Falmouth stalks off toward the inn’s front door, swearing under his breath.
“Not that way,” Frey snaps. “You won’t be staying under my roof tonight, so just you walk on. The Green Lion in Taunton might take you. I’ll send your menservants along come morning.”
Falmouth stops for a moment and his shoulders go stiff, as if he’s about to protest, or turn and threaten Frey, but she speaks once more and there’s a deadly seriousness to her words.
“Walk. On.”
At last, Falmouth does as he’s told. It’s not until he’s half a mile down the lane that Frey turns to me.
“Alright, Violet?”
I nod shakily.
“Good.” Frey tucks her pistol into the band of her apron and sets her hands on her hips. “Now listen closely, because I’ll tell you this once, and you’d do well to remember. There are some men in this world you can play against and win—who’ll keep to the rules and grumble if you best them, but do no more. There are others you will only ever lose to, even if it seems like you’ve won for a moment. Learn to see them coming, and keep out of their way.”
“Thank you, Frey,” I tell her. “I’m not sure what he would have done if you hadn’t come along.”
She shrugs. “I’ve got a sense for trouble, and I generally turn up when I’m needed. You go straight home, then, Vi.”
Frey stands in the shadow of the doorway and watches as I walk down the lane, in the opposite direction from that the Duke of Falmouth was forced to take. But my hands tremble and my throat aches and I don’t feel truly safe until brambles twine shut behind me and I’m back on the grounds of my beloved House.
I make it to the jacaranda before I stumble and fall to my knees and sob. Burleigh wraps me in arms of ivy and grows a bed of moss beneath me, while the wind whispers wordless, comforting things in the branches overhead. When my tears are spent, a pale aurora paints itself across the sky. I lie still as a stone and watch it for a very long time, and I have never felt so hopeless or, in spite of Burleigh’s presence, so alone.
17
IT’S NOT EVEN DAWN YET WHEN I WAKE TO SOMEONE knocking determinedly at my door. My heart leaps—Jed’s left the House by this time of day and Mira never knocks.
I tumble out of bed, pulling my dressing gown on as I go.
“Wyn—”
But his name dies on my lips. It’s Esperanza standing in the hallway, neat as a fashion plate in her riding habit.
“I’m off to Bath,” she tells me, everything about her brisk and businesslike. “Somebody’s going to have to convince my father that Falmouth’s being an absolute boor about Burleigh, and I’m the best person for the job. But I’m leaving you Alfred, in case you need anything, and in case anything new comes up. I think we’re close, though, darling—we’ve got a list of two dozen port towns in Cornwall that my father apparently visits every time he’s about to leave England. And maybe I can winkle something out of Falmouth while I’m in Bath.”
She kisses my cheek and I catch a breath of her jasmine scent.
“Espie,” I say. “Be careful, won’t you? Falmouth, he’s—”
“Oh, believe me, I know,” Esperanza answers. “But I’m quite clever, as it turns out, and I know the most shocking things about that hideous man. Secrets that would severely dent his reputation if they came to light.”
I shake my head. I don’t know how she manages, in her world of espionage and underhanded dealings and perpetual gossip. I’d wither and die if I had to live that way.
“Where on earth do you get your information?” I ask.
Esperanza waves a dismissive hand. “From all the girls at court, of course. No one takes us girls seriously, so we make the most wonderful spies. Now I’ve got to be going if I’m to beat Falmouth into Bath. Be good. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”
And then she’s gone, as quickly as she came.
I walk over to the window seat and pull Papa’s ledger onto my lap, not so much because I intend to look through it at the moment but from force of habit. Though I leaf through the pages, I can’t concentrate. The eastern sky is growing grey, and after a few minutes of restless fidgeting I dress hastily, then slip out of the House.
The back woods are misty and green, though patches of mortar pockmark the forest floor. Birds sing in the trees overhead and a few bluebells still hold their bloom.
“Wyn?” I call as I wander here and there, not bothering to keep to the path. “Are you there, Wyn?”
