“I bid you go. Return to waters,” she said to the steaming horses. They did not wait but were away, racing wraithlike through the fog towards the river.
“I’ll have to hide you under my coat again,” I said.
“It’ll be more difficult now that it’s light. But we can’t have people seeing you.”
“Oh.” She fluttered her wings and blurred slightly, expanding and changing.
Before me stood a young lady of the upper ten thousand, attired in a clinging pale primrose muslin overdress with little puff sleeves. She had a very fine double twist of pearls about her slim white neck and looked ready for an evening’s dancing at Almacks. I suspected she even had vouchers for it in her reticule.
Glamor. I had forgotten that, even though she’d used in my house to hide in plain sight on the chaise lounge. “Do you think you could manage something a little more suited for traveling on a common stage?”
“Oh, “ she said with just the hint of a pout. “I liked that.” She blurred her clothing into a sensible frock of twilled cotton covered by a slightly worn pelisse. It was as well that the seamstresses and snyders of London did not see her do this, or those that did not die of shock would definitely have wanted to hang her.
The innyard was the usual bustle of mendicants and street merchants, even at this time of day. I felt the ghostly twitch of a pickpocket and wished the fellow well. My pockets were still wholly to let, which could just pose a problem as I had neglected to find anything I could pawn. I’d become quite inured to that little indignity. Still, my fey companion could conjure sovereigns from fish heads . . . which strangely enough I didn’t have any of, either. There was an outraged shriek that quite distracted me from my perusal of the sellers of paper twists of cobnuts. My youthful companion hit someone—a pockmarked youth in a fawn frieze coat.
Hit him so hard that he fell over. By the way he was doubled up and gasping, it was not a blow that Gentleman Jackson would have taught in his Saloon.
“Here! What’s happening?” I demanded.
“He put his hand . . .” she said indignantly, glamor briefly hazing.
The young pickpocket had not accounted for the glamor, it would seem. It might have been his intent to remove a purse from the pocket of her pelisse, but he had touched on something more sensitive. I advanced on him, and he scrambled to his feet, squirming away through the gathering crowd. A comfortable countryman bent down and picked up something the pickpocket had dropped. It was a purse. Monogrammed. With faint shock I recognized it. “This yours, little lady? That was a capital hit, that.”
I nodded. “She has learned some things from her brothers. Mostly they are undesirable . . . but, well, thank the kind gentleman nicely, young lady.”
She bobbed him a little bow, but made no move to take the red morocco purse.
It wasn’t hers—but then I felt that I had some claim on my dear absent’s wife’s property, and whatever was in it, by courtesy of the man who had taken her from me. “You’d better let me keep it.”
I took the purse and opened it a little. “I’d better check that your pin-money is intact,” I said, “You never can tell with these rogues.” I was quite proud.
I felt that I was turning into one myself, especially when I saw a generous roll of soft peeping out at me.
“Come, let me get you some coffee after that nasty experience. Give me your arm.”
“Well,” I said, when we were out of earshot. “That was a lucky accident.”
“There are no accidents. Not when someone has woven the fates as tightly as they have around you,” she said tersely.
“I wish you would speak the King’s English occasionally. Anyway, we have money now for us to travel post. We can hire a decent equipage and let you have more comfort for that arm. And also some coffee.” I was beginning to desperately need coffee.
* * *
Coffee. Annwn looked at the dark liquid. It was a strange, bitter brew, oddly pleasing after the first few sips. She’d only taken those because it provided social cover. There was an odd weaving of spells about this man. Strange, dark and powerful. Yes, there was some of the old blood there, but since she’d been in his bespelled house, she suspected more. She was seeing part of the weave, not the whole cloth, she was sure.
* * *
The well-sprung carriage bowled along the postroad toward Bristol. Now that I was awake, sober, even if my head was not too happy to be with me, I wanted some answers. The little fay was, it seemed, less than willing to provide them.
