InuYasha Fan Fiction ❯ Purity Redux: Metempsychosis ❯ My Wish ( Chapter 78 )

"Da!  Watch me, Da!"

The tall Irishman with hair as deeply auburn as Jessa's, threw his head back and laughed, a great, warm, belly laugh, while the small girl smiled so brilliantly, curls bouncing as the small horse she was riding cantered around him.  As small as Jessa was in the video—maybe three?—it was still very plain to see that, even back then, she was born to ride.

Nora slipped into the study with a coffee tray.  He'd told her earlier that Jessa was still sleeping and that he'd rather wait for breakfast until she woke up, and that he'd just borrow the office in order to check his email and to make the arrangements for their return home, but she'd offered to bring him coffee, and he'd figured that was all right.  Then she'd pointed out that Niall had kept a lot of the old videos of their family as well as files of random snapshots on the house server.

He'd lost track of how long he'd been sitting here, in her father's office, watching videos, stored on the computer.  He'd already sent all of it to a spare zip drive that he'd found still in the packaging.  Kells would love seeing Jessa as a girl, and Ashur?  Well, he had to admit that he wouldn't mind, watching them all again a time or ten himself . . .

"Thank you," he said, reaching for the cup that she'd just filled for him.  "I was able to book a flight home for Wednesday."

She nodded.  "That's fine.  Should I start addressing you as Lord Aumberlese?"

A measure of his overall good mood vanished, and he sighed.  "Must you?"

She smiled at his very obvious reticence.  "It's proper," she told him.

He made a face.  "How about you do that when we're here, then, but you can drop it in Canada."

"But it will make the new Lady Aumberlese very happy."

He sighed and shot her a very pointed look. Then he blinked.  "If they're transferring her father's title to me, what does that mean for Kells?"

"Well, given that he is related to you by blood—one way or another—then he can be recognized as your legitimate heir—if that's what Jessa wants, as well, though it can wait until he is formally adopted by her, too.  Then, he would be known as The Right Honorable The Earl of Cantaven."

Ashur snorted.  "And how does that work?"

Nora laughed.  "Your lesser title is the Earl of Cantaven, and as your recognized heir, he would use your lesser title until such time that you died.  Then he would take your title and hold the Earl of Cantaven in reserve until he had a son of his own."

Rolling his eyes, Ashur sipped the coffee and grunted, the sound muffled by the fine bone china cup.  "You Brits are a weird people."

She laughed again and refilled his cup before setting the pot down and heading for the door.  "I believe that Jessa is awake, so I'll have breakfast ready in short order."

He sighed again as she slipped out of the room, making a face as he wondered, just how his life had gotten quite so complicated.

'Look at the bright side.  At least you're not a duke . . .'

Ashur grunted.  'That's the bright side . . .?'

'Sure, it is. I mean, if you were a duke, just think of how much more crap you'd have to deal with.  I mean, they're just a step under royalty, right?'

Ashur supposed that, if he had to consider it in such a way, that his youkai-voice had a point—kind of.  Devlin had alluded to as much, saying what a pain it would one day be, when he ever inherited his father's title.

Frowning thoughtfully as his gaze lit on the still-unopened letter that was enclosed with the will—the one addressed to Jessa's future mate . . .

He hadn't opened it yet.  It wasn't that he was trying to avoid it, no, but he'd thought to wait until she was ready to open the one from her mother.  Even so, he couldn’t say that he wasn't a little curious to see just what her father might have wanted to tell him—something important enough to make him write a letter to someone he didn't yet know . . .

Reaching for the envelope, running his fingertips over the lovely texture of the paper, he sucked in a cheek, picked it up, turning it over to stare at the smudge of red sealing wax that held it closed.  Such an archaic kind of thing, and yet, in this place, it seemed wholly right, didn't it?

Drawing a deep breath, he slipped a finger under the flap, broke the seal, pulled out the folded linen stationery, embossed in the middle of the page with the seal of the Marquess of Aumberlese.

Letting the letter fall closed on his fingers, Ashur rubbed his temple, as he struggled to make sense of the words contained therein—the wishes of a dying father for his beloved daughter.

And the warning.

Just what was it that the Duke of Portsmouth really wanted?  Why . . .?  Why would he go to such lengths to see his son mated to Jessa, in the first place?  To commit murder, just to secure what he wanted?  And yet, the only one who really could answer that was Portsmouth himself . . .

Or maybe . . .

'Devlin . . . He might well know more than he's said . . .'

It was possible, sure, or maybe he didn't realize that he did know more.  He'd said that he didn't rightfully know why his father might have become fixated on Jessa, in the first place.  Even so . . .

'Why don't we look up the . . . good duke?  Maybe we could get some answers out of him . . .'