I don’t really hope to find him. The truth is, he’s been on his way out since I got home—I think I just delayed the process. But I can’t reconcile myself to his absence until I’ve looked everywhere, and left no stone unturned. If something terrible has happened, and he hasn’t simply left, I’d never forgive myself for not keeping up the search.
“Wyn?”
Somewhere overhead, a robin begins to sing, the liquid notes of its song carrying through the wood. There’s a flash of russet as a red squirrel hurries up a tree. I shut my eyes for a moment, breathing in the smell and sounds of the forest. I can almost imagine the past seven years away. Can almost picture a better life.
Mama is still with us. Wyn is down by the stream, and presently Mira will call us in for breakfast. Papa is Caretaker—
But no. Even if Papa was still Caretaker, Burleigh would still be slowly dying, sickening a little more every day thanks to the binding placed upon it.
I open my eyes, and when I do, Wyn is standing not ten yards away from me on the forest path. I squint, to make sure he’s real and solid, not a memory of the House’s, but there’s no watery cast of light playing over him, just sun through the leaves.
Wyn seems well. Better than he has in days, now that I think about it. The hollows are gone from beneath his eyes, and his untidy hair curls damp around his collar, as if he’s just washed up in the stream.
All the worry on his account that I forced endlessly down for seven years, and that I could not really feel last night for fear of falling apart, hits me like a storm surge. My hands shake, and I feel as if I’m going to be sick. Suddenly I can’t bear to look at him. I turn on my heel and rush blindly through the woods, though I can hear him following after me.
“Violet!” Wyn calls. “Vi, stop a moment!”
But I don’t, not till I’ve got out of the cover of the woods and stand in the middle of the wildflower meadow. The blossoms have taken on strange, twisted shapes, and as I clench my fists together and try to catch my breath, a hedge of brambles rises up around me, waist-high and bristling with thorns.
Wyn stops short.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he says, his voice low and strained. “I wouldn’t have left if I could have helped it.”
I shake my head, desperate not to feel the things I’m feeling, or to remember what it was like being left behind by Mama and then made a homeless orphan by Papa. But to my heart, it doesn’t matter why Wyn left. All that matters is that he went. That without warning, I found him gone. Yet I know my heart to be relentless and unfair, so with a supreme effort, I force down every scrap of loneliness and hurt.
“No,” I tell Wyn. “It’s alright. I shouldn’t expect what you can’t give; you made it clear from the beginning that you’re not planning to stay for long. I’m being foolish. Don’t mind me.”
Wyn takes a step forward, heedless of the brambles. They retreat a little, making way for him. “Violet. Say what you mean, for once. Tell me the truth. You’re upset with me, aren’t you?”
“No. Yes. You left. I am so tired of people leaving me, Wyn. So tired. My mother, my father, you—”
“I came back,” he offers, though there’s no defensiveness in his voice.
“It’s not just this time, though,” I say. “Why wouldn’t you go with me? When Papa was put under arrest, why did you stay? I needed you, Wyn. Mama always put herself first and Papa had Burleigh to think of. You were the only person I felt safe with, and you turned your back on me to stay here of all places, and I can’t u
nderstand why.”
“Blood and mortar,” Wyn mutters under his breath as he runs a hand across his face. “Violet. Can I show you something?”
“Oh, very well,” I answer flatly, because now I’ve said my piece, all I feel is sad and empty.
The brambles pull back and wither away as I step forward.
“It’s this way,” Wyn says, and leads me back into the woods. I hesitate at the edge of the forest. Part of me wants to stay out in the sunlight, in sight of Burleigh House, which has never let me down. But Wyn stops and waits for me, and at last I follow.
We go just about as far as you can get in the little forest while still remaining on Burleigh’s grounds. And in a back corner, in a thicket near the edge of the wood, we come upon something I’ve never seen before.
There’s a small shepherd’s hut in among the trees, built of odd, mismatched boards and roofed with a thin layer of thatch. It has no windows, and only one door.
“What is this?” I ask Wyn. “Where did it come from?”
