They left Phoebe and Aunt Sybil to fuss over Alexandra, who said loudly that she was quite capable of walking herself back to her room, if someone would bring her a bathrobe, looking quite mulish when Phoebe protested.
Hetta caught Gwendelfear observing Alexandra with a look of tired satisfaction. She had faded casually into the background in the general rejoicing at Alexandra’s recovery and would probably have slipped away without anyone being the wiser if Hetta hadn’t caught her eye and made a slight gesture. Gwendelfear’s eyes narrowed.
“I would have a word with you,” Hetta said quietly to her.
The fae followed her out. Hetta led her into the hallway, down the stairs and into the green drawing room. Wyn ghosted along behind them. Gwendelfear ignored him entirely. When Hetta and Gwendelfear entered the room, he took up a position by the door, a silent sentinel.
The green drawing room had been decorated by Hetta’s mother. Hetta had never met that lady, since she’d died giving birth to her. Hetta had come in here sometimes as a child, trying to picture her mother somehow in the space between the grandfather clock and the chesterfield. She’d never really succeeded, but the room had still come to mean refuge.
“Please sit,” she said to Gwendelfear. The fae did so, her whiteless eyes unblinking. Hetta wondered why she’d chosen not to adopt a human disguise. Maybe her magic was too drained to do so; there was a heavy weariness to her movements. Her appearance was even more jarring when contrasted with the ordinariness of her surroundings: upholstered chesterfield, country landscapes, aforementioned grandfather clock. Hetta tried not to show how much the woman’s strange appearance bothered her, and not just because she didn’t want to antagonise Gwendelfear. Wyn was watching her, and she knew that he would extrapolate her reaction to apply to himself also. He was as focused as she’d ever seen him, dark eyes intent on Gwendelfear, watching her as one does an untrustworthy dog without a muzzle.
“Thank you for helping my sister.”
Gwendelfear made a movement much like a horse wriggling a fly off. “I did not do it for your thanks.”
Hetta had seated herself across from Gwendelfear, the coffee table separating them. She felt a ridiculous urge to offer the fae tea. She wanted to ask Gwendelfear what she knew about the Stone and whether her court was involved but wasn’t quite sure how to begin.
“Wyn,” she said softly. “Would you leave us for a moment?”
He flashed them both looks: a warning to Gwendelfear and a request to Hetta to take care. But he left. “I will be outside.”
Hetta wished she had offered Gwendelfear tea, for then she would have something to occupy her hands with. Consciously, she laid them together in her lap and met Gwendelfear’s eyes steadily. “I’m rather out of patience with all this fae shilly-shallying, as my grandmother would call it. Will you tell me plainly why you came to this house and if my kinsfolk are in further danger from your people?” Taking a risk, she added, “You know the Star Stone is missing. Do you know its location?”
Gwendelfear was eyeing her oddly. “Do you truly expect me to answer your questions?”
“Well, I hope you will, but in any case, there didn’t seem to be anything to lose by asking them.”
Gwendelfear smiled. “Oh, I can see why he likes you, Henrietta Valstar.” She paused to contemplate for a few seconds. Then she rose. “You were kind to me when I came here, though I came under false pretences. For that, I will grant you a truth.” She paused to savour her next words and said with a cat-like smile, “The fae do not have the Star Stone.”
41
Land-sense
There was a certain apathetic quality to the atmosphere in the house the next morning. The family were, of course, relieved beyond words at Alexandra’s recovery, but since they had all been subconsciously preparing for the worst, the sudden removal of that strain left them all fatigued. Hetta, Jack, and Marius all gravitated to Lord Valstar’s study and Wyn showed up, with his usual foresight, complete with tea set and cake. Hetta told them, with resignation, of Gwendelfear’s ‘truth’.
Marius worried at his lip. “I just received a letter this morning, from my friends down in Knoxbridge. They identified the substance the false Stone was made of and gave me a list of manufacturers that could have shaped it, but it’s a slim lead.”
