A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(19)

Even as the image began to fade Robin was aware of a burning curiosity as to what was happening, as it were, just out of the frame. He tried to sink further into it, as one did with the waking dregs of a dream. His eyes stung. Move, he thought, show me, and the image lurched, and Robin could almost see— He was, he was surprised to learn, still upright. His hand was a pale claw on the doorframe. His legs felt like damp feathers. Someone was supporting him with a grip on his other arm.

“—with us. There.”

The support, Robin realised once his eyes focused, was Hawthorn. The man must have crossed the room at speed. Courcey was a few feet away, frowning.

“I’m fine,” Robin said. “Sorry.”

“Was that another attack?” asked Courcey. “The same pain as before?”

“No,” Robin said, before he could muster his thoughts enough to say yes, and seize on the excuse. But the immersive image had involved no pain in his arm or anywhere else. One mercy at least. “No, I just felt faint. I’m—recovering from a flu.”

A thick eyebrow arched. Robin waited for some sort of disparaging comment about swooning like a schoolgirl. Hawthorn had startling eyes, the sort of bright blue that might be called merry in a woman. Up close, he really was unfairly handsome, and his grip on Robin’s arm was strong and careful. But that willingness to wound was visible in the curve of his mouth. Robin would have rather kissed a fresh-caught pike.

“Try not to faint onto anything breakable on your way out” was all Hawthorn said.

Makepeace, not looking at all like a man whose position was imperilled, showed them to the door and helped them into their coats. The butler and Courcey exchanged a rueful look.

“New York,” said Courcey. “For how long?”

“Goodbye, Mr. Courcey.”

“Yes, all right.”

The door closed behind them with finality. New York, Robin thought. A trip across the ocean. He shivered a little as he followed Courcey back down into the street.

Courcey glanced at him. “Are you—”

“I’m fine,” said Robin yet again.

He wondered if coming clean about the visions would have made a difference, back there in the house. Somehow he doubted it. If Hawthorn hadn’t been prepared to even look at the physical evidence of the curse, there was no reason to think that hearing about effects beyond pain would have budged him further.

Courcey nodded and lapsed into a silence as brittle as the first freeze of a river. Robin could only guess at what he was thinking. A thawing comment of some kind was needed.

“What an utterly charming fellow,” Robin said.

The sound Courcey made was small, a clearing of the throat. If it had started as laughter then he’d caught it early. “Yes. That’s the way Hawthorn is. Can’t get through the simplest conversation without taking the chance to insult everyone in the room.”

Robin managed, narrowly, not to point out that Courcey hadn’t been doing himself any favours by reacting in such an obvious way. Indeed, Robin had been surprised at how easily Hawthorn had dismantled Courcey’s shell of competence and reserve.

Or perhaps it wasn’t surprising. If Hawthorn’s joke, which hadn’t sounded much like a joke, had referred to a true—liaison? relationship?—between the two men.

Robin glanced sideways. The shell had certainly hardened again. Courcey’s face was set and pale and unflinching, framed between collar and hat. When Robin overlaid that image with the one of Courcey sprawled bare and panting on a bed . . . it was preposterous. The man was like a porcelain figurine. There was the sense that if you tried to remove his clothes you’d find them painted on.

Robin shifted his jaw, uncomfortably aware of his own clothes. It had been—some time, that was all, since he’d been sexually intimate with another person. And he’d been accosted quite against his will by lurid visions of this one.

“I knew he’d be like that,” Courcey muttered.

“Thank you,” Robin said.

Another of those wary looks, bracing for mockery. “For what?”

“For trying anyway, I suppose. It can’t have been pleasant.”

“No worse than a handful of splinters when you’re spinning an orchard from twigs.”

“What does that mean?”

Courcey coloured. “Nothing. It’s a saying. A kind of proverb.”

“A magical proverb? Like the—marvellous light thing? Miss Morrissey told me, when she was explaining about unbusheling,” Robin added when Courcey looked startled.

“We are man’s marvellous light We hold the gifts of the dawn From those now passed and gone / And carry them into the night.” Courcey spoke coolly enough that it took a moment for the rhythm to emerge. “It’s a verse from an old poem by a magician called Alfred Dufay. There’s a spell-game set to it, that children learn. The other one is just—something you say.” He sighed. “The poem’s very long, and not very good. I can show you the whole thing. We’ve a book of Dufay’s work in the family library at Penhallick.”

“Thank . . . you?”

Courcey’s mouth twisted. “We’ve one of the largest private collections in the country, including a handful of books that contain information on rune-curses. I’ll go there this weekend, to try to find out more.” After a moment he added, any reluctance smoothed so far into neutrality that Robin couldn’t hear it: “And you should probably come along. I don’t want to rely on a drawing of the curse, especially if it’s changing, and I might need to do a few tests.”