The Wizard of London (41 page)

But
they did not blaze for him, though they might have had he taken a different
path.

There
it was: what he had lost, written plain.

And
in some forgotten corner of his mind, he knew that he had hoped, with the
knowledge of how many of his peers had kept women, that he could get it back,
so long as she had not given her heart to Frederick Harton.

Somehow
he would have cut her free and married her. Though in that dark corner the
baser part of him might have toyed with the notion of making her his mistress,
he knew now that he would never have settled for such a tawdry solution. No, if
it had been possible to have this woman, it would have been aboveboard.

Oh,
it would have caused some difficulties. A man married to a divorcee was
unlikely to be made Prime Minister—
if anyone knew his wife was once
divorced
.

And
even though he knew the cause was lost, he couldn’t help tracing out
those ways in his mind, as if he was probing at a sore tooth. There were ways
around that, trivial for someone with the Power of an Elemental Master and the
money of an Alderscroft. Records could be destroyed, memories altered. No one
need ever know—not even she; with certain spells he could erase the
memory of Frederick Harton entirely from her mind. Paying off Harton himself to
go lose himself in the wilds of Canada or the fastnesses of the Himalayas would
have not even made a significant dent in the Alderscroft fortunes.

But
it would not happen. A marriage of convenience could be erased. A marriage of
hearts, minds, and souls could not be.

And
such a marriage did not allow for any other parties nor any other ties. He had
lost her for all time.

There
was only one way to retrieve his dignity; to tell a part of the truth, before
she guessed at that other, hidden truth.

“Actually,
the truth of the matter is that this is not a social call. It is one esoteric
colleague calling upon the expertise of another. I encountered something
curious, and you were the only person near enough that might be able to explain
it,” he said, gathering his dignity about him and allowing her veiled
slur to slide past his own icy calm. “Besides paying a courtesy call, I
wished to call upon you as a consultant of sorts.”

Her
expression did not change as he described the nature spirit to her—though
he took care not to describe the circumstances under which it had appeared, nor
the creature’s threats.

Her
face turned grave. “You would be wise not to meddle with him,” she
replied. “He is older than you can guess. The country folk call him Robin
Goodfellow—”

“Good
gad!” he exclaimed, startled. “Surely not!”

“Surely,
for I have encountered him, too,” she replied, with warning clear in her
tone. “And Shakespeare did not do him any kind of justice. He is to this
land what Attic Pan was to Greece and Sylvanus to Rome. You meddle with him at
your peril—”

Now,
this made him angry, though he held his anger down firmly. “You meddle
with him at your peril,” indeed! It was like something out of a
poorly-written novel. What nonsense!

He
had been so fixated on his conversation that he must not have noticed that the
threatening storm had become actuality, for suddenly, Isabelle’s warning
was punctuated, as with an exclamation point, by a bolt of lightning striking
an ancient oak immediately outside the library windows, with a simultaneously
deafening crash of thunder.

They
both jumped; Isabelle clutched at the bookshelves, and he dropped the book he
had been unconsciously holding, his heart racing.

His
first thought—which he immediately dismissed—was that it had been a
warning to echo Isabelle’s. It wasn’t. It was purest coincidence.
There was no reason, no reason at all, to think anything otherwise.

It
took him a moment to recover; another to pick up the book he had dropped. By
that time he thought he knew what he was going to say.

But
the conversation was interrupted by the intrusion of—of all
things—that wretchedly defiant little girl child, easy enough to identify
even in the storm gloom by the raven that rode on her shoulder and glared at
him with bright, shining eyes.

“Mem’sab,
the lightning frighted the babies half to death an’ they won’t stop
cryin’ and the ayahs tol’ me to come get you.” He felt the
force of truth behind the words, but he also felt the force of something else.
The girl really disliked
him
and was fiercely happy to be the cause of
interrupting the conversation he was having with her schoolmistress.

Nor
did Isabelle seem at all displeased by the interruption. “You’ll
pardon me, I am sure,” she said, with absolute formality. “But my
duties to my charges in this case are something I cannot leave to anyone else.
I am sure I can extend the hospitality of Highleigh to you for as long as the
rain lasts. You may find research into the books on that shelf—”
she pointed, “—to be fruitful, especially in light of what you just
told me. You’ll forgive me, I am sure, if I do not make a formal farewell
and leave you in the hands of the servants.”

And
with that, she turned and followed the infuriating little girl out of the room.

Once
again, he found himself struggling against anger, and only by invoking the disciplines
that Cordelia had taught him was he able to regain his self-control.

That,
too, made him angry. Oh, this was the first
and last
encounter with
Isabelle Harton that he was going to have! He should have known better than to
come here in the first place. There was a reason, a good one, why he had broken
off the nascent relationship with the woman. Cordelia had been right. Anyone
who could invoke such strong emotions in him potentially had a hold over him
that he did not need nor want. No, what he needed was control, absolute and
complete. He had been an idiot to even think about having any connection to a
woman that went past mutual regard and a calm and rational assessment of how
each could supply what the other required for a reasonably comfortable life.
Marriages of convenience—much better, much more logical than marriages of
emotion. Emotion sapped control and self-control and no Elemental Master had
any business in allowing that loss of control to happen.

He
had no choice but to remain while the storm raged—but he did not have to
follow her suggestion to do further research into the nature of the creature
that had accosted him. He already knew enough, now. His suspicions had been
confirmed, and as irritating as it was to be challenged, then beaten by a
Nature Spirit, this one had millennia of power behind him, and he knew,
intellectually, that to pit himself against Robin Goodfellow was as foolish as
going out and howling defiance at the storm outside. And really, why should he?
There was no profit in it. No sense in any sort of confrontation.

