Reserved for the Cat (16 page)

“Will he use any of his real magic on stage?” she asked, watching the cat pace up and down the rug.

Well, she would do that. It would be fun.

You should sleep now,
the cat commanded.

She shivered with delicious anticipation, then rang for the maid to help her undress. The cat was right. Tomorrow she would be moving into her new apartment, all her own. She was going to need sleep.

E
LEMENTAL Masters needed a very particular kind of servant. To be precise, they must either be Elemental magicians themselves, or have been aware that magic,
real
magic, was in the world, for most of their lives. Often enough, their servants came from a close-knit group of people who had been serving Elemental mages for centuries.

Or, as now, the servant came with a recommendation.

“So,” Nigel said, looking up from the letter the girl had presented to him. “Sean McLeod says here that you are a Sensitive.” She was a pretty little thing, was Ailse McKenzie: carrot-red hair, green eyes, and clearly as tough as she was tiny. She had good credentials though; she’d served as the ladies’ maid in the shooting season at Sean’s hunting lodge; his guests were all Elemental Masters and magicians and their offspring. She had wide ambitions though, and according to Sean was not content with doing general servants’ work when there were no ladies present. Neither he nor Nigel could blame her; the privileges and pay of a lady’s maid were considerably more elevated than that of a parlor maid.

“If that means I see the wee cratures you gents can call up when ye’ve a mind to, then aye.” The girl’s Scottish accent was not so heavy he couldn’t understand her. Though it might prove difficult for the other party in this equation. Nina might find it difficult to understand her and that could prove a great hindrance. Sadly that was a mark against hiring her.

On the other hand there were many more points in her favor. Nina needed a reliable maidservant, and maids who had experience with magic were not all that thick on the ground. While it was true that Nina herself did no magic, Nina had a talking cat. Eventually a maidservant would notice something odd about the mistress’s pet. If she actually overheard what the cat had to say and believed her “ears,” she would probably run screaming from the house. If she did not actually hear it speaking herself, sooner or later she would notice her mistress having one-sided conversations with her pet.

Then there was the matter of self-defense. This was something every Elemental Master needed to consider if he or she was wealthy enough to employ more than one or two servants. When enemies came calling, they generally did not offer advance warning, nor did they scruple to ask whether or not anyone in the vicinity was an innocent bystander. You could be killed just as dead by Elemental Magic that you could not see and probably would not believe in if you were told about it.

Miss McKenzie would be able to see it, and might have some defense against it. When it came down to cases, anything that had been sent after Nina probably already had her “scent.” If the storm that had wrecked her yacht had been sent after her. . . .

“Mademoiselle Tchereslavsky may be . . .” he paused delicately, “. . . hunted. We are not certain, but the storm that sank the yacht she was on might have been sent to harm her.”

Not entirely to his surprise, because the Scots were a tough race, Miss McKenzie raised her head on her slim neck and looked defiantly down her nose at him. “An’ ye think, a’cause I have never th’ magic of my own, I canna hold my own?” Her eyes blazed fiercely. “Aye, a horse-shoe and a right pair of hobnailed boots will send most of those cratures packing!”

“Miss Tchereslavsky does not speak much English, you know,” he said tentatively.

“Lor’ bless ye, sir, three years in a row now, I tended a lady what never chattered in anything but French, and we managed all right,” the girl said proudly. “I’ll find a way t’ understand her, make no mistake.”

One final thing. “She has a protector,” Nigel said. “It’s her cat.”

“Does it talk?” the girl wanted to know.

“After a fashion.”

“An’ will it talk to me?”

“That, I don’t know. He might.”

“Well!” Miss McKenzie said in triumph. “There you are, then.”

Nigel blinked. Somewhere the conversation had just taken an abrupt turn, and he had missed it. “I beg your pardon?” he ventured. “What exactly did you mean?”

“If it talks,” the girl explained, patiently, as if he was a very slow child, “then she can tell the cat what she needs, and the cat can tell me.”

“Ah.” That very practical application had not occurred to Nigel. “Very well then, your services will be required.” He swiftly negotiated her wages and privileges, and sent her on to the flat with instructions to have the landlord show her in and get everything in readiness for Nina. He then wrote a note to his man, instructing him to pack up Nina’s things and send them to the flat.

As usual, the dancer had gotten up at an hour that would have satisfied the harshest stage director and gone straight to the rehearsal hall. There she would work until noon, stop for a bite and a stroll in the sunshine, then return to the rehearsal hall until dinner-time.

However, he proposed to change that schedule today.

As the hour approached when she usually stopped for her midday meal, he went upstairs to catch her before she left. She was just going through some complicated faradiddle involving a lot of fast, intricate steps, and he paused in the doorway to watch. And not because her short rehearsal skirt showed her legs, either; he saw more than enough of his fill of legs backstage. No, this was the first time he had actually watched her doing anything other than exercises, and he indulged himself in a moment of self-congratulation. He was no judge of ballerinas, but he knew his audiences, and she was by far and away the best dancer that
they
would ever likely see.

