by C. J. Archer
“Ahhh…”
“Tell me, can one choose the color of the new diamond? I don’t have any yellow, you see. The wife of a banking friend of my husband’s has a brooch shaped like a bee set with yellow diamonds and jet. It’s very pretty, but how she prattles on about its rarity. If I had a magical yellow diamond, it would put her in her place. She says she doesn’t believe in magic, but I think she secretly does. Well, India? Can one choose the color of the new diamond?”
Bristow must have been listening on the other side of the door and realized I needed saving because he entered at that moment and asked to have a private conversation about a matter requiring my immediate attention. I exited with him and he proceeded to rattle off a list of tasks requiring his attention. He was just finishing when Peter the footman appeared with the tea things.
I thanked Bristow and told Peter I’d pour the tea then waited for them to leave. Those few moments with the butler had given me time to think of how best to send Mrs. Delancey on her way with the least amount of damage done. “Speaking of the spell,” I began. “You didn’t inform Sir Charles, did you?”
She pressed her hand to her chest, horrified. “Oh, no, India. I learned my lesson. I don’t do that anymore. I would never betray your confidence more than once.”
“I am pleased to hear there is a limit. But I must insist that not only do you not tell anyone, but you must also forget about the spell. It doesn’t work.”
“But Miss Johnson said it does.”
It was yet another reminder of why I would throttle Willie when I saw her again. “We thought it worked, but a jeweler tested the diamonds and declared them to be fakes.”
She accepted the teacup and saucer with a tilt of her head. “How fake?”
“Quite, quite fake. He said it was easy for an expert to tell. So Fabian and I have abandoned that experiment altogether before we ruin any more gold in vain.”
She clutched her reticule tighter, a look of disappointment on her face. “Perhaps that’s for the best. It would be unfortunate to lose the gold for no return. My husband is always talking about return on investment. So much so that it seems to have sunk into my head finally.” She laughed as she picked up her teacup. “Well then. This will just be a nice visit with my favorite magician instead.” She sipped then put the teacup down. “Do you know, we had a magical collectors club meeting while Lord Coyle was on his honeymoon.”
“Oh?”
A wicked smile curved her lips. “He’s not the leader, you know. We can have meetings whenever we want, with or without him.”
“Who organized it?”
“Sir Charles.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Just between us, I think he was rather put out that Coyle didn’t invite him to his wedding. Mr. Delancey and I had another invitation or we would have been there, but most of the collectors club members weren’t invited. I think Sir Charles felt the slight more keenly than the others.”
“Was Louisa at the meeting?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Not a great deal, as it happens. Louisa talked about her fiancé’s magic. It was quite interesting, if not spectacular. He wasn’t there, however. A shame, as he could have given us a demonstration of his floating ink. I suggested to her afterwards that he would have been an asset to her lecture. Professor Nash was there too, but he didn’t say much.” She stared into her teacup resting on her lap. “Indeed it was rather a strange evening.”
“Because Lord Coyle wasn’t there to stimulate conversation?” I asked.
“Oh, no. It was quite pleasant without him taking over all the time. No, I suspect if you ask the others, the evening wasn’t strange for them. It was just me, and Mr. Delancey and Sir Charles, of course.” She might have been avoiding my gaze, but I could still see her cheeks blush.
“Do you mean to say it was all rather awkward between you three because of your liaison with Sir Charles?”
She nodded.
“I didn’t realize you’d told Mr. Delancey that we’d caught you giving him secrets about us.”
She wagged her finger at me. “One secret, India. There should be no ‘s’ on the end of secret. No, I did not tell Mr. Delancey. He somehow found out. I don’t know who informed him.” She met my gaze. “Was it you?”
“No!”
“Mr. Glass?”
“It wasn’t Matt.”
“Are you sure? Husbands and wives don’t tell one another everything.”
“We do.”
She sighed. “Then who?”
That was a good question. Sir Charles himself could have done it, but I couldn’t fathom a reason why he’d tell. I wouldn’t put it past Lord Coyle stirring up trouble again either.
“It was most upsetting when Mr. Delancey confronted me over it,” she said quietly. “He thought Sir Charles and I were having a liaison of an intimate nature, you see. It took me some time to convince him that we are merely club friends. I had to tell him everything about our rendezvous, what they were for, that sort of thing. He forbade me to see Sir Charles privately anymore, which is quite all right with me. I have no intention of seeing him outside club meetings. Why would I? We’re just friends, after all. Not even friends. Mere acquaintances.”
“Husbands can be jealous of other men,” I said.
“Very true, India, very true.” She sipped her tea. “It doesn’t help that Sir Charles is a knight. I think it wouldn’t matter to Mr. Delancey too much if Sir Charles was also poor, but he is quite flush these days.”
“He is?” We knew Sir Charles had recently bought himself a carriage, but he lived in a small house and didn’t seem all that wealthy.
“Not wealth on our scale, of course, but he has certainly come into some money recently.”
“How do you know?”
“Through Mr. Delancey’s banking friends, of course. He asked one of them about Sir Charles after he learned of our, er, connection. Oh, don’t look at me like that, India. You know bankers share information with one another. It’s simply good business sense.”
