Page 48 of Apt to be Suspicious
“Exactly.” Giles leaned back, and Pen finally pulled herself away from staring at the window. Though she couldn’t stop herself from glancing over that way. She had found him annoyingly attractive at first. Then he’d been vibrantly so, in a way she didn’t have words for. And now, there was something there she wanted very much, no matter how little she wanted to admit it. She couldn’t even name what it was.
Instead, she folded her hands in her lap, did her best not to look out the window, and cleared her throat. “Is there other background I ought to know?” It was an open-ended question.
Cammie settled back down and considered. “Two pieces of it. First, I was not at Bletchley, you know that.”
“No, ma’am. Um. Cammie.” Pen was trying so hard to match the way they were, and the way they were inviting her to be. “But your reputation preceded you. Some of the women had worked with you, other places. And you were of Albion, of course. A number of people wondered why you weren’t there, actually.”
“All of us track the others like us, don’t we?” Cammie nodded approvingly. “I was doing signals work until the beginning of 1944, when I was, well. Still doing signals work, just on a more specific project.” She considered something, then said, “Some of the work related to the Normandy landings, on the signals end, is what I can say about that. There I was working with Hypatia, Orion— now her husband, Lord Sisley if you hadn’t put it together— and Claudio Warren on it. We’re all four very close still. Duncan, my husband, was in the RAF, if Edmund hadn’t mentioned. Duncan and I have a townhouse a block down, but we set up a nursery here. It’s easier during the day and less fuss for Giles.”
“Edmund had, yes. I think he was trying to put me at ease. Also pointing out he’s not actually good at everything. I think aeroplanes confuse him?” Pen offered it a little tentatively, not sure how they’d take it.
“Oh, he’s quite open about that. None of his family are particularly mechanically minded unless it involves bridges and roads and such.” Pen blinked, because if that were the case, Edmund apparently had more to talk about with her Dad than she’d thought. “Land magic, obligations thereof. Bridges and roads come up quite a lot, actually, as well as the agriculture.” Then Cammie tilted her head. “Do you know much about his family?”
“Um, no? Not really. He’s mentioned a few things.” Pen was not at all sure where this conversation was going.
Cammie snorted. “Giles, you have seniority here, by quite a bit.”
He chuckled. “Yes. First, the household here, since I hope you’ll become familiar. Kate is a captain in the Guard, fairly senior these days. She works a range of hours, and she’s entirely used to coming downstairs to find a mathematical debate raging. All the usual charms to muffle noise and keep our oaths straight and all that. Our daughter and son have followed her into the Guard. They’re both apprentices. Artemis and Theodore. We get them home for supper when we can, but that’s not very often. As for Geoffrey, mmm.”
“The household at Ytene is— well, rather sprawling,” Cammie cut in. “Edmund’s parents, Lord Geoffrey and Lady Lizzie Carillon. Properly, she’s Elspeth, but she never uses that with people she likes.”
“Geoffrey was the younger son. Their parents died in 1916, the sinking of the Sussex in the Channel. His older brother died in 1922. It’s complicated, and best to ask privately if you want the details at some point. Geoffrey had been an explorer, looking for sources of materia and information about flora and fauna.” Giles seemed to have told this before. It had that sort of feel to it. “He and I met when I was at Oxford— he’s eight years older— and found we got on well. Thrown together by the man Edmund worked for during the war, actually.” That last sounded like an off-hand comment, but Pen was suddenly certain it was entirely deliberate on his part. “There are some more distant cousins, but none in the direct line, and Edmund is the oldest of his generation.”
The summary was in fact helpful. “And his father— Lord Carillon— was also at Oxford, yes?”
“Read history at Exeter. So you can see, Edmund is partly following in the family tradition that way too.” Giles considered, then went on. “I was blinded in a gas attack. Geoffrey served in the trenches and then did other work with his man, Benton. After the War, he was away from Albion until his brother’s death. Then he had to figure out how to be Lord. In that stretch, I’d become closer to Lord Richard and Lady Alysoun Edgarton. I did some work for Richard. They were kind enough to be a help to Geoffrey, partly on my request. Kate and I were married at about that point.”
