But on the other hand, there was only one name for that terror that had overcome him. Panic—named for the Great God Pan…
Surely, that had not been—surely not. It had worn the guise of a mere boy, not the Great Goat-footed One. Why would the Sylvan Faun do such a thing?
For that matter, what would he be doing in England? This was not his place, he belonged in Greece!
And yet, David had seen with his own eyes lesser Fauns in England, little boyish earth spirits that haunted the gardens of Earth Masters. They had come, so why not Pan?
But why should it be so?
Perhaps Isabelle was no Elemental Master, but she did know of the Elementals, and other such creatures, too. Perhaps she had even seen this one herself…
A dozen times David made up his mind to ride over to talk to Isabelle, and a dozen times found an excuse not to, until the day after his encounter when he was very nearly run to earth by a lady determined to have him for her daughter, to the point where he seized on any reason to go riding alone again.
“My dear woman,” he said insincerely, “I would be charmed to speak with you, but I have an appointment to pay a call at Highleigh Court.”
Mrs.Venhill stared at him. “A call?” she repeated. “I was not aware that you had any acquaintances in this part of the county.” Her mouth tightened. She knew exactly what he was doing. But he had no intention of giving her a way to disprove his statement.
“I do not,” he said calmly. “But an acquaintance of mine, a Mrs.Isabelle Harton, is a guest there. I have not seen her in many years, and she was quite eager to renew her acquaintance with me.”
That last was the only lie; the rest was absolute truth, and carried the lie like froth on the top of a wave. And since he did not mention a Mister Harton, this would, he hoped, lead her to think that Isabelle’s husband was no more, and she was a young, lonely, and presumably attractive widow.
And in a case such as this, an acquaintance out of one’s youth was going to trump just about any cards a matchmaking mama could lay out. She was beaten, and she knew it. She retired gracefully from the battle lines, murmuring, “Ah! Well, of course you must go, it would be insufferably rude if you did not!”
Of course, now he had done it; he had to go, or at least appear to go, or Mrs.Vennhill would be very well aware that he had been putting her off. Do that too many times and one found one’s invitations no longer extended or answered.
So he found himself on horseback again, riding off into a day that threatened rain. Not the cleverest idea he could ever have had, but it was too late now.
And he might just as well follow through with the putative visit.
After all, if it did rain, he would have to have shelter somewhere until it passed, and as a visitor he could at least claim that much even if the visit proved to be awkward.
He had no doubt that although he was not expected, he would be received with the proper respect, and so he was. The horse was taken around to the stables, and he was shown to the library, that being a proper and reasonable place for a gentleman to amuse himself when the lady he has come to see might be busy.
He did amuse himself by looking through some of the titles of the books there, and as he had half expected, a good number of them were occult or esoteric in nature. So the owner of the house was in Isabelle Harton’s circle of acquaintances, or at least, presumably knew many of the same practitioners of psychical magic that she did.
He took one down and began to leaf through it, but it was heavy going, and he was having a difficult time untangling the sense of it, when light footfalls heralded the arrival of a newcomer, and he looked up to see Isabelle stepping into the room. She walked briskly over to him, and boldly tilted the book up to read the spine.
“Blithering idiot,” she said, without preamble, and waved at the shelves. “Our host collects any sort of occult writing, but if you examine the shelves carefully and know some of the authors, you will soon determine that he has grouped his books according to their usefulness, or lack thereof.” The half-smile she produced had more than a hint of irony in it; it was the smile of a knowing, worldly-wise woman, not the pretentious irony of a girl. “His categories—and I apologize in advance—are Useful, Moderately Useful, Nothing of Note, Idiot, and Blithering Idiot. I fear that the Blithering Idiots number twice as much as all the rest combined, but he takes some amusement in having them about. I am told, though I have not actually attended such a function myself, that one of the entertainments for his close circle of friends is to take down a book from those shelves and read it aloud as portentously as possible without cracking a smile or laughing.”
He looked from the book to Isabelle and back, and felt something constrict in his chest. The woman of the photo was, in person, so much more.
The Isabelle he had known had been quiet, a little shy, diffident. Her attractive qualities had been shaded by that diffidence. If you knew how to look at her, she was quite pretty, and he had taken a certain amount of pleasure in knowing that nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand would never see her true beauty. Unlike Cordelia, of course, who was so strikingly handsome that even a dolt knew how attractive she was.
The woman that Isabelle had become was like Cordelia in that she left the impression that she was completely self-confident. It probably did not matter to her that the frock she wore was a trifle out of date, nor that it had never been in high mode. She wore it with an air that made what she wore irrelevant.
And there was beauty there, for those with eyes to see it. She had never been beautiful before, but she was now.
It was not the sort of beauty that would make her into a subject for photographic postcards, or cause artists to beg her to pose for them. But it was a beauty that would outlast those whose features made them into public icons.
