“I didn’t want to trouble you,” Matthew said, with uncharacteristic shyness.
“Nothing you do troubles me,” said James. “Well, that is not precisely true. You are quite troublesome, as you well know.” He grinned. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to know what’s happening in your life. I’m your parabatai.”
“I know. And I had rather thought—I suppose I had thought, since you had just been married, that you would want to spend time alone with Cordelia. That there was some chance your marriage might become a real one.”
There was a look close to distress on Matthew’s face. It startled James—Matthew, who so rarely showed distress even if he felt it. Perhaps, James thought, he had been worrying that things might change between them with James a married man. That their closeness might be diminished.
“Cordelia and I are friends only,” he said, with more surety than he felt. “You know I am pledged to Miss Blackthorn.”
“She cannot hold a candle to Daisy,” Matthew said, then looked utterly horrified. “My apologies—it is absolutely none of my business. I ought to get back to my flat, before I cause any more trouble.”
James was startled, though he supposed he shouldn’t be. Matthew had nearly bitten Grace’s head off at the wedding. Certainly James felt no resentment at Math’s dislike of Grace: he understood that Matthew did not want him to be hurt.
“Let me come with you,” James said.
Matthew shook his head, opening his carriage door. “I ought to be alone—settle myself—”
“No one need be alone to settle themselves,” said James quietly. “All I want for you, Math, is that you love yourself as much as I love you.”
Matthew took a shaking breath. “Cordelia doesn’t mind you coming to my flat?”
“She suggested it. She loves you too,” James said, and glanced up at the sky. Dark, snow-laden clouds were rolling in, obscuring the blue. He did not see Matthew close his eyes and swallow hard.
A moment later Matthew had flung the carriage door all the way open and was gesturing James inside. “Well, come on then,” he said. “If we hurry, we can get there before it starts to snow.”
* * *
Cordelia spent the afternoon curled up in the study, reading A Thaumaturgy of Dreams. Christopher had been right—the book was very interesting, though it was entirely about how one might direct the dreams of others and very little about what to do if one found oneself being visited by violent, unpleasant dreams that turned out to be true.
As the day wore on, groups of men came down the streets with shovels and brooms, and scraped and cleaned the night’s snow from the walkways; children emerged from houses, too, wrapped up like little packages, and proceeded to pelt each other with snowballs. She remembered, long ago, doing the same with Alastair. She hoped he was managing all right at Cornwall Gardens.
As the sun dimmed outside the window, snow began to fall again. It sifted down from the sky like flour, covering the world in a layer of powdered glass. The children were ordered inside, and the streetlamps glowed through a haze of fine white crystals. Cordelia found her mind wandering from the book: she could not help but think about Cortana again.
If you had any thought of meeting Cortana’s maker, I could take you. Past the great white horse and under the hill.
She bit her lip. Trusting faeries was one thing, but Lilian Highsmith had mentioned Wayland the Smith as well.
When I was twelve, I ran away from home and my parents found me wandering the Ridgeway Road, looking for the smith’s barrow.
Cordelia scrambled off the couch and headed for the bookshelves. The section devoted to volumes on travel was rather haphazardly knocked about—she and James had gone through half the books—but she found what she was looking for easily enough: The Wonders of Ancient Britain.
She found the Ridgeway Road in the index and flipped to the page, illustrated with a pen-and-ink drawing of a dark barrow piercing the side of a hill. Wayland the Smith’s cave lies Wiltshire way, along the Ridgeway Road, that highway of vanished races which runs end to end of the Downs. The fields are cultivated now, but the place still has a strange look. A fitting place to possess one’s soul in silence after a pilgrimage to White Horse Hill—
The sound of carriage wheels on icy pavement cut into Cordelia’s thoughts. Hearing the front door slam, she set the book aside hastily; a minute later James came into the study, hatless, his tumbled dark hair feathered with snow.