by Mia Marlowe
There were three elementals in the Order—magical persons with an affinity for one of the four ancient elements. Gaston LeGrand was a water mage, able to bend liquid of any sort to his will. Lady Stanstead, née Cassandra Darkin, was a fire mage, as was Vesta LaMotte, a witty courtesan who often provided the Order with an entrée into the Prince Regent’s intimate circle. This was useful since the express purpose of the group was to protect the royal family from psychically-charged objects intended to harm them. The Duke of Camden blamed himself for King George III’s occasional bouts with madness. His Grace was convinced that something malignant had slipped through his gauntlet and was playing fast and loose with His Majesty’s mind.
“Well, Miss Anthony,” the duke said as he paced the perimeter of the chamber. “What have you to say for yourself?”
“I’m most terribly sorry, I’m sure.” She was. Terribly. Especially when she glanced at the mottled bruise blooming around LeGrand’s left eye.
Uncle Rowney and Cousin Oswald’s burglary had been thwarted. According to the Frenchman, the older fellow was limping when the thieves tore down the back alley behind the row of town houses, but the pair got in a few good licks before they ran off. In addition to LeGrand’s black eye, His Grace’s handsome footman James was missing one of his front teeth. This was a disaster of biblical proportions for one in his position, because above average height and a pleasing face were the foremost qualifications for a footman. In any other establishment, James might have been given the sack since his looks had been spoiled, but the duke had promised that as long as James’ work continued to be excellent, a lost tooth was of no consequence to the dignity of the Camden table.
He seemed to be less forgiving of Meg. “Being sorry does not change matters.”
“Oh, Camden, stop it. You’re frightening the girl,” Vesta said. She was the only one of the group who dared reprimand His Grace. And she excelled at it through constant practice.
“She should be frightened. She disobeyed a direct order. I expressly forbade her to use her gift until we are assured she may exercise it safely,” Camden said to Vesta before turning back to Meg. “Do you not understand that the use of your Finding ability could result in your death?”
No one knew that better than she, but Meg decided silence was the best course. She nodded mutely.
“In a way, it’s a good thing she disobeyed,” Lady Stanstead said. “Otherwise we’d never have known her uncle and cousin were so close and that they still plan to abduct her.”
“What’s this?” Camden demanded.
When LeGrand had given his account of the afternoon’s events to the duke, he’d tactfully left out Meg’s connection with the thieves. Evidently, he’d felt no need to do so when he shared his exploits with the rest of the Order.
“We thought you were aware of the threat, Your Grace.” Lady Stanstead sent Meg an apologetic grimace. “You’d better tell him, Miss Anthony.”
Meg sighed. The members of the Order knew she’d been engaged in some shady dealings before she became a lady’s maid because her skills as a pickpocket had been put to good use once or twice. When she tried to teach Lady Stanstead some sleight of hand, she’d confided in her about her horrible family.
Now Meg launched into the sorry tale for everyone’s ears.
Her Uncle Rowney wanted her back under his thumb, she explained, so he could use her ability to Find as they roamed from town to town “looking for the main chance.” The gang’s usual plan was to discover somebody who’d lost someone or something of value and then convince them that Meg could retrieve the item or loved one…for a price. She didn’t mind Finding objects so much. But it was gut-wrenching to watch people give all they had for the least bit of news about a missing person. Often, the person was either dead or had abandoned their family willingly. Meg hated delivering either of those outcomes. It was part of why she’d run away.
The other part was Rowney’s plan to marry her to Oswald. She had to admit it was the best way to assure her compliance. She’d have no choice but to be obedient and outwardly grateful to the men who held power over her. As a married woman, she’d be considered little better than a child or an imbecile by the courts and have no say in where she went or what she was forced to do.
No matter what that might be.
It was hard to keep secrets in a group of psychics, but Meg had managed it. His Grace would be understandably upset. After she finished with her story, Meg folded her hands on her lap to hide their tremble as she waited for the duke’s anger to fall on her. Why hadn’t she trusted him with everything from the beginning?