It was the sort of beauty that would look good on the arm of a public official, and presiding at his dinner table. And the confidence she exuded would make her at home at any gathering of Elemental Masters though she did not share their gifts.
This could have been his—and he had thrown it away.
“You are looking well,” he said, making his words formal, a barrier between them.
She inclined her head, graciously, with no sign that she shared the emotional turmoil that racked him. “And you, though I confess that when your card came in, I was rather nonplussed. We attempted to have an interview with you about the threat to my two pupils a few months ago, in which a foreign Elemental Master was involved. Is this the cause of your visit?”
Pupils? What pupils? An Elemental Master attacking children?
Belatedly, he recalled the business in Berkeley Square, and suppressed irritation. This was the last thing in the world he wanted to talk about. “I thought that matter had been adequately closed,” he replied.
“Not in my opinion.” The inflection was of mild rebuke. “But then, I am responsible for them, and you are not. I believe steps have been taken to ensure their safety that do not require the approval of the Master of the Hunt, nor the Wizard of London.”
He felt himself flushing with embarrassment. Something about the way she said those two titles—especially the latter—made them sound overblown, like something a child would give himself in a game of “I Conquer The Castle.” But he endeavored to sound casually dismissive. “Is that what others are calling me, the ‘Wizard of London’? There is no accounting for gossip even among the Elemental Mages.” He shrugged. “As for Master of the Hunt, that title and the duties that go with it have nothing to do with what others outside the Master’s Circle do or do not do. No one needs ask me permission for anything one gets from another Elemental Mage so long as it does not interfere with their hunt duties. If they choose to squander their power, they may do so in whatever fashion they like.”
It was an insult, he realized that a moment later. But she didn’t even blink an eye in reaction. The insult simply slid past her, not as if she did not understand she had been insulted, but as if
it simply did not matter to her.
But it was very clear that she was going to extract whatever guilt she could from him before she let him go. “If the safety of two helpless little girls has not brought you here,” she said, “then to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?”
And now he found himself at a loss for words. There were many things he could say, and none of them were entirely the truth. Would she sense that? He had to wonder about that. Just what were her psychical abilities?
“I am visiting Mansell Hall,” he prevaricated, doing the only thing he could, which was to set it aside. “I understood that you were visiting here, and since it had been many years since we parted, I wished to pay a courtesy call.”
The moment the words were out of his mouth he could have hit himself. Of all the things to say, this was, perhaps the one with the least truth in it. And she would certainly sense that.
“Oh?” She raised an eyebrow. “I was not aware that our social stations were compatible enough for a courtesy call.”
Now there, at last, she showed her claws. Not that he didn’t deserve it—
But the fact that he deserved it made him feel resentful. She was not going to get the better of him in this situation.
“Social graces are never misplaced,” he replied, in a swift parry, “And I have paid a call on Mr.Harton at the school already.”
But she riposted just as quickly and to better effect. “In that case, would courtesy not have dictated that you pay the call when my husband was also in residence, and not when I was here alone? Especially as you have already made his acquaintance?”
Hit and hit again. She was right. This was—despite that there were servants all around in this place, not to mention the teachers and pupils of her school—ever so slightly improper as a courtesy call. “Alone” she was, in that her husband was in London and presumably not expected here for several days. Had he come to see the schoolmistress about her pupils, it would have been one thing; that would have been proper and reasonable, and as he was the one of more social importance, the call would have been appropriately made at his convenience, not hers. Had he really come to see an old friend, it would have been another case, for long friendships dictated a relaxation of formal manners, and their differing social stature would not have mattered, nor would it have mattered that Frederick Harton was not present. Had he come to see the Hartons socially as a couple, that, too, would have been appropriate.
But to come here when her husband was absent and refer to it as a “social call” implied something else. That he wanted to renew more than just “the acquaintance,” and not as one of “friendship.”
And the damnable thing was, now that he had seen her, he realized that there had been something of that sort in the back of his mind, a thought that though she was married to someone else, it might merely be a marriage of convenience on her part. One of the reasons why he had never been able to warm up to any of the young women of his circle was that none of them had struck that particular spark within him that Isabelle had.
And none of them had aroused much interest in him either. There just had been nothing there, no moment of connection. Beneath young Isabelle’s diffidence had been the banked fires of passion, and the promise that the man who could arouse them would have a precious gift indeed.
Beneath the mature Isabelle Harton’s serene competence, those fires of passion blazed for those who could read such things. The promise had more than been fulfilled, and it was the foundation for her attractiveness.
But they did not blaze for him, though they might have had he taken a different path.
There it was: what he had lost, written plain.
And in some forgotten corner of his mind, he knew that he had hoped, with the knowledge of how many of his peers had kept women, that he could get it back, so long as she had not given her heart to Frederick Harton.
Somehow he would have cut her free and married her. Though in that dark corner the baser part of him might have toyed with the notion of making her his mistress, he knew now that he would never have settled for such a tawdry solution. No, if it had been possible to have this woman, it would have been aboveboard.