“Let’s hear the list then,” said Jack tiredly.
Marius obediently drew a folded letter from his coat pocket and read the list aloud. None of the possibilities shed any light on the situation.
“Well, it was always a long shot,” Hetta consoled him when he’d come to the end of it.
“Well, that’s it then, isn’t it?” Jack said. “It’s not fairies and no one has the faintest idea where else the damned Stone is. We may as well announce that the Stone is missing and take up the search for star indigo publicly. I’m sorry, cousin.” He did look sorry, and there was no trace of triumph in his expression.
Marius looked to her for guidance. He would take her part, if she wanted to argue against Jack, but she could tell he didn’t have much heart for it. Seeing their two faces turned towards her, both anxious, filled her with a bittersweet decision. Jack was right, and yet she couldn’t regret the strange twist of fate that had kept her here for so long. Look at the three of them, come so far in such a short time.
Hetta breathed out slowly, coming to her resolution. She nodded. “It will be a scandal, but it won’t be the first scandal attached to my name in the North. Unless anyone has any better ideas?”
They agreed to make the announcement to the rest of the family at dinner. “And we must make sure no one else is hiding any more pertinent information about fairies or secrets or suchlike,” Hetta added, thinking of Alexandra and Gwendelfear. It was difficult to be truly angry at her half-sister, given that her actions might have saved her life, but cold fear filled her at the thought of what might have been. There wasn’t much more to say after that, and they parted ways, each to be alone with their thoughts.
Hetta found herself wandering through the vast house, struggling with strange, unnameable emotion. Along the route, tiny details leapt out at her: the painting of Grandfather Marius at the top of the main staircase that Wyn used to hide notes behind; the long south hallway where a serious eight-year-old Jack had tried to teach Marius and Hetta how to bowl before being soundly scolded by Aunt Sybil; the door to her father’s bedroom. She stopped outside this one. As a child, she’d been far too intimidated to intrude, but now curiosity plucked at her.
In more modern houses, it was usual now for spouses to share a bedroom, but Stariel couldn’t be considered modern by any stretch of the word, and her father and Phoebe had maintained separate chambers ever since Hetta could remember. Obviously, there must have been some travel between the two, given the fact of Gregory, Alexandra, and Laurel’s existence, but Hetta didn’t like to dwell too much on the details of that.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting to find here, but it wasn’t this quiet, clean room, bare of personality. Someone had been through and tidied away her father’s things, and now the space might have been nothing more than a large and slightly shabby guestroom.
She went over to the windowseat facing north, out towards the Indigo Mountains. Her father’s room was on the third floor, which struck her now as odd for an elderly and often inebriated man, but perhaps it had been worth it for this view. She sat down on the windowseat, walking her fingers along the ledge. What would her father have thought of all this? In his own way, he’d tried to do his best for Stariel, taking in Wyn, refusing to cut up the estate, and preparing Jack to take over the reins. He had always wanted Jack to inherit. The idea of Hetta becoming lord would never even have crossed his mind.
She’d never wanted this, this land of vast landscapes and idiosyncratic people and changeable weather, never wanted to research sheep varieties or drainage schemes or housing upgrades, never imagined a life spent buried in accounts books and arguing with tenant farmers. Why, then, was she so
miserable at the prospect of giving it up? She reached instinctively for Stariel for comfort, but there was none to be had. The land was as unsettled as she.
She gave herself a little shake. She ought to do something useful rather than this wallowing in self-pity. With this resolution in mind, she wound her way down to the housekeeper’s office. Wyn wasn’t inside and, after a query to the housemaid, she found him quietly turning wine bottles in the cellar.
“Are you hiding?” she asked, amused at the incongruity of this man, this fae prince, performing so mundane a task at such a time. His back was to her, his movements slow and graceful.
