Whisper the Dead (The Lovegrove Legacy) (18 page)

“I’ll take your horse and fetch some,” Tobias said.

“Not a chance,” she shot back, running and vaulting into the saddle. Her stomach tilted unkindly. Tobias swore, going for one of the Keepers’ horses. He had to pause to lay out a young man in a puce cravat who wouldn’t stop trying to wade into the churning waters. The kelpie screamed and whinnied piteously.

Ivy grew in long vines from the trees and wound around a stone wall left to crumble artistically. Gretchen grabbed fistfuls of it, winding it around her pommel, her waist, and her neck. Tobias worked silently beside her, hacking at the vines with one of his knives. When Gretchen could barely see through the ivy piled in front of her, she turned her horse around, nudging him with her heels. She felt rather than saw Tobias do the same behind her. They pressed their mounts into a gallop, trailing ivy and clods of dirt kicked up by hooves slamming into the ground.

Gretchen leaned forward, the wind pressing against her. She reached the pond a scant moment before Tobias and slid out of the saddle, shoving ivy at the Keepers. They wound the vines as quickly as they could, evading the deadly kicks of the angry kelpie.

The buzzing in Gretchen’s head returned. It was more insistent than ever. She concentrated hard, until she tasted copper.

“Stop!” she yelled. “It has to be wrapped around counterclockwise!”

Cursing, the Keepers pulled the chains back, working the ivy with cold, wet fingers. The kelpie came closer and closer.

The chains lashed through the water. The kelpie gnashed its powerful teeth, biting at the waves, the air, a wayward water
beetle. The chains tightened and tightened, until finally exhausted, the kelpie went still. It sank slowly down until only its flower-strewn mane was visible. Tears burned Gretchen’s eyes.

The whispering slammed into such sudden silence that she flinched. Her entire head felt like a rusted bell. She swayed on her feet. Tobias scooped her up before she could fall. The wet folds of her riding habit draped over his arm.

“Blast,” she said blearily. There were three Tobiases, all wavering in front of her, disapproving faces blurring. “All anyone is going to remember now is that you carried me. They’ll forget the important part.”

“That you helped chain a kelpie?”

“No, that I beat you in a horse race.”

Gretchen had fainted.

Fainted
. She’d never swooned in her entire life. Not when the Sisters had cornered her and her cousins, not even when she’d fallen out of a tree and right onto her head. She didn’t believe in it.

And
Tobias
had caught her.

That just made it so much worse.

She woke up cradled in his arms, just as the carriage rolled into motion. Mortified, she stayed very still. If she was lucky, he wouldn’t notice she was awake and she could pretend none of this was happening.

She was sitting across his thighs, her legs dangling over his knees, water dripping from her wet boots. Her head was tucked against his shoulder, and his arm was warm against her back, coming around to rest on her hip. She lifted her eyelids infinitesimally.
She could see the white of his cravat and the fine weave of his coat. He’d removed his ruined gloves, and his skin was tanned, as if he spent more time out of doors than his demeanour suggested. It was intriguing.

The carriage jostled over a bump in the road, and his arms tightened around her, securing her against his chest. He smelled like earth and soap.

She could have sworn she heard one of the dead witches sigh a little.

As if their incessant chatter wasn’t bad enough.

The footman opened the carriage door and let down the steps. He made a sound of surprise. “I’ll take her, my lord.”

“I’ve got her,” Tobias said, his voice rumbling his chest under her ear. He didn’t relinquish her, instead contorted himself in what must have been an uncomfortable angle for his neck, in order to step outside while holding her.

The butler hurried to let him in and footmen came rushing to help, dashing any hope of staying discrete.

“My lord Killingsworth!” Gretchen didn’t recognize the voice, but she instantly despised the simpering sigh it barely concealed. “How chivalrous you are.”

“She’s quite ruining your coat.” That was Clarissa. “She must be dreadfully heavy being so tall.” Gretchen had to remind herself not to bare her teeth. She was supposed to be unconscious.

Tobias carried her into the drawing room, settling her gently down onto the settee. She must have winced at the fevered pitch of girlish giggling because she felt him smile. “I saw that,” he whispered against her ear. His breath was warm and tickled the
nape of her neck. An expectant silence throbbed behind them. “I’d play dead if I were you,” he added.

She couldn’t stop an answering smile. “It wouldn’t be enough,” she returned, barely breathing the words. She cracked her eyes open, not realizing he was still so close. She could see the flecks of silvery gray in the impossible blue of his irises and the faint scar along his cheekbone.

