The globes of warm, orange light suspended from the chandelier had no auras.
He wondered, mouth gaping. “What the….?”
And Rachel—giggled. He blinked and looked at her, and she hid her mouth with one hand, eyes sparkling. A weight lifted.
She didn’t hate him.
“Flies are going to get in,” she advised him, very seriously, and he snapped his mouth closed. She smiled. “That’s better. The light is new,” she said, indicating it. “Some contraption shipped up from Vernella. It flickers from time to time and even goes out for hours, occasionally. But Rosie says the spirit within is quiescent and barely moves. No chance of it breaking out. That’s something, isn’t it?”
By that point, he’d stopped looking at that light. Her voice had taken on a far-away sort of tone, and she tilted her head to one side to look at the chandelier, making the tiny studs in her ears sparkle under the light.
“It certainly is something,” Chris repeated.
Too late, he remembered once again that she could sense his attention. She blinked and looked at him and colour bloomed in her cheeks. She swallowed and then… smiled. She nodded once, respectfully. “Good evening, Christopher,” she said quietly. “Please, do speak to Miss Faraday about Mister Greene?”
She hurried from the room.
He watched her go, a smile playing on his own lips.
Perhaps he didn’t entirely hate the country.
ll right, that’s quite enough of this. Wake up!”
The words penetrated Chris’s hazy, warm cocoon of sleep, and he jerked awake all at once, heart racing, fighting blankets to sit up. He flew back through the months. There was someone in his room, in his bed, he couldn’t move, there was a voice harsh in his ear, where is the list? only he’d given the bloody list up already and what could they possibly want from him now–
Olivia stood at the foot of his bed framed in watery light.
He blinked, sat up straight, and rubbed his eyes.
She was fully dressed in wide-legged brown trousers, a high-necked white blouse with cameo, and a smart little brown bowler hat with a crimson ribbon tied around its base tilted jauntily to one side. She threw back her head and cackled merrily. “Oh, bless, Christopher, you look like something a madhouse just belched out into the streets! I didn’t even know your hair could point in so many directions at once, goodness!”
His heart hammered at his ribs like it was impatiently waiting for someone to usher it inside. He fought through the spiderwebs clinging to his brain and swallowed around his unpleasantly fluffy tongue. He reached up and ran a hand through his hair. She was right; it was an absolute disaster. “Gods, Olivia,” he groaned. His voice sounded like a rusted hinge. “What time is it?”
“Five o’clock in the morning,” she replied promptly.
He immediately fell back in bed with a groan and pulled the quilt over his head.
“Oh, now, none of that!” Olivia said, her voice maddeningly bright. It felt as if it were piercing through his ears into his brain. “I think I’ve had something of a breakthrough, and this is the ideal time to investigate it.”
“Eight o’clock,” Chris groaned, turning his face into his pillow. “You told me, six months ago, when I took this ridiculous job. It starts at eight o’clock.”
“Yes, well.” Olivia hummed. “It was also meant to take place in Darrington City and involve the investigation of murders. We are already quite off the beaten path here. Now. Get up.” She punctuated this last order by grabbing the bottom of his quilt and yanking it down just far enough to make him yelp, sit back up, and grasp the remaining covering tightly in two hands.
“Olivia!” he protested, his voice a little too high, really. “I’m in my bloody nightshirt!”
“Yes, rather,” she said. She was grinning madly, and he sighed. There was absolutely no way he would be the victor of this conflict. “Now you’re so scandalized,” she continued, “that you have no choice but to stand up and dress.”
He held the blanket beneath his chin, looked up at her, and fully resigned himself to his crack-of-dawn fate. “You’re at least half mad, Olivia Faraday.” He sighed and then waved her off. “At least leave me to dress myself in peace?”
Olivia laughed. She swirled away, but when she reached the door, she simply stood there, facing the wooden door, and swayed from side to side.
“Olivia!” he protested, clutching the quilt against him as he slid out of bed. “Please, can’t you leave the room? I need to—to disrobe, for all the Gods’ sakes!”
