Something Magic This Way Comes (37 page)

It had been jealousy that brought her here in the first place. Now, knowing the truth, she felt betrayed and abused. Prince Gwyn had not courted her for love.

Still, she did understand his motivation now, even if she would never forgive him. As humans were reputed to be fascinated by the fey, there was a counterattraction, a curiosity about the world above. Most of Faerie looked long and often at the world above. Even a child could create the window-spells required for that. Then there was the food . . . there were some things that magic was curiously unsatisfactory for.

Children were told that the food and drink of the land above was poison, or that it would bind them there to the dull earth. Annwn, guiltily, knew that it was not true. Desire might bring them back, but not magic—

* * *

The hackney carriage pulled up at the door of an elegant Palladian mansion in that most desirable of addresses, Grosvenor Square. I could never look at the house, the home we had dreamed we would fill with laughter and children, without anger. Marianne had insisted on the address. Only Grosvenor Square would make her happy, and to make her happy I would have sold Redmund. I would have given her anything, then. Deep down I knew that I still would.

Well, anything but what she said that she now wanted.

That I leave London. And her.

I knew that I was not man to play “Cuckolds, all’s awry.” My pride ran too deep, even if she’d left me to be the mistress of a Royal Duke, and it was the
on
dit
of whole town.

The little fay in my arms stirred uncomfortably. She was so frail, and I must have tensed on seeing the house. I shook the feeling away from me and alighted from the cab. I had to be gentle. Kitty would have laughed at me and told me I was too gentle to be good at treating hurts. It was true enough. Even the sight of a small injury always made me feel sick. Kitty had always been the one who did the treating of injuries—from bandaging cut knees to splinting birds wings. She’d been as close as a sister to me once, before I had told her that I was betrothed to Marianne.

I hadn’t seen her since that . . . scene. Looking back now, she’d been right. And if anyone was the right person to take the fay to . . . it would be her.

Kitty . . . Now that I’d thought of her, it seemed obvious. Well, I was still fairly castaway. That did tend to make one oblivious of certain facts, like her stepfather.

“Jarvey,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster, having just staggered against my own gatepost—which, with alarm, I realized had iron rails, a circumstance I never noticed before. “Wait. I will need you to transport me . . .”

“Ho, you’ll not find a place to sell you more blue-ruin this side o’ Tothill fields at this time o’morning,” said the hackney driver with a snort.

“I need to go to a posting house, not drinking,” He looked me over. “That’ll be a first, for a flash cove like you.”

His comment stung, but it was not without accuracy, so I left it at that and took her indoors, to a chaise lounge in the second salon. The little thing had been oddly still, but I was relieved to see that she was still breathing. She opened her eyes. They were wide and a little wild. “This is not a good place for me to be . . .”

“While I have to agree with you, it’s unlikely that any of my staff will have stayed up to see you here. I’ll need something to make a splint . . . and then the best I can think of is a big bandbox. There’s a swansdown muff still, left from Marianne things . . .”

“There is an ill-wishing on this place. An unhappiness . . .”

“That’s true enough,” I said sourly. “Lie there. I have some sticking plaster, and I must look about for something to use as a splint. Then we can be away to someone better skilled than I.”

She shook. “Be quick. It . . . hates women.”

Well, my Aunt Seraphina had had just such humors.

Forever saying a place was augish or something. A few people called her eccentricities fey, which had always pleased her no end. She hadn’t like the house either.

Marianne had, and that had been good enough for me, then. An odd thought struck my still befuddled brain: Perhaps a fay would be fey.

I found a roll of sticking plaster and some small scissors. For a splint I looted Marianne’s remaining knicknacks. I found a very elegant oriental fan with ivory canes that she used to flirt from behind, those soft eyes peeping provocatively through sooty lashes above it. I’d been too dazzled to read their true message then. I had been such a fool, I realized, ruthlessly cutting the silk that held the canes together. I took it, the large bandbox, and the muff to the green salon.

She wasn’t there. Had it all been an illusion? A strange product of too much drink? I stared hard at the chaise lounge refusing to accept the evidence of my own eyes. I’d carried her. Felt the weight of her.