“I made it,” he says, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “The year after the arrest began. You can go in—I think then you’ll see why.”
I open the door and stop on the threshold. “Will you come with me?”
Wyn joins me at once. It’s reassuring, having him at my back, and I step into the close, dim interior. At first the only light is whatever filters through the chinks in the walls and the bare patches on the roof. But then Wyn strikes a sulfur match and lights a lamp, and it’s like we’re alone together in a small golden bubble, when everywhere else on the grounds it’s impossible to escape the pervasive presence of Burleigh House.
In here, though, my sense of Burleigh’s consciousness is dampened. I let out a small, audible sigh of relief as the House’s pain and exhaustion fade from the edges of my mind. They don’t vanish entirely, but quiet to a bare whisper.
“It’s because nothing in here is part of Burleigh,” Wyn explains, without me having to say what I’ve felt. “I found the boards in the old barn, and all the nails and the thatch—they’d been brought in from the village and were just sitting there, gathering dust. So I built this myself. The House had no part of it. When the arrest started, Burleigh was always . . . looking at me. You know the way it is, when all of its attention is focused on you, and it’s hard to keep upright? It’d be like that for days at a time, and I got so tired of it I could hardly see straight. I just wanted somewhere of my own, somewhere to hide. And this is it.”
I settle down, sitting cross-legged on the rough planks of the floor. Wyn sits, too, facing me, and sets the lamp down between us.
“It helps when I’ve done House magic, to come out here,” he says, an apology written across his face. “If I’ve done a lot of it, I can’t think of anything else. I didn’t mean to let you down, Vi. Are you still angry?”
“Have I ever been able to stay angry with you?”
Wyn smiles, and it’s a half-broken, wistful thing. “No. I suppose not.”
“Can I look?” I ask, gesturing to the confined space around us.
Wyn shrugs. “Alright. There’s not much to see.”
He’s not being entirely truthful, though. I take the lamp and hold it up, and find charcoal drawings on every wall. They’re of an achingly familiar landscape—wide, flat expanses of water and grass, with seabirds skimming the air overhead. I can almost hear the sea. Almost taste the salt. Almost smell the brine.
“It’s the fens,” I say, turning back to Wyn. “You drew the fens. How did you know that’s where we went?”
“Jed told me, just before you left.” He gets to his feet, ducking a little to avoid hitting his head on an arrangement of carved wooden birds suspended from the ceiling. I look at them, squinting a little in the low light, and I know every one of them. There’s a teal, a marsh harrier, a common crane, a grey shrike with a tiny hooked beak. They’re fen birds.
“I found some books in Burleigh’s library, and read about where you’d gone,” Wyn says.
Suddenly, hot tears burn at my eyes and my throat aches. Even while I was away, Wyn and I were still together in a sense. Sometimes, I feel as tied to him as I do to Burleigh House. And the panic I felt before dissipates, because he hasn’t left, he’s still here.
He’s still here.
“Wyn?” I say. He looks down at me, a question in his eyes. “Please don’t do House magic anymore. It’s not safe, and I hate watching what it does to you.”
“I know,” he says. “I know I shouldn’t. And I know I promised you that I’d stop. But if I’d let all that mortar out into the countryside . . .”
We both fall silent. Burleigh is failing, and someone must stand in the breach until I manage to find the deed.
If I manage to find the deed.
I turn my attention back to Wyn’s drawings on the walls. There’s one of gulls flying over the shore that catches my eye. When I step closer to it, I notice odd marks on the waves and the gulls’ wings. Not marks, handwriting done in ink, on the opposite side of the paper.
“Do you mind?” I ask, gesturing to the picture.
“Look all you want,” Wyn says.
Removing the pins that hold the page to the wall, I flip it over.
There’s verse scrawled across it in an unfamiliar hand. The way they scan and flow reminds me of something—of the old House rhyme Papa used to sing to me as a little girl. But the words are all wrong. They’re more like instructions, and the back of my neck prickles as I read.
