The Wizard of London (19 page)

She
never accepted another invitation again; instead, she concentrated on her
studies, both academic and occult, and set her eyes on the goal of leaving the
country altogether and somehow getting to India. Since that had also been a
longtime ambition of her benefactress, they had arranged for a trip for the two
of them, with Isabelle as the lady’s companion. Her father had been
bewildered, but accepted it. Her friend, the London bookshop owner, gave her
people to contact.

And
when she had met Frederick—everything changed for the better.

“Well,”
she said aloud. “Now I know that my memory of things matches
Bea’s.”

That,
too, had emerged from their morning of “catching up.” She had
not
been mistaken, everyone around her had assumed that she and David Alderscroft
were going to make a couple as soon as she came of the proper age to do so. She
was not the only one who had been shocked by his change of attitude.

But
perhaps most importantly, there had been one fundamental mistake that she
had
made. Her immediate circle of friends did not condone David’s behavior
toward her, much less share it. Now, there probably were some girls at the
school, and there were
certainly
some young ladies in the exclusive
social circle in which David resided, who applauded what he had done and felt
that Isabelle had been pushing herself in where she did not belong. But her
real friends, though she had been blind to it at the time, were incensed by his
treatment of her. Their doors were still open to her, just as Bea’s had
been.

And
that was of vital importance, for she was going to have to try to find some way
of discovering who had set the trap for Sarah and Nan without the aid of the
tacit leader of the Elemental Masters hereabouts.

She
laughed aloud, remembering what Frederick had once said to her.
When you
want something done, you ask a man. When you want it done quietly and without
any fuss, you ask a woman
.

Perhaps a circle of
old friends wasn’t a bad place to start.

DAVID Alderscroft
looked out over the tree-shaded boulevard in front of his town house and
frowned. Too many people, too many untidy people, clattering back and forth
along the pavement. A nurse pushing a pram, some wretched boy running an
errand, two carriages, and a tradesman’s van—too many people. How
much better it would have been had there been no one out there, the pavement
spotless, the street silent—

Better
still had it been winter. Everything lightly coated in snow, all the
imperfections invisible beneath the frozen blanket. That would be ideal—

It
would be so tidy if winter remained year round. No mess, people properly
remaining inside their own four walls, tradesmen keeping to their proper place
in the alleys
. He entertained himself with a vision of the frozen city for
a moment, everything as pure and white and clean as new marble, with nothing to
mar the shining perfection of it.

He
shook his head slightly. He shouldn’t be obsessing over such trifles. He
had some serious campaigning to do, if he was going to penetrate the circle
surrounding Her Majesty, Queen Victoria.

It
wasn’t a circle he would normally have entrée to. The Queen was
very particular about those she allowed near her. He wasn’t a family man,
nor was he particularly fond of children. Her Majesty was not noted for her
partiality to
young
men, nor was she inclined to put her trust in
them. But she was susceptible to men in general, in the sense that she tended
to rely heavily on them, and to be manipulated by them—not easily, but
when you knew what to say to her, when and how to say it, she tended to defer
to your judgment, over and above her own.

David
didn’t know what those things were, nor when and how to say them—but
Lady Cordelia did. So if he did his job correctly, and managed to get into that
magic circle, the rest would be easy. So she had told him, and he believed her.
Nothing she had told him thus far had ever been wrong.

He
turned back to his desk, and the frown smoothed. Here, in his office,
everything was precisely as it should be. The books had all been shelved in
their proper place along the walls, his massive mahogany desk was dustless and
polished until one could see one’s face in it. The Turkey carpet was
newly swept, the ashtrays washed, the two leather chairs on the far side of the
desk the exact distance from the desk that he favored. The blotter was
precisely in the middle, and his pens, pencils, paper and ink right where he
wanted them. This was more like it. Here was order, everything properly
arranged and tidy. He glanced at his pocket watch, saw that it was precisely
ten o’clock, and sat down to begin his correspondence for the day.

Parliament
would not be in session again until October; there would be nothing to occupy
him there until the summer recess was over, but that did not mean that he would
not be planning for the opening.

Politics
was something of a new field for the Alderscrofts. His father had taken no
interest in his seat in the House of Lords and neither had his grandfather, but
David had, on Lady Cordelia’s advice, been active since before his father
died. He had been taking his seat nearly every day when Parliament was sitting
for the past three years, and had been making a quiet name for himself there,
in the cleverest way possible—as a voice of moderation. No one expected a
young man to be the voice of moderation; he was attracting attention for that
reason. It was good attention, too; the Queen approved.

He
worked steadily until luncheon; his secretary James came in twice, quietly and
unobtrusively removing what he had finished with and bringing him new
correspondence to deal with. Some of it was political, much was social, a very
little was business relating to the running of the estate. He spent very little
time there, since his father had died; the old manor troubled him in a way he
could not define. Perhaps it was simply that there were too many memories
there. In any event, he left most of that business in the hands of his estate
manager. “Pay competent people who know the job,” Lady Cordelia had
said. “Do not try to attempt things you are not expert at and do not care
for.” Good advice, and he had gratefully left the estate in the hands of
Colin Foxward. The report was good, neither too much rain nor too little, crops
looking favorable, and he dismissed the estate from his mind with a feeling of
relief. It was more of a burden than a blessing, so far as he was
concerned—except, of course, for the income. And these days no one held
it against a gentleman if his income derived from investment rather than land.
If it were his choice… but it wasn’t. And besides, the old place
was useful in the shooting season. Near enough to London to take the train, far
enough for good hunting, and his gamekeeper did a fine job in making sure there
were plenty of pheasant, duck, and quail. It was useful socially, and would
become more so as he rose in social circles.