“Just what are you doing here? Are there others of your kind I could return you to?”
She shook her head. “No.”
It seemed she was reluctant to say any more. “I have to get you home,” I said, wondering about the land of Faerie. “I cannot help if you will not help me.”
“I don’t know how to get home.” She colored slightly.
“It was . . . an accident.” she bit her lip. “I was following someone. They . . . did some sort of magic, and I found myself in that stinking city of yours. I was trying to follow them when the dogs chased the cat, which upset the iron bin, which trapped me.”
“Follow them? So they came here?”
She nodded.
“But why didn’t you call them for help?”
She blushed fully now. “I was angry. I get very angry. I . . . I was going to kill her. And him if I could.”
“What?”
“Prince Gwyn. He . . . used me.” A little tear fell from her sooty lashes. “I didn’t realize it right then. I thought that I had caught them in a tryst. But it was to come here. I understand now. It’s . . . it’s almost worse.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and sniffed.
I offered her my handkerchief. She looked at in puzzlement.
“For you to dry your eyes and blow your nose on,” I explained.
“Oh.” She took it and dried her eyes and . . . held it away from her nose, looking at the fine mongrammed lawn. “It’s too pretty for that. I’ve seen people use them though. We watch you, you know.”
“You watch us?” I repeated, feeling idiotic.
She nodded, rubbing the fine stitches. “It is a simple spell. Even a child can do it. And you humans are strange and fascinating to us.”
“You are strange and fascinating to us too. But I mean the stories say that there used to be faerie folk here.”
“Once the line between the demesnes of Faerie and here was a thin one. There were many places where mortals would stray across into our realm, and the fay would come and sport in yours. But that is all over now.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “I cannot say.”
There was something about that that piqued my attention.
“Cannot? Or will not?”
She held her lip with her fine white teeth for a while. “Both,” she said eventually. “And I have failed. I have betrayed my father’s trust.”
“I suppose I did that too,” I said gently. “But my father alway used to say ‘no fences without a fall’ . . .”
“If the king finds out that they came through our demesnes, that I was blind in love enough to give the entry spells into the North March to a smuggler, it will be our heads that fall,” she said grimly, and she turned to look out of the window.
We came at last to Tatcham, and as the coach rolled down the raked carriageway, through a neat avenue of young cypress trees, I wondered just how I was going to explain all this. Not to Kitty of course. Explaining anything to Kitty had alway been easy, except for my engagement to Marianne. But I had left rather precipitously last time. I sighed, seeing the great house. It had altered greatly from the comfortably shabby, slightly rundown place where I had run tame in my youth. There were new wings, and the facade had been cleaned. The grass was manicured. Plainly Lord Carandon’s enterprises prospered. I was glad for Kitty’s sake, but Tatcham . . . it had changed. It was no longer the refuge it had been when I was growing up. The little fay looked uneasy too.<
br />
I paid off the postillions, and we made our way up to great door. Plainly we had been seen, because before I could reach for the knocker it was opened.
“Master Arthur!” Wilkins beamed. I would never be Viscount Lord Redmund to him, but remained little Arthur Wolverly from across the water. In his mind, no doubt, I had muddy knees, and a fowling piece that I was not supposed to have touched for him to have cleaned and quietly returned to the gun room.
“I will send one of the footmen to call Lady Catherine.”
He looked rather doubtfully at Annwn.
I didn’t enlighten him. This affair was muddled enough. “From that I assume that she’s in the stables as usual, Wilkins.” Footmen! Tatcham had always been understaffed and falling to bits. “I know my way well enough.” I should. The stables had been our play place, until Lord Carandon had informed me that his stepdaughter should no longer be in my company without a groom. Ha.
Besides, by speaking to Kitty down in the stableyard, I might avoid Carandon.
* * *
The woman’s face lit up as she saw my human companion, and she dropped the foreleg she’d been examining.
“Arthur!” She ran toward him, arms outstretched.
And then she saw that he was not alone.
