If we’d waited even one moment longer—if Jonathan hadn’t warned us—every gossiping magician in Cosgrave Manor would have seen us embracing and spread the news like wildfire.
Within minutes, Wrexham would have been hopelessly compromised...and nothing I said or did after that could have released him except for our marriage.
How could I have been so careless?
With a moan of guilt, I turned and fled through Cosgrave Manor all the way to my room without a single glance back.
8
There were mornings when rising from bed to face the world seemed frankly impossible. Or even more accurately: pointless.
But I’d spent the last four months learning to do it anyway. So I hauled myself out of bed the next morning at a reasonable hour, I sailed down to the breakfast table with grim determination, and when I glimpsed Miss Banks’s hopeful approach in the corner of my eye, I didn’t even flinch.
“Of course,” I said, setting down my fork as she fluttered near me. I couldn’t quite summon up a smile, but I did manage a polite nod. Wrexham was just stepping through the far door into the room, but I forced my gaze to remain fixed—mostly—on Miss Banks’s hopeful face. “We agreed to take a walk in the knot garden, did we not?”
“Oh, yes, if you wouldn’t mind, that would be wonderful, although of course you can finish your breakfast first and—”
Oh, no.
For all that he was allowing himself to be delayed by various conversational sallies along the way, Wrexham was definitely setting a course toward my table.
Grim determination was one thing. Outright heroism before I’d drunk my morning tea was quite another...and I’d learned last night just how weak my resolve had become in the two long months of our separation.
So I interrupted Miss Banks ruthlessly. “What better time than the present?” Leaving my half-full plate behind, I rose to my feet and tucked one firm hand through her arm to tow her from the room. “We may as well get this over with immediately.”
Really, there couldn’t be any better time to remind myself exactly why it had been so necessary to give up my fiancé in the first place...even if he was still stubbornly acting like a man who hadn’t been fiercely driven away forever.
At least he didn’t try to stop us as we strode, arm-in-arm, past him.
But the sardonic twist on his lips spoke volumes.
My back teeth were grinding together. I forced my jaw open with an effort as we stepped through the doorway. “We’d better—”
“Here.” Miss Banks tilted her head, not quite hiding a satisfied smile, as a maid appeared at the end of the corridor with a pile of warm outerwear in her arms. “I asked for our coats and boots to be brought before I came to find you.”
Hmm. There was more to the shy and sweet Miss Banks than I’d imagined. Perhaps she would survive the Great Library after all.
She certainly showed no signs of being put off by the weather, although the snow lay piled up before the house and we had to pace carefully through the narrow paths dug by Lady Cosgrave’s gardeners.
A pale sun shone through the grey mass of clouds overhead, casting its watery light against the thick white snow that balanced on the branches of the sculpted hedges before us. Even more snow fell in a light, steady stream around us as we stepped through the arched opening in the hedge and into the cloistered privacy of the knot garden.
I might not be a weather wizard myself, nor one with nature, but even I knew it must have stopped snowing by now in any natural winter storm.
Thank goodness for the elaborately sculpted knotwork spell in the hedges. Even an elf’s prying eyes wouldn’t see through those branches.
Probably.
To take my mind off that disquieting thought, I said briskly, “So, what spells have you learned to cast thus far?”
“I beg your pardon?” Miss Banks slid me a startled look under her hood. “You know I haven’t been accepted—”
“Yes, yes.” I released her arm and pulled my own satin-lined hood more tightly around my face for warmth. “But what spells have you managed to teach yourself already?”
There was a moment’s pause as she studied me warily. “You do remember that the Library directs all students to wait until their arrival—”
I waved an impatient hand. “And?”
Her expression broke into an irrepressible grin. “Look!” Whispering under her breath, she twirled around. The air shimmered.
A rainbow of lights shot up around her. Yellow, red, violet, blue...
They all speared upward and disappeared, leaving her laughing and triumphant in the snow before me. “Well?”
Something caught in my throat as I looked at her bright young face—a knot of emotions formed by pain and piercing envy and an unexpected, fierce tenderness.
I knew that exhilaration so well.
I wouldn’t let anyone take it away from this girl—not even herself.
I would not.
I cleared my throat with an effort. “Very good,” I said hoarsely. “Very pretty. Where did you learn it?”
She blinked, looking suddenly shy again. “I...found an old book of my father’s. Well, he was going to be rid of it, actually—he never had a son, and he hasn’t practiced himself in years—I think he never really cared for magic in the first place, so—”
“So you stole it,” I said. “I see.”
Her face fell. “I just—”
“Miss Banks...” I heaved a weary sigh. “Do you have any idea how many of my own father’s books I smuggled out of his library over the years?”
“You did?” Her eyes widened.
I gave a thin smile, stretched taut by memories. Of course, I’d had it easier than she had when it came to the actual acquisition of my books—I’d had Jonathan on my side, so whenever he’d been home for the holidays I’d sent him sneaking into the family library with a list of items to procure for me. If our parents had ever caught my brother with those books, after all, they would have been only too delighted...whereas I’d had them confiscated again and again whenever they were found hidden in my room, and I’d lost more than one meal as punishment for my incorrigibility.
Worse yet, after our father had died, his library door had been firmly locked...and only Jonathan had been allowed any access to the key.
I said, firmly shoving those recollections aside, “You’ll need a better book to work with. That spell comes from Richmond’s Assortment of Delights, which is only intended for festive occasions. Lovely to pull out for a long evening with friends, of course, but not much use in practical terms. If you want to persuade the Great Library of your abilities, you’ll need to prove them in a way that no one can pass off as a mere party trick.”