“Most certainly not,” Olivia insisted. Still facing the door, she planted her hands on her hips. He couldn’t help but notice the shape of her posterior through the trousers. Really, this was why women were meant to be in skirts. As if the early morning hadn’t already made things inconvenient enough in his trousers. He cleared his throat.
“And why in the world not?”
“Because I just know if I leave you to your own devices, you will be back in bed and sound asleep in half a second. And this has to be done before anyone else is awake.”
“Before the bloody birds are awake,” Chris grumbled, but Olivia only laughed. Sighing, he opened the wardrobe where one of the staff had carefully hung all of his clothing. “What on earth could possibly require such an early start?”
“Well, firstly. This is the day of the Festival so the grounds will be buzzing all through the day. This is going to be our only chance to move without everyone on the property watching us. As for our goal… I’ve been thinking about something from last night.”
Chris selected a pair of simple breeches, a starched white shirt, an especially robust plaid waistcoat, a light coat, and suspenders. He decided to forgo greatcoat, hat, cufflinks, or necktie. Full, proper daywear struck him as being crassly formal in this country domain, where things were simple and fresh.
“What exactly is on your mind?” He studied her carefully, ensuring that she wasn’t going to turn around, before removing his nightshirt and, flushing, slipping into his undergarments.
“It’s just a nugget. A possibility. But… I begin to think that Maris’s interpretation of the situation just may be correct. The good doctor says that Em stopped working on all of her ongoing enterprises. Including her passion project, that spirit-free heating system she sprayed all over me two weeks ago. Which, as you might recall, was on a strict and fast approaching deadline!”
“I do recall.” Chris buttoned his breeches. He’d need to do something about his hair before they went out. He somehow didn’t think Olivia would be interested in giving him time to shower. “This isn’t a new revelation,” he reminded her. “You thought it more than passing strange yesterday, as well.”
“Hm? Oh. Yes, certainly. But now I have a hypothesis, Christopher. That is the difference. The doctor says that Em ceased work on all her current designs, but also, that she’d never seemed more engaged in her work. And Em told us about another project, something important, which Livingstone didn’t seem to know a thing about! It all seemed a bit odd, didn’t it? Ah, but it makes sense, now! It’s that blasted light, you see?”
“Light?”
“Yes, the one Miss Albany pointed out. The chandelier that illuminated our rather disastrous dinner last night. Some ‘new-fangled thing from Vernella,’ the nanny said. Which got my wheels turning. Vernella? What sort of innovation takes place in Vernella, of all places? And surely if someone were so close to cracking some… new form of spiritbinding, or whatnot, Em would have known about it! Really, it’s all quite—”
Chris froze in the midst of fastening his suspenders. “Wait,” he said, suspiciously.
“Hm?”
“Olivia.”
“What’s that tone for?”
“Miss Albany and I discussed the light after you had left the dining room. After everyone had left, in fact.”
“Oh, that.” Olivia laughed and fluttered her hand around, long fingers dancing. “Well, Christopher, I suppose it’s just as y
ou and Miss Albany theorized. I’ve regressed back to my childhood self. She was an inveterate eavesdropper.”
“Hells!” Chris snapped. “That was a private bloody conversation, Olivia!”
“Yes, obviously. I feel I’ve already quite confessed to that part.” She folded her arms and actually had the audacity to look annoyed. “If you’re invited to it, it’s called listening and not eavesdropping.”
He and Rachel had teased and flirted. Discussed family matters and Rosie. Miss Albany had revealed a tiny sliver of her core to him before sweeping away. He highly doubted she would be at all comfortable with a crazy bloody Deathsniffer listening in to every word.
He turned to her. She was still turned away from him. His waistcoat still hung open, and his hair was still an absolute mess. He ran a hand through it and felt it spring back to its wild state. He should really know better than to sleep with pomade still in. “Look at me,” he said firmly.
She stiffened, and he felt her preparing to react poorly to his attempt at speaking to her with authority. More regression. But instead, she shook her head, as if to herself, and turned about. Her eyes swept him. She gave a half-smile. “Hm.” She tapped a finger to her chin. “Whatever it counts for, Christopher, you look more than a little dashing in that state of frayed, tortured near-dress. I’d cultivate and deploy that look tactically if I were you.”
