A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding #1)(49)

Edwin’s low, fierce voice cracked on the word easy. Robin reached out and touched Edwin’s forearm, purely on instinct. He froze the next second, ready to draw away—ready for Edwin to draw away—but instead there was a small loosening of Edwin’s fingers, and an even smaller nod of his head: acknowledging comfort, giving permission. He even gave Robin a look that was, while a little surprised, almost friendly.

Robin smiled at him and took his hand away before he could trample on the moment. He wanted to memorise the details of the friendliness. A crinkle at the side of Edwin’s eyes. A softening around the mouth.

This was so deeply awkward. Usually one simply knew, when acquaintanceship was turning to friendship. It wasn’t the kind of thing men discussed at length. Robin had no idea whether Edwin would characterise them as friends; quite possibly not. But all of Robin’s muddled feelings, which had been set on a giant fairground swing during the past two days, now churned and bubbled in his chest and finally announced that they were going to be vocalised, and Robin had a few more seconds to decide exactly how.

“Thank you,” Robin blurted, which seemed safe.

“It’s barely anything,” said Edwin. “Even for someone like me. These leaves will take—”

“Not for the tea. For everything. I know it’s a beastly bother for you, coming here, and it’s even more beastly the way these people treat you.” It felt a relief, to say it aloud. “And I dare say most magical chaps would have simply—tipped me into the midden, as Miss Morrissey would say, or at least tipped me into the hands of that Assembly of yours, instead of spending so much time and effort trying to help me.”

Edwin’s lips were parted in what looked like astonishment.

Robin felt foolish enough that he contemplated upsetting the teapot as a diversion.

“Robin,” said Edwin finally. “I dragged you out to the countryside. Where you have been shot, magically drugged, set upon by wildlife, half-drowned, endured an escalating amount of pain from a curse that I can’t remove, and managed to smile through a number of activities with my sister and her ghastly friends. I’m thankful you haven’t hit me across the face and stormed back to London.”

Robin managed to hold his tongue on something truly unwise like You look like a Turner painting and I want to learn your textures with my fingertips. You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I’d like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you. Those were not things one blurted out to a friend. They were their own cradles of magic, an expression of the desire to transform one thing into another. And what if the magic went awry?

Robin took a long sip of tea, instead, and smiled at Edwin through the steam. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said.





They took the motorcar to Sutton Cottage the next day. Neither Walt nor Bel were keen drivers; Edwin was sure their father had only bought the thing and learned the basics of its workings in order to be able to discuss it knowledgeably with his business associates. The Daimler gathered expensive dust in the converted carriage-house, and the chauffeur had given notice out of sheer boredom after a handful of months.

A chauffeur was not needed. Robin referred vaguely to friends of his who owned motorcars and had taught him the knack of it in Hyde Park—“Though the speed limit’s only ten miles to the hour, in the Park. And it’s twice that in the country! This should be a lark.”

Edwin, who wished Robin had betrayed this boyish and limb-threatening enthusiasm before they’d pulled out onto the road proper, pulled his hat more firmly down onto his head and fiddled with his cradling string, trying to remember if he’d ever read anything about how to unbreak a broken skull.

They stopped in town and sent their telegrams. Once back on the main roads they passed a few carts without mishap, and even another motorcar full of men around university age, who applied themselves to the horn and waved their hats until Robin waved back at them. Robin seemed to have a sense of what he was doing, and no desire to go at reckless speeds. Edwin managed to relax enough to direct their progress from the map.

“I hope this does get us closer to Gatling,” Robin said abruptly, into what had been a pleasant silence. “I know you must be worried about him.”

“Yes,” said Edwin.

A pause. Robin’s hands shifted on the wheel of the car. “Are you and he . . .?”

Edwin morbidly considered flinging himself from the vehicle, but settled his nerves with the force of habit and will. So Robin wanted to talk about it after all. He shouldn’t have been surprised. And it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption for Robin to make. “No,” he said. And heard himself add, “Reggie doesn’t care for other men—that way.”

“You can’t always tell.”

“Sometimes you can tell,” Edwin said. “One way or another.”

“Can’t argue with that.” After another pause, more tentatively: “And Lord Hawthorn?”

Edwin closed his eyes. Oh, what did it matter? Hawthorn himself had gleefully freed this cat from its bag and given it a kick to speed it on its way. “Hawthorn is a thing unto himself. And—yes. For a little while. It would have been three—no, four years ago.”

Edwin had been fresh out of Oxford, Hawthorn two years out from the military service that had been his first attempt at violently ignoring the magical world. Edwin had thought that he wanted the old version of Jack Alston, thought that version was still there, and kept digging for him beneath the mockery; thought he could risk opening himself in turn. He’d been wrong. And who knew what Hawthorn himself wanted. It hadn’t been Edwin, that was certain.