The Courtship of Julian St. Albans (9 page)

“It’s no less than he deserves,” said
Alex, bothered by the attitude that had come over the room. A glance around
explained it, though; Ms. Fitzhugh had taken her leave, whether for the moment
or the night, and the men were feeling their oats without her calming presence.

“Are you what he deserves, then?”
asked Willoughby, giving Alex the most insulting once-over he’d ever received
from someone who wasn’t a cop or a murder suspect.

Alex gave Willoughby a disdainful look.
“He deserves Mandeville, and we are all poor seconds to that.”

He stalked off, but there were other suitors
every way he could go, so he attached himself to the harmless-seeming Chilcott.
“Are you looking forward to your tea?” asked Alex, which seemed safe
enough.

Chilcott chuckled. “I may not seem like
much competition,” he said, “but I have every intention of winning
Julian.”

“Good,” said Alex, getting a
surprised look. “Julian deserves to have men vying for him and not just
his titles and lands.”

Chilcott raised one eyebrow and said, “I
can see now why you’re the dark horse. That sort of talk has won stouter hearts
than his.”

It was Alex’s turn to
chuckle. “It only works if you mean it,” he said.

“I know,” said Chilcott, and they
shared a moment of perfect understanding.

~ ~ ~

In the end, it looked as though Pembroke’s form
of charm worked just as well as Alex’s, and Alex had to squash a moment of
misplaced jealousy when Julian also bestowed a kiss to Pembroke’s cheek.

They emerged from the little alcove together,
and Emmeline returned as well for a blessedly brief final bit of mingling
before they were all sent on their way with a final toast.

“May we all find happiness, each in our
own way and time,” said Emmeline. She was acting as the head of their
little household, which made the toast her purview. “May magic make us
safe, luck make us joyful and blessings make us prosper. Let it be!”

“Let it be,” they all echoed, then
everyone sipped the champagne that had been circulated among them.

“Thank you for coming to my brother’s
first Courtship dinner,” she said, fingers nervous on the stem of her
glass. “Godfrey will see you all out to your cars.”

They all filed past, glasses abandoned on a
waiting side table so hands were free to shake hers, give a small final
greeting to Julian, and be ushered on their way. Alex didn’t bother trying to
linger, though he did give them both an extra squeeze and a silent promise that
the Agency was still most diligently on Mandeville’s murder.

Alex had a feeling they
heard him, with or without words.

~ ~ ~

“So, how was it?”
asked Henry, draped as he was over Alex’s couch.

Alex sighed; he should have known he wouldn’t
get to sleep before the interrogation began. “Long,” he replied,
moving toward the bedroom. “If you make tea while I change, I might
forgive you for not waiting until morning.”

Henry laughed, but he got up. “You’re
worse in the mornings,” he reminded Alex.

Alex didn’t dignify that with a response,
especially since Henry was right. Instead he vanished into his bedroom, which
he’d personally warded against his family’s unwanted intrusions and therefore
felt safe hiding in, at least for a bit. He carefully put away each item of
clothing, the cufflinks and tie tack in their box, cravat hung over a bar in
the shower to see if the wrinkles would steam out, jacket hung with the vest
and trousers in his wardrobe, socks and shirt in the laundry. He spent a long
moment sitting on the end of his bed in his pants, which were a black silk that
matched the cravat, before shedding those, too, in favour of a pair of soft
blue silk pyjamas that nearly matched Julian St. Albans’ eyes.

“Tea’s on!” called Henry, smart
enough not to try to pass the wards without invitation, though he’d had to
learn the lesson the hard way.

“Coming,” said Alex with a sigh, belting
on a nice black dressing gown and shuffling out in his slippers. “Can we
keep this brief?”

“Only if you give me the good bits right
off,” said Henry, sounding far too cheerful for how tired Alex was
feeling.

“Humbug,” said Alex grumpily. He
accepted the mug of tea Henry handed him, took a sip, made a face, then added
sugar and milk to acceptable levels.

Henry just chuckled. “I’d say you should
watch all those calories, but you’re still thin as a rail.”

“I burn them off,” said Alex, not
bothering to explain that it was through magic rather than whatever nefarious
ideas he was sure Henry was concocting.

“You’re being good
during the Courtship, though, right?” asked Henry.

Alex snorted. “You only care that the
family would lose face, but yes, I’m being a good little boy while I’m part of
a formal Courtship.” His tea was now acceptably adulterated, so he
rummaged in his cupboards for a tin of biscuits. He’d been full to the brim a
few hours ago, but nervousness seemed to have burned it all off.

“So, where were you seated? How’d the gift
go over? And the clothes?” asked Henry impatiently.

