Matthew said, his tone clipped and precise. “Marcus!”
“What’s wrong?” Marcus said.
“Diana isn’t well.” Matthew scowled ferociously at Fernando. “I should have been told.”
“I thought you had been.” Fernando didn’t need to say anything else. Matthew knew who had kept this from him. Fernando suspected that Matthew knew why as well. Matthew’s usually mobile face turned to stone, and his normally expressive eyes were blank.
“What happened?” Marcus said. He told Jack where to find his medical bag and called for Ransome.
“Diana found the missing page from Ashmole 782.” Fernando took Matthew by the shoulders.
“There’s more. She saw Benjamin at the Bodleian Library. He knows about the pregnancy. He attacked Phoebe.”
“Phoebe?” Marcus was distraught. “Is she all right?”
“Benjamin?” Jack inhaled sharply.
“Phoebe is fine. And Benjamin is nowhere to be found,” Fernando reassured them. “As for Diana, Hamish called Edward Garrett and Jane Sharp. They’re overseeing her case.”
“They’re among the finest doctors in the city, Matthew,” Marcus said. “Diana couldn’t be in better care.”
“She will be,” Matthew said, picking up a cradle and heading out the door. “She’ll be in mine.”
30
“You shouldn’t have any problem with it now,” I told the young witch sitting before me. She had come at the suggestion of Linda Crosby to see if I could figure out why her protection spell was no longer effective.
Working out of Clairmont House, I had become London’s chief magical diagnostician, listening to accounts of failed exorcisms, spells gone bad, and elemental magic on the loose, and then helping the witches find solutions. As soon as Amanda cast her spell for me, I could see the problem: When she recited the words, the blue and green threads around her got tangled up with a single strand of red that pulled on the six-crossed knots at the core of the spell. The gramarye had become convoluted, the spell’s intentions murky, and now instead of protecting Amanda it was the magical equivalent of an angry Chihuahua, snarling and snapping at everything that came close.
“Hello, Amanda,” Sarah said, sticking her head in to see how we were faring. “Did you get what you needed?”
“Diana was brilliant, thanks,” Amanda said.
“Wonderful. Let me show you out,” Sarah said.
I leaned back on the cushions, sad to see Amanda go. Since the doctors from Harley Street had me on bed rest, my visitors were few.
The good news was that I didn’t have preeclampsia—at least not as it usually develops in warmbloods. I had no protein in my urine, and my blood pressure was actually below normal.
Nevertheless, swelling, nausea, and shoulder pain were not symptoms the jovial Dr. Garrett or his aptly named colleague, Dr. Sharp, wished to ignore—especially not after Ysabeau explained that I was Matthew Clairmont’s mate.
The bad news was that they put me on modified bed rest nonetheless, and so I would remain until the twins were born—which Dr. Sharp hoped would not be for another four weeks at least, although her worried look suggested that this was an optimistic projection. I was allowed to do some gentle stretching under Amira’s supervision and take two ten-minute walks around the garden per day. Stairs, standing, lifting were positively forbidden.
My phone buzzed on the side table. I picked it up, hoping for a text from Matthew.
A picture of the front door of Clairmont House was waiting for me.
It was then that I noticed how quiet it was, the only sound the ticking of the house’s many clocks.