Unnatural Issue (28 page)

No one cheered, and no one laid any bets. They simply watched, bearing witness to something each and every one of them had hoped for and never expected to see.

And no one went for the constable.

Rod was unbelievably stubborn—or stupid. Perhaps both. Long after both his eyes were blacked, his face was a pulpy ruin, and both ears were swollen to the size of small apples, he was still fighting. Long after he was gasping for breath following yet another crippling body blow, he was still fighting.

Finally even the gamekeeper grew tired of it. Or perhaps his hands were getting sore. He landed a gut punch that had Rod bending over and ended it with a clasped-hand blow to the back of Rod’s neck.

The bully went down and did not rise again.

The gamekeeper stood there for a moment, shaking his head sorrowfully.

“Pride goeth afore a fall,” the brother said from the doorway.

“Aye.” The gamekeeper shook both his hands vigorously. “I could use that pint now.” He glanced down at Rod. “Reckon ’e needs a doctor?”

“Doctor won’ touch he,” old Dan offered. “Not ’less he be dyin’. Said so.”

“Well, ’e won’t die.” The man chuckled. “Only wisht ’e might. So us’ll have that pint.”

A dozen men scrambled to be the first to buy it for him. They all streamed into the pub, leaving Rod lying alone, to drag himself home and disguise his bruises as best he could.

T
HE atmosphere at Whitestone Hall seethed with emotion. The servants were all keeping out of the Master’s sight, even his housekeeper, who would slip in with a tray, place it on a table, and slip out again when he wasn’t in the room. Richard Whitestone was not merely angry, he was furious. He hadn’t known his daughter was missing until well into the afternoon of the day she vanished; he was ready to murder the housekeeper and the maid who had found her room empty that morning and had not seen fit to inform him. Instead, they had engaged in a futile search of the house and grounds themselves, with an inquiry at the village.

Not until past teatime did the housekeeper come, reluctantly, to inform him. And of course by that point the trail wasn’t just cold, it had been obliterated. Too many people had passed over the roads she might have taken; too many animals and people had trodden any path she might have used to cross the fields. Not that he expected her to cross fields, she was only a female; women didn’t go tramping cross country, it took too much effort, and they were too ill-prepared. A man might decide to cross the moors, but Susanne? She’d have not the first idea of how to go about such a journey. She was used to regular meals and to sleeping in a bed at night. She would never know how to camp rough; she probably wouldn’t even think about provisions other than to pack a little buttered bread and think she had done enough. No, she would keep to the roads, and think herself sleeping rough when she slipped into a stable or barn to bed down on straw.

That said, she had to eat, but a woman wouldn’t know how to forage, certainly would not know how to fish or hunt, and definitely would not know how to cook over a fire. Women expected things to be “civilized.” She must have hidden some money away somewhere; perhaps by taking things from the house and selling them. How would he have known if she did? He didn’t go prowling through the place, taking inventory! It could not have been a great deal of money, but she was used to eating the same simple meals as the servants, so a little would take her a long way.

He paced up and down in his rooms, refraining from smashing things only by an effort of will. He could only assume that she had decided to try her hand at working as a servant elsewhere. It was the only logical course she could take. He supposed that since she had been working unpaid as a servant all this time, the idea of doing so for wages was rather attractive, despite that she was technically gentry.

And so, he seethed. First, over the simple fact that she had escaped him. The ignorant little chit had the unmitigated gall to
run away!
It didn’t seem to have occurred to her that she was
his
, his possession, body and soul, to do what he liked with. It even said as much in the Bible, and the vicar preached regularly on the subject; since she went to church along with the housekeeper nearly every Sunday, she should have had that drummed into her by this time!

And what was wrong with her? He had finally taken notice of her, elevated her to her proper stature, given her luxuries she hadn’t even dreamed of. And she repaid him by
running away!
Wasn’t this exactly the sort of thing that those maudlin serialized stories in
Punch
and other papers were all about? Wasn’t this the sort of Cinderella tale that servant girls were supposed to wish for?

Why had she run from him? It made no sense.

He paused in his pacing to pass a hand over his face, trying to find a motive. If he had the reason, he could surely find the girl.

Was it rebellion? Was she simply so contrary that whatever he wanted for her, she would do the opposite?

No. There is nothing to suggest that.
He’d watched her closely. If anything, she had given him the impression of someone in the habit of obeying orders.

Was she angry because he had neglected her all these years? Was this her way of getting her own back?

But I saw no signs of anger, either. And surely she would have shown them when she was away from me.
There was nothing in her previous behavior all these years to suggest she was resentful; if anything, she was too accepting, taking the country attitude of “it is what it is” and dealing with what she had been given.

Was it something more complicated than that? He knew she was uncomfortable in her new role; had she run because she felt out of place as the daughter of the house? He’d counted on that to keep her off-balance and preoccupied, but maybe she was more sensitive in that regard than he had thought.

Oh, surely not.
He snorted with impatience. She’d been a servant, for pity’s sake. Servants were dull creatures of leaden sensibilities, just barely human.

