”

  Liam goes a new and interesting shade of pale and pulls himself to his feet. They aren’t steady and he grips the mantle-place, avoiding the broken glass and gulping down the remains of the brandy from the second snifter.

  “Sorry,” Jen whispers after he manages to get a hold of himself. “We kept it pretty quiet but … there will be no heir of Carterhaugh.”

  “None?” Liam asks, and his voice is rough, and raw, and small. “None at all?”

  “Not of my blood,” Jennet says. “I could adopt. Maybe I should adopt. Such a big house, I’m sure there’s a child in care who would love it. Carterhaugh does need an heir.

  “But the heir of Carterhaugh must be of your lineage!” Liam blurts, spinning around to face her. He reels, knocks the second snifter and it smashes next to its brethren, small shards of glass flying up and scoring Liam’s shins. He doesn’t seem to notice. His face is suddenly flushing, even though his lips remain ghost-white. “Or else the —” He catches himself and bites down hard on the inside of his own cheek.

  Jennet laughs. “Don’t tell me you actually believe all that fairy tale nonsense.”

  Liam says nothing. He stares down into the fire, eyes distant and dim, and for a while Jennet lets him.

  “What’s wrong?” he finally asks.

  Jen hates this conversation. She’s had it over, and over, and over with well-meaning busy bodies who do not understand what it means to have to choose between a hypothetical future and a devastating present. She’s not in the mood to have it again, so she flops down into the remaining wingback chair and crosses her arms petulantly. “Nothing, now.”

  “But if nothing’s wrong, then why can’t you have children?” Liam thunders.

  Jen scoffs in the face of his rage, unaffected by his display of man-child rage. “Leaving aside the fact that you’re making one hell of an assumption about whether I even want children, and a second bloody huge assumption about how a woman is broken or wrong or useless because the mechanism in her body has malfunctioned, it was either my uterus or my life, okay? Jesus.”

  Liam turns large, wet eyes to her. “You nearly died?”

  “Yes,” Jen bites out. “Complications from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.”

  “What does that mean?” He crouches down, lays his hands on her knees as if to console her, but it is patronizing and she hates it when someone tries to make her feel like a small child who just needs to have things explained to her better and then she’d understand, then she’d care Only she doesn’t care, and she doesn’t need to have it explained better, and she sure as fuck doesn’t need anyone to make her feel guilty about saving her own life, so she sneers and says:

  “They took out all of it. Everything.”

  “Everything?” Liam asks, horrified.

  “Don’t judge me,” she spits. “This isn’t your choice to make, you know. It’s my body. I decide what is and is not injected into it, how it’s cut up, what’s taken out or what’s put in. God, you’re just like the doctors! All those old white guys, telling me they know what’s best for me, making choices about my reproductive organs as if I was just a baby machine that has broken down and not a human being who has consciously and contentiously chosen not to have children.”

  Liam cries so prettily, Jennet has to give him that. “But did they have to remove everything?”

  “No,” Jen says, “But I told them to anyway. To keep it from coming back.”

  “So you made them cut out your —”

  “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes!”

  “I didn’t know. David never —”

  “Why would my father tell you?” Jen kicks his stomach gently, getting him to back up, and he stands. She regards Liam carefully, through the lens of this new information.

  Liam shifts uncomfortably under her gaze, then stills himself and meets it. “It doesn’t matter, now,” Liam whispers.

  They are silent again for a long time, neither of them willing to break their staring contest first.

  “You can’t honestly tell me it bothers you,” Jen finally says.

  “That you can’t have children? It does.”

  “Why?” Jen spits. “It was my uterus. It has nothing to do with you.”

  “It has everything to do with me!” Liam roars. And then he is gone, the door to her sitting room crashing against the wall, making the books in her shelf shiver with the force. He is a shadow streaking through the night, when she rushes to the window, swallowed by the the trees, lost to the darkness and the woods.

  Jennet sits on her little window seat and shakes, one hand pressed hard against her mouth, the other cupping the wide, grinning scar that smiles on her stomach.

  Jennet doesn’t see Liam for a week, and that makes her viciously pleased. When Karen and her husband and kids come over for dinner, Jen steadfastly does not allow herself to look at little Mattie and wonder. When Karen asks what happened to her beau, Jen tells an extremely edited version of the truth, and the three adults drink to being rid of douchebags.

  It is Thanksgiving in the new world, and the elder Mathew Simmons is both Canadian and vegan. They celebrate with tofurkey and cranberry sauce, which Jen thinks is ove
r-sweet and vile and ruins the flavor of the tofu, green bean casserole made with almond milk, and an utterly delicious agave pumpkin pie. When the meal is done, the Simmons go home, and the manor is devoid of servants and guests, and Jen feels horrifically, suddenly alone.

  A bottle of wine and then some sloshing around her system, Jen puts on her pea coat and shawl and grabs a candle. A torch feels too harsh. When she is outside she walks to the plain, lights the candle and sticks it into the grass by her knee, and sits in the middle of a fairy ring. She’s not surprised in the least when Liam sits down across from her after a few moments, clad once more in a green hoodie and black skinny jeans, even though Jen knows for a fact that he left them on her bathroom floor.

  “How does it affect you?” she asks with no preamble.

  “I missed you.” He reaches for her hand and she pulls it back, hides the pair of them in her pockets.

  “How?”

  “Do you know the worst part about the stories?” Liam asks. “It’s the magic. The things that the fae can do. They’re not sweet. They don’t laugh like bells, or have delicate dragonfly wings, or any of that. They are dark. They are cruel. Eyes of wood and a heart of stone,” Liam says, touching his own chest. “That’s what the Fairy Queen threatened.”

  He rubs with the heel of his hand against his sternum, as if to make sure that his heart is still there, still warm, still beating. “He was human. He was employed in collecting heather and he fell asleep in a fairy circle. This one.”

  Jen resist the recoiling urge to stand and jump out of it. But Liam, Tam Lin, is here with her, and she accepted his roses. She feels safe, here. When he reaches for her again, places his free hand on her knee, she doesn’t push him away.

  “He begged her not to, told the queen who had captured him, forced him into her entourage and bed, raped him … he begged her not to take that, too. To blind and murder him. And the queen didn’t, because it was the human soul in his eyes that she loved so well, and his human heart that could swell and break that she loved to hold in her hands.”