Chapter Four
I wake the next morning in a high bed, burrowed beneath three blankets and wrapped in delicious warmth provided by the still-glowing coals in the little hearth.
Lachlan had purchased me a room at the Red Finch, one of their finest, at a price I couldn’t have afforded with even a month’s wages from my teaching salary.
But despite the soft bed, it had taken me hours to fall asleep, worrying whether I was a fool to agree to this mad mission.
It didn’t help that Lachlan had rented every other room in the inn for his faerie cohorts, and they carried their reveling on through the night, drinking and banging about and singing strange, lilting songs in a whispery tongue I did not recognize.
How a community of the creatures could cavort so openly in the heart of London while avoiding notice, Fates only know.
It makes me wonder how long they have been here, and if there are far more than I ever knew.
Not that I know much about faeries. They fit into the same category as ghosts, demons, and selkies; that is, most folk prefer to not believe in them at all, except perhaps on the darkest and most storm-ridden of nights, when even the wildest stories feel possible.
If it were not for that fateful summoning spell I found in my uncle’s study, perhaps I, too, would be a skeptic.
The most commonly accepted explanation for them is that it was the fae who taught magic to humans, long ago, before vanishing from the world forever.
Clearly, at least half that story is false.
When I push myself out of bed at last, I find a new dress laid out on a wing-backed chair by the hearth, blue linen, plain but tasteful, with a new corset and petticoat. I put them on queasily, wondering who left them, and who chose them for me. They fit perfectly.
“Miss Pryor.”
I turn and see Emma standing in the doorway. “Yes?”
“Mr. Murdoch says to tell you he’s waiting below.”
It takes me a moment to remember Mr. Murdoch is my faerie.
Lachlan Murdoch. A common name for an uncommon creature, and I have no doubt it is not his true name.
Not that I’d prefer any other—the less I know of him, the sooner I can put him and all this behind me.
If I can just keep my head down and fetch him this branch, I’ll owe him nothing more and never have to see him again.
“Where is my other dress?” I ask.
“Mr. Murdoch had us burn it.”
My face heats. Perhaps my things were threadbare and unfashionable, but they were mine.
In the dim saloon, my faerie escort waits, with several of his followers hovering about. Their guises don’t fool me now that I’ve already seen through them. But in my periphery, I see glimmers of their magic, beards and bellies and liver spots that humanize them to all other eyes.
Lachlan, however, would be resplendent in any form. Today he wears all black, even his cravat spilling from his collar like silken ebony. His hair is loose but neatly combed, tucked behind his pointed ears. He stands in the parlor as if he owns it, cocky as a king.
“Well,” he says, looking me up and down. “You are a bluebird in midwinter, Rose Pryor. I knew that gown would suit you.”
“You had my things burned!”
He rolls one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “I can’t have my new assistant dressing like an urchin.”
I open my mouth to echo assistant? But the way he emphasized the word stops me; I realize there are some folk across the room taking their tea and watching us with interest—not faeries, but honest, blessedly ordinary folk one might find in any ordinary saloon.
I catch his meaning and curtsy, playing into the role.
“Let’s go then,” he says, with a brisk nod. “We’ve shopping to do.”
He whisks me all over London in his personal coach, a black, satiny affair drawn by matching dark horses.
It is driven by one faerie, while another plays footman.
People who watch us go by look for a half moment as if they are caught in a dream, and then when we’ve passed, they shake their heads and move on.
I sit on a bench upholstered in dark-blue fabric and watch the shops and houses through a window curtained by red velvet. The faerie sits across from me, one long leg thrown over the other, his chin resting on his hand, his eyes half shuttered.
In the corners and shadows, his fae lurk.
They seem to be guards of some sort, the way they hover about.
Silent and unobtrusive they may be, but they stick at the corners of my eyes, their glamours flickering so that at times they seem completely human, and at others, they are all beetle eyes and moth wings and clicking teeth.
“Who are the others?” I ask. “Your family?”
“They are my companions. We all left Elfhame together, long ago. Though we are not so many in number as we were then.” A shadow passes over his face.
At the first stop, a dressmaker’s establishment, he descends and offers his hand, gloved in dark leather. I take it hesitantly and am surprised by how gently he helps me out.