He took a breath, comfortable with it. “A decade and change later, Geoffrey did some work on the Continent with Alexander Landry. He’s on the Council, as you know, and now Alexander spends a fair bit of time at Ytene, their demesne estate. It’s a rather bucolic sort of space, but also holds all the traditions of the New Forest. Geoffrey breeds and trains horses for pavo. He keeps hawks in his mews. He doesn’t foxhunt, though, at least not regularly. They have a devoted staff and set of familial connections. Edmund’s also close to the Edgarton children, especially Anthony, also a Guard apprentice. And to the Fortiers, there’s a fair bit of history there, with Alexander.”
The list of names felt rather like an entirely different sort of logic puzzle, but Pen more or less followed it. And she now had the information to go draw up charts and graphs. It was ridiculous that she wanted to. She didn’t need to know this if whatever it was she and Edmund were doing was just in passing. On the other hand, he was obviously close to Giles and Cammie, and if she were apprenticing, she’d presumably be seeing him because of that, if nothing else.
Blast. Edmund was annoyingly handsome, competent, and thoughtful. She did not, in fact, want to think about him not being around to be annoyingly those things. Or that tangle of double negatives. She took a breath. “And Edmund went to Schola. A few years behind me, that part I knew.”
“He was in Owl, obviously.” Cammie said it cheerfully. “Proper child of our shared House. Merry was in Seal. Ros is in Fox, which is rather a surprise to everyone, but she seems to be doing well. Geoffrey was in Owl himself, and Lizzie in Salmon.” That gave Pen even more to think about. She kept assuming someone like Edmund would have been in Fox, even when she knew better. Assumptions caused trouble. At about that point, the alarm chime went off. Cammie glanced at it. “You need to get back for hall, yes? Let me reclaim my daughter from Edmund, and he can walk you back. We’ll set up a time to start you on some reading and all that as soon as we can, all right?”
“Cammie has a journal and handles that sort of correspondence for me. Write any time, she’s sensible enough that it won’t chime at her if you write late at night.” Giles did not stand, but the dog at his feet lifted her head hopefully.
“Though you might want to do the same for me. Sometimes I catch up on things when Kenna’s awake at two in the morning, and I don’t always remember when other people are asleep.” Cammie had pushed herself upright, now taking long strides across the room with a “Back in a minute, Giles.”
Five minutes later, Edmund had offered his arm, and was escorting her back to the Portal. Giles and Cammie had made the new arrangements clear. It was only when Pen was sitting down at table in hall that she realised that they— none of them— had got around to talking about the actual question for the visit, the problem of Cecily Styles. She was up the rest of the night trying to figure out if that was what Edmund and Giles and Cammie had intended or not.
Chapter 31
Wednesday, May 26th at the Council Keep
“Next shelf, volumes 1634 dot 3 and 1634 dot 5, please.” Edmund considered, clambered down the library ladder, pushed it two feet to the left, and climbed it again. He had been up at the Council Keep, Dinas Emrys, for most of the afternoon. They were in what was now the secondary library, open to escorted and supervised visitors. That meant he could fetch and carry the volumes Uncle Alexander had wanted to look at. They’d already pulled half a dozen maps.
When Edmund came down with those two, Uncle Alexander nodded. “There, please.” Edmund thought he was a bit distracted. That was to be expected, and it wasn’t as if Edmund weren’t also rather distracted himself.
“Thank you.” Whatever else, Uncle Alexander believed in the proper civility. “Let’s see. That will let me gesture at what I wanted. Now—” He launched rather abruptly into a discussion of several adaptations of ritual forms for re-anchoring land magic after problems in a family line, with no preamble.
Of course, Edmund knew a fair bit of the theory of it, but these particular cases dealt with the impact of disafforestation in the wake of the enclosure acts as well as Cromwell’s Protectorate. It was not a period Edmund had ever particularly focused on, either in terms of history or in terms of ritual theory, but he could not deny it was relevant to various of his interests.
They went back and forth for a good bit, with Edmund furiously scratching down notes. He needed to try to remember to soak his hand tonight. The late afternoon lecture would be hard on his writing as well. As a topic, Homeric archaeology demanded both Roman and Greek scripts, as well as various diagrams and sketches. After perhaps forty-five minutes, Uncle Alexander took a breath. “Got that?”
“Yes, sir.” Edmund swallowed. “I need to think about it before I have questions. Perhaps do some more reading about the period.”
“You have access to suitable libraries for that, yes.” Uncle Alexander leaned back. “You’ve been rather quiet today.”
