He shook his head. ‘I am afraid I ramble. I have been a Warlock in training first, a gentleman only second, these years.’
She smiled at him. He was earnest, so still with an edge of awkwardness that most men of his age had long shed. ‘You do not dance, Mr Scavian?’ she enquired.
‘I cannot master the passes,’ he said. ‘Besides, my fellows and I are here for other purposes. The King has promised to anoint us this very night and make us Warlocks in truth.’
‘A great honour. Your uncle would be proud.’
‘I hope so.’ The dance was drawing to a close, and he gave her an apologetic smile. ‘Forgive me, but I must be on hand for the King, should he need me. May we talk later?’
‘I would like nothing more,’ she replied. As he slipped away she saw Alice approaching, flushed from her exertions on the dance floor.
‘Were you . . . ? Was that . . . ?’ she started, but there was no way to avoid the truth. ‘That was one of the King’s wizards!’ Alice exclaimed.
‘The younger sort,’ Emily agreed, enjoying the look that came over her sister’s face. ‘His name is Giles Scavian, a very pleasant fellow indeed.’
‘Well, all very well for you,’ said Alice. ‘But I warn you now that I fully intend to dance with the King before this night is ended, and so you may consort with as many wizards as you wish.’
‘How generous of you,’ Emily remarked. The King, meanwhile, had lighted on another partner, and she recalled how his reputation for seeking female company outweighed even his love of music and dance or sword and lance. Perhaps Alice might yet achieve her wish.
But Alice was off again as soon as the musicians signalled the next dance, straight into the arms of one of the Brossade brothers, his metal hand gleaming around her waist. Emily sighed, seeing no further sign now of Giles Scavian, and prepared to sit down once more, when a shadow fell across her.
‘Excuse me, Miss Marshwic. Would you do me the honour of this dance?’
She did not need to look: the voice said all. It was Mr Northway, of course.
7
Surely you must remember that night as clearly as I? You must guess now how I felt in that moment.
I am looking across the edge of the swamps as I write this, or at least when the rain reveals them to me. I confess to a touch of that feeling even now: anger and horror and helplessness.
His expression was still that mocking thin-lipped smile, devoid of all mirth or conviviality, but she recognized in it a shield of sorts that could take the blow of her refusal and let him walk away.
What does he hope to gain? She met his eyes and saw there how he fully expected to be turned down, and that he would turn it into one of his jibes, at how predictable she was.
And no one else had asked her, the only man who had so far spoken to her having declined to dance at all.
And quite deliberately she took his proffered hand. ‘Mr Northway, I do not owe you this on my own account, but you saved my sister’s life as well, and perhaps I owe you one dance for her.’ So it is Alice’s fault. How fitting.
‘So you can be bought,’ he murmured, as he led her out onto the floor. ‘But with good deeds. What a costly currency.’ Nevertheless, behind the sly words something new had come into his face that she had never seen there before.
Does he look this way when he counts his gold? For surely there was a species of glee in his uncomfortable features, a fierce little joy born of avarice fulfilled.
This was another dance of changing partners, albeit one more measured and less tangled than the last, and Emily found her place just as the main movement started up and the dancers began revolving around each other in pairs. She had not danced for some while and the steps came slowly to her, so that for a dozen bars she was a fraction of a beat behind, until she caught the measure of it. Then she found the chance to watch Mr Northway, which was an education.
He danced like a man who had learned it from a book – and learned well – but had never actually practised before. Each move was there but clipped and careful, and each step he made drew his eyes down