The Courtship of Julian St. Albans
Read The Courtship of Julian St. Albans Online
Authors: Amy Crook
The Courtship
of Julian St. Albans
by Amy Crook
Copyright © 2013 Amy Crook
All rights reserved.
ISBN:
1490393250
ISBN-13: 978-1490393254
DEDICATION
For
Jefferson, who always tells me I can and should,
and for
Sarah, who helped me do.
TABLE
OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1
In Which We Meet Our Hero and a Corpse, and the Story Begins
Alexander Benedict was not a man who dealt
easily with fools, and since he considered nearly everyone he met to be his
magical and intellectual inferior, he found social interaction very trying
indeed. He took a deep breath, then tried again. “What reason do you have
to believe that the murder was committed through magical means?” he asked
the man at the other end of the phone, an agent who’d wheedled his number from
the department secretary. He vastly preferred his usual contact within the
department, Agent Lapointe.
“We’re not certain how the murder was
committed,” said the agent again, furthering Alex’s frustration.
“Then why do you think your superiors
would be willing to sign off on my exorbitant fees?” snapped Alex, tired
of this farce of politeness.
“Because of the victim. Or, well, the
victim’s circumstances,” said the agent. “Lots of pressure is being
put to bear, and I’ve heard that sometimes you can figure things out even if
it’s not magic.”
“Fine,” said Alex shortly, cutting
him off. “Fine, but I want Lapointe. None of this… None of you. I only
work with her.” Murielle Lapointe took care never to waste his time with
inane and irrelevant prattle.
He tried not to enjoy the affronted silence on
the other end of the line too much, but it was difficult. “I will speak to
my superior about you both, then,” the agent said, and hung up without
bothering to say goodbye.
Much better.
~ ~ ~
“Why am I here?” asked Alex, looking
around the well-appointed parlour with its well-appointed corpse. The posh
surroundings seemed to make most of the agents uncomfortable, but Alex had
grown up among such things, and having given them up voluntarily took away
their power to intimidate.
After all, no matter how much they had cost,
the objets d’art in the room had done no good for the victim, one Cecil
Mandeville. The body that had once contained Cecil lay sprawled in the middle
of the room, the limbs at uncomfortable angles like a doll that had been tossed
carelessly aside.
Lapointe chuckled. “We’re both here
because Julian St. Albans was supposed to take Mr. Mandeville here for his
bonded consort next week.” That was a name even Alex recognised, despite
being long past the point where he followed the ebb and flow of power among the
elite, and suddenly everything clicked into place.
“There had to have been magic involved,
then,” he said, setting his bag down and crouching beside it, taking out
the unbleached cotton gloves he wore in lieu of power-dampening latex and
slipping them on. “I’ll take a look.”
“I knew you would,” said Lapointe.
“Smedley’s pretty ticked that you wouldn’t work with him, you know.”
“But you’re happy to be assigned to this
case,” said Alex confidently, extracting a small metal tuning fork and
striking it against his palm to produce the softest of tones. “Smedley’s
an idiot.”
Lapointe didn’t dignify that with a response,
well accustomed by now to Alex’s ways. Once the tuning fork was struck, it was
no use talking to him; he was using his ears in an entirely different way and
voices became so much background noise.
In this room, the discordant
hum of malevolent magic was much louder.
Alex walked carefully around the perimeter of
the room, then circled closer and closer onto the source of the not-sound that
set his teeth on edge, unsurprised when this also brought him closer to the
body. Cecil Mandeville had been a handsome man in life, but death had given him
a slack, unpleasant pallor that stole away all but a hint of those good looks.
He was impeccably dressed, the clothing just as disheveled as the body wearing
it but of very good quality.
The tone from the tuning fork began to break
up, stuttering eerily whenever it got too close to the magical residue
surrounding the body. Acting on instinct honed by years of experience, Alex
opened the man’s shirt to reveal a silver amulet that looked, at first glance,
like a very expensive protection charm. Alex stilled the tuning fork in his
glove and his ears popped as he stood, normal sound flooding in to replace the
magical.
