by Emily Larkin
Miss Toogood frowned at this answer.
“But I’ll tell you what we do know,” Octavius said hastily. “We don’t know how or why we got a Faerie godmother, or even when, but it happened centuries ago. She comes on our twenty-fifth birthdays and grants us one wish.” He shivered in memory. “She’s not nice. In fact, she’s quite terrifying.”
Miss Toogood’s eyebrows lifted. “Terrifying?”
Octavius nodded. So did Dex.
“There are restrictions on what we can wish for. Grandfather sets boundaries, but Baletongue does, too—that’s what we call her: Baletongue. No one knows her real name.”
“I don’t think humans are meant to know that Faeries exist,” Dex said. “Let alone know their names.”
Octavius continued: “Baletongue sets limits on our gifts. For example, I can only change into creatures that exist in real life. I can’t become a gryphon or a hydra or a dragon. And Baletongue can’t grant wishes that are too big, either. Our Uncle Tertius wished for an end to warfare, but Baletongue said it was beyond the extent of her powers. So he wished for no more famines, and she said that was beyond her powers, too. Then he wished for an end to slavery and she said she couldn’t do that, either.”
Miss Toogood frowned thoughtfully, and nodded.
“Grandfather’s restrictions are different. He makes us swear not to choose wishes that harm anyone or raise us above other people, and that’s because of his mother. Her wish went wrong and four people died, and Grandfather won’t let anything like that happen again.”
“How did it go wrong?”
He pulled a face. “She made a wish that Baletongue didn’t like, and Baletongue punished her—and that’s another thing you need to know about Faeries: they hate humans and if they can harm us, they will. One of our ancestors was deaf in one ear and she wished not to be, but she phrased it wrong. Instead of saying ‘I want to be able to hear with both ears,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to be deaf in one ear,’ and Baletongue made her deaf in both ears.”
Miss Toogood’s eyebrows rose.
“It’s true,” Octavius said. “At least, we think it is. My great-grandmother had a journal that’s been passed down through the family, and it’s written in that. But Grandfather says we can’t trust that everything in it’s true. He can hear lies when they’re spoken, but he can’t see them when they’re written.”
Miss Toogood nodded thoughtfully.
“Our great-grandmother chose a wish that Baletongue didn’t like, and the punishment was that Grandfather became Duke of Linwood that very day. But he was fifth in line, so four people died. Two of them were children.”
“My goodness.” Miss Toogood raised one hand to her throat. “Your great-grandmother must have felt dreadful.”
Octavius exchanged a glance with Dex. “Actually, she was quite pleased to have that wish granted.”
“Pleased?”
“She wasn’t a very nice person. Grandfather says she had no conscience at all. But he does have a conscience, and so do we. All of us.”
Miss Toogood lowered her hand.
“We know that how things are isn’t how they’re meant to be.” Octavius gestured at himself and his cousin. “We shouldn’t have what we have. Grandfather shouldn’t be a duke. Dex and I should have to work for a living, go into the army or the church, but we don’t because we’ve been lucky—at the expense of other people’s lives. Children’s lives.”
Miss Toogood nodded soberly.
“Grandfather says we must never forget what happened and that it’s our responsibility, as a family, to make certain nothing similar happens again. And we will make certain of it. All of us. And we’ll make certain that our children do, too. And their children.”
“Amen,” Dex said, under his breath.
“Your grandfather sounds . . . admirable.”
“He is,” Octavius said. “He has more integrity than anyone I’ve ever met.” He paused, and then added, “He is little intimidating, though.”
Dex huffed a laugh. “That he is.”
Octavius looked at Miss Toogood hopefully. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “So, everyone in your family has a magic gift?”
Octavius shook his head. “The wishes used to go to the female line only—for centuries it was only the women who received them—but Great-grandmother decided to transfer it to the male line. That was the wish that made Baletongue angry. She doesn’t like humans and she particularly doesn’t like men, so she punished Great-grandmother and killed four people. Except that Great-grandmother didn’t think it a punishment.”
