Chapter 15
“So, your friend from the war, whom you conveniently never mentioned in any letter, has come to help you with Thistlemarsh?”
“Yes,” Mouse said, taking a hasty sip of tea.
John sighed. “You are a terrible liar, Mouse.”
She choked, and Smudge looked up at her with concern until she could get her cough under control.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Oh, and that was the reaction of a guiltless conscience, was it? You’re only making me worry more. I understand being too busy to come to the vicarage, but sending me away when I visit? That’s low.”
“I haven’t sent you away,” Mouse said.
“Yesterday you did.”
“I was ill.”
“So Mr. Thornwood said, but you are well enough today to run around in the rain.”
“John, please. I want to tell you everything, but it is all so unbelievable.”
“Try me.”
Mouse sighed. She’d known that her will would crumble as soon as she saw him. She felt as though she’d been holding her breath for a long time, perhaps even since before she came back to England.
“Thornwood is a Faerie, and I made a deal with him in order to keep Thistlemarsh from Carlyle,” she said in a rush before pulling her teacup back to her lips and gulping down half the cup. John was silent. Mouse set her cup down again. Her fingers had not stopped trembling. “Well?”
“If you don’t want to tell me the truth, that’s fine,” John said.
“I am telling the truth!”
“So, a Faerie, a creature that no one has seen in more than a hundred years, just happened to come upon you at your greatest moment of need? Do you think I’m stupid?”
“No, I don’t.” Mouse lifted her dress at the hem, and John looked away. “Please, I don’t care if you see my damn leg.”
She worked her stocking down to her ankle and held her leg up, scar on display.
“I got this wound two days ago. Second-degree burns healed in hours. The driver outside is under some spell, and that dog at your feet was a dragon not long ago.”
“You expect me to believe any of this? I am a man of God, Mouse, but I’m also a man of science. This is nonsense you are using to hide your shame that your new lover is a bloody fortune hunter, and the entire village knows it.”
The color drained from Mouse’s face.
“This is what you think of me?” Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, but her voice was clear.
John stood, his hands opened in placation. “He’s taken you in.”
“Thornwood is not my lover. He is barely my friend. Perhaps I could say the same of you.”
John jerked back, stung. “Mouse, that isn’t what I—”
“I think we’ve said enough to one another for the day.” She stood. “Come to Thistlemarsh if you want a display of Faerie magic. That is, if you can stomach entertaining it. Perhaps physical proof will convince you where my word has failed.”
Ignoring his protests, she pulled on her coat and snatched Smudge up from her place on the floor. The dog whined, ham hanging out of her mouth. Mouse marched out of the vicarage into the rain.
The driver did not speak on their way back to Thistlemarsh. Mouse did not try to make small talk, especially after she noted the puff of brown and gray feathers sprouting out under his driver’s cap where his hair should have been.
Smudge leaned against Mouse on the seat, silent and calm. Mouse knew that dogs could sometimes sense sadness—could dragons as well, or was it just dragons in dog form?
A headache pressed behind her eyes, and she banished any further philosophical questions about magical creatures for the day.
As much as she hated to admit it, Thornwood was right when he forbade her from doing anything physical.
Discounting emotional labor, all she’d done was climb in and out of a car, and she was exhausted.
When they pulled up onto the drive, Mouse gave the driver a nod before slumping back into the Hall.
One of the entryway walls shone, polished English oak standing out from its dull cousins lining the rest of the room. Years of dust had peeled off carvings high on the wall, revealing the smiling faces of satyrs, foxes, and rabbits.
Mouse looked away, feeling even more of a fraud in her sodden finery when confronted with the ancient architecture.
“You returned early. How was your friend?” Thornwood asked, bustling in. He carried on, not waiting for a response. “You’ll be pleased to hear that the servant quarters were connected to that bit of magic. It doesn’t cost me much to polish it up, so I’m almost finished.”
He cut off abruptly when he saw her face. He was at her side instantly, looking her up and down.
“What happened? Did the magic fatigue set back in?”
“My diplomatic skills leave much to be desired,” she said wryly. “The village thinks you are my wartime paramour and a fortune hunter. They think I’ve been taken in by you, as I am a stupid Irishman’s daughter, and that you are only fixing the house to save my fortune, presumably.”
“Not ideal,” he said.
“That’s all you can say? Not ideal?” She swatted at him, furious. Smudge shot between them, threading between their legs.
