The ever-helpful Oliver, too, turned up each time to do one of his little make-it-fit spells. Alan had surrendered to the inevitable.
“Lovely, let’s be off, then,” said Lady Cheetham when Alan joined her and Lady Dufay, whose entire being screamed mucking-about even though she was an ageless member of the fae. She had refused all offers of fancier clothes. She had refused to be involved in the complicated process of planning and hosting a magicians’ gala. She had even refused a bedroom in the Hall, and had instead moved with all appearance of satisfaction into the folly.
She did enjoy a walk, though. And had submitted to being on Phyllis and Polly terms with her hostess.
The two ladies talked mostly about gardening, but they also took some interesting tangents off into the history of the house and grounds. Alan had taken to bringing along his notebook so that he could jot down details for the society story he was purportedly here to write. No doubt most of it would be a pile of benign lies about an unremarkable party. At least he could stuff it full of accurate details about the place.
Sometimes the history was family history. Lady Dufay had deliberately distanced herself from the line of her descendants, more and more so as time went on. Lady Cheetham could recite both her own family and her husband’s back an easy couple of centuries. They seemed determined to talk it all out and meet in the middle.
“I think she’s glad to have someone of her own station to talk to,” said Jack, later that day. They were back in the library. “She likes to involve herself in other people’s lives, but she’s very much the local grand lady, here. And too aware of it to allow herself real friendship. She’s been lonely.”
“I like her,” Alan said. “She’s very … solid.” His mental picture of the countess was always in Wellington boots.
“She was raised not to blink an eye if a prince and his retinue showed up demanding tea and lodgings.”
“Wouldn’t know anything about that, me,” said Alan, letting his accent slip. “But most women in my neighbourhood are practically minded and strong like that. You make do with what you have.”
“Is your mother the same?”
Alan chewed his lip. “Used to be,” he admitted. “Less so now. She spent so much of herself keeping us alive when my pa died, before I could pull my weight. There’s only so much fight in a person. If it never lets up, if they can never rest—it gets squeezed out of them, forever.” He couldn’t march back through the years and stop it all from happening; he couldn’t pour back his mother’s lost vitality or restore her eyesight. But what he wanted more than anything was to give her a life of real leisure—not just infirm helplessness and the constant worry that they’d slip back below the line.
Jack’s attention was steady, the sensation of it on Alan’s face as heavy and alive as it always was now. He didn’t say anything. He nodded and leaned back in his armchair.
A half-finished game of chess sat on the table between them. Maud had been trying to coach Alan in the game, but Alan was now even more of the opinion that chess was a wonderful substitute for chamomile tea or a potion imbued to make you sleep. If he wanted an excuse to sit across from Jack so that they could insult one another at a leisurely pace for an hour, they could play cards.
And he wanted the excuse.
It had been nearly a fortnight, and they hadn’t fucked again. Hadn’t kissed. Had barely touched. All of Alan’s half-formed ideas about indulging those manor-house fantasies, about normality being suspended and play allowed, had come to an ungainly … well, not a halt. A pause.
He was in Jack’s house and Jack was the future earl and still magnificently, unbearably himself. But Alan had met Jack’s mother, and Jack had fae heritage, and Jack and Alan officially knew each other too well now for this to revert to being an excellent and uncomplicated fuck.
Not that it had ever been uncomplicated. But it had been cleaner, before, with that protective coating of true dislike hammered over the desire.
The desire itself was as strong as ever. Alan woke most mornings with a stiff cock and didn’t bother to keep his mind off Jack as he dealt with it. He was acutely aware of Jack’s body whenever they shared space. But it didn’t feel like torture. And for all that lust could dig its silent, violent teeth into him at the sight of small things—like Jack’s fingers dwarfing an ebony chess piece, or the prowling way Jack had of crossing a room—it didn’t feel urgent.
It felt like something was working itself out, a pot set simmering through a long afternoon, and Alan didn’t want to disturb it early in case it spoiled.
“Hawthorn,” said Edwin now, calling from his usual disaster of a table. Violet and Robin had cleared off one corner of it and were, in fact, playing cards; they glanced up when Edwin spoke. “Come and hear this out.”
Jack got to his feet and went to the table to be explained at. Alan took the opportunity to relocate to the window seat, where he settled in to enjoy a pool of sunlight and the squabbles of magpies just visible on the circle of lawn within the gravel drive at the front of the house.
“I think,” Edwin said, “we can turn the Lady’s Oak into the Last Contract.” He looked warily at Jack as if for comment, ridicule, or applause.
“Pleased as I am that you’ve learned to appreciate that most people don’t care to be buried in fine detail,” said Jack, “I will need some detail more than that.”
“I’d been thinking about what Dufay said, about her and her magic being the fourth gift, and the oak being a symbol of it. It’s not silver, but it is something both of the fae and of our world. And oak holds power very well. We know that.”
“A giant oak tree’s not exactly portable,” said Robin. “Or easy to hide in a pocket or a maze.”
“It wouldn’t need to be hidden if it couldn’t be used,” said Edwin, more animated. “When I drew on Sutton through the ley line, everything became tangled up and slippery. You can’t hold something that large in a way that lets you do anything useful at all. And Dufay said that the Lady’s Oak poured her own magic into the magic that was inherent in the land already. So—we tie the contract directly to the ley lines. To the inherent magic. We combine them.”
“Mingling,” said Violet slowly. “Really mingling, this time. Edwin, that’s elegant and sneaky. I like it.”
“Enough detail for you, Hawthorn?” said Edwin.
Jack looked at him for a long while. Finally he said, “You’ll know better than me if the theory is sound. But Robin had a point. So long as the contract exists, there will be people interested in trying to use it, slippery tangles or no. You’re putting the weight of guarding it onto my family’s shoulders. Permanently.”
“I’d do it on Sutton if I could,” said Edwin. “But there’s nothing there with the same history, the same link with the fae. It has to be that tree. And I can help,” he said quickly. “That beech grove could be used to enhance a warding, you could plant other trees with other properties—everything I know from Flora Sutton’s notes, you and your mother can have it.”