Page 10 of Salt Magic, Skin Magic
“But is it true Lord Thornby can’t leave the estate?”
“Dalton has stopped his allowance. I suppose that’s what Lord Thornby means if he says he can’t leave. He hasn’t any income.”
“What if I told you he really can’t leave; that there’s something keeping him here.”
“Magic?”
John sighed. “If it is, I can’t detect it, but I don’t see how it could be anything else. Do you suspect anyone else around here of using magic?”
“No.” She looked down at some shreds of mucky straw that had stuck to her plum-coloured boot. “I bought my charm in Pickering; that’s miles away. It couldn’t be Mr Derwent could it? He seems so vague and old, but he does have some odd curios, doesn’t he?”
“He does,” John agreed. “But, I beg your pardon, what about Lord Dalton? Lord Thornby says his father admits it openly, and has told him that once he marries, he can leave. His father claims to have that power.”
There was a long pause. She bunched her hands in a fold of her dress. So, this was the possibility she didn’t want to consider: that her own husband was doing these things to her. He had already frittered away all of her money. Now, as well as his coldness towards her, was he also secretly terrorising her?
“I don’t know,” she said eventually, her voice faint.
“Has Lord Dalton ever behaved oddly, would you say?”
“Not especially. He’s always buying little rocky islands, ‘skerries’ I think they’re called. I did think it was an odd enthusiasm when I first met him, but he believes in seaweed as a fertiliser, and, well, to me, gentlemen often seem odd in their interests. I once met a viscount who talked about the benefits of martingales for over an hour. An hour, Mr Blake! Through seven courses!”
She smiled, timidly, as if half expecting him to launch into a lecture about martingales himself. He smiled back.
Emboldened, she went on. “When I met Lord Dalton, he was different. He was courteous. He was never unkind. Perhaps he wasn’t as conventional as most of the men I’d met, but I liked that about him. He never seemed to care what people thought. My parents had cared so much! To meet someone who didn’t—” She paused, searching for the right word. “It wasliberating, Mr Blake. I suppose I married him for one of the worst possible reasons, but I really thought...”
Her voice, which had become almost a whisper, trailed off.
“You wouldn’t be the first young lady to have her head turned by a nobleman,” John said kindly.
She looked at him blankly. “That’s what people think, isn’t it? I wanted the title. Lady Dalton. That’s what George believes.”
“That’s not the case?”
“Of course I understand why people assume that.”
Her voice was resigned. She was used to not being believed. He waited silently for the truth.
“He begged me. Begged me on his knees. None of the others did that. But the real reason...” She broke off again, and John averted his eyes to spare her embarrassment, expecting a tale of passion or seduction, but she surprised him again.
“I was sorry for him,” she said. “I know that’s the worst reason to marry someone. I was such a fool! But I’m still sorry for him, even now. I know he neglects his duties and there’s no money, and he and Thornby argue terribly. But there’s something driving him to it. I don’t mean to say it’s magic. It’s more—his first wife dying. And he loved her so much. I thought—if we were married—and it did seem to work at first. Sometimes he would be so kind! When we first came to Raskelf he would bring me flowers. Not big bouquets from the gardens, but daisies or violets. He picked them himself. Or he said he did. Maybe it was the gardener’s boy all along. But it all stopped when he brought Lord Thornby home.”
She stood there by the stable door, a strand of dirty straw held forgotten in her hand, eyes unfocused, remembering.
John could think of another, meaner, reason why Lord Dalton might bring her wildflowers rather than bouquets, but he didn’t voice it. The idea of the aggressive, grizzled marquess picking violets sat uncomfortably with his idea of the man, but then most men did sometimes behave strangely where women were concerned, especially if those women were wealthy heiresses.
So, she’d married Lord Dalton because she was sorry for him. It was, truly, a terrible reason to marry someone, but perhaps love might have grown if her husband had continued to treat her kindly. He wondered again if she had some sensitivity to magic, if perhaps she could sense the curse, and pity the man under it without knowing why. If she’d been a boy, she’d have been tested. She might have gone to the Institute or had an apprenticeship somewhere.
John made his excuses, went upstairs and began to put a ward charm on a handkerchief she’d given him. He made wards all the time, but his usual customers were factory workers or their bosses, and he usually warded from fire, from crushing or slicing injuries, from cotton fibre in the lungs, or from mistakes brought on by exhaustion and hunger. This was a different sort of job entirely; warding from the unknown, from general malice. He took his time over it. He even went back to his books at one point. Wards for ladies tended to contain a soporific, to calm and reassure. But he weighed the bag of Hochmel beads in his hand and put them to one side. He never used them for the mill girls; they needed their wits about them. If Lady Dalton indeed had some sensitivity to hidden magic, it seemed wrong to dull her senses to it while she was caught in the middle of it all.
He put the charmed handkerchief in his pocket, to give to her, and his fingers caught the edge of the sketch he had put in his pocket-book.
He took out the portrait of Lord Thornby and examined it. At first, all he could see was his own desire. There was something in Thornby’s face that surpassed the classical by falling short of it. Perhaps his nose was too narrow, his mouth too wide, and his cheeks too hollow, but these imperfections let John know he was flesh, not marble, and the knowledge made his heart pound.
But after a while, he began to see in a different way. Thornby had drawn himself at a slight angle, chin thrust out to the viewer, eyes hooded. When John had first glanced at it, he’d thought it an arrogant pose. But now he looked closer and saw that it was not. In fact, he’d seen the attitude before, in people terribly bereaved; the eyes full of despair, the mouth tense. It was the face of a man held together with pride, because that was all he had left.
John sighed and put the portrait back in his pocket. He’d done as Catterall had asked; he’d come to Raskelf, he’d looked for magic. He’d proven Lord Thornby’s innocence. But Lady Dalton was still in trouble. The Marquess was cursed, but by whom? And Thornby, the strangest, most beautiful, and most disconcerting man he’d ever met, was somehow trapped at the heart of it.
He could not walk away.