His cheeks warmed, but he knew she was only attempting to distract him. He straightened his jaw and levelled her with his most serious look. “It was blasted no good of you to listen in on that sort of conversation, Olivia,” he said. “Matters with Rachel are complicated enough as it is, which you know, and she’s… well, she’s private! Which you of all people should understand.”
Olivia’s face fell, and she pursed her lips. Her hand came up to brush the hair away from her face, only to find it all piled atop her head, beneath that jaunty little hat. So she just threw her arms in the air and looked away, instead. “I know. I’ve spent most of the night thinking about what the two of you said—regression and eternal childhood and how we behave around our parents. I decided that it’s all quite undignified. I absolutely should not have eavesdropped. It was a right childish thing to do.”
“Ah,” Chris said. “Oh.”
It wasn’t at all the reaction he’d expected. And despite the absence of the word “sorry,” it was one of the most heartfelt apologies she had ever given him.
“Truth be told,” Olivia said, straightening and meeting his eyes again, “my mother and I create quite the waves when we’re together, and you deserve a world and then some better than to blindly splash about betwixt our bloody whirlpools.” She went to brush back her hair again, made a frustrated noise, and dropped her hand. “But—honestly, enough of that. It’s all—” She growled and turned on her heel, throwing open his door. “Enough of that nonsense. Come with me, Christopher. We have to see if we can make sense of what Em was really working on before she disappeared. Because I’ll bet my last royal, it has to do with that damned light.”
In the watery light of dawn, the mist hung on the apple trees and floated about the hills like cobwebs. Once again aback Hobby the lazy gelding, Chris initially wished he’d worn a greatcoat after all. The morning was cool and damp, and the chill was the kind that settled into the bones. But when the sun broke the horizon and peeked above the treeline, it was warm and sweet and butter yellow. He closed his eyes, letting Hobby have his head, and allowed himself to enjoy the rays on his face. Life stirred in the trees and grass around them as bugs and birds both sang to herald the dawn.
“Nothing like a country morning, is there?” Olivia’s voice was strangely soft, and Chris peeled his eyes open to see her riding abreast him, her fingers threaded through Alouette’s thick black mane instead of on the reins.
“It’s very… peaceful,” Chris admitted. He rarely rose before six even on his earliest days, but he knew that early morning in the city meant lamplighters on footways tapping alps and salamanders back to sleep, milk delivery carts rattling up and down the streets, day labourers hurrying off to work in either their own or hired conveyances. Darrington woke with the sun when it bothered to sleep at all. This was different. The entire world felt as if it was sleepily rolling over and blinking slowly, smiling up at the sky.
“In an hour or so,” Olivia said, “the entire orchard will be humming. Even if it weren’t Harvest Festival, on a crisp autumn morning like this, you’d see absolute armies of orchard workers gathering bushels and bushels of apples. Some to the mill, some to the cidery, some to market off in Summergrove town, and some to ship farther, or even to ride the eight o’clock train all the way back south to Darrington. Hah, or all the way up to North Country, where a thousand orange-haired little Maris-types will bake ten thousand pies!”
She seemed so delighted and animated, eyes flashing and cheeks high with colour, that Chris couldn’t help the question that slid out. “You really love this place, don’t you? Why are you so reluctant to take it over, even if it means someone like Dayton bloody Spencer getting his claws into it?”
He saw by the way the skin around her eyes tightened, and her fingers clutched Alouette’s mane that she fully intended to launch into another odd tirade. But as he scrambled for an apology her jaw bulged, her throat worked, and then her chest heaved. “Later,” she murmured.
He couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or herself, and she kicked Alouette’s sides and loped off into a canter before he could ask. He winced but kicked the reluctant Hobby up to follow her, lest he be left behind and lost in the labyrinth of apple trees.
Riding at a canter was a nightmare. The trees and ground flew by at an incomprehensible pace, and Chris huddled down against his mount’s neck, holding on tight and closing his eyes as tears leaked from the edges.
