A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(107)

They exchanged a look that Robin didn’t understand. It felt like trying to guess the shape of an animal having seen only the ears; it was related to Edwin’s reluctance to go to either the Coopers or the Assembly for help, at any point in this disaster. Robin pushed his questions down to join all the others. They would, he sincerely hoped, have time for them later.

“No. Damnation,” said Mrs. Kaur. “Then what do you suggest we do?”

They all looked at the corpse of Billy Byatt. The switch-knife was lying half-concealed by his body; Robin bent to retrieve it. Edwin’s gaze clung to the blade like fearful glue, so Robin folded it hastily and pocketed it, getting it out of sight.

“Can you make him disappear?” Robin asked. “Not turn up having been dragged from the river in three days, I mean.” He felt rotten for asking such a thing of a woman who’d cared for the man at one time. But he didn’t see many other options.

“Not tonight I can’t,” she said, sharp. “I’m not a bottomless well, and that curtain-spell took effort.” She added grudgingly, “Tomorrow. I’ll come back. You’ll have to keep the staff out of your rooms for a while, Courcey.”

Edwin nodded.

“And when his friends start asking about him?” said Miss Morrissey.

“I’ve an idea,” said Robin, thinking of Billy at the Penhallick dinner table. Not my girl any longer. Mrs. Kaur’s rejection of him was public knowledge, which had clearly rankled as much as anything else. “He came to you, Mrs. Kaur. He visited you at your office, this evening. You argued. You didn’t realise how upset he still was, about everything that had happened between you.”

“This idea had better not be heading in the direction of framing my sister for murder,” said Miss Morrissey.

“No. He told you he couldn’t stand to be in London any longer, where it was so difficult to forget you,” said Robin, searching Kitty Kaur’s face. “He said he needed to get away from everything, and everyone.”

“Suicide?” said Edwin.

“I was thinking more an impulsive trip to the Continent, or the Americas,” said Robin, startled. “Do you think people are more likely to assume he did away with himself?”

“I’d believe either,” said Mrs. Kaur. “That’s . . .” She swallowed. “Clever. Yes. I can sell that, when the questions start. But you two are coming to tea sometime in the next few days—you as well, Adelaide—and you’re going to fill me in on everything. I don’t keep secrets without cause.”

“We can do that,” said Robin.

The Morrissey sisters left together. They didn’t show any sign of expecting Robin to leave with them, which was as well. Robin had no intention of going anywhere.

Edwin tidied the broken crockery and swept up the ashes, and Robin dragged Billy’s corpse into a corner, where at least they wouldn’t have to trip over him on the way through the parlour. Edwin didn’t have a trunk large enough to bundle him into, unfortunately.

“I’ll ring down for some extra blankets to drape over him, in case any of the Cavendish servants manage to blunder in,” said Edwin. “And some dinner. Billy ate all my bread.” He leaned against the frame connecting parlour to entrance hall, creating a striking and exhausted geometry of his own angles against those of his setting. His eyes made circuits then landed, skittish, on Robin’s face. “How long were you lurking by the window, then? How much did you hear?”

“Something about the contract allowing magicians to take power from other magicians.” Robin came and stood close enough to touch, but didn’t. “A lot of nonsense about how they expected you to cave if they dangled the idea in front of you, as though you weren’t twice the man Billy Byatt is. As though you were nothing without enough magic to fell a bull.”

“It could have worked.” Edwin reached out a deliberate hand and touched Robin’s wrist with one finger. Robin, slow and daring, tangled their fingers together. Edwin let him do it. “A month ago it might have worked.”

“You’re hardly nothing,” said Robin. “You made me see the future.”

“I think we’ve established that wasn’t me,” said Edwin. “We don’t know if it was even—them. I think it was latent. Triggered.”

Robin smiled at him. “I wasn’t talking about the visions.”

The vulnerable line of Edwin’s mouth wavered in confusion, then deepened at one side. His grip on Robin’s hand tightened.

“Robin,” he began, and was interrupted by the rap of knuckles on the door. They dropped hands at once. Whoever was on the other side didn’t wait for a reply before trying the door handle.

“That’s efficient,” said Robin. “Hold on, you didn’t ring yet—oh.”

Walter Courcey stood in the doorway, coat folded over his arm. Recognition took Robin an awkward moment; he’d only seen the eldest Courcey sibling at the start of all this, at that single dinner before Walter and Clifford Courcey took themselves back to London. All three of them—Robin, Edwin, and Walter—seemed just as startled as one another to have found themselves in this situation, even though there was nothing remarkable about any of it.

Apart from the corpse in the next room, Robin reminded himself with a mental kick.