A Radical Act of Free Magic

by H. G. Parry

“Yes,” he answered Thornton. “I do. I just don’t know if it’s right. I did mean what I said before, you know. The world is in a mess. And now if things go as we fear from this mutiny…”

  “Is it wrong to fall in love when the world is in a mess? That’s what people have been doing for a very long time. I don’t see that it can get better otherwise.”

  He smiled a little. “So you do think I should propose to her?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you were to do so,” Thornton said. “Before many more weeks have passed.”

  “Yes,” said Wilberforce uncertainly. “Or hours.”

  Thornton blinked and looked at Wilberforce. “Excuse me?”

  “Or minutes, really. I actually meant… today.”

  “Today.” Thornton’s look became a stare. Marianne’s joined him.

  “Yes?” It was strange how quickly his cousin’s opinion made his own falter. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I had considered asking her today.”

  The two Thorntons were silent for almost the entire length of Great Pulteney Street.

  “Wilber,” Thornton said carefully at last. “You know Marianne and I wish very much for you to be married and settled. You know that I myself introduced you to Miss Spooner, believing she might be a good wife for you. You know that I consider her to be a very attractive and modest young Christian woman.”

  “I know all these things, yes.”

  “I would just like to add something.”

  “Please.”

  “You’ve known her for eight days. In that time, you’ve spoken to her twice. Have you completely lost your mind?”

  Wilberforce sighed. It wasn’t exactly unexpected. “You think it’s too soon?”

  “In a word, my dear Wilber, yes.”

  “You’re right. She might reject my proposal after so little acquaintance.”

  “She might,” Thornton agreed. “It’s also far too great a step for you to take without careful thought, consideration, and thorough knowledge of the person in question, however unimpeachable she may seem to be after a few encounters over the space of a week.”

  “You’re absolutely right.” This was good sense. He’d known it all along. But he couldn’t help but feel dejected. “I should wait.”

  “Exactly,” Thornton said, looking relieved. “We’re not saying not to marry her, of course.”

  “I might be, in fact.” Marianne spoke up. “Don’t look at me like that, Henry. She’s a perfectly decent young woman. But you have to admit, she’s rather quiet to be married to someone who rarely has less than four guests in the house.”

  Thornton carried on regardless. “We’re merely suggesting something like eight weeks might be appropriate, not—”

  “I just hope my letter hasn’t been sent.”

  The Thorntons once again exchanged glances. “What letter?” Marianne asked.

  “The letter I wrote to her last night asking for her hand in marriage.”

  “You sent her a letter?”

  “No! I wrote one. But it just occurred to me that I left it on my desk quite near the other letters I wrote to be sent, and that it might have just—”

  “We need,” Thornton said very calmly, “to return to your lodgings immediately.”

  The letter wasn’t there when Wilberforce and the Thorntons reached his desk. Most of his papers were still in the piles he had begun to sort out upon arrival, but there was a small patch of bare wood where his outgoing post had been. Thornton and Marianne kept searching while Wilberforce went to find a servant.

  “It went with the others an hour ago,” Wilberforce said, returning. “The footman remembered the address.”

  “Well, that’s that.” Thornton straightened from the desk drawers. “We could send somebody to try to intercept it, of course, but it’s very likely too late.”

  “Yes.” He tried to examine his feelings about that, the way he might examine a new proposal for a bill in Parliament, and found that he really, truly did not care. The world was crumbling about them. In Portsmouth, the navy was on the point of revolution; in London, conversations were being had in dark corridors that would drive the country further into repression; overseas, the dead were marching across Europe, and a kraken had risen from the depths. This was what people did when the world was in a mess. This, perhaps, was how the world made a little more sense—just enough, perhaps, to give him ground to stand on, and from there he could make the rest better too. Or if he couldn’t, then he could at least do the right thing.

  “I just hope she doesn’t turn me down,” he said.

  Thornton sighed but said nothing.

  Evening was deepening around them as they approached Wilberforce’s lodgings. They had been walking all afternoon, and conversation and the views of flowers and lazy rivers had so calmed him that he was completely unprepared for the butler informing him that he had guests waiting in the parlor.

  “Who?” Thornton asked, before Wilberforce could.

  “A Mr. Spooner and a Miss Spooner, sir,” the butler replied.

  Wilberforce’s heart stopped.

  “Her father must have come from Bristol,” Marianne said, glancing at Thornton significantly.

  He nodded, equally significantly. “That bodes well.”

  “Or he’s come to challenge me to a duel,” Wilberforce said. There seemed to be a good many voices in his head, all of which were screaming.

  “Wilber, businessmen do not challenge perfectly respectable and wealthy gentlemen to duels for making offers of marriage to their daughters,” Thornton said. “Generally they thank them.”

  “Go and talk to the Spooners,” Marianne urged. “Henry and I will wait in your office.”

  Wilberforce shook himself. “Don’t be silly; it might be hours. Go home. I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “We’re not worried about you,” Thornton said. “We just couldn’t bear to wait a moment longer than necessary to find out the details of how you fared.”

  “Shall I tell them you’re here, sir?” the butler asked discreetly.