The duke didn’t say anything for the space of several heartbeats. Then he sank into his wing chair and crossed his legs. “Well, this alters matters.”
Meg’s heart sank to the pit of her stomach. It was just as she’d feared. He was going to ban her from the Order. She knew it.
He considered her through half-lowered lids for a moment, and then looked away.
“Is Lord Badewyn still in residence at Faencaern?” His Grace directed this query to his steward, Mr. Bernard, who was busy taking scrupulous notes of the Order’s business. Meg released the breath she’d been holding. The duke was moving on to other issues. A small candle of hope fluttered to life within her.
“I should think so. His lordship didn’t come by his reputation as a recluse dishonestly. London hasn’t seen Lord Badewyn in years,” Mr. Bernard said with a shake of his head that set his ponderous jowls a quiver. “He’ll not have left the castle, I’ll be bound.”
“Good. Pack your bags, Miss Anthony.”
“What?” That small candle of hope guttered completely. He was giving her the boot after all. “Please, Your Grace, give me another chance. I’ll not keep anything from you ever again. Don’t make me leave the Order.”
“Leave the Order? Of course not. You are merely leaving London. You’re bound for Wales on the morrow.”
“Wales? But it’s so wild and lonely there,” Lady Easton said with dismay. She was the one member of the Order who possessed no psychic ability of any kind, but her sense of refinement and social niceties smoothed the way for the others as they moved through the ton. “Well, I suppose it can’t be helped. It’s certainly remote enough for our purposes. Miss Anthony will be safe there. I shall have my abigail begin packing immediately.”
“No, sister, you will not be accompanying her,” Camden said.
“But this is wholly unacceptable.” Lady Easton set her mouth in a prim line. “Lord Badewyn is an unmarried gentleman. If Miss Anthony is to stay at Faencaern Castle, she must have a chaperone. Otherwise her reputation will be ruined before she makes her first appearance in society.”
“She’d only need a chaperone if anyone knew she was there. I intend that no one shall discover her whereabouts. As far as Polite Society is concerned, Miss Anthony is about to disappear,” the duke rose and began his habitual prowling of the room. “Her nefarious relatives have evidently been watching the comings and goings of this house. They expect her to be surrounded by my associates, so she certainly cannot be seen in your company, sister. To further confound her uncle and cousin, she will not be traveling in my carriage. Miss Anthony will go by public coach instead.”
Meg hated to interrupt His Grace, especially when he was on a tear with new plans, but there was no help for it. “But…I don’t know the way to Wales.”
“Of course you don’t,” Camden said agreeably. “Especially not to the part of Wales to which I’ll send you. Few civilized people do. Mr. Bernard, however, is one of those few. He will accompany you to Faencaern Castle.”
“Very good, Your Grace,” the steward said, as unflappably as if the duke had asked him to ring for tea instead of set off across the country with a fugitive Finder in tow. “With Miss Anthony’s permission, I will pose as her grandfather for the duration of our travels.”
Meg sent the steward a tremulous smile. With all her heart, she wished that the kindly fellow was her grandfather i
n truth, but only the good were gifted with family like that. She supposed Rowney and Oswald were no more than she deserved.
“Capital suggestion, Bernard. Off with you now, Miss Anthony, and see that you pack lightly. You’ll have to manage your own luggage for this trip,” the duke said. “And nothing fashionable, if you wish to pass as Mr. Bernard’s granddaughter. Plain leaves no lasting impression.”
“You’re being unkind to the girl, Camden. Miss Anthony has a number of lovely gowns and it would be a shame for her to have to wear the same thing day and day out. Even in Wales.” Vesta sent Meg a conspiratorial smile. “I’ll make sure he sends the rest of your wardrobe later.”
Meg nodded her thanks to Vesta and rose, grateful that she was still counted one of His Grace’s Extraordinaires. But being whisked off to Wales still felt very much like banishment. “What if something happens and the Order needs me to Find something?”
