Chain of Iron

“It was some years ago. Anna was in love with Ariadne—very much so, I gather—but Ariadne did not return the feeling. It seems the tables may have turned, but …” Matthew shrugged. “It took quite a bit of asking for me to learn that much. Anna has mastered being entirely open without ever revealing anything significant about herself to anyone. It is why she is an excellent shoulder to cry on.”

“And have you made use of it?” She studied him: his dark green eyes, a faint scar on his cheek, the wisps of blond hair that curled at his temples. It was rare he stayed still enough for her to really look at him. “Anna said you had a habit of getting your heart broken.”

“Crikey,” said Matthew, turning his half-empty glass in his hand. “How unfeeling. She probably means Kellington.” He looked at her sideways, as if gauging how she’d react to this news. Cordelia wondered what Matthew would say if she told him in turn about Alastair and Charles. It was odd to know something so personal about Matthew’s brother, and not be able to say so. “Not long after my first visit to the Ruelle, Kellington offered me a private concert in the Whispering Room.”

Cordelia felt her cheeks turn pink. “And that became a broken heart?”

“That became an affair, and the affair became a broken heart. Though I am, as you see, entirely recovered.”

Cordelia remembered Matthew in the Ruelle, Kellington’s hands on his shoulders. She remembered the look on Lucie’s face too, when Anna had said, Matthew seems to prefer a hopeless love. “What about Lucie, then? Did she break your heart? Because she wouldn’t have wanted to.”

Matthew rocked back slightly in his chair, as if she’d pushed him. “Does everyone know about that?” he said. “Does Lucie?”

“She has never told me anything indiscreet on purpose,” Cordelia reassured him. “But in her letters, she has often revealed more than I think she meant to. She has always … fretted over you.”

“Just what every gentleman wants,” Matthew muttered. “To be fretted over. One moment.” He stood up and went to the bar; Cordelia felt a twinge of sympathy for the barmaid as Matthew leaned over the polished wood, flashing his charming smile. She hoped the girl understood that Matthew’s flirtation was only a game, a mask he wore without thinking of it. It should never be taken seriously.

Matthew returned with a new ale of a much darker color and flopped back into his chair.

“You haven’t finished the other,” Cordelia said, gesturing to the glass. She could not help but think of her father—he, too, would often start a new drink without finishing the old one. But Matthew was not like Elias, she told herself. Elias hadn’t been able to make it through her wedding without falling to pieces. Matthew drank more than he should, but that didn’t mean he was like her father.

“Since we are apparently unburdening ourselves, I decided to switch to something stronger,” Matthew said. “I believe you were scolding me for flirting?”

“We were talking about Lucie,” said Cordelia, who was beginning to regret she had brought it up. “She does love you—just—”

He smiled, a crooked but real smile. “You needn’t console me. I did think I cared for Lucie romantically, but that is ended. I promise I am not nursing a broken heart and covering it up with wild flirting.”

“I don’t mind the flirting,” Cordelia said, nettled. “It just keeps you from being serious.”

“Is that so bad?”

She sighed. “Oh, probably not—you’re awfully young for serious, I suppose.”

Matthew choked on his ale. “You make it sound as if you are a hundred.”

“I,” said Cordelia, with dignity, “am an old married woman.”

“That is not what I see when I look at you,” Matthew said.

Cordelia stared at him in surprise. He had finished his glass; he set it down on the table between them with a decided thump. She could have sworn there was a flush along his cheekbones. More flirting, she thought. Meaningless.

He cleared his throat. “So, given what you told me in Maidenhead, we’re looking for a mythical barrow somewhere on the Ridgeway Road. How are we meant to find it, exactly?”

“According to the book I read, it’s near the Uffington White Horse.”

“It’s near a horse? Don’t they move about?”

“Not this one,” said Cordelia. “It’s a massive drawing of a horse, on a hillside—well, not quite a drawing, really. It’s cut out of the hill in chalk trenches, so it shows very white against the earth.”

“Is it the Uffington Horse you’re talking about?” said the barmaid, who’d snuck up on them with their steak pies.

Matthew and Cordelia exchanged a look. “That’s the one,” said Matthew, fixing the barmaid with his most angelic look. “Any help you could give us in finding it?”

“It’s just down the road a bit. You can see it for miles on the hillside, and folk come from all around every year to help scour the horse—keeping the chalk white, like. There’s a path up the hill leads to the chalk trenches. People climb it every so often, and they leave offerings, too—flowers and candles. It’s a witchy kind of place.”

Matthew’s eyes were sparkling as the barmaid left them alone to dig into their lunch. “You think the barrow’s there?”

“There, or near there.” Cordelia was beginning to feel real excitement. It had been a desperate gesture, coming out here in hopes of finding out what was wrong with Cortana. A method of seizing her fate with her own hands, even if it meant finding out something she did not want to know. “Perhaps it was once known that Wayland the Smith had a forge there, and the white horse was created as a sort of—”

“Shop sign?” said Matthew, grinning. “Get your enchanted swords here?”

“As a way to let people know it was a powerful, protected place. Though,” she added, “bet you a shilling there’s a stall selling hot cider once we get there.”

Matthew laughed. They hurried to finish their food and pay the bill before departing. They left the barmaid gazing longingly at Matthew and got back in the car. Cordelia crawled under a multitude of blankets as the car started up with a roar and they trundled out onto the road.

 

“Grace.” James blocked the door with his body. “You shouldn’t be here.”

She looked up at him, her small face shaded by her hat, her expression invisible. “But I need to speak to you,” she said. “It’s important.”

He curled his hand around the doorframe. The pressure was there in the back of his brain, the whisper that said, Let her in. Let her in. You want to see her. You need to see her. “Grace—”

She was past him somehow, and inside the house. Thank the Angel that Risa had gone to the Carstairs’ house to help Sona. James slammed the door shut—no point making a scene the whole of Curzon Street could see—and turned to see Grace already halfway down the hall.

Shah mat, he thought, and hurried after her. She always managed to get past him somehow. His emotional walls. The actual walls of his house, apparently. He could hear her skirts swishing down the corridor; he caught up with her as she was about to turn into the study.