The Great Game (Royal Sorceress) (25 page)

“Mother will probably send me to a convent,” Lady Elizabeth said. “Or try to find another man.”

The latter was more likely, Gwen decided. After all, no one knew about the engagement – or about the compromising letters. And Lady Elizabeth would be a good catch for anyone, as long as her reputation remained unblemished.

“And she’s not going to be happy about what you did to her,” Lady Elizabeth added. “Can’t you make her forget?”

“I don’t think so,” Gwen said, ruefully. A skilled Charmer could make someone forget something, but it never seemed to go away permanently. It was merely buried at the back of someone’s mind, awaiting something that would release the memory. “It wouldn’t stay forgotten.”

Society’s rules said that she should leave Lady Elizabeth to her fate, no matter how little she deserved punishment. And Lady Bracknell
would
punish her daughter for compromising herself so badly – of that, Gwen had no doubt. If she’d had even a hint that the letters existed, she would have married Lady Elizabeth off as quickly as possible.

Gwen shook her head. No one should have to be treated like that.

“I have an idea,” she said. “Would you like to come work at Cavendish Hall?”

Lady Elizabeth stared at her in absolute disbelief. “Are you serious?”

“Yes,” Gwen said. “You’re an educated girl – and I need a secretary who happens to be female. And you have a high position in society, so my detractors can’t complain that someone from the lower orders is looking at their letters.”

“Oh,” Lady Elizabeth said. She smiled, wanly. “Too few men willing to open your letters?”

Gwen nodded. She received hundreds of letters every day – and Doctor Norwell had proved himself reluctant to open them when she wasn’t at Cavendish Hall. Lord Mycroft’s clerks didn’t have that reluctance, but she couldn’t keep them indefinitely. Lady Elizabeth would make a good secretary – and she could say that she was keeping the girl somewhere where she could see her, if anyone asked. On the other hand...

“Howell might see your new position as a chance to force you to spy for him,” she added, slowly. “You would have to refuse if he contacted you.”

Lady Elizabeth paled. “I’m never going to get away from it, am I?”

“It could be worse,” Gwen told her, sharply. “You could have people whispering that your mother lay with a devil before you were born.”

“But if the letters did come out,” Lady Elizabeth said, “you would have to sack me...”

“Why?” Gwen asked. “I don’t care about your reputation in society – and neither should you.”

She shook her head. “As long as you don’t actually betray
me
, you will always have a place at Cavendish Hall,” she said. “And if Howell contacts you, you can tell me and we can work something out.”

No one would have dared blackmail one of Master Thomas’s people, not when he took a paternal interest in his subordinates. But Gwen’s reputation was nowhere near as fearsome...

Yet
, she told herself. Something would definitely have to be done about Howell.

“If you want to come with me, pack a bag of clothes and we can go now,” she said, firmly. “Or you can come later...”

Lady Elizabeth stood up. “I’ll come now,” she said. “Just let me get cleaned up before I pack.”

Gwen watched her go, then closed her eyes and concentrated on a mental impression of Gareth St. Peter, one of Cavendish Hall’s Talkers.
Gareth
!

Lady Gwen
, his mental voice echoed back, two seconds later. As always, it felt difficult to push her thoughts so far. And to think that a Talker could send a mental message right around the world!
What can I do for you
?

Gwen concentrated. The problem with mental communication was that it was hard
not
to send plenty of unwanted impressions along with the message. Talkers tended to be more than a little neurotic, simply because they had few secrets from their brethren. And very few people had secrets from them.

Lady Elizabeth is going to be staying at Cavendish Hall for the foreseeable future
, Gwen sent.
Have one of the smaller suites prepared for her, then have one of the sealed offices next to mine opened up and cleaned out.

Understood
, he sent back.
I shall pass on the message. Inspector Lestrade left another message for you, Milady. He needs to see you at Mortimer Hall.

Gwen blinked.
Did he say why?

No, Milady
, Gareth said.
He just said that it was important
.

I’ll go there directly
, Gwen said.
Tell Martha to help Lady Elizabeth settle in
.

