Disenchanted & Co.

by Lynn Viehl

  I felt the warmth receding. “Don’t leave me, Mum.”

  In my mind she whispered, We’ll be reunited someday, my darling. When it’s your time, your father and I will be waiting for you.

  As my eyes cleared so did the darkness, and I found myself looking across my desk at Lady Diana Walsh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Are you unwell, Miss Kittredge?” Lady Diana asked, taking a lacy handkerchief from her reticule and touching it to the dark circles under her pretty eyes. “Is that why you refuse to help me?”

  “I’m not sick, milady.” The burning sensation in my stomach had vanished. So had all my aches and pains and the soot blackening my skin. My mind began to reel as I glanced down at the little calendar I kept on my desk and saw the date. The date that was a fortnight past. The day I’d met Lady Diana Walsh for the first time.

  Time. Harry had said something about it. It took a moment before I remembered what it was.

  You’ve turned time on its head.

  “The attacks on your person are not the result of a spell, nor are the words cut into your flesh actual wounds,” I told Lady Diana. “You are the victim of cruelty and contempt, not magic.”

  “How could you—?” She stopped and rose to her feet. “I should have known better than to come here. Good day, Miss Kittredge.”

  “Proof. Of course, you’ll want that before you believe me.” I took a flask from my drawer, went round the desk, seized one of her wrists, and pulled off the glove. “Here, hold still.” As I poured the brandy over her hand she uttered a shrill sound that I ignored as I picked at the edge of the letter S in SLUT, lifting the dried wound paste just enough to peel it off. “You see? Just as I said. The brandy acts as a solvent, but don’t yank at it too hard, or it will still tear your skin.”

  Lady Walsh stopped protesting and stared. “How in the world . . . ?” She went to work and in a few seconds had carefully peeled all the paste off her unmarked flesh. Her wide eyes shifted to my face. “You knew how this was done to me? Without ever meeting me? Who—?”

  “I’m afraid this time I do have an urgent appointment across town,” I told her as I reached for my walking cloak. “Perhaps we could meet later, at your home?”

  “You are not invited to my home. Nor can you tell me such things and then walk out.” Her voice grew shrill. “I must know who did this to me.”

  “In a few hours, you will. Or we’ll all be dead. I’m not quite sure how it will go.” Once I fastened my cloak I grabbed my keylace from the wall hook. “Oh, and you should know that the only reason your husband married you was to get another heir. Your stepson is diseased and barren. Good day, milady.”

  I ran past her footman for the stairs, praying that my assumptions about my own circumstances were just as correct. Puzzling that out made me forget about Fourth, who intercepted me on the stairs halfway to the first floor landing.

  “Good morning, Mr. Gremley.” Hoping to squeeze past him I moved to one side, but he did the same. “I do beg your pardon, but I’m in something of a hurry.”

  The clerk bent from the waist in one of his overdone bows. “Miss Kittredge, I’d hoped to—”

  “—run into me today,” I finished for him. “I regret to say that I cannot be your escort to the opening of the opera on Thursday next, excuse me, Friday next, as I will be away on business. Mr. Skolnik’s unmarried daughter, Maritza, will make a fine substitute. She speaks no English, so your dear mother will be unable to grill her.”

  By this point Fourth’s nonexistent chin had dropped to his reedy chest. “Miss Kittredge, you have anticipated my every thought. How in heaven’s name—?”

  “It’s magic. I was wrong. It does exist.” I patted his shoulder. “Must fly. Do enjoy the opera.”

  He didn’t try to stop me as I darted round him and made it to the basement access door on the first-floor landing.

  “Docket.” My voice couldn’t be heard above the clanking and hammering, but as soon as I spotted the bottom half of him sticking out from a familiar cabinet I didn’t bother to shout again. I did rap my knuckles on the side of the HangItAll to get his attention.

  “What the devil is it now?” Docket emerged, his face shiny with sweat and patches of black grease. “Oh, Kit, fabulous. I’m just putting the finishing touches on—”

  “—the HangItAll. Problem is that the boiler steam will soak all the garments you put in it, so best you call it the WashItAll.” I paused to catch my breath. “Docket, I need to borrow your carri for a few hours.”

