A Restless Truth (The Last Binding #2)

Chapter 5

5

Violet had learned at an early age that there were different levels of scandal that it was possible for a young woman to achieve.

Among the Debenham sisters, these levels had been measured by how many inches their father could be induced to lower the newspaper at the breakfast table, and how high their mother’s voice rose as she related whatever gossip she was anxious for her daughters to imbibe as a cautionary tale.

Running off unmarried to ruin oneself with the Earl of Cheetham’s dissolute son was already teetering at the end of the scale that might lead the newspaper to be begrudgingly laid entirely aside. Violet often wished she’d been present to hear how shrill her mother’s bewailments had been, when their too-tall, too-difficult middle daughter had so thoroughly exploded their little world and left its dust to settle without her.

Writing her first and last letter to Alice from New York City, informing the family that she was alive, tolerably well, and had now found employment in a theatre, had been no more than gilding the lily. The screeches of dismay must have been heard halfway across the county. Violet had kept herself warm with the thought of that, all through her first New York winter in a tiny, damp room in a tiny, damp boardinghouse, grimly learning to cradle warmth-spells with enough precision that she could manage them with the magic left over at the end of the day.

Violet might have to invent a whole new section of the scandal-scale for being caught with her dress and petticoat tugged up above her waist, and with the dissolute and obliging Lord Hawthorn’s hand both inside her drawers and then two knuckles deep inside her .

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, stop, ” said the young woman standing in front of them. She’d flung one hand across her eyes. The parts of her face visible below that were a radiant blushing red.

The dress of sunset-hued taffeta and the nut-brown hair, however, identified her immediately as Miss Maud Cutler.

Violet wasn’t easy to embarrass. She nonetheless felt herself turning a matching shade of scarlet. It was the embarrassment radiating off Miss Cutler that did it, as if the girl had brought enough to spare for the whole room.

Hawthorn slid his fingers out of Violet in an unhurried motion that sent a last flurry of sparks down her legs. Her body hadn’t caught up to the situation yet. It had been building its leisurely way towards one of the better orgasms of the last twelve months, and now it hung suspended and confused between pleasure and its opposite.

“We have,” said Hawthorn, in a voice dripping authoritative ice, “stopped. You may remove your hand from your eyes. And then, whomever you are, you may expect to be removed from this room.”

The girl dropped her hand. Her defiant and mortified gaze flicked from Hawthorn to Violet and then back. There was certainly a lot of Hawthorn to look at. Even apart from the harshly handsome features and the solid bulk of his thighs, Violet appreciated a man who could exceed her in height. The Bowery hadn’t exactly been swimming with them. Something to look forward to, in returning to the bosom of the well-nourished English gentry.

“Her name’s Miss Cutler. We met tonight at dinner.” Violet wrestled petticoat and dress back down over her hips. “She’s a magician.”

“Actually, no.” Maud Cutler’s hands formed decisive fists at her sides. She was staring right at Hawthorn. “I’m not a magician. And my name is Maud Blyth. I’m a friend of Edwin Courcey’s.”

The name rang only the faintest bell of familiarity for Violet. Hawthorn’s expression darkened further, scorn deepening the crease between those brilliant blue eyes.

“Christ,” he said. “Halfway across the bloody ocean and I still can’t escape his persistent fucking prying. If you’re hoping to impress him, I can inform you with some authority that Courcey is never going to marry you. Or fuck you. Or are you here because you’ve worked that out, and you, too, wish to avail yourself of my apparently well-publicised prowess?”

It was an attack; and with that mercilessly cold tone wielded as a weapon, it was a vicious one. Most well-born girls would have dissolved beneath it.

Miss Cutler—Miss Blyth —solidified instead. Her rosebud mouth, which would have had her cast as everything from Juliet to Innocent Shepherdess, gained a look of absolute stubbornness.

“Edwin came to see you with my brother, Sir Robert. Perhaps you remember, my lord? He had”—she gestured to her own gloved forearm—“a curse.”

Hawthorn stood in silence a moment longer. Then he looked at his fingers, muttered a colourful oath, and wiped them on his trousers. Violet bit her lip. Hawthorn crossed to the decanter to refill his glass with a generous dose of amber spirits, drank off half of it, and then looked between the two of them with thunderclouds in his face.

