Matthew’s eyes were sparkling as the barmaid left them alone to dig into their lunch. “You think the barrow’s there?”
“There, or near there.” Cordelia was beginning to feel real excitement. It had been a desperate gesture, coming out here in hopes of finding out what was wrong with Cortana. A method of seizing her fate with her own hands, even if it meant finding out something she did not want to know. “Perhaps it was once known that Wayland the Smith had a forge there, and the white horse was created as a sort of—”
“Shop sign?” said Matthew, grinning. “Get your enchanted swords here?”
“As a way to let people know it was a powerful, protected place. Though,” she added, “bet you a shilling there’s a stall selling hot cider once we get there.”
Matthew laughed. They hurried to finish their food and pay the bill before departing. They left the barmaid gazing longingly at Matthew and got back in the car. Cordelia crawled under a multitude of blankets as the car started up with a roar and they trundled out onto the road.
* * *
“Grace.” James blocked the door with his body. “You shouldn’t be here.”
She looked up at him, her small face shaded by her hat, her expression invisible. “But I need to speak to you,” she said. “It’s important.”
He curled his hand around the doorframe. The pressure was there in the back of his brain, the whisper that said, Let her in. Let her in. You want to see her. You need to see her. “Grace—”
She was past him somehow, and inside the house. Thank the Angel that Risa had gone to the Carstairs’ house to help Sona. James slammed the door shut—no point making a scene the whole of Curzon Street could see—and turned to see Grace already halfway down the hall.
Shah mat, he thought, and hurried after her. She always managed to get past him somehow. His emotional walls. The actual walls of his house, apparently. He could hear her skirts swishing down the corridor; he caught up with her as she was about to turn into the study.
“Not in here,” he said. Somehow this room was his and Cordelia’s place. It was bad enough having Grace in his home the day after Elias’s death. There had to be limits. “The drawing room.”
She gave him a lingering, curious look but went where he indicated, her delicate boots clicking on the parquet floors as she walked.
James locked the drawing room door behind them. He hadn’t been in here since the argument with Elias. He could still see a small porcelain figurine tipped sideways on one of the shelves, where Elias had knocked it over.
He turned to Grace. “We had an agreement.”
She had shrugged off her heavy cape; under it she wore a cream wool dress embroidered with blue. It was tight around the waist and hips, narrowing to a swirl of lace panels below the knee. “You told me how things were going to be,” she said, “but I don’t recall agreeing.”
He leaned back against the side of the piano. “I don’t mean to be unkind,” he said. “But this is not fair on either of us. Nor is it fair on Daisy. I made her a promise, and I intend to keep it.”
“Daisy,” she echoed, laying her gloved hand on the back of a chair. “Such a pretty nickname. I don’t think you have one for me.”
“Cordelia is a much longer name than Grace,” he said shortly. “You said you had something important to tell me.”
“I have a question, really. About Lucie.”
James didn’t bother to hide his surprise. “You’ve never shown much interest in Lucie.” Every summer in Idris, he had offered to introduce her to his sister, but Grace had refused, saying sometimes that she could not bear to part with a moment of her time alone with James, saying other times that she wished to meet Lucie when she was free of her mother and could speak of her love for James openly. James happened to think that the last thing Lucie wanted to hear about was a strange girl’s passion for her older brother, but Grace would not be moved.
“It is about her power,” Grace said. “I know Lucie, like you, can see the dead—but you can also travel in shadows. Can Lucie do the same?”
“Why do you want to know?” James asked. “And why now?”
“The murders, I suppose,” Grace said, looking away. “They’ve been so awful—and I know of your shadow power, but few others do, and I suppose I wondered if you and Lucie had any way of—of perhaps seeing the ghosts of those who had been murdered? Of knowing who might have done this?”