Page 28 of Salt Magic, Skin Magic
Chapter Seven
Dinner was nearly over.
“Where’s Lord Thornby this evening?” John kept his voice pleasant and even.
“Bad form. Late for dinner,” Mr Derwent mumbled. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“He does enjoy long walks,” Lady Amelia remarked.
“Youth must have its day,” said Lord Dalton, each word dripping with scorn. “So easy to lose track of time, eh?”
John nodded politely, but his stomach was tying itself in knots. After Thornby had left him on the terrace, he’d dragged himself upstairs. He’d been so tired even Raskelf’s incessant whispering hadn’t stopped him sleeping for an hour or two. When he woke, he’d spent the rest of the day looking for Thornby, but he’d not found him.
Was Thornby avoiding him? He hadn’t taken John’s news very well. It was a bloody difficult thing to take. She’d been hismother. To learn she hadn’t been human; it would shake a man to his core.
God, why did Raskelf have to be so big? The place was a labyrinth—one could wander it endlessly and never find the person one was looking for. But was Thornby avoiding him, or had something happened to him? Thornby had stalked away in high dudgeon and there were culverts aplenty on the estate where a distracted man could twist an ankle. The hole they called Jennie’s Pot had a cliff over twenty yards high. Of course, Thornby must know the estate the way John knew his iron pins, but it had turned foggy, which could have confused him.
Or he could have fallen foul of poachers. Some of the locals John had spoken to seemed to have great affection for Lord Thornby; his eccentricities impressed them. They expected the nobility to be different, and if Thornby was ‘touched’ and known to shout epithets at hedges and go shooting in court clothes, he was touched in such an odd and lordly way that it gave the local people bragging rights. But not everybody felt like that. Some of them were plain afraid of him, some with fear so deep, John felt it bordered on hate. What if Thornby met someone like that in the depths of the park?
Or what if John had broken the news too bluntly? What if Thornby simply couldn’t take it, on top of everything else? What if Thornby had decided he couldn’t go on? Was he even now lying dead in some ditch with his brains blown out—beautiful eyes glazed and dull, flawless skin growing cold?
John felt sick. He stopped pushing his venison about with his fork.
“Surely Lord Thornby should be at dinner by now? Shall I go and look for him?” He half got to his feet.
“Sit down, man. He’ll come in his own good time,” Lord Dalton said. “Farrell, more wine.”
“My lord.” John sat.
The Judas Voice had worked well on Dalton, but it would not stand up if he antagonised the man. He ate a bite of something without tasting it. Perhaps Thornby simply didn’t want to see him. Perhaps he was regretting what had happened in the spare room. Or perhaps he was indifferent to it. John himself generally walked away from such encounters without a second thought. Just because he was aching to see Thornby again—to hold him, to kiss him, to breathe him in—it didn’t mean Thornby felt the same.
“Mr Blake, will you take another glass of claret?” Lord Dalton waved a hand as if offering the entire contents of his cellar.
“Thank you.” He felt it would choke him, but it seemed polite to accept.
Did Dalton seem in a more expansive mood than usual? There was something almost gleeful about him, like a boy with a secret.
John felt as if ice-water had been poured down his spine. Dalton had done something to Thornby. He knew it.He’ll come in his own good time—there had been a subtle smugness to that comment. Dalton knew it wasn’t true.
The moment he could escape from dinner, John checked every room he could think of that locked, but found no sign of Thornby. And there was no point setting any seeking charms; Thornby would be as impervious to those as he was to everything else.
John slumped down onto a cold marble step, careless of his evening clothes. The temptation to go and confront Lord Dalton was strong, but he didn’t dare to play his hand so openly just yet. He still had no idea what to do about the curse. He’d once seen a cursed woman who washed her hands until the fingers were bloody stumps. What would Lord Dalton’s curse drive him to do?
He mustthink. He must think like Dalton. If Thornby was correct, then Dalton wanted the money that a wife for Thornby would bring. Dalton had tried a waiting game; isolating Thornby, not even allowing him his valet, using loneliness and boredom and mystery as weapons. But Thornby’s resolve had held. And now Dalton’s patience had run out. So, Dalton would up the stakes—to force Thornby to obey him. The other night at dinner the Marquess had threatened Thornby with ‘a demonstration’. A demonstration that meant Thornby had missed dinner and was nowhere in the house...
God, what a fool John had been, searching the Hall! It was obvious. He ran down the stairs, grabbing his overcoat on the way out. The worst thing Dalton could do to Thornby was to take him off the estate and hold him there. The magic that bound Thornby to the estate would do the rest; it would be torture. Would he find Thornby flayed raw? Bled to death? Or with his mind gone, from being kept away too long?
No. Dalton needed Thornby relatively whole and sane if Miss Grey or Miss Lazenby were to marry him. So Thornby would be somewhere near the boundary. Probably merely trapped in some way.
Outside, the fog had lifted, but grey wraiths still swirled around, moved by a cold wind from the north. John ran west along the driveway towards the village, feeling in his pockets for the rowan twig and vial of sulphur. He dipped the twig, sending power to both until they kindled and burnt with a cold, blue, un-consuming fire. Now he had a light, he easily found the path along the estate boundary.
But which way to go? He looked one way, then the other. If he turned the wrong way, he might search all night and Dalton would get back to Thornby first. John could not allow that to happen. He forced himself to breathe, to think.
