A Breath of Frost Read online

  “I already know what I know,” he said quietly. “Anyway, they only work on a single Keeper at a time. It would never hide you from an entire unit.”

  “Then why haven’t they come yet?”

  His smile was crooked. “Because they’ve been distracted by a murder and opened gates to the Underworld. But you’re being watched, even now. That opera singer’s carriage wheel was no accident.”

  Emma frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “She’s not known to us. She could be a warlock, or someone you’ve hired to help you escape.”

  Emma grew cold, glancing again at the windows. “That’s who’s been watching me this whole time. The Order.”

  “Of course. You’re wise to stay among other people. But I wouldn’t let your guard down just yet.” His voice was a whisper tickling her ear. She felt it in her knees. She hadn’t noticed but he’d circled them around to the doors that opened into the garden. In the whirl of couples, he tugged her outside into the privacy of the shadowy patio.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, instantly defensive. She glanced wildly about for other Keepers, half expecting him to turn her over to men with chains.

  Instead, he only closed his hands around her shoulders and dragged her against his chest. His eyes burned with a dark emotion that made her mouth dry and her throat hot. She could only stare at him, eyes wide. “Emma, if only you knew.”

  She didn’t even have a chance to ask him what it was she was supposed to know.

  He bent his head and kissed her, his mouth sliding over hers until her lips tingled. He tasted like honey wine and she felt instantly drunk. Her head swam and her breaths were small burning embers in her chest. His hands roamed over her back, fingers gliding up to dig into her hair. When his tongue touched hers, she was sure his hands were the only thing holding her up. There was no thought, no past, no future, just his mouth.

  The kiss was wild and desperate and more delicious than a hundred iced tea cakes.

  Until he pulled roughly away. His hands were still gentle on the exposed skin of her arms between the top of her glove and her beaded sleeve, but his breath was violent.

  “Damnation,” he said, his voice dark and agitated. “I can’t do this.”

  And then he was gone, leaping the stone balustrade and stalking across the dark lawns.

  Chapter 15

  Even without magical powers, mothers were terrifying creatures.

  When Cormac stumbled home at four o’clock in the morning, his mother was waiting for him in the upstairs hall. The light of the lamp she held flickered on her face. “Cormac, you’ve mud in your hair. What on earth have you been doing?” She paused. “Never mind, I don’t wish to know, actually.”

  He blinked at her owlishly. “How did you know I’d be here instead of my apartments?”

  She smiled gently. “Talia told me, of course. She seemed to think you might be distressed.”

  He leaned against the newel at the staircase, suddenly exhausted. He’d done everything he could think of to forget about Emma.

  Impossible.

  He’d visited White’s, his club, and gambled for hours. He’d seen a country estate, luckily not his own, lost on one bet of cards. And then he’d walked all the way home from Covent Garden, half hoping a thief would be foolish enough to accost him. He could have used a spot of violence. He felt sure his sister Talia, in addition to knowing his whereabouts, also knew just how much of his brain was occupied with forbidden and dangerous thoughts of Emma.

  Proving his point, and the general shrewdness of mothers, she smiled again. “There were some lovely girls at the soiree this evening. Before you disappeared.”

  He tried an air of nonchalance. “Is this one of those speeches about matrimony?”

  “You’ve time enough for that, darling. You’re still young yet.”

  “I’m telling Primrose you said that.” Primrose was only a year younger and was feeling the pressure to find herself a husband.

  “It’s different for girls.”

  “And I’m telling Colette you said that,” he teased.

  “Emma is a lovely girl,” was his mother’s reply. She looked at him the same way she’d looked at him when he’d been four years old and had broken his favorite wooden shield.

  And he was very much afraid he would end up breaking Emma as well.

  He felt the color drain from his face. “What?”

  She touched his cheek. “Don’t fret.”

  He wanted to point out that he was a man of nineteen and men didn’t fret, but she was right. “Does Father know? Or the Order?”

