Lady Carroway took a slow breath. “You are wrong,” she said. Her tone was kind and reassuring, rather than accusing. “My husband has wept and raged over the blindness of his peers. He has asked me before how the world can be so heartless. It is this dastardly need to remain calm and composed and polite that has left us all feeling so alone.” She was very quiet for a moment. “I admit that we are better off than we could otherwise manage. It is a hard thing, giving up what is already had. But each time Lord Carroway vents his frustration, we find it in ourselves to give up a little bit more, to those who need it more.”
Elias shivered strangely at this. He held harder to Dora’s shoulders. He took a few more deep breaths, and forced himself upright.
“I...” He swallowed hard. “I needed to hear that, Lady Carroway. I did not by any means deserve to hear it.” He looked towards her, over Dora’s shoulder. “I am terribly sorry. And I am grateful.”
Lady Carroway smiled, but Dora saw that it was tremulous. “Your anger can be terrifying, Lord Sorcier,” she told him. “Since we are being honest with one another, I must admit to being frightened by it. I cannot help but forgive such earnest grief, since it is caused by such earnest love. But I beg you to remember the effect you may have when you forget yourself.” She drew in another breath. “And I... will ask that you do not leave bridges unmended with my son. If you come inside now, I swear that all shall be forgotten on my side. Talk with Albert. You will have a hot meal and a warm bed tonight, instead of sitting in the dark in some wretched bachelor’s lodging, thinking of terrible things.”
Elias hesitated.
Dora surreptitiously kicked him in the shin, and he hissed in surprised pain. His eyes flickered back towards her, and she smiled serenely. “You must say yes, of course,” she told him. “Because there is no other proper answer.”
Elias sighed. Slowly, he removed his hands from Dora’s shoulders. “I am scared of facing him,” he admitted. “I would rather face a French firing line again. But since it was Albert that saved me from something of that sort in the first place, I suppose that would be a terrible waste.”
“If you change your mind,” Dora told him helpfully, “I will have my scissors on hand. You may borrow them whenever you like.”
Elias coughed on a hazy laugh. “That is very dark humour, Miss Ettings,” he managed. “I cannot help but approve.”
They headed back inside, all three of them, dripping on the floor in front of the quietly horrified butler. Lady Carroway sent a servant with Elias to find him a room. She turned to Dora then, and there was a fond, rueful smile on her face.
“I shall have to lend you a dress, Miss Ettings,” she said. “And perhaps a set of slippers.”
Chapter 11
Lady Carroway gave Dora one of her older dresses—it was a very lovely mint green silk that was so far beyond Dora’s means that it looked somewhat ridiculous, especially with the bust so obviously fitted for another woman. Still, one of the maids helped Dora change in Lady Carroway’s room, pinning back the extra material so that it looked nearly right. They eventually tracked down the matching slippers too, which fit her feet tolerably well.
“I will see how quickly I may return this to you,” Dora promised the viscountess. “It is so expensive, I almost fear to wear it at all.”
Lady Carroway shook her head. “I have not worn this in years,” she said. “I still think fondly of it, but it is a style fit for a younger woman, and it is time I gave it up.” She smiled at Dora. “I do not think that I have ever seen such grace and calm under pressure. I am suitably impressed with you tonight, Miss Ettings.”
Dora blinked at that. Somewhere distant, the words gently nudged themselves against a pile of misery, knocking away a few of the other ugly words that had nested there.
“That is... most kind of you,” Dora told her. “But I fear it is more of an affliction than a grace. I am often not emotional enough, my lady.”
“You were quite emotional enough to calm an angry magician and drive him to tears,” Lady Carroway said wryly. “I ought to have died of shock to hear an apology cross that man’s lips, Miss Ettings. But he seems truly chastened tonight, and now in a more generous and contrite state of being than ever before. If you continue to perform such miracles, you may yet be in danger of being canonised.”
