Spellbreaker (Spellbreaker Duology, #1)(21)

Was she talking too fast? Slow down, Elsie. Or he’ll know you suspect.

Was it wrong for him to think she knew? But there must be a reason the Cowls kept their identities from her. Like they were waiting for something. Like she had to prove herself. They’d provided her with so much already; they’d saved her from the workhouse and from being discovered as an illegal spellbreaker, which she surely would have been severely punished for despite her age. They’d arranged for her to find a good job—what should have been a good job, at least. She’d always wondered if it had angered them when she left it for Ogden’s employ, but she’d still been a child. Certainly they couldn’t hold it against her!

They used to send follow-up letters, telling her of the good she’d done, the results of her clandestine activities, but they’d stopped the practice years ago. Likely because double the letters meant double the chance of getting caught, and besides, she’d grown from a child to a woman. Still, she yearned for their praise, and they gave it in the best way possible.

They kept her on. They gave her more complicated and more important work, more frequently. Something was about to bend. Elsie could feel it, and then she’d finally have the answers to the mystery she’d been living for half her life.

“Just a list.” Mr. Parker sounded cheery, but the tone wasn’t genuine. It piqued her interest all the more.

Focus.

She dipped the proffered pen. “If you could detail the addition Squire Hughes is requesting.”

He did so, and Elsie wrote it down, her penmanship not what it should be. The pen quivered in her anxious hand. She hoped Mr. Parker didn’t notice.

She calculated the costs and wrote them in the first column of numbers, then, at the bottom of the page, drew an X and a straight line after it. Beneath it, she wrote, Mr. Gabriel Parker. Turning the ledger toward him, she said, “If you might review and sign, Mr. Ogden can get started right away.”

Adjusting his glasses, the steward did just that. Meticulous—a good quality for a steward. Elsie took a moment to study him, his white hair, the writing calluses on his hand. The smeared ink on his left palm. He had ruined the letter. No list would have inspired him to do such a thing. Could he really be one of them?

Could Mr. Parker be working for the squire to watch him? To bring down his household from within?

Then there was his talk of the viscount, and the Wright sisters’ gossip about the baron who had once stayed in this house. Could the squire be responsible for the deaths of the aspectors?

He was no spellmaker, but one didn’t have to be to use an opus spell. Even the pageboy could unleash a master spell if it came from a master’s opus.

Elsie’s thoughts spun so fast they were making her dizzy. She desperately needed to get away and think.

Mr. Parker signed. Elsie glanced at his signature as he returned the ledger, but of course the scrawl wouldn’t match his natural penmanship.

She desperately wanted to see what the steward was hiding under the desk. But alas, she could not force him to show her, and if she were to evince more than a natural interest, she risked revealing herself.

Standing, Elsie thanked Mr. Parker. He did not stand to walk her to the door—but of course he was busy, and he had that letter—so she saw herself out. Her nerves were so raw that she walked back to the stonemasonry shop at an even faster pace than she’d set earlier. She was distracted the remainder of the day, trying to piece together what she knew of Mr. Parker with what she knew of the Cowls. Wishing she had kept the letters to compare them to how he spoke.

It wasn’t until night settled and Elsie turned in for bed that she recalled a much more pressing situation.

Come dawn, she had to report to Seven Oaks, and the man who knew her most protected secret.



Why was it that every time Elsie returned to the Duke of Kent’s estate, it seemed to have grown larger in her absence? When she stood before it now, it appeared as foreboding as a castle.

It had not been difficult to get away; Ogden was busy again at the squire’s estate—something that tempted Elsie’s thoughts to return to the mysterious Mr. Parker—and Emmeline was so focused on her chores she often didn’t notice when Elsie left the house. After completing her deliveries and taking stock of supplies in the masonry shop, Elsie had brought the financial ledgers with her and finished them in the carriage, albeit with shaky penmanship. She would do her work for Mr. Kelsey and return swiftly, staying up late to sharpen the sculptor tools Ogden would need for his work at the squire’s house. She’d still get enough sleep to function, and none would be the wiser. Perhaps she’d be so useful Mr. Kelsey would excuse her after her first day.

That certainly sounded fictional, even to her.

If Mr. Parker knew of her predicament, would he swoop in and save her?

Of course, she didn’t know he was a Cowl. She couldn’t tell him anything. Not yet.

She entered the grounds as she had the first time—through the front gate. The duke was neither a king nor an aspector; he didn’t post guards, though he did have a number of footmen about. She didn’t see any people at all as she trudged around to the servants’ door, which was for the better. Whatever Mr. Kelsey had planned for her, she couldn’t let anyone else, even a scullery maid, know what she was.

She knocked, noticing with dismay that her hard work had already been undone. The enchantment had been returned to the doorknob, though it was currently inactive. A few seconds passed before a girl—the one with the washbasin from before?—peeked out, only to instantly close the door in Elsie’s face. Gritting her teeth together, Elsie waited a full minute, then another, before lifting her hand to knock again.