Ashur gritted his teeth, his gaze darkening as he stuffed the letter back into the envelope.  As much as he might well like to do that, he didn't really want to have Jessa anywhere near for that particular discussion.  After all, if the man had resorted to murder once, he could very well do it again, regardless of the idea that Jessa was Ashur's true mate . . . No, the best course was to talk to Devlin about it again, see if he might know anything that he hadn't mentioned already.  Failing that, maybe Ben could ferret out some information that was eluding them thus far.  He'd talk to him as soon as he got back to Quebec City . . .

With a sigh, he started the next video, more for a sorely needed distraction, a redirection of his musings, than anything else.  Deliberately letting go of the darker thoughts, he focused on the video instead, breaking into a slight smile as the sound of muffled music began.  Whoever was taking the video—her mother or father, he supposed—was sitting in the midst of an assembly of parents who broke into applause as a group of girls—maybe twelve of them, all around the age of four or five, he'd guess—filed onto the brightly lit stage against a dark green velvet curtain.  Jessa stood in the midst of them, her hair pulled back into a French braid, even though tendrils of curls had already escaped the careful coiffure.  Wearing a black satin dress with long sleeves and a flared miniskirt that was embellished with very intricate embroidery along the white accents, she looked the same as all the other girls, and yet, there was something about her that stood out, even back then.

The clicking and stomping of the dance was wonderfully executed, as far as he could tell.  His smile widened as he watched the video.

"Ah, watching those old things, this early in the morning?" Jessa complained as she shuffled into the study, her hair in an unbound, almost wild disarray, lost in the copious folds of the thick white robe.  Wandering over to him, only to crawl into his lap, her arms slipping up around his neck as she cuddled against him, she buried her face against his chest with a half-yawn, half-sigh.  "Maybe we ought to go back to bed?"

He chuckled, smoothing her hair before kissing her forehead and wrapping his arms around her.  "You didn't have to get up yet," he told her.  "I asked Nora to hold off on making breakfast in case you wanted to sleep in.  You've not been sleeping well since we got here . . ."

"I slept very well last night," she countered gently, a little petulantly.  "Have you booked flights home yet?"

He nodded.  "I have.  The soonest they had was a couple days, though, but I'd like to make sure that everything is in order before we go, anyway."

Letting out a deep breath, she seemed to snuggle a little closer against him.  "Have you been watching these all morning?"

He didn't really confirm or deny her question, and she slowly shook her head.  "They're just silly videos of me as a child," she told him with a shake of her head.

"I think they're cute," he told her.

"If you say so . . ."

He chuckled and kissed her forehead.  "I do."

Pulling her sweater closer around her shoulders as the wind picked up, carrying with it, the scent of fall—of drying and frail leaves, of fading and sun-cured grasses, of the last of the harvests that still lingered on the air.  Sitting in the midst of her father's torch ring, she turned her face upward, staring at the slightly overcast sky above.

Ashur was busy, going through the mountain of paperwork that the attorney had sent over, and she hadn't wanted to look at it yet, so she'd slipped out of the manor, only to end up here, wishing that she could sense her father here, that there were some way that she could see him and her mother, just one last time, to let them know that she really was all right—that Ashur had made it all right for her in his own way—and yet, knowing that it was a childish dream.

Digging out her phone when the chime announced the arrival of a text, she smiled wanly at Carol's message: 'Hurry home, sweetie!  Miss you horribly! MEN!'

'What did Laith do now?'

She'd barely had time to back out of the text screen when the phone chimed again.  There wasn't a text this time, just a picture of Laith, sprawled out on the bed, taking up most of it while Carol huddled on the edge with a very unimpressed expression on her face.  Jessa laughed and texted her back, 'Buy a bigger bed?'

Carol sent her back a sighing emoji.

'Flying back Wednesday.  Let him live till then.'

'If I must . . . XOXO Have a safe flight!'

Jessa giggled and slipped the phone into her pocket once more.  What was it about Carol that had the ability to reach her, even halfway around the world, to pull her back, to make her smile when her heart felt so heavy just moments before?

Drawing a deep breath—a cleansing kind of breath—she let it out slowly, let her gaze shift over her surroundings that she knew so well as she slipped her hand into her pocket once more, timidly touching, feeling, the roughened texture of the envelope that she'd grabbed on a whim.

The letter from her mother . . .

It wasn't that she dreaded what the envelope might contain.  It was more the feeling of finality that she couldn't ignore, that crept around the edges when she contemplated the idea of reading what her mother had to say.

It was strange, really, and if she honestly stopped to consider it all, it was all so hard for her to grasp.  The sudden and massive changes in her life in the past couple years, and yet, she knew deep down that she wouldn't change a thing because one thing had hinged upon another.  Had her parents lived, she wouldn't have gone to the States, wouldn't have met Ashur, wouldn't have met Kells . . . And it wasn't that she was glad her parents had died at all, but . . .

But it was a part of life, wasn't it?  Giving up some parts of her childhood in order to gain the other parts that she was meant to have . . . And if she could look at it in that way, then she could smile, couldn't she?  Because it was all right to carry her parents in her heart forever—the things they'd taught her, the love that they'd given to her—and it was all right to let go of them, too, to find other things and other people who could fill that part of her with the same sense of security, even if it wasn't in the same way . . . Instead of being the one who needed to be protected and coddled, it was all right for her to want to stand on her own, to protect and nurture a life like Kells'—like Ashur's . . .

