A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(111)

Edwin had forgotten the estate warding entirely until Walter began to stir, frowning. “I don’t like the feel of this,” Walt said. “You two are—deceiving me, somehow. The coin won’t be here.”

“This’ll pass,” said Edwin wearily. “Hold tight, Walt.”

“Think of England,” put in Robin, not at all pleasantly.

Walter showed no intention of holding tight. By the time they turned onto the long driveway he was half-standing, jabbing his finger in Edwin’s face. “Turn around. You bloody little pest, tell him to turn this around.”

Edwin’s heart shoved cold water through his veins. He wanted to hide. “Walt—”

“Courcey,” snapped Robin, actually grabbing at Walt’s arm.

“Stop!” Walt shouted, all the force of his personality behind it, and the carriage settled to a halt.

Edwin managed not to choke on the irony of it all. He didn’t want them to keep going. He didn’t want Walter to have anything he wanted. And yet, he did.

The stronger the magician, the stronger the warding, and now Walter had no tracking spell to trump the wards. Edwin didn’t think they’d manage to drag Walt over the elm-tree boundary with haste, as Robin and the Daimler had managed to drag Edwin.

Edwin opened the door of the coach and stepped onto the road. He walked past the line of elms and felt the moment when the estate awoke to him, the air suddenly fresher and more alive in his lungs. I’m sorry, he thought, miserable. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

“This is my brother, Walter Courcey.” He couldn’t manage the words he is welcome. “I am inviting him onto these lands.”





The staff of Sutton Cottage were startled to see Robin and Edwin again, so much sooner than Edwin had told them to expect him, but there was a glint of pleasure in Mrs. Greengage’s eye even as she over-apologised for the likely quality of dinner with the superbly passive-aggressive air of the expert.

Walt looked critically around the house. Edwin was afraid he’d demand a tour, but single-mindedness won out, and all three of them headed to the parlour as their bags were carried upstairs. Walt’s brow furrowed at the empty chair in which Flora Sutton had died. Edwin knew that look. Walt was looking for a triumph that would overwrite the failure he’d last experienced here.

Edwin, last into the room, touched the doorframe and again felt the ache of apology in his fingertips. If London was normal and Penhallick was a dull itch, then Sutton was like discovering that one had been breathing shallowly one’s entire life; that there was an extra inch of rib cage to be filled. It was new, it was still uncertain, but it welcomed him. Edwin felt vertiginous with it. Walt’s presence meant he managed not to show it on his face; he’d learned before he graduated into long trousers not to show either of his siblings the things that he valued, if he could possibly help it.

“Show me this secret study,” said Walt.

Edwin had left the rose pendant in a shadow box hanging on the parlour wall between two enormous floral embroidery samplers. The box was in the shape of a tree, with the trunk a series of stacked small windows. Edwin pulled the rose from the lowest of these, touched it to the mirror’s frame, and watched the glass dissolve.

The Rose Study was exceedingly cramped for three grown men, especially when one of them had shoulders like Robin’s. Walt called up a light and tethered it to the empty glass bowl on the desk, an old-fashioned style of guidekeeper. In the glow of it, mingling mellowly with the spill of daylight in from the parlour, Edwin looked around at the neatly shelved books and the polished floorboards, which suddenly seemed vulnerable; ready to be torn up. He remembered the destructive mess that he’d walked into in Reggie’s office—Robin’s office—the day after Robin was cursed. Walt would be methodical, but no less destructive.

“Where do we start?” Robin asked. “You did say you can’t do a spell to search for it, didn’t you?” Perhaps he was thinking about the wrecked office as well. It really was a shame that the objects were muffled against detection, because inability to define parameters— “Hold on,” said Edwin. He dragged pieces of thoughts around like a Latin sentence, until all the parts made tentative sense. “We don’t have to search for the contract in particular, or anything magical at all. We’re in a small space and we’re searching for silver.”

“Fossicking,” said Walter.

“Yes,” said Edwin. He sat at the desk and located in a drawer some pencils and a pile of writing paper. A floral scent wafted into the air as he lifted the paper onto the desk. Attar of roses. Flora Sutton had sat at this desk and written a letter to her great-nephew after he’d left her estate with two rings in his pocket. After she’d trusted to family and a secret-bind to keep the contract safe, when she knew danger would be closing in on her soon. She’d trusted in the wrong things.

Edwin wrote down a line of notation, tapped the pencil against his chin, put it down to move his fingers and remind himself how the blazes one defined silver in a cradle, and wrote another line.

“Fossicking?” Robin asked.

“If you can define something, you can find it,” Edwin said. “There’s a story about a magician who took himself to California, convinced he’d be able to make his fortune using it to find gold. It does work, but only if you’re very close already, and only if the amount of gold is large enough.”