In the shop, Lachlan is greeted with a flurry of delighted exclamations.
The owner, a Madame Alexandra, knows him by name, and sends her girls fluttering to me.
It’s like being set upon by a flock of excitable parrots.
They pull me away and begin pinning and measuring about my person, exclaiming things like “this will bring out the green in her eyes” or “a good figure, if too thin. We’ll add more to the bustle. ”
“How do you know Mr. Murdoch?” I ask them.
“Oh,” one says. “He brings us the most excellent cloth. No one in London supplies such rare silks and cashmeres.”
“He is a cloth merchant?”
“The finest.” She giggles. “And the handsomest. How fortunate you are to assist him.”
When they’ve finished with me, they return me to Lachlan’s side, dizzied and blinking.
“The gowns will be ready this evening,” says Madame Alexandra.
“And you’re certain we cannot do any spellwork for you?
I employ some of the best Weavers in London.
” She casts a critical eye over me. “We have charms to inspire industriousness in your assistant, or to alert you of any little thefts . . .”
My face heats, and I start to cut in, but the faerie’s soft touch on my arm stops my tongue.
“It will not be necessary,” Lachlan says.
They discuss business then, talking cloth and shipments, and I walk away so as not to lose my temper at having my integrity impugned.
In one back room I spy several Weavers bent over gowns, carefully stitching spells into hems and cuffs and bodices.
The walls around them are filled with potted plants, ivy curling over the ceiling and ferns springing up in the corners, to provide a ready source of energy for them to channel, even in winter.
I gasp a little, recognizing Maeve Reilly, an old classmate from my school days.
She always did have the quickest hand at embroidery.
I pull back before she can recognize me.
I’d always imagined working at a dress shop would be glamorous, embroidering and tatting and knitting spells for ladies and duchesses. But those girls looked exhausted, their eyes red and their hands cramped.
Finally Lachlan calls me over, extends an arm, and sweeps me out and onto the street in a whirl; my head is still spinning from the hasty fitting session.
“Sir, why are you—?”
“Because I need you to succeed,” he interrupts. “And to do that, you must look as well as play your part to perfection. It is a narrow rope we must walk together, and I will not let shoddy hems be my undoing.”
“I think I’d like no more debts to you, Sir Faerie,” I say wryly.
He tosses a spool of black silk thread into my hands. “Then pay your way. Embroider my coach with your clever little warming spells, and consider yourself my assistant in truth.”
At a loss, I relent and let him shuffle me back into his black coach. What on earth tidy hems have to do with sneaking into Elfhame is beyond me. I should think this task would depend more on subterfuge than manners.
But he is relentless in his transformation of me from charity-school teacher to respectable merchant’s assistant.
We flit from shop to shop. He buys me three pairs of shoes, two bonnets, a coat fringed in dark fur, lace handkerchiefs, and a dozen other odds and ends to fill up the two valises he also purchases.
At every shop, the owners bob and bow and flatter him, all of which he accepts with cool indifference, as if it is perfectly natural for the world to turn on the tip of his pale finger.
They attempt to conjure more coin from his purse with the promise of spells worked into each piece, even the shoes. He turns them all down.
At one shop he tells me to wait in the coach.
It’s a tall, solemn establishment in a good part of town; the doors and windows are all trimmed in black, and its stone walls look thick enough to keep out an invading horde.
With a little start, I notice the small plaque depicting crossed bobbins engraved in bronze.
“The Telarii Guild,” I whisper. My poor dead uncle was a Telari, one of the royal battle Weavers who served in the army.
They are known for their powerful martial tapestries designed to alter the course of battles or even entire wars.
It is said a single tapestry woven by rebel Telarii was responsible for the successful revolution of the American colonists; woven with stripes and stars, it warded the rebels in many battles.
Lachlan returns a half hour later, carrying a large parcel wrapped in oilcloth under his arm.
I’ve been working on the warming spells, my needle drawing Lachlan’s black thread through the thick velvet curtains, and already the coach is feeling like a summer afternoon.
I stop when he opens the door. He ignores my curious stare and barks at the driver to continue.
The parcel sits beside him, and he keeps a protective hand on it, his mouth set in a grim line.