"Everything is unreliable, from time to time."
A small smile flashed across Elaine's face before she could stop it.
"See, not so bad," he said.
Elaine swallowed the smile, but couldn't quite chase away the warmth that had accompanied it.
Mala refilled Elaine's mug without asking. She motioned to the mage. "Would you like some more, sir?"
"Yes, please." He held out his mug. He offered her the empty cookie plate, as well.
"Would you like some more sweets?"
"Some more of those excellent cookies would be quite nice."
Mala blushed and dropped a rough curtsey. It wasn't as though Mala weren't complimented on her cooking often by the entire household.
Elaine watched the plump cook hurry away. Did Harry the stableman have a rival? No, that was silly. Mala would know that Jonathan would never let a wizard court her.
Elaine's stomach clenched in a cold, icy knot. Would Jonathan be able to abide a wizard under his own roof? Even if it were her?
Mala returned with a plate of cookies for both of them. She set it on a little stool before the fire.
"Thank you, Mala," Gersalius said.
Mala giggled.
A mere thank you, and she giggled. Elaine had never seen the cook like this, not even around Harry.
Mala left to stir something at the stove. The back of her neck was red with a blush of pleasure.
Was the mage that charming, or was it a spell? Elaine wanted to ask but didn't want to embarrass Mala.
Gersalius sipped his tea and looked at Elaine. There was a twinkle in his eye that seemed to say he knew what she was thinking.
"Do you know what I'm thinking right now?"
"Yes, but it is not magic."
"How, then?"
He leaned forward, lowering his voice. "Your body posture was very disapproving when your cook catered to me just now. Your face is like a mirror, child. Every thought chases across it."
She frowned at him. "I don't believe that."
"You don't want to believe it," he said. "The thought that your thoughts, your feelings, are so easily read by a stranger frightens you."
She opened her mouth to deny it, but didn't. It wasn't so much the mind-reading mage that bothered Elaine, but the others. Did Konrad know how she felt? Did everyone? Was she that transparent?
"I am a very noticing kind of person, Elaine. Most people aren't, even people that see you everyday. In fact, I have found, people that have watched you grow up are often oblivious to you. You know what they say, 'familiarity breeds invisibility.»
"I thought it was, 'familiarity breeds contempt.»
"Well, yes, maybe it was, but I don't think he has contempt for you, do you?"
"You are reading my mind," she said. She sat very straight, hands gripping her mug tight.
"Perhaps I am, a little. The fact that you are an untrained mage makes it easier for me. Strong emotions are also easier to decipher."
Elaine's hands trembled. Hot tea sloshed onto her skin. Mala darted forward, scooping the mug from her hands and dabbing at the spill with a clean towel. "Have you burned your hands?"
Konrad knelt beside Elaine's chair. He pressed a cloth to her hands. She started at the coldness. He had scooped snow into the cloth. "Cold is the best for a minor burn."
His hands enfolded hers, pressing the snow to her skin. Her chest was tight. The weight of his hands round her own chased the last of the cold from her body. Even with snow touching her skin, Elaine felt warm. She felt the warmth creep up her neck, and she knew she was blushing.
Konrad stared only at her hands, at his task as a healer. He never looked at her face.
Elaine's eyes met the mage's gaze. Gersalius was right, Konrad didn't know. He didn't see what a stranger had noticed easily.
"How do your hands feel?" Konrad asked.
She stared down at him. The blush had faded with knowledge that Konrad felt nothing when he touched her. When he'd carried her downstairs, the feel of his body against hers had thrilled her. To him it was just another task. Another sick person to be tended.
"They don't hurt," she said.
He nodded and stood, taking the cloth to clean it and set it to dry. He never glanced back.
"Do you want the tea, Elaine?" Mala asked.
Elaine shook her head.
Mala took the offending mug away. She didn't even flirt with the mage.
"Tell me of your visions," Gersalius said. His voice was gentle, as if he knew what she had just realized. Since he was reading her thoughts, he probably did know.
Her first reaction was anger. How dare he spy on her feelings? She opened her mouth to tell him to get out, to leave her alone, but the look in his blue eyes was too kind, his face too understanding.
"I would not hear your thoughts quite so clearly if I could help it. You give off your thoughts like the sparks from a fire. You shine, Elaine. You shine with so much talent. When I learned how old you were and that you had never been trained, I thought your abilities would be small. How else could the magic have stayed so controlled for so long?"
His face was suddenly serious. He leaned toward her, and Elaine found herself moving closer to the mage. "The strength of your will is fierce, Elaine. You did not want to be a mage, so you squashed the magic down inside of you. You locked it away with pure, shining determination. If you could turn that strength toward learning magic, you would be formidable. And you would learn quickly."
From inches away, she stared into his eyes. He was whispering to her before the fire, a conspirator. His power glided over her skin like wind. The hairs on the back of her neck and along her arms rose. Her skin crept with it. She felt something inside herself flare upward, something neither fire nor cold nor anything she had a name for. Whatever it was, Elaine felt it pouring up through her body, responding to the mage's magic. Like calling to like.
Elaine took a soft, shallow breath. She'd been holding her breath without realizing it. Her fingertips tingled as if magic would pour from her hands. She had the urge to touch the mage, to see if the pull of magic was stronger with a touch. She suspected it would be. She wanted to touch his hand. Her skin ached with the need to see what would happen. With the need came the fear.
She crossed her arms over her stomach, hiding her hands against her body. They balled into fists, digging into her sides, as if they would burrow out of sight. It took all the determination Gersalius had spoken of not to reach out to the mage.
She sat back in her chair as far from him as she could get without standing up.
Gersalius leaned back from her, giving her room. "It can be stronger when mage touches mage. It depends on what sort of magic a person possesses. Yours, even more than mine, is a laying on of the hands, I think."
"How can you tell that?"
He shrugged, smiled. "It is one of my gifts to judge talent in others. Most mages can spot power and judge potential strength, but few can decipher the actual method the magic will choose to come out."
"The magic chooses the way it will come out?" She made it a question, so he answered it.
"Often. If you had been trained earlier, perhaps you could have chosen the path of your own power, perhaps not. But now the magic has made some of the choices on its own. Your visions, for one."
Elaine shook her head. "You make magic sound like a second being inside of me, with a will of its own."
"I do not mean to. It is not separate from you. It has no thoughts or feelings of its own." The wizard frowned, thinking. He smiled as if something pleasant or clever had just occurred to him. "Say you had a talent for sewing-not a learned talent, but something you were born with. You were born to be a seamstress, or a tailor. But you were never allowed to study sewing. Then one day you made a beautiful ball gown. A week later you made another even more lovely than the first.