A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(38)

Robin dreamed of the swans.

He spent the afternoon after the boating game playing pool and talking sports with Belinda and Charlie and their friends. He drank a few more gin cocktails than was his custom. He almost managed to pretend that he was in his club, or at a party with his own friends, except for the occasional jolt when someone used magic. Even Belinda and Trudie could light a cigarette from their fingers, though their cradles were looser and less complex than any of the men’s.

Belinda’s set of magicians had the uninhibited manners of the freshly moneyed, and treated Robin’s title as though it were an amusing hat he’d donned for the occasion. Robin might have found them refreshing if he wasn’t fighting a headache and a tendency for his swan-pummelled ribs to catch at his lungs halfway through a breath. And if it wasn’t for the undercurrent of casual, unthinking malice to the conversation whenever it turned to other people: gossip with a sort of aniseed edge to it.

Other people included Edwin, who made himself scarce until dinner. Through the games of pool Robin kept turning his head whenever someone entered the room, not bothering to examine the niggle of hope that was quashed when the newcomer turned out to be one of the footmen bringing more drinks. Edwin had seemed frantic when Robin was in danger, angry that it had happened, and fascinated as ever by the curse and the visions. But he’d not sought out Robin’s company. Whether he was in the library or with his mother or elsewhere, he wanted to be there on his own.

Robin took his headache to bed early. The next morning he woke shaking, with his legs gone to wax and lake water in his mouth and his arms sore from where he’d tried to defend himself against the crushing blows of the swan’s wings, and his ears full of that terrible hiss and someone shouting and laughter carrying across the water— No. It was a dream. Not even a vision: a bog-standard nightmare. Robin’s legs were tangled in the bedclothes. He was dry and breathing and alive and . . . as safe as he could be, in a house full of careless magicians, with a curse that was getting stronger and more painful.

Robin politely turned down the invitation at breakfast to join the others on a morning walk and picnic. He lingered alone, dissecting a kidney omelette with his cutlery and drinking excellent coffee, until Edwin appeared.

Edwin was wearing a waistcoat in a dull shade of grey, and did not look as though he’d slept well. Unfortunately, it suited him. Robin was already restless; now his thumbs ached to be pressed to the circles beneath Edwin’s eyes, or run across the sharp cheekbones. He wanted to catalogue the changing agricultural shades in Edwin’s hair, to see what kinds of light would bring up the colours that lay between bright wheat and murky barley.

It was incredible what difference it had made, that moment of unspoken connection over the Roman tract. It shouldn’t have. Even aside from the mysterious tangle of curse and contract that hung urgently over them, Robin was hardly going to make any kind of overture without encouragement. And Edwin was still himself: cool, prickly, resentful of Robin’s presence in his life, thin and quiet and studious and carrying around an air of being invisibly shuttered. And quite clearly more intelligent than the rest of the house’s inhabitants put together, with bony, agile fingers that Robin could close his eyes and see hooking magic out of string.

“I want this curse off,” Robin said, too distracted by trying to banish the image to manage a more normal kind of good morning. “I want you to try. Today.”

A frown. “I haven’t done enough—”

“Keep at it. I’ll help. I’ll do whatever you say. I’d rather you attempt it and fail than twiddle our thumbs another week while it gets worse and worse. I dare say if it were left up to you, you’d never feel you’ve done enough research to even give it a try.”

Edwin’s blue, bruised gaze had nothing readable in it.

Robin said, with difficulty, “I’m—afraid of the pain. Is all.”

Edwin said, “I’d like some breakfast.”

He brushed very close to Robin on his way to the sideboard, close enough for Robin to smell his hair. It took Edwin until he’d swallowed his first mouthful of bacon and another of marmalade-laden toast, washed down with tea, to say, “You’re right.”

“Hm?” Robin was onto a fourth cup of coffee and wondering, as his pulse hammered gaily away beneath the skin of his neck, if that had been a wise decision.

“Perhaps I could read every book in the library and never stumble across the exact form of runes. It’s your arm. It’s your pain. I’m willing to give it a try, this afternoon.” Edwin inspected the crust of his toast. “By which I mean, I’ll ask Charlie to do it.”

“I’d rather it was you.”

The sheer surprise in Edwin’s lifted gaze was like a needle to the heart. “No, you wouldn’t,” he said, but mildly. “You want the person in the house with the most magic to do the actual spell. I’ll put it together for him. I’ll write it down; I’ll make sure he does it exactly.”

That launched a discussion—a miniature lecture, rather, but Robin didn’t mind—about the difference between runes and cradling notation, which took them through breakfast and into the library again, where Edwin slid behind the table with a near-audible sigh of relief. Robin sat down also, pulling a book towards himself at random to show willing.