The arrow graze on his leg had already stopped bleeding. There was no time to have anything ironed. Most of the creases of Robin’s shirt were hidden by the black waistcoat and dinner jacket.
Evening had truly fallen and the corridor was lamp-lit when Robin closed the door behind him, smoothing his hair back with a palmful of pomade.
No. Not lamp-lit. A fist-sized ball of creamy light like one of van Gogh’s stars hovered at the level of Robin’s eyes, helpfully off to one side so as not to blind him. When Robin stepped forward, it moved forward. When he halted, it halted.
Something larger than laughter and emptier than pain lodged between Robin’s ribs, a feeling that was new but felt, in an indefinable way, mundane. Human. He looked again at the ball of light—magic, magic—then screwed his eyes shut, leaned his arm against the wall and his head on his arm, and breathed like he was learning how.
“Is it the curse?” Edwin asked, behind him.
Robin flinched; he hadn’t heard Edwin’s door open or close. But he couldn’t dredge up any shame. His dignity had flown out the window somewhere between the attack of pain in the train carriage and rolling around in the dirt under the influence of Belinda’s arrow. And none of it was his own fault. He refused to feel bad about it.
He shook his head.
“Or the flu?” There was no clue in Edwin’s tone as to whether he’d believed Robin’s prevarication about a recent illness.
Robin shoved it all aside and straightened up. A second light had appeared, this one hovering over Edwin’s shoulder.
“I’m still not entirely sure I won’t trip over my feet, bang my head, and wake up to find it’s all been a dream,” Robin said. “But I suppose if pain was going to shake me out of it, it’d have done it by now.”
An ironic look widened Edwin’s eyes. “Endure the dream for a few days. I’ll have you back to your life as soon as I can.”
Of course he would. Robin was an off note—a book that had been thrown to the ground. Edwin wanted to tidy him back to where he belonged. That had been clear all along.
“This light is spying on me,” Robin said.
“It’s a guidelight. It’s a charm tied to the room, and now to you. It’ll light your way if you want to go somewhere after dark.”
“Even if it’s only to dinner?”
“You might be glad of it on the way back.”
“Seems as though it’d make some of the after-dark activities of your typical house party rather more difficult to carry out in stealth, if everyone has one,” said Robin before he could seize control of his tongue.
There was a pause. Edwin glanced at his feet, then back up. No smile had appeared, but the irony was dancing in the blue of his eyes now.
“Tell it to stay, and it will stay,” he said.
Feeling utterly foolish, Robin turned to his guidelight. “Stay,” he ordered, and took an experimental step. The light began to drift back to the position just outside the room’s door, where it had been when Robin emerged. “Come to heel?” Robin suggested, to the light’s utter disinterest.
“Amusing as this is,” said Edwin, “they’ll be waiting on us for dinner.”
“Tell me the truth,” Robin said. “Is my fork going to take it upon itself to deliver my peas to my mouth?”
“Only if Belinda’s still feeling playful,” said Edwin. He led the way down the corridor, his own guidelight bobbing along with him, before Robin could decide if he was joking.
Robin Blyth liked the house. That much was obvious.
And despite his attack of—nerves? misgivings?—upstairs, he was at ease at the dinner table, dropping comments when called for and falling into polite silence whenever the conversation tripped off into areas of interest only to magical society. His only misstep had been at the beginning of the meal, when he asked if they were waiting for Mrs. Courcey to join them. The room had suffered an expanding awkwardness before Edwin’s father said, “I’m afraid my wife is indisposed this evening,” with a glance at Edwin that said, quite plainly, that Edwin was failing to tidy up his own messes.
Now Edwin drank his soup without tasting it and watched Robin’s smile dimming and broadening as the ambience dictated. It was the smile of someone who knew exactly how to handle himself in company, even when the company was strange. Never mind his parents’ enemies, and never mind the Home Office—the Foreign Office should have snatched up the owner of that devastating smile and cultivated him like a hothouse plant.