Breaking the wax seal on the envelope, she drew a deep breath, pulled out the letter—a letter that still carried the scent of Orlaith so indelibly that it unleashed a pain so swift, so deep, so vast, that it wrenched a low, primitive kind of moan from her, doubled her over for a long moment until the savagery of the ache lessened.

Just the warmth of her mother's familiarity that emanated from the stationery to her was enough to unleash the strangest emotions.  The comfort of the scent that she'd known from childhood and before, the traces of her lingering youki that had permeated the paper as she wrote this . . . the same, almost lyrical, slant of her handwriting . . .

A thousand images flickered to life in her head, only to fade so quickly that she couldn't quite grasp them, but the overwhelming sense of comfort that they cumulatively inspired was enough to bring a sheen of tears to her eyes, and she quickly dashed over her face to wipe them away, and when she started to read the words, the voice in her mind—the one that spoke to her—was her mother's . . .

Jessa swallowed hard, trying to force down the lump that thickened in her throat, crushing the letter to her chest as the first rattle of bittersweet tears surged through her.  The rawness of her mother's words—words that still resounded in her head—somehow tore her open and yet soothed her, too.

The arms that slipped around her, that drew her up and against a solid body required no words, no thoughts.  Ashur sighed, rubbed her back, let her cry as he held her close.  He asked no question, demanded no answers.  Content simply to offer her whatever support she needed, and she loved him just a little more for that.

And it took a long time before she managed to pull it back, to compose herself enough that she could put a stop to the tears, leaning against Ashur's chest as the breeze dried her cheeks, as the freshness of the wind seemed to sweep away the melancholy, the sense of desperate heartbreak . . .

Lips, warm on her forehead, she closed her eyes for just a moment, snuggled a little closer to him, letting him be her windbreak, simply reveling in the warmth, the vibrance of his youki.

"I . . . I suddenly felt like you needed me," he ventured at last, careful to keep his voice low, almost as though he were afraid of shattering the silence.

"I did," she admitted, unable to repress the slight shiver that raced through her body.  "I do . . ."

He sighed.  "I read your father's letter this morning," he told her.  "If you want to read it . . ."

"He wrote it to you, though," she said.

He shrugged.  "He did, but . . ."

She bit her lip, leaned back far enough to look at him.  Blue eyes as bright as the summer sky, he managed a wan little smile that she knew was just for her.  "Do you . . .?  Do you want to read my mother's letter?"

One brown eyebrow raised.  "Do you want me to?"

She considered his question, and he suddenly chuckled, pulling her close against him once more.  "I don't need to," he told her.  "It was for you, and if you got out of it what you needed to, then that's all that matters to me."

"I . . . I don't think I'd mind if it was you," she admitted.

He shrugged. "It feels like one of those things that is exclusive between a mother and a daughter," he said.  "It's fine."

Idly twisting a long strand of his hair around her fingers, she sighed.  "I just . . . I wish they'd gotten to meet you," she admitted quietly.  "That they'd gotten to meet Kells . . . They would have loved you . . ."

"Fathers don't usually love the men who take away their little girls, now do they?"

She laughed, and it was tinged with a sadness.  "I think they would have . . . It would just have been nice to know . . ."

He opened his mouth to answer, but the wind suddenly dropped entirely and all at once.

Jessa sat up, her gaze shifting around slowly, as, one by one, her father's torches shot to life as an unsettling, yet entirely comfortable, sense of warmth rose around her.

"Jessa . . . Did you . . .?" Ashur murmured.
She shook her head, eyes widening as a soft sort of glow, almost like a mist, seemed to solidify in the air in front of them.  "Da . . ." she murmured at the brush of a very familiar youki.

The vague sound, almost like laughter, came to her, though whether it was just in her head or not, she didn't know, but she heard Ashur's sharp gasp behind her.

For the briefest of moments, she heard them both, smiled as a haze of tears rose to blur her vision again.  A softer, gentler laugh mingled with her father's while a sudden gust of wind blew in, carrying white petals of what looked to be moon flowers . . . The petals danced and swirled, surrounding the invisible silhouettes of two people, side by side, but the wind didn't touch Jessa or Ashur.

Suspended just above the ground, the familiarity of scent, the feeling that she'd never thought to ever feel again . . .

Slowly, one of those forms—the smaller one—seemed to lean down, to brush against her cheek with an outstretched hand, lingering against her skin for a rending moment until, with a burst of laughter, clear and bright, the wind returned in a gust, dispersing the swirling petals, extinguishing the flaming torches . . .

And they left behind the sense of contentment that made Jessa smile.  Her parents—she'd felt them, and Ashur . . . He'd felt them, too . . .

"They . . . They approve," she whispered.  Ashur hugged her tight.  "They . . . They approve . . ."