Dora looked down at the green slippers on her feet. “I will ask the priest on Sunday,” she said absently. “But I suspect I must be dead before I may be canonised, Lady Carroway. The thought does not immediately appeal, so I shall do my best to refrain from further miracles.”
The viscountess laughed at that. It was a warmer sound, now that they were away from dinner and behind closed doors. “Miss Ettings,” she said. “It is a terrible shame that you will not marry Albert. I would have loved you as a daughter.”
Dora froze in place. A warm, flustered confusion beat at the inside of her chest. “I... I don’t know what you mean by that,” she said.
Lady Carroway patted her shoulder. “Albert has set himself against it,” she said. “For the life of me, I could not understand why at first. But I have seen now what he must have seen from the beginning. You have a rare sorcery indeed, to wring a few such smiles from the Lord Sorcier, Miss Ettings. And I think you must be nearly as taken with him as my son is.“
Dora gave a few slow blinks. The hundred or so implications of this little speech moved like molasses through her head.
This is ideal, she thought. Albert will be pleased that his mother has given up.
But Elias was not really courting her, and obviously she was not taken with him. Dora could not really be taken with anyone, could she? She was almost certain one required a full soul for that sort of thing.
“I would have loved you as a daughter.”
The words made her chest sore. She reached up to rub at it, confused.
“I am very mindful of the compliment you have paid me,” Dora said quietly. “I value it dearly, though I do not quite know how to express it.”
“You may help me with a new project,” Lady Carroway told her. “For after tonight, I feel it necessary that we must part with another sliver of our comfortable living, or else I will sleep restless.” The viscountess reached out to tuck a strand of rust-coloured hair behind Dora’s ear. “Mrs Dun is quite at her limit, as is the orphanage itself. Perhaps we could find another building and another administrator. But I will need more than one person keeping an eye out for the right building and the right administrator.”
Dora considered that seriously. “My chaperone, Miss Jennings, is quite excellent with children,” she said. “She is an ex-governess, and she can keep a sick room. She has been generous with her sentiment over the workhouses, and I think she would be very amenable to a permanent position.”
Lady Carroway nodded thoughtfully at that. “I will see if I can engineer a chance to meet her,” she said. “Perhaps you must come here for tea, and bring her along.”
They went back down to dinner, though some of the courses had come and gone, and Albert had disappeared—called up to speak with Elias, one of the servants informed Lady Carroway quietly. She had some food sent up to them both, and settled both herself and Dora closer to the head of the table.
“It is raining dreadfully outside,” Lady Carroway said cheerfully. “As we have accidentally discovered.” It is drizzling, Dora thought with mild amusement. But she did not contradict the viscountess. “I really must insist that you all stay the evening with us, Lady Lockheed,” the viscountess continued. “It will be far more pleasant for you to stay inside where it is warm and dry, and to take off fresh in the morning.”
Auntie Frances had been looking at Dora and her borrowed dress with a familiar, growing suspicion—the sort of expression that asked what strange thing have you done now? But at this invitation, she became all smiles and undying gratitude. “You are so gracious to offer,” she cooed to Lady Carroway. “I would decline, but since it is so awful out, I will stay for the sake of th
e girls. I cannot bear the thought of them catching cold for such a small thing as my pride.”
Lady Carroway sent a runner back to Hayworth House, informing the countess that they would be staying the evening. As dinner wound to a close, the gathering retired to a drawing room, whereupon Lord Carroway snuck himself a brandy and Lady Carroway requested to hear Vanessa on the pianoforte. Dora settled herself on a sofa in the corner, sorting quietly through her strange piles of emotion as she listened. Dimly, she noticed Lady Carroway’s oldest son, Edward, watching Vanessa with the same sort of stricken expression that Dora had seen so many times before on other suitors. Even if I never marry Albert, Dora thought. I suspect the hens will have their true desire soon enough.
Even as she thought this, Vanessa glanced over the piano at Dora with a desperately quizzical look. Dora realised that her cousin was far too preoccupied with the evening’s earlier events to notice her lovelorn attendant. Dora rose to her feet and padded over towards the piano, settling herself onto the bench next to Vanessa.
