his hands and attention free if they were attacked, so he used a driver now. Lily disliked pretty much every part, but she was adapting, dammit. Though the loss of privacy still grated.
She said hello to Scott and fastened her seat belt. “Married, I think.”
“Yes, we will be,” he said, claiming her hand. “Only five months now.”
“And I’m not even hyperventilating.” Marrying Rule was easy. Holding the wedding was another story, but she had a list, after all. Several of them. “But I meant that the ghost was married before the death-do-you-part clause got activated. He, she, or it wore a ring on the left hand.”
“You saw a ring? No face, but a wedding ring?”
“When it reached for me, the hands got a lot clearer. The ring kind of glowed.” She considered. “I should say he, not it. They looked like a man’s hands. Not real young, not real old, and he wasn’t a manual laborer.” No, they’d been soft hands, she remembered. Clean and cared for. Narrow palms, long fingers, nicely trimmed nails.
“It reached for you?” Rule did not sound happy.
“Then wisped away.” She squeezed his hand. “Relax. It—or he—didn’t seem hostile, and even if he was pissed and was able to interact with the physical, what could he do? Lob a pencil at me?”
“I seem to recall a wraith who managed to do quite a lot.”
“I couldn’t see the wraith. I saw this, so it’s unlikely he was a wraith.” It was unlikely for other reasons, too, having to do with how wraiths were made.
“Hmm.”
Rule didn’t ask the obvious questions. He knew that whatever she’d seen, it hadn’t been a trick of the light or a delusion. He also knew it couldn’t have been an illusion. Lily was a touch sensitive. She felt magic tactically, but couldn’t work it or be affected by it. Whatever she’d seen had been real.
Scott signaled for the turn. Lily tried to pretend he wasn’t able to hear everything they said. Rule was better at that than she was. Ignoring their front-seat audience entirely, he played with her fingers. Especially the one with his ring on it. For a man who’d spent several decades morally opposed to marriage and all forms of sexual possessiveness, he sure was fascinated by that shiny token of his claim on her.
Maybe she should have gotten him an engagement ring, too.
“Something funny?” he asked.
“I was picturing your left hand with a diamond on the third finger.”
He blinked. Went still. Then nodded. “That’s a good idea. I wonder why it didn’t occur to me that I needed an engagement ring.”
He wasn’t kidding. He honest-to-God meant it. She leaned in and kissed him lightly. “I love you, you know.”
“I like hearing it.” He switched his attention from her hand to her hair, running his fingers through it. “Shall we pick something out together?”
“Your engagement ring, you mean.”
“We may have to go with something custom.”
“Um . . . yeah, we might.” Unless . . . “We might find something in San Francisco. Or in Massachusetts.” Did gay guys buy each other engagement rings? Why didn’t she know? The only XY married couple she knew personally had tied the knot in a big hurry, afraid their official permission to marry wouldn’t last. They’d been right.
Rule smiled, following her thinking easily. “Perhaps I could ask Jasper.”
“Jasper?”
“Your cousin Freddie’s good friend. They recently moved in together.”
“Oh, that Jasper.” Lily’s cousin Freddie—third cousin, really, but still a cousin—had started working for Rule last month. He was handling some of Leidolf’s investments, which took a big load off Rule. Lily had mixed feelings about this. Freddie was indefatigably honest and good at what he did—at least Lily’s father thought so, and he ought to know. But she’d built up a good head of Freddie-aversion over the years because he would not stop assuming that she was going to marry him. “I’ve only met Jasper a couple times. I didn’t realize he was . . .” She sat straight up. “Wait a minute. You don’t mean that Freddie—”
“You didn’t know?”
“Freddie’s gay?” Her voice rose in outrage. “He asked me to marry him a dozen times. Not because he wanted to, mind, but his mother wanted . . . so did mine. Are you telling me he’s gay?”
Rule shrugged. “Define it how you like. He and Jasper—”
“Just because Jasper’s gay doesn’t mean Freddie is.” Because it would really piss her off if Freddie had done his damnedest to marry her without mentioning that he preferred sexual partners who