Page 23 of Salt Magic, Skin Magic
Father’s apartments had always been locked, as had mother’s old rooms which connected to them. Even Mrs Diggins, the housekeeper, did not have keys, although Warren, Father’s valet and chief henchman, did. Apart from some dim childhood memories, Thornby’s mental map of the house had, for the last year and a half, had this blank space at its heart.
Watching Blake put the key in the lock of father’s chamber and open the door was, well,magical.
***
John went into LordDalton’s large, blue and gold bed-chamber. He started by asking the walls if they knew any secrets, trying to stay alert for the faintest trace of magic, however formless. He was very conscious of Thornby at his side, opening cabinet drawers and peering under the bed.
At his side.
With him.
During his time at the Crystal Palace, John had fought off several attacks: the possessed bats, the insinuations of Barchiel, the pathetic shatter spell those Tory architects turned out to have paid a fortune for. The bats had nearly been the death of him. But Paxton had been relying on him, and him alone. John hadn’t expected anyone’s help. It hadn’t occurred to Paxton to offer it, nor him to ask for it. At the Institute they’d always taught independence. It was one of the pillars of discretion.
So, when Thornby had saidOf course I’m coming, it was like being given a marvellous gift, even if it was one he shouldn’t have accepted. For once, not to be alone. Being trapped in that crystal thorn-bush had frightened him more than he cared to remember. He was lucky to be alive. That was the last bloody time he would take magical advice from a pound of salt! To have someone along now who might be utterly ignorant of magical methods, but who might nonetheless be able to help if something happened—
It was such a buoyant,happyfeeling. Happiness, in the middle of this bizarre mystery! He kept trying to put it aside, and it kept bubbling up. A gift.
His strong suspicion that Thornby was connected to that other place had not abated, but it was impossible to think of him as anything other than a man, and a brave one at that. John had to avoid glancing at him though; if he looked for a moment, he wouldn’t want to look away. And then he’d forget himself again. Although, perhaps Thornby would like that? The knowledge that Thornby might truly be interested in him was making it well nigh impossible to think of anything else. He’d been at a stand ever since Thornby had said, “I like a bit of rough,” with that plummy accent and those wanton eyes. Thornby would probably fuck like an officer about to go back to a posting. He had that edgy look about him, all nerves and desperation.
He would probably do absolutely anything.
John closed his eyes for a moment. Must concentrate. He was here to do a job. It wouldn’t do for Lord Dalton or his valet to come up and find them here.
There were a couple of rooms off Lord Dalton’s bedroom. One was a dressing room; John rifled through tweed suits and town suits and shirts and under-things, sticks and shoes and hats. The most well-worn of Dalton’s outfits seemed to be a nautical looking cap, and a couple of thick jerseys of the type usually worn by sailors. Odd. But perhaps the Marquess preferred to be incognito when he was about his business at the coast. The jerseys had the faintest whiff of the curse about them—a suggestion of shit, spite, and rotting fish—but it was no more than a suggestion. The jerseys seemed to hold no clue. Probably they had just absorbed a bit of the reek from their owner from being worn so much.
In the sitting-room-cum-study next door John found a number of deeds for properties in the west of Scotland. To judge from some of the other letters and paperwork, Dalton was in the process of buying more. There were some nautical charts, and a couple of ledgers with records of payments to ships’ captains. He supposed all this was to do with Dalton’s commercial seaweed-growing scheme.
He searched the coal scuttle, the mantelpiece, checked behind the pictures and under the rug. There was nothing that looked remotely like the makings of a spell, let alone one powerful enough to keep a man trapped in one place for over a year.
He crossed back through the bed-chamber, where Thornby was still searching, and opened the connecting door to the first Lady Dalton’s room with the chimera key. He went in and drew back a curtain a few inches, sending clouds of dust cascading down. Daylight showed what had once been an elegant lady’s boudoir furnished in sky blue, gold and white—the feminine equivalent to the gentleman’s room he’d just left. Now it was festooned with cobwebs, and grey with dust. Sensing Thornby at his shoulder, John re-locked the inter-connecting door.
“Mother’s room. It hasn’t changed a bit,” Thornby said. He sounded like a man in a dream. “There’s the picture with the lion. And the seashell; she used to hold it to my ear. It’s dusty. She wouldn’t have liked that.”
“Let’s look around,” said John.
“He wouldn’t hide a spell in here, would he?”
John knew what he meant; the room had a holy feel, a shrine to the dead woman. He put his hand to the wall. “It does feel empty. Of magic, anyway.”
Thornby had opened a small writing desk. He froze, staring at a couple of tin soldiers standing at the front. “Those were mine,” he said slowly, half to himself. “They were my favourites. I left them here to look after her because I had to go to school.” He picked one up. “They were supposed to be enemies. One blue, you see, and one red. But they were friends. They had all kinds of adventures.”
There were not many papers in the desk. Perhaps the first Lady Dalton had not been much of a correspondent. John picked up a couple of loose sheets. The first seemed to be menu ideas, the second some instructions to a dressmaker. The letters wandered about the page, large and looping. The spelling was rudimentary, at best. It was not the hand of a well-educated lady. “Is that her writing?”
“She never cared about it. She used to say I must write her letters for her. She laughed about it. I say, look over there—there are tracks in the carpet where the dust is worn away. Father must come in here sometimes. They come from his room.”
Sure enough, a darker path across the dusty carpet led from the door to Lord Dalton’s room to a set of blue velvet drapes on an inside wall. John followed the path across the room and pulled the cord of the drapes.
They parted to show a life-size portrait of the most beautiful woman imaginable. She was so lovely, it was difficult to look away. Her dark hair was dressed in a bun, but several tendrils curled around her fine-boned face. Her mouth was well-modelled and sensuous, and her grey eyes so beautiful one could have gazed into them forever. They were large as a doe’s, tumultuous as the sea on a stormy day, and ever so slightly slanted. Around her neck was a string of pearls the exact shade of her milky bosom. She was shown half standing, caught forever in the act of rising to her feet. She wore a gauzy white dress in the fashion of the twenties, and was surrounded by huge pink and white roses and a marble column. A wolfhound with a blue collar lay at her feet, gazing at her adoringly.
There was such life in the picture you felt she would step out of it and whirl you round the room. And yet, there was something sad about her too, a subtle tension in her jaw, longing in her beautiful eyes. She was joy and sorrow and beauty and pain. John, who had never desired a woman in his life, felt that even he could have fallen in love with her.
A beautiful woman. Yet the more he looked, the more he was sure she was not a human woman at all. Her eyes. The way her mouth curled at the corners. The whole damned feel of her. She was beautiful all right. She was perilously fair. Because she wasn’t human. She was from that other place. Earlier, he had merely suspected that Thornby somehow had links to that place. Now he knew exactly who the link was.
No wonder Lord Dalton seemed half mad. This was what he had lost.
And no wonder John hadn’t been able to sense the source of the curse. If she had done it using fair folk magic, it would be as difficult to detect as everything else about that place.
“Your mother,” John said. It wasn’t a question; there was such a strong resemblance. And yet he needed to hear Thornby confirm it.