I held the branch of candles higher. And then I could see her still lying there, holding her injured arm. Her little face was still pained and much too white, her green eyes wide and fearful.

Glamor, I realized. Well, glamor or no, I had do something about that arm. There wouldn’t be any brandy in the house, but some ratafia . . . I had alway detested the stuff. Even drunk I didn’t like the smell.

I went to fetch a decanter and returned. She wasn’t there, but now I knew I just had to look harder.

“Drink this,” I said kneeling next to her, holding the crystal glass of almond-scented liquor to her lips.

“No daylights.”

It clattered slightly against her teeth as she tossed it back. Belatedly I realized that she was actually quite small.

* * *

The scent alone was heady. Earthly fruits steeped in brandy flavored with almonds. Something for those of the wealth and power of Faerie to sip. She’d tasted it once. A gift from Gwyn—she’d thought him fabulously generous at the time. Love had tinged that, as pain did this time. It was so unmagically powerful that it almost overwhelmed the pain of the human moving her arm. Oddly, she could see that he was crying as he wrapped the white carved canes—carved with an almost elven delicacy—around her arm. He strapped it in place, and gradually the pain of his handling ebbed. His long white face with its high cheek-bones and clean planes was almost a mirror for her agony.

He’d felt it. She knew, looking at him, what a curse her kind had loosed on humans, mixing blood and then deserting them to live with after-clap. Those of Faerie knew how to block out such magics.

He stood up. Looked at his handiwork. “I think that’ll do. Now let’s hope that the hackney cab hasn’t decided to lope off into the night. We’ll need to get your arm properly set, and there is only one person I can trust to do it.”

Trust. Annwn knew that that was a rare and a precious commodity, and one Faerie had little of. Less now. They would see her as having betrayed the faith that the house royal had placed in her. They would not see it that she too had been betrayed. But right now she had to get out of this house. She stood up a little shakily. “Then let us go. Now.”

“Steady. Unless you have a supply of fish heads, I’ll need to find something to raise the wind with.”

She blinked a little owlishly. Raised her good arm.

The curtains began to flap and flames on the branch of candles danced wildly. “How hard a blow will you need?” she asked, an expression of faint puzzlement on her impish features.

“I meant my pockets are all to let. I’ll have to spout something.”

The ratafia was definitely affecting her. “I’ll never fit in a pocket. Not even shrunk to my smallest.” she blinked. “Spout? Like a whale-fish or a poet?”

For the first time in months my impecunious status embarrassed me. “Money. Gelt. I don’t have any cattle in my stable any more or an ostler to hitch them up to my phaeton. Actually, I don’t have the phaeton either. And I was thinking of transporting you in this bandbox.”

“Cattle,” she informed me loftily, “belong in a byre. I could call horses for you if you desire. It was one of the powers given me.” She looked at the marble floor. “Only perhaps we should do it outside.”

“I am surprised at your consideration for my house.”

She shook her head. “It’s the horses. They’d slip on this, and they don’t like fire. Besides, there is an illwishing on this place. They might get hurt. Let us go.”

She’d swayed up onto her feet, into the hall, and was heading determinedly for the kitchen. I followed willynilly and turned her toward the front door.

It was a foggy predawn out there. It was also a street remarkably free of a hackney cab. That was probably just as well, as two gray horses were thundering down it toward us. Magnificent creatures. Lovely arched necks and clean lines. They also, to my eye, looked like they might want to kill us. But just before I was about snatch the bosky fairy away to safety, they stopped. They stood, still, barring the occasional restive toss of the head. She looked at her arm in irritation, her torn little wings fluttering vainly. “You will have lift me up onto her.”

The horses were beauties . . . “But . . . what about saddles?”

She stamped her tiny foot impatiently. “Dawn comes closer. We must ride.”

She didn’t look as if she’d stay in the saddle anyway.

“You’re as drunk as a wheelbarrow.”

“Don’t be silly, wheelbarrows don’t drink. Even barrows only drink souls. Throw me up!”

I was ready to cast up accounts myself, but I knew what she meant. So I lifted her. She threw a leg over the horse if it were something she did every day. Perhaps the Faerie did. It was certainly less than ladylike.

