No Proper Lady (3 page)

The house was a long redbrick square rising from a lake of green. Four floors of windows watched Joan as she approached, all wondering who this drowned rat was and whether she really meant to come inside.

“Give me your hand,” Simon said. “Try to look quiet and frightened. I’ll tell them that you were set upon in the woods, that you hit your head and lost your memory.”

“Amnesia doesn’t work that way.” Joan rested her hand on his arm. Beneath her palm, his shirt was soaked and clammy, but the faint warmth of his body felt good.

“Fortunately for us, I doubt any of my servants know that.”

Servants. Right. Joan remembered some of her briefing. She was increasingly aware of how scanty it had been.

“How easy is it to become a servant?”

“Here?” He sounded startled.

“At Reynell’s.”

“Difficult. He hasn’t had a vacancy in quite a while, and he’s quite thorough about new applicants. Interviews them personally.”

“Worried about assassins?”

“Or afraid for the good silver.”

She wasn’t sure what silver had to do with it, or what the difference was between good and bad, but she didn’t have time to ask. Figures were coming out of the house now, hurrying toward her and Simon with black umbrellas over their heads. She shifted her weight a little to lean against Simon and tried to look dizzy and confused.

That wasn’t hard. She’d had maybe an hour of sleep, and her last meal had been almost a full day earlier. It had been a good meal—they’d even found beef somewhere—and she’d gone longer than usual without eating, but she was starting to feel the lack. She lowered her voice and looked up at Simon. “Anything else I should do?”

“Don’t shoot anyone.”

“Sir! Mister Grenville!” It was one of two young men, both sturdy enough to make Joan wary, neither armed, and both in clothes like Simon’s. The one talking was short and blond. “It’s good to see you, sir. We thought—oh.”

He looked from Joan to Simon, silent for a second, until his taller, red-haired companion kicked him on the ankle and took over. “Glad you’re all right. We’ll have you inside in no time.” He handed an umbrella to Simon—it was sort of futile at this point, but the gesture was nice—and then turned, the blond following him, and opened the doors.

Lots of deference, Joan noted. No suspicion of an ambush. Neither of the men had scouted the area or even looked behind her and Simon while they were talking. Back home, even in relative safety, anyone outdoors would have done those things.

Being attacked wasn’t just unlikely in this world. It didn’t happen. Period.

She would have stopped to think that over, but there was no time. And then they walked through the doors.

Part of Joan went on thinking coolly, too trained to do anything else.
It
marked the exits, the lit fire in the fireplace, and the heavy iron tools by it. The rest of her mind boggled.

The walls and floor were pale, but not the rough, industrial gray-white of the caves. These walls were warmer colored with traces of gold and tan and polished so that they glowed in the firelight. Brighter paintings hung high on the walls, and the dark furniture that sat against the walls was made of black and gold enamel or solid reddish wood carved into whorls and curves, and it had velvet cushions. Inside glass globes, gas flames flickered, brighter and warmer than any fluorescent Joan had seen. Even light was different here.

It was gorgeous. It was terrifying. Again she told herself that luxury here didn’t mean what it had meant back home, that this wasn’t a trap or a sign that Simon had sold out. Still, she wished she had her gun in her hand.

The servants Simon had mentioned came out, headed by a woman in a long gray dress with a high collar and long sleeves. She was shorter than Simon, though she’d still have been on the tall side back home—Joan was something of a freak there—and plump, with thick brown hair under her white cap. She started talking to the men who’d brought them in, giving them orders. Then she looked over to Simon…and saw Joan.

She was disciplined in her own way, this woman. She didn’t gape or cry out. Her large brown eyes got larger for a moment, and she took a deep breath. That was all, but it was enough for Joan to recognize the look as horror and then pity.

Joan bristled at first, but she couldn’t blame the woman. She’d read the reports back home about malnutrition, vitamin deficiency, and all the conditions people got when their food mostly came powdered. Nobody back home had been eating right for a long time, but she’d never really thought about that. Now it came home to her. The servants and Simon looked the way people should, and Joan didn’t.

“James,” said the woman, “go to the village and get Doctor—”

“No,” Joan said quickly. She might be able to explain the claw marks on her leg or the scar where the flashgun had latched onto her arm, but she didn’t think people in this time had warding tattoos. “Thank you.”

“The scoundrels ran away at the first sign of anyone competent, Mrs. Edgar.” Simon took a step forward, lowering his voice. “But I can’t…Well…I don’t think she’s in any state for such an examination.”

Mrs. Edgar put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, you poor dear—”

“I don’t remember anything,” Joan said. “My head hurt for a while, but it’s stopped now.”