Oh, it would have caused some difficulties. A man married to a divorcee was unlikely to be made Prime Minister—if anyone knew his wife was once divorced.
And even though he knew the cause was lost, he couldn’t help tracing out those ways in his mind, as if he was probing at a sore tooth. There were ways around that, trivial for someone with the Power of an Elemental Master and the money of an Alderscroft. Records could be destroyed, memories altered. No one need ever know—not even she; with certain spells he could erase the memory of Frederick Harton entirely from her mind. Paying off Harton himself to go lose himself in the wilds of Canada or the fastnesses of the Himalayas would have not even made a significant dent in the Alderscroft fortunes.
But it would not happen. A marriage of convenience could be erased. A marriage of hearts, minds, and souls could not be.
And such a marriage did not allow for any other parties nor any other ties. He had lost her for all time.
There was only one way to retrieve his dignity; to tell a part of the truth, before she guessed at that other, hidden truth.
“Actually, the truth of the matter is that this is not a social call. It is one esoteric colleague calling upon the expertise of another. I encountered something curious, and you were the only person near enough that might be able to explain it,” he said, gathering his dignity about him and allowing her veiled slur to slide past his own icy calm. “Besides paying a courtesy call, I wished to call upon you as a consultant of sorts.”
Her expression did not change as he described the nature spirit to her—though he took care not to describe the circumstances under which it had appeared, nor the creature’s threats.
Her face turned grave. “You would be wise not to meddle with him,” she replied. “He is older than you can guess. The country folk call him Robin Goodfellow—”
“Good gad!” he exclaimed, startled. “Surely not!”
“Surely, for I have encountered him, too,” she replied, with warning clear in her tone. “And Shakespeare did not do him any kind of justice. He is to this land what Attic Pan was to Greece and Sylvanus to Rome. You meddle with him at your peril—”
Now, this made him angry, though he held his anger down firmly. “You meddle with him at your peril,” indeed! It was like something out of a poorly-written novel. What nonsense!
He had been so fixated on his conversation that he must not have noticed that the threatening storm had become actuality, for suddenly, Isabelle’s warning was punctuated, as with an exclamation point, by a bolt of lightning striking an ancient oak immediately outside the library windows, with a simultaneously deafening crash of thunder.
They both jumped; Isabelle clutched at the bookshelves, and he dropped the book he had been unconsciously holding, his heart racing.
His first thought—which he immediately dismissed—was that it had been a warning to echo Isabelle’s. It wasn’t. It was purest coincidence. There was no reason, no reason at all, to think anything otherwise.
It took him a moment to recover; another to pick up the book he had dropped. By that time he thought he knew what he was going to say.
But the conversation was interrupted by the intrusion of—of all things—that wretchedly defiant little girl child, easy enough to identify even in the storm gloom by the raven that rode on her shoulder and glared at him with bright, shining eyes.
“Mem’sab, the lightning frighted the babies half to death an’ they won’t stop cryin’ and the ayahs tol’ me to come get you.” He felt the force of truth behind the words, but he also felt the force of something else. The girl really disliked him and was fiercely happy to be the cause of interrupting the conversation he was having with her schoolmistress.
Nor did Isabelle seem at all displeased by the interruption. “You’ll pardon me, I am sure,” she said, with
absolute formality. “But my duties to my charges in this case are something I cannot leave to anyone else. I am sure I can extend the hospitality of Highleigh to you for as long as the rain lasts. You may find research into the books on that shelf—” she pointed, “—to be fruitful, especially in light of what you just told me. You’ll forgive me, I am sure, if I do not make a formal farewell and leave you in the hands of the servants.”
And with that, she turned and followed the infuriating little girl out of the room.
Once again, he found himself struggling against anger, and only by invoking the disciplines that Cordelia had taught him was he able to regain his self-control.
That, too, made him angry. Oh, this was the first and last encounter with Isabelle Harton that he was going to have! He should have known better than to come here in the first place. There was a reason, a good one, why he had broken off the nascent relationship with the woman. Cordelia had been right. Anyone who could invoke such strong emotions in him potentially had a hold over him that he did not need nor want. No, what he needed was control, absolute and complete. He had been an idiot to even think about having any connection to a woman that went past mutual regard and a calm and rational assessment of how each could supply what the other required for a reasonably comfortable life. Marriages of convenience—much better, much more logical than marriages of emotion. Emotion sapped control and self-control and no Elemental Master had any business in allowing that loss of control to happen.
He had no choice but to remain while the storm raged—but he did not have to follow her suggestion to do further research into the nature of the creature that had accosted him. He already knew enough, now. His suspicions had been confirmed, and as irritating as it was to be challenged, then beaten by a Nature Spirit, this one had millennia of power behind him, and he knew, intellectually, that to pit himself against Robin Goodfellow was as foolish as going out and howling defiance at the storm outside. And really, why should he? There was no profit in it. No sense in any sort of confrontation.
The Wizard of London Page 30
