I flex my fingers, noting how much the pins and needles have faded. “He’s not a man afraid of pain. But you do store some magic in yourself.” I gaze significantly at his hair and he smiles.
“I haven’t refreshed that in weeks.”
“Hmm. I don’t quite believe you.”
He raises a single eyebrow and both corners of his lips at the same time. “You think I can’t be this charming without magical aid?”
I exhale a laugh, steering the conversation from this increasingly large, unspoken thing between us. “Maybe he’s got the right idea, though. You should expend that energy on a more important spell in case you ever need it. But the magical knowledge of his that we’ve gathered because of Sir Bird—can’t he have just stored the spells before? So it doesn’t matter that we have his book.”
“Once broken, the connection between Lord Downpike and the spells in this book cannot be restored. If Downpike was storing any of the spells in Sir Bird, he lost them.”
“Good boy,” I murmur, nuzzling Sir Bird with my cheek. “I won’t let nasty Finn dye you ever again.”
Finn and Sir Bird exchange jealous glares. Finn breaks eye contact first, returning to the sheet I was working on. “Now, look here.” He points to one of the symbols I’ve copied. “If you shifted that one place to the right, instead of dousing flame with water, you would light water on fire. Change one variable and you change the entire equation.”
“Is that why there’s so little innovation?” I haven’t told him about Eleanor’s trick. Finn informed me early on that everyone sticks to the magic they’ve been instructed in. I’ve started to wonder about switching things around, though—combining and reimagining some of the more complex spells.
“It’s safer. A slight change in any stage could have unintended results. That’s why most of the gentry hardly bother with magic at all. They learn the basics as is required of all of us to defend Albion, but other than that they leave it alone.”
“Why are you different?”
He sighs, shoulders slipping down as though bearing a greater weight. “Because someone must be paying attention.”
“To what?”
“To everything. My parents entrusted me with a great deal of knowledge; they did not do it so I could live a privileged life of ease.” His voice gets that heavy distance it always does when referencing his family.
“Mmm, yes, because the homes and wealth and carriages and galas and symphonies are such a burden.” I cannot hide my smile, and Finn sits back, noticeably more at ease.
“You’ve forgotten what a great deal of work it is to be so handsome and charming.”
I look pointedly at his hair. “Perhaps you could show me the equation and methodology behind that one. I should very much like to understand how much effort you’ve put into it.”
“It truly was essential when I came to the city without knowing a soul. I had to get invitations to dinner and dances and social engagements somehow. I used to put more stock in its effectiveness, until a certain someone proved resistant.”
“Why was it so important? You don’t seem to enjoy any of your social engagements.”
“I was looking for someone. If no one is willing to talk to you, you can’t get much information. Then I caught wind of Lord Downpike’s warmongering, and that overtook everything else. I keep a constant watch on the moods of the important families—whether or not they would support aggression against the continental countries and the Hallin line.”
“So your charm was a tool.”
“Effective enough, until you. You know, I’ve been reading more of your father’s book in an effort to better understand where you come from.”
“But he’s wrong on—”
“No, no, meaning everything he says I dismiss entirely. But there’s one chapter about the Melenese language I found fascinating. Is it true you have fifteen different words for love?” He leans forward, his lips a challenge, like he wants me to ask why he would bring such a thing up.
I refuse to rise to his bait. “Yes. It’s much clearer, really. There’s a word for the first blush of youthful love free of desire. For longing to be with someone so much you would rather throw yourself to the tides than be without them. For the stale but steady relationship between faithful members of an arranged marriage. For how to feel about someone you thought was everything but ended up never feeling the same way about you. For the poison left over when you love someone and it ends so badly you cannot release the feelings. For the love between a mother and her children, a father and his children, a grandmother and her progeny, the love between two dear friends, the love that is the first building block of a lifelong affair. There’s even a word for a love so devastating nothing before or after is ever seen the same.”
“Beautiful,” he says. “But I counted only eleven.”
“I’m not as fluent in Melenese as I’d like. Alben took even our ability to love from us.”
“That is a tragedy beyond expression,” he says, and at first I think he is teasing but there is no curve to his lips, no dance to his eyes. The air between us is charged with something unquantifiable either in math or magic. I can’t look away and I don’t want to. But I remind myself that we are unchaperoned, and I am a lady, and there are rules to this sort of thing.
I slap myself in the forehead, startling Finn and Sir Bird, who flaps away to the other end of the room. “What is it?” Finn asks.
“I’ve just now remembered something very important.”
“Yes?”
“I’m not an Alben woman.”
He frowns, confused. “You’d forgotten that?”
“A great many people have tried to make me, from the time I was small.” I smile, admiring the line of his jaw and the curve of his mouth, and let myself feel whatever I want to feel, even if I cannot remember the exact word for it.
He narrows his eyes. “Is everything all right?”
I throw my arms around his neck and kiss him full on the mouth.
Twenty-six
AS SOON AS MY LIPS FIND HIS, HE BACKS AWAY, nearly falling off his chair. “I didn’t make you do that!” His eyes are wide with panic. “Please believe me, I really have not been using any charm spells, and I would never take advantage of—”
I put my finger—from the hand without the glove—over his mouth and trace the soft curve of his bottom lip. “Please stop talking.” Hooking the collar of his shirt, I pull him toward me and kiss him again.
