See! one could imagine them saying over the blackcurrant jam and kippers and eggs done three ways. We do retain the ability to transfer food onto our own plates, and carry those plates to the table, and even refill our own coffee cups!
Where does the food come from? Why, it just appears, of course. Like all food. What a silly question.
The spot between Alan’s shoulder blades was still smarting from the zap of pain that the butler had magicked him with. He was standing among magicians. Perhaps their food did just appear.
“Members of the press?” said Miss Debenham. “No. Standard procedure for thieves, though. Oh—no, Price, I’m just making fun. Thank you.”
The butler exited, leaving Alan alone with three people he knew and three he didn’t.
When Alan had written up his fawning, gossipy article about the first-class crossing on the Lyric, he’d described Miss Debenham as a well-born eccentric heiress with a scandalous past and a fair beauty. All of which was more or less true, even if Alan was the least qualified man in London to pass judgement on feminine beauty. Didn’t matter. Anyone well-born or well-moneyed enough was beautiful on paper.
Given the truthful run of his pen, he’d have called Violet Debenham a cautious minx of an actress.
Right now, she looked relaxed. Mistress of the manor and all. Alan managed not to glance at the breakfast dishes again. His stomach gave a gurgle that he hoped went unheard.
“We probably shouldn’t be making jokes about thieves, given everything,” said Miss Blyth. “How d’you do, Mr. Ross. How good to see you again!”
“Miss B.” A more genuine smile for her. Maud Blyth was composed mostly of dimples and idealism. As aristocrats went, at least she made rooms feel warmer instead of colder. It was good to see her again.
It might have been the one and only good thing about the grim situation that Alan currently found himself in.
“How did you do that?”
The question came from one of the unfamiliar men. Tallish, slimmish, looked like he had possibly made the acquaintance of a single sunbeam back before the turn of the century.
“Do what?”
“Whatever you did when Price—” A practiced flick of the hand.
“I didn’t do anything.” He’d assumed it was meant as a warning. Something to put him in his place. It had felt like he’d jerked his neck at the wrong angle and needed to wriggle his nerves back into comfort.
“But it went back to him.”
Alan didn’t speak magic. He shrugged.
“It was the same on the ship,” said Miss Debenham. “I couldn’t get an illusion to stick to him properly.”
“And Price said he got through the entrance wards without being invited,” said the pale one, looking more excited than displeased at this apparent gap in their security. “This shouldn’t be—wait a moment, I think I did read something…”
“You’d be Mr. Courcey, then,” said Alan, as several mental notes from the voyage on the Lyric clicked themselves together.
“Pardon? Yes.” Courcey met the gaze of the brown-haired man who looked a lot like Miss Blyth and even more like an advertisement for an athletic nutritional tonic, and muttered pleasedtomeetyou as if it were a word in another language. “Front door or back? Where did you enter?”
From anyone else that would have been a dig about the tradesman’s entrance, but Courcey hadn’t a whiff of snobbery about him: just urgent curiosity.
“Front.”
“Really? Don’t you feel uncomfortable? Like you shouldn’t be here and are desperate to leave?”
Alan had a lot of experience keeping his expression neutral in the face of idiotic questions from his social superiors. He couldn’t quite suppress his tongue, though.
“Now that you mention it, perhaps I do. Why d’you think that would be?”
“Mr.… Ross?” said the brown-haired man firmly. “I apologise for everyone’s manners. Why don’t you sit down and join us, if you’re staying. Violet can do the introductions properly.” This would be Miss Blyth’s older brother. The baronet. His posture said he was used to being the highest-born person in a room.
Which wasn’t actually the case right now, was it?
Alan took a seat and finally lost the battle he’d been having with himself since he walked through the door. He allowed himself to glance again at Baron Hawthorn.
The man sat as still as a predator and twice as keen-eyed in one of the gorgeously carved wooden seats at the table. Alan had known Lord Hawthorn would be here. He’d prepared himself, he thought.
He’d been wrong. He’d forgotten the speed with which this hatred rose simmering within him. He’d forgotten that the edges of it crossed boundaries where it stopped feeling like hatred and became something wilder and more dangerous.
Miss Debenham introduced Alan to Sir Robert Blyth, Mr. Edwin Courcey, and the last unfamiliar face: a young Indian woman with humour around her mouth and eyes as dark as Alan’s own. None of these watercolour British looks for Miss Adelaide Morrissey, whom Miss Debenham introduced as Robin’s … awkward pause.
“Colleague,” said Sir Robert.
“Typist,” said Miss Morrissey cheerfully. She eyed Alan for a second longer and then pushed the toast rack across the table: the only foodstuff not miles of etiquette away under silver covers. “Do have something to eat, so I’m not the only one still working on my breakfast. Make yourself useful, Hawthorn, pour the man some tea. How do you take it, Mr. Ross?”
Alan was torn between choking on his breath and swearing eternal friendship. She’d shoved Lord Hawthorn into the role of tea lady through sheer aggressive good manners.
“Black, three sugars.”
Hawthorn wielded sugar tongs like he was thinking of using them to pull Alan’s fingernails. Alan helped himself to toast and butter, real butter, huge yellow pats of it just lying around on the table.
Courcey interrogated the others about the specific ways in which Alan was, apparently, an oddity. Alan demolished his toast and his tea. So far nobody had asked him why he’d come to breakfast and walked through some invisible set of Keep Out signs. As far as Courcey was concerned, Alan might as well be a gift from Saint Catherine.
Miss Morrissey caught whatever expression was on Alan’s face and laughed. “Don’t take it personally. Edwin does this with everyone. Magicians. Foreseer. Medium. Whatever you are.”
“And you?” Alan asked.
“I’m ever so dull. No magic at all.” Still cheerful. But she was sitting beside a baronet and stealing toast and mushrooms from his plate, and despite her dark skin she had an accent you could see your reflection in. Alan wanted to fight how much he liked her. He wanted to ask how many servants her family had.
“So he’s not completely resistant to magic—I’ve never heard of that being possible, anyhow—just sends it askew,” said Courcey, once he’d finished grilling Misses Blyth and Debenham. “And are you sure you haven’t seen him in any visions, Robin?”
“If so, it was one of the ones I don’t remember well.”
Courcey snapped his fingers. “Perturbator. That’s what Guignol called it. There are some case studies in one of his collections. But never in someone unmagical. It’s always arisen in a magician, or at least in a magical family.”