Everyone was staring at her. She was aware of everything that Simon’s coat concealed: her ludicrous dress, her tattoos, and the long-healed scars from past battles. Joan folded her arms across her chest.

“Food and rest are what’s needed, I think,” said Simon. “And privacy.”

“Very good, sir,” said Mrs. Edgar. “If you’ll follow me, miss—”

“MacArthur, wasn’t it?” Simon offered.

At least it mostly kept her father’s name. “Yes—I think so. It sounds familiar.”

“Very good. I’ve had Rose light a fire in one of the guest rooms, and we should be able to make you quite comfortable. This way, miss.”

Joan followed, wincing at first when her shoes made squelching noises on the marble. Then she stopped thinking about it because she had too much else to take in. The staircase itself was a marvel with a dark wood railing carved with roses, a thick, tan carpet on the stairs, and small windows made of red and blue glass on each landing. You didn’t have windows back home unless you had to. Windows broke.

The upstairs room into which Mrs. Edgar led Joan had blue walls and a large fireplace. The fire was starting to blaze now, and a young blonde woman in a pale dress and white apron was rising from her knees in front of it.

“This is Rose,” said Mrs. Edgar. “She’ll be in again shortly to draw you a bath and bring some food. If that’s all right, miss?”

The question was an afterthought. The woman had clearly put Joan into whatever mental category she used for children and invalids. That meant less trouble for Joan, but it was still vaguely insulting.

“Fine,” Joan said. “Thank you.”

She looked around. The room was vast. The
bed
was vast. Joan’s briefing had covered at least a little about this time’s weird morals, or she would have asked where the other two people were. A tall dark cabinet stood in one corner, a chest of drawers with a mirror over it opposite the bed, and a desk by one of the windows. Thick blue drapes covered the windows, and a blue and gold rope hung down by the canopied bed.

Joan watched the other women leave, waited until they’d closed the door, and then dumped Simon’s coat onto the floor. She shrugged her knapsack off on top of it, flicked the bag open, and swiftly unpacked its contents into the desk. The flashgun and the knives went into the bottom of one drawer, and she set two wrist sheaths full of poisoned darts over them. Then there were a small metal flask with a sigil on it, in case anything poisoned
her
, and a thin wire garrote coated in silver, because you never knew, plus a first-aid kit, a case of lock picks, and two sticks of camouflage face paint. Finally, there was another metal flask, this one smaller and with a different sigil, containing liquid fire. The priests back home had enchanted it.

On top of everything, including the knapsack itself, she laid the black clothing she’d brought: leather pants, shirt, gloves, and soft-soled shoes. With everything piled right, the drawer appeared to contain nothing but a mass of black cloth. Now only her tattoos and the magic-sensitive patch behind her right ear would show that she wasn’t from this time, and the sensor was almost invisible even when she was naked. She closed the drawer and stepped back just as someone tapped on the door.

“Come in,” Joan said.

“I’ve come to run your bath, miss.” Rose was carrying towels and a clean white nightgown over her arm. Her eyes widened for a second when she saw Joan’s dress, but she didn’t say anything. Not waiting for a response from Joan, she opened the door on the far wall, revealing a small bathroom. She knelt by the tin tub and began to run the water.

Joan looked away. They said this was how the Traitor Lords lived, with people waiting on them hand and foot. When Rose stood and stepped toward her, Joan stumbled backward, revolted in a way that had nothing to do with the marks on her own body or the girl herself. “I can bathe on my own,” she said quickly, forcing herself back to pleasant neutrality. “Dress myself too. Thanks.”

“Of course, miss,” said Rose, surprise changing to sympathy on her face. “I’ll set the tray by your bed then, when I bring it up?”

“Thank you,” Joan said.

When Rose left, Joan took a deep breath, then closed her eyes and let it out slowly.
This isn’t a bad place
, she told herself,
and you’re not a bad person for enjoying it. Missions have benefits. If this one’s got more than most, there’s a reason for that.

Then she opened her eyes and shucked off the wet dress as fast as she could, peeling it down her torso and kicking it away from her legs. Her boots went too, and she finally curled her bare feet into the carpet. The thick, golden-red patterned stuff was better than even the captains or the administrators had back home.

Talk about hazard pay!

Joan got into the bath slowly with one foot, then the other, gradually sinking down until everything below her neck was submerged. The water was hot enough to make her wince when it hit the cuts on her leg and some scratches on her back she hadn’t been aware of, but she wasn’t complaining. No way. If she’d closed her eyes, she’d have fallen asleep then and there.

