A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(24)

“Myself being equally boring,” said Edwin in a colourless tone.

“Precisely!” said Belinda, and bundled the two of them off upstairs to dress for dinner, with a parting shot of: “Not that way, Win—I’ve put Miggsy in your room; the view’s much the best on that side of the house—wasn’t expecting you—never mind, you’ll do very well in the south corridor. I suppose you’d better take the willow rooms.”

Robin was following Edwin up the stairs and so had a perfect view of the way Edwin’s knuckles paled in a fist by his side, quickly released.

“Of course” was all Edwin said.

“Win,” said Robin, after a moment. His theory held: the knuckles whitened again. “Or not,” said Robin easily, “if you don’t care for it.”

A pause. “No, I don’t.”

“I’m surprised it’s not Eddie.”

They’d reached a landing; the footsteps of the servants transporting their bags were already receding down the corridor on the next level. Robin admired an Oriental-style vase in blue-and-white porcelain set atop a wooden display stand. He added, “Charlie, Trudie, Miggsy, and Billy. I’ll be lucky to escape the weekend without being Robbied or Bobbyed.”

“I did warn you.”

So he had. The aggressive informality was odd, like plunging right into a cold pool at the public baths, but Robin much preferred it to the alternative. None of them had shown the least intention of Sir-Roberting him yet.

The willow rooms were a pair of matched bedrooms tucked down the end of a corridor. The furniture was modern and thin-limbed, the walls painted a pale green from waist height down and papered above that in a pattern of willow boughs.

In the room assigned to him, Robin ignored the bustling of the upstairs maid who was clearly doing her best to prepare a room on five minutes’ notice, and went to run his hands over the wallpaper.

“This is William Morris.”

“Yes, sir,” said the maid, somewhat unexpectedly. She was—Robin blinked hard—lighting a fire in the grate, by magic. She cradled like Robin’s attacker had: with no string at all. She blew the sparks into shy flames and looked over her shoulder with a smile. “Most of the rooms here are done up with it. Mrs. Courcey wouldn’t hear of anything else.”

Mrs. Courcey. Robin wondered that Edwin’s mother hadn’t come out to play hostess herself, but perhaps she was one of those women who took an hour to dress for dinner.

Which was what Robin was meant to be doing, he realised. Country hours and all that.

“Thank you, ah . . .”

“Peggy, sir.”

“Peggy. Can you finish this later? I don’t want to be late for dinner.”

She stood. “D’you want me to fetch one of the footmen, sir? Mr. Courcey’s man, Graves, is the only proper valet in the house, but he’s—”

“I’ll manage,” Robin assured her. “Though I will need these trousers mended. I’ll leave them on the clothes-stand, shall I?”

The arrow graze on his leg had already stopped bleeding. There was no time to have anything ironed. Most of the creases of Robin’s shirt were hidden by the black waistcoat and dinner jacket.

Evening had truly fallen and the corridor was lamp-lit when Robin closed the door behind him, smoothing his hair back with a palmful of pomade.

No. Not lamp-lit. A fist-sized ball of creamy light like one of van Gogh’s stars hovered at the level of Robin’s eyes, helpfully off to one side so as not to blind him. When Robin stepped forward, it moved forward. When he halted, it halted.

Something larger than laughter and emptier than pain lodged between Robin’s ribs, a feeling that was new but felt, in an indefinable way, mundane. Human. He looked again at the ball of light—magic, magic—then screwed his eyes shut, leaned his arm against the wall and his head on his arm, and breathed like he was learning how.

“Is it the curse?” Edwin asked, behind him.

Robin flinched; he hadn’t heard Edwin’s door open or close. But he couldn’t dredge up any shame. His dignity had flown out the window somewhere between the attack of pain in the train carriage and rolling around in the dirt under the influence of Belinda’s arrow. And none of it was his own fault. He refused to feel bad about it.

He shook his head.

“Or the flu?” There was no clue in Edwin’s tone as to whether he’d believed Robin’s prevarication about a recent illness.

Robin shoved it all aside and straightened up. A second light had appeared, this one hovering over Edwin’s shoulder.

“I’m still not entirely sure I won’t trip over my feet, bang my head, and wake up to find it’s all been a dream,” Robin said. “But I suppose if pain was going to shake me out of it, it’d have done it by now.”

An ironic look widened Edwin’s eyes. “Endure the dream for a few days. I’ll have you back to your life as soon as I can.”

Of course he would. Robin was an off note—a book that had been thrown to the ground. Edwin wanted to tidy him back to where he belonged. That had been clear all along.

“This light is spying on me,” Robin said.

“It’s a guidelight. It’s a charm tied to the room, and now to you. It’ll light your way if you want to go somewhere after dark.”