“No, actually.” He turned. “I simply found myself too distracted to perform tasks requiring much intellect, and this still needed to be done.” His mouth lifted when he saw her standing at the cellar entrance. “Hetta.” He said her name as if he simply wanted the pleasure of saying it.
“Angus asked me to marry him,” she said, surprising herself.
He froze. He did that under stress, went still as a deer in a hunter’s sights. She watched him consciously un-freeze himself after a short pause, his shoulders relaxing in a display of sheer willpower.
“What was your answer?” His tone was mild, as if he didn’t give two figs whether she married another man. His eyes told a different story, subtle but undeniable; she was getting better at reading him.
“I told him I wasn’t sure of my own heart yet. Although after considering the matter, I don’t think we would suit.”
He let out a long breath. For a moment, she thought he was going to move towards her, but then he paused, his eyes widening at some inner revelation. He opened his mouth, looked at her face, and closed it again.
She crossed her arms and glared. “What?”
He paused and then said, carefully: “Lord Penharrow.”
“Yes, we have now correctly established Angus’s title.”
“Someone with a motive to want you as lord,” Wyn expanded. “Lord Angus Penharrow.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “If this is jealousy speaking—”
The air about him abruptly crackled with magic, bringing with it the smell of rain falling on dry earth. It filled the spaces between the dark wooded walls of the cellar for a breath before he drew it back into himself and once again was only her mild-mannered butler.
“Why would I be jealous of Lord Angus? You said you didn’t want to marry him.”
Hetta noted he hadn’t actually refuted her charge. “For goodness’ sake, let yourself be angry for once in your life. It’s exhausting watching you tamp it down every time you threaten to lose your temper. No wonder you have so little faith in yourself—you never let yourself relax, really, do you?”
Wyn tilted his head. “Just to be clear here—are you instructing me to lose my temper at you, Hetta?”
“Well, I don’t precisely encourage it, but you shouldn’t fear that I’m going to break if you do.” She paused. “And you’re also allowed to be jealous, if you choose.”
He shook his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Very well, then. But that isn’t what prompted my accusation. We know it isn’t the fae who took the Stone, and we know it wasn’t Marius’s lover. Who else stood to gain from your ascension? Lord Penharrow.”
“On the off-chance that I would marry him and combine the estates?” she said sceptically. “A very long shot, surely? And besides, I don’t even think combining the estates would work, with the land-sense.” Although Angus hadn’t believed in the land-sense, she remembered. She shook her head. “No. Out of the question.”
Jack was just as adamant in his reaction when Wyn had dragged them all together again in Hetta’s study.
“No,” Jack said. “He’d never do something so underhanded. And what would he stand to gain, anyway?”
“Hetta,” said Wyn simply. “And land.”
Jack’s eyebrows went up. “What do you mean?”
“He’s been after Stariel’s lands for years.”
Jack made a dismissive sound. “That’s not a secret. And in any case, what good would it possibly do him to make Hetta lord?”
“He has been courting Hetta,” Marius said slowly.
“What?” Jack looked so appalled at the idea that Hetta couldn’t help but laugh.
“You needn’t sound horrified at the idea of someone courting me, Jack. It’s a little insulting. There are men who find me attractive.”
“Yes—but, Angus and you?” he spluttered.
Hetta took from this that she wasn’t the only person who had suffered a case of hero worship towards Lord Penharrow. “In fact,” she said, needled, “he asked me to marry him.”
This created a certain amount of uproar and the need for further explanations. When the initial reaction had calmed, Jack was still unconvinced
“I don’t think that constitutes a motive.”
“But perhaps,” said Marius, “it would be worth checking Penharrow, to be sure. Any one of us ought to be able to sense the Stone’s presence, if we get close enough.”
They all turned as one to look at Hetta. She flushed and shook her head. “No. I cannot possibly visit Lord Penharrow given the circumstances. He will, quite rightly, take it as a sign of encouragement, which wouldn’t be fair to either of us!”
“Why don’t you want to marry Angus, anyway?” Jack asked.