Instead, Joan made good use of the washcloth and some soap that smelled like roses. She scrubbed hard. Seeing dirt peel away from her skin was satisfying, if a bit disturbing. It took three washings before she thought she had gotten all the demon blood out of her hair, and when she got out of the tub, the water was dingy brown.

The nightgown was warm and very soft. Back in the bedroom, she found dinner on her nightstand, sitting under a silver dome and smelling delicious, with a glass of red wine beside it. Joan had mostly been able to ignore her stomach before, but now it woke up and screamed like a spoiled child. She lifted the dome quickly, revealing half a chicken, hot bread with real butter, and soup with beans and carrots floating in it.

If she hadn’t been trained, if she hadn’t seen men die after gorging themselves on an unexpected feast, Joan would have fallen on the meal like a hungry dog. She made herself eat slowly instead. It was very pleasant torture. Nothing on the plate was gritty or hard, and the meat was so tender she almost didn’t have to chew it. And apparently this wasn’t anything special here, just a meal for a rainy day.

Joan couldn’t eat all of it or even much more than half. When Rose, returning, gave the tray a wide-eyed look, Joan dropped her eyes and looked away. “I hadn’t been eating much,” she said, speaking only partly to the girl. She could feel the shades of her family and her comrades watching her, their eyes hollow and hungry.

“Yes, miss,” Rose said with another one of those sympathetic looks. “Shall I put out the light for you?”

“Yes. Please.”

Tired as she was, Joan woke sometime before morning. She didn’t know when. At first, she didn’t know where she was. She knew that it was dark and that she was alone.

For a long moment, she held still, waiting to hear the sounds or see the movements that would tell her what to do next. There was nothing at first, then the slow and comfortless return of memory.

She
was
alone—alone in a world she knew even less about than she’d thought.

Earlier, she’d taken pleasure in being well fed and clean and in the softness and warmth of the bed. Later, she might enjoy those things again. Now, in the dark, they only reminded her of what lay ahead.

Nothing came for free. Not even in this world, pleasant as it seemed. Joan already knew the price she’d have to pay.

Whatever the servants might have thought of “Miss MacArthur’s” curious appearance or of the story Simon had put forward to explain it, they kept very much to themselves. Mathers, Simon’s valet, was the only one who knew him well enough to inquire about the matter. “If I may be permitted to ask, sir,” he began, as Simon dressed after his bath, “how long do you believe that Miss MacArthur will be with us?”

“I can’t say. She doesn’t remember any family, and she looks like she’d been in the devil of a situation for some time. Unless you’ve heard of any missing women”—Simon paused long enough for Mathers to shake his head—“she’ll stay here for a while.”

“Yes, sir.”

Simon nodded, running a hand absently through his hair. By God, it was good to be clean and dry again—and well fed too. He hadn’t realized he was so sharp-set, but he’d attacked dinner thoroughly enough to nearly leave the plates gleaming.
Being near death is very good for the appetite, of course. Ask any jailer.

A quiet cough drew his attention back to Mathers. “Yes?”

“With your permission, sir, I’ll have one of the maids engage the village dressmaker tomorrow. And the cobbler as well.”

“Ah. Yes. Good idea.” One, Simon was embarrassed to realize, that had never crossed his mind. He knew very little about the essentials of female life.

Realizing that made him think of Eleanor—and wonder.

However aware Ellie had been of the unseen world before her fateful encounter with Alex, she certainly knew about at least a part of it now. Joan would have no need to pretend amnesia with Ellie. Besides, Ellie knew more about women’s life than Simon. She could be a guide where his own experience failed him.

If she could stand the experience.

Simon frowned into the mirror. If he could trust Joan to keep quiet about the more alarming parts of her history and about her connection with Alex, the arrangement might benefit everyone. Still, it wasn’t a decision to make lightly, and he was glad that he had at least one task to put behind himself before he could speak to Eleanor.

***

There was some benefit to having a house far too large for its occupants. Simon had taken over the smallest of the bedrooms, in addition to his own suite, and had sent the room’s furniture upstairs for the servants’ use. The gesture had, as he’d hoped, left most of them unwilling to question the source of their luck too closely. He claimed that he used the room to practice fencing. One of these days, he kept thinking, he should buy a foil.

The room was an airy little place with a good eastern view. The walls were light colored and the floor was bare wood, far from comfortable on a cold and rainy day but most convenient for Simon’s purposes. The only object was a large rosewood chest against one wall. The chest’s contents would have amazed most people, disturbed others, and told all more about Simon than he particularly wanted any of them to know.

Before Simon took out the key to the chest, he locked the door behind himself and then tried the handle. He’d never seen a spell interrupted, and while quite possibly he would survive unharmed, he preferred not to take chances.

