Chapter Fourteen
The next day was Friday, which meant that Vesper, unfortunately, had to face her family once again.
“There she is,” Freddie said, as soon as she materialized in the drawing room. “The temptress herself.”
Vesper scowled at her brother on instinct, despite not having the faintest notion what he was talking about.
Bypassing the human inhabitants of the room entirely, she made a beeline for the bar cart in the corner.
She seized the champagne bottle as though it were a life raft and poured herself a healthy glass.
“What are you on about?”
Freddie smiled innocently at her, which immediately set her on edge. “You and Ashbridge. Looking quite cozy at Grenoble’s, I hear.”
Quite cozy, Vesper thought, was an understatement—not that Freddie needed to know that. Or the fact that she’d replayed the memory of Ashbridge’s kiss more than once last night before falling asleep.
“Merely trying to keep our cover story intact,” she said airily, flopping inelegantly into an armchair next to Simon, who at the very least could be counted on to be a neutral party.
Tonight, he had George on his knee; the latter was concentrating very hard on a thick volume that, despite his precociousness, Vesper was certain he could not possibly read.
Vesper jerked her chin at the book. “What’s this, then?”
Simon sighed the long-suffering sigh of parents everywhere. “The Iliad in the original Greek.”
“Ah,” Vesper said, nodding, as if this were a perfectly normal thing for a five-year-old to be engrossed in. “Fluent, is he?”
“Give it a year or two,” Simon said darkly. He leaned toward Vesper conspiratorially. “He’s angry that he hasn’t learned to read yet, so I’ve given him this—seemed safer than anything in English, since he might actually teach himself to read that.”
“And what are you going to do if he somehow teaches himself to read Greek?”
“Send him to scientists to be studied,” Simon said, looking unconcerned.
Vesper gave her brother-in-law a jaundiced look, and took a healthy sip of champagne.
“What about you and Ashbridge, then?” he asked, and her look turned to one of betrayal.
“Not you too!”
“I’m curious,” he said with a shrug.
“You’ve been in the family too long. We’ve had a bad influence on you.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Vesper, stop stalling and tell us what you and Ashbridge learned,” Cecily called from her spot on the sofa next to their mother, where they had their heads bent together, having previously been deep in discussion; Cecily had always had an annoying knack for keeping an ear on other people’s conversations, even while conducting her own.
“I heard about the poor chap last night.”
“In a frenzy stripping naked, was he?” her father added, looking more satisfied than was remotely seemly. “I wish I could have seen Anthony Grenoble’s face—”
“He wasn’t there,” Vesper said. “Just Edward.”
She and Cecily exchanged grimaces.
Their father’s face darkened. “If that young upstart so much as laid a finger on you—”
“Daddy, please, let’s not do this.” Being the youngest was very exhausting at times. “Besides, Ashbridge was there.”
“And that’s reassuring, is it?” Cecily asked, bearing a striking resemblance to a lion about to pounce.
“Yes, actually,” Vesper said, feeling a bit defensive on Ashbridge’s behalf. “If Edward Grenoble had tried any funny business, I’m fairly confident Ashbridge would have knocked him flat. I can trust him on that count.”
“And that count alone,” Lucian murmured, taking a sip of his own champagne. Vesper frowned; a week ago, she would have agreed with her father in this assessment of Ashbridge. But now…
She wasn’t so certain.
“Let’s please not lose focus,” Amelia said briskly. “This isn’t good. That’s four accidents at the clubs in less than a fortnight. Word’s beginning to spread.”
“Is it?” Vesper asked, jerking her head up.
Amelia nodded, her expression concerned. “I had lunch with Lady Adele today.”
Vesper frowned. “Who?”
Amelia now looked a bit exasperated, as she always did whenever someone couldn’t keep up with her seemingly infinite social sphere.
“Adele Audley. Mundane. Her brother is a duke. She was saying that she’d heard about what happened at Grenoble’s last night—and that was only at lunchtime today.
If word’s spreading that fast…” She trailed off.
This, Vesper thought, was precisely why her investigation with Ashbridge was important.
If people began to fear that each time they drank a potion or inhaled some spell powder, they’d find themselves spinning around the chandelier or stripping naked in company, they’d become less willing to risk it.
And that would be very bad for business.
Vesper frowned into her drink.
