I’ve been made a fool, she thought, as her temper flared. She’d allowed him to worm his way into her heart, to reach out and kiss her... and do more than kiss her. Lady Mary had aborted her child, but how could Gwen blame her for that mistake when she’d come so close to making it herself? It was worse; she’d known what had happened to her mother and yet she’d come so close to repeating her mistake. She’d allowed her desire to blind her.
No one knew, she told herself, but she knew it wouldn’t last. Sir Charles might believe his secret to be safe... yet it would come out, once Gwen shared what she’d discovered with Lord Mycroft. Sir Charles would be hanged for high treason, but Gwen herself would be publicly humiliated. She understood just what Howell’s victims would have felt now, after coming so close to absolute disaster. All the people who’d claimed that a girl couldn’t be Royal Sorceress would come forward to argue that Gwen had proved them right.
She rang the bell. Martha appeared a moment later. “Have my carriage brought round to the front gate,” she ordered. “Then have a messenger come here.”
Martha nodded and withdrew. Gwen scribbled down a short explanation for Lord Mycroft, then attached it to Sir Travis’s journal and the incriminating account books. When the messenger arrived, Gwen passed the whole collection to him with instructions to take it to Whitehall as soon as possible. Lord Mycroft had to be informed. No doubt he would be disappointed in Gwen.
She stood up and looked around the study, wondering if she would be allowed to return to Cavendish Hall. They might sack her after the truth came out – and it would, she had no doubt of that. She had sufficient enemies that it would never be allowed to remain a secret... but somehow it no longer mattered. All that mattered was ending the whole affair as quickly as possible.
Shaking her head, she picked up her hat and cane, then walked down the stairs towards the front entrance. Those hoping to waylay her saw the expression on her face and stepped backwards, allowing her to pass unmolested. She paused in the entrance hall, remembering just how proud she’d been the day Master Thomas had brought her to Cavendish Hall... would she be allowed to return?
Maybe not, she told herself, as she walked outside. But that isn’t the important problem right now.
Chapter Thirty-Six
People would probably notice if she took a carriage directly to Sir Charles’s house, Gwen realised as the carriage clattered through the streets of London, but it hardly mattered any longer. Her reputation was going to be in tatters, both personally and professionally – and while she didn’t really care about the personal aspect, she did care about losing her professional reputation. But there seemed to be no way to avoid it. She mulled over possibilities for a while, before dismissing them all as impractical.
Maybe I’ll have to flee to France, she thought, in a moment of dark humour. Or maybe even go to India myself.
Sir Charles had rented a large house on the outskirts of London, an odd decision for someone who wanted to carve out a place for himself in Polite Society. Addresses grew more prestigious the closer they were to Whitehall, even though the flats in Pall Mall were little more than a couple of living rooms and a bathroom. They were a far cry from the great houses of the aristocracy, where a building with twenty bedrooms would be considered small. But then, she couldn’t fault his choice; it was very hard to do anything in Whitehall without being seen.
“Wait here,” she ordered the coachman. She changed her mind a moment later. “No, take the rest of the day off.”
She watched him driving off, then turned to look at the house. Oddly, it reminded her of Howell’s house, apart from the smaller garden and the complete absence of trees providing cover from prying eyes. Gwen walked up to the gate, hesitated and then pushed the doorbell. There was a long pause before the main door opened and an elderly man walked down towards the gate. Sir Charles’s manservant, Gwen decided, after a moment. Very few men in London would be without a manservant, even if they lacked the funds to hire other servants.
“Lady Gwen,” he said, as he opened the gate. “The Master said you might call.”
Gwen felt her temper flare, forcing her to bite her cheek to keep it under control. Sir Charles had said she might be calling, had he? No doubt he’d believed that Gwen would come so they could make love in private. How arrogant was he to believe she would do that? But she remembered the way her body had felt after they’d kissed for the first time and she knew that he might have been right, had she not realised the truth.
“Thank you,” she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could. “Please take me to him.”
The interior of Sir Charles’s house was almost barren, with only a handful of artefacts looted from India on display. Sir Charles, she suspected, didn’t entertain guests very often; a conspicuous display of wealth was part and parcel of living in high society. If the wealthy aristocrats had seen his house, even though it was rented, they would have considered him poor – and wealth lasted far longer than fame. Gwen glanced at one of the artefacts, a golden facemask shaped like a demon, and shivered. It was a truly appalling sight.
“I believe that the Master took that from a Thuggi priest,” the manservant informed her, in a tone that suggested that she should be impressed. “The Thugs preyed on their fellow Indians until they were wiped out. Even today, their name is spoken of with fear and hatred.”
Gwen shrugged and allowed him to lead her into a study. Sir Charles sat at a desk, writing in a large journal of his own. Merely seeing him caused her heart to race, setting off a conflicting series of emotions that threatened to undo her. He’d killed his best friend and at least four other people, but she still wanted him.
He turned and smiled at her. This time, she realised that he smiled too much. It was a mask to hide his true feelings, far more suitable than the Indian facemask she’d seen in the hallway... and far harder to see through. Her own admiration for his exploits had blinded her, Gwen reminded herself, again. She could not afford to make the same mistake twice.
