A Matter of Magic (33 page)

“There ain’t nothin’ wonderful about
that
,” Kim said, staring in turn. “I ducked, that’s all.”

Renée and Mairelon exchanged glances. “Nothing wonderful about it at all,” Mairelon agreed. “For a wizard.”

“What?” Hunch gasped. “That Kim, a wizard? She ain’t no such thing!”

“Not yet,” Mairelon said, smiling. “But with proper training she will be.”

“Me?” Kim said, stunned. “Me, a wizard? Me?”

“Ah, bah!” said Renée to Mairelon. “You do not explain at all well, I find, and so you are frightening her.” She stepped forward and put a comforting arm around Kim’s shoulders. “It is because you can feel the magic, which is a thing very difficult for most people to learn and for some quite impossible. So you have the talent for magic, and now, if you wish, you will come to London and get the training.”

“Of course she wishes,” Mairelon broke in. “Kim likes London. We’ll start the lessons as soon as we’ve found a house to hire for a few months, and—”

“Richard!” Andrew sounded horrified. “Are you mad? You can’t live with this . . . girl in the middle of London!”

“Really, Andrew, you’re as bad as Hunch,” Mairelon said. He gave Kim an uncertain, sidelong look that Kim, in her confusion, found impossible to interpret. “I’ll make Kim my ward; that will satisfy the proprieties.”

“But, yes!” Renée said before Andrew could object again. “That will do entirely well. And you and Mademoiselle Kim will stay with me to begin, and there will be no foolish gossip such as Monsieur Andrew Merrill fears, because I will be there and everything will be proper.” She tilted her head to study Kim, ignoring the brothers Merrill.

“It is a great pity we cannot take you to France,” Renée went on. “But there is a dressmaker I know who will do well enough, although she is entirely English. You will be quite charming in a gown, I think.” Her eyes flickered from Kim to Mairelon and back, and she smiled to herself, as if contemplating a private joke.

“Hold on a minute, Renée,” Mairelon interrupted. “I’m not spending hours at some dressmaker’s. I refuse. Positively.”

“But of course you will not,” Renée said gently. “You will be spending hours with Milord Shoreham. He will want the details of all your work, and he is very persistent.”

Mairelon looked at her with a blank expression that changed slowly to chagrin. “Oh, Lord, you’re right again. It’ll take hours. Days.”

“Naturally,” Renée said. “And while you and Milord Shoreham talk, Mademoiselle Kim and I shall shop for the kind of clothes that will be proper for your ward to wear in London.” She turned back to Kim and
leaned forward conspiratorially. “But we will save the boy’s clothing for other times, because, all the same, Monsieur Richard Merrill is not at all proper and of a certainty you will need them.”

“It ain’t fitting, Master Richard,” Hunch grumbled, but he was not chewing on his mustache at all, and Kim decided he was only complaining for the form of the thing.

“Well, Kim?” Mairelon said. “You do want to come, don’t you?”

“Come?” Kim shook herself, thinking,
Me, a wizard!
, and gave Mairelon a look full of scorn. “Do I look like a looby? Of course I want to come!”

“Good,” Mairelon said, relieved. “That’s one thing settled. Now, Hunch, about the wagon—”

He half turned, to include his henchman and his brother in his conversation, and Kim stopped listening. She was going back to London. She’d never have to sleep on the streets again as long as she lived, or bear the cold and the nagging hunger. She had escaped Dan Laverham and the looming shadow of the stews for good. She was going to learn real magic, and not just tricks, but proper wizard’s training. She was going to stay with the notorious Mademoiselle Renée D’Auber, who might be willing to teach her a thing or two of a different kind. And she was going to be Mairelon’s ward. She wasn’t quite sure what that would mean, but it was certain to be interesting. She looked at Mairelon, who was arguing with Hunch and Andrew about the passability of some obscure road in Kent, and shook her head. Interesting wouldn’t be the half of it. Slowly she began to smile. After this, anything might happen.

Anything at all.

For Lois Bujold,
without whom this would still be stuck in Chapter 7.
Twice.

This book would not have been possible, let alone finished, without the aid and comfort of the following people:

Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet, Beth Friedman, Raphael Carter, Sarah Withee, and Elise Matthesen, who helped with sundry accents and foreign languages, and James Bryant, who provided the answer to a tricky research question. Any errors are, of course, my own.

My critique group, The Usual Suspects past and present, who were amazingly good about sitting through the same scenes over and over until I got them right, and who performed prodigious feats during the final days of production: Lois McMaster Bujold, Peg Kerr Ihinger, Elise Matthesen, Bruce Bethke, and Joel Rosenberg.

My editors, Delia Sherman and Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who were supernaturally patient when patience was most required, and who somehow knew exactly when it was necessary to crank up the heat.

Caroline Stevermer, Rosemary Ighel, Lois Bujold, and Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet, who provided much-appreciated moral support, encouragement, lunches, and a careful eye to period detail.

My family, who were exceedingly understanding as regards late Christmas presents and last-minute cancellations.

Cold rain drizzled on the dark London streets—at least, it
looked
cold. Kim peered out her bedroom window at the deserted square two stories below and pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders, though the fire in the grate was almost too warm for comfort. She hadn’t had to shelter, shivering, in a doorway for nearly a year, but the memories lingered.

Still no sign of Mairelon. Is he going to stay out all night?
Kim thought resentfully.
He gets to jaw with Lord Shoreham and eat at the Royal College of Wizards, and I’m stuck here with a great thick square book and that poker-backed aunt of his.
She shook her head. It was not what she had expected a year ago when she had agreed to become Mairelon’s ward and learn reading and magic. Then, she had thought it would be a great adventure.