Miss Toogood stared at him, a faintly bemused expression on her face. “Tell me if I’ve understood this correctly: it used to be only the women who got wishes and now it’s only the men?”
“Yes.” He waited a beat, and then said, “Is there anything else you’d like to know?”
Miss Toogood thought for a moment. “How many people know about this?”
“No one outside the immediate family.”
Miss Toogood’s head tilted slightly to one side. “How many is that, though? You’re a large family.”
“Our family’s large now, but it didn’t use to be. One daughter per generation.”
“Uncle Tertius went back through Great-grandmother’s family tree and he couldn’t find any other branches,” Dex said. “To the best of our knowledge, it’s just us.”
Octavius nodded. “Our mothers know, of course, and Grandmother and Dex’s sister, but that’s it.” He risked a faint, hopeful smile at her. “And now you.”
“I find it hard to believe that no one else is aware of your abilities, given that you’re so indiscreet about using them,” Miss Toogood said, a little tartly.
Octavius felt his face flush. It had been extremely indiscreet of him to change his shape in the shrubbery. Grandfather would flay him alive if he ever found out. “We’re usually very careful,” he assured Miss Toogood. “Grandfather makes us promise to take every possible precaution.”
He hadn’t taken precautions today, though. He’d been rash and irresponsible.
“We thought you weren’t coming,” he offered as both an explanation and an apology. Or perhaps it was an excuse.
“Lord Newingham told me you were in the rose garden,” Miss Toogood said.
Octavius shook his head. “Shrubbery.” Curse Bunny and his sieve of a brain. This mess was all his fault.
Except that it wasn’t Newingham’s fault at all. It was his own stupid fault for changing shape in the shrubbery, where anyone might see him.
“What were you doing?” Miss Toogood asked. “Why did you look like . . . like that?”
“Because we want to scare the baron. I can’t be Medusa or a harpy, so Dex thought maybe I could be a crone.”
Miss Toogood’s forehead creased slightly.
“We want to put the fear of God in him,” Octavius explained. “I’ll be a housemaid, and when Rumpole accosts me Dex will lift him off the ground and hold him there. I’ll change into someone frightening and threaten him with a dreadful fate. Rumpole will think it’s the hand and voice of God, and with any luck he’ll be so scared he’ll never do it again.”
Miss Toogood nodded thoughtfully.
“We’re having difficulty deciding who I should turn into. I need to be human, so I can speak, and female, because I’ll be wearing maid’s clothes, and scary, because we want to terrify him. A crone’s the best we’ve come up with.” He shrugged.
Miss Toogood thought for several seconds, and then said, “What about one of his dead wives? Or his mother?”
Octavius stared at her for a long moment, speechless, and then turned to Dex. “That’s who I’ll be. His wife or his mother. It’ll scare the daylights out of him.”
Dex grinned. It was a particularly wolfish expression. “I like it.”
“There are portraits of both his wives in the gallery here,” Miss Toogood said. “And his mother.�
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Octavius turned back to her. “You’re the most clever woman in all England,” he declared.
Miss Toogood turned ever so faintly pink.
“Are there any suits of armor here?” Dex asked. “Because I think we need a sword, too. To give our threat teeth.”
Miss Toogood shook her head. “Not that I’ve seen, but there might be one somewhere.”
“Doesn’t matter if there isn’t one,” Octavius said buoyantly. “We’ll scare the stuffing out of Rumpole.”
“Rumpole, certainly,” Dex said. “But what about the valet? We don’t know what his mother looked like, or even if she’s dead.”
“Valet?” Miss Toogood said.
“Rumpole’s valet attacked me the other night,” Octavius told her. “Well, not me me, but the housemaid he thought I was.”
Her eyebrows rose. “He attacked you?”
“Attacked,” Octavius repeated, rubbing the lump he’d acquired on his head when the man had thrown him against the wall. “He was more violent than Rumpole. In fact, of the two of them, I think the valet’s the most dangerous.”
“You do?” Dex said dubiously.
