Courting Magic (Kat, Incorrigible #4)(15)
Alexander didn’t turn around, but I saw one corner of his lips quirk upward. “I wouldn’t be here either,” he offered.
“Wonderful.” I grimaced. “So it would only be me and Mr. Packenham…wait. Where is he?” I turned around. “Shouldn’t he come with us?”
The Marquess said, “If we take time to hunt him down, we may be too late.”
The rogue witch had established a solid pattern by now. He appeared in the guise of an important and well-known personage and persuaded someone—a young lady, usually—to step aside with him into a more private location…at which point, he robbed her of all of her valuables and fled, leaving his victim convinced of the wrong man’s identity—and an innocent man publicly embarrassed and accused of theft.
It was a ruse the illusionist had first practiced in various servants’ halls across the country, during large house parties where it was entirely plausible for the noblemen whose appearance he stole to have wandered into the servants’ quarters. Now he was using his skills in ballrooms instead, and taking far richer pickings from his victims.
“Mr. Packenham is in the gaming room,” Alexander said, “drinking heavily. I’m not certain how much assistance he would be able to offer even if we did drag him with us.”
The Marquess’s tone turned to ice. “Watch your tone, Harding. Mr. Packenham is a gentleman and deserves your respect.”
Alexander raised his eyebrows, his own tone hardening. “Perhaps, my lord, I’m too low-born to understand the true meaning of ‘gentleman’…but I’ve heard stories about Mr. Packenham’s behavior that don’t sound gentlemanly to me.”
“I can believe every one of them,” I muttered. “But please, let’s forget about him for now.” We were almost to the false Prince’s circle, and I was fighting to find my magical focus with the crowd pressed tightly around me and everyone’s different colognes and perfumes battling it out for supremacy in the stifling heat.
Oh, no. I gritted my teeth and leaned closer to Alexander, standing on tiptoe to whisper in his ear, “You can’t possibly scent his magic through all this.”
When he shook his head, I felt a warm hint of stubble brush against my lips. I jerked back so quickly, I stumbled.
The Marquess caught me. “Are you well, Miss Stephenson?”
“Of course.” I took a deep breath, intentionally not looking back at Alexander. I was not going to think about how good he had smelled. I just wasn’t. “But we need to find a way to get the wretch free of this crowd, so we can check his scent.”
“If I can smell it even then, under all of his cologne,” Alexander muttered. “I can smell that even from here. He must have bathed himself in it before he set out tonight.”
“Probably to mask the scent.” The Marquess’s eyes narrowed as he released my arm. “Perhaps…”
I narrowed my own eyes, not waiting for his conclusions. Breathe…focus…there!
There was definitely a thread of witchcraft in the air before us. I could feel it, pulled taut at the edge of my consciousness.
It would be so easy to snap that thread with my Guardian power, breaking the spell and exposing the so-called ‘Prince’ to the room as an imposter…
…But the Order would be furious if I did. Our central purpose might be to protect Society from malevolent magic-users, but our secondary purpose, as the Marquess had pointed out, was to keep magic of all sorts well out of sight. My own mother, after she had been exiled from the Order and forbidden to practice her Guardian magic, had shocked her neighbors by practicing her witchcraft in public…but that had been nearly two decades ago.
I’d only witnessed one unmistakable use of magic in public in all my life, when Lucy had been overpowered by the wild magic in the Roman Baths all those years ago. Most people hadn’t seen any at all. I’d even heard some young gentlemen confidently call magic itself no more than a fairy story imagined by superstitious older generations.
Thus far, every victim of our illusionist had been willing to be convinced that the thief had merely been a master of disguise. If I unmasked him now and everyone around us saw the illusion drop, the gossip and the horror would be unspeakable.
The disappointed look I would get from Mr. Gregson would be infinitely worse.
I sighed. “Here.” I lifted my hands to my throat and turned between my two colleagues. “Shield me a moment, will you?”
“Why?” demanded the Marquess, frowning.
Without a word, Alexander moved in front of me, crowding in close until his broad chest and shoulders blocked my face and chest from the crowd behind him. Sighing and muttering to himself, the Marquess moved to complete my cover.
Closing my eyes, I whispered a quick spell. Light sparkled along my chest and in the corners of my eyes. There. My single strand of pearls had turned into a dazzling diamond-and-emerald necklace, and my tiny paste earrings—which Elissa had called “delicate”—had turned into massive, pear-shaped diamond monstrosities to match. I only wished that I’d thought to wear a ribbon in my hair. I could have turned it into a really tasteless tiara to complete the ensemble.
“What—what—what?” The Marquess blinked rapidly. “Did you just use witchcraft?” he hissed. “In public?”
“Oh, don’t fuss,” I whispered back, rearranging my suddenly massive-looking necklace. “No one saw me do it, thanks to you two. And Guardians aren’t supposed to sneer at witches anymore, remember? Plenty of us were born with both types of magic. Why not learn to use it?”