Broken Dove (Fantasyland #4)(150)

Indeed, they could do much with a mirror.

And they would.

On these thoughts, he got close to her back and felt her jump when he slid his hands along her ribs.

She twisted her neck to look up at him and he smiled down at her.

“Hello, my dove,” he greeted.

Her hand cut to her face, her finger extended over her lips, and she hissed, “Shh!” before she turned to look back outside.

He felt his brows draw together as he moved his gaze to the window. Then he felt his lips curve up when he saw Hans speaking with Loretta out in the snow at the side of the house.

Hans was standing very close to the maid.

Loretta didn’t like this and was pulling back.

Thus Hans had an arm around her waist, plastering her to his side, just as he had his neck bent so he could bring his face close to hers.

“They can hardly hear us, poppy,” Apollo pointed out, still looking out the window.

“I’m concentrating,” she told him.

“On what?” he asked.

“Reading Hans’s lips.”

This surprised him so much he cast his gaze to the top of her hair.

“You can read lips?”

“No!” she snapped impatiently, not tearing her eyes from the window. “That’s why you have to shush so I can concentrate.”

His body shook with his laughter as he turned her resisting frame in his arms.

“Lo! I’m missing it,” she bit out irritably when he had her front to his.

“Perhaps we should let whatever-that-is play out without an audience,” he suggested.

“If we do, how can I report back to Finnie, Meeta and Bella?”

“You’ll just have to ask Loretta what occurred when you have that opportunity.”

Her expression changed to frustration when she shared, “She’s being closed-lipped about the whole thing.”

He was again surprised.

“I thought you women nattered about these things freely,” he remarked and watched her eyes narrow.

“We women are vast in number, Apollo. Some do. And some, like Loretta, don’t.”

He grinned down at her. “All right. Then perhaps you should allow her to share, or not, as she wishes.”

“What’s the fun in that?”

She had him there, so he didn’t answer.

Instead he changed the subject. “How’s her injury?”

He felt as well as heard her deep sigh as she gave into his demand that she leave his man and her woman alone, something she had no choice but to do with the hold he had on her, and she knew it.

Then she answered, “Healing nicely.”

“And has she recovered from the incident?”

Her eyes slid to his shoulder as she replied, “That maybe isn’t healing so nicely.”

“It frightened her,” Apollo deduced, and her gaze came back to him.

“It would anyone, Lo,” she noted. “Those things were creepy and there were a lot of them.”

He did not need the reminder of Maddie and her women out in the snow with a lot of “creepy” things.

Alas, he had it and they were discussing it, as they should. Avoiding it was not healthy.

Therefore, he pointed out, “She went to that forest of her own accord, poppy.”

“She did,” she agreed. “But that shit was extreme.”

This was terminology he’d never heard, not even from Maddie.

He still understood it.

“Then let’s hope Hans can get through to her. If anyone understands shit that’s extreme, it’s Hans.”

“Good point,” she murmured, her gaze now moving over her shoulder as she twisted somewhat in his arms to look back out the window. “I’ll have to mention that to her.”

“I would allow Hans to try to break through, Madeleine,” he advised.

She looked back to him, her eyes wide. “Are you nuts?”

“No,” he pointed out the obvious.

“I have to meddle. It’s my sisterly duty.”

He was further surprised at another reference to the heretofore unknown sisterhood of women.

Then again, he’d seen it at work the night Loretta and Meeta forged into the cold, heavily armed, doing so on the dubious, but eventually proved correct knowledge that Maddie might need them.

And the knowledge of a sisterhood of women was far from unwelcome in times like these.

“Before going to lunch, we have things to discuss,” he told her.

Her eyes moved over his face before they caught his and she settled into his embrace, giving him some of her weight and lifting her hands to place them light on his biceps.

“What do we need to discuss?” she asked.

“After lunch with the children, I’d like you to remain at the house so we can talk.”

“We’re talking now,” she noted.

“We need time, my poppy, and privacy. I would delay until later when we go back to the dower house this evening after dinner, but it’s important.”

Her body stiffened slightly in his arms when she asked, “What are we going to talk about?”

“Amongst other things, the timing of your moving into this house,” he told her and her body stiffened more.

“Apollo—”