Page 35 of Salt Magic, Skin Magic
Although his face was healed, he’d scratched it afresh in the hazel thicket and it stung. His ankle throbbed. He was trembling with a potent mix of fear, loathing for Father, and frustrated excitement for John. God, what a night! The sheer panic of being chained outside the estate. And then, John undressing him in the middle of a thicket, and the nightmare was transformed. That was truly magic; to be able to take such a terrible situation and turn it into something sweet.
More than anything, he wanted to see John again. John Blake, with his clever, serious eyes and reassuring hands. John, who had murmured some really quite surprising things last night, while still managing to look like a paragon of middle-class respectability. “I will make you beg,” he’d said.
Thornby flexed his ankle. Agonising. Nevertheless, he limped along the passage to John’s room. He knocked, but there was no reply. Damn. What now? Last time he’d gone in, that pathway had opened and they’d nearly been trapped. John’s theory that you couldn’t open the pathway by accident was comforting, but—
He was still dithering at the door when Lady Dalton appeared at the top of the stairs. She wore a morning dress of turquoise velvet trimmed with lemon-yellow ribbons. He remembered it from last autumn; perhaps her dressmaker had stopped extending credit.
“Oh!” she said, going white, then red. “Lord Thornby. Good morning. I was looking for Mr Blake. Your face—it—seems much improved.”
“Ma’am.” He bowed, coldly, and was about to walk away when he remembered John saying, “Leave her out of it,” at dinner. Also, her cousin was John’s friend. “He’s not here,” he added. “I’m looking for him, too.”
She looked as if she would turn away, then stopped. “Lord Thornby, I owe you an apology. I thought you were doing things to frighten me. But Mr Blake says you’re quite innocent. So, I beg your pardon. I hope you will forgive me.”
A dozen memories of being rather cruel to her jostled in his head. At the beginning, she’d tried to be friends, and he’d pushed her away every time. He’d lumped her in with father and his lackeys.
“No, really,” he said. “Easy mistake to make. Think nothing of it.”
“There’s something strange going on, though, isn’t there? Mr Blake says there is.”
“Yes, he thinks Father’s cursed.”
“Oh.” She paled again.
“Forgive me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, no. I want to know. Lord Thornby, I’m so glad your face is better, but you do look pale. And you’re quite scratched. Should you not sit down?”
As she spoke he felt the world spin around him. “I probably should.”
He started to move away from John’s door. When she saw how he was hobbling, she took his arm.
“Did you overdo it in the park?”
“It’s my ankle. Father chained me to a tree.”
“Oh, Iwishyou wouldn’t say such things! I know he has his faults, but he is your father!”
Thornby sighed. “It’s the truth. But if you prefer, I can say I got it stuck in a gin trap. The poachers are terrible, aren’t they? What we need is a decent gamekeeper.”
“Why do you make up these stories? I can never tell whether you’re telling the truth.”
“I always used to tell the truth, but no one ever listened. Or they didn’t believe me. So now I just say whatever I like.”
“No one believes what I say, either.”
They looked at each other, both recognising something in the other. Then she added, “Mr Blake listens.” And blushed.
So, she fancied John, did she? He didn’t blame her.But he’s mine, he thought, so fiercely it surprised him.Or I wish he was.He remembered John putting a careful, deliberate hand on the wall of Father’s room; the intent look on his face as he listened to whatever he was learning from it. She was right. Now he thought of it, he’d never met a man who listened quite as well as John.
“He believes me, too,” she said. “He says I’m not imaging anything. And he says there’s a curse? On Lord Dalton?”
“I’m afraid so. I’m sorry you’re caught up in this, my lady.”
“Well, Dalton is my husband, I suppose.”
“How on earth do you stand it? Being married to him?”
“Oh, I—”