Echoing her thoughts, her father said, “I don’t like this. Simon, what’s been said about it among the MPs?”
“Nothing so far,” Simon said. “But if word is spreading this quickly, then I expect that will change—the second Finlay hears about this, he’ll be like a predator scenting blood.”
“The bill’s going to be read in a fortnight,” Cecily said, mirroring her father’s frown. “And if things continue in this vein—or something actually dangerous happens—”
Vesper raised her chin. “Ashbridge and I are doing our best, you know.”
Everyone blinked at her. “Of course you are, darling,” Amelia said, in the same tone she’d employed to comfort Vesper when she’d fallen off her bicycle as a girl.
Vesper—as so often seemed to be the case when she was around her family lately—wanted to scream with frustration.
Why did everyone insist on treating her as though she were still a child?
She was twenty-five! It was this vague feeling of resentment, which had been simmering within her for the past week or more, that propelled the next words out of her mouth—ones that, perhaps, she might have considered a bit more carefully before uttering them:
“And we’re going to investigate the Duke and Earl next.”
Silence fell at this pronouncement, as well it might.
“You… are?” Freddie asked, raising an eyebrow. “You, Vesper.”
There was nothing for it at this point but to brazen it out, obviously.
“I am, yes, Frederick.”
“And how, precisely, do you intend to do that?” Cecily asked, sounding amused.
“Freddie has a membership, if I recall,” Vesper said, as if membership was the biggest obstacle.
“I do,” Freddie agreed. “Though I think they might notice if I suddenly grow a pair of—”
“Frederick Leighton Holloway.” That was Amelia, who was perfectly content to be appallingly bawdy with her friends—particularly once she’d had a glass or two—but who was rather capricious when it came to her children’s language and manners.
Freddie, abashed, fell silent.
“Thank you, Freddie, for stating the obvious,” Vesper interjected into the silence that had fallen. “I’m aware they don’t allow women. But fortunately for all of us, I have a plan.”
“I see. And I suppose you’ve informed Ashbridge of this plan already?”
“I have, yes,” Vesper agreed. She’d always been a very confident liar—too confident, as more than one exasperated childhood nanny and governess had informed her parents on various occasions.
It wasn’t really a lie, after all. It would be true—just as soon as she told Ashbridge that their next quest would involve a bit of cross-dressing.
What cause could he possibly have for complaint?
That evening, just before bed, Vesper received a note from Edward Grenoble.
It was delivered to her by a member of the Grenoble family staff, who appeared at her door at half past midnight—Vesper had only been home from the club for a short while, but the boy at the door didn’t appear to find it the slightest bit odd to be delivering a note to a woman in the wee hours of the morning.
Vesper imagined that Grenoble kept him quite busy with such tasks, grimaced, and sent the boy off with a coin for his troubles.
The missive, on engraved stationery that featured a bit more gold foil than was to Vesper’s taste, was brief:
V—
My father was out to dinner last night with Jacob Finlay, the mundane MP. I trust you’ll keep your word.
—E
Vesper stared down at the words on the paper, her mind churning.
Jacob Finlay: Simon’s rival in Parliament.
The architect of Forbiddance. As strong an anti-magic voice as there was to be found in the country these days.
Why had he wanted to take Anthony Grenoble out to dinner?
She supposed there must be some sort of greasing of palms happening; it was common enough practice, the cost of doing business now that magic was illegal, but she was a bit surprised to learn that Finlay partook.
She’d always got the impression that he considered himself so principled as to be above this sort of thing—“maddeningly sanctimonious” was how Simon had once described him.
She supposed she should stop acting like a naive girl, and simply accept that this was how the world worked. And yet, as she got ready for bed and slid between her warm sheets, listening to the wind gust outside, she puzzled over the matter, something about this seeming not quite right.
She was still wondering about it when she finally fell asleep.
Ashbridge lived in a cozy little flat in Hampstead village, within a stone’s throw of the heath. Vesper had procured the address through her usual means—asking around.
The building was a red-brick Victorian with bay windows that must have been carved up into flats after its original owners sold the house.
There was a small, neat garden between the front door and the street, hidden from view by a high wall and a wrought-iron gate that wasn’t locked.
She walked to the blue front door, took a breath, and then pressed the buzzer with a neat, handwritten label next to it that read TOP FLOOR – M. ASHbrIDGE.