  “No.” Wilberforce took a deep breath, said a quick and ineloquent prayer, and let it out again. “No, I’ll go myself. Thank you.”

  “Good luck,” Thornton said to him, and Marianne squeezed his hand briefly.

  The parlor was lit by the lights coming from the window and the glow of a fire in the grate. Wilberforce saw with a surge of embarrassment that he’d left almost all the books he’d brought with him spread out over the sofa where he’d been looking at them, so there was no place for a visitor to sit down, and then he saw Miss Spooner standing alone at the window.

  She turned at the same moment. It occurred to him that it was the first time they had ever been alone together, and also the third time they had met.

  “Miss Spooner,” he said foolishly.

  “Mr. Wilberforce,” she said. She glanced around the room, possibly recalling the same things he just had. “My father came with me,” she added. “He wanted to talk to you—he just went to speak to the servant—”

  “I hope you didn’t mind my writing,” he said almost at the same time. “I realize we haven’t known each other very long. My cousin thinks you’ll find me terribly impetuous, but—”

  “Yes,” she interrupted simply.

  “Yes I’m terribly impetuous?”

  She smiled for the first time. “No—well, yes. But I meant, yes. I will marry you.”

  For once, Wilberforce was completely at a loss for what to say or feel. “Well,” he said. “That’s—that’s… Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m very disorganized, you know, and I tend to give away more money than I earn, though I do have a comfortable income. I trust people far too freely, and don’t work nearly so hard as I should, and I am a good deal older than you, and my health isn’t perfect. I also—”

  “Tend to talk a great deal when you’re anxious?” she suggested. Her smile was growing more sure.
<
br />   “Yes! You see, you’ve begun to notice my faults already. And there’s one more thing that I may have misled you about, and it’s partly your fault. I said I might be considering retirement from public life. I will not be. You made me realize that I couldn’t.”

  She frowned. “How did I do that?”

  “Because you were right.” He didn’t know how to say more than that, not yet. If things went well, they would have the rest of their lives to talk about it. “You were right, and I still have work left to do. With all this, are you absolutely certain that you’ll marry me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Despite your faults, and the fact that I was right, I will marry you.” She hesitated, and a flush came over her cheeks as she glanced down. “I want to marry you.”

  Wilberforce felt himself smiling, though at the same time he felt suddenly as solemn as he had ever been. His mind had quieted, and left the hushed silence of stepping into an empty church on a clear day. “Well. That’s wonderful.”

  This is what we do when the world is in a mess. This is how we make the world make sense, so that we can start, again, to make it better.

  If we are very, very fortunate, it works.

  The mutiny had grown far, far worse before it had grown better—or, more accurately, the peaceful mutiny at Spithead had sparked others across the country. One, at Nore, had not been content to strike over pay and working conditions—it fell into the hands of a braceleted fire-mage named Parker, who declared himself President of the Delegates of the Fleet and ordered his ships to blockade the Thames until his increasingly radical demands were met. A flotilla of fifty loyal ships barred their way, leaving London in the midst of a naval civil war that was ended only when Parker attempted to set sail for France and his support finally crumbled away.

  In London, the meetings over the naval mutiny had taken on the character of a recurring nightmare. Forester managed to appear at every one of them, even one that took place on a Sunday, when the Templars were supposed to be at worship, and he was the only one whose energy never flagged when the negotiations stretched late into the night. Pitt hoped his didn’t seem to either, of course, but he was finding he couldn’t quite keep the hours he had kept at twenty-four, and Forester always seemed to be looking at him when he was most inclined to yawn.

  “Not at all,” Forester said, when someone commented that surely being so often at the meetings must be making it difficult for him to attend the dawn prayers at the Temple Church. “I never sleep more than two or three hours a night. I find that perfectly sufficient.”

  “That’s very admirable,” Pitt said politely.

  When Forester and the others had left at four o’clock that morning, he went straight downstairs and gave word to his patient household staff that he was going to bed for at least eight hours, possibly more, and just for once he would truly appreciate not being woken unless a small country was on fire. He was, at least, quite capable of the same levels of pettiness he had managed at twenty-four.

  He came downstairs a little after eleven to find Edward Eliot waiting for him.

  “I’m in town for the day,” Eliot explained. “I could be in town for longer, if I so chose. It’s rather dull in Clapham with Wilberforce and the Thorntons in Bath. Little Harriot’s gone to stay with your mother.”

  “You weren’t honestly told I was only waking up for a small country on fire, were you?”

  “I have no idea what nonsense you’re talking, as usual. I heard the negotiations went late again last night. I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  “That places you in a very select club. Thank you.”

  “Not at all. It was pure habit. I used to share a house with you.”

  “This house, in fact, and I think you’ll agree it hardly qualifies as being forced into close quarters. I probably have people sharing it with me now whom I’ve never met. We probably miss each other in the corridors.”

  “Are you ever lonely here?”

  The question was pointed, but Pitt avoided the point. “I’m not usually given the opportunity. I had half the cabinet, two admirals, and the King’s Magician here until a few hours ago. I’m very glad to see you, though.”