  “WashItAll. That might work.” As he looked at me, his grin turned upside down. “Sorry, my dear, but the carri’s done for. Took it apart last week to repair the boiler.” He squinted at me. “What’s the matter? You look white as a wedding frock.”

  Without a carri I’d never get there. “I have to go.” Wouldn’t be the first time I’d stolen one. I hurried outside and looked down both sides of the street. No carris in sight, and the trolley wouldn’t reach the corner stop for half an hour. I felt so desperate I even thought of the tubes, but even if I could survive the pressure of being shot through one, I’d never fit inside.

  I sat down on the curb to prop my head against my fists. I would not wail or weep or otherwise make a fool of myself. I would think of a way.

  The clop of hooves came toward me, growing slower until they stopped. I raised my head to see a big black horse looming over me. He had been bridled but not saddled, and his sides were sweaty, as if he’d been on a long run.

  “George, what are you doing here?” The horse dropped his head to nudge my shoulder, and I automatically caught his reins. “You can’t be here. You weren’t here that day. This day. We haven’t met.”

  He snorted and tugged, pulling me to my feet. I had to hike up my skirts to mount him, which bared my legs almost to the knee as I rode down the street. Decent men stared, decent women turned away, but a few clerks and cartlasses laughed and waved me on.

  I guided George across the city, out to the farmlands, and down the long road to my destination. The black iron gates were closed, of course, but George leapt over them, as quick and nimble as a hare.

  I reined him into a respectable trot—dashing up to the great ugly place would only alarm the hooligans guarding it—but took him straight to the front of the house. Connell appeared before I could dismount, but as soon as he saw my face he turned and hurried back into the main house.

  “Well, we’re here, George,” I said as I dropped to my feet. “One of us has to go in there.”

  The big black horse eyed me before he turned and trotted off toward the stables.

  “Coward.” I shook out my skirts and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as I walked up to use the knocker. But the door was already opening, the man inside stepping out.

  “Charmian.” Lucien Dredmore, resplendent in his usual silver and onyx, surveyed me from toe to crown and back again. “Am I to understand my man correctly? You’ve stolen one of my horses?”

  “No, sir.” He was alive. “I am returning it.” He was himself again. “It ran away and came to my building in the city and I have to sit down now.” I was going to cast up my accounts, all over his boots.

  The marble step felt so cold it was like perching on a block of ice. That was why I was shaking so badly. I felt a strong hand at the back of my head, an arm under my knees, and then he was lifting and carrying me through his dark dungeon of a house to a softer spot, a chaise lounge by a sunlit window. I heard him call for brandy, and then he was putting the rim of a glass to my lips.

  “Drink.” When I didn’t, he took hold of the end of my nose and pinched it shut.

  I drank, and coughed, and felt the fire in my throat spread through my insides as it settled to an agreeable warmth.

  He made me take another swallow and then he watched me until the shaking stopped. “Should I call for the smelling salts, Charmian, or is that the end of it?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’ve never been in shoc
k before now. I’m so sorry.”

  “You are apologizing. To me.” He put his hand to my brow. “You’ve no fever. Were you thrown from my horse?”

  “George would never unseat me,” I said, and took a deep breath. “This morning I was tossed back through time. I’m here because of that. Because I’ve seen the future, and I need your help to change it.”

  “You have hit your head on something.” Lucien glanced over at Connell. “Send for the physick at once.”

  “Wait, please.” I considered what to tell him. I’d killed the man, or rather his body; he deserved to know at least that much. But he had no memory of the wonderful or terrible things that had happened to us—or hadn’t yet done them, now that I’d thrown us all back in time—so he would think me terribly addled, or even perhaps gone mad.

  Unless I offered him evidence to the contrary. “No one knows about your life before you came to Toriana, do they? You’ve never confided it to anyone. Certainly not me.”

  “What are you about now, Charmian?” he asked, his voice going soft and lethal.