“Thank you, Fred,” Sir Charles said. “That will be all.”
The manservant bowed and retreated, closing the door behind her. Gwen looked at him, feeling oddly vulnerable, even though she knew that she should have nothing to fear. But then, merely being alone with an unrelated man was enough to ruin a lady’s reputation... she couldn’t help smiling bitterly as Sir Charles stood upright. After everything she’d been fool enough to do, Polite Society would have problems choosing just what they were going to use to ruin her reputation.
“I’m glad you came,” he said, huskily. “I missed you after the dance.”
He reached for her, but Gwen stepped backwards. “Why did you kill your friend?”
Something flickered through his eyes. “What do you mean?”
Gwen stared at him, trying to feel him out with her senses. She tried not to use that talent – it was weak and imprecise – but there was no choice. He seemed to be nothing, but a void where a person should be. Even the faint disturbance in the air he should have caused as he moved wasn’t there.
“You have magic,” Gwen accused. “Your talent is the absence of magic. A Sensitive would not have recognised that you were there, not unless he looked at you. And all you had to do was sneak up behind him and club him on the head. You’re a practised fighter; it would have been easy for you to stun or kill him with one blow.”
“Travis was my friend,” Sir Charles said, coldly. “Gwen, I care deeply for you...”
“Do you?” Gwen asked, sharply. “I think you muscled your way into the investigation to monitor our progress.”
“You’re a remarkable girl,” Sir Charles said. “I allowed myself to fall for you.”
“I don’t believe you,” Gwen said, remembering some of the whispers the junior magicians had shared. They’d all talked about reaching a point after which they couldn’t stop – and yet Sir Charles had stopped when she’d told him to stop, without even trying to argue. “You didn’t have to mention the Golden
Turk – and if you were so concerned with Sir Travis’s reputation, you would never have mentioned the Golden Turk.”
She held his eyes, forcing him to look away. “And you talked about gambling incessantly with him in India,” she added. “I believed you, yet there isn’t a mention of gambling in his journal, not even with you. You were claiming to defend your friend, but instead you were creating an impression that he was addicted to gambling, even to the point of using his powers to cheat. It was quite believable. Men like you and he gamble with your own lives regularly. Why not gambling for money too?
“I went through the account books. There are plenty of debts listed, but a number were entered for days when Sir Travis was out of the country. I have proof that he couldn’t have run up those debts. And Hiram Pasha, who backed the debts, was killed, apparently on the same night Sir Travis died. How very convenient! All the Charm in the world wouldn’t suffice to interrogate a dead man.”
“You’re wrong,” Sir Charles said. “Gwen...”
“Prove it,” Gwen insisted. “Where were you the night Sir Travis died?”
He had no answer.
Gwen felt magic shimmering within her, demanding release. She wanted to hurt him, to kill him, both for what he’d done to his friend and for making her look a fool. Or worse.
“You killed him,” she said, coldly. “You committed high treason. Why?”
Sir Charles seemed to relax, suddenly. “Why not?”
Gwen blinked in surprise. “Why not?”
He smiled. For the first time since entering the room, it seemed real.
“You know about my family, I believe,” Sir Charles said, as calmly as if he were ordering dinner. “I didn’t, you see. There was no clue that I wasn’t their middle child until I discovered that I’d been adopted. And I only found out through accident.”
Gwen couldn’t help feeling a flicker of sympathy. She’d been marginalised because of her sex and magic; what must it have been like to know yourself one moment and see it all torn away the next? Jack had had similar motives for turning against the Establishment.
“They treated me as their son, right up until my elder brother died,” Sir Charles added. “And then they turned on me. I had an engagement; it was suddenly broken. I had a ticket to the innermost levels of society; it was destroyed. My friends... suddenly wanted nothing more to do with me. And Rachel was so disgusted that she spat at me.”
“Rachel Wolsey,” Gwen said, remembering her mother’s views on the girl. She hadn’t just fallen from grace, she’d done something Polite Society found even more shocking; she’d gloried in her fall. If rumour were to be believed, Rachel Wolsey had slept with every dissolute young man in London. “And she spat at you?”
“I was a commoner,” Sir Charles reminded her. “She didn’t like the thought of opening herself for a commoner.”
Gwen shuddered. “And so...?”
“My family – my adopted family – paid for me to go to India and bought me a commission,” Sir Charles reminded her. “I served there for years, earning plaudits... and yet my family tried to deny me a knighthood. Lucky for me that they didn’t manage to convince the Viceroy, after what I’d done. Snobbish prick he might be, but he knew the value of rewarding courage and determination. I was a knight and a famous adventurer. But it wasn’t enough.”
“And so you decided to betray your country,” Gwen said, flatly. “Why did you kill your friend?”
Sir Charles laughed at her. “What made you think he was my friend?”
Gwen stared back at him. “His journal...”
