The Timeseer's Gambit (The Faraday Files Book 2) (12 page)

There was no arguing with the tone. Chris sighed. He put a bit of theatre into it, because he knew Olivia enjoyed it. “What if I had plans this evening?”

Olivia snorted. “With
who
?” And then, after cocking her head and visibly thinking: “Oh, him. He can wait.”

Chris flushed. “I thought you told me I had to apologize to him!”

Olivia looked at him shrewdly. “You should,” she said primly. “But do my receipts, first.”

Chris bowed his head. “As you say, madam,” he agreed, and she grinned.

With Rosemary in the country and Olivia’s paycheques becoming more and more robust as she grew fonder and fonder of his continued service, Chris had found himself with more excess funds than he’d ever had. At first, he’d squirrelled away every extra copper. His plan had been, of course, to use the saved money to become self-sufficient. He’d resign his position―more successfully, this time―and take Rosemary somewhere where they could be together and he could give her the life she deserved.

Unfortunately, Olivia Faraday was devilishly clever.

She had a way of planting ideas in his head. When she caught him staring longingly at a suspect’s perfectly ironed arrow collar, she’d dropped a sly comment that the look would suit Chris’s neck. He had extra money, so he’d made the purchase. They’d investigated the murder of a 14-year-old girl who’d loved a series of exciting mystery novels for young ladies, which Olivia had encouraged him to skim for clues. A week later, he’d bought the entire set and had them delivered to Rosemary in Summergrove. A few dropped suggestions about how accommodating Miss Rachel Albany was to relocate to the country to care for Rosemary on the wages Chris paid her had him giving the nanny a raise. Her most recent campaign involved convincing him to purchase Rosemary a pony. There were no ponies available for riding at the Summergrove orchards, and Rosemary desperately wanted one, as Elouise Faraday still considered her far too young to learn to ride a proper horse. Somehow, Rosemary herself had gotten wind of the pony project, and her letters were full of little drawings of beautiful unicorn-ponies and plans for what she would name the now-inevitable creature once it arrived at the Summergrove stables.

It wasn’t that he didn’t recognize what she was doing. At first, he’d been fooled, but the most surprising thing about Olivia Faraday was that she wasn’t a very subtle person. Her mercurial moods and sly manipulation at first seemed impossible to navigate. Chris used to be perplexed by the easy way Maris had handled her. He wasn’t anymore. Olivia was, shockingly enough, one of the most predictable and readable people he knew. He was fully wise to her scheme. It was simply that, as time went on… well, “familiar” became “right.” And it was now familiar to come home to an empty house, to have a wallet full of royals, and to be able to give both himself and Rosemary all the things they deserved. Even if she was far from home, and even if he did miss her. She was safe, she was happy, and he finally had a decent pair of trousers that didn’t climb halfway up his calves when he sat carelessly.

One of the purchases that Olivia had planted in him was a portable magic mirror. It came equipped with its own bound gnome which communicated with the gnome at the mirror installed in his foyer. It had to be controlled by that anchoring mirror, and had no chimes of its own to contact the operator or a specific frequency, but it was large enough to hold a conversation, and he could set it up wherever he was in the house for longer and far more comfortable conversations than he could manage standing by his front door.

The mirror was currently glowing a rich russet brown and was babbling excitedly while Chris hunched over his desk and turned another page of ‘binding receipts. He copied down another name. He had a mild headache, both from all the squinting and from all the chattering, but he smiled at the mirror regardless as the voice on the other side paused for a breath. “Is that so?” he asked.
Richard Pillington
, he wrote. Mister Pillington hadn’t appeared in any of the previous waterbinding receipts, but he made a note to crosscheck against other ‘binding types. These days, there was a lot of overlap. No one could afford to be a specialist.