This time he does not break away, cradling the back of my head with his hand, his thumb stroking down the side of my neck. His lips are soft and warm and fit mine like the answer to an equation I didn’t know I was trying to solve.
Fate is a choice, and I cannot imagine any other choice making me as weightlessly happy as I am in this moment.
We break apart and I beam, unable to contain the giddy warmth spreading inside me. Finn looks the least composed I have ever seen him, a sloppy smile on his face. “That was—you are—”
“You know what they say about Melenese women. We are given to great passion and must be trained in the Alben ways of modesty and decorum.”
“I would much rather be trained in your ways.”
“I suspect you’d be a quick study.”
He leans his forehead against mine. “What now?” he whispers.
“Now,” I say, angling in as though I would kiss him again, “I am going to visit Eleanor.” I stand, laughing at the frustrated scowl that takes over his face. “We cannot have too many lessons in one day. You must practice and perfect what you’ve already learned before moving forward.”
“I’ll endeavor to be your best pupil.”
I turn to leave but he catches my hand in his. He looks up at me with dark eyes open and sincere. “Thank you for giving me another chance.”
“Thank you for deserving one.”
I practically skip toward Eleanor’s uncle’s town house. It’s a few blocks away from the Greenhaven Park door, but I relish the time to m
yself to consider what just happened. I’m not sure what it means, to me at least, but I don’t have to be sure. Whatever happens between Finn and me, I care for him right now more than I knew I could ever care for anyone.
The future will take care of itself. In the meantime, I see nothing wrong with kissing. Kissing is wonderful.
Lord Rupert’s butler shows me in, saying that Eleanor will see me in her private sitting room. She hasn’t been feeling well lately, still not recovered from her nerves after the symphony.
“I have decided,” she says from the couch where she’s tucked up beneath a quilt, “that I never again want to be the center of gossip. Gossip is much better observed and spread than lived.”
My dreamy haze collapses when I see her. She looks as though she’s lost weight even in the three days since last I called. I sit next to her, putting my hand to her forehead, which is cold and clammy.
“Have you been seen by a doctor?”
“I’m fine. Just tired. But you look like a sparrow in springtime. What has you all bright eyed and blushing?”
I laugh. “You haven’t given Finn a plant, now, have you?”
“I don’t need to spy to tell something is different. Tell me.”
“I kissed Finn.”
“Lord Ackerly? Kissed you? No—you kissed him?” She sits straight, eyes as round as children’s marbles. “You are the single best thing that has ever happened to me. I thought Moira Chapel’s flirtation with the gardener was the best story I had heard this year, but this tops all. Has he proposed, then?”
“No, and I wouldn’t accept if he did. Not yet. I’m perfectly happy to figure out just how much I adore him without committing to adoring him forever.”
“You have a strange idea of marriage if you think that’s what it is about. I expect an engagement before the end of the month. Untouchable Lord Ackerly indeed. Promise to tell no one but me first. I’ll have to book every waking hour with calls to see as many looks on as many faces as possible when they hear.”
I laugh. “Who else would I tell?”
She settles back down, resting her head against the sofa with a cat-in-the-cream smile. “Of course, it would make sense that Lord Ackerly would find the most ridiculous match possible. Oh, pardon, I don’t mean it to be rude.”
I wave my hand. “Doubtless our whole relationship is viewed as a lapse of sanity on his part. But why does it make sense?”
“On account of his parents. He’s told you about them?”
“Only that they shadowed each other.” I blush, realizing that, though I’ve only now opened myself to my feelings for Finn, he threw his soul to me with reckless abandon. I wonder if what is a thrilling, unexpected romance to me is actually a massive relief to him after how I’ve dismissed his shadow and even demanded its removal.
Eleanor huffs. “That man is hopeless. Here he was sitting on one of the great forbidden romances of the century, and he didn’t bother to tell you? I must do everything around here. He’ll have told you about the two magical lines, correct?”
I nod, remembering the symphony. “Albion has all the descendants of the Crombergs, and the rest are Hallins, spread through the continent.”
“No one knows exactly when the split happened, but it was as deep and unbridgeable as any divide in history. The Hallins, being smaller, guard their magical knowledge with deadly fierceness. Crombergs have been killed for merely asking the wrong questions while traveling abroad. We don’t have to be so vigilant about our magic, since our strength is in numbers, not skill. But for ages it’s been mandatory to keep the two lines of magic completely separate. So imagine the scandal when the youngest daughter of the king of Saxxone fell in love and eloped with a certain Lord Ackerly the elder.”
“Finn’s mother was from Saxxone?”
“A princess. Please do not leave that part out, it makes it ever so much more romantic. Anyone else would have been killed, but the king of Saxxone is the most powerful man alive, and the story is that she was always his favorite daughter. So he forbade anyone from doing them harm, but banished them both from the continental countries forever. Lord Ackerly was shunned in Alben society, but as he had already inherited—and those laws are ironclad—there was not much anyone could take from him. They moved to his country estate, removed from everyone and utterly unconcerned, so in love they were with each other.”