“It was this,” said Alex, pointing,
careful not to touch it, even gloved. “He’ll have received it as a gift in
the past few days, from someone he trusts.”
Lapointe looked quite pleased. “The
coroner will have to confirm, of course, he’s waiting outside.”
Alex took one last glance around the room.
“The body’s all his. I need to see Mandeville’s rooms.”
“How did you know he’s got rooms
here?” asked Smedley, crowding past Lapointe in advance of the coroner.
Lapointe stepped to one side for the gurney to
pass, but declined to comment, waiting to see how Alex handled Smedley with a
tiny smile lurking around the corners of her mouth.
“It’s obvious,” said Alex, not
bothering to note all the details that pointed to it, from the shoes that would
only be worn inside to the slight dampness of the hair that showed he’d just
showered.
“Come on,” said Lapointe, leading him
toward the hallway, “the butler will know where Mandeville’s rooms are.
We’ll have to get the crime scene people in there, anyway.”
“I’m afraid that’s out of the
question,” said a very cultured voice from just outside. “Master St.
Albans is sequestered in that wing of the house for mourning, and won’t open it
up until the Courtship begins.” They stepped out into the hall and came
face-to-face with a tall, dark-haired man dressed in the manner of imposing
butlers everywhere, glaring down his long nose at everyone and everything
disrupting his domain.
“He’s doing a formal Courtship?” asked
Alex, finally interested. A Courtship’s precise dance of manners and intrigue
had always fascinated him, though they were out of fashion except among the
very highest of society. It was expensive and time-consuming to host one, not
to mention the necessity of housing all the hopefuls for the latter portion.
But the process itself was one that Alex had always wanted to observe, putting
thirteen men to the same tasks and seeing how each differentiated himself in
order to move on to the next round and do it all over again.
The butler looked unimpressed. “It is what
must be done, now that Master Mandeville is no longer with us.”
“We still need to look at Mandeville’s
rooms, surely you can see that?” said Lapointe. “There’s bound to be
evidence of his murderer in there.”
“I’m pretty sure that the body makes this
whole house a crime scene, according to the letter of the law,” said Alex
slyly. “I don’t think you want us tromping around without any direction at
all, do you?”
Alex could practically hear the man’s teeth
grinding before he relented. “This way, sir, madam,” he said instead,
leading them down a corridor with all the portraits and mirrors already covered
with black mourning cloths.
“Has Mr. St. Albans recently lost another
family member?” asked Alex, for once wishing he’d paid more attention to
the gossip.
“His parents,” said Lapointe, when
the butler ignored him. “It was a terrible accident, while they were away
on holiday. That’s why his marriage to Mandeville was moved up to next week,
because Julian St. Albans has declared his intention to become a consort and
allow his future husband to take the family titles.”
“And now he’s got to have a Courtship,
because he can’t take over himself after the formal declaration,” said
Alex. “Is it certain the parents’ death was an accident?”
“Nothing is certain at this point, I’d
say,” said Lapointe, though Alex could see the butler flinching at the
idea of yet another blot on their reputation. Still, the St. Albans name and
titles would be enough to draw the cream of society to Julian’s courtship,
murder or not.
“I wonder if my brother will
participate,” said Alex idly. His older brother Victor was already married
as befitted his station but Henry, the younger one, was still single last he
knew. His twin sisters had wed young, and of course Alex himself played at
being the black sheep.
“Maybe you should give it a go,” said
Lapointe, sounding amused. “You’ve got the pedigree, too.”
“Nonsense,” said Alex, though in
truth it might be worth it, if he got to observe a few rounds before his
inherent personality flaws got him eliminated. “The killer will be,
though.” Alex could practically feel the butler’s outrage at the very
idea, which amused him enough to keep talking. “Whether or not the parents
were a real accident, there’s many a man in society hungry for just the sort of
plum that Julian’s set before them. I’m sure there was polite outrage of some
sort when his engagement to Mandeville was announced.”