  She pursed her lips. “Of course not. He wasn’t there to see you tonight.”

  He sat on the top stair, leaning his head back wearily. “So it’s obvious?”

  “Only to me, dear,” she assured him. “A mother knows these things.”

  “Then you also know it’s impossible.”

  “Nothing’s impossible when it comes to love.”

  She was a romantic, and she always had been. “This isn’t one of your novels,” he said.

  She ignored him. “I looked her up in the Witch’s Debrett’s.”

  He groaned. The regular Debrett’s was used to record the lineages and titles of the aristocratic families of Britain. It was the bible of matchmaking parents. And parents being parents, there was a secret version entirely dedicated to witching families.

  “Her family is very powerful. The Lovegroves have been witches since the time of the Romans. I couldn’t find very much recent information, however. Most of it’s lost in scandal and rumor.”

  “You wouldn’t, would you?” he said. “No one can remember anything about Emma’s mother and she’s too mad to tell us anything herself. The only thing anyone can say for certain is that her magic is very powerful and unpredictable. She apparently took out three Keepers, one of them her own father.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Exactly. Which is part of the reason the Order wants Emma brought in.” He felt bleak at the thought. A winter wind howled inside his chest. “Father might very well be following that command as we speak.”

  She set her lamp down. “Your father is currently snoring like one of those beasts at the zoological gardens. He came home an hour ago stinking of port and smoke. I can assure you he was in no condition to be attempting any Keeper duties.”

  That was something, at least. Some of the tension left him and he found he could unclench his jaw after all. Emma would be free for just a little longer. And that was just a little longer that she might not despise him.

  “You’ve worked so hard to be part of the Order,” his mother continued. “I worry you won’t work as hard on your own personal happiness.”

  “Mother, I don’t lack for companions.” He tried not to blush. What a conversation to be having with his mother.

  She waved that aside. “I saw the way you looked at her. And that kind of connection is precious, whatever the complications.”

  “More precious than my oaths? Than the safety of the witching families of London?”

  “Yes.”

  He blinked at her savage tone. “You can’t mean that.”

  “Let the witches look after themselves every so often. I’m far more concerned with your heart.”

  He groaned. “Don’t be. As you said, I’m young. I’ve plenty of time.”

  Her smile was sad. “There’s never enough time when it comes to matters of the heart.” She ruffled his hair. “Try to get some sleep.”

  As if he could.

  He didn’t even bother getting up from his position on the step, only bent one knee and leaned back to get more comfortable.

  He shouldn’t have kissed Emma. He knew better. He just hadn’t been able to stop himself, not when she’d kissed him back just as desperately. He remembered every moment of the time they’d spent together over Christmas, before he’d realized who she was and how little she knew of their world. She was surrounded by witching families and yet neither she
nor her cousins knew a thing about it. And try as he might to broach the topic, she never quite understood what he was trying to say.

  It hadn’t mattered at the time. He’d been happy enough to sit in the garden under a thick sheepskin blanket while she pointed out the stars and the shapes they made. They’d drunk mulled wine and eaten oranges until she tasted of them when he kissed her.

  And now everything was different.

  Well, not everything.

  He still wanted to kiss her.

  He pulled an acorn from his pocket. It was painted with a miniscule pattern in white, spelling out Emma’s name in a long-forgotten language that looked like nothing so much as bare branches in winter. He stared at it, hating his life, his lack of gifts. Himself.

  He had to act now, before it was too late. If he didn’t prove himself now, the Order wouldn’t listen to him later, when it mattered.

  He had duties, responsibilities. He’d taken a blood oath to protect witches from warlocks, and from one another if necessary.

  He broke the acorn. The tracking spell activated immediately, linked to the fine powder of crushed horsehair and gargoyle dust he’d left in Emma’s hair when he’d kissed her. Like tree roots, it would grow and spread, following her wherever she went.

