A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(10)

Alf tsk’d. “Them gels won’t be well pleased,” he opined. “Them lads’ll all hev their famblies there, like as not, so them gels’ll be workin’ just as hard, with no chance fer a nice dinner or gennelmun what has the notion fer some company arterwards.”

They ate a few more bites in silence. “Chrismus Eve’s moon-dark,” Alf observed. “Anythin’ ye’ll need?”

“I don’t know yet,” Alexandre admitted. “I’ve been researching, but I haven’t come across anything that will advance my powers that calls for that specific combination.”

That was not quite true. The actual truth was, Alexandre didn’t exactly . . . research anything. He was more like a butterfly, flitting from one potentially attractive occult or magical flower to another, but never staying long at any of them.

But Alf just shrugged. “Early days yet. Happen ye’ll run acrost somethin’. An’ happen ye don’t . . .” he lifted his beer glass in Alexandre’s direction. “. . . then Chrismus Eve’s a desperate thin noight fer workin’ wenches. Eh?”

“There is that.” Alexandre cheered up a trifle. The rest of the meal proceeded in silence; when they were done, Alexandre took his seat in his easy chair by the fire; Alf put the dishes on his tray and took them to the kitchen, where the housekeeper would deal with them in the morning. Unless Alexandre summoned him with the bell, he’d return to his room, and do whatever it was he did to amuse himself. One thing Alexandre knew he did from time to time was go out after his master had gone to his own bedroom and get a woman just for himself. Sometimes two. Alexandre admired his stamina. They were always gone long before morning, and nothing in the flat had ever gone missing, so as far as he was concerned, Alf could do as he liked.

As for Alexandre . . . he had intended to leaf through that pillow-book, but that was only going to lead to a certain level of frustration—and he felt too burdened with ennui to send Alf out for a wench to relieve that frustration. He reached for one of the French novels, but his hand fell on that odd little occult book he had picked up instead.

Well, why not. He opened it, and looked at it more closely, and before long he realized that thanks to the ruined spine, it was more than a few pages that were out of order. Intrigued now by the puzzle, he plucked all the loose pages out and slowly began to piece the book together.

He startled himself with a yawn, and looked at the clock over the mantle, realizing with a start that a good two hours had passed. And his neck was feeling a bit stiff. He put the book down on top of the stack of pages that had yet to be inserted, weighed it down with another, heavier tome, and picked up the French novel, pouring himself a brandy from the bottle on the side table that held the books.

As he read, he was aware of a nagging discontent. This was not how he would have chosen to spend his evening, if he had had a choice. This was . . . cloyingly domestic. Except for the subjects of his reading, it had been an evening even his mother would approve of, if she had a moment of sobriety in which to do so.

His father, thank the devil, had died while Alexandre was still at Oxford . . . and thanks to careful management on Alexandre’s part, the only thing that the old Puritan had been aware of was that his son did not share his obsession with religion.

Then again, there probably wasn’t anyone at the entire University, including the clergy, who could have been as obsessed with religion as the elder Harcourt had been.

Alexandre had, fortunately, been able to evade his father’s eye because he was only the second, or “spare” son, a fact his father had often reminded him of. His older brother, the pride of the house, the ever-so-perfect Victor, was everything Andrew Harcourt desired in his son. Just as religious, impeccably obedient, never once, in all of Alexandre’s life, had Victor ever done something for which he had been chided. Whereas Alexandre had seen the business end of a cane more times than he cared to think about, at least until he learned to be so sly and cunning in his misdeeds that, while there might be suspicion about him, he was never caught.

Eventually he became so good at deception he even evaded suspicion. When the odd half crown went missing, he made sure evidence pointed to someone who was already guilty of petty theft. And later, girls who might have looked for him to make good on his promises were always looking in the wrong town, for a young man of the wrong name at the wrong address. And later still . . . well his deceptions were aided by magic, so that even his face and voice were muddled in their minds, and they could, and often did, pass him on the street without recognizing him.

That was all while he was at Eton, following in the ever-perfect Victor’s footsteps. A foray into a secondhand shop on one of his clandestine visits to the town had netted him a peculiar book that he was quite drawn to, even though he had been looking for something else entirely.

Handwritten, between two soft leather covers, it was nothing he would have picked up even to look at under ordinary circumstances. But he couldn’t help himself, and he took it to the proprietor as if he was under a spell and paid the sixpence he was asked for without haggling.

He knew now of course that it had been a spell: a spell designed to find someone exactly like him, and induce him to purchase the thing. The spell had been written on the inside of the leather cover, although he hadn’t known that at the time. All he knew was that he must have this thing, and deciphering it became his obsession.