Authors: Isabel Cooper
No Proper Lady
Copyright © 2011 by Isabel Cooper
Cover and internal design © 2011 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover illustration by Anne Cain
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
Fax: (630) 961-2168
Joan can’t hear much screaming.
The tunnels are long, and a lot of doors line each side. The doors are heavy, metal ones, the kind you have to shut by turning a wheel. They do a fairly good job of containing the sounds of the screams within. Of course, screaming wastes breath and time, and there’s nobody to hear or help.
Some of the Dark Ones don’t let you scream anyhow.
Joan’s right hand twitches. Here in this windowless white-walled room, the priests are working on the circle, making sure everything’s right and performing the last few rites they hadn’t been able to complete in advance. Joan has never done any real magic. She can’t fight either, not this time—if she got killed now, it’d be the end of everything—and she’s convinced herself of this enough to hold most of her body still. It’s just her hand that doesn’t listen.
So Joan wraps it around the hilt of her sword. She’d rather have a gun, but the priests have said that would be a spectacularly bad idea in here. The sword’s hilt is wood, smooth from long use and solid. More solid than she feels right now.
Behind her, the circle has started glowing blue. She knows this because the hair at the back of her neck stands on end. She doesn’t look. She doesn’t want to see the circle before she has to, and she definitely doesn’t want to meet anyone’s eyes.
Nobody speaks. The priests chant incantations, all fifty-seven Secret Names and the tongue-warping syllables of summoning, but nobody talks to each other. All the plans were final months ago. There’s nothing to say. Joan doesn’t want thanks or pity, and she’s not really sure she wants hope.
So she stays silent, and she’s the first one to hear the noises: metal clanging and gunfire and wet sounds she knows too well. And now some screaming. Sometimes you can’t help it.
Joan wants to tell herself she doesn’t know any of the voices, but she can’t believe that, and it doesn’t matter. Everyone outside knows their duty. When the first set of claws shears through the metal door, she knows whose bodies lie in the hallway beyond.
She jerks the sword out of its sheath and slashes at a hand almost the size of her body—too big for the tunnels, but when have the Dark Ones ever concerned themselves with normal sizes and shapes? There’s a screech and the hand jerks back. Only for a moment, though. Smaller creatures pour through the hole. But they’re not that much smaller.
The situation is familiar now, even with the surging power behind her, the increasingly panicked voices of the priests, and the names she’s trying not to think. Fighting settles around Joan’s shoulders like a warm blanket. She stabs at things with too many eyes and dodges lashing tentacles and claws and bursts of greenish-black fire. There are others at her sides, the inner guards. She knows their presence like she knows her own hands.
One of the guards falls, smearing red against the wall. Another ducks, catches a glistening whip behind the heel, and is dragged forward struggling. Joan lunges forward, slashing—but someone from behind jerks her back. She starts to fight but then remembers where she is and sees human eyes glaring down at her.
“Go now,” says Elizabeth, her face bloodless. “
Now
.” She doesn’t wait for a response and shoves Joan forward into the circle.
Light rises around her almost at once: blue at first and then shimmering in a million different shades. Outside the barrier of light, the room spins and fades, and the floor falls away beneath Joan’s feet.
The last thing she sees is her sword hitting the floor.
The forest near Englefield Hall was lush and green with early summer but the view out his study window might have been invisible as far as Simon Grenville was concerned. All he could see was his aunt’s letter, the careful penmanship hiding polite rage:
I find it quite impossible to understand what you mean by departing so suddenly and without giving notice to any of our acquaintance save through me. Your actions seem calculated to provoke gossip, if not to give offense outright.
You, of course, have long demonstrated that you care little for the good opinion of society. Such hasty conduct, however, cannot but reflect on Eleanor’s place in society—to say nothing of her own mind and temper.
He’d stopped reading then and dressed for a ride. With considerable effort, he’d kept himself from tossing the letter into the fire on his way out.
The devil of it was that Aunt Sarah was right. Leaving London on short notice by himself might have caused rumors. But taking his schoolgirl sister away with him, so soon after a mysterious incident at a gentleman’s house, would have the gossips talking for weeks. It hadn’t been a prudent course of action. It had simply been the only one he could take.