  “You were five when your parents sent you away to school. They didn’t tell you that you would be kept there, that you wouldn’t go home for holiday like the other boys.” I looked round at his things. “You’ve always had the best that could be provided. They paid for you to have a private room, the finest tutors, the most expensive garments. But there were no letters, Dredmore. No birthday cards. No visits. Nothing. They wouldn’t even permit your nanny or valet to write to you.”

  His eyes took on a dangerous glitter. “Who told you this?”

  “You did, or more precisely, you will.” And I proceeded to tell him the rest. I spared him no detail, and when I named the exact sum his mother had offered him to leave England forever, he turned his head and stared into the fireplace.

  It wasn’t anger or wounded pride. He was ashamed of what they had done to him. Perhaps because they had felt no shame in doing it.

  Once I had finished, I picked up the glass of brandy I disliked so intensely and took a large swallow. After another round of coughing, I handed the remainder to him. “In fourteen days there will be an invasion of Rumsen. Talian Reapers will come here with an army, led by the agents of an Aramanthan warlord called Zarath. They plan to use the dreamstone they’ve hidden all over the city inside phony wardlings to turn our people into puppets.”

  He drained the rest of the brandy. “I don’t know how you found out about my boyhood, but dreamstone and time travel are myths. The Tillers would never permit the Reapers to set foot on Toriana soil.” He regarded me carefully. “You haven’t been trifling with poppy dust, have you?”

  “The Reapers have already infiltrated the Tillers,” I assured him. “They’re controlling Lord Walsh.”

  “Nolan Walsh, the banker?” When I nodded, he made a dismissive gesture. “The man is nothing but a pompous ass.”

  “Takes one to know one, does it?” I asked sweetly. Before he could reply, I added, “In a little over a week, that pompous ass will capture you and me at Feathersound. Yes, I know you own it. To save my life, you’ll swallow a spirit stone, Walsh will kill himself, and your body will be possessed by Zarath. The warlord needs your mind power to remove the final obstacles and set off the dreamstones.”

  He stared at me. “You’ve never in your life believed in magic.”

  “That reminds me.” I smiled. “Your current suspicions about me are correct. I am a spell-breaker, Lucien. That’s why your magic has no effect on me.” I didn’t have to tell him that his spiritborn gift of enchantment worked extremely well; that little detail could remain between me and the future Dredmore.

  He came to me and jerked me to my feet. “If what you say isn’t some bizarre fancy you’ve dreamed up to confound me, and by some impossibly wild chance you have returned from the future, then why didn’t you stop the Reapers while you were there?”

  “I did.” I rested my hand against his chest. “Just before Zarath cast his spell over the city, I drove an iron spike through his heart and killed him.” I looked up at him and let him see everything I felt. “Which was, coincidentally, your heart.”

  “You killed me.”

  I nodded. “Before you surrendered your body to Zarath, you made me promise that I would. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I expected. Really a lot of blood.”

  His hands fell away. “Now I do believe you.”

  “Excellent.” I turned my head. “Bring the carriage round, Connell.” I saw the surprise on the servant’s face before I said, “Your master and I are going to call on Lord and Lady Walsh.”

  Dredmore said very little as we rode to the Hill. I pulled up the shade so I could see the mansions glittering in the sunlight once again. While I would never care for the ton’s lofty community, seeing it burnt to the ground had not been an improvement.

  “Do you mean to expose Walsh in front of his family?” Dredmore asked.

  “Not at all.” As the carriage stopped, I reached up and felt for my pendant. “We will speak to him privately.”

  He frowned. “If he is under Reaper control, he will deny every charge, and then use his influence to destroy my credibility and your life.”

  “Not this time.” I reached out and patted the back of his hand. When he seized my wrist, I didn’t pull away. “We’ve arrived. Don’t change your mind now.”

  He held on to me. “You haven’t told me everything about the future, have you?”

  “What, and spoil the surprise?” I smiled as Connell opened the door. “Where would be the fun in that?”

  The Walshes’ forbidding old butler came directly to answer the door, doubtless astonished by the prospect of anyone calling at such an unseemly, early hour.