“Yes!” the mirror said excitedly. “It is so! And do you know what else? Missus Faraday says that I can wear some light cosmetics to the next country ball so long as you agree? Oh, you’ll agree, won’t you, Chris?
Please
? Lillian Witherspoon is eight whole months younger than me, and her mother lets her wear rouge
and
kohl to the balls!” The image in the mirror, that of a young girl with a mass of wild curls and a perfectly beautiful doll-like face, bounced up and down excitedly.

Chris was of the opinion that Rosemary was still too young for rouge
or
kohl. He was also becoming aware that he knew less about raising girls than he had previously thought. He wasn’t sure advice from Elouise Faraday was exactly what he wanted, considering how
her
daughter had turned out… but there was no denying that the woman was a lot more experienced than he was.

He deferred to the judgement of a more moderate party. “What does Miss Albany say?” he asked.

He heard her voice faintly. There was no room before the mirror for Rachel Albany when Rosemary was there. Chris’s sister took up one hundred percent of every stage she walked on. But Miss Albany’s voice was soft and familiar and warm as it floated through the linked gnomes and into his ears. “I haven’t expressed an opinion, Mister Buckley,” she said. A tiny smile pulled at Chris’s lips as he heard her voice. “I’ve told Miss Buckley that she should obey what you have to say on the matter.”

“And I told her that she shouldn’t worry, because you’d say yes!” Rosemary chirped. She turned the full power of her big blue eyes onto the mirror. She had learned to flutter her eyelashes most becomingly. “Oh, you
will
say yes, won’t you, Chris?”

If she were standing right here, and could put the cherry on it by tugging at his hand and staring up at him, there was no way he’d be able to resist. Luckily, half a nation and three months had given him some backbone. “Ah,” he said, clearing his throat and turning to his papers. He scanned the current page without really seeing it. “I solicit your opinion, Miss Albany. Speak freely, won’t you?”

“I…” Miss Albany sounded deep in thought. “Well, I think that Miss Buckley’s fourteenth birthday is coming very quickly. That does seem old enough for very, very subtle cosmetics.” She paused and then continued. “Perhaps just enamel and a tiny bit of rouge? Miss Buckley flushes quite red when she’s excited, and a more even complexion would make her look more dignified at the country balls.”

“I do not!” Rosemary protested, and Chris noticed that her colour
did
rise when she was indignant. Well, well. There was a flaw in his sister’s beauty, after all.

“Well,” Chris said, smiling. “If Rosemary doesn’t think she needs it, then―”

Instantly, his sister changed directions. “Oh, no!” she protested. “Chris, she’s right. It’s very serious. I go all blotchy! You have to let me use enamel and rouge, please?
Please
?”

“All right,” he agreed, having already made up his mind. Miss Albany’s opinion in such matters had become the one he fell back on. Once Rosemary noticed that, she would probably become unstoppable, but somehow, she’d failed to make the connection just yet.

Rosemary squealed her excitement. “I love you, Chris! Thank you!” She leaped up from the mirror. “I’m going to go and set a date to go shopping in town with Missus Faraday right away! Thank you, thank you, thank you!” She scurried off.

Chris shook his head, looking back down at his paper.
Eleanor Wardingham.
Aha. She had bound a salamander for one of the other Churches, hadn’t she? Indeed, he’d scribbled her name a few pages back. He put a star beside it. Maybe she was the link they were looking for? He flipped through, trying to find the names of firebinders, specifically, for the other two churches. He jumped near out of his seat when that warm, soft voice said, much closer, “You look busy.”

He glanced back at the mirror. Rosemary was gone, but the mirror wasn’t empty.

Rachel Albany was a strange sort of woman. She always had her dun brown hair pulled back in a tight bun, which made her face look angular and plain. She wore high-collared, button-up, store-bought gowns with no petticoats to give them volume, and she did not appear to wear shaping garments beneath, because her figure was more ruler than hourglass. Nevertheless… nevertheless, Chris had seen Miss Albany in moments of vulnerability. With her hair released from its prison, those lustrous waves were soft and chestnut and softened her chin, nose, cheekbones. Her dark eyes were luminous and deep in the right lighting. He’d seen her in her undergarments once, after a particularly harrowing incident, and there was most certainly a shape beneath the unflattering lines of her dove-grey dresses. A very pleasing shape.

