Dufay was first out of the carriage, surprisingly sprightly, when it delivered them to the front of the house. Alan and Adelaide took more time. Alan felt relieved that Adelaide, too, seemed to need a moment to take in the size of Cheetham Hall.
It was a glorified series of large boxes, Alan told himself. Grey stone and square, poised within the green unfolding of nature brought to heel. Huge windows stared down at him, their sight rheumed with clouds that interrupted the patchy blue of the reflected sky. The wind was softly cold, puffing Alan’s hair into his face, and smelled of clean nothingness tinged with grass. Between the enormity of the house and the mingling of liveried footmen and women in white dresses spilling like a foam-tipped wave through the enormous front doors, Alan felt spongelike in the other direction. He wanted to shrivel up and hide.
Voices rose. The white dresses were Maud and Violet, dashing down the steps, and Robin and Edwin were behind them, and—
Alan’s eyes stopped moving when he caught sight of Jack, with an abruptness that made it shamefully obvious to himself that he’d been searching. Jack transferred from clean-scrubbed steps to the fine gravel of the drive and came up next to Alan, and his eyes stopped too. Alan had never been looked at like this, with this hot pleasure in his presence that had such palpable, irresistible weight. It moved like an iron over his irritable nerves and uncreased them.
“You must be lost,” said Jack. “We don’t admit your sort here.”
“I’ve come to nick the candlesticks.”
The air really was intolerably clean. It was scouring Alan’s throat from the inside. He let himself hold Jack’s gaze for a moment longer, a greedy child clinging to a treat, before he transferred his attention to the chaos taking place nearby. Robin and Adelaide had their heads bent together, and Edwin was trying to catch the elbow of Dufay.
“What on Earth,” Jack muttered.
“He’s the Grimm,” said Alan.
“Truly? Christ. We’d better have him inside. My mother can at least make him welcome before Edwin begins the inquisition.”
But Edwin’s urgent questions were rolling off the greasy anoraks like drops of unheeded rain. Dufay had his face uptilted, frowning as if remembering something. He looked in every direction, ignoring everything from Adelaide’s prompts to Maud’s attempts at cheery greeting.
The only person to win acknowledgement was the footman attempting to take the canvas bag. Dufay pushed the bag into the footman’s arms, a motion of abrupt and startling authority, and straightened to his full cranelike height.
Then he bypassed the steps entirely and stalked off around the side of the house.
“Blast,” said Edwin, aggrieved, and hurried off in Dufay’s wake. The Grimm was moving with such rapid strides and an air of such purpose that Alan found himself, along with everyone else, following along like children in the wake of a street parade.
So Alan avoided having to be swallowed up by Jack’s ancestral home for a while longer, as he was taken on a strange little tour of the grounds. They passed through a paved area twice the size of Alan’s house, with trees like absurd lollipops in huge pots, and then across a moss-furred bridge and through a small forest of slender trees that towered green above them. Then up a grassy hill that was topped with a single tree almost too large to comprehend. It must be a trick somehow. Magical.
Alan had not planned to go for a brisk and confusing walk in nature. He was not sure nature approved of him any more than grand magical houses did. But he was damned if he’d fall behind. He hastened his steps to keep up with Jack, who gave Alan a look that wasn’t exactly a comment about his height but had all the trappings of it, as if Jack no longer had to open his mouth for Alan to know when he was being teased.
Alan glared and did not open his mouth in return. He was too busy breathing through it.
When they caught up to the others at the top of the hill, Maud was red-faced with exertion and most of them were puffing at least a little. Robin wasn’t. Robin had a swing to his arms and a light in his eyes like he was about to suggest a brisk jog down the other side and then a nice, bracing swim. It made him absurdly attractive and also made Alan want to slap him.
Dufay was walking in circles around the tree, fingers trailing on the bark. Each circle took some time. It really was enormous. Perhaps the same magic—or country air, or whatever it was—was responsible for Jack’s size.
“Oh for—Hawthorn,” said Edwin, exasperated. “Can you shed any light on why the Grimm of Gloucester is so enamoured of this oak? I can’t get a sensible word out of him. And I seem to remember it has a name, so I assume it has a story.”
“The Lady’s Oak,” said Jack. Dufay shot a look at Jack on his most recent circuit, frowned—at the ground this time—and disappeared around the trunk again. “It’s a family legend. Apparently an acorn was planted here by the wife of the first lord to be granted the land, and she asked the tree to grow into a long-lived guardian who would look after the family forever.”
“Oaks grow very old,” said Edwin. He craned up at it and touched the single low branch as thick as a man that looped down nearby. “This one could be several centuries. Or more, or less, if magic went into the life of it. Was she a magician, that woman?”
Jack shrugged. “One assumes so. I can’t even remember her name. Something classical. Phoebe, or Phyllis.”
“Phyllis died for love and became an almond tree,” said Robin. “What’s that look for? I did read Classics at Pembroke, you know.”
“No. No, widdershins on all counts. No magic worth speaking of in an almond. Better to stick with oaks. And you were supposed to guard it, not the other way around.” Dufay’s light, throaty voice came around the tree first, and then he appeared again.
Alan blinked a few times as if that would make sense of what he saw. Was there an illusion there, being perturbed? Nothing melted or wavered. The features were the same, even if their delicacy now looked distinctly feminine. Same eerie height; same layers of flapping, flowing clothes; same yellow-white hair, gleaming like whipped butter in spots where sunlight snuck through the oak’s leaves.
And eyes the exact same heartrending blue as those that stared back at—him? her?—from the face of Jack, who’d turned pale as clean smoke.
“And I’ve never died yet,” said the Lady.
21
It was a long, long conversation.