“I’m not turning the car.” Robin frowned. “We should find out what she knows. It’s not as though any of your books are going to say This Way to Reggie Gatling. At least Mrs. Sutton wrote to—”
“We have to stop,” Edwin said, close to panic. A rough line of elms was approaching and beyond it Edwin could see the crisp, rich green of well-tended hedges. “We shouldn’t be here.”
The car slowed as some of Edwin’s alarm finally conveyed itself to Robin. Edwin felt ill. “We shouldn’t have come. We have to turn around.” How could he make Robin understand? “There’s nothing here—”
The car inched past the tree line.
Edwin sagged back into his seat, his breath catching on a gasp. He felt like someone had thrown cold water over his brain.
“Robin,” he said. “That was a warding. Stop the car. We’ll keep going, but—I need you to stop.”
Robin stopped the car without another murmur. “What’s going on? A what?”
“A warding, and a strong one. Someone doesn’t want visitors.” Edwin climbed out of the car. “You didn’t feel it?”
Engine having puttered to a stop, Robin climbed out after him. “I heard you rabbiting on like you were trying to change your own mind. I didn’t feel anything.”
Edwin was already cradling a basic detection spell, but although he could feel a vague tug of his hands towards the tree line, it wasn’t likely to provide more information than that. He reached up to touch the yellow-splotched dangling leaves of the closest tree, and let the spell collapse, then tucked his string away. He was more interested in what would happen if he stepped back through the line.
“Come here,” he said. “Take my hand.”
Robin took Edwin’s outstretched hand in his own. Edwin ignored the flood of physical awareness that tried to clamour in his bones, the way his whole body wanted to turn towards Robin’s.
“If I try to pull away, don’t let me. If I start to run . . .”
“Wrestle you to the ground?” Robin suggested pleasantly. His thumb moved over Edwin’s. Edwin looked away.
“Yes. I’m presuming you included rugby in the list of sports you spent your time excelling at while your family was paying for the improvement of your mind.”
“Message received,” said Robin, amused. “Get on with it.”
Edwin stepped between two of the elms.
The feeling of violent wrongness flooded back at once. He knew he was in the wrong place. He should be anywhere but here.
Edwin held tight to Robin’s hand and managed to propel himself back onto the other side of the warding with a wrench of stumbling effort. He dropped Robin’s hand and turned to touch the trees again. “Fascinating.”
“I’m sure.”
“You don’t understand. That kind of ward has to be constantly re-laid, and the amount of power it would take to maintain it along the entire boundary of a property—or perhaps it’s just this particular row of trees—”
“Edwin,” said Robin. “I utterly refuse to spend the rest of the daylight helping you hop back and forth between trees just because you want to test a theory. Entertaining as it would be when you inevitably got stuck halfway over a fence.”
Edwin sighed and returned to the car. “It’d be simpler to ask Mrs. Sutton how it’s done,” he allowed.
“Ah,” murmured Robin. He followed Edwin and applied himself to starting the engine. “But where would be the intellectual challenge in that?”
To his surprise, Edwin found himself flushing at the tease without feeling like he wanted to make himself small, or meet the barb with coldness, or seek out a quiet space where he’d be unbothered by anyone’s company but his own.
“No need to be like that simply because you wouldn’t recognise an intellectual challenge if you tripped over it in the street,” he said, trying to mirror Robin’s tone, and Robin laughed as he climbed back behind the wheel.
They drove the rest of the way without incident. Sutton Cottage itself was one of those coyly named places; it was nearly as large as Penhallick House. And the grounds were as impressive as advertised, a grand sprawl in the best English tradition. They drove past a rose garden where a pair of gardeners were at work removing spent blooms, tidying and trimming in readiness for winter. The famed hedge maze could be seen briefly, before the drive curved around and the maze was hidden by a gentle hill dotted with trees. And there was the fountain, set in the centre of a scrupulously neat parterre that dominated the area in front of the house.