“Sit,” he ordered Miss Blyth, pointing to a chair, and she did so. “Violet—”

“Stay,” said Miss Blyth quickly. “Please.”

“Appearances notwithstanding, Miss Blyth,” said Hawthorn, “I am not going to beat you or ravish you if left unsupervised.”

“I want Miss Debenham to stay.”

“Miss Debenham,” said Violet, “will make up her own mind on the matter, thank you very much.”

Violet’s body had given up all hope of an orgasm. It had chosen instead to burn with curiosity as to what this girl was doing aboard the Lyric, under a name not her own, accompanying a woman who had just died, and speaking of magic as if she knew it.

Violet went and poured a drink of her own. Then she sat. She gave Hawthorn a look that inquired whether he intended to beat her . He returned it witheringly and turned back to Miss Blyth.

“So. You’ve gone to the extreme of chasing me down mid-Atlantic, and I can see that unless I throw you overboard— don’t tempt me—I’ll have no peace at all. Talk.”

“I will.” Miss Blyth dug in her beaded bag and pulled out a small candle. “Once I’m sure I can trust you. Do you have a lighter? Oh, and a penknife or a razor?”

“Explain,” directed Hawthorn.

“This is a truth-candle. Edwin explained it—something about an imbuement on the wax, and then another used to soak the wick. He’s trying to find a way to power it without requiring the participant’s blood, but no luck so far.”

“It detects the truth?” said Violet. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Edwin is very clever.” Said with pride. “Will you go first, Miss Debenham?”

It was testament to the increasingly bizarre momentum of this evening, and also to Miss Blyth’s brisk and dimpled charisma, that Violet came within a hair’s breadth of agreeing. Then good sense slapped her back.

“I’m not putting blood into a spell I don’t know.”

Miss Blyth set down the candle and removed her evening gloves. “I’ll do it first. If you haven’t a lighter, how about a matchbook?”

“I can give you a light, but not a finger-prick.” Violet didn’t trust her control over the knife-spell she knew. She’d only wielded that particular spell once, and she swallowed a wash of nausea at the memory.

Hawthorn did have a knife, sharp and well kept. Violet cradled a flame and lit the candle. Miss Blyth clutched it in one hand and held out the other for Hawthorn to nick the side of her finger, then let a drop of her blood mingle with the small pool of melted wax already forming at the wick’s base.

At once the flame rose eerily high and turned a vivid green.

“My name is Maud Blyth and I really do need help, and I’m going to tell you the truth about why,” Miss Blyth said rapidly. It was burning down faster than a candle should. “And, er, I’m wearing a purple hat.”

The candle responded to that last with a fierce leap of the wavering flame, which turned bloodred. Miss Blyth blew the candle out and looked at Violet.

Curiosity won out. Violet removed her gloves. She was wearing Jerry’s wooden rings on her thumbs beneath them, both habit and reminder. She closed her eyes rather than watch her blood join the wax, and the flame nipped at her finger.

Miss Blyth said, “Miss Debenham. Were you responsible for Elizabeth Navenby’s death?”

“No.” The flame stayed steady and green.

“Are you associated, in any way, with Walter Courcey and the group of people trying to find the last contract in order to use it?”

“I—no.”

Green. Miss Blyth extinguished the candle again.

“Walter Courcey?” said Hawthorn.

“Yes.” Miss Blyth held out the candle to him. “I will explain.”

Hawthorn impatiently answered the same questions in the negative, after which only half the candle remained. Miss Blyth tucked it away in her bag.

“The ingredients are expensive, and it burns down fast. Especially if you lie.”

And then, as promised, Miss Blyth explained. It took nearly enough time for a normal candle to burn down; time enough that Violet finished her drink, and then wanted another, and then forgot to want another.

Maud Blyth’s equally unmagical brother, Robin, had been unbusheled last year by accident, and cursed by men who thought he was working against them. The curse had been removed—with no help from Lord Hawthorn—by the man called Edwin Courcey. Between them, Edwin and Robin had uncovered what their enemies were seeking: three items that had been discovered and removed from a church, midway through the previous century, by a group of lady magicians who called themselves the Forsythia Club. The unofficial leader of whom had been a woman called Flora Sutton, who had been killed for her part in hiding one of these items. And whose diaries, in code, Edwin had inherited.

