Dawn licked her lips. Now the questions became harder and the stomach squirrels more diabolical.
“My mother used to tell me stories of other types of creatures who walked this earth and lived among us. Not just angels and demons, but other beings that dwell in the night and shadows. Are you one of those?” Dear God, was she living among a family of demons? Fear snaked cold fingers around her heart. She didn’t want to believe that she had agreed to the advances of an agent of Satan, but he seemed too morose at times to be a winged angel.
His chest heaved in a sigh and he spread his hands. “Yes and no. Life is not black and white, good or evil. Do you remember when Elijah spoke of a clock and balance? Imagine an old grandfather clock, and underneath hangs a pendulum that swings one way and then another, constantly trying to find a balance. My family is one side, but there is another side too.”
“Are you children of God?” If he was neither angel nor demon, what did that leave? She tried to remember the stories her mother told in hushed whispers at night because her father dismissed them as nonsense. Her mind seized on stone masters, winged creatures, and others that scuttled in the dark ferreting out a person’s deepest secrets. Which one fitted his countenance? A stone master.
A faint laugh huffed his chest, and he smiled briefly. “I’ll give you another analogy. Imagine a grand palace and consider all those who live under its roof. You have the king and queen, surrounded by their royal children. Then there are courtiers and nobles. Under them are ordinary folk trying to make a living and carrying on down to the servants who labour in the kitchens.”
Here was a concept she could understand, a kingly Creator and creatures arrayed in descending order beneath him. “And which character in the palace more accurately portrays your family?”
His lips twitched. “We are the servants sweeping the halls and cleaning the privy.”
A short laugh burst from Dawn’s throat, and she slapped a hand over her mouth. “That doesn’t sound very…celestial.”
His face remained passive but humour sparkled in his eyes. “We do what is necessary, not always what is pleasant.”
“But I still don’t understand who or what you are? How old are you exactly?” The vital question could no longer be contained. She had to know.
“My parents established Ravenswing Manor. Julian was born a decade after the house was built. I was born a decade after that, and Lettie was a joyous surprise twenty years after me.”
The map of the estate was dated 1580. Simple math made the siblings’ birthdates 1590, 1600 and 1620. “You’re two hundred and eighty years old?”
He nodded. “As you have surmised, we age far slower, but we do age and we can die. As happened to Julian.”
She drew a short breath and her muscles tensed for flight while her mind exclaimed no, impossible. She should have leapt to her feet, called him a liar, and dashed from the room. But the pieces she had discovered over the week fitted together and created a net that kept her from fleeing. “And Elijah is older than the seventeen or so he appears to be, I presume?”
His face remained still, only his eyes reflecting his concern. “Elijah was born in 1840, three months after Julian died.”
It was as she suspected, even though part of her couldn’t believe it. Would she awaken from an opium-induced haze and find this all a make-believe world? “What are you – angels or demons?”
He let out a sigh and took the chaise opposite her. “In Greek history, we are named as Elementals. It is an all-encompassing label, just as all people who walk this earth are called humans. We then have divisions as you have Englishmen or Americans.”
“Or you have a genus and then subspecies?” She wondered if she should have grabbed her notebook to write all this down.
A brief smile flashed over his face. “Yes, if you will. Ours is a story as old as creation, a tale of mother earth and father sky. Various cultures and religions all have similar origin stories and give them many different names. The Greeks called them Gaia and Ouranos.”
She knew that mythology. “Their children were the Titans, and each generation of gods was supplanted by their offspring.”
He leaned his forearms on his thighs. “We were created as their servants from the four forces that make up this world: water, earth, air, and fire. Gaia crafted her servants from water and earth, Ouranos used fire and air. We are the two sides that the pendulum swings between as we each serve our creators.”
Her conversation with Hector sprang into her mind and she whispered a name. “The Hamiltons. They are the other side to your family.”
Lord Seton arched an eyebrow. “Yes. They are servants of Ouranos.”
“They killed your brother.” When she answered an advertisement for a gardener she had no idea she would stumble into an ancient battle between mythical creatures. He should have made that clear in the fine print.
His hands turned into fists and his body went rigid. His grey gaze turned to granite. “And they nearly took Lettie from me as well. I will not rest until I deliver justice upon them, however long it takes.”
Dawn’s desire to catalogue and describe emerged and took control of her overwhelmed mind. “If Elemental is your genus, what is your subspecies? Are you earth or water?”
He released his fist and leaned back. “I am earth, as is Elijah. Lettie is a water element. We have had many names over the millennia. In the seventeenth century, Paracelsus wrote of the four elements and named us undine, gnome, sylph, and salamander.”
“Gnome?” Dawn bit her lip to keep her face impassive. The last word she would use to describe the well-built earl was gnome.
His brows pulled together and he pursed his lips. “Earth Elementals prefer to be called gargoyles. As families or clans, we refer to ourselves as Warders, for we are the guardians of this earth. We have our own servants – the watchers.”
“The ravens.” Snatches of nonsense her mother whispered made a new sort of sense, and she began to understand the unseen world that had ensnared her. Was the bird that used to watch her every day in Whetstone attached to a Warder family? Had Lord Seton watched as she tended her backyard and grew from girl to woman?
“You know of them?”
“Yes. We had a raven in our garden at home in Whetstone that my mother called the watcher.” She had thought it a mere coincidence, but what if her mother knew of this world?
“The ravens are our eyes. I knew as soon as you stepped off the train that you were…not what I expected. We also have others that are stationary, like the gargoyles on the gate.”
She had joked to Mouse that the large black birds watched her every movement and reported them back to a stone master. How else did someone know to leave her breakfast when she roused?
“You’ve been watching me all this time. Spying on me.” She wiped her hands on the embroidered silk skirt. The squirrels in her stomach began turning somersaults like tiny circus performers. Dawn rose and walked to the French doors.
“The bird doesn’t see you undress or bathe, if that concerns you. It is more like the tug on the bell in a parlour when tea is required,” his voice came from behind her.
Did that make it easier or harder to reconcile that he watched her? For how long had other eyes observed her? “Did you send the raven to our garden?”
“No. There are a handful of Warder families in England. That raven would belong to those who have a care for Leicestershire. But that it took up residence in your garden is significant. I shall enquire with the Lord Warder of that district.”