“I know I’m not clever,” Robin said. “But no, I’m not stupid.”
Edwin’s traitorous tongue was now a lump in his mouth, frozen in fear that he’d make things worse. He wanted Robin’s smile to come back. He wanted to reach out in conciliation and touch. He wanted to be touched. It was unbearable.
Robin’s eyebrows arched; there was just enough humour there that Edwin knew he was luckier than he deserved. “This is when you say, I’m sorry, Robin.”
Edwin’s intense contrariness suddenly wanted him to do nothing of the sort. He made himself say, “I am sorry.”
Robin pushed himself to his feet. “And then I say, thank you, Edwin. Thank you for being brilliant and—saving my life, I expect.” He leaned down slowly enough that Edwin could have evaded the kiss, if he’d wanted.
He didn’t. Robin’s lips were dry, peeling a little. It was quick and soft, no more than a gesture.
“Edwin,” Robin said, husky. That voice was a whole conversation being cracked open like the top of an egg. It promised all sorts of things that Edwin wasn’t equipped to hear. He had the ludicrous urge to ask Robin to write them down; to bind them up and give them to him on paper.
Edwin slid out from the seat and went over to the table, where he began to close the books that Robin had left open. “You’re welcome,” he said lightly. “Now, I need to get dressed for breakfast. And you should change your shirt. Belinda threw water on that one, and that’s before I had to ruin the sleeve.”
There was a pause that might have been Robin noticing the dampness for the first time.
“Good idea. I really am starving,” Robin said, and there was a different promise in those words, full of heat and light. Edwin didn’t allow himself to look up to meet it.
“Mm,” he said, to the familiar leather covers of the books. He tidied a small stack of them. Edge to edge. “So am I.”
There had been two separate instances in childhood when Robin had broken one of his arms. He only dimly remembered the pain of having the bones set and the limb wrapped in linen strips, soaked in plaster that hardened to a cast. What he remembered with startling clarity was the moment when the shudder of the surgeon’s plaster-saw finally cracked the cast in half, and his arm emerged from it, limp and pale as that of a girl who’d spent her life under parasols.
The curse was gone. The knowledge felt like having a bone new-knitted beneath white flesh. Robin found himself still rubbing at the shirtsleeve with his thumb, wondering. He didn’t care that a headache had buried itself behind both his eyes since he was wrenched awake in the library. For the moment, he didn’t care that the Last Contract was still out there, and people would still kill for it. No more pain. No more fear that the next attack would be the last. A weight that had been dragging at him was gone. He wanted to shout and laugh and scull from Putney to Mortlake and back again.
Edwin caught up with him just outside the breakfast room. He was shut away inside his clothes, hair smoothed back, looking far more composed and far less touchable than he’d been in the library. Always, with Edwin, this drawing-back. He drew close and lowered his voice. “I didn’t ask—can you remember any of what you saw? It went on a long time.”
“It was all rather scrambled, after the beginning,” Robin said. “I’ll jot down what I can after breakfast.”
Once again Robin’s curse and its dramatic removal were the talk of the table. Charlie was explaining the ink-spell to Trudie and Billy, while Miggsy made an elaborate show of floating the coffeepot down the table to serve Belinda a fresh cup. Maud sat apart, not talking to any of the magicians, pulling grapes from a cluster and eating them one by one. She shot Robin a smile, though, when he sat opposite her, and she eyed his overfull plate with approval. Robin’s hunger was no joke; he’d taken huge servings of everything hot, and liked his chances of going back for seconds. Maud poured him tea as he took the first forkful of devilled kidneys, followed by another of bacon and fried potatoes, heavily dusted with salt and pepper. He took two more mouthfuls, barely bothering to chew, and regretted it when the middle of his chest complained about the amount he’d gulped down all at once.
Robin coughed and set down his cutlery. He was reaching for his tea when the smell hit: a wrong note in the morass of savoury odours that filled the room. This was like petrol fumes. Like damp stones.
No. It couldn’t be what he thought. The food was well seasoned, and he’d eaten it too fast. He was seeing—light glittering off the silverware and the window, that was all.