  He meant it, for reasons more than strictly selfish. Eliot’s health had been fragile lately—in many ways, he had never recovered from Harriot’s death. From the looks of things, he was feeling stronger. Certainly, as the two of them breakfasted on toast and tea as the sun streamed through the window, his appetite had returned. Most of the navy had returned to active duty, Pitt was able to reassure him, while in the meantime a few loyal ships were still bravely sailing off Gibraltar, tricking the French into believing there was a whole fleet just waiting to tackle the kraken. (It was illusory magic, usually performed on the stage, the work of a water-mage and a weather-mage bending light. It was possible France had been doing the same for years and both sides had far fewer ships than they pretended.)

  “By the way,” Eliot said as he took the last piece of toast. His hesitance caught Pitt’s attention at once. “This is probably the last thing on your mind, but… Well, have you seen the papers today?”

  Pitt frowned and put his teacup down. “No… Should I?”

  “Well…” Eliot said uncertainly, and winced as Pitt snatched up the paper from the table in front of him.

  He saw instantly what Eliot meant, and his heart chilled.

  On the sixth page, well after the reports of the mutiny, was a quarter-page political caricature. Pitt was used to seeing himself depicted in variously unflattering degrees of caricature: it was an occupational hazard. Fox collected his and put the best ones up in his study. In fact, he might even have been cutting out this one as Pitt looked; he was indeed featured in the corner, in devil’s guise and gnashing his teeth in rage.

  Pitt was not, however, used to seeing himself in caricature arm in arm with a beautiful woman. He was especially not used to seeing himself and a beautiful woman heading toward a wedding bower.

  He knew who the young woman was, of course. Her name was Lady Eleanor Eden—the biblical imagery made this quite clear. She was the eldest daughter of Lord Auckland, and a very promising alchemist. Pitt had met her frequently since her family had bought the estate next to his own, and in the last year the acquaintance had deepened into real friendship, based on their mutual love of books and trees and riding the paths between their two properties even in weather considered less than ideal. He wasn’t naive: he knew her family probably wanted more than friendship from him. Whatever the papers liked to snigger when he hadn’t done anything else to warrant mockery, he was very aware that women existed outside his own family, and that some of them were very attractive. But it had never really been something he had had time or inclination to make a study of, given the limitations of a predominately male social circle and the country being at war. Eleanor was clever, thoughtful, and kind; those were the terms on which he took her, and she herself had never given any signs of wanting to be seen as anything else. He had not given thought to anything further.

  But he’d known others had, or he should have. And now, apparently, the whole country would.

  “They’re quite positive about it,” Eliot offered. “They seem to think marriage will improve your political standing. That’s why Fox is—”

  “Gnashing his teeth, yes, I can see that,” Pitt interrupted, more tersely than he meant. He shook his head. “This is ridiculous. I’m not getting married.”

  “There has been some talk about it for a while,” Eliot said.

  “I know, because I have actually been spending time in the company of a woman and it makes a nice change from sniggering that I don’t know what a woman is. But for them to do that to her—”

  “They’ve only implied she’s marrying you,” Eliot pointed out. “I’m no judge myself, but I’ve been assured you’re not quite a shabby enough romantic prospect for her to be completely horrified.”

  “Are you smiling?”

  “It’s a serious frown, but I put
it on backward.”

  “Well, straighten it.” Pitt took a deep breath, trying to find the whole thing as amusing as Eliot did. It was funny, in a certain light. He had barely looked at the poor young woman, only talked to her, and apparently he had looked and talked just a little too long, and now it was national news. He would have found it very funny, if it had happened to somebody else. Or, perhaps, with somebody else. “She’ll know it’s ridiculous, at least.”

  “Maybe she will, but her father doesn’t,” Eliot said, more soberly. “I spoke to him only the other day, and he implied that an offer was imminent. Apparently you and his daughter hold each other in mutual esteem, and an alliance between the two families would be a great thing.”

  “We do—it possibly would—but…” Pitt trailed off, looking at the paper. His hands had tightened around it and crumpled the edges; he forced them to relax. “This is too far.”

  “I agree,” Eliot said. “So why not simply marry her?”

  Pitt’s head whipped around, and he fixed his gaze on him. “I’m sorry?”

  “Don’t give me the look you give members of the opposition. I’ve never met Lady Eleanor, but I’ve heard she’s sensible and clever, which would suit you excellently. You’re a human being. You clearly like her a great deal, because you don’t talk to people you don’t like. Marry her.”

  “I wish I could,” Pitt said, and wondered immediately if he meant it. He couldn’t tell at the moment. He felt sick, and he wished he hadn’t eaten quite so much. “Eliot, would you excuse me for a moment? I have to write a letter.”

  “Of course.” Eliot hesitated. “By the way, have you heard of Wilberforce’s engagement?”

  “No, I haven’t. To whom?”

  “A Miss Barbara Spooner, apparently. Twenty years of age, pure Commoner, the third of ten children of a Birmingham businessman. I met Thornton in town: he’s recently returned from Bath. The Babingtons introduced them there. Thornton tells me she’s very handsome. I think it’s the only thing he really knows about her.”

  “They were introduced in Bath?” Pitt asked. “But I thought Wilberforce only went to Bath two weeks ago.”