Thornwood caught her hands. “Calm down. At least they won’t run us out of the village for that. You are usually such a sensible creature. What is bothering you?”
Mouse stopped fighting, crumbling in on herself. “I told John about you and the deal, everything, and he didn’t believe me.”
She burst into tears and sank to the floor. Thornwood was clearly bewildered, judging by his uncharacteristic silence.
She kept waiting for her tears to subside, but they didn’t, and soon she was crying for everything that had happened since 1914.
She cried for Bertie, dead in no-man’s-land; for Roger, lost despite being found; for John, so kind but so careful; and even for her uncle, alone in his house, wasting into nothing.
But, mostly, selfishly, she cried for herself.
When her sobs subsided to weak hiccups, Thornwood spoke.
“You realize this is a good thing, right? Who knows how the villagers might react to a Faerie returning to England? We are not prepared for that.”
“I know. I even knew he would not believe me, but he called me a liar in as many words.”
“To be fair, you did try to lie to him earlier,” he said. Mouse stiffened. “I’m sorry. Even I can tell that was not the right thing to say.”
“No, it was not.” She straightened, rubbing away her tears with her sleeve. “But you’re right.”
“Everything will be fine. You will forgive each other.”
“How can you be sure?” Mouse asked. Her voice was barely a whisper, more smoke than words. “John has never been this upset with me, and he is the only friend I have left.”
“Not the only friend,” Thornwood said. “After all, you have Smudge.”
He was being kind again.
“That was almost sweet,” she replied, looking anywhere but his face.
“Exactly the descriptor I was looking for,” he said. He rose, helping Mouse to her feet as well. “Now, let me show you the work I’ve done.”
Mouse woke the next morning feeling as though she had slept for a night and a day.
Her energy returned with vigor. Smudge sensed it as well, dancing around her feet as she dressed.
Opting for a dark skirt, a plain white shirt, and a green jumper, Mouse felt ready to dive deeper into the secrets of the house, even if she wasn’t ready to rejoin Mr. Hobb on the grounds yet.
She thought she might take him one of Mickelwaithe’s fine lunches to prove she was still alive and well, although Mouse was sure some of the village gossip from yesterday had made its way to him anyway.
Thornwood’s tour the day before was exciting, despite how exhausted Mouse felt at the time. He could touch up every part of the servant quarters except the mudroom by the back door and work on several rooms upstairs without his spells dissolving like spiderwebs.
“What other centers of power are there in this house?” Thornwood asked when she met him in the study.
“Centers of power?”
“Yes. The boiler was clearly ‘heat,’ and the magic we encountered was elemental. That means the caster likely linked the spell to powerful places or objects related to the elements. Perhaps a windmill?”
“I’m sure we don’t have a windmill,” Mouse said. “Although, there used to be a holy well on the premises.”
“You mentioned the well before. That could be it.”
“Limit your expectations. The Dewhursts filled it in years ago.”
Thornwood waved away her words. “I will determine if it is a potential spot when I see it. Where is it?”
“You’ll have a rough time: It’s underneath the pond in the garden.”
The Faerie sank his face into his hands. “Of course it is.”
Mickelwaithe offered to lock Smudge in the conservatory where she could still see the sky, but Mouse decided against it.
Every time she entered the conservatory, with its smothering scent of orange and its cage of lined windows, Mouse wanted nothing more than to hike up her skirts and escape.
Mouse’s father disliked the place as soon as they arrived.
The cultivation of citrus trees was popular enough in the upper classes, and her father was trained to take care of them, but he always flinched when his duties forced him inside.
“I prefer to leave plants where nature intended them to grow,” he told Mouse once. “There is something unnatural about those plants, like they don’t need tending and they are only humoring us by pretending that they do.”
Mouse thought that perhaps it was the idea of so many living things trapped under glass and never allowed fresh air that disturbed them.
It might be irrational, but Mouse did not want to subject anyone else, human or inhuman, to the sensation. If the dragon-dog wanted to play in the mud, why stop her? However, when they ventured onto the grounds, Smudge skidded to a stop on Thistlemarsh’s front landing, eyeing the lawn in distaste.
“Are you coming?” Mouse asked. Smudge whined pitifully.
Mickelwaithe stepped out onto the stoop, and Smudge snuggled up against his leg.
“We will wait here for you,” the Faerie servant said.