Spellbreaker

Elsie met the steward’s blue-eyed gaze. Swallowed. “Um, yes, of course.” She pulled out the ledger, trying to keep her hand from shaking. Act normal. It’s just speculation. But the wax, the secrecy . . . and Mr. Parker had specifically mentioned Viscount Byron to her on her last visit. Because he knew something? Because he knew her?

It is my business to know, he’d said.

Clearing her throat, Elsie opened to the squire’s page in the ledger. “If I might borrow a pen and ink.”

“Oh yes, of course.” Mr. Parker slid whatever he’d been working on under the desk and pushed the pen and ink vial toward her. He gestured to a chair.

Elsie pulled it over and sat. She was so flustered, so excited, so confused, that she couldn’t stop the question from bubbling up her throat. “What was that you were working on? That is, I hope I didn’t intrude. I wouldn’t want you to have to rewrite it.”

Was she talking too fast? Slow down, Elsie. Or he’ll know you suspect.

Was it wrong for him to think she knew? But there must be a reason the Cowls kept their identities from her. Like they were waiting for something. Like she had to prove herself. They’d provided her with so much already; they’d saved her from the workhouse and from being discovered as an illegal spellbreaker, which she surely would have been severely punished for despite her age. They’d arranged for her to find a good job—what should have been a good job, at least. She’d always wondered if it had angered them when she left it for Ogden’s employ, but she’d still been a child. Certainly they couldn’t hold it against her!

They used to send follow-up letters, telling her of the good she’d done, the results of her clandestine activities, but they’d stopped the practice years ago. Likely because double the letters meant double the chance of getting caught, and besides, she’d grown from a child to a woman. Still, she yearned for their praise, and they gave it in the best way possible.

They kept her on. They gave her more complicated and more important work, more frequently. Something was about to bend. Elsie could feel it, and then she’d finally have the answers to the mystery she’d been living for half her life.

“Just a list.” Mr. Parker sounded cheery, but the tone wasn’t genuine. It piqued her interest all the more.

Focus.

She dipped the proffered pen. “If you could detail the addition Squire Hughes is requesting.”

He did so, and Elsie wrote it down, her penmanship not what it should be. The pen quivered in her anxious hand. She hoped Mr. Parker didn’t notice.

She calculated the costs and wrote them in the first column of numbers, then, at the bottom of the page, drew an X and a straight line after it. Beneath it, she wrote, Mr. Gabriel Parker. Turning the ledger toward him, she said, “If you might review and sign, Mr. Ogden can get started right away.”

Adjusting his glasses, the steward did just that. Meticulous—a good quality for a steward. Elsie took a moment to study him, his white hair, the writing calluses on his hand. The smeared ink on his left palm. He had ruined the letter. No list would have inspired him to do such a thing. Could he really be one of them?

Could Mr. Parker be working for the squire to watch him? To bring down his household from within?

Then there was his talk of the viscount, and the Wright sisters’ gossip about the baron who had once stayed in this house. Could the squire be responsible for the deaths of the aspectors?

He was no spellmaker, but one didn’t have to be to use an opus spell. Even the pageboy could unleash a master spell if it came from a master’s opus.

Elsie’s thoughts spun so fast they were making her dizzy. She desperately needed to get away and think.

Mr. Parker signed. Elsie glanced at his signature as he returned the ledger, but of course the scrawl wouldn’t match his natural penmanship.

She desperately wanted to see what the steward was hiding under the desk. But alas, she could not force him to show her, and if she were to evince more than a natural interest, she risked revealing herself.

Standing, Elsie thanked Mr. Parker. He did not stand to walk her to the door—but of course he was busy, and he had that letter—so she saw herself out. Her nerves were so raw that she walked back to the stonemasonry shop at an even faster pace than she’d set earlier. She was distracted the remainder of the day, trying to piece together what she knew of Mr. Parker with what she knew of the Cowls. Wishing she had kept the letters to compare them to how he spoke.

It wasn’t until night settled and Elsie turned in for bed that she recalled a much more pressing situation.

Come dawn, she had to report to Seven Oaks, and the man who knew her most protected secret.