“Ladies,” Tobias said, pulling away sharply and turning to bow. “I leave her to your tender care.”

“Coward,” she muttered.

“I have smelling salts!”

“No, try my vinaigrette!”

The same girls who looked down their noses at her and her cousins rushed forward to show how very helpful and compassionate they were. She didn’t open her eyes until she was sure Tobias was gone and the stench of someone’s vinaigrette burned her nostrils. Her wolfhound hid under the settee, equally distressed, paws over its nose.

“What the hell is that?” she snapped, glowering at the offending smell. “Demon blood?”

“It’s hartshorn and pickling vinegar. My mother swears by it when she’s feeling faint.”

“It’s vile.”

“Tobias carried you inside,” Emma explained, handing her a cup of hot tea. “After which they all promptly lost their minds.”

“He was very dashing,” Penelope put in.

“Is he courting you?” A girl sighed, her eyes shining hopefully. Gretchen hoped it wasn’t contagious.

“No,” she said very firmly. “He most certainly is not courting me.”

“He carried you out of the carriage and all the way up the path,” someone else put in. “He wouldn’t even let the butler help. He took you right to that very couch himself!”

“He was ever so handsome!”

“Do you think he’ll call on you?”

“Pity you look so dreadful, Gretchen.” Clarissa sniffed. “You’ve got mud all over your hem!”

Gretchen let her head fall back onto the cushion, sloshing tea into the saucer. “It’s not bad enough I had to fight off a kelpie? I have to be gossiped and giggled to death as well?”

“You’d prefer the kelpie, wouldn’t you,” Emma said with a sympathetic smile.

“Every time.”

“You’re soaked!”

“Did he rescue you from drowning? How romantic.”

The chatter increased to a frenzied pitch. They were like winter sparrows swarming on a single crumb. Her evil-eye ring cracked in half.

“A woman
did
drown,” she interrupted. “And I can assure you, it wasn’t the least bit romantic.”

A hush fell. It didn’t last.

“We’re safe at the academy, surely.”

“And he
did
save you then?” someone else asked tentatively. “Did you kiss him?”

Gretchen threw the cushion at her.

“Oh, go on.” Penelope stood up to shoo the girls out. “Before she starts throwing furniture.”

Clarissa sniffed. “You don’t own the drawing room, Penelope Chadwick.”

A sudden clap of thunder rattled the chandelier. One of the girls shrieked in surprise. Clarissa jumped but refused to otherwise react. She glared at Emma. “Don’t be childish,” she said.

Emma just smiled as a burst of rain flung itself sideways through the open window behind Clarissa. Cold water spattered her, and she stomped away, trailing the others, who were suddenly more eager to stay dry than to hear gossip.

Gretchen grinned at Emma. “I love your magic,” she said. She tried to sit up gingerly. When her head didn’t fall off, she reached for a biscuit.

Penelope waggled her eyebrows suggestively. “Tobias was very solicitous.”

“You’re as bad as the other girls.” Remembering the soft touch of his breath on her ear, Gretchen’s cheeks were suddenly and strangely hot. She must be weak from the embarrassing swooning. She ate another almond biscuit. “I’m sure he was just worried he’d get in trouble with the Order.” She made a face. “Or my mother.”

“Your mother is rather fearsome,” Emma allowed. “But I don’t think that’s it.”

Gretchen refused to look at them. “Stop it, both of you. You’re being silly. And we have more important things to worry about.”

Penelope did not look convinced.

• • •

Try as she might, Gretchen could not beat her brother at billiards.

Ever since she was twelve, Gretchen had snuck down to the billiards room regularly in the middle of the night to practice. For years. Faithfully. And yet Godric still trounced her game after game and with apparently little effort.

Gretchen circled the table once more, eyeing it as a hunter might eye a peevish lion.

She muttered to herself about angles and mathematics and vexing twin brothers. Godric leaned on his pool cue, bored but cheerful. The wall behind him was papered in dark blue silk and bristled with spears and swords that were purely decorative, as they’d discovered the afternoon of their infamous duel. The blades had snapped in half, brittle as stale bread. Marble busts of Classical philosophers no one knew lined the walls on either side of the fireplace, as well as gilt-framed painting of horses and hunting dogs and a door that led out to the terrace. Gretchen and Godric’s familiars curled up together under the table, watching her pace back and forth.

