Chantress Fury (25 page)

I could still decide to accept myself.

I held up the crumpled paper and let the brisk November wind take it from me. As I watched the paper fly away, I felt lighter than I had for a long time.

It took me five full days to set things to rights in Gravesend and Tilbury. I couldn’t resent the time I spent there—the people were too grateful, and they were in desperate need—but I was glad to get back to London.

My men and I came into the city in the small hours of the night, on the incoming tide. When we reached St. James’s Palace, only the guards were up, and even the torches were giving up the ghost.

“I think we’ll wait till the morning to make our report to the King,” I said to Captain Knollys after we passed through the gatehouse. “You and the men should try to get a little rest before then.”

Knollys raised a graying eyebrow. “And you?”

Just behind us, Barrington piped up, “Chantress, would you like an escort to your rooms?”

I had to smile. He was ready to drop, I knew, but he was loyal to the core. They all were.

“Thank you, Barrington, but it’s not far. I’ll be fine on my own.” I held up my hand as they started to protest. “All of you, get some sleep!”

After parting from them, I made my way toward the rooms I shared with Norrie. When I reached our courtyard, I hesitated.

I couldn’t see Norrie’s windows from here—they were on the other side of the building—but the infirmary window was in plain sight. And Norrie and Penebrygg had kept a light burning there even in the darkest hours.

There was no light there now. Did its absence mean Nat was—

Not letting myself even think the word, I ran up the stairs and knocked on Norrie’s door, softly at first, and then louder.

At last I heard footsteps coming. Norrie pulled back the door. “Who—” she began, and then she saw my face. “Oh, child, you’re back at last!”

She dragged me over the threshold and steered me through the darkened room. “We’ve been waiting and waiting. The most wonderful news—”

She opened the inner door. There was Nat, standing by the window, wide awake.

CHAPTER FORTY

MANY WATERS

“Lucy.” Nat came forward, with a note in his voice that made me tremble.

Norrie backed into the outer room, murmuring something about mending. The door closed, and Nat and I were shut in together. I stared at him, hardly able to believe my eyes.

He stopped well short of me. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” I said quickly. “It’s just . . . you’re awake.”

He smiled. “Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Almost three days now.”

“And you’re well? You’re not feverish or injured or—”

“I’m fit as can be,” he assured me. “The only trouble is that I’ve been waking very early. I suppose it’s because I’m all caught up on sleep.”

There were merely a few feet between us now. I wanted to close the gap, but I didn’t have the right to. Looking for something to say, I seized on the first thing that came to mind. “Have you seen many people yet?”

“A few. Sybil, for one.” There was an odd look in his eyes. “She came to see me the day before yesterday—and we had a very interesting conversation.”

I felt a prickle of apprehension. “You did?”

“She wanted to know if I was betrothed to Lady Clemence. She said Gabriel had told you I was.” He looked at me with exasperation. “You believed him?”

Was he saying it wasn’t true? My heart began to race. “You said you were going to find someone else. I saw you together, and Gabriel said that he’d talked with her father, and the earl was drawing up a marriage contract—”

“Then the earl was getting rather ahead of himself,” Nat said. “He’s been angling for a way into the King’s inner circle for some time now, and he thinks an alliance with me will get him what he wants. And perhaps he finds it difficult to believe I would refuse an earl’s daughter.”

“But—you have?”

“I came close to saying yes,” Nat admitted. “He caught me just after you and I had quarreled, you see, and instead of giving him a point-blank refusal, I asked for time to consider the idea. I thought of what you’d said, that I ought to choose someone else, someone who could give me a normal life. By that light, Clemence would be a very suitable match. She’s kind; she’s fun to sing with; she agrees with everything I say. So, yes, I was tempted to propose to her and be done with you.”

My heart contracted.

“But then I saw Clemence herself the next day,” Nat said, “and I realized that proposing wouldn’t be fair to her, or to me, or to you. My heart wasn’t in it.” His steady eyes held mine as he came closer. “I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again: The one I want is you.”

I felt as if someone had handed me the sun—dazzled but disbelieving.

“I know you think it will never work between us,” Nat said. “But you’re wrong. Of course we’ll argue sometimes; we’re only human. But I don’t want to be with someone who always agrees with me. I’m a scientist; honest arguments don’t scare me. And I don’t care tuppence what the broadsides say about us, or what the Court gossips think.”

I didn’t either. Not anymore. That wasn’t what was holding me back.

“All that matters to me,” Nat said, “is that you’re Lucy—and I love you.” When I didn’t speak, he looked at me, suddenly uncertain. “But maybe you don’t feel the same way?”

There was a knot in my throat. “It’s just that . . . I’m not sure that’s how you really do feel, deep down. When you were asleep, you wanted me to go away.”

He looked at me in dismay. “I did?”

“When I spoke, you pulled away from me in terror.” It was hard to speak; I had to force the words out. “That’s why I stopped visiting. Penebrygg thought it best.”

“He was wrong.” Nat drew me down onto the high-backed bench by the fire. “Lucy, if I looked terrified, it was because I was afraid for you. When I was asleep, I had nightmares that Pressina had trapped you, that I couldn’t get the stone to you quickly enough, that you were calling out to me in agony—”

I must have looked unsure, because he said, “It’s true, Lucy. But even if it weren’t, you can’t hold a man responsible for what he does in his sleep. And an enchanted sleep, at that.”

