Violet, the supposed target of Edwin’s monologue, was the one who cast Jack a speaking glance. She set down her teacup and cradlespoke help needed at him.
Edwin broke off from one sentence to the next. His hand slipped out of Robin’s. His eyes were on the door, behind Jack’s shoulder.
Jack turned in time to see Mr. Price enter the room with more speed and less calm than usual. Spinet House’s butler had a fussy elegance to him, like an orchestra conductor eternally on the verge of lifting his baton and frowning at the brass section.
“You’ve a visitor, miss,” he said to Violet. “A journalist, from the papers. I told him to stay in the hall, but he didn’t, and he somehow pushed right through—”
Right through the private wards, one assumed. Not something you could blurt out in front of the average unmagical person. The butler let the words die in his throat as this person—probably not even average, certainly much shorter than Price—slipped through the doorway behind him and took a few steps into the room before stopping, gaze dragged to the covered salvers on the sideboard, as if business had been momentarily postponed by the smell of bacon.
Disapproval wafted from every inch of Mr. Price, who cradled a spell before anyone could speak. Jack couldn’t see what it was—perhaps something designed to subdue the intruder for long enough that he could be escorted firmly back to the door.
Belatedly Violet said, “It’s all right, Price, he’s—”
The green spell had already left the butler’s hands like a handful of hornets. The short young man gave a shake of his black hair and a twitch of one shoulder as if he really had been stung, and frowned.
Two green sparks flew back towards Price’s hands. The butler shook his fingers and made an affronted sound of surprise.
In the ensuing pause, Edwin stood, eyes narrowed. Transparently on the verge of saying Do that again, where I can see it properly.
“Unbusheled,” finished Violet with a sort of laugh. “Thank you, Price. We know him.”
“Do we?” said Robin.
The young man in question looked around the breakfast room. He hadn’t changed. He still looked like a graven angel that had stepped down from the entrance to a church, shaken off the greyness of stone, and decided to go about the world clad in restless flesh and dark, dark eyes.
Those eyes slid over Jack in their tour of the room, and the back of Jack’s neck tensed in preparation for an argument.
“How d’you do. So, do you welcome all your morning visitors by hurling magic at them, Miss Debenham,” said Alanzo Rossi, “or only members of the press?”
3
If he tried to list every question he had about the more baffling aspects of upper-class life, Alan would run out of fingers, toes, and probably pubic hairs and stars in the sky as well.
Fairly high on the list, however, was: Why breakfast?
If you lived the sort of life where a small army of people was responsible for fetching your food, setting it in front of you, and then hovering near the wall to replenish or replace as needed, what was the point of abandoning that habit for one single meal of the day? Alan could only assume it was a daily exercise in which the rich and lofty entertained delusions that they’d be any use at all if thrown into a world where they had to fend for themselves.
See! one could imagine them saying over the blackcurrant jam and kippers and eggs done three ways. We do retain the ability to transfer food onto our own plates, and carry those plates to the table, and even refill our own coffee cups!
Where does the food come from? Why, it just appears, of course. Like all food. What a silly question.
The spot between Alan’s shoulder blades was still smarting from the zap of pain that the butler had magicked him with. He was standing among magicians. Perhaps their food did just appear.
“Members of the press?” said Miss Debenham. “No. Standard procedure for thieves, though. Oh—no, Price, I’m just making fun. Thank you.”
The butler exited, leaving Alan alone with three people he knew and three he didn’t.
When Alan had written up his fawning, gossipy article about the first-class crossing on the Lyric, he’d described Miss Debenham as a well-born eccentric heiress with a scandalous past and a fair beauty. All of which was more or less true, even if Alan was the least qualified man in London to pass judgement on feminine beauty. Didn’t matter. Anyone well-born or well-moneyed enough was beautiful on paper.
Given the truthful run of his pen, he’d have called Violet Debenham a cautious minx of an actress.
Right now, she looked relaxed. Mistress of the manor and all. Alan managed not to glance at the breakfast dishes again. His stomach gave a gurgle that he hoped went unheard.
“We probably shouldn’t be making jokes about thieves, given everything,” said Miss Blyth. “How d’you do, Mr. Ross. How good to see you again!”
“Miss B.” A more genuine smile for her. Maud Blyth was composed mostly of dimples and idealism. As aristocrats went, at least she made rooms feel warmer instead of colder. It was good to see her again.
It might have been the one and only good thing about the grim situation that Alan currently found himself in.
“How did you do that?”
The question came from one of the unfamiliar men. Tallish, slimmish, looked like he had possibly made the acquaintance of a single sunbeam back before the turn of the century.
“Do what?”
“Whatever you did when Price—” A practiced flick of the hand.
“I didn’t do anything.” He’d assumed it was meant as a warning. Something to put him in his place. It had felt like he’d jerked his neck at the wrong angle and needed to wriggle his nerves back into comfort.
“But it went back to him.”
Alan didn’t speak magic. He shrugged.
“It was the same on the ship,” said Miss Debenham. “I couldn’t get an illusion to stick to him properly.”
“And Price said he got through the entrance wards without being invited,” said the pale one, looking more excited than displeased at this apparent gap in their security. “This shouldn’t be—wait a moment, I think I did read something…”
“You’d be Mr. Courcey, then,” said Alan, as several mental notes from the voyage on the Lyric clicked themselves together.
“Pardon? Yes.” Courcey met the gaze of the brown-haired man who looked a lot like Miss Blyth and even more like an advertisement for an athletic nutritional tonic, and muttered pleasedtomeetyou as if it were a word in another language. “Front door or back? Where did you enter?”
From anyone else that would have been a dig about the tradesman’s entrance, but Courcey hadn’t a whiff of snobbery about him: just urgent curiosity.
“Front.”
“Really? Don’t you feel uncomfortable? Like you shouldn’t be here and are desperate to leave?”
Alan had a lot of experience keeping his expression neutral in the face of idiotic questions from his social superiors. He couldn’t quite suppress his tongue, though.
“Now that you mention it, perhaps I do. Why d’you think that would be?”
“Mr.… Ross?” said the brown-haired man firmly. “I apologise for everyone’s manners. Why don’t you sit down and join us, if you’re staying. Violet can do the introductions properly.” This would be Miss Blyth’s older brother. The baronet. His posture said he was used to being the highest-born person in a room.