Coming to this place, seeing her from close up . . . It was clear now. Well, clearer anyway. The last person Annwn had expected to see was the woman who had been with Prince Gwyn. But all the pieces began to tie together now. Magic was like that. Everything interlocked.
Especially when a dark one made such a working.
They should never have been allowed to interbreed with humans. Throwbacks such as this were inevitable.
And yet . . . Faerie had fought the nag-alfar before.
Destroyed their lairs and torn down their castles. Annwn knew them, she knew their smell and their hatred of her kind. This woman was one of the alfar, the dark ones from the northern ice, but there was none of the reek of evil that normally came with them. Living among humans she would not have been raised to evil. The darkness was still there, of course. But . . . not released.
“Who is this?” the woman-alfar asked in a voice that would have frozen steam.
“I need your help with her, Kitty. She’s hurt. You were the only person I could think of to turn to. The only person I could trust.”
Annwn could see Kitty visibly thaw with the last word. Seeing another woman with him hurt her. And yet . . . she loved him enough to be willing to help.
“Ah, Redmund,” said a cool voice from behind them. Turning, Annwn knew things had just become much worse. The doorway was filled by a tall slim man in a many-caped coat, with a whip in his hand— the man she’d seen with Gwyn and this woman back in Faerie. And just behind him stood Gwyn, attired for driving, like a human.
* * *
I saw Lord Carandon’s whip flick out and the lash twist around Annwn . . . and her glamour vanished as it touched. I tried to move and found myself frozen just there.
“Father!” said Kitty, running forward.
“Stay back, my dear. I have her powerless. I have a series of little magnetized iron beads sewn into the lash for just this type of eventuality.”
“But . . . that’s Arthur!”
“She has him in her thrall, Catherine. A weapon for the evil they plan. I will be able, I hope, to lift the enchantment. In the mean time, Gwyn, I shall require a suitable glamour to get us across to my laboratory. I believe that we were not seen by any of the grooms?”
The man he called Gwyn looked as if he might be sick. But he shook his head. Kitty stood there, twisting a lock of her hair, looking as if she would burst into tears, as we were led away. I did not want to go, but I could no more resist than I could cry out.
Carandon’s laboratory was on the second floor. As well as the arcana it was cluttered with, it also had a row of sturdy iron cages, perhaps intended for animals.
Annwn was thrust into one of them. I was led to small room off the passage on the far side of the laboratory. Lord Carandon eyed me with disfavor.
“Why did you decide to meddle in my affairs, Redmund? I thought you were safely away in London. I will have to dispose of you now.” He paused, putting a slim white finger to his chin. “In some manner which will not excite comment from the outside world. I will have to think about it. Come, Gwyn. I see no occasion to delay our visit to town.”
“How did she follow us?” asked Lord Carandon’s companion, his voice nervous. “She’s dangerous, Carandon. Dangerous to keep and dangerous to kill.”
“My dear Gwyn,” he said languidly, “leave dealing with you fey creatures to me. She is not without value to my work. You may take the compulsion off this one.” They turned and left. The door locked, and I was left standing like a waxwork. The paralysis faded slowly, but it was to be some hours before I could move. And I was sure that crying out would bring no help.
* * *
The bars were cold iron, and the cage was just that. Bars all round. Annwn could not avoid touching them. They hurt. The darkness and the betrayal hurt more.
And then there was light. A branch of candles and the woman-alfar. Fury and hatred stirred in Annwn, almost eclipsing the pain. If she could get free of here, she would . . .
“Arthur trusted me.” The woman was plainly both unhappy and afraid.
“He did,” said Annwn, keeping her voice level. “He said you were the only person he could trust. So he brought me here, to my enemies.”
“But why?”
“He could not help himself. Your workings enmeshed him. I freed him of the other thrall placed on him, as my gift for saving me, but your magics are too strong for me. It is a pity, for you deserve Gwyn my faithless lover, far more than you deserve Arthur.”