“But I saw the same expression on your face when you were awake,” I said softly.

He frowned. “When?”

“When I turned into a serpent. The look you gave me,” I said. “The horror . . .”

“No!” He cupped my face. Under his dark brows, his eyes were clear and direct and loving. “I won’t lie. When you changed form, I was stunned. I didn’t know you could do that. But I was grateful, too, because I’d thought everything was lost, that Pressina was going to kill you, and then you turned the tables on her.”

“And when I swooped up to you?”

“I was horrified, yes—but not by you. It was the situation that was so dreadful. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get the stone to you, that Pressina would attack you first.”

“You weren’t thinking that I was a monster?”

“No.” He looked genuinely surprised. “Why should I?”

“I was a serpent, Nat. I had scales. And claws. And teeth.”

He smiled. “It was amazing to see, you know. You twisted in the air. You
flew
. And yet somehow you were still Lucy all the time. How did you do that?”

There was not a trace of repugnance or fear on his face, only curiosity and wonder.

And now there was wonder inside me as well. I’d always known that Nat was a born scientist, that he tried to keep an open mind about everything. But I hadn’t realized, until now, quite how open his heart was too.

“Do you know what’s truly amazing?” I asked him.

“What?”

“You.”

Still smiling slightly, he raised an eyebrow. “Because I don’t think you’re a monster?”

“Among other things.” I touched my hand to his rough chin. “There is no one else like you in all the world, Nat. And I love you for it.”

Outside, a gust of wind rattled the window, and a distant bell chimed. Nat traced the back of my hand with his fingertips. “Then will you marry me?”

Again I stood at the top of a precipice, where everything depended on what I said next. And as before, there were so many reasons to say no. We both had a lot to lose, and there would be many challenges ahead of us. No magic on Earth could guarantee that everything would turn out well for us. No magic could make our life an easy one.

But this time I wasn’t going to make my decision out of fear. I was going to make it out of hope. I was going to make it out of love.

“Yes,” I said.

I reached for Nat, and he reached for me. And when our lips met, I heard music—the music of joy.

HISTORICAL NOTE

This book is steeped in both magic and history. Which bits are real?

If you were to go back to the real London of 1670, you would see many of the same sights I describe here. Westminster really was a low-lying place built on marshy ground, the Tower was prison as well as palace, and Cornhill was and is one of London’s highest points. Although the gargantuan Whitehall Palace sounds like fiction, it was real too. A true “city within a city,” it did indeed have more than fifteen hundred rooms, as well as a Great Hall and tiltyards and courtyards galore. It burned to the ground in 1698, but if you go to London today, you can visit the Banqueting House, which survived.

A few caveats: Even though the story takes place in 1670, the overall geography of
Chantress
London is roughly that of the real-world London of 1665, before the reshaping of the city by Sir Christopher Wren and others. Lucy’s London also has more embankments than actually existed at the time—but there were some real-life seventeenth-century plans for more.

I wrote much of this book during the winter of 2013–2014, when we had record rainfall here in England, with terrible winter storms. At times I felt as though I had only to watch the news to see how flooding could affect the country. To get the details right, however, I also read many articles and studied many maps of London, past and present. My account of the rebuilding of London owes a great deal to accounts of the actual rebuilding of the city after the Great Fire 1666.

While Charlton Park is a figment of my imagination, it’s modeled on genuine enclosures of the 1600s. The enclosure process—which began centuries earlier—was hugely controversial, and it really did cause great hardship for ordinary people. Despite riots against it, eventually enclosure became the rule, changing the British landscape forever.

Other “real bits”: The term “elemental” was used by the real Paracelsus more or less the way I’ve used it here. Actual British monarchs almost never married commoners, and when they did, they courted trouble. Broadsides really were the “gutter press” of their day, with catchy lyrics, gaudy woodcut illustrations, and enormous popular appeal. Posted in pubs and plastered on walls, they had a huge circulation.

While not strictly speaking real, the legend of Melusine is a very old one. Its roots run especially deep in France and the Low Countries, but the story was popular in many parts of medieval and Renaissance Europe, and many versions exist.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Warmest thanks to Kit Sturtevant, Nancy Werlin, Jo Wyton, Paula Harrison, Kristina Cliff-Evans, and Teri Terry, who read the whole book in draft and gave me such helpful comments. You are a fabulous team of readers.

Many thanks to my editor, Karen Wojtyla, for her patience and insight, and to assistant editor Annie Nybo for helping in myriad ways. My thanks also go to publicist Siena Koncsol and associate art director Michael McCartney, and to Bridget Madsen, Bara MacNeill, and Chrissy Noh.

I appreciated Julie Just’s support as I started this book, and I’m grateful to everyone at Pippin Properties for seeing me through. Special thanks to Holly McGhee, whose kindness and good sense are invaluable.

Much as I love spending time in the
Chantress
world, writing a trilogy on deadline has been no easy task. Loving thanks to my dear family and friends for their encouragement and good cheer. I’d be lost without you.

Cheers to my choir, who helped me find the magic in music even on difficult days. I’m also grateful to all the readers, reviewers, and bloggers who have taken these books into their hearts. I also appreciated the collective wisdom of the Mid-Career Writer’s Gathering at WisCon37.

Deepest thanks to my daughter, who graces my days with her stories and songs, and to my husband, brilliant reader and best friend. Life with you is the best music I know.