In transit, her horse moving at a slow plod, Rebecca heard a familiar voice call her name and the sound of running footsteps. The Pull gave The Guard a sense of one another, and of the task at hand. Michael wasn’t the only one to seek out her and her destination.
“Elijah Withersby,” Rebecca replied, halting her horse. “I can handle these heads perfectly w—”
“I d-didn’t want you to have a go of tonight’s work all alone because you thought none of us was available,” Elijah stammered.
Rebecca looked down from the saddle, offering a look of irritation that rivaled Alexi’s. She took a moment to evaluate her friend’s disheveled appearance, and with mild disgust noted his half-tucked shirttails and badly buttoned breeches.
“Why, thank you, Elijah,” Rebecca began. “How thoughtful to be available in our moment of need.”
“What can I say? I am a veritable icon of responsibility.”
“So it would seem.”
Elijah cursed as he caught the direction of Rebecca’s eyes. He had rushed out of Josephine’s amorous clutches and toward his higher calling, only to be betrayed by his pants. Josephine, at least, would remain without implication. Nor would the gaffe further tarnish his reputation, as he was erroneously assumed a libertine. Though—especially with Josephine’s pointed behaviour of late—did any of them truly believe the charade anymore? Surely The Guard had long since guessed they two knew each other in ways more intimate than friendship.
Not that he could admit it. What on earth would Alexi say, after all the ribbing, upon discovering Elijah’s loyal, loving nature? The revelation would be a disaster. That’s what would happen, when he honoured his promise to marry Josephine: everything would fall to pieces. Not just Alexi either. His peers. His family. Everything. And yet he’d promised upon the prophesied addition of The Guard’s seventh member…
“Shall I press on to business and leave you standing there staring?” Rebecca asked, interrupting his thoughts and shooing her hand at a young spirit taking the time to levitate apples from a nearby cart, to the owner’s great dismay.
Elijah bowed. “By all means, my lady. By all means.”
“I suppose you might as well make yourself useful. Since you’re here,” she allowed.
“As you wish!” Elijah said cheerfully, and promptly wiped the minds of all those who’d seen the flying fruit. Passersby dispersed, oblivious. Disappointed, the spirit gave up and sank through the cobblestones, but not before offering the headmistress an impertinent gesture.
“Busy night,” Rebecca stated conversationally. “I was just on my way to Ye Olde Cock Tavern. Then to Sadler’s Wells.”
Elijah made a face. “Oliver Goldsmith’s head? Again? And that clown? They must have a cranial rivalry; they’re always out in tandem.”
“Each won’t take but a minute, especially if we work together. We’ll begin up Fleet Street.”
Rebecca kicked her horse into a slow walk, and Elijah strolled along beside her. “Damn writers,” he opined, “loath to leave anything, frightened of fading into obscurity; it isn’t Goldsmith’s body haunting Fleet Street, it’s merely his pride. Damn them all. There isn’t a single noble profession in the world.”
“Nobility comes only through lack of work, then?”
“My class is constituted entirely of sniveling idiots,” he replied.
“What, then?” Rebecca laughed. “There must be some worthwhile task—”
“Yes,” Elijah said firmly. “Ours. We’re the world’s only nobility, Rebecca. Though our rewards seem paltry.” He eyed her. “How are you faring these days?”
Rebecca snorted. “What’s come over you?”
“I was asking the questions, my dear.” He grinned. “I was just wondering how it feels to be free of His Highness, if only for a bit.”
Rebecca thought a moment. “Not bad, I suppose. Not bad.”
“Good, then. Our leader Alexi may be, but you of all people oughtn’t be kept at heel.”
“He did not put me at heel.” Her voice was cold.
“No, he didn’t.” Elijah’s gaze was uncomfortably direct. “You did. He respects you the most of all of us. But you’ve never done yourself that honour, have you?”
A discomfited clearing of her throat was Rebecca’s only response, and they walked in silence to the tavern.
“Hold on to your head, Oliver!” Elijah cried upon their arrival. “We come for it again, you witless sot! I never did like a single one of your tired phrases!”