Once he’d made certain that the room was secure, Simon took a small silver censer from the chest and lit it. The room began to fill with the smell of rosewood almost at once. That was a good sign and one that eased his mind considerably. The day and hour, after all, were less than favorable for the sort of magic he intended.

The power came easily, though. Simon began to sense it building before he’d done much more than unfasten his jacket. As usual when he’d gone some time between women, he felt the sensual aspects most strongly. By the time he’d undone his trousers, his cock had risen, thick and hard against his stomach.

He bit his lip and turned his mind sternly to the task ahead of him. Unlike with some of the experiments he’d done in his youth, the laughing half-drunk nights he’d spent with Alex, the purpose of this ritual was in no way to excite the senses. Remembering that, and the consequences should he fail, helped a bit. When he donned his silk tunic, he could at least feel the motion of the fabric against his arousal without losing control.

After the tunic came a shorter red-and-gold robe girdled with a gold sash and a crown of gold and silk. With these, Simon found himself mostly able to ignore his body’s urges. Part of it was the ritual—donning the ceremonial garments and putting himself into another state of mind—but much of it was because he knew he looked thoroughly foolish.

Nonetheless, he couldn’t completely banish sensual awareness. As the power increased, Simon felt it like a gentle hand tracing up his spine, and when he went to retrieve ink and paper from the chest, he was very aware of the weight between his thighs. He thanked God for his training. The sessions he’d had to hastily abandon in his youth had been numerous. And best not thought of.

Repeating any of the incidents would be damn embarrassing, after all. Even if no history tutor was around to catch him this time.

Instead, Simon focused on the paper as he spread it out on the floor before him and pictured the symbols in his head. This ritual would be one of protection, invoking Mars and Apollo. He took a deep breath, dipped his first quill into the vial of vermilion ink, and began.

Practice let him draw the outer circle in one smooth motion timed with his exhaled breath and the ensuing rush of power. The ink bled onto the parchment, looking startlingly bright. He’d prepared it years ago as part of his initiation, but Mars had been an infrequent influence on his life, and Simon had never felt the need to use the ink until now. It looked remarkably like blood. The civilized man in him wanted to turn away, but the magician relished the sight. Found it exciting.

This was going to be unlike anything he’d done before. He should have had the good sense to be afraid. Had he been outside the room and dressed as an ordinary gentleman, he might have been. Here and now, fear was only heightened anticipation.

Simon began the second, inner circle with golden ink, invoking the sun. This power was more familiar, less preferentially violent but no less capable of destruction. Like that force that had roared out of the stone circle and over Simon’s head, it was too large for mercy.

As he drew the innermost shapes in red and gold, he felt his breathing, his movement, even his heartbeat take on a slow, steady rhythm. The power flowed around him, rising and falling with every breath but always increasing a little. The tide was coming in. He felt it in the warmth at his temples and around his hands, below his feet and at his groin.

Calm. Center. Control.

Simon’s name came first with the request itself: protection against the Powers of Darkness and all their servants. Then there was his name again and the characters that extended the protection to all of his blood or under his guardianship.

Then the other names. Michael and Gabriel, the warriors of the angelic host. Minerva and Apollo, for wisdom and protection. Bes, a relatively obscure Egyptian god who supposedly fought demons bare-handed, and Sekhmet, before whom evil trembles. Phaleg and Och, Tyr and Freya—a whole circle of names in red and gold with Gevurah, for justice, crowning it.

A space at the bottom provided room for one more entity. With his hand almost shaking with power and dread—even now, there were a few things he feared—Simon drew a final few characters invoking Kali.

The power in the room was almost tangible. Simon could feel its heat as he breathed. It no longer brushed lightly against him but pressed itself close. The power was not as purely sexual as it had been, though his cock was as hard as ever. Rather, it was overwhelming in all ways to all senses, hot and shining and rosewood scented.

Taking the parchment in his hands, Simon knelt and began the invocation:

“O Powers who sit at the foundations of the world,

Hear my plea.

I come in an hour of darkness, and I ask for light.

I come in a time of siege, and I ask for aid.

I come a stranger, and I ask for mercy.

Shut not your eyes to my countenance.

Deafen not your ears to my voice.

O Powers, I kneel before you as a supplicant.

O Powers, I ask for aid.”

On the last line, his voice dropped, and he felt the resonance in his chest. He stood in one smooth motion, the graceful ascent of a bowing courtier. The power he’d built rose with him. Simon felt it travel up from the center of his body through his chest and his head and then out, taking wing in one radiant burst of energy. It left him standing breathless in the middle of the room, every muscle in his body tense.