Octavius rubbed the lump again, remembering the speed and viciousness of the valet’s attack. “Yes. Rumpole manhandled me at Vauxhall, but he thought I was a lightskirt. With the maids, he’s used threats of dismissal rather than violence. But the valet grabbed me without warning and hit me hard enough to make me see stars. If I truly had been a female, I’d have been hard-pushed to fight him off.”
There was a long moment of silence. Octavius heard bees humming in the shrubbery, heard leaves rustle in the breeze, heard the burble of the creek. “They’re predators,” he said. “Both of them, Rumpole and his valet, but one of them’s a fat, old fool and the other one isn’t. The valet’s more dangerous.”
“Then we should use a sword for the valet,” Dex said. “Even if we don’t use one for Rumpole.”
“Use a sword?” Miss Toogood said.
“Only as a threat,” Octavius hastened to clarify. “We won’t hurt him. You have my word.” Although the valet would undoubtedly be the better for a little castration.
“And my word,” Dex said. “Grandfather would have our guts for garters if we used magic to harm anyone.”
Miss Toogood studied Octavius’s face for a moment, and then Dex’s, and what she saw must have satisfied her, for she nodded. Octavius took a few seconds to study her, too. She didn’t look wary or mistrustful any longer. She looked alert and curious. Interested.
Some of the tension in his chest eased. Interested was good, wasn’t it? Interested meant Miss Toogood didn’t think that he and his magic were evil.
Interested meant he still had a chance, that if he asked for her hand in marriage she might—possibly—consider it.
But he wasn’t going to ask her today.
He might have been stupid enough to change shape where Miss Toogood could see him, but he wasn’t stupid enough to ask her to marry him immediately afterwards. Not when he’d frightened her so badly that she’d run from him.
He rubbed his hands over his knees and said cautiously “So, are we good, Miss Toogood?” He didn’t know precisely what he meant by “good,” but Miss Toogood seemed to understand, for she nodded. Not a tentative nod, but a firm nod, the nod of someone who didn’t think that he and Dex were evil.
More of the tension in his chest eased. “Would you mind showing us the portrait gallery?”
Chapter Twenty
Pip looked in at the schoolroom, where she found the girls showing Lord Newingham the gift they were making for their half brother’s birthday—a pair of embroidered slippers, the left slipper being embroidered by Fanny and the right by Edie. “By Jove!” Newingham was saying. “They’re capital. Absolutely capital!” Then he caught sight of the three of them in the doorway. “Oh, hello. What are you lot doing up here?”
“We’re going to look at the family portraits,” Pip said. “Would you like to come?”
The viscount and the girls did indeed wish to come, so the six of them trooped down one flight of stairs to the gallery, a long, gloomy room hung with a great many portraits of a great many people.
“Here’s Mother!” Edie cried, running ahead and pointing to a painting.
Pip had seen the painting when she’d first come to Hampshire, but she examined it again. There was the baron, with his scowling eyebrows and sulky mouth, stout and red-faced and unattractive, and there was his second wife, and there was his son.
“Lord, but she looks young,” Mr. Pryor said. “How old was she when she married Rumpole?”
“Seventeen,” Newingham said. His voice was grim. When Pip glanced at him she saw that his jaw was grim, too. “And twenty-one when she died.”
She looked back at the painting. Amelia Rumpole’s face was round and pale, her eyes hazel, her hair dark blonde. “Is this a good likeness?” she asked.
“Of Amelia? No.”
Pip was aware of the Pryor cousins exchanging a glance. “Are there any other paintings of her?” Lord Octavius asked.
There were two others: one of Amelia Rumpole sitting at a writing table, looking insipid, and one of her holding an infant.
“That’s me,” Edie said proudly.
“I was there, too,” Fanny said. “Inside her.”
Mr. Pryor smothered a laugh.
“Which is the best likeness?” Lord Octavius asked.
“Not that one,” Newingham said, with a gesture at the painting with the writing table. “Doesn’t look like Amelia at all.” He turned to the other portrait. “This one does, though.” There was a note in his voice that Pip’s ears identified as sadness. She glanced at him. He was staring at the portrait of his sister, the set of his mouth regretful. He misses her, Pip realized.