“What happened then?”
She smiles sadly. “No one knows. They were more or less forgotten. I hadn’t even heard of them until two years ago when the young Lord Ackerly descended on the finest social circles of the city, charming and handsome and rumored to be downright deadly with his magical knowledge. Everyone called on him, trying to find out whether he had learned Hallin magic. He never demonstrated anything but the most proficient wielding of Cromberg skill since Lord Downpike, whom many consider to be the most powerful man in Albion.
“Lord Downpike was, of course, obsessed with finding out what he knew. According to rumor, he’s been planting spies for years all over the Iverian continent—in Gallen, Saxxone, even the smaller countries like Ruma. Nothing worked. Lord Ackerly was a new, easier target. If Lord Downpike could get your Finn on his side, he thought he could access the elusive Hallin magical knowledge. Downpike tried everything—bribery, threats, even theft—to get to Lord Ackerly, but nothing worked. Lord Ackerly was unconnected to everything and everyone, acquaintance of all and friend to none. He only stepped in when he thought someone was leaning too close to encouraging war. There was nothing for Lord Downpike to do, no advantage for him to secure. Until . . .” She trails off with a pointed smile.
“Until me.”
“Until you.”
“But Finn has said nothing of having extra magic.”
“I’ve tested him myself—oh, don’t tell him! His magic is pure Cromberg. There was nothing strange in it.”
I nod. “And the things I’ve studied from Lord Downpike’s and Finn’s books function in the same way and contain the same relative information.”
“You’re studying magic now? But I thought—can you do anything?”
“No, no. My father may be Alben but he is not noble in any sense of the word. I simply nurture a scholarly curiosity.”
She laughs. “You probably know more than I do now.”
“I’ll admit I find it odd that you have access to all of this information and power and you choose to ignore most of it.”
Her smile becomes sly. “Dear Jessamin, I ignore nothing.”
“But what of the history? I want to know how it happened, where it came from. Who were the original Hallins and Crombergs? How did they discover the magic? What happened to divide them?”
Her look grows serious. “Don’t ask too many questions there. Some history has been lost to time. Other histories have been deliberately hidden. You’re not supposed to know any of this to begin with, and—” She shifts into a hollow, rattling cough. She pulls a handkerchief out to cover her mouth.
“Are you sure you’re feeling well?”
She’s coughing too hard to answer me, so I pour a glass of water and take it to her. When the cough finally passes, she puts the handkerchief down. We both stare.
It’s spotted with blood, seeping as we watch to form the familiar silhouette of a large bird.
“Oh,” Eleanor says, a soft exhalation of surprise. “That can’t be good.”
I stand, then sit, then stand again. “Where is your uncle? He won’t stand for Lord Downpike threatening you!”
Eleanor continues to stare at the handkerchief, her pallor gray. “My uncle left for a month-long holiday yesterday.”
“I’m sending the butler for a doctor immediately. Where is Ernest? Can he stay with you while I run to fetch Finn? Finn can fix this. I know he can.”
Eleanor nods, eyes glassy and unfocused. “Hattie, the maid, she’ll fetch Ernest.” She looks up, her lip trembling. “Jessamin, I’m scared.”
I pull her to me, kiss her forehead. “I will take care o
f you. You’ll be fine. I promise.”
I wait until the butler is dispatched and Hattie is helping Eleanor into bed before rushing down the stairs. Ernest passes me, his look frantic.
“Jessamin, I—”
“Neither of us can afford to stand idly by anymore, Ernest. I’m sorry for whatever part I play in this, but it is not my fault. It is Lord Downpike’s doing entirely. And until the people with power in this country are willing to openly stand against his vicious bullying to further his cause, everyone is at risk.”
He doesn’t have time to respond before I am out the front door. Finn can fix this. He will. And then—I don’t know. I don’t know how long we can play this game, run around dousing the flames Lord Downpike is sending to lick at our heels.
As I turn a corner at a run, someone grabs my wrist, spinning me to a stop against his chest. I look up into Lord Downpike’s falsely handsome face.
“Such a hurry, little rabbit. It’s as though someone has died. Or is dying, perhaps?”
“You can’t. You won’t. The earl would destroy you.”
Lord Downpike’s hand encircles my wrist in a viselike grip. I try to pull away but he shakes his head. “Careful now. That special glove of yours might come off if you struggle much more. Walk with me like a civilized person, not some rampaging savage.” Keeping his bruising hold, he tucks my hand in the crook of his elbow, walking at a leisurely pace I am forced to match.
“Now, never mind about the earl. I certainly don’t. If his niece were to succumb to a sudden wasting disease, who could blame me? I have nothing but the girl’s best interest at heart. After all, it is my job to protect Cromberg lines, to advance them. But I do think I have seen this particular curse—I mean, illness—before. Very fast-acting. She will not last the night.”
“I will kill you myself.” My voice is hoarse with hatred for him and fear for Eleanor.
“Such threats! A fierce little thing for being the helpless pet of Lord Ackerly. But we are all in luck! I know the precise magic to restore her to full health.”
Illusions of Fate Page 15