“This had nothing to do with business.”
She waved off my concern. “Mr. Delancey keeps such sensitive information to himself usually, but it just slipped out when he confronted me about my liaison with Sir Charles.”
“When did Sir Charles get this money?” I asked.
“He deposits it in irregular intervals. Sometimes every week then there might be a pause of several weeks before he comes in again with another deposit. It’s all rather intriguing, isn’t it? I do love a good mystery, but unfortunately there’s no way of solving this one, so my husband says. Not unless we ask Sir Charles directly, of course, but not even Mr. Delancey would do something as gauche as that.”
She changed the subject and I tried to follow, but my mind kept returning to Sir Charles Whittaker and his secrets. His secret meetings with Lord Coyle, his secret knighthood, his secret job, and his secret money. Working for the government would explain his knighthood, but perhaps it was Lord Coyle who paid him. Did that mean Lord Coyle also worked for the government?
“India, are you listening?” she asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, is she?”
“I’m sorry, is who what?”
“Is Mr. Glass’s odd little cousin here?”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” I said.
“Miss Johnson.”
“No, I’m afraid she isn’t. Did you want to see her?”
She gave a small shudder. “I wanted to know if she’d signed the vow of temperance yet.”
“Oh! Not yet, I don’t think. She’s been very busy.”
“Drinking?”
“Mostly gambling.” I rather enjoyed seeing her lips purse so tightly they almost disappeared altogether. I nearly told her Willie had also been cavorting, but thought it best not to. Mrs. Delancey might faint and I didn’t want her here longer than necessary.
I greeted Matt as soon as
he returned home from Scotland Yard. He’d visited Brockwell, but I was too intent on telling him what Mrs. Delancey had told me about Sir Charles’s money to wait for his report.
“Well?” I finished. “Do you think Sir Charles and Lord Coyle both work for the government? And if so, why is the government spying on Fabian and me?”
I knew Matt had been pondering that question ever since learning of Sir Charles’s secret knighthood. This was the first time I’d raised it, however.
“Because of your magic.” His jaw went rigid. “They want to keep an eye on you both.”
“In case we create a dangerous spell?”
He merely shrugged.
“Ridiculous,” I muttered. “Sir Charles and Lord Coyle both know I’d never give my spells away, nor would I do anything to jeopardize lives, as Amelia Moreton is doing. It’s rather insulting they think I would.”
“There are other reasons they might want to keep an eye on you.” He sat beside me on the sofa and placed my hand between both of his. They were deliciously warm. “It appears as though the government was aware of magic from before Fabian even came to England. They probably knew about it before you did. Perhaps they’ve always been aware, but kept the knowledge secret, known to a select few.”
“But Commissioner Munro didn’t know. He was very resistant to the notion of its existence. He still is.”
“When I say select few, I’m not including Munro.”
That would be a very select group indeed. “I’ll speak to Lord Coyle and Sir Charles,” I said. “It’s time to tell them we know they’re spying on me on behalf of the government—and to stop it. Or at least tell us why. I don’t mind telling them what spells we’re creating, I just won’t be sharing those spells with them. If I make that clear, then there can be no misunderstanding and we can stop all these lies and subterfuge.”
He put his arm around me and drew my head down onto his shoulder where he proceeded to gently massage the back of my neck. “You’re too trusting, India.” His voice rumbled through me, as silky and rich as chocolate. I sighed and sank into him. “The government might not believe you capable of protecting your spells and demand you give them up for safekeeping,” he said. “Or they might want you to create a spell they can use against their enemies.”
Now I really did feel naïve. “I would refuse,” I said lamely.
“There’s one other possibility.” His eyes darkened as his gaze drilled into me. “They might want to suppress magic altogether, as it has been suppressed for hundreds of years. Don’t forget Whittaker employed violent means to encourage Barratt to stop writing his book.”
I nodded weakly. “Yes, he did.”
“If that’s the case, the question is, what will they do if they think magic is in danger of becoming common knowledge? How far will they go to suppress magicians who want to make it public?”
I sucked in a breath between my teeth. “You subscribe to Mrs. Moreton’s theory that artless officials want to imprison magicians?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m cautious, for now. We simply don’t have enough information. For one thing, we don’t yet know if Coyle and Whittaker are part of the same spying circle or not.”
I pulled away to look at him better. “You think Whittaker is feeding information to the government and Coyle separately?”
“It’s possible he’s playing two hands at once, yes. There are too many unknowns at this point to confront either of them. We need more time to investigate.”
We certainly did, but what should we do? How would we get answers?
“We need to know why Whittaker was knighted,” Matt said. “I want to be one hundred percent sure we’re not imagining something that’s not there. He might not be working for the government at all, but someone else entirely, or only Coyle. If his knighthood turns out to be for innocent reasons, that will give us an answer. I need to speak to someone who can go straight to the top. There’s a peer at my uncle’s club who is close to the Home Secretary. He might be able to help, but I need an introduction and the questioning has to be done subtly. I don’t want to ask my uncle, even if he were still in London. But aside from him and Coyle, I don’t know anyone, and I definitely can’t ask Coyle.”