“If you hit the ball from that angle it will ricochet off the side there and will very likely bounce right off the table. Again,” Godric commented. Gretchen had a habit of using too much force and not enough forethought.

She shot him a look. “Don’t help me,” she ordered. “When I finally flatten you utterly, it will be a delicious revenge entirely of my own making.”

Godric nodded to the candles guttering in their silver holders. “Might you make the attempt today? Before Mother and Father
return from the opera? I don’t fancy another lecture on how I am too lenient with your unseemly habits.”

“We’ve hours yet.” Gretchen waved that away. “It’s barely one in the morning.”

“Some of us like to sleep.”

“Please. You’re hardly out the door for your evening debauchery at this time.” She smirked. “You just want to go out looking for Moira.”

He reddened slightly. She smirked harder. “I’m only concerned for her well-being,” he muttered.

“Moira can take care of herself,” she assured her brother. She took the shot, mostly to distract him from his worry. And the fact that if he left to prowl the London rooftops and the goblin markets, she would be equally worried for his safety. More worried actually, since he wasn’t half as fierce as Moira.

Gretchen rushed the shot and knew before the end of the cue struck the ball that she had botched it up, as usual. She stayed hunched over the table, frowning. Her wolfhound scrambled out from underneath, hackles bristling.

“There’s no need for dramatics, Gretchen,” Godric said. “I already warned you you’d never make that shot.”

“It’s not that,” she said, finally straightening. She pressed a hand to her breastbone. “I feel odd.” There was a burning sensation, slowly developing into a painful prickling under her skin. Her breaths went shallow. Her wolfhound growled, just as Godric’s wolfhound leaped up beside hers, also growling and with its ears flattened against its glowing skull. “Something’s wrong,” she added.

Her brother’s hold on the cue made it appear suddenly spearlike. “I’ll go and see.”

Gretchen shook her head wildly. She felt clammy and pale. “It’s inside of me.” Pain lanced through her, like a sword being driven into her belly. She gasped.

“Are you ill?” Godric frowned. “Shall I call for the doctor?”

“No,” she croaked, stopping him when he went to ring the bell to summon the butler. She was both so hollow and so filled with disorienting pain that she could only sink to her knees. Both wolfhounds circled her, barking madly. “It’s something else.”

“Is it a Whisperer thing?” he asked, looking helpless.

She shook her head. “The pain’s not in my head.” She began to writhe, hot needles jabbing her all over. Blood spotted her gown, under her collarbone, on her shoulder, above her belly button. They were small wounds, but they throbbed unpleasantly. “It’s magic.”

“Hell no,” Godric said. “Not with a Keeper likely out lurking in the bushes.” He raced out onto the terrace, bellowing Tobias’s name.

Gretchen’s arrowhead amulet flared as hot as metal on a blacksmith’s anvil. Waves of sparkling iridescent heat emanated from it, and the acrid smell of lemon balm forced another dose of adrenaline through her.

Tobias and her brother rushed in from the garden, trailing flowers and rain. Tobias came to an abrupt halt, his expression remained cool and remote. She found it oddly comforting.

“Do something,” Godric snapped.

“We need salt,” Tobias ordered. Godric left for the kitchens
at a dead run. Gretchen tried to push herself up off the floor but couldn’t quite manage it.

“Don’t tax yourself,” Tobias said gently. She had a very good view of the water and mud on the bottom of his boots. She concentrated on them, trying to keep the panic at bay. Tobias pulled rowan berries and iron shavings from the pocket of his greatcoat and built a circle around her. When Godric returned with the salt, Tobias added it to the ring.

Gretchen was able to catch her breath for just a moment. “It’s helping,” she said, but she knew it wouldn’t be enough. The pain was already stalking her. She could practically see it pacing outside the barrier.

An invisible dagger stabbed through her palm. A ragged hole opened on her witch knot, bleeding sluggishly. She cried out, feeling her hand pinned to the floor even though there was nothing physically touching her. The wound throbbed viciously.

“Take this.” Gretchen fumbled awkwardly with her free hand for the clasp of her arrowhead amulet. Tobias crouched in front of her, brushing the back of her neck as he released the talisman. He added it to the rest of the barrier spell. He pressed a large chunk of black jet just above the neckline of Gretchen’s gown. It was cool against her fevered skin. There was a flash of magic. The candles flared so high and hungry they were extinguished in pools of melted wax almost immediately. Her wolfhound howled, a ghostly sound that wasn’t quite audible and yet still managed to chill the blood.