“ ‘Anything might happen,’ I thought,” Kim said aloud to her reflection in the rain-dark window. “ ‘Anything at all.’ I must have been touched in the head.” She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue at her mirror image.

“Dicked in the nob, that’s what I was,” she muttered.

The bedroom door opened. “What did you say, Kim?” Mrs. Lowe asked in a mildly disapproving tone.

With a faint sigh, Kim slid off the window seat and turned. The relentless respectability of Mairelon’s paternal aunt was very wearing. It seemed much longer than a week since they’d found her ensconced in the townhouse on their arrival in London. And since they were all
technically guests of Mairelon’s brother Andrew, who as elder son had inherited the townhouse, there was nothing to be done about Mrs. Lowe except spend time elsewhere. Which Mairelon had been doing rather a lot. Kim wished she had that option. “I didn’t say anything,” she told Mrs. Lowe in as mild a tone as she could manage.

“I was sure I heard your voice.” Mrs. Lowe hesitated. “It wasn’t any of that . . . that thieves’ cant, was it?”

“Flash lingo,” Kim said helpfully.

Mrs. Lowe frowned. “After all my nephew has done for you, the least you could do is to be more careful of your language.”

“Mairelon doesn’t mind the way I talk.”

“My nephew is not always as conscious of the social niceties as he should be,” Mrs. Lowe said. “Nonetheless, they must be observed. And you really should refer to him as ‘Mr. Merrill.’ He is your guardian, and it would show a proper respect.”

“Did you want me for something?” Kim asked, hoping to dodge the discussion. “I have studying to do.” She waved at the fat, leather-bound book on the nightstand beside the bed, and suppressed a grimace. Three more volumes were waiting for her in the library below.
Why he keeps shoving them at me when he knows I’m no great hand at reading . . .

“More magic, I suppose.” Mrs. Lowe shook her head. “I’ll speak to Richard about that in the morning.”

“Speak to him?” Kim said, beginning to be alarmed. For the past week, Mrs. Lowe had made Kim’s life a respectable misery. She had insisted that Kim accompany her to pay interminable morning calls on dull but acceptable acquaintances, forbidden all walks alone, and made it quite clear that, in the unlikely event of Kim’s encountering any of her former friends, Kim was to cut them dead. Thus far, however, she had not attempted to interfere with Kim’s magic lessons.

“I am sure you will have plenty of opportunity to study when you are back in Kent,” Mrs. Lowe said. “Magic is all very well, but it is hardly a necessary branch of knowledge for a young woman in your situation. While you are in London, we must make the most of your chances. I cannot say I have any great hope of success, given your . . .

circumstances, but there are one or two possibilities—That is why I wished to talk to you tonight.”

“I don’t understand,” Kim said warily.

“Mrs. Hardcastle knows a gentleman who sounds as if he will do very nicely. Well, perhaps not a
gentleman
, but respectable enough. She has arranged for us to meet him tomorrow afternoon, and I wished to warn you to be on your best behavior.”

“Best behavior—You can’t be thinking of getting me leg-shackled to some gentry cull!”

“If what you just said was some sort of reference to arranging a suitable marriage for you, yes, that is precisely what I was referring to,” Mrs. Lowe replied stiffly.

Kim didn’t know whether to be amused or appalled. Her, married to a toff? In her wildest notions, she had never thought of such a thing. She looked at Mrs. Lowe, and her amusement died. The woman was serious. “It’d never work.”

“It certainly won’t if you burst out with a remark like that over Mrs. Hardcastle’s tea table. Consider carefully what I have said, and be prepared tomorrow, if you please. I am afraid that your . . . interesting background means that you are unlikely to have many opportunities of this nature; you would be ill advised to waste this one. Good night.”

Kim stared at the closing door, then flung herself back into the window seat.
Marriage!
She’s
the one who’s dicked in the nob. There isn’t a toff in London who would marry a penniless, nameless sharper, even if I have gone all respectable.
She shifted restlessly in the window seat. Respectability did not sit comfortably with her, but what other choices did she have?

She couldn’t go back to the streets, even if she were mad enough to want to. What with all the regular eating, she’d filled out more than she’d have thought possible; posing as a boy now would be out of the question. She hadn’t the training to be a housemaid or take up a trade, even if she could find someone to hire her. Mrs. Lowe’s “respectable gentleman” wasn’t a serious possibility, but sooner or later Kim would have to think of something. She couldn’t stay Mairelon’s ward forever.

Though that doesn’t seem to have occurred to him.

But Richard Merrill—whom she still could not think of as anything but Mairelon the Magician—didn’t look at things the way other people did.
Well, if he did, he’d never have got himself made my guardian.
For all the awareness he showed, you’d think he was perfectly willing to go on feeding, clothing, and housing Kim until they both died of old age.

Maybe she should ask him about it. Maybe she would, if she could figure out what “it” was, exactly—or at least well enough to explain. “I’m bored” would only get her a larger stack of books to study; “I’m not happy” sounded ungrateful; and “Your aunt is a Friday-faced noodle” was insulting. But there had to be some way to put it.

Meanwhile, she had three more pages of Shepherd’s
Elementary Invocations
to decipher before morning. She didn’t want Mairelon to think that she wasn’t working at her lessons, not if that Mrs. Lowe was going to ask him to stop them. Sighing, Kim climbed out of the window seat.