First, speak a binding
Second, wield a knife
Third, give your spirit
Fourth, give your life
Fifth, take in power
Sixth, take it all
Till your blood runs with mortar
Till your breath fills the walls
“Do you know what this is?” I ask Wyn, holding out the page. For a long moment, he’s absolutely silent, staring down at the paper.
“No,” he says, and I know he’s lying from the way he won’t meet my eyes. He’s never been able to bluff.
“What is it?” I press.
“I told you I don’t know. Just some old nonsense, on a scrap of paper I found years ago. Put it back.”
I frown at him. “I want to keep it. It could be important.”
“Suit yourself,” Wyn says.
But on our way back through the woods, there’s tension between us. It stretches on and on until we leave the forest and I push the sleeves of my rough fen blouse up, because the day is already warm and muggy. As I do, I hear Wyn take in a sharp breath.
“Violet Sterling, what happened to you?”
I glance at him in confusion. “What?”
In answer, he takes one of my hands and holds it up. It’s the first time he’s touched me when neither of us is working House magic, and even though we’re not entirely getting on, the feeling of Wyn’s skin on mine sends a shock through me.
But I see at once what he’s bothered about. Dark blue bruises have blossomed around my wrists, angry against the white of my skin. The slick pink mark that rings my arm just below my left hand is more prominent than ever.
“Oh,” I say, trying for lightness and sounding a little forced. “Falmouth wasn’t pleased with how things went here. We had a very . . . animated conversation, last night when I was leaving the Red Shilling.”
I’ve never seen Wyn look so fierce. “Is he still there?”
“No, he’s gone to Bath, don’t worry about it,” I say.
“Are you certain?” Wyn asks.
I give him a thin smile. “Frey ran him off with a pistol. I don’t expect he’ll be back anytime soon.”
My assurances sound hollow and unconvincing, even to me. I haven’t told Wyn about the deal I struck with the king—that if Burleigh survives the summer but I’m unable to find the deed, Falmouth will take over the House. And I’m certainly not about to bring it up now, when I’ve no idea what I’ll do if things come to that.
We walk
inside, through the ruins of the conservatory, shattered glass crunching like gravel under our feet. I ought to clear this up—being in disrepair is hard on Burleigh. But there are so many things that need doing. The slate tiles on the guest wing roof are so sparse it looks as if my House has contracted some sort of architectural mange. In spite of Wyn’s best efforts, the dining hall is still growing cracks like a tree grows leaves. The ballroom’s still split down the middle in the wake of my unfortunate accident with Burleigh’s House magic. And everywhere, ivy creeps in at the windows and rooflines. The damage weighs on me constantly.
“When do you finish at the Shilling tonight?” Wyn asks, putting a hand on my elbow to steady me as I nearly trip on an overturned ottoman.
“Usually a bit after two.”
“I’ll be there at two, then, to walk you home.”
“Oh, Wyn,” I protest. “Don’t be ridiculous. Falmouth is gone, and I don’t—”
“Let me do this,” he says. “You may not mind now, but you’ll probably want company tonight. Just trust me, won’t you? I know.”
I relent. “Alright, have it your way.”
Wyn holds the conservatory door open and looks back at the shambles behind us as I walk through.
“Got my work cut out for me today,” he says. “But first let’s find Mira and see if she’ll feed us. I’m starving—haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday morning.”
Wyn grins at me, and for a brief moment, seems like an ordinary boy—the sort of person he might have become if he weren’t tied to my family and my House.
“I’m fighting with Mira,” I say, moping a bit because I like it when Wyn pities me. “I expect I’d be fighting with Jed, too, if he didn’t leave before dawn and go to bed while I’m still out. They don’t agree with me about Burleigh.”
“Well, I’m not fighting with you,” Wyn says.
“Really?” I ask hopefully. Perhaps he’s already forgotten about the strange scrap of verse tucked away in my pocket.
“Really.” Wyn tries and fails to hide a smile. “I don’t ever fight with you. I just have temporary differences of opinion.”
“That’s the same thing,” I mutter.
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