By the time Edwin’s brother, Walter Courcey, appeared in the narrative, Violet had managed to brush the mental dust from the name Courcey itself. A magical family, more powerful than her own, though not as wellborn by the standards of unmagical English society.

The items themselves—coin, cup, and knife—had long ago been separated and disguised and hidden again by the women who found them. Because they were the physical symbols of the Last Contract, the bargain made centuries ago between the departing fae and the magicians of Britain, that magic would be left in the hands of humans in exchange for their stewardship of the land.

“ What, ” said Hawthorn flatly.

Miss Blyth, whose bright voice was beginning to fatigue, waved a yes-I-know sort of hand and sped them onward.

As magic was contract, any magician from the bloodline of the families who had made that bargain could now have their magic drawn upon, used without their direct consent, if the contract was manipulated in the correct way. Walter Courcey was part of a group of magicians who wanted to do just that. Who had begun their search for the contract with the blessings of the British Magical Assembly, but who were now almost certainly operating by their own rules.

At some point, Miss Blyth herself had become involved in this adventure. When Edwin’s efforts to trace the other members of the Forsythia Club had led them to the émigré Elizabeth Navenby, Miss Blyth had travelled to warn the old woman that there were people trying to recover the contract, and to use it, in the way that the Forsythians had decided it should never and could never be used.

On hearing of Flora Sutton’s death, Elizabeth Navenby had dressed herself in impeccable mourning, packed her bags, and informed Miss Blyth that she would be returning to England to see this business through. She had kept her own piece of the contract a secret still.

“Why didn’t she leave it in America?” Violet asked. It was by no means the least of her questions, but the first she’d managed to shoehorn into Miss Blyth’s rapid narrative.

“Edwin says the people on the other side are learning to locate the pieces through magic. We don’t know if they could find it in America, but it’s possible. And if she’d left it, she wouldn’t be there to protect it.”

Though she wasn’t there to protect it now. Or to steal it back, as it had apparently been stolen from her room aboard the Lyric . There was only Miss Blyth.

And, Miss Blyth hoped, the two of them. Violet and Hawthorn. One theatre magician, trained largely in tricks and splendour; and one ill-tempered aristocrat whose own magic had deserted him years ago, under circumstances that Violet had heard only the worst rumours about.

“There are three hundred first-class passengers on the Lyric, ” Miss Blyth added. “Just over one hundred and fifty in second class. A thousand in third class. And three hundred crew.” She might have been reciting from a pamphlet. “I can’t investigate them all on my own, let alone get Mrs. Navenby’s piece of the contract back again.”

“You want our assistance to identify, from within these hundreds of people, a dangerous magician who may have killed someone, and recover from them some stolen items,” Hawthorn said. “One of which may be a physical representation of the Last Contract, which is a story for children.” His soft, ruthless tones were as much a pushing-away as his initial descent into obscenity had been—and had the same lack of effect on the dauntless Miss Blyth.

“Yes. This children’s story has killed several people already. It nearly killed my brother.”

The Last Contract.

Before Violet’s father had resigned himself to a lack of sons and was still prepared to humour his horde of girls, he’d told them stories of a magic far less tame than that used in their household: of fairies, of magicians in the wild times, of quests and bargains and spells large enough to alter the world. Violet had absorbed them like a parched lawn and retold them over and over for her sisters.

Then, when her father’s wellspring had run dry, she began to invent her own. She did the low voices of forest spirits and the regal one of the fae queen, and performed the squabbling of the three sisters who founded the Three Families, until Alice and Julia fell across the bed laughing, and Ellen and Meg nudged each other in the doorway, where they hovered pretending to be too old for stories.

Violet had never been too old. She had sought stories, always. The Debenhams had been invited exactly once to Cheetham Hall, the seat of Hawthorn’s father: a grand old place where magic stuck to the skin like cobwebs and made you shiver, and where Violet had felt uneasy throughout the whole gathering. Afterwards she had kept her sisters awake with stories of ghosts, and of Lady Elsie Alston, who’d gone mad and leapt from the roof.