  The moment she left the relative security of her aunt’s magic-protected house, as well as the public scrutiny of guests and bystanders, the Order would be able to find her.

  She’d been marked.

  Chapter 16

  Emma and Gretchen descended on the Chadwicks’ house after breakfast. Emma practically tripped the poor butler, trying to get the door open faster. “Our cousin’s expecting us,” she said. She peered up the massive marble staircase. A statue of a nymph stared down at them from the landing. “Penny, hurry up!”

  “All right,” Penelope grumbled, still pinning up her hair as she came down the stairs. “It’s obscenely early.”

  “It’s eight o’clock.”

  “As I said.”

  “Be grateful,” Gretchen told Penelope. “She was knocking at my door before the maids were even finished lighting the fires.”

  Penelope shuddered.

  “Where’s your mother?” Emma asked, ignoring them both. She was already tired of feeling as though a Keeper lurked around every corner.

  “She’s in her stillroom,” Penelope replied, leading them through the dining room so she could snatch a roll from the sideboard. Gretchen took two. They went down a hall decorated with Egyptian-style statues and out into the garden. Aunt Bethany distilled perfumes when she wasn’t painting. Today the small shed was permeated with the thick scents of lilies and oranges.

  “Girls, you’re here early.”

  “That’s what I said,” Penelope agreed around a mouthful of bread. She dropped onto a wooden bench. Emma looked around the familiar room. Dried flowers and herbs hung from the ceiling and bottles filled with oils and tinctures lined the wall. Salt was scattered under the single window and the door was crowned with rowan branches.

  Suddenly it didn’t look like a stillroom for perfumes but a place to store strange ingredients for strange spells.

  “You’ve known all along,” Emma said quietly.

  Bethany put down the bottle of limewater with a small sigh. “Yes, my darlings. Witchery is in the blood, after all.” A badger spun from starlight and shadows emerged from the hem of her gown and snuffled past the cousins and through the partly opened door.

  “What the bloody hell is that?” Penelope blurted out.

  “My familiar,” her mother explained calmly. “You’ll find your own, soon enough. All witches have one. It’s the shape your magic takes to protect you.”

  “But what does it all mean?” Emma asked. “Cormac was maddeningly cryptic. Even before I made it rain.”

  “I suppose we should be surprised your ignorance of magic lasted as long as it did,” Bethany replied. “You’ll see others with the knot now,” she added, lifting her own palm. Her knot wasn’t as dark as Emma’s mother’s had been. It was more like faded brown ink. It made Emma think of old pirate maps and cave paintings done in ocher.

  “So Godric and I really saw a ghost covered in blood?” Gretchen asked. “Poor Godric, he’s going to be right put out.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” Penelope added.

  “You wouldn’t have believed me, kitten,” she answered. “The spell my sister worked was powerful. Even if you had been inclined to believe me, it would have prevented you. Lord knows, the Order tried again and again. You’re lucky the spell did what it did. Every time they tried to question you, you didn’t understand what they were saying.”

  “I don’t remember being asked about witchcraft,” Gretchen pointed out. “I think we’d recall something like that.”

  “Not with Theodora’s spell. She was always more powerful than the rest of us combined. She not only bound Emma’s powers, but she accidentally bound all of you as well. Cora was about ready to deliver the twins but I didn’t even know I was pregnant yet. Most people can’t work that kind of spell on purpose, never mind as residue.”

  “Is that what made her mad?” Emma’s voice felt scratchy in her throat.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. So she can only have done it to protect you.”

  Guilt made Emma feel sick to her stomach. First Margaret, now this. Bethany squeezed her hand. “Your mother loved you. She wouldn’t regret the cost, not when the spell worked so well for so long.”

  Emma regretted it enough for the both of them.

  “But why?” she asked.

  “I wish I knew.”

  “How can you not know why she bound us and bound herself?”