Alex ate a biscuit defiantly, washing it down
with more tea before answering. “The clothes made an impression as
expected, the gift was much appreciated for its thoughtfulness, and I was
seated to Julian’s left.”

Henry looked surprised. “Right up front,
and not down with the rabble?” he asked, snagging a biscuit from the tin
when Alex brought it too close.

“Right up front, and I was second to last
in the interviews, too,” said Alex, taking a seat and hoping that would be
enough for now.

“Pembroke was first, I take it?” said
Henry. He always did have a better understanding of these things than Alex.

“And Willoughby
third,” said Alex, between bites.

“These are pretty good,” said Henry,
stealing another biscuit. “Gift from Mum?”

“I can buy my own biscuits,” said
Alex defensively, though in truth he had no idea where they’d come from. Still,
they were in his cupboard and tasted good, and tonight that was all he cared
about.

“How was the
sister?” asked Henry.

Alex had a feeling this was Henry’s real
interest, so he drew the moment out just because he could while Henry munched
on filched biscuits. “Ms. Fitzhugh was very nice, and she’s thinking of
doing her own Courtship once Julian’s settled,” said Alex. “Why, are
you thinking of settling down?”

“Nah, just wondering if the widow was
getting a bit lonely,” said Henry, flashing the smile that had won his way
into many unexpected places in high society, most of them the bedrooms of women
he had no business bedding.

Alex rolled his eyes. “I assure you, she
will be fully occupied for some time. Mandeville was practically family, and
she is properly in mourning.”

“Mmm, I never could stand the
criers,” said Henry. “Well, anyway, what’d you request for tea? One
of those awful girly things you used to do with Mum and the girls?”

Alex shuddered; while he’d enjoyed the array of
finger foods, they were the only good memory he had of taking high tea with the
women of the Benedict household. “No.”

Henry laughed. “Well,
then, what?”

“I’m tired, you’ve heard enough,”
said Alex, strangely protective of that intimate conversation. “I’ve got
to get some rest if I’m going to get dragged back out for more shopping.”

“More?” asked
Henry, and Alex sighed.

“More. I’ve only got one more gift ready,
and Fauna’s threatened me with bodily harm if I try to repeat an outfit.”

“You poor man. Well, I’ll let you be,
then,” said Henry, stealing one last biscuit and draining his tea.
“But I expect to hear all about it if you get a bit from young Julian,
he’s quite the looker.”

Alex couldn’t even be bothered to respond to
that, and he waved halfheartedly over his teacup as Henry took his leave. At
least he had the decency to close the front door behind him.

CHAPTER
9

In Which There Is a Minor Incident and a Magical Kiss

“You did magic right off?” said
Flora, sounding disgusted. She and Fauna had decided to double up on him today,
unfortunately.

“Flashy,” agreed
Fauna.

Alex laughed. “You wanted me to wear
diamond cufflinks the size of chestnuts, and you’re calling my butterfly trick
flashy?”

She sniffed and sipped her tea, but didn’t
retract her criticism. They never did.

They were meeting at a very exclusive
couturier’s today, Flora having insisted that he needed the very best if he was
to keep making a proper impression, and then Fauna having insisted on coming
along to keep him from buying more black.

“But I look good in black,” he’d
protested, but they’d overruled him, this time with the help of the designer.

They were having tea now and waiting for his
first fitting in the casual suit that he was instructed to wear for his
upcoming picnic with Julian. “The watch fob worked wonderfully,
anyway,” he said, pulling it out and admiring the alien beauty of it once
again.

“I have no idea why she let you get that
weird thing,” said Flora with a little moue of distaste.

“Because she knew I’d have bought it
myself and caused a scandal,” said Alex, tucking it back away. It did its
work the best when he was holding it, but he had no desire to listen to the
cacophony of magic present between the couturier and their clientele.

“He had that
look,” said Fauna with an aggrieved sigh.

Alex resisted the urge to stick out his tongue.
“Julian was very pleased by his gift, anyway, thank you for that.”

“We’ll see if he wears them,” said
Fauna dubiously, though she herself had vetted the gift.

Alex rolled his eyes. “He hardly leaves
the house, how would you know what he wears?”

The girls laughed. “Oh, we’ll find out.
Besides, now that his Courtship has started, he’ll have to do even more
shopping than you will.”

“They don’t really expect him to have a
different outfit for every single date, do they?” asked Alex, appalled.

The girls tittered. “He can mix and match,
but he’ll need a lot of pieces to keep from repeating himself,” said
Flora, with the air of someone telling a child something they ought to have
already known.

They always had been worse
together.