She’d felt bad about that, later, when she was old enough to know about the pressures that could be put on a girl. And the shapes that a girl could turn beneath those pressures.

Did she believe all of this? And regardless of the tale behind it—did she really think Miss Blyth was going to have the slightest amount of luck finding her needles in this ocean-bound haystack?

Perhaps not. But the story of the Three Families and the Last Contract was one of those that had captured young Violet’s imagination. Even a hint of it being real was like opening a door, newly discovered in a familiar house, to find boxes of treasure and a map to more.

She said, “Count me in, Miss Blyth. I’ll help.”

“Why?” said Hawthorn, cutting over the start of Miss Blyth’s delighted thanks.

“As I told you, my lord Hawthorn, I’m bored and intrigued. And a pretty girl is offering me something more exciting than six days’ worth of quoits and promenades and musical performances.”

“A wild goose chase with a side order of possibly being apprehended for theft.”

“Or, apparently, murdered,” said Violet. “Doesn’t it sound a lark?”

It rather did. The open door of wonder was a motive that she could keep tucked away for herself. This would cost no money and demanded no investment of emotion, and Maud Blyth—for all she was young and painfully naive—captured attention like the once upon a time of a fairy tale.

Violet wanted, quite simply, to see what would happen next.

“Lord Hawthorn?” Miss Blyth’s hands were clutched together on her knee. A piece of her hair had escaped its pin during her long explanation, and lay against the side of her neck like an errant duck’s feather.

“No,” said Hawthorn. “I don’t do things for a lark. If the two of you wish to race around the Lyric flouting locked doors and courting danger, you have my blessing. But not my help.”

“These people are a threat to all the magicians in Britain. They want to steal power, and they’ve killed to advance their aims. Don’t you care even a little ?”

Hawthorn stilled. His face flickered, tongue moving against closed lips as if he were trying to rid his mouth of a bad taste. For a moment it seemed as if Miss Blyth had aimed correctly.

But then he shrugged. “People kill. Sometimes they have good reasons and sometimes they don’t. It does not mean I will be dragged into a treasure-hunting conspiracy because Edwin Courcey has dragged you into it and seems to think I can be relied upon for chivalry. I cannot.”

Miss Blyth raised her chin. Violet wanted abruptly to reach out and curl that lock of errant brown hair around her own finger, which still stung at the tip from Hawthorn’s knife. She wanted to pull .

“No. What Edwin said was that you’d do your best to hurt me, to make me go away, and that your best would be very good indeed. But you’re what I have, my lord. I refuse to be killed before I can get this piece of the contract back. I will do this for my brother, who you didn’t care to save, and for Edwin, who did save him. And for Mrs. Navenby. And for all the magicians of Britain, because I care about what’s right, even if you don’t.”

The girl would have her audacious belief in the mythical goodness of people ruined eventually. Hawthorn was doing a fine job of ripping it to shreds tonight. But Violet, looking at the fire in Maud Blyth’s eyes, didn’t want Lord Hawthorn to have it all his own way. His lordship’s masterful nature might send thrills down Violet’s spine under sexual circumstances, but it was becoming tiresome now.

She said, “Do you really want the girl’s death on your conscience if things go wrong, Hawthorn?”

“This ball of righteousness,” said Hawthorn, “is not my wife, my ward, or my sister.” And Violet remembered all over again, with a sensation in her stomach like a coin dropped into a dark well, that Hawthorn had had a sister; and remembered what happened to her. “She is not my responsibility. If she were to die through her own rash misadventure, I would sleep no better or worse than I currently do.”

“You might have trouble sleeping if her brother finds out you let her come to harm and comes to kick your door down. What did you say his name was, Miss Blyth?”

“Sir Robert Blyth.”

“Easy enough to track down in the event of your demise, I should think.”

There was a pregnant silence in which they turned their eyes to Hawthorn.

“Your move, my lord,” said Miss Blyth.

“I don’t respond well to blackmail either.” But a treacherous corner of his mouth had begun to look amused. Miss Blyth clearly noticed it; she pounced.