I’d ridden bareback myself as a boy at Redmund— but not without a bit and bridle. “Up,” she said, imperiously.

Her steed stood more steadily than she had.

I was still a bit foxed myself and nearly went over the far side of the horse. The mane that I clung to was oddly cold. I was no sooner up than the horse moved off rapidly, breaking into canter. “Yoicks! We’re going the wrong way.”

She turned her horse with consummate skill and nearly had me off onto the street. I would have fallen had it been anything but the easiest paced beast I’d ever straddled. “Whither?” She demanded. “They’ll head for the sea if left to themselves.”

“The White Horse Inn, in Fetter lane,” I gasped.

“Just point. The names mean nothing to me,” she said with a little exasperation.

Wild horses must have raced through half the streets of London that pale morning. I couldn’t point very well or very often when it was all I could do to stay on the horse. And her steed tried to stay in the lead.

They were like no earthly horses, seeming tireless.

“Slow . . .” I managed to say, when we’d just frightened a lamplighter dowsing wicks (no modern gas lamps in this part of town) out of several years of life.

“It wants scant time till dawn, and the horses must be away by then, back to the water.”

“Close. We . . . better . . . go on foot. People about,” I said pointing to a wide-eyed flowerseller, who had dropped her posies and was gaping through the foggy swirls.

“True.” She halted her horse, and I alighted. I didn’t quite fall, as I managed to clutch the neck on my way past. She leaped, graceful as a fairy . . . and landed, plainly jarring her arm. She winced in pain.

“I bid you go. Return to waters,” she said to the steaming horses. They did not wait but were away, racing wraithlike through the fog towards the river.

“I’ll have to hide you under my coat again,” I said.

“It’ll be more difficult now that it’s light. But we can’t have people seeing you.”

“Oh.” She fluttered her wings and blurred slightly, expanding and changing.

Before me stood a young lady of the upper ten thousand, attired in a clinging pale primrose muslin overdress with little puff sleeves. She had a very fine double twist of pearls about her slim white neck and looked ready for an evening’s dancing at Almacks. I suspected she even had vouchers for it in her reticule.

Glamor. I had forgotten that, even though she’d used in my house to hide in plain sight on the chaise lounge. “Do you think you could manage something a little more suited for traveling on a common stage?”

“Oh, “ she said with just the hint of a pout. “I liked that.” She blurred her clothing into a sensible frock of twilled cotton covered by a slightly worn pelisse. It was as well that the seamstresses and snyders of London did not see her do this, or those that did not die of shock would definitely have wanted to hang her.

The innyard was the usual bustle of mendicants and street merchants, even at this time of day. I felt the ghostly twitch of a pickpocket and wished the fellow well. My pockets were still wholly to let, which could just pose a problem as I had neglected to find anything I could pawn. I’d become quite inured to that little indignity. Still, my fey companion could conjure sovereigns from fish heads . . . which strangely enough I didn’t have any of, either. There was an outraged shriek that quite distracted me from my perusal of the sellers of paper twists of cobnuts. My youthful companion hit someone—a pockmarked youth in a fawn frieze coat.

Hit him so hard that he fell over. By the way he was doubled up and gasping, it was not a blow that Gentleman Jackson would have taught in his Saloon.

“Here! What’s happening?” I demanded.

“He put his hand . . .” she said indignantly, glamor briefly hazing.

The young pickpocket had not accounted for the glamor, it would seem. It might have been his intent to remove a purse from the pocket of her pelisse, but he had touched on something more sensitive. I advanced on him, and he scrambled to his feet, squirming away through the gathering crowd. A comfortable countryman bent down and picked up something the pickpocket had dropped. It was a purse. Monogrammed. With faint shock I recognized it. “This yours, little lady? That was a capital hit, that.”

I nodded. “She has learned some things from her brothers. Mostly they are undesirable . . . but, well, thank the kind gentleman nicely, young lady.”

She bobbed him a little bow, but made no move to take the red morocco purse.

It wasn’t hers—but then I felt that I had some claim on my dear absent’s wife’s property, and whatever was in it, by courtesy of the man who had taken her from me. “You’d better let me keep it.”