A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(16)

“As I said, I’ll need to do some research. And”—damn, damn, no avoiding it—“there’s someone who should take a look at that curse. His family’s always had a knack for working in runes.” If he even let them in the front door.

“Very well, if you think it’s worth a try,” said Blyth. “We’ll be here. Sorting. You can go and fetch this someone.”

“Fetch,” Edwin said. “Of course. Is there anything else I can bring back for you, Sir Robert?”

That appeared to sail over Blyth’s head. “Though really, I haven’t the foggiest idea what I’m looking for here. Why don’t you stay and help? It’ll go faster with three.”

There was no magic at all in Blyth’s voice, in the note of casual command that rang golden in his vowels, but something about it tried to capture Edwin’s feet anyway. Edwin swallowed a hot mouthful of resentment and fumbled for his watch. It was nearly ten o’clock. He could invent a pressing engagement and insist that they meet up later; Blyth wouldn’t question it.

Miss Morrissey’s contemptuous look, from her position on the floor, dared him to try. Besides, the likelihood of Hawthorn allowing himself to be fetched anywhere was about par with the likelihood that Edwin would spontaneously gain the ability to freeze a lake’s surface with a wave of his hands. A feat that he had, in fact, seen Hawthorn accomplish when they were boys.

“Yes, very well.” He knew he sounded ungracious. “At least putting all of this in order will familiarise you with some aspects of the position.” Reggie’s position. Still Reggie’s.

“Crackpots and far too much paper,” said Blyth. He directed the smile at Miss Morrissey, but he’d started it—perhaps by mistake—when he was looking at Edwin, and it was like being caught in the last rays of sunset. “Sounds like government work to me.”



They left Miss Morrissey in a halfway tidied office. At a certain point in the re-filing process, she’d given up all pretence that she wasn’t seizing the opportunity to impose order on what seemed to have previously been a rather slapdash approach to organisation. She’d all but shovelled them out of Whitehall with the calm promise that she’d have a briefing paper ready for Robin to deliver to the Prime Minister the next day.

Robin was beginning to get a sense for the way the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints had functioned under his predecessor. Or rather, adjacent to him. Possibly even despite him.

It was odd. Courcey didn’t seem the type to have any patience for laziness or clutter, and nothing he’d said about Gatling had made the man seem extraordinarily likeable. Though the puzzle of Gatling’s personality couldn’t hold a candle to the puzzle of his disappearance, or of this mysterious contract—or, for that matter, the entire enormous mystery of magic, which Robin could feel sucking at the edges of his concentration even more strongly today as the buffer of shock began to wear away.

Today’s rain barely counted as rain except that the air was more wet than otherwise. There was nothing worth raising an umbrella against as Courcey led Robin across Green Park in the direction of Mayfair. The lawns stretched away from them, dotted with ducks on the hunt for worms, and the paths were pearled with puddles.

Robin nearly fell in one when the pain started.

It came from nowhere, as sudden as it had been when the curse was laid—that same invisible cage of red-hot wires, so intense that his mind tried to scream the impossibility of it. He managed to catch the rather more audible scream behind his tongue, where it silently strained. No point making a fuss in the middle of a public park. But oh God, it hurt.

When it stopped he was bent over his own arm, breathing hard. A muscle in the back of his neck twinged as he straightened, as if he’d thrown a poor punch. Courcey’s eyes were wide, the blue of them washed out by the sky.

“It hurt,” Robin said, forestalling questions. “Like when they put the blasted thing on in the first place.”

“It—looked like it.” For a second Robin thought Courcey might reach for him, but the man curled his hand in an awkward fist. “Well. At least now we know what it does,” he added. “Good. That may help. Can you walk?”

“I’m not a damned invalid,” said Robin, nettled by the decisiveness of the word good—as though Robin were nothing more than the problem on his bloody arm.

He strode ahead to prove it, and Courcey didn’t say anything else.

Despite himself, Robin could hear his mother’s voice murmuring approvingly about the address that was their destination. A small house for the neighbourhood, but the right neighbourhood, oh yes. It took some time for the door to be answered by an imposing black man with a faintly harassed air that snapped, instantly, into the unflappable calm of the best butlers.

“Good morning, Mr. Makepeace,” said Courcey. “We need to talk to Lord Hawthorn.”

“Mr. Courcey.” The butler gave Courcey a look that acknowledged familiarity while also not giving an inch on the subject of whether that familiarity would increase their chances of being allowed entry. “I’m afraid his lordship is extremely occupied—”

“It’s important,” said Courcey.

Makepeace paused. Clearly, a lot was happening in the unsaid parts of this negotiation. The butler dragged his impassive gaze over Robin. Robin tried to nod like someone who wasn’t going to shove his shoe in the door if they were turned away without any chance of assistance.