“Lovely Louisa, there you are.”
He was in a disturbingly good mood. Every short glimpse of Mr. Morningside lately showed him to be irritable and vexed. Shouting matches raged at all hours between him and Mrs. Haylam. Complaints about noisy, lead-footed servants disturbing his work. And wasn’t the foyer awfully drafty? But now, sitting behind his massive desk, his menagerie of birds clustered around him, Mr. Morningside smiled at me. Brightly. Too brightly.
I curtsied and waited for him to invite me to sit, which he did, giving a small, elegant wave of his hand. Reams of parchment that had seen much better days littered his office. Huge, leather-bound books were stacked high on the floor. Quills with broken nibs, their feathers splattered with ink, had been abandoned in every corner. He was hard at work at something, though nothing on the pages looked intelligible to me. Scribbles, I thought, unintelligible little pictures.
He sat back in his chair while I took just the very edge of mine, my hands squeezing each other fretfully in my lap. I had yet to enjoy a wholly pleasant or even mundane interaction with this man . . . creature . . . thing. Given his too-friendly smile, this afternoon’s visit would be no different. Mr. Morningside cleared a space in the mess on his desk, haphazardly gathering up the old parchments and stacking them on the right side of the polished wood.
“Tea? Something stronger? How are you enjoying the spectacle out on the lawn? It’s soon to be far more exciting. The Court convening here . . . It’s been, let me think—” And here he began tabulating silently on his long fingers. “Oh sod it, who knows? Who cares? It’s been a very long time, and now we are to host the Court. Such a delight.”
“Forgive me for saying so,” I began carefully, “but you don’t look particularly delighted.”
“Do I not?” He showed yet more white, even teeth with his next smile, but it only had the effect of being even more unsettling, forced. Aggressive. “Well, my questionable delight over hosting the Upworld’s finest fops and fools is a topic for another time, Louisa. We have far more pressing matters to discuss.”
He served tea in his ornate cups, each decorated with tiny, fine birds. Without my asking him to, he also removed a round bottle of what looked to be brandy and poured some in with my tea, scooting it quickly across the table. Given the smell wafting off the cup, he had given me rather more brandy than tea.
“It isn’t yet three o’clock,” I pointed out mildly, eyeing the concoction.
Mr. Morningside tipped his head to the side, ceding the point, then took a gulp straight from the brandy bottle and tented his fingers in front of his nose, studying me. My mind raced. He was generally so unflappable. What could be upsetting enough to call for that much brandy this early in the day? Did it have something to do with Mary? Had she returned from the Dusk Lands after all? Or perhaps he had concerns about Lee, who had become like the house ghost, often heard but rarely seen. Then there was, of course, George Bremerton’s people, the cult of zealots that had sent Bremerton to Coldthistle in the first place with the mad idea of killing the Devil.
I sighed and picked up the tea, waiting. What had my life become that these were the anxieties swirling around in my mind?
“I’ve received a rather curious letter, Louisa. Quite honestly, I do not know what to make of it.” Mr. Morningside ruffled his luxuriant black hair and then reached for one of his desk drawers, withdrawing a folded piece of parchment with a broken green seal. Even at a distance, I could smell the distinct scent of juniper emanating from the paper. “It’s left me speechless.”
“Now that is odd,” I mused.
“Yes, yes, please enjoy a chuckle or two while you still can. I doubt you will feel so blisteringly superior when you hear the contents of the letter,” he said, his eyes, yellow and dancing, flamed with annoyance.
Setting down the tea without drinking it, I frowned and reached for the letter, but he tugged it away, keeping it just out of my reach. A few of the birds perched around him tittered as if amused.
“Not yet,” he said, shaking his head. “You may read it soon, but first I must know something, Louisa.” Mr. Morningside leaned toward me, setting his jaw and grinding it back and forth a few times before saying softly, “How are you?”
I stared. “How . . . am I? What sort of question is that?”
“A friendly one,” he replied. “A genuine one. I realize I have been . . . preoccupied of late, but I do honestly worry. That ugly business with Bremerton would leave any normal person catatonic with shock. I know you must feel a certain amount of confusion still, what with Mary’s ritual not working. You appear to be taking it all in stride, but as you know, looks can be deceiving.”
“I’m . . .” I cast about for a suitable response. It hurt to realize just how baffling that question could be. How was I? Unsteady, terrified, disheartened, utterly lost in a sea of strange forces and even stranger revelations about the world, about myself, about the nature of good and evil, God and the Devil. I was . . . “Getting along. Yes, I’m getting along, sir.”
Mr. Morningside lifted one dark eyebrow at that. “A genuine question deserves a genuine answer, Louisa.”
“Very well, then I’m surviving. I survive, usually by trying not to think too hard about what you are and what this place is. I clean the chamber pots and wash away blood. I sweep and muck out stalls and put my hands over my ears at night if a guest is screaming. If I thought too hard about any of it, about who I am and what I’ve seen and done after less than a year of employment here, then I might not appear to take it in stride. So while your question may indeed have been genuine, sir, it was also foolish.”
My voice had risen to almost a shout, and I did not apologize for it, nor did Mr. Morningside seem taken aback or offended.
He placed the letter on the desk between us, tented his fingers again, and nodded slowly, chewing briefly on his lower lip as he continued regarding me. His gaze flickered once to the letter, but then fixed on me. I refused to squirm under the scrutiny.
“Would it please you to see your father?”
I laughed. Scoffed, really, and gave a distinctly piglike snort. Pointing to the fine parchment of the letter, I said, “Malachy Ditton could never afford paper that fine. If he has, it’s a deception, some way to part you from your coin, and you’d be a dolt to believe a word of it.”
Mr. Morningside’s eyes grew huge, almost innocently so, and his lips parted. “Oh.” Still looking dazed, he reached for the letter and began opening the creased pages, laying bare a long, long note written in a scrolling, beautiful hand. I had never seen letters with so many flourishes and loops. The entirety of it appeared to be written in Gaelic.
“My father can hardly scratch out his own name,” I murmured, transfixed by the sheer loveliness of the penmanship and that delicate perfume of juniper and forest drifting from the paper. My eye swept to the bottom and the signature, a name I did not recognize. It looked like Croydon Frost. “There must be some mistake . . .”
“There is no mistake, Louisa,” Mr. Morningside said gently. “This letter is from your father. Your true father. Not a man of flesh and blood and mortal spirit but a Dark Fae, the source of your Changeling magic.”