A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(20)

Robin swallowed both an unmanly squawk of Tests? and the instinctive groan of someone to whom research had always felt like pushing a lump of marble uphill. “All right. Books are at least somewhat less likely to hurl insults at one,” he said.

“It is one of their major appeals,” said Courcey, and Robin found himself unexpectedly smiling.





The station platforms were crowded on that Friday afternoon. It was the third weekend of autumn; the Season was over, the weather promised to be crisp but still eke out occasional scraps of sunshine, and half of London was fleeing to the country for either prolonged shooting jaunts or Saturday-to-Monday house parties. Edwin saw a cluster of young women laughing and waving from atop piles of luggage as a train pulled out, the moving air sending their hat-ribbons fluttering.

Blyth had acquired them first-class tickets from the office account, at Miss Morrissey’s insistence. They were heading to Penhallick to investigate an intrusion of the magical world onto the unmagical, she’d pointed out, with a meaningful glance at Blyth’s arm. That fell within the bounds of their job descriptions.

For the first stretch of the journey north they shared a compartment with a dignified couple who spoke in the shorthand murmurs of the long-married. Blyth read the Times; Edwin worked his way through two chapters of Kinoshita, not bothering to waste energy on disguising the cover. For the most part, people didn’t see the unfamiliar unless it threw itself in their face.

Or emblazoned itself on their arm, he supposed, looking up from a deeply confusing paragraph about using fish to navigate by sea. The train was pulling in to Harlow and the couple were gathering their luggage. Blyth ducked to avoid a blow from a hatbox, folded his paper, and met Edwin’s eyes as the compartment door closed, leaving them alone.

“Come on, then,” Blyth said. “Tell me about this estate we’re headed to.”

Kinoshita nipped Edwin’s finger as he reluctantly closed it. “There isn’t a lot to tell. I can’t claim it’s been in the family for generations. My parents bought Penhallick just after my sister was born, and to hear them talk it was ramshackle at best. I think they liked having something they could splash their own tastes over.” Edwin brushed a fingertip up and down the book’s edge. “It’s a large house, but there’s plenty of room to keep to yourself. If that’s what you want.”

“Why do you do this?” Blyth asked, abruptly. “The—liaison thing?”

It wasn’t difficult to follow his reasoning. Edwin’s family had money. Edwin had money, even if he lacked the precise vowels of someone who hadn’t needed to rely on a scholarship to get to Oxford. Edwin was not, to even the dimmest observer, a man delighted by his post of employment.

“I was asked to do it. The Chief Minister’s a friend of my father’s.” And when Edwin had tried, uncharacteristically, to dig in his heels and refuse, Clifford Courcey had made it a condition of his youngest child’s allowance. Edwin keenly remembered the humiliation of that discussion. The implication that Edwin was never going to be good for anything else. “It’s not strenuous. I’ve plenty of time for my research.” Edwin lobbed the question back across the net. “Why are you doing this?”

Blyth shrugged. “I scraped my Second at Cambridge by the skin of my teeth, and probably scraped my way through the civil service exam even more narrowly. I was never going to get put on anything grand. I did spend a few years as a junior in Gladstone’s office. But—look, Lord Healsmith hated my parents. He was looking for a way to take it out on me, and he had the chance to shove me into a job that looked like a dead end.”

“But you’re titled,” said Edwin. “I wouldn’t have thought . . .”

“Baronet,” said Blyth, which Edwin had already guessed; the man was hardly old enough to have nabbed himself a knighthood. Blyth looked glum about it. “Only inherited a month ago.”

“I’m—sorry.”

Another shrug.

Edwin gave up on politeness. “Why are you bothering with this sort of employment at all? Why aren’t you off administering a country seat, or whatever it is that baronets do?”

A pause. “Idealism?”

“Civil servants don’t get to choose their masters. It’s Asquith and the Liberals now; it could be someone else in another few years.”

Blyth’s mouth twitched. He didn’t look offended. “You don’t think it’s possible to want to serve your country?”

“Would you do it if you weren’t paid to do it?” Edwin countered.

It was the wrong thing to say. The hints of humour vanished.

“No,” Blyth said, and looked out the window.

Edwin put the pieces together. A few years directly under the Home Secretary; that sounded about right, for landed gentry of mediocre intelligence, despite the so-called egalitarianism of the entrance exam. And now Blyth had been shoved into a job that did, from the outside, have all the trappings of demotion. But he’d turned up anyway. Because he was being paid.

Edwin turned the picture in his mind a few times and then set it firmly aside.

He cleared his throat. A peace offering. He was woefully out of practice at making friendly overtures, but he could scrape together some small talk. “And your family, are—”

Between one word and the next, Blyth made a low, strangled noise and doubled over where he sat, his body clenching around his right forearm.