He was actually grateful when it came time to
be shoved into the suit they’d chosen. He’d managed to get them to compromise
from the pink they were going to choose to a more suitable deep aubergine. He
had to admit it wasn’t as bad as he’d feared; the couturier knew his stuff, and
he’d managed to use touches of a cool silvery grey throughout the outfit to
keep from making Alex look like a particularly cranky eggplant.

“May I ask, if I were to require a special
costume, for instance, if the St. Albans Courtship would include a
masquerade…” began Alex, watching as the designer’s face lit up.

“Then you would of course come to me, and
I will dress you in such magnificent fashion,” he said with a grin,
“that even your sisters would approve, yes?”

Alex relaxed and grinned back. “Oh yes, if
you think there’ll be time, it’s usually only a few days’ notice.”

“Nonsense, for such an occasion we will
make special exception. Like the Americans with their film awards,” he
said, looking very pleased indeed.

“Good,” said Alex.
“Perhaps for that, I’ll leave them home.”

The designer laughed, and directed the seamstress
to tuck in Alex’s coat a little further, emphasising the narrowness of his
waist. Alex admired himself in the mirror, and wondered what sort of thing he
might wear to a ball.

~ ~ ~

Alex managed to shake his sisters once they’d
taken him to get appropriate amethyst and silver accessories for the outfit.
The girls even insisted on a second pocket watch and chain in silver to match,
though the fob was allowed to stay. Alex was happy to buy anything they
directed him to by that point, since it wasn’t his money and he could always
exchange it for something he didn’t loathe later.

After picking up a few more things on his own,
Alex gave in to her prodding and headed over to see Lapointe. “So,”
she asked, as soon as he came into her office, “how’d it go?”

“No one is going to ask me about anything
else until this is over, are they?” he said with a laugh, flopping onto
her beastly sofa.

“Nope,” she said cheerfully.
“But if you agree to tell me first, I’ll let you sweep me away for coffee
so the rest of the gossips can’t find you.”

“And you’ll fill me in on the case?”
asked Alex, pretending to think about it.

“Yep,” she said,
already gathering her things.

Alex grinned. “It’s a
deal,” he said.

Before he could get up, a new obstacle blocked
the doorway in the form of Agent Smedley. “I see you’re quite the charmer
when you want to be,” said Smedley, waving this morning’s society page at
Alex, with its marginally accurate article about last night’s proceedings.

Alex pretended to pout. “I thought you
were already fond of my charms,” he said. A glance at Lapointe showed her
trying not to laugh; his fake flirting had never worked on her, which made it
all the more entertaining to watch.

“You’re not my type, bean pole,” said
Smedley, “Or should I be calling you ‘the dark horse that came from behind
to overtake the pack in the race for Julian St. Albans’ broken heart’?”

“Does it really say
that?” said Lapointe.

Alex sighed. “It really
does,” he said disgustedly.

That got her to laugh, and
Smedley as well.

“They should be ashamed to write prose
like that,” said Alex. “It doesn’t even flow.”

“Oh, really?” said
Lapointe. “What would you suggest?”

Alex harrumphed and crossed his arms over his
chest, refusing to acknowledge the question as beneath him. Instead he pulled
out his watch fob and began to fondle it, sitting sideways on the couch and
ignoring them both.

They kept talking, but he let that fade out,
opening his other hearing, bathing in the soothing hum of the building’s
high-end wards. They were well-constructed and familiar, the pattern of their
music like a symphony of orderly magic, and he sometimes listened to them just
to calm his mind. Today, though, he dismissed them and delved deeper, finding
the soothing thread of Lapointe’s quit smoking amulet; a tinkling forget-me-not
on Smedley’s keys; a surprising, sinuous attraction spell on someone out in the
offices around them.

Alex catalogued and dismissed each of these
little personal charms and he was surprised to find underneath that he could
hear that same insidious melody he’d been hearing ever since this case began.

“Did any new evidence come in today?”
asked Alex, coming abruptly out of his trance and interrupting their banter.

They both looked at him like
he’d grown another head.

“Evidence! On the Mandeville murder? The
whole reason I’m doing this ridiculous Courtship?” he asked again,
standing and slipping the watch fob back in its pocket.

Smedley’s brows knit. “We finally got the
warrant in order and brought in his personal property, but it’s all with
Armistead.”

“Sod Armistead,” said Alex, making a
beeline for the evidence laboratory, a place he generally tried to avoid.

Lapointe and Smedley trailed in his wake,
Smedley asking, “Does he do this a lot?”

Lapointe chuckled. “You can’t tell me you
hadn’t heard of his reputation before this,” she said.

Smedley chuckled. “He is an odd one, but
if he can cut down on the time they spend filtering through all of Mandeville’s
possessions, even Armistead might be grateful.”

