The highwayman’s eyes—the only part of his face she could see—narrowed. And in that moment she knew for sure. She’d last seen those eyes in Ogden’s bedroom. The glimmer of a spell caught her attention as the air froze around her, forbidding her to move.
Nausea turned sharp in her stomach. Her lungs weakened, and she strained to breathe.
The man’s gloved hand picked up the reticule, weighed it, and tossed it onto the bench. “She wants you,” he said simply, his voice low and gruff. He closed his eyes for a moment, the lids creasing, as though he was in pain. It reminded her of the way Ogden had acted on the docks, fighting his own spell. Then the man’s glare hardened, and briefly Elsie was sure she heard the faint pitch of a spiritual spell, like the magic was flaring, forcing him back under its thumb.
The man leveled his gun at her. “Can’t spellbreak a bullet, Elsie Camden. Come quietly.”
Elsie needn’t agree; the stiffened air around her shifted, carrying her to the door. “Please, I can help you. I can break the spell she has on you—”
His other hand whipped out and pressed a foul-smelling rag to her face, and the world around her went dark.
CHAPTER 15
The gray-cast sky finally gave in to a miserable, misty sort of rain. The kind that caught on the breeze and got everything wet. It was cold rain, despite the summer. English rain was one of the things that made Bacchus miss home.
He had no jacket and no umbrella. Instead, he cast a spell on the air around him, curving the rain away from him. Scanning the park, he spied a few people running for the shelter of trees. A barouche passed by, its driver quickening the steps of its horses.
Bacchus had been here two hours, with no sign or word from Elsie.
After the carriage passed, he crossed the narrow path and approached a chestnut tree. Leaning against the truck, he pulled out his bespelled blue pencil and a piece of parchment, which he lay across his raised knee. If he leaned it against the tree, the pencil on Elsie’s side might end up scrawling across her wall or furniture instead of the paper she was supposed to leave beneath it.
Are you well? he wrote simply. Then he waited.
And waited.
The magic on the linked pencil didn’t take—no grip touched its bespelled wood. Bacchus was a patient man, so he remained in that stance for several moments longer, the rain increasing in power, then decreasing until it was little more than fog. Still no response. She usually didn’t take this long to respond.
And so Bacchus strode out of Hyde Park, feeling uneasy. His mind circled around some irrational fears, some personal doubts regarding Elsie’s affections for him, but he cast them aside. He would not feed them. No use in torturing himself over what was likely a misunderstanding.
He’d driven himself here in Master Hill’s cabriolet, thinking perhaps Elsie would enjoy a ride before they headed to Seven Oaks, where he was due shortly. But after Bacchus cared for the horse and pulled out onto the main road, he drove to the post office rather than Kent.
“I’d like to send a telegram,” he said upon opening the door. The young man behind the counter, no older than fifteen, gave him a look that was half fear and half awe; Bacchus was a head and a half taller than he and darker than the heavy freckles bespattering the lad’s nose. No matter. Bacchus was used to being received in such a manner.
Fortunately, the boy gave him no problems and handed him a pad of paper and a pencil. “Write it out here. The cost is—”
“I don’t care.” Bacchus scratched out, Is Elsie well? She was meant to meet me at Hyde Park. Kelsey. Below it, he wrote the address of the stonemasonry shop.
“Send it to the Brookley post office.” He slid the paper to the boy and dropped his coin pouch beside it. “To anyone present in the household.”
The lad nervously smiled and took the requisite coin and the letter before disappearing into the back room where the telegraph was kept. Bacchus took his purse back and stood at the door of the post office, peering down the road in the direction of Hyde Park, as though he might catch Elsie running up it at any moment. He thought to return there to wait for her, but with luck someone at the stonemasonry shop would send a swift reply.
The postal employee returned a few minutes later, but after acknowledging Bacchus with a nervous nod, he continued to sort through a stack of letters. Bacchus waited at the door for another quarter hour before sitting in one of two chairs crammed into the small foyer.
Leaning back, he folded his arms and continued to watch the road through the window. It felt later than it was, thanks to the rain. He watched a drop on the pane grow heavier as others joined it, until it could no longer cling to the glass and wound its way down the window.
Another quarter hour passed before he heard the telltale clicking of the telegraph. He stood, and the lad rushed into the back and out of sight. Bacchus massaged his knuckles anxiously. When the employee returned, he said, “I didn’t write it down. Thought you’d just want to hear it.”
Bacchus nodded.
“‘E left over three hours ago. Not seen?’ Sorry, the cost is per word, so sometimes people aren’t very specific—”
Bacchus didn’t wait for the boy to finish. He swung open the post office door and rushed into the rain, not bothering to enchant it away.
Bacchus burst into the stonemasonry shop just over an hour later, his hair dripping from the ride. Emmeline squeaked and dropped the broom she was carrying, then turned toward him with a hand over her heart.
“Oh, Master Kelsey!” she exclaimed. “You scared me . . .” She watched him shut the door behind him. “Elsie isn’t with you?”
The question strummed a chord of fear within him. “You sent the telegram?”
She nodded. “She left”—she glanced to the clock on the wall—“coming on five hours ago, now.”
Bacchus pulled the tie from his hair and shook it out. “Did she say where she was going?”
“She told Ogden she was doing something with the Duke of Kent.” Emmeline’s voice grew quieter.
Mr. Ogden strode in just then, his expression tight. “You haven’t seen her.”
“No. We were to meet at Hyde Park. I waited two hours. I wrote her before sending the telegram.”
“Oh,” Emmeline chimed in, “with that magic pencil?” She picked up the broom and hurried out of the room, taking it with her. A moment later, she returned. “She didn’t take it with her. Your message is on her bedside table.”
Bacchus worked his hands. “Did she seem upset? Did she take anything with her as though planning for a longer trip?”
Emmeline and Mr. Ogden exchanged a glance before the latter answered him. “No, just her reticule.”
That chord of fear began to sing, spreading cold prickles across Bacchus’s skin.
Mr. Ogden said, “I’ll send Emmeline to check locally. This isn’t like her. And with Merton . . .”
He didn’t finish the thought, only left to grab his coat.
The first thing Elsie observed was the stone beneath her—the coldness of it against her cheek and its hardness beneath her shoulder and hip. The second thing she noticed was the darkness, save for a single enchanted light in the middle of a low stone ceiling. The third was the awful taste in the back of her mouth, followed by the dryness of her tongue and rawness of her sinuses.
She pushed herself up, head pounding. For a brief moment, she thought she was still in prison and everything else had been an oddly detailed dream. But as she blinked and gained her bearings, swallowing to moisten her throat, she realized her surroundings were completely new to her.