“You can’t be appalled at the idea that he would want to marry me and then equally appalled that I don’t want to marry him within the space of the same conversation. Besides, it’s none of your business.” She couldn’t help her gaze flickering beyond Jack to Wyn, who stood quietly next to the poster of the Sun Theatre.
“I don’t see how it isn’t my business,” Jack shot back. “Given that he’s our neighbour.”
“We’re straying from the point,” Marius interjected. “Are we going to go search Penharrow or not?”
“On what basis?” Jack flared up once more in Angus’s defence. “Angus has only ever been a good neighbour, and we’ve no evidence that he’s played us foul other than his questionable taste in women.” He gave Hetta a deliberately provoking look, and she might have risen to the bait except that a vague recollection bubbled to the surface of her mind. She let Jack and Marius argue while she tried to catch it. No evidence, Jack had said. It seemed an apt description for the entire mess. If Marius hadn’t realised the Stone was a fake, there would have been no evidence of the crime at all. The false Stone was the only hard piece of evidence they had, for who other than the Valstars really understood the land-sense?
“Marius,” she said, then—since he was involved in a passionate debate with his cousin—more loudly: “Marius!” The two of them broke off and turned to her. “Marius, what was that list of possible manufacturers again?”
She thought he would question her, but something in her tone alerted him, and he obediently fished the list from his pocket and read them out again.
“Smithson’s Manufacturing,” she repeated slowly.
“You recognise it?” Marius asked.
An image snapped into focus: a box labelled Smithson’s Manufacturing. Where had she seen such an item? She frowned, searching, and abruptly her mind surrendered the memory. The train platform. A box stamped ‘Smithson’s Manufacturing’. A box collected by none other than Lord Angus Penharrow.
42
Confrontation
The others hadn’t wanted her to go alone to Penharrow, of course, once she’d explained. But Hetta was filled with an unpleasant mix of anger and hope, and she didn’t want others to be party to her confrontation. Hetta had eventually pointed out that if they were relying on her to frighten away fae monsters with her pyromancy, it would be the height of hypocrisy not to allow her to face one mortal man by herself.
Marius drove her unhappily to Penharrow. Hetta drew in a sharp breath as they crossed the border between Stariel and Penharrow; again, there was that intense sensation of resistance, worse even than the last time. Marius shot her a
concerned glance before returning his attention to the road.
“Don’t you feel it?” she asked him. “Stariel—it doesn’t want us to go.”
He frowned. “Not specifically. All I’ve got from it these past weeks has been restlessness, like I can hear someone moving about in a distant room. But you know my land-sense isn’t strong.”
Hetta glanced back towards Stariel thoughtfully. She hadn’t thought her land-sense was particularly strong either.
The midday sun might’ve been designed to show Penharrow Estate to its best advantage. Everywhere there were small signs of prosperity, obvious now that Hetta had been grappling with the lack of them at Stariel: cottages and roads and fences in good repair, fields neat and green. Even the sheep looked fatter.
Really, it was intolerable that Angus should be such a good landowner. It made it impossible to cast him properly in the role of villain, a concept she was still having difficulty with. Perhaps there had been some mistake. Anger warred with confusion.
Penharrow Manor was of more modest and modern construction than Stariel House, brick rather than stone and more coherent in design.
“It’s probably fully elektrified too,” Hetta grumbled under her breath as they pulled up. Marius gave her an odd look as he parked the car.
“You sure about this, Hetta?” he asked, grey eyes serious.
“Perfectly.” She got out of the kineticar. “I shall be back shortly.”
She’d known that Angus would be happy to see her and, indeed, had been conscious that he might take her spontaneous visit entirely the wrong way.
“Hetta!” he said delightedly when his butler announced her. He rose and kissed her cheek. “I had no idea I was to be so favoured.”
She smiled, though it felt very false. “It’s very good of you not to point out that I’m being abominably rude by calling on you without warning.”
The Lord of Stariel Page 26
