Hit and hit again. She was right. This was—despite that there were servants all around in this place, not to mention the teachers and pupils of her school—ever so slightly improper as a courtesy call. “Alone” she was, in that her husband was in London and presumably not expected here for several days. Had he come to see the schoolmistress about her pupils, it would have been one thing; that would have been proper and reasonable, and as he was the one of more social importance, the call would have been appropriately made at his convenience, not hers. Had he really come to see an old friend, it would have been another case, for long friendships dictated a relaxation of formal manners, and their differing social stature would not have mattered, nor would it have mattered that Frederick Harton was not present. Had he come to see the Hartons socially as a couple, that, too, would have been appropriate.
But to come here when her husband was absent and refer to it as a “social call” implied something else. That he wanted to renew more than just “the acquaintance,” and not as one of “friendship.”
And the damnable thing was, now that he had seen her, he realized that there had been something of that sort in the back of his mind, a thought that though she was married to someone else, it might merely be a marriage of convenience on her part. One of the reasons why he had never been able to warm up to any of the young women of his circle was that none of them had struck that particular spark within him that Isabelle had.
And none of them had aroused much interest in him either. There just had been nothing there, no moment of connection. Beneath young Isabelle’s diffidence had been the banked fires of passion, and the promise that the man who could arouse them would have a precious gift indeed.
Beneath the mature Isabelle Harton’s serene competence, those fires of passion blazed for those who could read such things. The promise had more than been fulfilled, and it was the foundation for her attractiveness.
But they did not blaze for him, though they might have had he taken a different path.
There it was: what he had lost, written plain.
And in some forgotten corner of his mind, he knew that he had hoped, with the knowledge of how many of his peers had kept women, that he could get it back, so long as she had not given her heart to Frederick Harton.
Somehow he would have cut her free and married her. Though in that dark corner the baser part of him might have toyed with the notion of making her his mistress, he knew now that he would never have settled for such a tawdry solution. No, if it had been possible to have this woman, it would have been aboveboard.
Oh, it would have caused some difficulties. A man married to a divorcee was unlikely to be made Prime Minister—if anyone knew his wife was once divorced.
And even though he knew the cause was lost, he couldn’t help tracing out those ways in his mind, as if he was probing at a sore tooth. There were ways around that, trivial for someone with the Power of an Elemental Master and the money of an Alderscroft. Records could be destroyed, memories altered. No one need ever know—not even she; with certain spells he could erase the memory of Frederick Harton entirely from her mind. Paying off Harton himself to go lose himself in the wilds of Canada or the fastnesses of the Himalayas would have not even made a significant dent in the Alderscroft fortunes.
But it would not happen. A marriage of convenience could be erased. A marriage of hearts, minds, and souls could not be.
And such a marriage did not allow for any other parties nor any other ties. He had lost her for all time.
There was only one way to retrieve his dignity; to tell a part of the truth, before she guessed at that other, hidden truth.
“Actually, the truth of the matter is that this is not a social call. It is one esoteric colleague calling upon the expertise of another. I encountered something curious, and you were the only person near enough that might be able to explain it,” he said, gathering his dignity about him and allowing her veiled slur to slide past his own icy calm. “Besides paying a courtesy call, I wished to call upon you as a consultant of sorts.”
Her expression did not change as he described the nature spirit to her—though he took care not to describe the circumstances under which it had appeared, nor the creature’s threats.
Her face turned grave. “You would be wise not to meddle with him,” she replied. “He is older than you can guess. The country folk call him Robin Goodfellow—”
“Good gad!” he exclaimed, startled. “Surely not!”
“Surely, for I have encountered him, too,” she replied, with warning clear in her tone. “And Shakespeare did not do him any kind of justice. He is to this land what Attic Pan was to Greece and Sylvanus to Rome. You meddle with him at your peril—”
Now, this made him angry, though he held his anger down firmly. “You meddle with him at your peril,” indeed! It was like something out of a poorly-written novel. What nonsense!
He had been so fixated on his conversation that he must not have noticed that the threatening storm had become actuality, for suddenly, Isabelle’s warning was punctuated, as with an exclamation point, by a bolt of lightning striking an ancient oak immediately outside the library windows, with a simultaneously deafening crash of thunder.
They both jumped; Isabelle clutched at the bookshelves, and he dropped the book he had been unconsciously holding, his heart racing.
His first thought—which he immediately dismissed—was that it had been a warning to echo Isabelle’s. It wasn’t. It was purest coincidence. There was no reason, no reason at all, to think anything otherwise.
It took him a moment to recover; another to pick up the book he had dropped. By that time he thought he knew what he was going to say.
But the conversation was interrupted by the intrusion of—of all things—that wretchedly defiant little girl child, easy enough to identify even in the storm gloom by the raven that rode on her shoulder and glared at him with bright, shining eyes.
“Mem’sab, the lightning frighted the babies half to death an’ they won’t stop cryin’ and the ayahs tol’ me to come get you.” He felt the force of truth behind the words, but he also felt the force of something else. The girl really disliked him and was fiercely happy to be the cause of interrupting the conversation he was having with her schoolmistress.
Nor did Isabelle seem at all displeased by the interruption. “You’ll pardon me, I am sure,” she said, with absolute formality. “But my duties to my charges in this case are something I cannot leave to anyone else. I am sure I can extend the hospitality of Highleigh to you for as long as the rain lasts. You may find research into the books on that shelf—” she pointed, “—to be fruitful, especially in light of what you just told me. You’ll forgive me, I am sure, if I do not make a formal farewell and leave you in the hands of the servants.”
And with that, she turned and followed the infuriating little girl out of the room.
Once again, he found himself struggling against anger, and only by invoking the disciplines that Cordelia had taught him was he able to regain his self-control.
That, too, made him angry. Oh, this was the first and last encounter with Isabelle Harton that he was going to have! He should have known better than to come here in the first place. There was a reason, a good one, why he had broken off the nascent relationship with the woman. Cordelia had been right. Anyone who could invoke such strong emotions in him potentially had a hold over him that he did not need nor want. No, what he needed was control, absolute and complete. He had been an idiot to even think about having any connection to a woman that went past mutual regard and a calm and rational assessment of how each could supply what the other required for a reasonably comfortable life. Marriages of convenience—much better, much more logical than marriages of emotion. Emotion sapped control and self-control and no Elemental Master had any business in allowing that loss of control to happen.