He wanted at once to shout for joy and to snarl defiance, to sing hymns and swear the worst oaths he could think of. He wanted to run like a schoolboy on the first day of summer holidays, to make love to a woman until neither of them could stand, to laugh long and hard and to weep just as intensely.

Life
, he thought dimly.
I do think it worked then.

That made him laugh in a way that he hadn’t since perhaps before he’d seen Alex at the gaming tables and the spirit looking over his shoulder. Now laughter rose through his chest like the power had, and it felt astoundingly good.

Everything did. Simon ran a hand down the bulge in his tunic and wrapped his fingers around the swollen shaft beneath the silk. Almost of their own accord, his hips thrust forward, rubbing his cock against the tight grip of his fingers.

If he’d been elsewhere, Simon might have tossed off there and then. He knew it wouldn’t have taken long. But this was not the place for any sort of casual release, partnered or not, and there was no time to sneak off to his rooms.

With a considerable effort of will, he opened his hand and turned his mind to old geometry lessons. By the time he finished lacing his boots, Simon was physically presentable, but the euphoria remained. He chose to think of it as a good sign. Calling on the solar powers always had left him somewhat giddy, so it was only logical that such a large working would be even more intoxicating.

Certainly, he thought, he must have been a little drunk to have invoked Kali. Simon hoped that had been wise, but now that he was out of the chamber and back in his normal clothing, he wasn’t at all certain. All the other Powers he’d invoked had been relatively minor: servants of something greater, like Michael and Gabriel, or the sort of god who was really just a larger person, like Apollo and even Sekhmet. Kali was a Greater Power herself. And even the most benign of the Great Ones were very dangerous.

She is, however, one very necessary side of a coin. And she is Chamunda, slayer of demons. Hard to find someone more appropriate.

Abruptly, he thought of Joan.

Perhaps she’d been in his mind all long. Quite possibly, she’d inspired his choice at the end. Certainly neither her presence nor the world from which she came could be absent from Simon’s thoughts for very long. They were too unusual, too significant, and too disturbing, Joan herself nearly as much so as her world. Her utter ruthlessness was appalling, her swift determination unsettling, and her whole person so unlike any feminine ideal Simon had ever encountered, even in his progressive circles, as to be utterly alien.

Yet perhaps that disturbing strength and focus was what the situation demanded. The spell Simon had just cast would turn aside demons and curses, but magic wasn’t the only threat in the world. Reynell could use men, controlling them by a spell or a fistful of banknotes. The idea had seemed ludicrous earlier—Alex Reynell sending out assassins like some shadowy mastermind in a penny novel—but earlier Simon hadn’t had hellhounds trying to rip out his throat.

He hoped he could defend himself. He knew very well that Eleanor could not.

Any men Reynell hired would be men of this world, unused as Simon was to fighting women and likely to underestimate Joan. She could accompany Ellie too in places where Simon couldn’t go.

If the gods had sent him a problem, they’d also sent him a tool. He’d be damned indeed if he wouldn’t use it.

***

Eleanor almost crept through the library door, stopping as soon as she was far enough inside for it to close and clasping her hands behind her back. She looked up at Simon uncertainly, the same way she seemed to do everything these days. “You wanted to see me, Simon?”

“I did,” he said, and put a hand gently on her shoulder, guiding her to a chair. “Sit down first. I’ve rung for tea already.”

She sat obediently. Never a big girl to begin with, she looked childlike now. Her eyes were huge, bright blue above bruised-looking half circles. The mass of her braided and coiled hair overwhelmed her face, and her pallor was downright ghastly against her black dress. The chair itself seemed to devour her.

Joan was thinner, Simon thought. But nobody would ever mistake her for a child or think her fragile. Even drenched and near starving, she’d had more life about her.
And if she can give Eleanor some of that
, he thought suddenly,
I don’t care how if Ellie learns to throw knives and skin deer into the bargain.

“I heard that there were bandits,” Eleanor said, surprising him. She almost never spoke on her own initiative these days. “Are you all right? I’d worried.”

“In excellent health. Thank you.”

She managed a weak smile.

They’d never really talked, growing up. Simon had gone off to school just as Ellie had started to walk. Now his memories of her were like a gallery of portraits, each one only a moment in time: the laughing child with flyaway curls, the awkward and anxiously mannered twelve-year-old in black school dress and pinafore, the shy young lady with an armful of books. From the time he’d taken over her guardianship, they’d been amiable strangers, but they’d done all right together until April.

Now Simon felt as if he was groping in the dark, breaking fragile heirlooms in a clumsy search for a light that might not even exist.

“You must’ve heard, then,” he said, “that we have a guest.”

“Miss MacArthur, they said. She’s amnesiac?”