The Serpent's Shadow (17 page)

There was a postbox on the corner; the letter went in, and she moved on. It was done, and she felt the letter leave her hand with a sense of having put something in motion that it was not in her power to stop. She sighed and quickened her pace. One thing was certain. If this was a typical day at the Fleet, she wouldn't have time to think about the meeting tonight, much less worry about it.

“Hello, old man—what
are
you brooding about? That's a perfectly delightful bit of lamb you've been frowning at for the past minute, and I'm sure it hasn't done anything to you.”

Peter Scott looked up from his luncheon with a start. Almsley stood just beside his table, looking at him with a particularly knowing expression. As usual, Lord Peter was impeccably attired in a neat morning suit of gray flannel, his cravat conservatively tied. He must have checked his hat with his coat at the entrance to the club, since he was bareheaded. Sunlight full of dust motes streamed in through the nearest window and glinted off his pale hair, giving him a kind of specious halo. Lord Peter Almsley was an excellent fellow, but no one would ever accuse him of being angelic.

Peter Scott had decided to eat at the club today, rather than one of the pubs or eateries local to his shop. He was out of the mood for bustle and noise, and there certainly wasn't any of that here. If anything, the atmosphere was positively drowsy. No one had spoken above a murmur since he sat down.

“Almsley, I didn't know you were in town!” he said, rather inanely, since it hadn't been more than two days since the meeting they had all attended. Lord Peter took that as an invitation to join him, and folded his thin limbs down onto the substantial mahogany chair across the round table, a table which was far too large for a single diner. A waiter appeared immediately, waiting attentively on Lord Peter's wishes.
Where
did they come from? Scott had never been able to catch one hovering, but the moment one wanted something, there was the waiter, at one's elbow. It was a trifle unnerving.

“Exactly what he's having, but I'll give it proper attention,” Almsley said. The waiter nodded, and betook himself off, vanishing into that limbo in which the Exeter Club waiters existed when they were neither taking orders nor bringing food. “Now, what has that poor bit of meat done to make you so annoyed at it?” Almsley asked, taking a roll from among the folds of the linen napkin lining the breadbasket between them, breaking it apart with long fingers, and buttering it, somehow turning the simple act into a pantomime the equal of a Japanese tea ceremony, though with none of the solemnity.

Peter chuckled. “It's what I've done that worries me,” he replied, rather glad to have someone to talk to. Once the letter had gone out, he'd been taken with mixed feelings. What if she replied? What if she
didn't?
“And I'm afraid that there's a distinct possibility that the other—members—will be more than merely annoyed at me if they find out.” He explained what he had discovered about Doctor Witherspoon as succinctly as possible, although he had to catch himself once or twice when he realized he was dwelling on the lady's virtues a little more enthusiastically than the short acquaintance would warrant. Lord Peter's face remained an absolute blank the entire time, telling Scott little or nothing about what the other was thinking.

When he had finished, Almsley examined his half-eaten roll with every sign of interest, but his pale blue eyes had that look in them that told Peter that his “twin” had absorbed and was now considering every word he said. He finished just as Almsley's luncheon arrived, but although the plate steamed invitingly when the waiter uncovered it and vanished again, Lord Peter made no move to take up his implements. Instead, he put both elbows on the table, steepled his fingers together, and stared intently at Peter Scott across them. The intelligent eyes took on a sharpness that few people ever saw in them.

“I think, Twin, that you had better not tell anyone about these plans of yours, at least not for a little while,” Almsley said. “But I
also
think that this is the only possible thing you
could
do. In your place I'd have done exactly the same, and devil take the hindmost.” His eyes gleamed with suppressed enthusiasm. “Even this moment, I'd make the offer to help her, if I wasn't a total stranger. I'd do it if you hadn't already, that is. She sounds completely fascinating, this paragon of yours.”

“I think she'll be suspicious, and rightly,” Scott said thoughtfully. “The trouble is, so far as what I've done is concerned,
and
the way the club is likely to think about it, you're far more likely to—to—”

“To get away with it!” Almsley laughed, loud enough to attract a curious glance or two before the other diners glanced away. Laughter seldom broke the sonorous murmuring of the club dining room. “I
will
help if you think you need an extra set of hands and talents. We can't just leave her the way she is; the magic will break out, one way or another, and it's just a jolly good thing that so far it's only broken out in healing and self-defense with her. My grandmother's told me stories—well, if I need to convince her, this doctor of yours, I'll trot them out, no need to bore you with them now.”

Magic had skipped a generation in Lord Peter's family, and he was the only one of the four siblings in his own generation to have it.
I wonder if some of those stories are about Young Peter? He could very well have been an unholy terror as a child.
Scott kept his smiles to himself, but he was pretty sure that whatever else he'd been like, Peter Almsley had never been a timid or reticent child.

“I may hold you to that promise,” Peter Scott replied. “You don't erect a defensive barrier unless there's something to defend against; you don't use magic that confuses other mages as to where you are unless you expect to find another mage looking for you.”

“Agreed, to all of it,” Lord Peter said, now moving to attack his meal. He sobered just a moment, then lightened again, as if he didn't want to voice his own unease. “Do get the trick of that last bit from her, if you can, won't you? I can think of any number of useful purposes a bit of ‘don't look at me' could be put to. Better than being invisible, that.”