She finished the sequence and came down flat-footed in that way that dancers had when they were practicing something and not actually in front of an audience. And only as she was turning around did she catch sight of him in the mirror.

She jumped, her hand going to her throat.
“Blin!”
she exclaimed. “You startle me!”

“Your pardon, Mademoiselle, I certainly didn’t mean to—” he began, but she waved her hand impatiently.

“It is good you are here,”
she said in French.
“There is something I wish you to see.”

She ran to the corner and got what looked to Nigel like a rod of some sort, and nodded to the pianist. “Spring song,
s’il vous plais,”
she said, and as the pianist began what Wolf would surely have snorted at as a “tinkly little melody,” she unfurled a long ribbon from the rod and began to dance with it.

Actually there was a great deal more twirling the ribbon in intricate patterns than there was dancing, but Nigel could easily see that this would be no great concern for his audiences. The eye was drawn to the streamer of silk, which was yards and yards long. It seemed almost alive as she made it draw circles and spirals, twine around her and create elaborate figures in the air. And he could just imagine it with some special stage lighting on it too. . . .

When the pianist ended with a flourish, and so did she, he applauded. She caught up the ribbon and began carefully folding it, looking both flushed and pleased.

“Bien?”
she asked.

“Tres bien,”
he assured her. “I don’t think our people have ever seen anything done like that before.”

“Oh, it is nothing but a little trick, and I could not do the throws and catches, the ceiling here is not high enough. But it looks grand from a distance,”
she replied in French, putting the ribbon and stick up carefully.
“There was a troupe of girls from Switzerland, I think, that performed these things. There is also a hoop, and a ball, and I think both will serve in your production.”

“Anything that looks good from the balcony will sell tickets, Mademoiselle,” he said with pleasure. “Now, I am going to ask you to please forgo your afternoon practice, if you will. I’d like to take you to luncheon, and then to your new flat. It’s all arranged, I’ve had your things sent over, and I just hired you a fine maid to take care of you. She’ll have set everything to rights by the time we get there.”

To his pleasure, she clapped her hands like a child given a sweet. “Monsieur, you are too good to me!” she exclaimed. He flushed, but smiled.

“Save the praises for when you see it all,” he cautioned. “After all, you might not like it!”

The little Scots maidservant answered the door, already looking as if she had been in this place since it was built, her crisp black and white uniform immaculate. “Sir,” she said, with a nod of respect to Nigel. “This would be m’lady then?”

Nigel nodded. “This is Mademoiselle Tchereslavsky. Mademoiselle, this is the young lady I hired for you, Miss McKenzie.”

Ninette elected not to imitate La Augustine this time; the dancer was horrible to her servants. Instead, she gave Miss McKenzie a friendly smile as she stepped for the first time into her own parlor, and made sure the door was not shut in Thomas’s face. Then she looked around, and felt a thrill of sheer delight.

In times of fanciful dreaming she had imagined living somewhere like this. When she daydreamed about being the pet of a rich old man, she had pictured herself in a place virtually identical in every way. Everything about it spoke comfort, not just that the furnishings looked comfortable, which they did, but unlike the boarding house (which was comfort attainable only so long as the money in her purse lasted), or the luxury of Nigel’s flat (which was his, not hers), this place whispered a little message to her.
You will never be cold or hungry again.

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, milady,” the maidservant said once the door was closed, “but there’s a Brownie in the pantry. Did ye wish me to do sommat about him?”

A—what?
Was Ninette’s reaction. What was a Brownie? Some sort of mouse? Or worse still, a rat?

It’s quite all right, McKenzie, I invited him,
said the cat.

“Oh well, it’s all right then. Your pardon for interrupting you,” she said, without turning a hair. “Your pardon, but I was preparing m’lady’s lunch. I shall be in the kitchen if you require me.”

“And I’ll show you about,” said Nigel, looking just a trifle smug.

But Ninette wasn’t ready to be shown her new flat just yet. “She heard you!” she said, in a tone of accusation.

“Very much so,” Nigel replied, and turned to Ninette. “Miss McKenzie is not a magician, but she is able to see the same things that you are. We refer to her abilities as being a ‘Sensitive.’ You will not need to hide anything from her.”

Ninette nodded, with some relief. At least she was not going to have to explain the cat away! “But—how?” she asked in English.

“Our sort of folk need servants, servants we can trust, after all,” Nigel chuckled. “I simply let it be known I needed a maidservant for my famous dancer, and one was forthcoming.”

Somehow she doubted that it was
quite
that simple, but she was willing to let that pass. The tour of the flat took very little time, although the enjoyment she knew she would have in a more leisurely examination of its delights would occupy her for a while to come. When they were finished, Miss McKenzie had a really admirable luncheon laid out for them, which they sat down to enjoy.