“Give Maud a couple more decades and she’ll make one,” said Alan.
Adelaide laughed. “No doubt.”
The busy train-silence reigned for a while. They were still within the city, a part of it that Alan had never seen, though the sky was enlarging as they went with the promise of fields to come. Adelaide looked out the window and tapped her ring. She was clearly going to let the subject drop, being too well bred to pry in return about Alan’s views on love and marriage.
Thank fuck. He didn’t know if he had any presentable views. He’d never been in love. Marriage for a man already supporting a family would be a burden rather than a duty. And the best he’d be able to do on the subject of desire would be to hand her one of the Roman books and stumble through the excruciating explanation of the difference between sexual fantasy and personal politics.
Best to steer things out of those waters entirely.
“Did you have any success in Gloucester, then?” he asked. “Track down this Grimm?”
Adelaide jerked her head back to look at him. She brought a hand to her mouth and inclined her head towards the pile of anoraks in the corner.
It took Alan a second to grasp her meaning.
“Really?”
“I’m so sorry! I didn’t explain, did I? I assumed—never mind.” She straightened her face. “I won’t wake him for introductions, but this is the Grimm of Gloucester. Mr. Dufay.”
Alan fumbled after sense. “The one who wrote the song?” No, that one was dead. Alan had stood at the grave with Maud, where the ghost in question had failed to present itself and be helpful.
“His grandson. Or nephew, perhaps? He was vague about it. He is”—Adelaide sighed—“not quite as bad as the letters in person, but not a great deal better.”
Well, she had threatened to drag the Grimm back in her luggage if she couldn’t get the information Edwin wanted. Alan eyed the sleeping man with greater interest. Even folded into the seat corner like a bent wire, Dufay gave the impression of height. The mismatched anoraks fell to a pair of heavy, scuffed boots. The snoring had quietened, but the occasional ripping snort still came from an old, clean-shaven face with oddly delicate features, surrounded by poorly cut shoulder-length hair with the colour and greasy shine of cream.
“Looks like he should be living in a cave on the moors, doesn’t he?” said Adelaide.
“Or like an old sailor determined to drink through the whole voyage,” said Alan, eyeing the canvas bag and boots. “Can he help, then? Does he know about the Last Contract?”
“I’m sure he knows something. For the entire first day he wouldn’t talk to me because I’m not a magician, so God only knows what he thinks the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints is, for all the years he’s been writing there. Then I told him we knew where the contract was, but that we didn’t have it anymore, and he raged at me for being irresponsible. As if it were my fault!”
Alan, whose fault it was, shifted in his seat. “How did you persuade him to come along, in that case?”
“It was his idea!” said Adelaide. “I was trying to explain what we know, or sort of know, about Lord Hawthorn and Lady Elsie and what Bastoke has been trying to do—and he heard the name Cheetham Hall and the next thing I knew, he was insisting that we leave at once. He’s spent most of the journey asleep. I think he can do it at will,” she added, eyeing Dufay dubiously, “when he doesn’t want to talk.”
And Dufay stayed asleep for the rest of the journey. Or at least did an excellent job of pretending at it. The moment the train shuddered to a halt at the Cheetham village station, Dufay’s eyes cracked open as if a pair of chambermaids had raised the window sashes in unison. Those eyes were brilliantly, piercingly blue, and fixed with suspicion on Alan himself.
“We’ve arrived, Mr. Dufay,” said Adelaide, nodding her thanks at Alan as he hoisted her hatbox in his free hand. “And this is Mr. Ross.”
“Not a magician either,” said Alan, who was feeling needled by that stare.
“Hmph,” said Dufay, a light, throaty sound, and unfolded himself like a clotheshorse.
Thanks to Adelaide’s timetables, there was a carriage and driver waiting at the station to deliver them to Cheetham Hall. Dufay didn’t speak on the way, but nor did he go back to sleep. His attention was keen on the village and then the green-soaked countryside. Watching him, Alan had the sense of an ancient sponge, twisted and parched, that was being slowly rained upon and unfolding its full shape as the water took hold.
Dufay was first out of the carriage, surprisingly sprightly, when it delivered them to the front of the house. Alan and Adelaide took more time. Alan felt relieved that Adelaide, too, seemed to need a moment to take in the size of Cheetham Hall.
It was a glorified series of large boxes, Alan told himself. Grey stone and square, poised within the green unfolding of nature brought to heel. Huge windows stared down at him, their sight rheumed with clouds that interrupted the patchy blue of the reflected sky. The wind was softly cold, puffing Alan’s hair into his face, and smelled of clean nothingness tinged with grass. Between the enormity of the house and the mingling of liveried footmen and women in white dresses spilling like a foam-tipped wave through the enormous front doors, Alan felt spongelike in the other direction. He wanted to shrivel up and hide.
Voices rose. The white dresses were Maud and Violet, dashing down the steps, and Robin and Edwin were behind them, and—
Alan’s eyes stopped moving when he caught sight of Jack, with an abruptness that made it shamefully obvious to himself that he’d been searching. Jack transferred from clean-scrubbed steps to the fine gravel of the drive and came up next to Alan, and his eyes stopped too. Alan had never been looked at like this, with this hot pleasure in his presence that had such palpable, irresistible weight. It moved like an iron over his irritable nerves and uncreased them.
“You must be lost,” said Jack. “We don’t admit your sort here.”
“I’ve come to nick the candlesticks.”
The air really was intolerably clean. It was scouring Alan’s throat from the inside. He let himself hold Jack’s gaze for a moment longer, a greedy child clinging to a treat, before he transferred his attention to the chaos taking place nearby. Robin and Adelaide had their heads bent together, and Edwin was trying to catch the elbow of Dufay.
“What on Earth,” Jack muttered.
“He’s the Grimm,” said Alan.
“Truly? Christ. We’d better have him inside. My mother can at least make him welcome before Edwin begins the inquisition.”
But Edwin’s urgent questions were rolling off the greasy anoraks like drops of unheeded rain. Dufay had his face uptilted, frowning as if remembering something. He looked in every direction, ignoring everything from Adelaide’s prompts to Maud’s attempts at cheery greeting.
The only person to win acknowledgement was the footman attempting to take the canvas bag. Dufay pushed the bag into the footman’s arms, a motion of abrupt and startling authority, and straightened to his full cranelike height.
Then he bypassed the steps entirely and stalked off around the side of the house.