Lapointe watched as Alex burst into the room
full of sealed bags and boxes and then took out his new charm and went all
still again, while Armistead tried to give him a dressing-down for
interrupting. “I wouldn’t count on it,” she said wryly, holding the
door for Smedley to precede her.

“…can’t just come running in here
without so much as a greeting!” Armistead was saying, while Alex blithely
ignored him, though he didn’t totally tune them out the way he had on the
couch. He had to be aware of his surroundings enough to find the one item he
was looking for amongst the clutter.

“You should know it’s no use when he’s
like this,” said Lapointe, gently pulling Armistead away.

Alex took advantage of Armistead’s distraction
to step over to the open evidence box he’d been rummaging in. Inside there
seemed to be the contents of Mandeville’s writing desk, from a packet of old
letters from Julian to a pen and inkwell. “It’s in here,” said Alex,
picking up the box and taking it to the last bare work table.

“Gloves,” said
Lapointe, sauntering up to him with the box in hand.

“Oh, yes, thank you,” said Alex,
tucking away his watch fob and putting on, not the annoyingly insulating latex
gloves from the box, but his own fine white cotton crime scene gloves, pulled
from an inside pocket and still sealed in their little packet from the
department-approved cleaners.

He reached into the box and pulled out the
bagged items one by one, laying them out on the table, pushing items away as
they proved to be magically null. Soon he had a half-dozen items in front of
him, all of them the sort of thing you might expect a rich man to have charmed
for one thing and another.

The sound was stronger now,
too.

“It was hidden in plain sight,” said
Alex, filching a pen to sign the first log sheet before using his pocket knife
to break the seal. He pulled out the item of the bag, a lovely set of inkwell
and pen rest, the two glass phials cradled in a filigreed metal stand, one
capped and one left open for a quill to rest inside.

Alex brushed his finger over the opening of the
second phial and felt the spell reaching out just before everything went black.

~ ~ ~

Alex woke not in a hospital as he’d feared, but
laid out on a couch rather more comfortable than the one in Lapointe’s office.
“Wha-” croaked Alex, and he accepted a sip of water before trying
again. “What happened?”

“Smedley caught you,” said Lapointe,
looking worriedly amused. “Then Armistead sealed the inkwell up in one of
those fancy spellproof lock boxes, all the while ranting about you and your
cotton gloves.”

Alex chuckled. “Latex wouldn’t have saved
me this headache, I don’t think,” he said. He considered sitting up, but
decided he might as well lie here as anywhere. At least here it was
comfortable, and he even had a pillow. “Whose?”

Lapointe chuckled. “Smedley’s, of course.
He’s off hovering over the evidence wizard, but he’s told me to tell you that
no, you can’t put his couch in my office.”

“Can you get one just like it?” asked
Alex, making his best puppy eyes, which he expected were rather better than
usual, given how he felt. His head pounded like he’d been hit between the eyes,
and he could feel the alien magic still trying to work on him, though
ineffectually now that it was cut off from its source.

“Nope,” she said, making him sip more
water through the straw. “Feel up to some paracetamol?” she asked,
waving a pair of pills in his line of vision.

“Please,” he said, sitting up
gingerly so he could take them properly with the last of the water. Sitting up
seemed to clear some of his head. “They should see if they can get a
warrant for any similar artefacts still in the St. Albans home.”

“We should,” she agreed, “if we
can find a judge who’ll authorise it. It was hard enough getting Mandeville’s
things.”

“I suspect if you can figure out what this
one does, they’ll be happy to have anything else like it safely gone from their
lives,” said Alex. “Coffee?” he asked hopefully.

Lapointe laughed. “If you’re well enough
to ask for coffee, you’re well enough for me to let the medical mage in here to
examine you while I make you up a cup.”

Alex sighed, but given the lingering
contamination he could still feel buzzing in his blood, he couldn’t disagree.
“All right,” he said, “but only if he closes the blinds. I don’t
need the rest of them watching me get magically probed.”

“At least it’ll only be
your magic he’ll be probing,” she said with a grin.

Alex waited until she was almost out the door
before he said, “That’s the problem.”

Her laugh made him feel
almost as much better as the water had.

The medical mage slipped in and closed the
blinds. “I would’ve shut them anyhow,” he said good-naturedly.
“I’m Dr. Geoffrey Tamlinson.” Alex spared a moment to enjoy the sight
of Tamlinson’s fine physique, compactly athletic and well-displayed in the
medical scrubs he was wearing.

“I know,” said Alex, feeling annoyingly
shy. He’d admired this young man from afar since he’d been hired, but had no
excuse to be introduced. This wasn’t the excuse he’d been hoping for, either.
“Oh, er, Alex. Alex Benedict,” he added belatedly, holding out his
hand for shaking.