“We must talk,” he said under his breath, as he passed her on the stairs, she going down to breakfast, he returning from it.
“Now is as good a time as any,” she replied, “I am not so enamored of grilled tomatoes that I cannot take the time to speak with my pupil when he looks so distressed. Let us take a turn in the gardens.”
Here, of course, was where she overheard the lamentations of the gardeners, and smiled to herself.
“I am not sure where to begin,” he said at last. “I encountered a—a nature spirit here. It threatened me.”
“Uncommon but not unheard of,” she observed. “Clearly, though, this was no common spirit.”
“No,” he said grimly, and proceeded to describe his encounter in minute detail, while she grew more surprised by the moment. There was only one creature she could think of with that sort of power. And the fact that it had threatened to interfere now made her understand why the Ice Lord had taken direct action.
Her first thought was that the spirit—clearly one of the Greater Fey, those who had been, in their time, worshipped as gods—had somehow deduced her plan and the Ice Lord’s. If that was the case, a few puny wraiths were not going to stop him.
But then she realized that all of the threats had been aimed toward David, and the warning specifically pointed at this part of the country. There had been an implication that the spirit did not care what happened in London, so long as no Ice Magic was brought here .
So it didn’t know.
Just because a creature was very powerful, it did not follow that it was omniscient. And even if it had the capability to read the future, it did not follow that it would. The Greater Fey in particular had curious holes in their thinking. They tended to be “flighty.” They had difficulty in concentrating on any one thing for too long. No matter how important something was, there was always the possibility that once it was out of immediate sight, it would also be out of mind.
Chances were, the creature had already forgotten about David. And by the time it realized that they were working Ice Magic, it would be too late. Nor would it occur to the Fey that there could be more to it than just Cordelia’s plan.
But this fed directly into her plot.
“You were right to be concerned,” she said earnestly. “This is a dangerous creature, capricious and unpredictable. I must safeguard you from it.”
His lips thinned as he frowned. “Simply tell me what to do,” he replied, once again showing an annoying independence. “I can handle this myself, I should think.”
“Under normal circumstances, yes,” she replied. “But these safeguards are against the Greater Fey and must be placed externally. Even if I told you how to place them—which I will, of course—you would only be able to place them on someone else. The subject must be unconscious in order for the protections to be invoked, or the initial disorientation as one is suddenly able to see the Fey realms is far too painful.”
She congratulated herself gleefully at that stroke. Brilliant! Now she could do whatever she liked with him with absolute impunity. He would never even question what she was doing, because he already had had the experience of what happened when one first was able to see the creatures and energies of Elemental Magic. It was generally very disorienting and sometimes distressing. Children who were born into nonmagical families sometimes went mad, or believed they were doing so. He had no idea whether or not being able to see the Fey would be worse than that, although, in fact, the Fey realms did not exist, and the Fey were simply Masters of all the Elements.
“When can we do this?” he asked eagerly, as she regarded him with grave eyes.
“Tonight would not be too soon,” she said soberly. “And if you meet me here in the garden, I will find a secluded place where we can work undisturbed.”
***
Isabelle was just finishing her correspondence when the sound of a familiar footstep made her raise her head and swivel swiftly in her chair.
Just in time to have Frederick stoop over her and kiss her passionately, his arms including both her and the ladder-back of her chair, which was probably the only reason why he wasn’t crushing her into his chest. Not that she would have minded being crushed into his chest.
As always, she closed her eyes and allowed herself a moment when all she thought of, felt, knew, was him; the moment of being completely with him, in love, surrounded by love, engulfed by love. As always, it was better than it had been the last time. She had never been more sure of him, never been more sure that no matter how things changed, the two of them would see that they changed in a way that only brought them closer.
Being together, in that way that stole her breath and stopped her heart and held them both in timeless time.
The moment passed, as such moments always did, leaving behind echoes that created their own kind of song inside her. She felt him stand straight and opened her eyes, smiling.
He looked down at her, chuckling, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Once again, we scandalize the servants.”
She laughed. “I did not expect you until tomorrow!”
He grinned and shrugged. “Doomsday Dainwrite sent me off with a half holiday,” he replied, and his face took on the mournful expression of a bloodhound contemplating an empty food dish. “ You need to go to your wife ,” he said in sepulchral tones. “ Terrible things are about to happen, and she will need you .”
Isabelle laughed at that, because the head of the firm, called “Doomsday” even by his own wife (who he predicted would leave him, drown, catch fire, be struck by lightning, or die of some plague virtually on a daily basis), had never, ever been right in his predictions of disaster and mayhem. The only times disaster had befallen the firm or some person in it, Doomsday had been completely silent on the subject and had been taken as much by surprise as anyone else.
“Well, it is not as if you have not earned a half holiday and more,” she replied, taking his hand in hers, and holding it against her cheek for a moment, then letting it go.
“And so have you. We are having tea on the terrace, away from the children, and then we are going for a walk on the grounds, you and I and no one else. And we are going to talk of nothing but commonplaces.” He bestowed a look on her that told her he was accepting no arguments. But then, she was not inclined to give him one.
By dinnertime all was back to normal, except that she felt as rejuvenated by the afternoon as if she had spent a week at the seaside. Her good humor spread among the children; for once there were no quarrels, no outbursts of temper, scarcely even a raised voice when there was contention over the last jam tart. That pirate of a raven, Neville, was on his best behavior, and Sarah’s parrot Grey did not even indulge herself in her own favorite bit of mischief of sorting through the bits in her cup and dropping what she didn’t care to eat on the floor.
The children went off to baths and bed with scarcely a moment of fuss. The youngest, now at the “escape from the bath and run through the halls naked, shrieking,” stage, for once did not indulge themselves. It was the perfect ending to a perfect day.
Until, as the oldest were settled into their beds, and Isabelle finished the rounds of “good night hugs,” she and Frederick stepped out onto the terrace—
—and the perfect day shattered.
One moment, they were holding hands, gazing at the stars and listening to the nightingales and the occasional call of an owl.
The next, they were clutching each other, half-deafened by the thunderclap, half-blinded by the lightning bolt that had delivered Robin Goodfellow to the foot of the terrace. A very angry Robin Goodfellow, who was nothing like the merry lad who had strutted his way across their improvised stage, playing himself with gusto and glee.
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