My heart beats faster than I am certain it can bear. A crow flies from tree to tree, and I fear it shall find me out. It flies instead to Amar and settles on his shoulder.
“The time nears. Beware the birth of May.”
He kicks the horse’s flanks and rides off in a cloud of dust.
I stay hidden for a full count of one hundred, and then I run hard and fast for the Borderlands.
I want to tell them about Circe, but I’m afraid. How can I possibly confess that she is still alive? That I’ve gone to her for counsel? That I’ve given her magic? I’m ill when I think of what I’ve done, of the risk I’ve taken. And for what? Rubbish. Admonitions to search my dark corners, as if she weren’t the most evil soul I’ve ever met.
Once I reach the castle and see my friends laughing and playing a game of catch, I’m cheered considerably. It was a mistake seeing Circe, and one I’ll not make again. I won’t go back until it is time to return the magic and make the alliance, the day she’ll be gone from our world forever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
WE WAKE TO A GLORIOUS SUNDAY MORNING FULL OF color and dappled with a soft light that blurs the landscape into the sort of palette that might please Mr. Monet. After a hideously dull sermon, compliments of the half-dead Reverend Waite, Mrs. Nightwing offers a reward for our saintly endurance by asking our help in preparing for Spence’s masked ball. We are turned out of doors in our artists’ smocks with paintbrushes in the pockets. On the back lawn, long stretches of canvas have been spread out on tables. Pots of paint hold down the corners. Miss McCleethy directs us to paint pastoral scenes befitting a paradise so that we may employ them as scenery for our masked ball performances. The only scene that comes to my mind is the ridiculous frolicking Pan in pantaloons from my grandmother’s home in London. I refuse to copy that monstrosity, though the prospect of outfitting him in a corset is rather tempting.
Felicity is hard at work. Her brush dips from pot to pot, and when I see the castle emerge, I smile and add the craggy mountains of the Winterlands behind it. Miss McCleethy walks between the tables, her hands behind her back. She makes improvements with her paintbrush, correcting a bush here, a flower there. It is quite annoying and I have the thought of painting a mustache on Miss McCleethy.
“What is this?” Miss McCleethy frowns at our picture of the Borderlands in progress.
“A fairy tale,” Felicity answers. She adds touches of purple berries to a tree.
“Fairy tales are rather treacherous. How does this one end?”
Felicity’s smile is a challenge. “Happily ever after.”
“It’s a bit dreary.” Miss McCleethy grabs a paintbrush and dabs a bright pinkish orange over the churning gray of my distant Winterlands sky. It doesn’t improve it; it only makes it into a muddy mess with a false dash of color.
“That helps,” she says. “Carry on.”
“Monster,” Felicity mutters under her breath. “Promise you won’t give her a drop of magic, Gemma.”
“I shouldn’t share with her if my life depended upon it,” I vow.
In the afternoon, the Gypsy women come bearing baskets of jams and other sweets. We slather jam on bread, not caring about our paint-smeared fingers. Miss McCleethy asks if one of the Gypsies might be hired to chop firewood, and a short while later, Kartik comes, and the heat rises in my face. He removes his coat, rolls his shirtsleeves to his elbows, and takes the ax to a tree.
Miss McCleethy leaves us so that she might inquire after the East Wing’s progress, and I sneak over to where Kartik is working. His shirt is damp and clings to him. I offer him water. He glances toward McCleethy, who pays not a whit of attention to us. Satisfied, he gulps the water and wipes the back of his hand across his forehead.
“Thank you,” he says, smiling in a curious way.
“What is so amusing?” I ask.
“I’m reminded of the oddest dream I had.” He rubs his thumb across his lower lip.
The blush begins at my toenails and whooshes up to my face. “Well,” I say, fumbling with the water bucket. “It was only a dream.”
“If you remember, I believe in dreams,” he says, gazing at me in such a way that I find I must look elsewhere to keep from kissing him again.
“I…I need to speak to you about an urgent matter,” I say. “Mr. Fowlson paid me a visit in London. We’d been invited to dinner at the Hippocrates Society. He was waiting outside.”
Kartik pulls the ax from its resting place in the tree stump. His jaw tightens. “What did he want?”