Illusions of Fate

“See? Disappointing.”

“It’s true, it’s not very exciting. I mainly studied healing magic. The mending of bones, the repair of the body. Not very glamorous.”

I flex my fingers. “That’s how you worked up the glove so quickly. But you said ‘studied.’ Why did you stop? Too middle class for a nobleman to be playing at doctor?”

His smile effectively shuts him off from me, tight as a mask. “I found my interests shifted significantly when I had to come to Avebury.”

We spend the rest of the meal in silence. But when he stands to leave, his mask drops off into mischievousness. “I have a gift for you.”

“No more gifts!”

“You’ll want this one.” He hurries to a side table and lights a lamp there. Muttering to himself like I do when working out a particularly complex equation, he blocks my view with his body. After a minute, he turns around, a perfect sphere of glowing brightness hovering above his palm. It looks like a miniature sun.

“There! I can’t fix the whole country, and it will only last a few days, but I present you with the sun, on behalf of my dreadfully boring magic.”

He bows low, holding out his hand. I reach out tentatively, afraid of being burned, but the globe merely hovers above my hand where I slide it on top of Finn’s. It’s golden and deliciously warm and instantly makes me happier and more at ease than I’ve been in weeks.

I laugh, delighted, and by the look on Finn’s face you’d think I was the one who had given him an absurd and wonderful gift.

Eighteen

TWO DAYS LATER, I SIT IN ELEANOR’S PARLOR drinking the sourest lemonade in the history of liquids. The birds have not followed me here. Neither has Finn, for once.

“Sorry,” Eleanor says. “I am afraid Mrs. Jenkins is at a loss for what to serve to someone who dislikes tea. She’s not good at improvisation.”

“It’s very fresh.” My voice squeezes out from my tortured throat.

“I am glad you stopped by, though! I have so much news.”

“I had to figure out somewhere Finn—” When I use his first name, Eleanor’s eyebrows raise slyly, and I realize I’ve given her more gossip. “Lord Ackerly wouldn’t come. He’s been like a shadow.” I pause, “Well. I mean less literally, of course. He waits outside the hotel when I leave in the morning, no matter which part I try to sneak out of. He haunts the library, insists on walking me through the park, joins me for every meal.”

Eleanor stirs her third heaping spoonful of sugar into her tea, a dreamy smile on her face. “That’s wonderful.”

“No, it’s not! He’s hovering.” Not that he’s not good company, it’s just that I have no say in the matter. I glare at my shadow, though I know he can only be either listening or watching. He assures me he does neither.

“You should hear what Arabella Crawford had to say when she heard that he’d shadowed you. You’ll remember her from the gala—encased in her shiny, black dress like a sausage?”

A note of panic sounds in my ears. “How did she hear?”

“I told her, of course.”

“But Finn threatened you! Oh, no. I’ll forbid him from cursing you, but I can’t say how much he’ll listen.” After Hugh missed two important exams, I asked Finn to remove the curse early. He felt I was entirely too forgiving, but when I heard Hugh crying softly in his carrel I couldn’t help but relent.

Eleanor laughs. “Silly girl. Self-preservation is a skill of mine. I would never cross Lord Ackerly. At least not in a way he’s likely to discover. No, he told me to tell.”

“He what?”

“The morning after that horrid business with Lord Downpike, your Finn came for a visit and asked if I would please tell everyone I could possibly think of that he had shadowed you. I was to spread it like the gossip of the season, which was no great task, because it is.”

“But—I thought he—well, the night of the gala, he only spoke to me in secret. And the past two days we have gone nowhere where your crowd would see us. I assumed he was . . .”

“Ashamed?”

Blushing, I nod.

“If he is, he has an odd way of showing it. There isn’t a cousin-of-a-cousin-of-a-noble that has not heard about it now.”

I don’t know what to do with this information. The way he has been acting, and now to so openly claim me . . . but why spread the word among people whom I don’t know? Why not talk to me about it? Perhaps it is a step on the way to regaining his shadow.