The Wizard of London

guard her in it.

Not that she was likely to get into too much trouble. The man was only a toff, maybe one with a bit of magic about him, but he wasn’t bad evil, he was only the sort that would meddle because he thought he had a right and he thought he was stronger than anything he meddled in. So up to the point where he fell into the hole he hadn’t seen, he was safe enough.

“Well,” she said aloud. “If we’re gonna meddle, we best do it afore he gets himself into somethin’ worse nor he is, an’ brings it home.”

Puck gave her a wry little bow. “And there’s wisdom; to know when to run and when to hold fast, and when to stand by your friend.”

But his smile in the moonlight was warm with approval, and when the Sidhe-deer moved on like a drift of mist, glimmering a moment among the trees and then gone, he took them off on a strange, wild walk in the night. He showed them an owl’s nest in a barn, with four round faces peering at them out of it, and he spoke to the mother owl when she came with a mouse, so that she allowed them to stay and watch her feed the hungriest. It made Nan giggle to watch, as the mouse tail hung out of the owlet’s beak, and it gulped and gulped and the tail slowly disappeared. She would have thought that Sarah would have been revolted, but Sarah found it just as funny.

He also took them to a fox den, and let them play with the cubs while mother watched benignly, though he warned them after, when he was taking them home, that they must never try such things when he was not about. “I have the speech with the wild things,” he said. “And they know me. They will abide much from me that they will never tolerate elsewise.”

“Well, of course!” Sarah replied, matter-of-factly.

It was a good thing he was along; he showed them a better way of scrambling up to their window. “I mind me,” he said reminiscently, peering in through the open casement, “when there was a bright-eyed lass a living here had a farmer’s lad all head-tumbled and heart-sore, because he thought she’d set her cap on the steward’s son. But when the banns were posted, it was the farmer lad who won the day. Of course,” he said, with a wink, “it might be that I had a hand in that.”

“With the little purple flower?” Sarah replied archly, referring back to the Shakespeare play.

“Now that would be telling, and I never tell.”

And he was gone in an instant, and they got back into their nightdresses and crawled into bed to fall asleep the moment they got under the covers.

And in the morning, they might have thought it was all a dream—except that when Sarah stuck her hand into the pocket of her pinafore, she pulled out, much to her surprise, an owl feather.

15

THE strange Spirit had rattled David as nothing else had in many, many years. He longed for someone to discuss the incident with, but Cordelia was in London, and he did not think there were any other Masters living near this place.

Which left only Isabelle. After all, she was no expert on these things. He didn’t even know if she could see the Elementals and nature spirits.

But on the other hand, there was only one name for that terror that had overcome him. Panic—named for the Great God Pan…

Surely, that had not been—surely not. It had worn the guise of a mere boy, not the Great Goat-footed One. Why would the Sylvan Faun do such a thing?

For that matter, what would he be doing in England? This was not his place, he belonged in Greece!

And yet, David had seen with his own eyes lesser Fauns in England, little boyish earth spirits that haunted the gardens of Earth Masters. They had come, so why not Pan?

But why should it be so?

Perhaps Isabelle was no Elemental Master, but she did know of the Elementals, and other such creatures, too. Perhaps she had even seen this one herself…

A dozen times David made up his mind to ride over to talk to Isabelle, and a dozen times found an excuse not to, until the day after his encounter when he was very nearly run to earth by a lady determined to have him for her daughter, to the point where he seized on any reason to go riding alone again.

“My dear woman,” he said insincerely, “I would be charmed to speak with you, but I have an appointment to pay a call at Highleigh Court.”

Mrs.Venhill stared at him. “A call?” she repeated. “I was not aware that you had any acquaintances in this part of the county.” Her mouth tightened. She knew exactly what he was doing. But he had no intention of giving her a way to disprove his statement.

“I do not,” he said calmly. “But an acquaintance of mine, a Mrs.Isabelle Harton, is a guest there. I have not seen her in many years, and she was quite eager to renew her acquaintance with me.”

That last was the only lie; the rest was absolute truth, and carried the lie like froth on the top of a wave. And since he did not mention a Mister Harton, this would, he hoped, lead her to think that Isabelle’s husband was no more, and she was a young, lonely, and presumably attractive widow.

And in a case such as this, an acquaintance out of one’s youth was going to trump just about any cards a matchmaking mama could lay out. She was beaten, and she knew it. She retired gracefully from the battle lines, murmuring, “Ah! Well, of course you must go, it would be insufferably rude if you did not!”

Of course, now he had done it; he had to go, or at least appear to go, or Mrs.Vennhill would be very well aware that he had been putting her off. Do that too many times and one found one’s invitations no longer extended or answered.

So he found himself on horseback again, riding off into a day that threatened rain. Not the cleverest idea he could ever have had, but it was too late now.

And he might just as well follow through with the putative visit.

After all, if it did rain, he would have to have shelter somewhere until it passed, and as a visitor he could at least claim that much even if the visit proved to be awkward.

He had no doubt that although he was not expected, he would be received with the proper respect, and so he was. The horse was taken around to the stables, and he was shown to the library, that being a proper and reasonable place for a gentleman to amuse himself when the lady he has come to see might be busy.

He did amuse himself by looking through some of the titles of the books there, and as he had half expected, a good number of them were occult or esoteric in nature. So the owner of the house was in Isabelle Harton’s circle of acquaintances, or at least, presumably knew many of the same practitioners of psychical magic that she did.

He took one down and began to leaf through it, but it was heavy going, and he was having a difficult time untangling the sense of it, when light footfalls heralded the arrival of a newcomer, and he looked up to see Isabelle stepping into the room. She walked briskly over to him, and boldly tilted the book up to read the spine.

“Blithering idiot,” she said, without preamble, and waved at the shelves. “Our host collects any sort of occult writing, but if you examine the shelves carefully and know some of the authors, you will soon determine that he has grouped his books according to their usefulness, or lack thereof.” The half-smile she produced had more than a hint of irony in it; it was the smile of a knowing, worldly-wise woman, not the pretentious irony of a girl. “His categories—and I apologize in advance—are Useful, Moderately Useful, Nothing of Note, Idiot, and Blithering Idiot. I fear that the Blithering Idiots number twice as much as all the rest combined, but he takes some amusement in having them about. I am told, though I have not actually attended such a function myself, that one of the entertainments for his close circle of friends is to take down a book from those shelves and read it aloud as portentously as possible without cracking a smile or laughing.”

He looked from the book to Isabelle and back, and felt something constrict in his chest. The woman of the photo was, in person, so much more.

The Isabelle he had known had been quiet, a little shy, diffident. Her attractive qualities had been shaded by that diffidence. If you knew how to look at her, she was quite pretty, and he had taken a certain amount of pleasure in knowing that nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand would never see her true beauty. Unlike Cordelia, of course, who was so strikingly handsome that even a dolt knew how attractive she was.

The woman that Isabelle had become was like Cordelia in that she left the impression that she was completely self-confident. It probably did not matter to her that the frock she wore was a trifle out of date, nor that