He caught up with her outside of the guest house. The sun had climbed another few inches into the sky, but trees crowded around the guest house like a bevy of overprotective aunts, casting it into deep, blue shadows. No lights shone from inside. Olivia nodded to herself and slid down off Alouette’s back.
“Gods,” Chris gasped as Hobby pulled up to a halt. “Warn me before you—”
She spun to look at him and pressed a single finger to her lips. He hushed up immediately.
Olivia moved carefully when hitching her mount to the post, and Chris didn’t need to be told twice to emulate her caution. For whatever reason, she wanted this done in silence.
It felt strange opening the side door to the kitchen without so much as a knock. It was all entirely appropriate, in truth; the guest house belonged to Olivia by rights, along with most everything in it. But it still felt like Doctor Livingstone’s home, which made Chris’s palms sweat uncomfortably. Hadn’t the good doctor had enough intrusions into his private business for an entire lifetime?
It was dark inside except for the salamander glow from the banked oven and the watery morning light streaming in through the high windows. So far, no cook had risen to prepare bread for the morning. Olivia turned to Chris and smiled triumphantly. “See?” Her voice was low, just above a whisper. The sound seemed to vibrate in the air. “Wake at a time that feels insane, and you get the run of things.”
They took what appeared to be a servant’s staircase up to the second floor. The steps were steep and narrow, and Chris foresaw himself tumbling backwards, but they didn’t make so much as a squeak. “Always better oiled,” Olivia said with a little laugh. “Can’t have the maids coming and going at all hours waking the master of the house, after all.”
From there, they made their way to the attic laboratory.
Very little light came in through the small, open window. The air felt clammy in the damp morning air, which made the burnt, old soil smell stronger. And there was a new dimension to the scent, too… almost rotten. Chris wrinkled his nose, eyes going to the offending pile of clods. “I hardly see the point of stockpiling… dirt.”
Olivia snorted. “It’s peat, Christopher. Hones
tly.” She’d raised her volume. Despite knowing that Livingstone and his family slept on the first floor—and that Olivia’s family owned this house, and that they were doing nothing wrong—he really wished she’d go back to the quiet murmuring. Once stealth had been established, it was bloody hard to shift back to normality.
He tried to focus on her words, and not her volume. “Peat?”
“Peat. From the rank boglands in the Northern Country. You don’t remember Em’s speech at the automobile demonstration?”
Chris rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. “Other things from that night have subsumed the demonstration in my memory, Olivia.”
She heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Oh, fair enough,” she said. She walked over to one of the workbenches and began to rifle through sketches and graphs. Chris could barely recognize Emilia’s beautiful handwriting in the henscratch that covered the pages. “A great deal of Emilia’s work is based on the potential properties of peat as a fuel source. It’s what she used to heat the water that became the automobile’s steam. There isn’t much wood up where Maris is from, so before Lowry reached them, they just burned peat.”
Chris picked up one of the clods. He weighed it in his hand. It was more solid than he’d expected. “How would you even burn dirt?”
Olivia tittered a laugh, still flipping through pages. “It’s not dirt, silly boy. It’s moss. Old, dead plant fibre in fens becomes this fine sort of soup… oh, I don’t know the details. But Em says that it’s like… an earlier form of the black rock they use for fuel in the south. Like a sapling to a tree. Peat isn’t nearly as strong or sustained or hot a burn, but it’s a decent starting point…” She sighed loudly and dropped the papers down on the table. “I can barely read any of this!”
Chris found himself adjusting his concept of “south” once again. Olivia didn’t mean back in Darrington, or down at the capital in Vernella, or even all the way to the fishing villages that populated the southern coast of Tarland. She meant south, all the way south, down to the continent of coffee and tea, monkeys and elephants, manticores and dragons. It beggared belief that Emilia Banks could be settling for a lesser form of the fuel they used there. He set the brick of peat back atop the pile. As he did, he thought he caught movement in the apple trees below, but when he leaned out of the window, there didn’t seem to be anything there.
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