“In that unlikely event, be assured I will send for you post haste,” the duke said. “However, there is nothing pressing at the moment. There seems to be a psychic lull. I’ve detected no malevolent objects making their way toward the royals. Perhaps during this respite, I can study the problem of how to make the use of your gift less dangerous.”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” Meg said with a deferential nod. “But when will I be able to return?”
“When we are certain your relations no longer pose a threat,” he said kindly. Then his expression turned stern. “And when you have learned to obey a direct order. No more Finding on your own. Not until we have discovered a way for you to do it in safety.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” She’d have agreed to travel to Wales on her knees if it meant she was still part of the duke’s Order. Dropping a low curtsy, Meg turned to go. On her way to the door, she overheard Mr. Bernard ask if he should send word to Lord Badewyn in Wales that he was about to receive visitors.
“No need,” Camden said. “He’ll know you’re on your way before you leave London.”
I’ve heard it said the best gift a man can have is a noble friend. Failing that, the second best gift is a noble enemy. I have no friends and my enemy is my father. Alas, he is anything but noble.
~ from the journal of Samuel Templeton, Lord Badewyn
Chapter Two
Samuel pored over the star chart. The vellum was in remarkable repair considering that the map was at least eight hundred years old. The dye used to colorize the chart had probably been added later, possibly as early as the 1600’s, but even so, the embellishments were impressive. The constellations wheeled in a celestial circle, fanciful creatures and ordinary beasts chasing each other across a flat sky. The chart was an important find.
“Where did Ingfeldt get this?” he asked, scarcely able to contain his excitement.
“Some monastery outside of Milan,” came the bored response. Grigori had no use for star charts. He much preferred to experience the night sky directly, as he did most things. Samuel’s intense scholarship—his “bookishness,” Grigori called it—irritated him no end. Samuel didn’t commit to his studies solely to annoy him, but it was a nice side benefit. “So, it’s not a forgery?”
“No, it’s genuine. A real relic,” Samuel assured him. He set a felt-bottomed paperweight gently on one corner of the chart to keep it from curling. “And the oldest one I’ve ever seen.”
Grigori brushed his dark hair back off his forehead so it wouldn’t hide his pale gray eyes. Women found the stark contrast appealing, irresistible even. Many had been captivated by the juxtaposition of light and dark, of hard chiseled features and the seductive smile that softened them. Grigori was undeniably handsome, but Samuel would never admit it. Except for a few bars of silver at Grigori’s temples, his striking appearance and coloring too closely mirrored Samuel’s own.
“Please,” Grigori said with a sneer, “unless you think that piece of calfskin has been around for a couple of millennia or so, don’t talk to me about old.”
He was always difficult to impress. Samuel decided to take a different tack. “All right. How about this? Even though this is hand drawn, the proportions within the constellations are roughly the same as current charts.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning after all these years, the stars still whirl in the same orbits, as orderly a progression as a Mozart symphony. They don’t change.”
“They change. You just aren’t able to see it from here.” Grigori hefted himself up onto the thirty inch deep ledge before the arch-shaped window in the gray weathered stone. His broad-shouldered frame filled the space. It was a good sixty feet down from Samuel’s study in the topmost tower of Faencaern Castle to the floor of the bailey below, but when Grigori looked over his shoulder at the long drop, he just yawned.
“‘Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades?’” Grigori quoted from Job. “Those stars are bound together by a gravitational force but every second, they’re moving farther away from Earth in tandem. They do change. Trust me.”
Well, he’d know. Samuel was rarely disposed to trust him about anything, but he’d give him this one. Grigori’s faults were legion, but he knew two things backward and forward—the heavens and the Bible. He was dogmatically truthful about the night sky but, as any consummate theologian, he wasn’t above twisting scripture to suit his purposes.
“You seem more than usually disgruntled this fine day,” Grigori said. “Do I detect a bit of regret over not bolting to the Village to partake of the Season? London’s crop of debutantes featured a number of true beauties.”