“Master Mandeville has- had been Master
Julian’s companion for several years,” said the butler, stopping finally
in front of a pair of doors. “That is why he resided here rather than with
his own family. The engagement was no surprise to anyone.”
Alex nodded for the butler to step back,
digging out another tuning fork, this one a bit larger and louder, before
nodding to Lapointe. She, too, was still wearing her gloves from the previous
scene, so she opened the door and stood to one side.
“If that will be all?” asked the
butler, just as Alex struck the tuning fork against the side of his hand.
He didn’t hear the rest of the exchange,
trusting Lapointe to make sure he was undisturbed and everything was handled
properly. They hadn’t once had a case thrown out for improper handling despite
his own lax manners in that area, because Lapointe kept impeccable paperwork
and never let him make off with evidence without first tagging it.
The first thing Alex saw was his own
reflection, dim in the uncovered mirror. His face was pale as always with a mop
of curly dark hair nearly falling into his eyes, and the godawful early phone
call from Smedley showed itself in the dark circles beneath. He was tall and
thin, wearing all black except for the gloves, because black things always
matched each other and it made his mother work harder to criticise him. He
never liked to make it easy for his family, a sort of pathetic revenge for
making it so very difficult to be him.
The lights came up, and he blinked and turned
away from his face, eyes gone dark with the hum of magic. The light spell itself
was a simple one, a tinny melody easily dismissed along with the other
household spells — a tea set that would fill, heat and clean itself; carpets
spelled to resist staining; privacy charms on the windows to keep out prying
eyes. All of these magics made a background harmony that completely obliterated
everything but magic for him, so he had to walk carefully in case something
outside the network of spells got in his way. He did so hate to trip over
people’s unspelled coffee tables, it ruined his concentration and gave Lapointe
easy ammunition for teasing later.
The parlour was entirely harmony and nearly
devoid of personality as well; Alex had a feeling that very little time was
spent there. The next room was a bedroom, full of fading human warmth that matched
what little he could discern of Mandeville beneath the amulet. There was
another presence here, too, stronger because the person who had given the room
its energy was still alive, and Alex deduced that that must be what Julian St.
Albans sounded like, to his magic.
He was surprised at how much
he liked it.
This room had other, different spells but it
was still mostly harmony, a bit of discordance from a pair of ceremonial
daggers over the mantel but that was all.
Alex moved on, finding himself in an elaborate
dressing room much like the one he’d had as a young man, shoes and clothes and
accessories all impeccably kept and perfectly organised for Mandeville to find.
Alex felt an echo of the amulet’s dissonance here, and he looked carefully
through everything, noting the places that things were missing, and which
seemed perpetually empty.
There was a box with space for four different
amulets in it, one of which was far more worn and one of which was missing.
“Mandeville chose a different amulet today than his usual protection
charm,” mused Alex, fingers brushing over the empty spot and feeling a
tingle of evil magic even through his gloves. “But why?”
“We were supposed to go horseback
riding,” said a voice, startling Alex into dropping his tuning fork,
though its tone had mostly died out already. Alex turned to find a truly lovely
young man lurking in the doorway, red-rimmed eyes staring out of delicate,
elfin features.
“You must be Julian St. Albans,” said
Alex, when he got his voice back. Even in the throes of grief, the young man
set Alex’s pulse to racing, from his athletic grace to the shock of freckles
across his pale cheeks, and his neatly-trimmed auburn hair. Alex suddenly
understood that titles and fortune weren’t the only reasons someone might wish
to kill the man who was to possess the St. Albans heir.
“Cecil didn’t like horses much, but I love
them, and he was going to choose a mount for himself for riding with me once we
were married,” said Julian, as though Alex hadn’t spoken. “He
switched amulets so that he’d have more protection in case of a fall.”
Julian looked down, but his hair was too short to hide behind, and tears
glistened on his cheeks. “I should’nt’ve…”