She broke the mental connection and staggered, feeling sweat forming on her forehead. Laymen claimed that mental communication should be effortless, proving – once again – just how little laymen actually knew. Even experienced Talkers had problems maintaining a link without eventually collapsing – or risking madness. Master Thomas had warned Gwen to use mental communication as little as possible... although she’d had the impression that it was to prevent her from giving away too many secrets while she was using the talent. It was so hard to control one’s thoughts.

It wasn’t far from Bracknell Hall to Mortimer Hall, she reminded herself. She could put Lady Elizabeth in the carriage and have the coachman take her to Cavendish Hall, while Gwen herself walked or flew to Mortimer Hall. Or she could just have the carriage take her there first and pick up another cab to take her back home afterwards. Shaking her head, she stood up and called for a servant. The maid who answered didn’t seem to find it odd when she asked to be pointed to Lady Bracknell’s room.

Lady Bracknell was sitting on the bed, a thoroughly murderous expression on her face that became fear when she saw Gwen. Clearly, her mind wasn’t formidable enough to break the Charm outright, although that wouldn’t last. Charm, particularly blatant Charm, rarely did, unless it was renewed time and time again. Gwen couldn’t help being torn between two different emotions; pleasure that Lady Bracknell had finally run into someone stronger than she was and guilt for acting too much like Lord Blackburn. He’d believed that magicians were naturally superior to non-magicians and Charmers were superior to ever other kind of magician.

“Your daughter is going to be taking up employment at Cavendish Hall,” Gwen said, without preamble. “It is a very important job that only an educated woman of high birth can do, so I trust that you will raise no objections. Should someone ask, you can tell them that you are honoured that your daughter is serving her country.”

Lady Bracknell’s face seemed to darken with unspeakable rage. She would probably be horrified at the thought of her daughter being outside her control – and only realise that most of the magicians in Cavendish Hall were either male or from lower class backgrounds later. Gwen made a mental note to ensure that
someone
was serving as a chaperone before Lady Bracknell even realised that was going to be a problem.
Gwen
might not have any suitors, but the same couldn’t be said for Lady Elizabeth.

“She will be in a much stronger position for making a good match,” Gwen assured Lady Bracknell, “
if
she chooses to marry. There are quite a few magicians who rank higher than your family, socially, and they would have a chance to meet her...”

She had to smile at the woman’s expression. They weren’t
that
high up the social tree – but that would change, if they found a really good match for their daughter. Which raised the question of just why they’d agreed to allow her to marry Sir Travis... had someone told them that he was going to be further ennobled? Or was there something going on that she wasn’t seeing? She made a mental note to enquire of David – or Lord Mycroft – and then concentrated on Lady Bracknell.

“I don’t blame you for being upset at how her engagement ended, but you should understand that it wasn’t her fault,” she added. “If you give her a hard time, she might simply decide not to come back to your home. I suggest that you give her some time to recover – and that you take the time to meditate on what is actually important.”

Hypocrite
, a voice in her head pointed out. Had she treated her own mother any better? And Lady Mary hadn’t been anything
like
as bad as Lady Bracknell. How could she blame Lady Elizabeth if she lived on her salary from the Royal College and never went back to Bracknell Hall?

“Now” – she allowed Charm to slip into her voice – “you can wait here until after we’re gone, then you can leave the room and do whatever you see fit.”

She stood up, took one look around the ornate bedroom – with only a small bed, suggesting that Lord and Lady Bracknell never slept together – and then strode out of the room without looking back. Lady Elizabeth had packed with commendable speed and was waiting in the lobby, a servant carrying a massive trunk standing next to her. Gwen made a show of picking it up with one hand – actually, she used her magic to hold it in the air – and carrying it out towards the carriage. It was easy enough to secure it to the roof.

“I’ve made arrangements for you to be met when you reach Cavendish Hall,” she said, as she followed Lady Elizabeth into the carriage. “And I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Lady Elizabeth blinked at her, nervously. “Where are you going?”