At
noon, precisely, he rose from his desk. He did not need to call for his
carriage, for his household knew his habits; it was waiting at the door to take
him to his club, where he lunched. He then spent precisely three hours making
social calls, not returning home until teatime. He couldn’t abide taking
his tea as a social call; difficult enough to make calls on ladies when they
were merely receiving, for at least then one could escape when the level of
chatter grew too high. One was trapped at tea, and the clatter of china was
only eclipsed by the chatter of gossip. Lady Cordelia was the only female of
his acquaintance who eschewed gossip; she was the only female of his
acquaintance who showed any sense about the matter. Now that he was not busy
with politics until the October opening, she had resumed his lessons in
Elemental Magic; she would be here for tea, and then, a lesson.

Precisely
on time, no more than ten minutes after he had arrived, he looked out of the
window to see her carriage roll up to the front entrance. It was a distinctive
vehicle; most carriages in London were black or dark shades of red, green or
blue. Hers was white, trimmed in light blue, and it was probably the entire job
of one servant to keep it clean and shining in the filthy air of the city. Her
horses were matched grays; her coachman’s livery was light blue. A moment
after the carriage rolled to a halt, the footman opened the door, and Lady
Cordelia, dressed in her customary colors of pale-blue and white, descended
from the carriage. She moved with a cool grace he had never seen in any other
woman; she glided as if she was on wheels.

She
was curiously ageless; her hair so white a blond that it was not possible to
see any silver or gray in it, her face as smooth and unwrinkled and serene as
if carved from alabaster. Her eyes were a pale blue-gray, her form as slender
as a young birch, but as erect and straight as a wand of silver, and all in
all, there could not possibly have been a more perfect physical representation
of an Air Master. There was nothing about her of the occasional giddiness or
spontaneity of an Air Master and no sign at all that she had a touch of the
passionate Element of Fire in her.

But
Lady Cordelia had too firm a grip on the reins of her character and her Element
to allow passion to come into play. In fact, she had taught David that passion,
especially when dealing with Fire, was dangerous. She had instilled in him a
discipline and control he had no notion existed before she began teaching him,
and taught him to keep his Elemental creatures under firm control and tight
rein.

She
had also taught him something else, something he had never seen nor heard of
before. The absence of fire was cold; she taught him how to harness his Element
in a way that allowed him to create an arctic chill instead of furnace heat.

And
there were Elementals that thrived in that atmosphere, odd creatures of
negative Fire, if that was possible. Strange little Ice Fey and Frost Fey; a
kind of counter-Salamander, creatures of snow and glacier, and—or so she
claimed—even the famous Yeti, though it was highly unlikely he would ever
see one of those in England. They were utterly obedient to his will, never
fighting him, as opposed to their flame-driven brethren. Perhaps this was why
he liked them so much, preferring them over the common aspect of his Element.
One would have thought that water, in the form of snow and ice, being inimical
to his Element would have made these creatures just as hostile. But in fact,
this was Water locked away in a crystalline form that rendered it unreachable
by Water Elementals. In a sense, this was where Fire conquered Water.

Sometimes,
though, he looked back on the days of raw power, of careful negotiations with a
Phoenix, with nostalgic longing. Still, those were the days when he was very
young, childish in fact. Only children preferred chaos over order, uncertainty
over certainty. Children did not understand control and self-control. Cordelia
had set him straight on that path.

There
was a crystalline order to cold that appealed to him as well. As every
snowflake was an orderly lattice, mathematical and precise, so was the matrix
of spells that controlled the cold. The only flaw in the situation, and it was
a small one, was that the Elemental creatures he had so far encountered were
inferior in power to those of Flame. Still, it wasn’t as if he was going
into Duel Arcane any time soon.
Those
unhappy days were over.

Cordelia
entered the drawing room, followed immediately by the maid with the tea cart,
and he advanced to greet her exactly as always, the comfort of well-rehearsed
pathways making him feel settled. She extended a kid-glove-clad hand for him to
shake, he took it, squeezed it once, and released it. She smiled faintly.

“My
dear David,” she said, taking her place in her favorite chair, and
motioning to the maid to begin serving, “I am given to understand you
have been exceptionally busy this afternoon. Following up on an invitation to
meet with the Prime Minister, no less! I am impressed by your progress.”

He
no longer wondered how she knew these things; her sources of information were
logical. They were in the same circle of friends, she would have been told of
the invitation at some point during her morning calls, and it was beyond the
realm of possibility that he would not have been putting great thought into the
exact wording of his acceptance this afternoon. “It’s only a large
dinner party,” he replied, hastily making it clear that although he had
managed this himself, it was an inferior achievement to those things she could
do for him. “I doubt very much that I will be able to get more than a
word or two with him.”

“But
that will be several words more than you have gotten heretofore,” she
countered, with no sign of disapproval. “Congratulations.”

He
felt a little glow at her praise, and indeed, he
had
worked hard to
get this invitation. He suspected that he had ultimately gotten the invitation
because he was an eligible bachelor, and the lady of the house had two
unmarried daughters to dispose of. Not that he would even consider either of
them.

He
had higher ambitions, and any wife he took would have to fit those ambitions.
Neither of the two hapless daughters fit that mold, but of course, she would
not know that. You manipulated people by knowing their weaknesses and
exploiting them in such a manner that they did not actually feel exploited. Best
of all was if you could exploit them in such a manner that they felt an
obligation to accommodate you, or a desire to fulfill your desire.

He
had never met anyone quite as skilled at doing this as Cordelia. She could
extract nearly anything she wanted from someone, and leave him (or her) with
the feeling that it was Cordelia who had been conferring the favor.