Unnatural Issue (45 page)

And although Elizabeth and Michael had treated her well enough before . . . the fact that their son had very nearly been killed because of her was not likely to make her particularly attractive to them.

Charles looked up as she came in. He smiled pleasantly at her. She smiled shyly back. “Is there aught I can be getting’ tha’?” she asked in her broadest Yorkshire accent, hoping that would trigger some memories.

He didn’t seem to notice. “No, nothing, I am doing well, thank you,” he replied politely, then laughed. “Or at least, as well as someone who can’t even remember his own name can be said to be doing.”

Well, speaking to him in the accent of his home hadn’t worked. She wondered if she could get a bit of heather somewhere—hadn’t someone told her, once, that scent was the most likely thing to trigger memory? Or—cheese! Some of the cheeses that she herself had made! She moved around his room, tidying and cleaning—just in case someone came in or spotted her from the hall—while talking to him, and pummeling her mind for anything she might use to bring those memories back.

Scrumpy? Parkin? Yorkshire pud’ and onion gravy? Where on earth would she get what she needed to make those things? And where would she be able to make them in the first place? Well, she couldn’t make scrumpy, and she rather doubted that the aristocratic Kerridges drank it anyway, but everyone had parkin on Bonfire Night. And Curd Tart . . .

She continued to chatter about the things that he should find familiar, and he continued to be pleasant but . . . absent. Clearly he had no idea what she was talking about, and he was . . . well there was no other way to put it. He was humoring her.

Finally she gave up. She finished putting his room to rights and excused herself. It was going to be dark soon, and this was the East End. It didn’t do for a woman to be out on the street alone after dark.

As she hurried through the cold streets, she continued to try to think of ways she could wake up his memory. The most obvious was also the most dangerous: use magic. If Richard was back in England, he would certainly be looking for signs of Earth Magic, and he would associate it with Charles. She might just as well mail him an invitation if she used magic.

Well . . . if
she
used magic. There was someone else who might and who was too powerful for Richard to trifle with.

She also had the impression that he wouldn’t care a fig about all the barriers other Elementals found to being within an urban center like London.

The main question was, could she prove to him this was something he really should do?

“Food shortages,” mused Alderscroft, swirling the brandy around in his glass.

They were sitting in two of Alderscroft’s leather wing chairs in front of a nice coal fire in his sitting room at the club. Outside, December made itself known. Inside, all was warm and comfortable. They had just finished one of the Exeter Club’s excellent dinners.

Peter had been thinking about the poor bastards in the trenches with a great deal of guilt.

“Eh?” said Peter, startled. “Not that I had noticed.”

The Old Lion snorted. “Ask your watery little friends about the German submarines. It’s only a matter of time before they start torpedoing merchant ships. They’ll wear us down by starvation—or at least, they’ll think they can.”

“Good gad.” Peter blinked. “I never thought of that. I’m just not used to thinking in war terms. Especially not this modern warfare with all the—” he waved his hands vaguely, trying to signify
terrible scientific weapons.
“How soon, do you reckon?”

“End of next year, I expect there will be rationing.” Alderscroft shrugged eloquently. “Your brother should be told; all the country dwellers should be told, if they’ll listen, which most of them won’t. But your brother will. You know what best to advise your people to do. There are plenty of things that can be grown that won’t be taken for the war effort. Country folk will be all right, if they start planning for it now; it will be the city dwellers that will feel the pinch.” He shook his head. “Back to the subject at hand. Now please remember, young Peter, that I don’t want the Whitestone girl harmed. I also don’t want Charles Kerridge harmed. On the other hand, they make excellent bait to draw out Richard Whitestone.”

“I’d need informed consent for that,” Peter warned him. “I won’t do that any other way.”

Alderscroft gave him a level look. “You’ll get it from the girl, I expect. She doesn’t strike me as the shrinking kind, from what you’ve said. But Charles—”

“Still doesn’t remember a thing,” Peter confirmed. “And it’s not malingering. Maya’s been to see him, and she says its genuine.”

Alderscroft cursed quietly for a moment. “Well, in that case, we have to treat him as we would a child. Ruddy well can’t use him as bait. That only leaves the girl. I wouldn’t mind it if it were the two of them together, or Charles alone, but the girl alone? I don’t like it.”

“Nor more do I,” Peter replied, feeling his blood run cold at the very notion. “He keeps getting stronger and more clever. I’ve no notion how he managed to separate Charles from his men, but he did it. And then he attacked Charles on
his
ground, and he used the barrage to his advantage. That’s getting devilishly clever, and deuced if I know how he’s controlling that many liches. Then there are the ambushers to consider. I might be a Master, but Water isn’t the most effective power against Earth, unless we can get him somewhere that my Elementals can get at him.”

“Neither is Fire,” Alderscroft pointed out. “His Elementals can smother most of mine. It should be Earth and Air against Earth, with Fire and Water as support—or in a pinch, Fire and Air together and Water as support. And I’m damned shorthanded right now. Maya can’t be spared, nor can her husband. I need her in the hospital and him on coast watch. The rest of the Lodge are scattered from Scotland to Wales, and some are serving under the general. But we can’t leave Richard Whitestone free a moment longer than we have to. You saw the results of what he could do with a battlefield of corpses and six months of war to draw from. Imagine what he’ll be like as it goes on!”

“Thank you, I’d rather not,” Peter replied frankly. He drank the last of his brandy, and put the glass aside. “I’ll just toddle along and let the girl know I am here. We’ll put our heads together. She’s clever, that one.”