“At least tell me if you become aware of any other magicians on board. You have a better chance of recognising them. I won’t ask you to go poking around and breaking into rooms—I’m sure I can manage that, if I have Miss Debenham’s help. But I want to know we can call on you if we find ourselves in trouble.”

“Further trouble,” said Hawthorn.

Miss Blyth looked around the parlour room. Her gaze landed on the chess board atop the credenza. “I’ll play you for it, if you like.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If I win, you agree to help. If I lose, I’ll leave you alone.”

“You’re prepared to sit here in my room, all night, and play chess for my cooperation? Without knowing anything about my level of skill?” Hawthorn paused. “Or is this more intelligence from Courcey?”

“No,” said Miss Blyth. “It’s not. But you don’t know my level of skill either.”

The two of them gazed at each other for a beat.

“So, yes,” added Miss Blyth. “I’m prepared to play you for it. But if you’d prefer something quicker…” She was out of her seat. In a drawer of the writing desk was a packet of playing cards. The light shone off their glossy backs, red stamped with the white star of the ocean line. Miss Blyth handed the pack to Violet, who obligingly took up shuffling duties. The cards had the crisp edges of newness.

“Poker?” inquired Violet, enjoying herself.

“Even simpler,” said Miss Blyth. “We each draw a single card. Highest wins.”

Hawthorn rubbed a hand over his face and came to the edge of his chair. He looked, for the first time, tired. Violet didn’t blame him. Being in an enclosed space with the buoyant energy contained in the skin of Maud Blyth was like standing uncomfortably close to a fire.

Violet fanned the cards. Hawthorn plucked one out: the ten of hearts.

Miss Blyth chose her own card and flicked it to lie on the table.

Queen of spades.

“And what,” said Hawthorn, “would you have tried next, if you’d lost?”

“Goodness knows.” Miss Blyth had pleased colour in her cheeks. “I might have tackled you around the knees, I suppose.”

Hawthorn gave one of his whip-crack laughs. “You really are Blyth’s sister, aren’t you? He was barely holding himself back from popping me one the entire ten minutes of our acquaintance. Very well. You win, Miss Blyth. You may call on me if required. Now, if business is concluded, you will both leave my room.”

That dark amusement was back. At the door, he even lifted Miss Blyth’s hand and kissed it in mocking farewell. Violet’s fingertips he kissed more lingeringly, which she recognised as revenge. She was clearly not going to find out what she’d missed, now.

“Oh, I am sorry,” said Miss Blyth, looking at Violet’s fingers resting in Hawthorn’s larger ones. “I ruined your plans for the evening, didn’t I?”

Violet took her hand back, and her regrets with it. “I’m sure there are plenty of people aboard who’d be happy to oblige me. And if not, I do have a few helpful devices in one of my trunks.”

“Devices?” inquired Miss Blyth.

There was a short and fascinating silence. Violet burst out laughing, mostly at the look on Hawthorn’s face.

“I am not,” said his lordship the Baron Hawthorn, “explaining the concept of bedroom aides to a pugnacious baronet’s sister. Or perhaps I will start doing so, if it will get you out of here faster.”

Still giggling, Violet linked her arm through Miss Blyth’s and marched them grandly out into the corridor.

“Thank you, my lord,” she called through the closing door. “We will consider your kind offer.”

A collective inhalation alerted her to the presence of other people. A gaggle of middle-aged women like well-dressed waterfowl had halted nearby.

Miss Blyth’s arm went rigid where it was tucked through Violet’s. Violet made eye contact with the frontmost woman, a rake-thin creature in unfortunate purple, and gave a deliberate wink. The woman flinched as if Violet were some sort of diseased street cat.

“Good evening, ladies. Don’t let us interrupt you. Come on, Maud, my dear girl,” said Violet. “I find myself quite worn out, don’t you?”

Miss Blyth murmured something as the gaggle edged past them with many backwards glances and a crescendo of shocked muttering. Violet laughed and looked down at Miss Blyth, who was gripping her gloves and her bag, pink-cheeked.

“Well,” said Miss Blyth gamely. “The scandal part of your evening’s gone to plan, anyway. That’ll be all round first class by the end of breakfast tomorrow.”