“Gwyn?” she colored slightly. “My workings? What do you mean?”
“Prince Gwyn was my lover. And as for your black working, you know all too well what I mean.”
Kitty shook her dark ringlets. “Gwyn Morgan has been paying court to me. It was flattering, I suppose. But . . . my heart was given to someone else long ago.” She held up a finger. “We . . . um . . .”
It was clearer to her now. “You pledged your troth in blood.” The blood that mingled and drove the magics that had been close to killing him.
She nodded. “We both pricked our fingers and put them together. It was children’s play, I suppose. His . . . sentiments underwent a change. But mine never did.”
She took a deep breath. “Even if he loves you now.”
“He doesn’t. He brought me here because I have a broken arm. He said that you were a healer. He doesn’t realize that he is too. He has just never learned to block the pain of those he tries to help.”
“You’re not . . . you’re not . . .”
“His lover,” filled in Annwn. “No. But Gwyn was mine. He betrayed me.”
A note of doubt crept into her voice. “Papa says that your kind can be very persuasive. Very deceptive.”
Annwn shrugged. “But not, as you should know, when constrained by cold iron.”
Kitty nodded slowly. “No. That much I have learned. I don’t know very much about you. It is Papa’s special field of research. He is teaching me.”
“He is using you.”
“No . . . I just help him a little with his work. He did so much for Mama and me. He says that I have an aptitude for it.” She sounded doubtful . . . but she was also busy with the latch. “Do you truly swear that you haven’t enchanted Arthur?”
“By the high throne and the low. By Mab and all the princes,” said Annwn. “I swear that I have done nothing more than lift the spell that bound him to someone called Marianne. It was killing him, in combination with the ill-magics on the house. Your magics.”
The hands fiddling with the lock had stilled. “He was in love with Marianne. He told me so himself. He was enchanted with her.”
“He was. Enchanted. A tawdry human spell. Easy to break. Your workings on the house were not
.”
Kitty looked first incredulous, and then terribly guilty. “It wasn’t meant to hurt him.”
“It would have killed him but for your shared blood. Why not direct your workings at her?” asked Annwn, curious about this dark-alfar motivations, despite her predicament.
“Because . . . he loved her,” said Kitty in a small voice. “I couldn’t hurt something he loved. I . . . hated that house.”
“It worked on her anyway.”
“Did I . . . I mean, the crim. cons. say that she’s the mistress of . . .”
Annwn shook her head. “It is a facet of your magic, alfar-girl. You could only bring out what was there. If she had loved him truly, it would just have been a house blighted with ill-fortune, and they would have left it. Now are you going to let me out or not?”
Kitty nodded, and sprang the lock.
Free of the iron, and close to Kitty, Annwn could feel the tracery of magics that had been bound about the alfar-girl. Magics of the same sort that had been placed on her first rescuer. She snapped them like chains of gossamer. “Now we need to find your Arthur and get out of here,” she said, as Kitty shook her head as if to clear it and rubbed her hand across her eyes.
* * *
I was not going to fit out of the window. Nor, it would appear, was there anyone outside to signal to. And then I heard someone at the door, a rattle of keys. Well . . . there was nothing that could serve me as a cudgel. But I was known to have a punishing right. If I could see that it came to handy blows before the devils had a chance to use their enchantment on me, well, at worst I could floor Carandon. At best I’d floor his companion first. Leaping down from the high sill, I knocked the man down with my rush. . . . to realize it was neither Carandon nor the other fellow.
It was Wilkins. He sat up. “Master Arthur,” he said, “I’ve had the grooms saddle horses for you and your friend. You’d best be gone, quickly. Lord Carandon is planning terrible things.”
The old butler had been at Tatcham long before Lord Carandon had married Kitty’s mother. He’d been our partisan through all sorts of trouble from when I was barely out of short clothes. I should not have been surprised . . . but I was. And touched, especially after Kitty had just let her stepfather take us.
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