He
did not, however, have to like that revelation. But he needed to keep his
emotional reaction to a minimum, or that, too, would cause a loss of control.

Nor
did he have to like the fact that Isabelle Harton had also had an encounter or
encounters with the spirit, and presumably had not gotten a similar warning.

So,
petty as it was, he did the only thing in his power at the moment. Instead of
researching among the books Isabelle had indicated, he selected a novel and set
himself in a chair at the window to read it. Or at least, pretend to read it.

And
the moment the sky cleared, he summoned a servant to fetch his horse, and was
gone.

***

With
her experiment a success, Cordelia had no further need for the second orphan.
She was, in fact, debating what to do with him when fate itself presented the
solution in the form of a tap on the door of her study by the housekeeper.

“Beggin’
your pardon, milady, but I’d like to know if you’ve got any plans
for the future of that boy,” the woman said, without preamble. No need to
ask “what boy,” since there was only one on the premises.

“Well,
I had originally thought to make him a page…” She allowed her voice
to trail off, leaving it for the housekeeper to determine that Cordelia now had
some doubts about the wisdom of that plan.

The
housekeeper jumped on the opening, and shook her head. “You’re
kindness itself, milady, but that boy—there’s only so much polish
you can put on a lump of coal, milady. Might be shiny, but ‘tis still a
lump of coal, and that boy is never going to make a good page, and I
don’t need another head in the household that does naught but run
errands. He’s simple, milady, and that’s a fact. Not so bad to have
a simpleton boy about, but a simpleton
man
, that’s another
kettle of herring.”

Cordelia
smiled benignly. “Mrs.Talbot, you would not have come up here to speak to
me about one little boy if you did not already have a solution in hand. What is
it?”

The
housekeeper relaxed visibly. “The sweep’s here,” she said—which
statement did not precisely follow, but Cordelia waited for elaboration.
“Seems he’s not got an apprentice. Boy’s been following him
about, does what he’s told, and he’s small and likely to stay so.
Sweep asked where the boy was from and wants to know if you’d
‘prentice him out.”

“Ah.”
Cordelia nodded. It made perfect sense. Chimney sweeps’ apprentices had
shortened life spans; between falls and the unhealthy effects of crawling
through tiny, soot-and-tar-laden chimneys, the number of apprentices that
actually made it as far as becoming full-fledged chimney sweeps was exceedingly
small. Sweeps were always looking for nimble, undersized boys.

The
housekeeper had been more than a bit shaken by the death of the first boy, and
was also getting a bit tired of having the second underfoot as well as losing
the services of a perfectly capable housemaid for as long as the boy required a
nanny. She had already registered one or two mild complaints with Cordelia on
the subject. Now, if ever, was the opportunity to tidy up.

“I
believe you have hit upon the perfect solution, Mrs.Talbot!” she said,
earning a smile of relief from her housekeeper.

And
that brought the household neatly back to normal. The boy was taken away, his
nanny returned to her normal duties, and afternoon quiet settled over the town
house.

Now
was a good time for Cordelia to retire to her workroom. Perhaps the Ice Wurms
would be able to do something about those little girls… in any event, it
was time to put her plans for David into motion.

She
lit the lamps—magically, of course—shut the door and sealed herself
inside. With a word and a breath, she called up the chill, and the water in the
air condensed into a mist, and she waited for it to settle into the forms of
her Ice Wurms.

But
it didn’t.

Instead,
it spread itself in a single even layer on the marble top of the worktable and
then—

Then
there was ice. A thin film of ice that turned the surface of the table into a
mirror, which reflected her face for an instant, and then reflected something
else entirely.

She
stared, mesmerized, into colorless eyes that took up the entire surface of the
worktable, and which stared back at her in some amusement.

So
,
said a voice she had not heard in a very long time in her head.
You have
found a way to achieve your desire. Your dream of power. Congratulations
.

She
shook herself loose from the fascination of those eyes. “And if I
have?” she replied. “I can’t see that it would matter to
you.”

Oh,
but it does
, said the voice.
Very much so. As a mere female you were
vaguely interesting, even amusing, but as a man you will have the reins of
power in your hands. That makes you more than interesting, it makes you worth
bargaining with in earnest
.

Bargaining?
Now her curiosity was more than merely piqued.

But
the first step in successful bargaining was to never show any interest.

“What
do you want?” she asked.

Mostly
an agent, a foothold. An opening into your world, and freedom from this cage in
which I have been confined
.

Aha!
So the creature
had
been imprisoned where she found it!

“And
what could you offer me that I would want?” she replied.

It laughed.
Let
me show you
—

SHE had not wanted to
see David. Not ever again. She had thought that it was all over and done with
when he appeared at the school and Frederick spoke to him.

She
had thought that she had all her resentment, her hurt, and her anger over and
done with, too, long ago. It should have been. She should have been past all
this. There was no reason why he should still have been able to affect her.

She
had been wrong. And she wasn’t entirely sure that the lightning strike
right outside the windows had been “accidental.” Give the amount of
wild magic in play here, the number of arcane entities simply appearing, and
the feeling she had that this was both a nexus for powers and a place where
they manifested easily, that bolt from the heavens might merely have been her
reaction to David’s presence.

Which
meant that truly, her anger was not under control, it was merely being locked
in place.

Not
good. Not for a Warrior of the Light.

She
could not afford to have uncontrolled anger. She could not afford to let this
man unbalance her.

She
thought, given the circumstances, that she had comported herself well. No
longer the tongue-tied teenager when confronted with conflict, she had remained
at least outwardly composed. Her words had been civilized. Her manners had been
impeccable. He was the one who had acted poorly, if anyone had. She had even
given him good advice, not that she expected him to take it. The more she thought
about it, the more certain she was that he had had no idea of just how angry
she had been with him.