Chapter 28
Ella reviewed the contracts without comment and merely said “mm” to Blackwell’s pointed, “See?” The thought of how much he’d done in the last twenty-four hours and how little he’d received for it brought on a pang of mingled gratitude and regret.
Beatrix had the impulse to reach for his hand before she was reined in by the thought of fordēst—and the ominous way he’d talked about the wizards in charge.
So she simply said, “Thank you, Omnimancer,” as sincerely as she could.
“Let me see you home,” he said. “I’ll feel easier when you have what you need and get back on the road.”
Ella shook her head. “We can manage.”
“You think there won’t be a wizard lying in wait?”
“We’re not defenseless, you know.”
He grimaced. “No, but you don’t want to give the game away and end up in prison!”
Ella glared at him. “You don’t want to end up in prison, you mean.”
“Please,” Beatrix said, a headache threatening. “He’s right—let’s get this done and get out.”
She navigated the car down his sharply angled driveway, Ella silent beside her, Blackwell again invisible in the back. She wished she were alone with him so she could ask what he was doing—really doing—in town. And most of all, why he cast a restricted explosives spell over and over each day.
But she couldn’t, and as she drove home, her mind returned to a different question, the one that had made her feel sick when it struck her earlier that evening.
Could Theo really have been interested in her?
The odds seemed low. Perhaps they’d sent him to do double duty: investigate Blackwell and romance Lydia Harper’s sister.
What if, despite her efforts, she’d told him something that helped the magiocracy?
She should have listened to Ella.
Turning up the winding driveway to Cedarlawn, she braced herself for problems. But she wasn’t expecting the one that revealed itself as the trees gave way and the house came into view.
Theo. Theo pacing outside the front door, walking in and out of the glow cast by the porch light. He stopped as he caught sight of the car.
“Shit,” Blackwell said, sounding as tense as she felt.
“I’ll take care of this,” Ella said.
Beatrix sighed. “No. I need to tell him something, and it had better be in private.”
“Scield,” Blackwell murmured, and she felt the results of his protection spell prickle her skin.
She parked the car shy of the garage, close enough that the porch would still be visible, and rubbed her arms to get rid of the goosebumps he’d raised.
The churning in her stomach wouldn’t be so easily subdued.
It wasn’t fear—Theo couldn’t be intending to jump anyone, not out in the open like that—but rather the expectation of a simply awful conversation.
Exactly how much of what you’ve said to me has been lies?
“Don’t let him put his hands in his pockets,” Blackwell said, the words sharp.
A burst of anxiety hit her, so out of proportion with how she’d felt the moment before that it could only be his.
“Miss Harper, do you hear me?”
“Yes,” she said, truly uneasy now. This man understood the magiocracy. He’d guessed at what might happen to Lydia. And now he was worried, very worried, about her.
She opened the door and walked toward Theo, taking deep breaths. He covered the distance at a run.
“Are you all right?” he said, urgency in his words, on his face, in the way he grasped her arms. “Is your sister all right?”
Of all the things she thought he might say, that was not among them. “What do you mean?”
His answer was whisper quiet. “My unit’s been ordered to stop her ... by any means necessary.”
She stared at him, shocked he would admit it. Had she misjudged him?
“Tell me I’m not too late!” he insisted.
Tears burned at the corners of her eyes. This didn’t seem like the behavior of a man pretending to care. “You’re not.”
“Thank God,” he said, pressing her to him.
Her doubts about him didn’t disappear, but they faded beneath the warmth and solidity of his embrace. She hadn’t realized until this moment how badly she wanted him to be the Theo she’d thought he was—how much she wanted this one thing in her life to go right.
“I tried to find you in Baltimore, but I had no idea where you were. Beatrix ...” His grip on her tightened. “Your sister is in terrible danger.”
“Why?” she said, all her fear, anger and shock about Lydia’s situation making the word a protest. “Why on earth would anyone want to assassinate the leader of a ladies’ group?”
“They think she might succeed.”
“In banning magic?”
“In getting them tossed out.”
She pulled away so rapidly that her head spun. “She’s never said that in public before tonight.”
“She must have said it in private. Word got back.”
Yet more confirmation they had a leak. If it wasn’t Ella, who could it be?
“Where is your sister?” Theo asked—and just like that, her thoughts narrowed to one syllable on repeat. No, no, no. Suspicion, so recently battered down, ratcheted back up.
“I can’t tell you that! Why would you even ask?”
