“The problem is,” Edwin went on, “the man who attacked us today managed to get past the estate warding.”
Robin felt stupid. It had been a long day, and he was sore. But Edwin’s had been just as long and he was much less physically fit; he’d sustained the same amount of damage, and here he was with his brain racing capably around like a cat after mice.
“I—didn’t think of that,” Robin said. “You think he wasn’t a magician?”
“It’s possible to cast an illusion mask on someone else, I suppose. I didn’t think of that. I assumed . . .” Edwin frowned, tilting his head back to rest against the wall. The lines scored across his throat by the thorned vines were disconcerting. He could have been a decapitated saint in a devotional, the carmine line of the wound painted in to hint at the manner of martyrdom. “I wondered if the curse could have a tracking clause,” he finished.
Robin looked at his arm. By now the runes had begun to creep up his shoulder. He had nearly a full sleeve’s worth of intricate black pattern.
“That might overcome a warding,” said Edwin, having switched easily into lecturing mode despite sitting with blankets pooled in his lap. “It’s a matter of one sort of spell having priority over another.”
“If they cast a spell to follow me, they could follow it even if the boundary spell was telling them not to?”
Edwin nodded.
“Then they didn’t need advance notice of where we were going,” said Robin, with relief. While he might not trust any of the members of Belinda’s party, he didn’t want to believe any of them capable of murder.
It did leave them without any more clues as to who was responsible, though. What clues had been in this house had died with Flora Sutton.
Robin thought suddenly of the vision he’d had of an old woman—a different old woman—black-clad and bright-eyed, being attacked in a small space. Something about the defiant edge to her smile had been the same as Mrs. Sutton’s.
“About Mrs. Sutton,” he said, tentative. “Did you have the feeling she didn’t give up whatever that chap wanted from her?”
“Yes,” said Edwin. “Or else she gave the answer he didn’t want, and then took herself out of the picture.”
That was a kind of courage that Robin wouldn’t have ascribed to many people. Certainly not to himself. When he’d punched the men in illusion masks, that first evening in the London streets, he’d been more surprised and affronted than anything else. Now, after six days of pain and confusion, he wondered if he’d still do the same thing. And if that wasn’t exactly what the curse’s pain and visions had been intended to inflict.
As much as Robin had wanted to shake the secrets out of Flora Sutton’s skirts—to know why he’d been cursed, and what Reggie Gatling might have died for—he’d seen the fear on her face, when she talked about the contract and what it could lead to.
Was leading to.
“I’ll have to go through her books,” said Edwin, brightening marginally. “I wonder if Sutton Cottage would let me take a few of them home.” He glanced around the room as if expecting a response to his musing.
It seemed completely mad, that Edwin had acquired an estate on the basis of some blood and one woman’s hands, but there it was. Magical inheritance law, it appeared, was two parts sympathy and one part paperwork. The housekeeper had unlocked a desk drawer in a dusty study, before dinner, and there it had been: Edwin’s full name, in stark copperplate, on an official will. That sort of charm was possible because Edwin was a registered magician, Edwin had explained. Though there’d been an edge of uncertainty to it, as though they’d strayed into areas for which even Edwin’s life of reading had not fully prepared him. Perhaps it was something to do with Sutton Cottage itself, like the way the guidelight had flared up when Edwin climaxed.
Thinking about that, Robin wanted to put his lips to Edwin’s again. But he was entirely at sea in the etiquette. What came after sex and before sleep? What fell into the bounds of acceptable behaviour?
“No visions today?” Edwin asked.
“Not yet,” said Robin. Thank goodness one hadn’t decided to strike mid-coitus. “I’m getting more of a warning, when they come. I’d have time to”—he waved a weak hand—“sit down. As it were.”
“What kind of warning?”
“Sparkling lights at the corners of everything. Like when you take a tumble to the mat and stand up too fast.” Robin licked his lips. “And a taste like pepper. And usually some kind of smell, but that one varies. And—it’s hard to breathe. Pressured. Not quite like being winded, but close.”