“I will play the simple part of a duet, if you like,” Dora said.
Vanessa searched her eyes—for distress, or confusion, or fear, Dora was sure. As she found nothing immediately concerning, however, Vanessa forced a smile. “Yes, that would be lovely,” she agreed.
“The situation has sorted itself,” Dora said softly, beneath the strains of the piano. “Elias has calmed himself and made his apologies.” I am almost certain that he has apologised to Albert by now, Dora thought.
“I did not realise he had such an awful temper,” Vanessa murmured back. “I begin to think that you were right, Dora. We must find someone else to help you.”
One of those flutters returned to Dora’s stomach. “I do not want someone else to help me,” she said. “Elias may have an awful temper, it is true. But he is angry about all of the right things. It’s so very strange, Vanessa. I cannot think of respecting anyone who does not feel at least a little angry at all of this injustice now. It is almost nonsensical to be calm about it.”
Vanessa pursed her lips at that. At first, Dora thought she may have accidentally insulted her cousin. But then, Vanessa said: “You call him Elias?”
Dora missed a note on the piano, and promptly apologised.
I have used his name too much tonight, Dora thought. When else did I use it? I have likely embarrassed myself without noticing.
“I can forgive much,” Vanessa said softly. “But if he should ever speak to you the way that he spoke to Lady Carroway, I will find a new pair of scissors, Dora.”
Dora managed a smile at that. “You do not need to find a new pair of scissors, Vanessa,” she said. “You gave me a pair of my own, and you taught me how to use them.”
For just a few hours, the lantern warmth between them returned. Dora basked in its glow, letting the feeling soothe the long-tailed worries that had built up over the course of the evening.
It was another very different feeling, being bundled into a bed that wasn’t even her normal borrowed bed. Dora tried to sleep, but soon found herself pacing the bedroom, in search of some feeling which she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
The mirror, she thought after a few minutes, pausing her steps. She had not scryed on Elias more than a handful of times, but she had grown used to the idea of having the mirror nearby, so that she could do if she wanted to. Elias was under the very same roof tonight, and yet she found herself unsettled knowing that she could not speak to him, to know whether he had ended the night in a less tortured frame of mind.
Dora chewed at her lip thoughtfully.
I could find a normal mirror, she thought. He did say that perhaps I could manage, even without the spells.
This seemed like a perfectly reasonable alternative somehow—and so Dora slipped out of her borrowed room and went off in search of a mirror.
She found one not far from her room, mounted upon one of the walls in the hallway. It was a burnished brass plate, rather than a silver-backed mirror, but the reflection was clear enough to do. Dora focussed upon it and knitted her brow, trying to imagine Elias as she had last seen him—soaked and bedraggled and looking awfully miserable.
The strange, detached state of mind was easy to come by. But the image of Elias remained stubbornly stuck in her head, unwilling to come out. Dora frowned, and tried to focus on it harder—this time, she felt a distinct pressure against her mind, as though she were trying to press into molasses. The pressure became harder, and somehow more ominous, the more that Dora leaned into the effort. Bother, she thought. He has protections, I’d forgotten. It was the mirror he gave me that could bypass them—
“What are you doing, you twit?” Elias’ voice hissed behind her, and she startled free of her trance. She saw him in the reflection of the brass mirror, standing just behind her in a loose cambric shirt and pants. His hair was even more mussed than usual, and his eyes seemed raw and tired, but he was somehow even more real than he had ever been before—
His hand closed on her shoulder, warm and very present, and Dora realised that he was quite real.
Dora turned around with a pleased, even smile. “I was trying to scry you,” she said. “But here you are.”
Elias pressed his fingers to his forehead. “You might have hurt yourself,” he told her. “You’re lucky I felt someone trying to barge through my wards. I had no way of knowing who it was, but I thought that there must only be one person foolish enough to try.”