“I just hope she’s clever enough,” Alderscroft replied, glumly.

It was growing dark by the time he stepped out of the door of the club; he decided that he wouldn’t stop at his flat to change out of his uniform. Even in Bethnal Green it would go a long way toward keeping him from being interfered with, and an officer’s uniform would guarantee respect at the boarding house where Susanne was living.

He knew how to pick his taxi drivers; he found one in relatively short order that had no qualms about taking a fare into Bethnal Green, and they were on their way.

“I’d like you to wait for me,” he said, as they neared the address.

“Long as yer payin’ guv’ner,” the cabby replied. “Got me a cosh in the front seat. Nobody’ll trifle wit’ me while yer in there.”

“I rather thought so,” Peter said with satisfaction. “If there’s trouble, give a toot on the horn, and we’ll settle them.”

The driver laughed. “Shouldn’t be surprised, guv’ner. Ye don’t look loik much, but in my ’sperience, it’s the skinny ones as fights the nastiest.”

Despite his anxieties, Peter laughed aloud. “True, o’ wolves! I should be right out.”

He ran up the door to the boarding house and rang the bell. A suspicious-looking woman in a maid’s dress answered it, and her eyes went round when she saw what was clearly an officer on the doorstep. “I should like to speak to Constance Weatherby, if you please,” he said, with a little tip of his hat. “I know it’s late, but we are old friends, and I need to speak to her about her father in France.”

The maid’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, cor!” she breathed. “He’s not—”

“No, not yet anyway,” Peter said truthfully. “But I do need to speak with her about him. Tell her Peter is here to talk to her about her father.”

“Come in, sir,” the maid told him, and showed him into a tiny parlor, empty at the moment. “I’ll go fetch her down.”

Peter chose the least uncomfortable-looking of the chairs and perched on it, grateful for the little fire. After a moment, two sets of footsteps on the stairs coming down told him that “Constance” was coming.

“Constance Weatherby, sir,” the little maid said, as if she was a herald announcing the queen’s arrival. Then she gave a little curtsy and left.

“Have you got a key?” Peter quietly asked Susanne. “Can you let yourself back in after the landlady locks up? There are things I would rather not talk about here, and I’m likely to keep you out late.”

“I have a key, and my cloak is still down here in the hall,” she replied, and went to fetch it. “We’re likely to be on at all shifts, here. The landlady is used to us coming and going at all hours.” Peter helped her on with it, and the two of them went out into the blustering night to the waiting cab.

“You don’t mind being taken to my flat, do you?” he asked, as he helped her in and got in next to her. “I promise, I will have Garrick there as a chaperone. He’s as fierce as a dragon.”

“I haven’t a reputation to ruin,” she said with a shrug. “I think I would like to see your flat. It’s probably stuffed full of naughty Hogarth etchings.”

He looked at her curiously, gave the cabby the address, and settled back. “You’re a little chameleon, did you notice? You’ve got no trace of Yorkshire in your speech, and I would reckon that in a few months you’ll sound London-born if you stay here.”

“Thank you, I’d rather not. This is a
wretched
place for an Earth Magician.” She shuddered.

“Well, it’s no joy for Water, either, let me tell you,” he said feelingly.

“But yes, I know, I mean, I know
now,
that I take on the accent of a place. I bartered a favor from one of the Elementals in the Ardennes, a bit of magic to make me ‘speak and understand like a native’ wherever I go—though it takes me a couple weeks to become comfortable with a foreign language.” She chuckled a little. “I suppose this is another case of ‘be careful what you wish for,’ though in my case it doesn’t seem to have done any harm.”

“No, and it can be quite useful.” He hesitated a moment longer, then shrugged. “It certainly will serve to mask your presence. Unfortunately, Alderscroft and I would like to ask you to do the very opposite. I’ll explain when we get to my flat.”

It was no more than a few minutes to reach the flat in any event. Peter paid the cabby and handed her out, and he soon had her settled in a much more comfortable chair with Garrick pouring her a good, strong cup of tea. She sipped it and smiled. “I feel so guilty being in a place like this, when I think of all the men—” she nodded her head eastward.

“And women, too,” Peter pointed out. “There are some nursing sisters at the field hospitals, and their conditions are not much better than the men in the trenches, except that they get canvas tents to keep the rain off. But I know what you mean. I was just enjoying my own slice of guilt with my dinner.” He paused and let her get a little more comfortable.

“If Charles has his memory back . . .” She paused. “I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know what will happen if he does not. But . . .”

He could almost hear her thoughts. And again, he was tempted to tell her just exactly how close Rose and Charles were—it was the kind of closeness that didn’t require constant affirmation, because they both understood, at the level below thought, that they were the completion of each other. Like Maya and his “twin.”

And as Peter sat there and watched those thoughts move behind her eyes, he knew that would be the wrong thing to tell her. It was something she needed to see for herself in order to understand how impossible her infatuation was.

The realization hit him like a body blow, and he almost gasped. But he was an Elemental Master, and disciplined above all; he kept himself steady, and he knew that nothing of what he was thinking or feeling showed on his face.

“If I find myself otherwise at loose ends,” she said slowly. “Once Father is . . . disposed of, of course. Well, I will get properly certified and go back. I cannot in good conscience sit in England in comfort while fine men are suffering so on the Front.”

Oh, well done,
he thought. He was still trying to come to terms with what his heart had just told him, but her words were just a reinforcement that this was
right
. This young woman would never be content to sit and watch—and he could never care for one who would be.

But there were more important things than what he wanted right now. “Well, that rather brings us around to what I wanted to discuss with you.”