When his horse shied, Simon realized that he’d clenched his fists.
Easy,
he told himself.
The beast’s twitchy as it is. No call to spook him.
The path wasn’t much more than a game trail, and the underbrush was thick at each side. Nearby, trees seemed to grow through one another or leaned to the side like old cripples. It was the sort of place where one almost expected to meet a druid. There had been standing stones once. Simon remembered Father joking about them when he was small. Back then, the idea had been funny. When Simon had become older, the memory had made him curious—but he’d never had time to investigate.
Now it just reminded him of things he’d prefer not to think about. The way Eleanor had been keeping to her rooms since they’d arrived, for instance. Or the obituary in the morning’s paper: “Lieutenant Frederick Carter, a credit to his regiment and beloved by all who knew him.”
All except one.
Simon shivered. At first, he attributed that to nerves. Then he realized that the light had faded and looked up to see dark clouds covering the sun.
Stifling a sigh, he turned Aladdin around, making for the place where he remembered the path splitting from the main trail—but the trail wasn’t there. A three-way fork faced Simon instead, each path as thick as the next. He could see no clear sign of which way he’d come because the grass was too thick for hoofprints.
He stared at the junction, confusion and frustration rising as one. He’d turned
once
—
So you thought
, said a damnable little voice in the back of his head.
You were hardly paying attention, you know.
Simon drew a breath through his teeth and then took the right-hand path. One was as good as another just now, and he suddenly felt that he should be moving. It wasn’t just the darkening sky; the very air seemed thicker than it should be.
When he first saw movement to his left, Simon told himself that it was a bird or perhaps a squirrel. There were enough of them in the forest. Then, as he caught a glimpse of something gray and low to the ground, he tried to make himself think of badgers or perhaps a stray dog. No matter that his fingers were already moving in the beginnings of a warding spell. That was just nerves. This was his family’s land. There was nothing dangerous on it.
Then Aladdin bolted.
Simon flattened himself against the horse’s neck just as a tree branch snapped and fell through the air above him, scraping his back and sending down a shower of leaves and small twigs. He swore and yanked hard on the reins, but Aladdin ran on. Simon saw no trace of gray in the undergrowth now, no movement other than theirs, but the bloody horse seemed not to care.
Simon darted a glance behind himself just to be sure. The forest there looked empty too, but when he snapped his head back to the front, he saw a fallen tree looming ahead. He closed his eyes and hung on.
The landing was hard enough to bruise, but Simon sent up a quick prayer of thanksgiving just for being alive and still on the gelding’s back. When he opened his eyes again, he saw a clearing ahead—and a ring of stones inside it. Time and neglect had covered most of the stones with vines and grass, but their shapes were unmistakable. They were square-cut dark stones, each only a little shorter than a man.
The ground at the center of the ring was glowing.
At first, the light was a blue dot, only about the size of his fist, but then it blazed like a newly lit gas lamp. Rings of the same glowing blue energy spread out from it, rippling across the mossy ground and out to the stones.
Some kind of energy was building here. Simon wasn’t sure he wanted to be present when it peaked, and he knew he didn’t want to be on the back of a panicking horse. He kicked free of his stirrups, tightened his fists in Aladdin’s mane, and yanked backward with all his strength.
He was expecting to be thrown, which let him tuck his head and take most of the impact on his shoulder, but it still hurt spectacularly when he landed. Aladdin, damn his hide, bolted onward across the clearing and into the forest beyond.
The ground hummed with power. As Simon got to his knees, he saw the stones out of the corner of his eye—dark rock outlined in blue-white fire. His hair lifted, standing on end.
Instinctively, he turned away from the circle, closing his eyes and throwing one arm up to shield his face. A second later, the earth shook and a light flashed blindingly bright, even through Simon’s closed eyelids. He had the momentary sense of some Power passing over him, of something great enough to terrify any mortal man.
Then the light was gone, leaving only a faint blue afterimage and the rapid hammering of Simon’s heart. He opened his eyes.
