Spellbreaker

She needn’t explain further. She’d been employed here, just as she was now, during their courtship. Emmeline, new and excitable, had suggested ideas for the wedding dinner and Elsie’s dress almost daily. Ogden had stressed over finding her replacement. They, too, had been shocked when it ended faster than night turns to day. She’d dedicated herself more fiercely to the Cowls than ever after that. This was just a painful reminder of where her loyalty belonged.

“Oh, Elsie.”

She shrugged. “Just for a minute. Doesn’t matter. H-He didn’t think twice of it.”

He rubbed her arm briskly like she’d bruised it. “I’ll have Emmeline bring dinner to your room.”

I’m fine, she wanted to say, but her throat burned with the lie.

“With some warm milk,” he added.

God help her, she really was eleven again.

His hand stilled. “You’re a bright young woman, Elsie. You have no idea the things awaiting you in this life.”

And oddly . . . she felt better. They were simple words, but they carried a strange power. A firm assurance she didn’t quite understand. She thought she felt . . . but no, that was a hair tickling her face. She brushed the thing away. It would take hours to pull the pins out of the knots she’d made of it.

Ogden patted her elbow and stood from the bed. She heard him linger at the door for several seconds before closing it.

Elsie fell asleep before Emmeline could bring her a tray.

CHAPTER 11

“I suppose you’re going to compensate me after my employment is terminated?” Elsie asked, picking her way around a mud puddle formed by the morning’s rain. She traversed a wide dirt road that stretched from Seven Oaks toward the bulk of the duke’s tenants, and while the overhead sky was currently dry, the lurking, morose clouds promised more rain to come.

Mr. Bacchus Kelsey, half a step ahead of her, scoffed at the idea. He wasn’t in a jovial mood, not that jovial was his usual demeanor. But he was a little stiffer than usual, a little colder, too. Elsie didn’t think it had anything to do with the weather.

She stepped over a stone, glad she’d had the forethought to don sturdy boots for today’s blackmailed labors. She wore a simple linen dress, one she wouldn’t care too much about dirtying. The hem was already collecting whispers of mud. Elsie would wash those out herself rather than explain to Emmeline how she’d come by them. Another late night ahead of her, then. At least she’d caught up on sleep.

Even so, she knew she couldn’t carry on her triple life for much longer. If she spent much more time away from Brookley, she’d get herself in trouble. Goodness, it felt like she was a character in one of her novel readers, and if she’d learned anything from those sensational stories, everything would culminate into a ghastly event meant to entertain someone else—perhaps, in this case, God—at her expense.

She should try her hand at authorship someday. She might be good at it.

You may have more time than you think. What if it’s the steward who is keeping Mr. Ogden busy, not the squire? What if Mr. Parker’s giving you the time you need? Wishful thinking, perhaps, but she hoped it was true.

When they crested a small hill and the first homes began to dot the greenery ahead of them, Mr. Kelsey said, “The crops haven’t been doing well. They thrive in the tenants’ individual gardens, but the farms are waterlogged and close to rot.”

“It did rain today.”

He cast her a withering look.

Elsie sighed. “Well, I can certainly take a look.”

He didn’t reply, so she simply followed him into the tiny village, averting her eyes, wishing not to be recognized. Out for a stroll, she’d say if asked. Consultant. Curious about the duke’s grounds. Eager for Mr. Kelsey’s company, is all.

Not today. The man was practically a storm all in himself. Maybe he’d also run into a past lover. What kind of woman, precisely, would interest a man like Mr. Kelsey?

“Perhaps the queen will decide it’s too dreary and hire the Physical Atheneum to clear up the sky, hmm?” Elsie offered. It wasn’t fully a jest—it had happened before. With the ability to control temperature and water vapor, powerful physical aspectors could create storms, even dismiss them. For a city as large as London, it would take . . . many working together. Elsie wasn’t sure of the exact number. But Kent would feel some of the effects.

If Mr. Kelsey replied, she didn’t hear it. They stepped between two homes, Mr. Kelsey nodding to a woman comforting an infant on her shoulder. To the right, Elsie spied a physical spell, small and faintly blue, shivering as though cold, at the center of the stone wall. It vanished just as quickly.

When they were out of earshot, she said, “I don’t suppose you want me to take the fortifying spells off the homes as well?”