He threw open the tavern door and burst inside with a raucous yell, drawing a pretend sword and crossing the entire first floor in a few bounds. Rebecca couldn’t hold back a laugh. The burly man behind the bar had come out to tackle him, but Elijah raised his arms in a swift, grand gesture like a conductor halting a symphony. All was immediately quiet, the tavern’s assemblage staring suddenly off into space. Unable to help himself, Elijah waved his arms about a bit, seeing how the entire company moved their heads in response like marionettes on strings. This caused him limitless glee, and Rebecca had to take his arms and gently lower them, lest he play giggling puppeteer all night.
“You allow me no fun,” he pouted, a stray finger still making one slovenly drunkard’s gaze turn loops.
Rebecca confiscated both his hands in hers and nearly pressed her nose to his. “Fun? What about Jane’s recent lark? We cannot all be allowed to misbehave.”
“I thought I saw something about a children’s ward…” he began.
“And?”
“Brilliant.” Elijah grinned.
“You picked the locks, didn’t you?”
“What, and let Michael steal my mischief? He lets her into the parish wards all the time. It was my turn.”
The two of them walked onto the tavern’s back stoop in tandem. Sure enough, Oliver Goldsmith’s disembodied head bobbed at eye level in the back courtyard, his transparent features looking entirely offended.
“Stop scaring the barmaids with your corpse, Goldsmith…let your prose do it for you!” Elijah’s magic pinned the writer by his century-dead eyes while Rebecca’s incantations of banishment settled into a hush. The spirit was soon dispatched, and they crossed back through the quiet, lazing pub, Elijah relinquishing his control of the inhabitants with a flick of his wrist as the front door clicked shut behind them. He admitted, “I don’t sense Grimaldi anymore, do you?”
Rebecca thought a moment and shook her head. The Pull was gone. “He must know that his colleague has been dispatched. Performers hate taking direction, especially from us.”
“Fancy a drink?” Elijah offered.
Rebecca’s stomach roiled, thinking of the night before. “Tea.”
“Tea it is,” he agreed. “To headquarters! La Belle et La Bête!”
The pair made their way to the small café and found that something had pulled all five of the remaining Guard together. Rebecca’s raven had come, too, Jane’s cat Marlowe entwined at her feet, and they partook of beverages, tall tales and laughter, playful derision all directed at the absent Alexi. When Percy was spoken of, which was infrequent, it was with apprehensive reverence. Shop talk, as it were, was avoided completely. Rebecca debated mentioning the strange new doors at Athens, and she decided to ignore them for the moment. Lifting her tea to her lips, she enjoyed its warmth and simply cherished her scrap of contentment.
The hour growing late, Michael was gentleman enough to see her safely back to the academy. He was always looking after her. She wasn’t sure she’d ever acknowledged it, and only when he vanished back into the shadows did it occur to her that she ought to have thanked him more heartily.
She went to her office. It was an hour past when anyone should work, but there was paperwork to attend, for which she was grateful. There was a budget to be balanced, a staff to compensate, a board to please, sponsors to court, supplies to order. The work was solid, dependable; there was a science to running an institution, and Rebecca was master of it, grateful that some part of her life made sens
e. Her occupation was like running a household, only magnified exponentially. This partly filled the ache of not having an estate of her own, partly made up for a lack of a husband and progeny. Partly. Her students were her children and The Guard her family. The Grand Work was her husband. An ache remained.
She was deep into the ledgers when a sensation hit her so sharply it knocked her forward, her fountain pen scratching out and bleeding darkly over the corner of the lined book and onto the blotter. Her breath was swiftly cut from her, as if by a knife. Her gift was sounding a raucous alarm. Miss Parker—Mrs. Rychman, she amended bitterly—would be compromised. Endangered. Before there was even a chance for Beatrice’s predicted war, somehow, by someone, she would be cut to the quick. And it would be someone close to her.
Rebecca’s blood chilled. Never before had the pique of her gift felt so violent or so raw. She placed her fountain pen to the side, having held it clutched tightly in her fist, and she saw her hand was smeared black. She slid her elbows onto the desk, hoping that the action would still the sudden trembles coursing up and down her spine. But, no.