Why Lord Peter's open approval should have made Peter feel as if a huge weight had been taken from him, he didn't know—until Almsley added, after allowing an expression of bliss to pass across his features following the first bite of his meal, “I'll back you in front of the Old Man himself, if that's needed. Absolutely. And I doubt he'll argue with
me.”

“You will?” Perhaps he sounded a bit too surprised; Almsley chuckled.

“Oh, ye of little faith. Of course I will. We're not doddering about in Victorian parlors anymore. We have serious business to attend to and not enough hands to attend to it. Well, think of it! The more
people
there are in the world, the more
mages
there will be, of course! And the more mages there are, the more likely it is that some of ‘em will go to the bad, or be born into it. The Old Man's obstinate refusal to bring in the ladies
or
the—ahem!—tradesmen—”

“Other than me, and that only because I was too strong to ignore—” Peter interrupted, with just a touch of bitterness. “—and even if I wasn't
one of you,
I was at least a ship's captain, which might slide in under the definition of ‘gentleman.' ”

“Pre-cisely.” Lord Peter allowed another bite of the tender lamb to melt on his tongue, and Peter Scott followed his example, finally doing justice to the meal by according it the attention it deserved. “It's antiquated, it's ridiculous, and it's going to cost us one day. What if we need more manpower than we've got? That lot old Uncle Aleister's got hanging about him isn't worth much, but what if some day he corrupts a
real
Master? What if one of the ladies decides she's had enough of being patted on the head and patronized and tells us all to go to hell when we most need her? Have
you
ever had to try and placate an angry Earth Elemental?”

“Ah—no. The project's never come up on my watch.” Scott replied carefully.

“I have.” Lord Peter's wry expression held no pain, but from the shadows in his eyes, the experience had been no pleasure either. “And if you ever do, you'll be glad enough to have an Earth Master there. The ones that surface in the city are—not pleasant.” Lord Peter shrugged. “For some reason, that Mastery tends to go to women and country folk. Neither of which are likely to be invited to the Council if the Old Man continues to have his way.”

“See here, Twin—you're not talking palace revolution here, are you?” Peter asked, a spark of alarm lighting up within him. The last thing he wanted to do was to challenge the entire structure of the Council and Lodge! To his relief, Lord Peter laughed.

“Great heavens, no! Just that the Old Man needs to change with the times, and I think your clever doctor may be the one who makes him see that. She's certainly got the brains to best him in argument, and if she's as strong as you say—well. Earth can support Fire, but it can also smother it. I don't think he'd put it to the Challenge.” He gestured with his fork. “Now—eat. I've got heredity to thank for my lean and hungry look; there's no excuse for you to go about looking as if you were starving for something.”

It was on the tip of Peter's tongue to say that he
was
starving for something, but he was afraid that his “twin” would only make a joke of it. Lord Peter was, to all appearances, perfectly content with his ballet dancers and his sopranos, and to put it bluntly, he had the resources to indulge himself with them as much as he cared to. His rank and wealth allowed him to spend time in the company of many sorts of women, from the educated to the artists, the debutantes to the little dancers. If he wanted the company of an educated woman, or a clever one, he had any number of open invitations to the salons of the intelligentsia. If his need was more—well—carnal, he could afford a woman who made carnality into a delicate and sensual art.

With limited funds came limited choices. Peter Scott had no taste for dance-hall belles, or the women of the dockside bars, and the only other sorts of women he came into contact with were generally someone else's wives. Besides, most of the women he'd met in either venue had minds too shallow to drown a worm. Maya Witherspoon, however—

Enough of that. You're not only putting the cart before the horse, you haven't got cart or horse yet.
The afternoon post hadn't come when he left the shop; there'd been nothing in the morning post. There was no telling what the doctor would think of his letter. She might not answer it at all.

No, she must! She's intelligent. Surely she's aware of how little she knows, how much more she could be with proper training.
He recalled only too clearly the frustration he had felt when the magic began to wake in him, and his natural abilities far outstripped his knowledge. For someone like the doctor, accustomed to having the answers to every dilemma at her fingertips, it must be a torment. Almsley must have been starving; he finished long before Peter Scott did. There was no vulgar business with bills being presented in a private club like this one. A meal was tallied to the member's running account, which was presented at the end of the month. Lord Peter waved off a waiter who appeared to ask him if he wished a sweet, and stood up. “I've got business to attend to, old man—but send a note around when you've heard from the good doctor. I'm deuced curious now.”

“I may not hear from her,” Scott replied cautiously. “She may think I'm mad.”

But his Lordship only chuckled. “Small chance of that,” he said confidently. “Only think what you would do in her place, and you'll know I'm right there.”

Lord Peter strode off, weaving his way expertly among the tables, leaving Scott to finish his meal in silence. He, too, waved the waiter away when he finally finished all he had an appetite for. The afternoon post should have arrived by now; he had to know if there was an answer in it.

He hurried back to the shop, unlocked it—and there on the mat was a letter, monogrammed in one corner with an M entwined with a W—and as if that wasn't enough to identify it for him, two little puncture marks crowned each end of the W.

He snatched it off the floor and ripped it open, in too much haste to neatly detach the wafer. Mere seconds later, he had her answer.

Initial elation was followed quickly by a certain disappointment. After his own long, heartfelt missive, to get only this bald, bare reply?

Then he shook himself into reasonableness.
What else can she say? She's a lady, she's reticent, she may even be shy; she isn't going to pour her heart out to a stranger, a strange man. She's opened herself up enough just by accepting my offer. And, good God, she wants the first meeting tonight! What more could I ask for?