  “Because my memory was altered too. I remember her coming out of the forest with blood on her dress, and the look on her face, and then nothing else. Except the knowledge that whatever I’d seen made me want to grab my happiness with both hands, no matter the consequences. I eloped with your father that very night.” She smiled sadly at Penelope. “My mother sent me her mother’s jewels. Father was distraught, especially when Theo’s name was stricken from the Witch’s Debrett’s. Whatever magic she worked traveled on the power of her name, it must have. Even the Order can’t quite remember what she did; they only know they fear her. Our own father wasn’t able to recognize her after the spell was cast.”

  “But why would she cast a spell like that?” Emma had come for answers, not more questions. But her aunt didn’t reply.

  Instead, she stood up slowly, frowning at the rowan branches over the door. They shivered, dropping wrinkled red berries. Her luminescent badger-familiar darted back into the still-room, teeth bared. “Blast,” she said sharply. “You’re going to have to run.”

  She took a strip of cloth from her worktable and poured the contents of the nearest bottle over it. Essence of lime stung the air. As soon as the material soaked up the limewater, mist curled out of it, rolling down the table and across the floor. It lifted like smoke off a bonfire, bringing the chill damp of sea air.

  Gretchen clapped her hands over her ears. Bethany spared her a surprised look. “You’re a Whisperer,” she said.

  “A what?”

  “Never mind, there’s no time. The Feth-Fiada spell might buy a few minutes at most, but it’s better done with seawater,” she muttered. “The Keepers are relentless.” She kicked aside the small, colorful rug under the worktable to reveal a simple trapdoor set into the floorboards. “Go,” she whispered to them urgently. “You’ll end up in the goblin markets, but it’s the best I can do.”

  The hole in the ground yawned and stank like a black mouth full of rotted teeth. A wooden ladder disappeared into its depths. “If they follow, remember your rhymes.” She kissed Penelope’s cheek before shoving her under the table. “Now go!”

  The sound of footsteps echoed off the flagstone path leading to the stillroom.

  Emma knotted her skirts between her knees and lowered herself down the ladder.

  “Goblin market
s?” Penelope asked above her as her foot touched the first rung. “I sincerely hope that’s a metaphor, because it sounds … unhygienic.”

  The darkness below was palpable, as if Emma were climbing down into a pool of ink, or the ocean in the middle of a moonless night. It was cold, until she hit the third step and then a strange warmth snaked through the damp. Emma felt dizzy, and held on tight. Gretchen’s boot came around the opening, lowering to the ladder. Her skirts swung like a bell, blocking some of the light. Dirt rained through the floorboards.

  A man cursed just outside the stillroom. Penelope tried to climb back up the ladder.

  “I’ll be fine, they’re not here for me,” her mother snapped, pushing her back down into the cellar, and slamming the trapdoor shut above them. Penelope fell onto Gretchen, and they both fell on Emma.

  Emma decided she was getting rather tired of being pushed.

  Being landed on wasn’t much fun either.

  Chapter 17

  “Ooof,” Emma wheezed. “Someone’s elbow is taking liberties.”

  “Sorry, sorry.” Gretchen shifted. “But if Penelope’s left foot gets any closer to my cleavage we’ll have to read the banns.”

  “Mmmgrllk.”

  Emma paused, mid-shift. The smell of damp and spices was curiously strong. “Pardon?”

  Penelope squirmed and spat out what felt like a wad of lace. “I sincerely hope that was someone’s petticoat and not a rat,” she groaned, extricating herself from the tangle of flailing limbs. “Ouch, that was my nose!”

  “Well, stop fussing about!”

  “I have to get back up there! My mother’s alone!”

  “I don’t hear any footsteps,” Emma said, frowning up at the ceiling. Or what she assumed was the ceiling. She could have been frowning at the back of Penelope’s head for all she knew. “Perhaps they’ve gone?”

  They listened carefully, hearing only their own breaths echoing loudly in the dusty dark. Eventually Emma could make out a woman’s voice but it didn’t sound like Penelope’s mother. Nor did it sound distressed.