“Aunt Trudy! Oh, I could never do that!” Anthea turned to Qualin. “Is this true?”
“It is,” he said reluctantly, eyes still on the ghost. “And who art thou, stranger, who comes thus to imperil mine heir?”
“Her ancestral ghost, who has known and cherished her since childhood. I do not wish your child any harm, but I will not see my own deprived of youth and the few carefree years of romance God grants to her. A vaunt, eldritch lord, and stand aside! This lady is not for you!”
“I shall not let her be torn from me!” Qualin ground out, and lunged forward.
“No,” Anthea screamed—but swords not of steel met with a fearful clash ...
And held. They stuck together as though they were magnets of opposite poles, and an eerie silver light played over both blades, melding them together. Qualin spat an oath and wrenched at his, but it would not budge. “What magic have you wrought, fell specter?”
“No enchantment of mine.” Sir Roderick, too, was wrenching at his blade. “Some other force comes. O glow upon our swords! You are a spirit of your own form!”
“Even so.” The voice was a thrumming in the air, a deep vibration within their skulls. “I am a spirit foreign to the land, but strong enough withal, especially on such a night as this. Give over, Faerie lord! Give over, ghost! For I shall hold thee bound till thou dost cry ‘Hold, enough!’”
“Never shall I bow so!” Qualin raged. “What hellspawn hath brought thee here?”
“A spawn of mortal folk, and not of Hell at all,” said a resonant voice behind Anthea. She spun about with a gasp, and saw a gentleman in breeches and Hessian boots, though his coat and neckcloth were gone and his shirt torn wide open, showing a manly, muscular chest. “Roman!” she cried, then blushed. “I mean, Mr. Crafter!”
“The same, Miss Gosling.” But Roman’s gaze was fixed on Qualin and the ghost. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Wouldst thou speak as though in a drawing room, thou fool?” the Faerie lord snapped.
“Why not?” Roman said, with airy disregard of the circumstances. “We may as well be civilized, after all, since we cannot do one another harm. Anthea, would you do the honors?”
Anthea noticed the use of her Christian name alone, but knew it was no time to charge him with a breach of etiquette. “Mr. Roman Crafter, may you be pleased to make the acquaintance of Qualin, a lord of Faerie, and his lady, Lolorin, with their child. The knight is my old friend, Sir Roderick le Gos, late of Windhaven Manor.”
“Quite late, I should judge, from the cut of your armor.” Roman looked Sir Roderick up and down. “Still, it is becoming; you must give me the name of your tailor. I thank you for your kind intercession on behalf of Miss Anthea, Sir Roderick.”
“It is my pleasure,” the knight responded, “for I am privileged to think of her as my ward, though not in the eyes of the law—and you shall have to answer to me, Mr. Crafter, if you wish to know her better.”
“Why, Sir Roderick!” Anthea protested, blushing furiously.
“I gather he is the senior male of your house,” Roman inferred.
“If you are being so civil as to make introductions,” Qualin ground out, “might we know the name and style of this creature who has bound our swords?”
“My apologies,” Roman murmured. “He is a creature of the sea, and I made his acquaintance during a storm in the tropics. We got on famously, and he has chosen to accompany me for a brief space. In fact, it is through him that my cousin purchased my rise from powder monkey to midshipman, and thereby to ensign and, eventually, captain.”
“Yet he advanced by his own ability,” the spirit hummed. “Call me, as he does, merely ‘Erasmus.’ ”
“Saint Elmo’s Fire!” Anthea cried.
“Excellent, Miss Gosling,” Roman said, with surprised pleasure. “Not too many landlubbers know the term, or that ‘Elmo’ is the shortened form of ‘Erasmus.’ Yes, he has that name among the superstitious, though to tell you the truth, he has as little to do with saints as with demons—though I promise you, he can give living mortals quite a shock. Yet he seems to have taken a fancy to my inquisitive turn of mind.”
“And to your boldness and talent in dealing with spirits,” Erasmus hummed. “What say you, Roman? Shall I free these two banty roosters?”
“Banty roosters!” Sir Roderick choked.
“You will have to forgive my friend,” Roman apologized. “He has taken up many idioms that he learned from me in my youth—oh, very well, my early youth. But the question he asks is valid. Will you both sheathe your swords and try to deal in reason, if he releases you?”
“Well, I will attempt it,” Sir Roderick huffed.
“And I.” But Qualin’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Yet I warn thee, I will not permit the lady to be taken from us, if she doth choose to stay.”
Roman glared at him for a space, then said, “Fair enough. She is, after all, her own person. It is your decision, Anthea, and we will all abide by it. Agreed, gentlemen?”
Ghost and Faerie grumbled assent, and the glow drifted away from their swords to hover, a sphere of light, by Roman.
Anthea paled, and almost cried out in protest. Was she to be left without support in this? Though she did have to admit that she did not want to be compelled to a course of action she would not like, it would nonetheless be wonderful if someone else could only tell her what it was she wanted—and could be right.
“Please acquaint me with the nature of the contretemps,” Roman said. “Apparently the issue is the freedom of Miss Anthea Gosling. But why should there be any contention against it?”
“First tell me,” Qualin growled, “who you are, and how you came into my hill.”
“I am Roman Crafter, late of His Majesty’s Navy, and later of the United States of America.”
“What is that?”
“A country in the West, beyond the Isles and the ocean.”
“It cannot be.” Qualin’ s eyes burned. “Mortal eyes cannot see the Western Haven.”
“Quite right; the only ones we see are quite mortal, I assure you, and though they have their own population of elementals and spirits, none of them are of your race. As for myself, I had the bad fortune to be impressed into the British Navy, and the good fortune to meet Miss Anthea Gosling. When Erasmus told me that she had been spirited away by an a utter cad, I rode as quickly as I could to overtake them. I lost their track on the road, but Erasmus cast about and found them for me, and I arrived in time to spare her the worst of his attentions. Yet when I’d done with him, she had fled, and I was quite concerned for her further safety. Erasmus was good enough to seek you out again and unravel the spell that barred the entrance to this hill. I felt your presence and followed.”
Anthea stared. “But—the door ... the lock ...”
Roman frowned. “What door?”
“That huge old door in the hillside! He used a six-inch key to open it!”
Roman shook his head, gaze still on Qualin. “Only a bush, and a cave mouth.”
Anthea’s breath hissed in. “A glamour! It was an illusion that Qualin cast.” She looked up at the tall Faerie lord. “Did you think I would be more willing to help if I thought you lived in a rich house?”