“I just need to visit Mortimer Hall,” Gwen told her. She couldn’t blame Lady Elizabeth for being nervous. Gwen had been nervous when she’d gone to study under Master Thomas... and she’d always wanted to use her magic. “Don’t worry. I’ll find my own way back home.”

Chapter Twenty-One

M
ost of the reporters seemed to have decided that Mortimer Hall wasn’t going to give them anything more newsworthy and left, leaving only a handful of junior reporters to watch the gates. Gwen rolled her eyes as she jumped down from the carriage, said goodbye to Lady Elizabeth and walked up towards the policeman on duty outside the gates. He looked surprisingly pleased to see her.

“Too many relatives have come to try to see the house,” he explained, as he opened the gates. “Several of them even wanted to argue with the Inspector when I refused to let them in.”

Gwen had to smile as she walked up to Mortimer Hall. It might have been falling apart, but it was still in a very wealthy part of London. Whoever owned it could use it to boost their status – if, of course, they had the money to renovate it. They might discover, eventually, that they had inherited a white elephant. Gwen knew enough about household management, thanks to Lady Mary, to know that parts of the house would simply rot away without constant maintenance. A single servant could not have hoped to keep pace with everything that had to be done.

“Lady Gwendolyn,” the Sergeant on duty at the door said. “The Inspector is in the reading room, studying the late owner’s papers.”

“Thank you,” Gwen said, keeping her amusement hidden. She knew that Lestrade
hated
paperwork – and if the case wasn’t so political, he would have passed it down to someone lower in the department. But then, she felt the same way too. “I’ll see him in there.”

The reading room was a small library in its own right, Gwen realised as she stepped through the door. Each of the walls were lined with bookshelves, mostly copies of history’s finest works of literature. The complete works of Cicero, Cato, Caesar and hundreds of other famous Romans dominated one wall, while another held more recent books from England, France and Russia. One section held a number of books written in Arabic; Sir Travis must have brought them back from Turkey. And there were even a couple of books on magic, one written by Benjamin Franklin in his final years. Franklin’s contribution would never be officially recognised, but he’d added greatly to humanity’s understanding of some of the talents.

Lestrade was seated at a desk, a cup of tea beside him, reading through a stack of papers. He looked pleased to see Gwen too, if only because he had an excuse to put the papers to one side. Gwen couldn’t help wondering if Mycroft had sent some of his clerks to recover anything classified before Lestrade started his investigation, before deciding that it probably didn’t matter. Lestrade might have had only a very limited imagination, but he was one of the most trustworthy men in Scotland Yard.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, as he turned the chair around to face her. “There was a curious development earlier this morning.”

Gwen sat down on a rickety sofa and smiled at him. “What happened?”

Lestrade rang the bell for Polly. “Polly can probably explain it better than I can,” he said. “She was the one who took the message.”

Gwen looked up as Polly entered the room. “More tea, Inspector?” She asked. “Or for Lady Gwen?”

“Not right away,” Lestrade said. “Can you tell Lady Gwen what happened this morning?”

Polly bobbled a short curtsey to Gwen. “I was responsible for settling bills with the tradesmen,” she said. “Even... even after the Master died, I was still responsible for it.”

That was...
odd
, Gwen knew, but it did make sense. Sir Travis hadn’t had the wealth to set up permanent accounts with the businesses that handled food deliveries into the capital, so he would have had to pay tradesmen every week. Giving the money to Polly and allowing her to handle it might have seemed better to him than doing it himself. After all, what sort of nobleman allowed himself to be seen shaking hands with a businessman?

My father
, she thought, ruefully. Lord Rudolf had rebuilt the family fortune through business – which might have reflected badly on him in society, if his daughter hadn’t been a devil-child.

“They’d heard about his death and come seeking payment before all of the money was locked away,” Polly continued. “I had to pay everyone... until the Turk arrived. He demanded four
thousand
pounds – again.”

Gwen stared at her. Four thousand pounds was a minor fortune. A person with even a thousand pounds in the bank would be considered wealthy. He might not be able to afford a home in Central London, or even rent a flat in Pall Mall, but he could live comfortably for a very long time.