Florence Courcey sat with Edwin at one elbow and Bel at the other, and Robin sat across from her. The fact that Edwin had failed so completely to remove the curse was the main topic of conversation.
“What did I say?” Miggsy said. “Some curses can’t be snuffed until the bearer has been, you know. Just getting the chap’s hopes up, pretending otherwise. Not meaning any offence,” he added, to Robin. “But I’m one for facing up to facts. Always have been.”
Edwin saw, and couldn’t have explained how he saw, a remark that was going to be both straightforward and unpleasant rise to the edge of Robin’s lips, hover there, and then evaporate in the sheer warmth of Robin’s company manner.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Robin said. “Me, I’m one for clinging on to hope, I suppose.”
Edwin’s mother turned to him. “I’m sure you’ll come up with something, darling,” she said, low. “You’re so clever. My clever boy.”
Edwin smiled at her, not trusting himself to speak. Sometimes he had the horrid, disloyal thought that she’d have preferred him dull-minded and casually powerful, if only to provide Walt with less of a target. Like Bel, their mother had perfected avoidance for self-preservation. Every time she sat at table with both her sons, Edwin saw stamped on her face how much she hated her inability to step between them, but it was useless to expect her to change. The shape of the Courcey family had been ironed in place years ago, and trying to rearrange it now would do nothing but leave dangerous holes in the fabric.
His mother raised her voice again. “You mustn’t think very highly of us magicians as a species, Sir Robert, given your experience of us thus far.”
There was a snort from Trudie’s direction, which buried itself, thanks to an elbow emerging from Bel’s beaded confection of a dinner gown, in a fit of coughing.
“Not at all, Mrs. Courcey,” said Robin. “I’m sure I’m not the first fellow to take a beating on another’s behalf because he’s thought to know more than he does. Nothing magical about that.”
“Well, you’ve gone practically native,” she said. “I see you’ve decided to bring your guidelight along tonight.”
“I’m accustomed to the thing now. It is very handy.” Robin conveyed a heroic portion of lamb to his mouth and managed to smile with his eyes as he chewed, gazing down at his guidelight. The table was set with the Tiffany guidekeepers again.
“I always forget how lovely this room looks when it’s full of people. Full of light.”
“It does look lovely tonight,” Robin agreed. “As do you.” He sounded neither flirtatious nor flattering. Entirely sincere.
Edwin watched the smile tremble across his mother’s face, then firm out into the strong and luminous expression he always tried to remember her as wearing. In that moment he would have carved a curse onto his own arm as a favour for Robin, who had made his mother smile. At the same time he felt an ugly backwash of jealousy in his stomach; he couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled like that for him.
She did look well, carefully dressed in a pale-green gown with layers of ruffles that disguised the thinness of her arms, with her favourite set of pearls glowing around her neck. She was also playing an even more genteel game of croquet with her peas than Edwin was. Edwin told one of the footmen to ask the kitchen for another round of buttered French rolls, as she’d at least eaten all of her bread.
For some reason Billy and Charlie were batting around the thought experiment of power transference again.
“But surely,” Billy was saying, “you can’t deny that it would be useful, to be able to pool the power of many and place it at the command of one. Spells that require difficult coordination in a group could be done much more simply by an individual.”
“Not necessarily,” said Edwin. “Each of us grows up accustomed to controlling our own amount of power, and no more. If I suddenly had all of Charlie’s magic . . . perhaps it’d be easier for me, but perhaps I’d try something as simple as making a light, and end up burning the skin off my face.”
“Convenient, isn’t it?” Miggsy said. “That kind of sour-grapes attitude about it, for someone like you.”
Edwin sensed the tiny wince that went through his mother. Every surface inside his mouth went bitter.
“As I said,” pronounced Charlie. “You have the power you have. Dangerous to mess with that.”
“I do agree, Charlie,” said Trudie, eyes luminescent with hope that she’d be able to drag the conversation on to something more interesting to her. “And we all know what happens when too much power goes bad. Think of what happened with the Alston twins.”