But there is one way in which she could have completely fooled me. A man.
It was more likely that she had a loutish lover somewhere. Had she fled to him? Stupid, romantical female . . . she would have known he couldn’t approve of a marriage to anyone from the village or the farms. Had she thought that if she just ran off to him, her father would be forced to agree to the misalliance?

If so, that was extremely vexing. He thought he’d checked thoroughly for that possibility immediately on discovering she was the perfect vessel for his purposes, and had found nothing. How could she have been so cunning that she’d hidden a secret alliance?

But if that was what she had done, where was she? She could not possibly have met a man who lived too very far away.

His first thought on considering
that
had been that she and her lover had elected to run off together. That was certainly foolish and romantical enough to appeal to a callow girl. He’d sent the stableman around to see what he could learn, but the results had been disappointing. No young man was missing from the village or surrounding lands, so whatever she’d done, it hadn’t been to “run away together” with anyone at all.

He resumed his pacing. On further consideration, romance seemed unlikely. She just did not have any opportunities. Oh, there
had
been some gossipy nonsense about a gamekeeper, but he didn’t employ a gamekeeper, nor did anyone hereabouts. In the end, he had to put the rumor down to the tendency of silly females to make things up when there was nothing to talk about.

Suddenly another thought occurred to him. Had she gotten some sort of fright?

His blood ran cold for a moment at the idea she might, against all odds and precautions, have found him out. That she might have learned what he planned for her.

What if she did? Where would she go? Would she know enough to find another Elemental mage and reveal his true nature?
He paused again and reached blindly for the back of a chair to support himself. To be exposed . . . to be hunted by that wretched Alderscroft and his Lodge as he himself had hunted others . . .

They would show him no mercy.

But then, sound good sense took over. She couldn’t possibly have discovered what he planned. He’d never told anyone, not even the redcaps. The only way for her to have learned such a thing would be from some preternatural source, some occult source such as a vision or a dream, or—

—Or reading his books.

Again, he froze for a moment of absolute terror. Those books were explicit. There was no doubt what they were about. And Alderscroft would know exactly where he had gotten them.

No, that was impossible. Even if she had been able to read them, all his books were safely hidden away in the secret Work Room. No one in the house knew he had such a room, much less where it was, except for him and the creatures he bound to serve him.

And even if the human servants had known the room existed, no one else in the house knew how to get into it. He kept it locked at all times, except when he was in it.

The boggarts and redcaps wouldn’t have told her. And if she had seen the boggarts and redcaps, she wouldn’t have stopped to chat with them, foul little beasts that they were. She’d have run screaming at the sight of them. Any sane person would. And they did have the ability to make themselves visible to perfectly ordinary human beings without a touch of magic in them.

Could that have been it? Could she have gotten a glimpse of one of his bound servants and fled the place in horror?

No, that made no sense. A female, confronted with one of the little terrors, would turn to the nearest strong man for protection. She would have come running
to
him, not away from him!

As for occult means, such as visions and clairvoyance—that was just nonsense. Being able to do such things without a complicated and costly spell? Impossible. Besides, she’d shown no more occult powers than a paving stone.

He resumed his pacing. There had to be a reason. Nothing ever happened without a reason.

Perhaps she
had
gotten a fright, but it was not of the obvious sort. Perhaps it was merely that she was frightened of the education he “planned” for her. He had set her to a lot of difficult lessons, and with her mind dulled by years of servant work, they might have proven so hard that she was coming to hate the idea of more.

Women are intellectually lazy. They only exert their minds if they are forced to.
Even Rebecca had shown that unfortunate trait, perfectly content to settle into a placid round of household tasks and feminine handiwork. If he hadn’t kept encouraging her to exert herself, she never would have taken herself out of the domestic round.

That seemed the likeliest of all; either because Susanne felt she was incapable or because she was lazy, further quickening and filling her mind could have seemed a nightmare to her. Simply put, she might have run off rather than be sent to university. Perhaps she feared the snubs of those with better educations. Perhaps she was certain she would fail. Perhaps she was simply afraid of so much work. Stupid chit! It was all the more vexing because, of course, he’d never intended to send her to university. And if she’d felt intimidated, all she had to do was express her concerns. He would have had another chance to appear to be the regretful father eager to make amends. Instead . . . she bolted. Like a little boy afraid of the tutor. And she was more than old enough to know better.

He paced angrily in his room. Neither boggarts, nor goblins, nor redcaps had found her, either, and he’d spread them all out to a day’s run in every direction. Using trolls was out of the question of course, and simply finding a misplaced girl was exactly the sort of thing that the smaller creatures were good at.

Except they had found nothing. She had vanished right out of their ken. And the other Earth Elementals would no longer obey him. He couldn’t even force them to; the moment he had spilled blood in Blood Magic, he had broken the Compact, and they were not obliged to answer him to
be
forced.

That left using a Hound, but she hadn’t left a thing behind he could use to trace her—not a hair, not a nail paring, not a stocking. A Hound needed the scent, for it worked by the Law of Contamination. The wretched housekeeper had confirmed that she had taken all her old things, and
only
her old things. “All them pretty dresses, she left, Master Richard,” the old hag had quavered. “Reckon she didn’t want t’ be beholden to you, sir.”

The notion that she didn’t want to be “beholden to him” would have been amusing had the situation not been so dire.