And once, he had kissed her.

Or rather, he’d kissed a faceshifter wearing her like a mask. Which Rachel Albany did not know, and Christopher Buckley could not forget.

When Chris looked at her now, he could see past the hard lines she projected. Rather―he
did
see past them, whether he wanted to or not. The memory of the kiss-that-wasn’t coloured every interaction he had with her. He hadn’t been in the same room as Miss Albany since the spring, and yet he knew there was something between them regardless, and it grew.

“Hello,” he breathed.

Miss Albany coloured. She lowered her eyes for a moment. Chris cursed himself for an idiot, shaking off the stupor and organizing his face. When she glanced back up, he remembered that he was her employer, she was far away, and she had asked him a question. “I’m doing some… research.” He said. “And my eyes are crossing.” He chuckled ruefully.

Miss Albany nodded. “I thought I heard you turning pages. Anything particularly interesting?”

“Ah,” Chris said, and his eyes caught on a name.
Eleanor Wardingham
. Back again, was she? Eagerly, he flipped through, looking for the last church. If Miss Wardingham was on all four… “I suppose,” he mused distractedly. “As exciting as a list of names could be.”

“A list of names?”

He found the receipt for the winter salamander at the Sanctum of the Father’s Sheltering Arms. Quickly, he scanned the document. His eyes fell on the name woven clumsily into place.
Hugh Edwards
. “Dammit.” He slapped his hand down. The Father’s Arms church had been the first attacked, too, hadn’t it? Which made Miss Wardingham entirely unlikely. Another dead end and his mild headache was starting to get less mild.

“Mister Buckley?”

Chris glanced up.

Miss Albany stared at him through the mirror. Her eyes were very focused. “Is everything quite all right?”

Chris ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “Yes,” he said. “I’m sorry, Miss Albany. I’m not especially good company this evening. Olivia―Miss Faraday―she has me combing through a year of receipts for a job and these names are all starting to blur together.”

“Oh.” Miss Albany relaxed. A small smile touched her lips. It brought a little of the softness to her face that he knew was there. “Well, all that extra work will be much appreciated when Rosemary gets her unipony.”

Chris groaned. Miss Albany laughed.

“Oh, no,” he lamented. “She’s even recruited
you
to the mission to acquire Lady Apples?”

“Her name is Autumn Star, now!” Miss Albany pretended great distress. “Do try and keep up, Mister Buckley! Miss Rosemary has decided on a much more dignified name for her future best friend.”

Chris laughed. He leaned close to the mirror. “Don’t breathe a word of it,” he murmured, “but Olivia’s increased my salary again. I actually am intending to have a pony sitting outside Rosemary’s window for her birthday in a month. Perhaps not a horned pony, but she’ll have to settle.”

He expected to earn a real smile from Miss Albany. But the nanny dropped her eyes, and a sad frown flickered across her lips. Chris was alarmed. Had he done something wrong? “Miss Albany?”

“I’m sorry, goodness,” Miss Albany said. She reached up as if to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, even though none had escaped her bun. “It’s none of my affair.”

“Is…” Chris frowned. “Is the pony not a good idea? Am I spoiling her?” Without Fernand―
Gods, Fernand
―to warn him, he found himself blissfully unaware of what was appropriate in these matters. Elouise Faraday apparently considered Rosemary quite the brat and had words for her daughter about Chris’s choices in raising her, words that Olivia imparted with gleeful malice, as if to prove that she was not the only one who completely failed at human interactions.

“Oh, no. Mister Buckley, the pony is lovely. She’s the only girl here without one, and she’ll do well with the responsibility of caring for it. No, it’s just… the way that you phrased that. It made it quite clear that you don’t intend to visit for the date.”

Chris bit his lip. “Miss Albany…” He sighed. He hadn’t expected this from her. Especially not from her. “You know I can’t.”