“No, I’m not sorry to have missed it. Once was definitely enough. All that infernal mucking about in one crowded parlor after another, listening to banal conversations, and pretending to take interest in them.” And the underlying subtext of all those conversations was that every young miss was frantic to snag any eligible gent in the Marriage Mart before they were all taken. There was no respect. No meeting of the minds. Merely a joining of ledgers and titles, the marital unions that came out of the Season struck him as degrading on all sides. Of course, Samuel had his own reason for shunning marriage. “I’d rather have my entrails roasted before my own eyes.”
Grigori laughed. “The parson’s mousetrap isn’t as bad as all that.”
“You never wed.”
“Yes, I did. Once.” His tone was so different, Samuel’s head jerked up to find his father in a rare moment of reflection. If melancholy had a face, it was the one Grigori wore. Then just as quickly, he shook it off. “After that time, I never needed to marry again,” he said with a falsely bright grin. “But you need to face facts. It’s high time you wed.”
“Is this about the business of getting an heir again?”
“Getting an heir isn’t as automatic a process as you seem to think. Depending upon how fertile the young lady is, it may take some time,” Grigori said. “So this is also about finding something for you to do besides rattling around in Faencaern by yourself. A wife offers all sorts of diversion—in and out of the bedchamber. It would be good for you. Bring you out of hiding a bit.”
Samuel doubted Grigori had his best interests at heart, but he was right about one thing. Samuel was hiding. That’s what monsters did, wasn’t it? If they weren’t disposed to terrorize the populace, they burrowed themselves away, only appearing when the moon was full, cloaked in legend and half-truths.
“If a pretty face doesn’t move you, perhaps a bluestocking would be to your taste,” Grigori went on. “Lady Winifred, the Earl of Chalcroft’s daughter, is more than able to keep up with your intellectual pursuits.”
“I’m not looking to rescue a wallflower from spinsterhood.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect you were a molly.”
Samuel glared at him. He liked women very much, but he wasn’t about to become leg-shackled to one just to please Grigori.
“Contrary to what you appear to think, you cannot incinerate me with a look,” Grigori said, turning sideways and folding his long legs up
onto the window ledge. Most people would be terrified at being so close to a precipitous edge like that, but Grigori seemed perfectly comfortable. “But back to wedded bliss. It is the lot of mortals. Since the Garden, people have been going through life two by two. Why on earth do you resist marriage so strongly?”
“You know why.” Samuel narrowed his eyes at him.
Grigori rolled his, clearly unaffected by Samuel’s displeasure. “Well, the whole matter may be settled before you know it.”
“What makes you say that?”
“If you’d take a few moments from your study of that old calfskin and think back to the last time you exercised your gift with a scrying basin, you’d remember that the Duke of Camden is sending one of his wards to you, a certain Miss Meg Anthony.”
Samuel had Seen the approach of the young lady and her companion more than a week ago. His ability to view distant events was one of the few things in which he bested Grigori. Samuel’s scrying vision was much clearer and he seemed to possess something of a psychic cloak for himself. Try as he might, Grigori had never been able to view Samuel’s activities in a still surface. But though Samuel had Seen Camden’s ward on her way to Faencaern, he couldn’t divine why the duke had ordered the lady to travel to Wales. “I wonder what she’s done to deserve banishment.”
This part of Wales wasn’t the least fashionable. No wellborn miss who was used to the bustle of London would relish spending time here.
“She’s not being punished. I sense it’s for the lady’s protection.”
It was hard to argue with Grigori’s intuition. He was rarely wrong. “Protection from what?”
“Does it matter? The duke needs a favor. You ought to be more than pleased over a chance to put a gentleman as powerful as Camden in your debt.”
If a lady needed protection, Samuel was willing to offer it without entangling her guardian in anything as distasteful as obligation. Goodness was supposed to be its own reward, though it seldom turned out that way. “Very well. She can stay.”