“Sir Travis, the poor aristocrat whose very name opened doors all my wealth could not force, clung to me,” Sir Charles said. “I was never truly aware of my talent until after I met him – and after that, I could never escape him. He was a constant reminder of the mockery my life had become. I did much of the work on our missions; he reaped more of the rewards. Just because he was born on the right side of the blankets!”
He slapped his hands together. “Tell me, Lady Gwen, what would have happened to you if you hadn’t been born to the aristocracy? You would have been killed – or worse.”
Gwen shivered. Lord Blackburn’s uncle had seriously urged, back before the Swing had raged over London, that Gwen should be sent to the farms. There, she would have spent the rest of her days drugged out of her mind, giving birth to child after child. If she’d been born to a lower-class household, there would never have been a chance to apprentice under Master Thomas. She would just have vanished into the farms.
“I was lucky,” she said, quietly.
“Our entire system is badly flawed,” Sir Charles said. “If competence and birth went together, maybe it would work – but they don’t go together. For every Duke of India or Lord Amherst, there are ten idiots who think that the world will bow before them, simply because of their high birth. None of them can control themselves and yet they rule our world.”
Gwen found it hard to argue. The Committee, at least, was reasonably competent; the same couldn’t be said for the lesser nobility, who preferred to enjoy themselves rather than actually work hard to maintain their fortunes. And she had never really understood just how little some aristocratic women knew until she’d discovered why she’d been offered instruction on basic accounting. The women rarely knew the value of money, let alone how to bargain...
She shook her head. “Do you believe that your treachery will change things?”
“It might,” Sir Charles said. “The public already has a greater stake in government after the Swing. What will happen if the myth of aristocratic power is called into question?”
Gwen couldn’t help herself. She snorted.
“Do you really believe,” she asked, “that what you’re doing is in Britain’s best interests?”
Sir Charles shrugged. “Of course not,” he said. “But really, when has Britain cared about my best interests?”
He pulled up his jacket to reveal a scar. “I was slashed by a knife-wielding assassin while protecting the Viceroy,” he said. “My back was lashed hundreds of times while I was in Bukhara, where the Emir believed us to be plotting his overthrow. I even came within bare seconds of being trampled to death by a wild elephant. Time and time again, I risked life and limb to serve the interests of my country. But my country’s leaders were so petty that they tried to block me receiving my rightful reward. How many others were knighted for much less?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Gwen admitted.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Sir Charles pointed out, coldly. “All you would know is that someone was knighted. You wouldn’t know how many others had been barred from a knighthood because of an accident of birth, or because they weren’t considered gentlemen, or... do you know how many aristocrats were promoted into positions where they could get people killed, just because of their birth? I shudder to think what Colonel Robertson would have received if he’d survived the Sikh War. He would probably have been rewarded for walking right into an ambush and seeing two-thirds of his men shot away before someone had the common sense to order a retreat.”
He looked up at her. “And tell me,” he added, “what would happen to you if they discovered another male Master Magician?”
Gwen grimaced. It wasn’t hard to imagine at all.
“You would be sacked,” Sir Charles said. “What do you really owe to the Establishment?”
His eyes bored into hers. “You were treated as a witch when you were a child,” he reminded her. “And now, even though you have proved yourself more than enough, they still sneer at you. There are even whispers that you offered yourself to Lord Mycroft to be confirmed in your position. The moment they find a replacement, they will kick you out of Cavendish Hall and exile you to India, where all the embarrassments go. What do you really owe them?”
Gwen hesitated. He had a point.
“Come with me,” Sir Charles added. “You could blaze your own path...”
“My mother kept me,” Gwen said, qu
ietly. It was hard to be angry at her mother now, even after what they’d said to one another. Gwen had come far too close to making the same mistake. “I could have been given up for adoption, but she kept me, no matter the damage to her reputation.”
“You were isolated,” Sir Charles reminded her. “How many friends did you have growing up?”
“I thought that you were a friend,” Gwen said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “But my mother didn’t abandon me, even though it would have been easy. Why should I abandon her?”
“The Establishment will drop you the moment it feels it can,” Sir Charles said, insistently. “I care about you, Gwen; they do not. They cannot. Join me.”
Gwen looked up at him. She knew that he was right; her experience told her that aristocracy was sometimes a poor way of choosing leaders. Jack had brought London to its knees and, as far as anyone knew, there was no aristocratic blood in him. Lord Brockton was unable to see beyond his own self-interest; Lord Blackburn had been even worse, before he’d fled to Turkey. And yet...
She’d sworn an oath to the King.
“I can’t,” she said, quietly. “I gave them my word...”
“They will not reward you as you deserve,” Sir Charles reminded her. “How much have you done for them already? No matter what you do, they will always hate and fear you; eventually, they will seek to replace you. One day, your life as the Royal Sorceress will be over.”
“You might be right,” Gwen said, making up her mind. “But you still killed Sir Travis.”
She stared at him, daring him to deny her. “I read his journal. He didn’t know how you felt about him – and he clung to you because you didn’t upset his talent. I think he cared deeply for you, in his own fashion. And you betrayed him by cracking his skull.
The Great Game (Royal Sorceress) Page 34