There was a girl in the circle.
She was almost Simon’s height and slat-thin, with lightly tanned skin and darkish hair that hung down her back in a lank braid. The leather trousers and vest she wore did little in the service of modesty, but moral outrage was not the first thing that came to mind upon seeing her. Caution was.
The woman had a knife strapped to each wrist, another at her waist, and an angular silver pistol holstered beside the knife. She might have had more weapons yet in the large pack on her back. Simon wouldn’t have been at all surprised.
As he began getting to his feet, she heard and snapped her head around. Her eyes were narrow, her body tense. She reminded Simon of a wild animal poised to run or fight.
She’d clearly been doing the latter already. Looking more closely at her in that moment of stillness, Simon saw that the upper part of her right boot and the leg of her trousers above it hung in shreds. He glimpsed red beneath the tatters and more on her vest near her collarbone.
“You’re bleeding,” he said.
She relaxed, at the shock in his voice more than anything else, and felt at her face before looking down the length of her body. “Not mine,” she finally said. Her accent was strange—not quite American but close to it—and her voice was low. “Not mostly. Some scratches on the leg.”
“You should have them seen to,” Simon said. “I’d—”
He stopped himself for a second, wondering if he really meant to take this half-wild creature back to the house. But she was a woman alone, however well armed, and wounded, with both night and rain coming on.
Simon sighed. “I’m Simon Grenville. And I’d be glad to show you back to the house.”
If I can find it
.
The woman stepped forward and offered a hand. Simon took it, unsure for a moment what she expected, but she evidently had no such doubts. She shook hands like a man. “Joan,” she said. “Daughter of Arthur and Leia.”
Simon wouldn’t have been surprised to hear Sultana or Yen Xing—or Titania, for that matter, as unlikely a fairy as “Joan” would have made—but he’d expected nothing so ordinary. “A pleasure. I’m—”
“
Down
,” Joan barked. Then she swept Simon’s legs out from under him.
She followed him to the ground with more control, one hand darting to her belt. Her weight hit Simon’s chest, and her hair fell into his face, blocking his vision.
Oh, good. She’s mad. I’m going to die here.
There were three short, high-pitched noises. Three bursts of silvery light flew overhead. Then there were screams.
They weren’t human screams. No human throat could make those noises. They had a shrillness and a buzzing quality around the edges that put Simon in mind of angry bees, only many times larger.
“Fuck,” Joan snarled, and fired again.
Another scream stopped midway through, cut off by a quieter, much wetter noise. Then silence.
Joan was lying atop him, most of her body pressed firmly against his. Simon had imagined the general situation in his youth; it was not nearly as pleasurable in fact.
For one thing, he was getting quite tired of being knocked to the ground, especially now that he had a large rock pressing into his back. For another, Joan was all angles, and one of her elbows was practically stabbing him in the ribs. Up close, she also smelled: not dirty, but rather acrid and sharp, as if she’d washed her hair with lye. Her hair wasn’t really dark at all, he realized then. It was simply covered with something viscous.
She got off him quickly. It wasn’t a moment too soon.
Away from her, the smell was different and worse, rank-sweet like burnt honey. Two…creatures…lay in the grass near the stones.
Both were more than half Simon’s size and doglike but with six legs each and horns. Hairless. Gray. Simon understood the wet noise now. One of the creatures no longer had a head, only a mass of bone and red meat. That was still less horrible than the twisted, eyeless flesh of the other and its gaping, razor-lined mouth.
Simon turned away toward Joan, and that was almost worse. She was looking thoughtfully at the bodies, the silver gun in one hand. Clear tubes ran out of the gun and into her arm just below her elbow, pulsing slowly. Simon could see her blood moving through them.
No oath could have expressed his shock, and none came close to encompassing his disgust. He made an inarticulate sound in his throat.
Joan looked up and absently tapped the top of the gun with her free hand. The tubes detached from her arm and began recoiling. Their ends were covered with tiny teeth. Simon watched them, hypnotized by his revulsion.
“You’re in a hell of a lot of trouble here, Simon Grenville,” Joan said.