“Were you close in age?” she asked.
“She was four years older than me, but it seemed like more.” Newingham hesitated, and then said, “My mother died when I was a boy. Amelia helped to raise me. She was more my mother than my sister.”
“Archie says she was his mother, too!” Fanny piped up. “Even though she really wasn’t. But she used to sing to him and tell him stories and cuddle him and kiss him good-night.”
Newingham smiled down at the girl. “Your mother loved children, and she had the kindest heart of anyone I’ve ever known.”
Pip examined the portrait. Amelia Rumpole hadn’t been beautiful, any more than Newingham was handsome—their faces were too round, their noses too short—but they both had good hearts, and the girls had inherited those three things: round faces, short noses, good hearts.
She walked back to the portrait of Amelia Rumpole with her husband and stepson. Archibald Rumpole had his father’s sandy hair, but that appeared to be all he’d inherited from the man. He looked slender and timid.
He has a good heart, too, Pip thought, looking at the boy’s pale face. Archibald Rumpole was going to be a clergyman, not a bully, and he wanted to help people, not harm them—and those things could probably be attributed to Amelia, because she’d been his mother for four years, and she’d loved him and shaped his character and taught him how to be compassionate, not cruel.
Someone came to stand next to her. She glanced sideways, expecting to see Lord Octavius, but it was Newingham.
“My father gambled away his fortune,” he said, staring at the painting. “And then recouped it all by selling Amelia to the highest bidder.”
Pip listened to the bitter note in his voice, and returned her gaze to the portrait. “When did your father die?”
“Six months after she married Rumpole.” Newingham’s voice was even more bitter.
Pip looked at the girl in the painting. “I’m sorry.”
“Amelia’s loss, my gain,” Newingham said flatly. “I inherited a lot of money.”
Pip considered that statement, then shook her head. “Archibald’s gain, too. He deserved to have a loving mother, even if only for a few years.”
Pip shook her head again.
Newingham looked past her, to where the others stood. He frowned. “The girls . . .”
Pip waited a moment. When he didn’t speak, she prompted: “The girls?”
Newingham’s frown deepened. “I wish . . .”
Pip never found out what the viscount wished, because Edie called out gleefully, “We’re going to look for suits of armor!”
They found two suits of armor, both carrying battle-axes. The axes were great unwieldy things with spikes for stabbing and huge, curved blades. Mr. Pryor prized one from the gauntlet that gripped it. “Oof,” he said. “Heavy.” He swung it in a short, wobbly arc, then exchanged a glance with his cousin and shook his head.
Edie and Fanny clamored to wield the battle-ax, too.
Pip opened her mouth to turn down this request—but Newingham beat her to it. “You have to be eighteen before you can swing a battle-ax,” he said, loudly and cheerfully. “Law of the land.” He winked at Pip. “But come and feel how heavy it is before we put it back.”
Pip watched Newingham supervise the girls, letting them hold the great, blackened handle while the vicious spike rested on the floor. She hoped the ax had never been used in battle, hoped that no one had been spitted by that spike or hacked open by that blade.
“Do you wish to try, Miss Toogood?” Newingham asked.
Pip picked the ax up briefly—it was heavy—then gave it to Lord Octavius. He hefted it in one hand. “Nothing subtle about this, is there?”
Pip shook her head. No, there was nothing subtle about the ax. It was a tool forged purely to maim and to kill.
Lord Octavius wedged the ax back into the gauntlet’s grip.
“What shall we do next?” Mr. Pryor asked. “I know! Let’s explore the attics.”
They spent an hour in the vast, dusty expanse of the Rumpole attics. There were no more suits of armor and no swords. When the last corner had been investigated and the last trunk prized open, the girls went back to the schoolroom to embroider slippers and the men went downstairs to read newspapers or play billiards or whatever it was that young noblemen did on Sunday afternoons. Pip sat at her desk and tried to marshal her thoughts into some kind of order. They felt as tangled as a briar patch, and it wasn’t just her thoughts that were tangled; her emotions were, too. This new knowledge was simply too huge and too shocking to make sense of.