“How kind of you. I’ve never run into any trouble—I’m not a young girl anymore, and I find the trick is to look as unspeakably dull and respectable as one can. This helps,” she added, her smile growing to a small grin as she lifted her hand to display the ring that she was forever tapping on things.
The once-was jewel thief in Alan sharpened at the sight. Dull, it was not. A plain gold band nearly groaned under the weight of an enormous oval-cut ruby ringed with seed pearls.
“You could certainly take someone’s eye out with it, if they bothered you.”
“Family heirloom. Lady Blyth’s own wedding band. Maud was delighted to palm it off on someone else and not have to inherit it herself, or so she says.”
Alan hesitated, then said it anyway. They’d all heard his weaknesses, his worst parts, laid bare. And even though Adelaide had been cool-mannered with Alan at Spinet House after the Barrel disaster, she’d clearly made up her mind about him in the interim, and was behaving with all of her old friendly ease.
“Could I ask you a question?” he said. “Something personal?”
Adelaide’s interest brightened. She folded her hands, obscene ring and all. “By all means.”
“Do you—are you and Sir Robert—” His nerve failed. Some interviewer he was.
“Do I love him?”
Close enough. Blood filled Alan’s cheeks as he nodded.
“Yes. In the way Edwin loves him, and the way he loves Edwin? No. But they trust me to see what they have without wanting to interfere with it, and respect me enough to believe I know what I want. And don’t tell him I said this, but Robin’s a traditionalist at heart. I believe he rather fancies the idea of offering me the protection of his name, along with sliding me sideways into Walter Courcey’s blood-oath.”
“Protection?” Alan couldn’t help smiling. “You don’t seem in need of that.”
“I see it as a way to get the things I want, without the things I don’t want,” she said calmly. “And I’m not like Violet. I don’t mind marrying to make my family happy, and to stop them worrying about me.” Her manner softened into seriousness. “And that’s still a choice made from love. Would I prefer a world where nobody expects me to marry at all, or believes a man’s name will give my life legitimacy? Of course. But that’s not the world I’m living in.”
“Give Maud a couple more decades and she’ll make one,” said Alan.
Adelaide laughed. “No doubt.”
The busy train-silence reigned for a while. They were still within the city, a part of it that Alan had never seen, though the sky was enlarging as they went with the promise of fields to come. Adelaide looked out the window and tapped her ring. She was clearly going to let the subject drop, being too well bred to pry in return about Alan’s views on love and marriage.
Thank fuck. He didn’t know if he had any presentable views. He’d never been in love. Marriage for a man already supporting a family would be a burden rather than a duty. And the best he’d be able to do on the subject of desire would be to hand her one of the Roman books and stumble through the excruciating explanation of the difference between sexual fantasy and personal politics.
Best to steer things out of those waters entirely.
“Did you have any success in Gloucester, then?” he asked. “Track down this Grimm?”
Adelaide jerked her head back to look at him. She brought a hand to her mouth and inclined her head towards the pile of anoraks in the corner.
It took Alan a second to grasp her meaning.
“Really?”
“I’m so sorry! I didn’t explain, did I? I assumed—never mind.” She straightened her face. “I won’t wake him for introductions, but this is the Grimm of Gloucester. Mr. Dufay.”
Alan fumbled after sense. “The one who wrote the song?” No, that one was dead. Alan had stood at the grave with Maud, where the ghost in question had failed to present itself and be helpful.
“His grandson. Or nephew, perhaps? He was vague about it. He is”—Adelaide sighed—“not quite as bad as the letters in person, but not a great deal better.”
Well, she had threatened to drag the Grimm back in her luggage if she couldn’t get the information Edwin wanted. Alan eyed the sleeping man with greater interest. Even folded into the seat corner like a bent wire, Dufay gave the impression of height. The mismatched anoraks fell to a pair of heavy, scuffed boots. The snoring had quietened, but the occasional ripping snort still came from an old, clean-shaven face with oddly delicate features, surrounded by poorly cut shoulder-length hair with the colour and greasy shine of cream.
“Looks like he should be living in a cave on the moors, doesn’t he?” said Adelaide.
“Or like an old sailor determined to drink through the whole voyage,” said Alan, eyeing the canvas bag and boots. “Can he help, then? Does he know about the Last Contract?”
“I’m sure he knows something. For the entire first day he wouldn’t talk to me because I’m not a magician, so God only knows what he thinks the Office of Special Domestic Affairs and Complaints is, for all the years he’s been writing there. Then I told him we knew where the contract was, but that we didn’t have it anymore, and he raged at me for being irresponsible. As if it were my fault!”
Alan, whose fault it was, shifted in his seat. “How did you persuade him to come along, in that case?”
“It was his idea!” said Adelaide. “I was trying to explain what we know, or sort of know, about Lord Hawthorn and Lady Elsie and what Bastoke has been trying to do—and he heard the name Cheetham Hall and the next thing I knew, he was insisting that we leave at once. He’s spent most of the journey asleep. I think he can do it at will,” she added, eyeing Dufay dubiously, “when he doesn’t want to talk.”
And Dufay stayed asleep for the rest of the journey. Or at least did an excellent job of pretending at it. The moment the train shuddered to a halt at the Cheetham village station, Dufay’s eyes cracked open as if a pair of chambermaids had raised the window sashes in unison. Those eyes were brilliantly, piercingly blue, and fixed with suspicion on Alan himself.
“We’ve arrived, Mr. Dufay,” said Adelaide, nodding her thanks at Alan as he hoisted her hatbox in his free hand. “And this is Mr. Ross.”
“Not a magician either,” said Alan, who was feeling needled by that stare.
“Hmph,” said Dufay, a light, throaty sound, and unfolded himself like a clotheshorse.
Thanks to Adelaide’s timetables, there was a carriage and driver waiting at the station to deliver them to Cheetham Hall. Dufay didn’t speak on the way, but nor did he go back to sleep. His attention was keen on the village and then the green-soaked countryside. Watching him, Alan had the sense of an ancient sponge, twisted and parched, that was being slowly rained upon and unfolding its full shape as the water took hold.