“What about Lord Farnsworth?”
His brow creased. “You did hear me say subtle, didn’t you?”
“I know he’s an odd character, but he would be perfect, perhaps because he’s so odd. No one would suspect him of trying to trick answers out of them. And you said yourself he’s smarter than he looks.”
“I said he might be. I’m not sure.”
“He also has knowledge of magic and an interest in protecting magic and magicians.”
Matt dragged his hand through his hair and down his face. “Very well. I’ll ask him to introduce me to the Home Secretary’s friend. Then I’ll cross my fingers and hope I don’t regret this.”
Chapter 10
Matt and I called on Oscar Barratt that afternoon at the offices of The Weekly Gazette where he worked. We had intended to speak to him after learning that Sir Charles Whittaker had been the one to set the thug upon him on the day of Lord Coyle’s wedding, but the business with Mr. Bunn and Amelia had since consumed us.
Before telling Oscar who was to blame, Matt began with a warning. “You must assure us you won’t confront him yet.”
“It was Coyle, wasn’t it?” Oscar asked.
“Your assurance, Barratt.”
Oscar squeezed the bridge of his nose but forgot about his swollen eye and winced in pain. “Very well, but I don’t understand why I can’t confront him. If I don’t, he’ll just bloody well do it again.”
“Language,” Matt growled.
Oscar gave me a sheepish look. “Sorry, India, but my nerves are stretched thin.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “We understand. You want revenge.”
“I want to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and I can’t see a way of doing that without confronting him.” He indicated the closed door to his office. Outside, journalists, illustrators, editors and errand boys pored over the long desks on which the upcoming edition’s pages were spread. “I should be out there but I worry every time I see a stranger so hide in here. I feel like a coward, but what else can I do?”
Poor Oscar. He did indeed look quite anxious beneath the bruising and swelling. I leaned forward and patted his hand, but could offer no words of comfort. He was right. Unless someone confronted Sir Charles, the danger would continue.
On the other hand…
“I have an idea,” I said. “You let it be known in certain circles that you’re giving up the idea of writing the book, but you continue to do it in secret.”
“Or you could actually give it up,” Matt said darkly.
Oscar ignored him. “That’s a good idea, India.”
“When people ask why, you tell them the truth,” I went on. “That you were frightened off by an anonymous thug.”
He nodded. “I’ll have to inform Louisa of the incident after all so she can help me. She could inform the members of the club. That way Coyle will hear it.”
“It wasn’t Coyle,” Matt said.
Oscar sat forward, frowning. “Then who was it?”
“Whittaker.”
“Whittaker!” Oscar sat back heavily. “Why?”
“I’m investigating a theory,” Matt said.
“What theory?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Oscar looked at me, but I shook my head. Our suspicions about Sir Charles being a spy for the government must remain within a small circle of trusted intimates for now. Oscar was too volatile, and he was engaged to Louisa, someone I trusted as much as I trusted Lord Coyle and Sir Charles Whittaker.
“I’m on your side, Glass,” Oscar said. “Yours and India’s.”
“No, you’re on your side,” Matt said. “And you’re too arrogant to see the danger your book will bring down on the head of every magician.”
“Or it co
uld bring them freedom.”
Matt scoffed. “You’re naïve.”
“And you have no faith in human nature. The public won’t persecute magicians for their magic. They won’t revile them. They’ll celebrate them by clamoring for their wares. The only folk to be disadvantaged will be artless craftsmen. But there’s no reason they can’t become employees of the new factories built by magicians who will need to keep up with increased demand.”
Matt’s features set hard. “You’re a fool if you believe all the artless craftsmen will be content to become employees of others.”
Oscar shook his head.
“Matt’s right,” I said.
Oscar arched his brows. “You wish to continue to live in secret, India?”
“I don’t live in secret. I live my life perfectly well, thank you. I simply don’t tell people about my magic.”
“I’m disappointed in you. Before you married, you had your own opinions and they didn’t necessarily agree with his. But now that you’re married, you’ve become like every other wife and taken on your husband’s ideas when they are not your own.”
Every word had my eyes opening a little more and my temper rising a little further until it finally boiled over. “That is not true, and how dare you assume to know my mind!”
He held up his hands in apology, but I wasn’t letting him off by forgiving him. “I came to the conclusion on my own a few days ago, when a fireworks magician blew up a bomb without being near it to detonate it.”
He frowned. “A fireworks magician? Who is it?”
“Moreton’s Fireworks. Both father and daughter are magicians, but Amelia is the one who detonated the bomb when I refused to use my extension spell with her friend’s magic.”
“What do you mean she detonated it without being there? She didn’t use a timer?”
“No.”
He scrubbed a hand over his jaw and glanced at Matt.
Matt was still glowering Oscar’s way. “She hasn’t been caught yet,” he said. “Scotland Yard are in possession of the facts and are searching for her now. She must be caught before she makes another bomb. The first one was a warning to show us what she’s capable of. The next could be deadly.”