  “Lord Dredmore and Miss Kittredge to see Lord Walsh,” I told the old winge before he could open his mouth. “On quite urgent business.”

  The butler reared back, the skin surrounding his nose drawing up as he ignored me and addressed Dredmore. “The master is not receiving, milord.”

  Dredmore brushed past him. “He will see me now.”

  “It’s a terribly private family matter,” I told the outraged butler as I followed suit. “We’ll wait for him in his study.”

  It took Lord Walsh less than three minutes to stalk into the room and slam the doors behind him. There was egg yolk on his chin and he still wore his morning jacket and what looked like fur-lined bed slippers. “Lucien. Good God, man, what is the meaning of this?”

  “Your wife came to see me this morning, Lord Walsh.” I waited for him to lower himself to notice me. “She believes your deceased first wife has cast a spell on her. But as it turns out, you’re the one who has been bespelled.”

  The first tinge of purple bloomed in his florid cheeks. “How dare you—”

  “With very little trepidation, actually.” I closed the distance between us and lifted my skirts. “But I do apologize in advance for my actions.”

  I kicked him in the groin with as much force as I could muster, and stepped back as he shrieked and dropped to the carpet. He didn’t vomit, however, which annoyed me. “I see you’re going to be difficult. Lucien, please hold his head for a moment.”

  Dredmore came up from behind and clapped his hands over Walsh’s ears.

  “Thank you.” I grabbed the man’s chin and inserted two of my fingers into his mouth, pushing them back as far as I could until he gagged. “Watch your boots.” I sidestepped the spew of Walsh’s breakfast, waiting until he coughed out a gleaming red stone. Using a kerchief to pick it up, I wrapped it carefully before passing it to Dredmore. “Don’t swallow this.”

  “I’ve no desire to.” He pocketed the bundle.

  Lord Walsh finished vomiting shortly thereafter and, once Lucien had helped him to his feet, began to make his own apologies. “I say. Terribly sorry. Must have eaten something that was . . .” He trailed off as he looked at both of us with visible bewilderment. “Do I know you?”

  “Dad? What the devil?” A b
leary-eyed Montrose burst into the room, tottering a little as he rushed to his father’s side.

  “You can come in, too, Miss Walsh,” I told the woman hovering outside the door. “This concerns you as well.”

  The timid Miranda tiptoed in, her hands worrying at the edges of her lace fichu while she surveyed the messy scene. “It seems my father is ill,” she said, her voice wavering. “You should perhaps leave so that we might attend to him.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with Lord Walsh anymore,” I assured her. “I helped him get the spirit stone you shoved down his throat out of his belly.”

  “He will suffer some gaps in his memory,” Dredmore added, “but they should not be permanent.”

  As Miranda shrank back, I eyed the mess on the floor. “You’ll probably want to have the carpet cleaned right away. When egg yolk dries it’s as hard to comb out as plaster on cashmere.” Dredmore got to the door before Miranda and closed it. “Thank you, Lucien.”

  He leaned back against the door. “My pleasure, Charmian.”

  Miranda skittered away from him, going to stand behind a wingbacked chair. “Monty, call for the nobbers. Hurry.”

  “Dredmore is a deathmage, Monty. I wouldn’t twitch an eyelash.” I went to Miranda, and dragged her over to face the still-wheezing Nolan Walsh. “It’s time to tell your father exactly what you and your husband have been up to.”

  “My husband is dead,” she protested, at the same moment Lord Walsh said, “My daughter is a widow.”

  “On the contrary, her husband is still alive and hiding somewhere in the city,” I told him. “He’s probably too young to be a Lost Timer, but I expect his Talian father was.”

  Miranda gaped at me. “My dear Lestin died in battle.”

  “Your husband faked his death to get out of the militia, come to Toriana, and—with your help—begin the groundwork for the Reaper invasion.” I nodded at Nolan Walsh. “While he didn’t have any powers for Zarath to use, I imagine your father’s wealth, power, and influence proved quite useful, once the Aramanthan took control of his mind and body.”