“I’m trying to ensure that she’s safe.” He sounded hurt. Which was exactly the emotion he would reach for, if this was all an elaborate trick. “Whose side do you think I’m on?”
She backed up a step, frowning. “I don’t know.”
“Beatrix—”
“I’m not sure if I know you at all, Wizard Garrett.”
He stared at her. Then he grasped her hand so fast she couldn’t avoid him.
“I love you. That’s the truth! I …” He set his jaw and dropped to one knee. “I want to marry you.”
She had no idea what to say, and she couldn’t have made her lips form words even if she had. In a day of many shocks, his proposal was second only to Lydia’s near-miss.
“I realize this is all very”—he gave a bark of tense laughter—“sudden. I don’t have a ring. God, I realize we’ve only known each other a little over a month. But I was certain days and days ago. I’ll marry you right away, if you’d like.”
Her heartbeat played like timpani drums in her ears.
“Beatrix? Please say something,” he whispered. “Was I wrong to think you’re serious about me?”
Her dream the night before—kissing a different man—flashed before her eyes. Then she focused on her memories of Theo. His lips. His laughter. His hand in hers.
She brushed away tears. “No, you’re not wrong.”
“I want to go walking in forests with you until the end of my days. I want to make you glad you took a chance on a wizard.” He looked up at her with those soulful dark eyes. “I want to send you to Hazelhurst College.”
She thought for a vertiginous second that she had reached her shock limit and would faint. Instead, she took the hand he held out to her and willed herself to stay on her feet.
“Theo—you can’t. Do you have any idea how expensive that is?”
“If you can send your sister to Hazelhurst on a salary that’s one-fifth of mine, I expect I can manage. You haven’t lived your own life since you were thirteen. Don’t you think you deserve better?”
Yes. Yes, yes, yes.
“I love you.” He put his free hand over hers. “Say you’ll have me.”
She wanted to say yes. Wanted to wake up beside him in the morning and go to sleep in his arms at night. To bask in the sunshine of his good humor. To go to college.
But really: How could she agree to marry a man she hadn’t known for even six weeks? A man whose longtime employer was trying to kill her sister?
A man who, from a certain point of view, was bribing her to accept his offer?
Hard to believe Theo would agree to marry someone as part of the conspiracy against Lydia. But this was a man she hadn’t known for even six weeks. How could she tell?
Then it hit her, what he’d said. If you can send your sister to Hazelhurst on a salary that’s one-fifth of mine, I expect I can manage.
“You’re going to keep working for them, aren’t you,” she said, voice wavering.
He hesitated. “I can’t resign. You know that.”
Blackwell managed to do it. Probably for nefarious reasons, but he did.
“Actually can’t?” she asked. “Or won’t?”
“Beatrix, my family—they would never understand.”
She could feel the future she wanted, the one his proposal represented, accelerating away from her. “Tell them why,” she said. Pleaded, actually. “They’d understand that.”
“I can’t.”
“Well—stay, then, and blow the whistle. Tell Congress, if they’re not in on it—tell the press.” She knelt down and grasped his shoulders. “Someone has to stop them. If not us, who?”
“Beatrix,” he said, running fingertips down her jawline, shaking his head, “my whole life—it’s all tied up with the Army. You can’t ask that of me.”
“What about my sister’s life?” She let go of his arms before the urge to shake him overcame her better judgment. “Do you really intend to—to stand by as your colleagues murder her?”
“What? No! There’s only one thing to be done. Surely you must see that.”
“What?”
“She has to step down.”
The words cut into her far more effectively than a knife. A knife could damage only what it touched, just muscle and tendon and bone. She scrambled to her feet.
“I see,” she said, cursing the way her voice caught. “Gain my trust, then use me as the tool to get this inconvenient woman out of the way.”
“Beatrix—”
“I might be a fool, but I’m not an idiot.”
“This isn’t a trick!” He leapt up, and she had to take two steps backward to avoid his grasping hands. “For God’s sake, I’m asking you to marry me! Your sister is all the family you have left, and the wizards in my unit are very, very good at what they do—”
“Lydia will never quit. And neither will I.”
He threw up his arms. “This isn’t worth dying for.”
“Freedom of speech? Self-determination? An honest-to-God democracy? People died to ensure we would have these things!”
“Men died, Beatrix. Men.”
A second ticked past, then two, as her ears rang with this proof that he didn’t see her—would never see her—as an equal. What was it that Blackwell had told her? Very revealing, the things people say when they’re provoked.
“Get out of here,” she snarled. “Don’t come back.”