Rebecca shook her head. “No, none of us. It cannot be. We wouldn’t.” None of them wished ill upon the girl, and so—
A cool and thorough moisture broke over her flesh. She stared up at the ceiling of her office—a beautifully crafted, wooden-paneled affair, with its centre scalloped fixture emitting soft gaslight and needing, to Rebecca’s chagrin, a bit of dusting—and she prayed. “I don’t know what it means,” she said, wrestling with her gift, hoping that it would clarify itself once it heard her soft plea. “If I don’t know how, or by whose hand harm will come to her, how am I to prevent it?”
The gift would not see reason. Only one thing remained clear: the dread certainty that Percy would be severely endangered by someone she knew. Rebecca steepled her ink-stained fingertips and slid her forehead down onto their point. She heard a small choking sound come from her throat, something strangled and defiant. The words that broke free were half a plea, half a refusal:
“Not me. It shall not be me.”
As the carriage slowed, Percy gasped. A great mansion of deep brown sandstone, with a gothic facade and arching windows latticed with wrought iron, the Rychman estate was nothing if not intimidating, a magical fortress. A thrill worked up her spine to call it home.
Alexi drank in her every expression. “I want to offer everything I can to please you,” he murmured.
“Oh, how you do,” she cried, fumbling to take his hands in hers.
The driver unloaded their trunks at the side portico and pulled them to the front eaves where a huge brass bird with outstretched wings held the ring of the door knocker in its talons. Alexi climbed out, swept Percy into his arms and allowed the driver to open the front door. Percy’s delicate fingers danced at the nape of his neck.
“Welcome home, Mrs. Rychman,” he said, kissing her softly, and he carried her into the house.
Everything was dark as he set her down inside the threshold, but not for long. He waved his hand and a chandelier above their heads glittered to life. An open foyer with vaulted ceilings was illuminated, a winding banister rising to the second floor where a balustrade jutted over the foyer. The wooden floor of the main hall led into rooms at either end of the estate with glass doors open to reveal a sitting room and a library, both doorways accented by sconces of firebirds whose wings cradled glass cups of sparkling flame.
The windows at the front of the house belonged to an elegant dining room where sliding doors led into a sitting room and steps presumably descended to a kitchen. There were several vases of towering roses set upon the cream cloth covering the banquet table. Another chandelier, vast and circular, was the focal point of the room, draped with crystals that sparkled like diamonds.
“Oh, Alexi.”
Wide-eyed at the elegant splendour of the home, Percy dragged her husband by the hand as she toured the first floor. She took in the open sitting room, which was replete with grand piano, divan and impressive high-backed chairs near the hearth whose mantel bore the same rich grey marble that topped the end tables. Paintings of Josephine’s particular style mixed alongside pastoral scenes in classical style, all with a deep colour scheme that lent all the more richness to the cherry and mahogany wall panels. Spires of candelabra offered inviting, diffuse light.
Alexi only smirked as she tugged him next to his library, a room of dark green walls, cherry bookcases and innumerable leather spines. Percy, lost in the sights and smells, recognized his scent—clove tea and leather-bound books—and leaned close to breathe him further.
Rococo writing desks and random laboratory equipment were arranged throughout the room, interspersed with worn chairs. A large phonograph took up one corner. The moment Percy’s eyes fell upon the large, fluted bell, Alexi was quick to go and turn the handle. With a sputtering hiss, out flowed a dark, tumbling Chopin étude. Alexi returned, and Percy found herself intoxicated anew by the way dim candlelight played on his features.
She pulled him again into the foyer, rejoicing in how music permeated this house. She ran to the windows and unlatched the shutters, one by one exposing the entire house to a wash of moonlight. A wild, unkempt rose garden came into view, with a winding path to a grove of birch trees.
Alexi took in an awed breath. “My God, you become the very moonlight,” he breathed. Percy looked down to see how bright her skin glowed, and her husband extinguished all other light with a wave of his hand. Her body and the moon itself were the only sources of illumination.