Dora smiled at him again. For some reason, the expression came much easier to her at the moment. It had something to do with his hand on her shoulder, she thought, or maybe the fact that he seemed closer to his normal self than he had been before.
“Are you much better?” she asked him.
Elias laughed softly, but it was the sort of tired laugh that suggested he had given up a fight. “We are both in the hallway, barely dressed better than our night clothes,” he told her. “Naturally, you would like to have a heart-to-heart just now.”
Dora’s smile broadened. “Naturally,” she said. “I am remembering now how strange that is. But I was worried. I hope you will indulge me somehow.”
Elias sighed. “I will,” he said. “That is the worst of it.” He dropped his hand from her shoulder. “Stay here. I will go and find something to solve all these silly, modest rules.”
He disappeared down the hallway again, and Dora waited patiently. When he soon returned, he brought with him one of the lanterns from downstairs, which now gave off a watery, unearthly sort of blue light.
Dora gave the lantern a fascinated look. “What have you done to it?” she asked.
“I have thrown together the most hurried, slapdash spell of my career,” Elias informed her dryly. “But it is something akin to one that I have used before. As long as the candle is still lit and we stay within the light, we will be difficult to notice. Not impossible, mind you, but... we will be considered relatively unimportant and uninteresting.”
Dora nodded, fixated on the dancing flame inside. “I am sure it must have better uses than avoiding nosy servants,” she said. “But how novel!” She offered out her arm to him as though they were standing in a ballroom, fully-dressed, instead of in a strange hallway, looking far less than proper. Elias took the proffered arm, carrying the lantern in his other hand as they paced down the hallway.
“Are you much better?” Dora asked again, very quietly.
“I am better,” Elias murmured. Shame and embarrassment coloured the words. “I have eaten. I have spoken with Albert. I have even gotten some modicum of real sleep. Now that I am more steady, I am frankly shocked to have been let back inside this house, let alone offered to stay the night.”
Dora frowned at that, as they started wandering down the stairs. “You must give Albert and his family more credit,” she said. “He loves you, and he must know how badly you have been driving yourself. He feels some measure of the same things—it is part of why you have remained friends.”
“You could
not have parroted him better if you had been in the room with him when I apologised,” Elias observed dryly. He hesitated then. “Albert... has often suggested that I should take more pause, and feel less guilty for it. I have tried to listen to him this time. I am beginning to realise that I am no good for anyone this way. I am more apt to solve things when I am rested. I am more apt to rest if I am not alone with my thoughts.”
Dora nodded. “I suspect that Mr Lowe has had occasion to take his own advice. I wondered at first how he could possibly go home at the end of the day and go to balls or dinners with his family. But he is not as haggard as you are, and he has kept his calm in the face of some very awful, bloody things each day.” She paused. “Vanessa has kept me from losing myself, I think—though I cannot compare my difficulties to those that you and Mr Lowe have faced. And on those rare occasions when I have not had Vanessa, I have gone outside at night to look up at the stars. Or... I did such a thing back home, in Lockheed. It is harder to do in London, I will admit.”
“There are fewer stars to be had in London, it is true,” Elias observed. He squeezed her arm—as much for his own comfort as for hers, Dora thought. They came to a door that led outside, and she saw that it was a way into the same garden where she had tried to wash her dress in a fountain. Clearly, one or both of them had started in that direction from sheer familiarity. She smiled and opened the door, stepping out into the night.
The slight drizzle had long since cleared up, though the grass was damp beneath their feet. There were still stars, Dora thought, as she craned her head to look upward. They were not as bright or as numerous—though why that was, she couldn’t be sure. She stumbled over her feet a few times, dizzy with the distance; Elias reached out to flick her sharply on the ear, but this didn’t draw her attention in the way that he had probably hoped.
“I forget that you don’t react as a normal person sometimes,” Elias muttered. “At least keep your eyes on your feet while we walk. You might turn an ankle, and then where will we be? I know a great many spells, but fantastical healing is not among them.”
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