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waste if you ask me, Revelin of Innisfallen. For until he lets go of his guilt about what happened that fateful night, Aidan O Donoghue will not truly live.
    â€”Revelin of Innisfallen

Three
    â€œS o after my father’s ship went down,” Pippa explained blithely, “his enemies assumed he had perished.” She sat very still on the stool in the kitchen garden. The smell of blooming herbs filled the spring air.
    â€œNaturally,” Iago said in his dark honey voice. “And of course, your papa did not die at all. Even as we speak, he is attending the council of Her Majesty the queen.”
    â€œHow did you know?” Beaming, Pippa twisted around on her stool to look up at him.
    Framed by the nodding boughs of the old elm tree that shaded the garden path, he regarded her with tolerant interest, a comb in his hand and a gentle compassion in his velvety black eyes. “I, too, like to invent answers to the questions that keep me awake at night,” he said.
    â€œI invent nothing,” she snapped. “It all happened just as I described it.”
    â€œExcept that the story changes each time you encounter someone new.” He spoke with mild amusement, but no accusation. “Your father has been pirate, knight, foreign prince, soldier of fortune and ratcatcher. Oh. And did I not hear you tell O Mahoney you were sired by the pope?”
    Pippa blew out a breath, and her shoulders sagged. A raven cackled raucously in the elm tree, then whirred off into the London sky. Of course she invented stories about who she was and where she had come from. To face the truth was unthinkable. And impossible.
    Iago’s touch was soothing as he combed through her matted hair. He tilted her chin up and stared at her face-on for a long moment, intent as a sculptor. She stared back, rapt as a dreamer. What a remarkable person he was, with his lovely ebony skin and bell-toned voice, the fierce, inborn pride he wore like a mantle of silk.
    He closed one eye; then he began to snip with his little crane-handled scissors, the very ones she had been tempted to steal from a side table in the kitchen.
    As Iago worked, he said, “You tell the tales so well, pequeña, but they are just that—tales. I know this because I used to do the same. Used to lie awake at night trying to put together the face of my mother from fragments of memory. She became every good thing I knew about a mother, and before long she was more real to me than an actual woman. Only bigger. Better. Sweeter, kinder.”
    â€œYes,” she whispered past a sudden, unwelcome thickness in her throat. “Yes, I understand.”
    He twisted a few curls into a soft fringe upon her brow. The breeze sifted lightly through them. “If you were an Englishman, you would be the very rage of fashion. They call these lovelocks. They look better on you.” He winked. “A dream mother. It was something I needed at a very dark time of my life.”
    â€œTell me about the dark time,” she said, fascinated by the deftness of his hands and the way they were so brown on one side, while the palms were sensitive and pale.
    â€œSlavery,” he said. “Being made to work until I fell onmy face from exhaustion, and then being beaten until I dragged myself up to work some more. You have a dream mother, too, eh?”
    She closed her eyes. A lovely face smiled at her. She had spent a thousand nights and more painting her parents in her mind until they were perfect. Beautiful. All wise. Flawless, save for one minor detail. They had somehow managed to misplace their daughter.
    â€œI have a dream mother,” she confessed. “A father, too. The stories might change, but that does not.” She opened her eyes to find him studying her critically again. “What about the O Donoghue?” she asked, pretending only idle curiosity.
    â€œHis father is dead, which is why Aidan is the lord. His mother is dead also, but