He swept her into his arms and began to dance her around the foyer, pausing every now and then to steal a kiss. All through the house they spun, in and out of every room, a deeper kiss in each, finally waltzing up the stairs, swirling about the balcony and through each of the elegantly appointed bedrooms. Their laughing sighs whirled them into the master bedroom, which was furnished with a lavish four-poster bed thickly draped by burgundy curtains, an armoire, a wide hearth and a leather-topped writing desk. A great, arched window looked down onto the wild garden, and strands of ivy could be seen sneaking onto the panes of glass.
Arms around each other, they gazed down at their estate. Alexi softly kissed the crown of his wife’s head. “Percy,” he whispered. “I used to hate this lonely place, shuttered and collecting dust. The whole of it now brightens with your radiance. It is the first time it is truly home.”
“How could I not shine, Alexi, with such blessings as these, as you—?” Her voice broke as she pressed her cheek to his breast.
The sentiment encouraged his covetous passion. She had assumed she would live her life entirely without such intimacies, but she’d been wrong. And Alexi held her afterward, all through the night. Percy, overwhelmed with the magnitude of her blessings, knew she’d never tire of their wonder.
Jane sat alone in her study, eyes closed. Marlowe, her white cat, was curled around her leg. She was waiting, listening for the soft chime of the clock that would bring both night and him, and as it did, the air around her grew cold and she shuddered with delight. A chill pressed upon her lips like a feather made of ice. She opened her eyes to Aodhan’s phantom kiss.
He drew back, the chill of his lips a lingering mist. He gestured for her to open her hand.
“You’ve brought me something?” she asked, but the look on his face stilled her pleasure. She reached out, and into her palm he trickled a stream of ash. As Jane furrowed her brow, wondering what he meant, he pointed emphatically to the clock. “What? What is this?” she breathed.
He grimaced and tried gesticulating. Jane shook her head, baffled. The light of his shade flickered. Time was not on his side these days, the Whisper-world weighed heavy and he faded before he could offer warning.
The next morning, before breakfast, Alexi offered Percy a tour of the immediate grounds, and her excitement nearly had him skipping with her toward the rear garden. Braced by the brisk air, they strolled about the twisting, overgrown, cobbled path through thickets of what,
to Alexi, was indiscernible foliage. Percy joyfully pointed out to him the names, blossoming seasons and general particulars of each.
Returning, they found the Wentworths, housekeepers to the Rychman estate. The pair did not live directly at the house, but in a nearby cottage, as Alexi wanted to keep his immediate home clear of anyone not involved in the Grand Work. The servant couple had recovered from the shock of the professor’s letter announcing that he would be returning from a honeymoon with a new mistress of the house; Alexi had taken pains to describe his dear young wife and champion her sweet nature, lest they show surprise at her singular pallor. The Wentworths were clearly not prone to gossip, suppositions or much conversation for that matter, but to Percy’s great relief, she no longer feared her lack of domestic savvy; Mrs. Wentworth would take care of everything.
The woman showed Percy to her boudoir, where a single trunk containing her meager possessions from Athens had been unpacked, and an entire wardrobe had been filled, via Josephine’s instructions, with stylish dresses in various shades of blue and purple. The Frenchwoman had written she’d only seen Percy in these colours, and so they must be her favourite. At this, Percy burst into tears.
“Oh, madame, there’s no need to cry,” the round and rosy Mrs. Wentworth clucked. “The professor can send for a seamstress should these not be to your liking.”
Percy laughed. “Oh, Mrs. Wentworth, I shed only grateful tears! Please understand that I was raised an orphan pauper in a convent. Living at Athens was palace enough, but now the riches of this household…I don’t possibly deserve such immense good fortune.”
“And why on earth not, Mrs. Rychman? Dear creatures who, as you do, take nothing for granted, you deserve every comfort, for you are of the mind to appreciate it. The master’s a shrewd man who’s kept his lamps trimmed low and his costs negligible. I’ve long thought it a shame, him being as well provided for, as intelligent and not altogether bad-looking as he is, that he had no wife to dote upon. I believe he’s only too happy to spend money on you, that it’s a pleasure for you both.”
The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker Page 14