I was like that once, Musgrave thought. Not nearly so strong, of course, but at least I knew. Oh, I knew.
There was the sound of movement behind her, a curtain moving, footsteps on the pine floor, but she didn’t turn from the window until she heard the strike of a match on the wood surface of her table.
“I told you not to smoke in here,” she said to the tall, dark-haired man lounging in the chair that Ellie had so recently quit.
The man regarded her, eyes dark, hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth, lit match in his hand. For a long moment their gazes held, then he smiled and shook out the match. He put the cigarette behind his ear, dropped the match on the table.
“ ‘Many Mice Wood?’ ” he asked.
She laughed and joined him at the table. There was still tea left in the brown betty. She poured them each a mug, giving him the one Ellie had been using. Since it hadn’t been rinsed, a light film of milk rode to the top of the tea. The man didn’t appear to notice, or if he did, care.
“Actually, it’s a true story,” she said.
“I’m sure it is.”
He added milk and sugar to his tea and drank it down with relish. Setting the mug down, he picked up the two halves of the mask and held them up, looking at her overtop of them.
“Iron doesn’t hurt us,” he said.
“I know. But it doesn’t conduct geasan well and…” She shrugged. “I thought it might set her thinking.”
“She doesn’t strike me as one overly interested in anything that can’t be measured and weighed by some man in a white coat holding the same blinkered views of the world as she does.”
“Don’t start on that again,” Musgrave told him. “She’s an artist.”
“She’s human.”
“She may not embrace the mysteries, but she still sees more than most do. That’s the gift and curse of an artist. I agree it would be better if she realized she was working with truths, rather than stories, but consider what she has to offer.”
It seemed that the argument Ellie’s arrival had interrupted was about to begin again, but then her guest shrugged.
“The geasan runs strong,” he conceded.
Musgrave nodded. After meeting the girl again today, she realized it was even stronger than she’d remembered. But that was the way of the geasan. It sidled and slipped, danced like shadows and light. Out of sight, out of mind. She’d given up wondering why a long time ago. If the mysteries were fathomable, they wouldn’t be mysteries.
She took the mask halves from him. Placing them back on the cloth, she refolded it into a bundle and tied it closed with the leather thongs. Her guest took the cigarette from behind his ear and rolled it back and forth between his fingers.
“But she’s a busy woman,” he said after a moment. “Easily distracted.”
“She’ll do fine.”
“Last night there was a man sniffing around her.”
Musgrave sighed. “She’s a young, attractive woman. What would you expect? Of course men would be interested in her. And what does it matter?”
“I don’t like it.”
“Why? Because it’s not one of you Gentry doing the sniffing?”
He gave her a hard gaze, but she only laughed at him.
“Give it a rest,” she told him. “And leave her alone. There’s no need for you to keep watch over her anymore. Go get drunk and listen to that music you fancy so much.”
“You don’t understand.”
“What? The drinking, or the music?”
He shrugged. “Either. It’s hard, living as we do, and grows harder every year. The music takes us away. There’s a promise in it, of all we never had.”
Musgrave laid her hand upon the bundled mask. “When this is done, you will have whatever you want.”
“Perhaps. If only she weren’t human.”
“We need her to make the mask,” Musgrave said. “Not wear it.”
He nodded, his dark eyes growing thoughtful.
“I don’t trust the little bugger you have in mind for that job,” he said, his voice soft. “I don’t trust him at all.”
“The trick is to use someone we can control.”
“And if we can’t?”
“Let me worry about him,” she told him, with more confidence than she felt.
“It’ll be on your head.”
Didn’t she know that, Musgrave thought.
“So you’ll leave the girl alone until she’s done her job?” she asked.
He gave another nod and rose to his feet. Musgrave remained at the table as he crossed the room and left the cabin. He had no word of parting for her and she kept her own peace. The lack of amenities between them didn’t surprise her. They’d been uneasy allies from the first.
Outside the window, she saw him pause to light his cigarette, then slip off into the woods behind her cabin. A faint intuition prickled up the length of her spine.
Something was coming, she knew. She could taste it in the air, feel the weight of it in her bones. A change, certainly. Perhaps danger as well. But she couldn’t place its source. It could come from the native spirits whose land the Gentry wished to claim for their own. It could come from the Gentry themselves. It could even come from a player who had yet to step onto the game board.
She thought of the young woman with the fierce aura of geasan that her body was unable to contain, thought of Ellie’s innocence and the task they had set for her. Musgrave sighed.
No one was to be trusted. Not even herself.
13
The back door of the main house opened just as Ellie stepped up onto its low stone stoop. Bettina appeared in the doorway, a glimpse of the kitchen showing behind her. She smiled at Ellie’s startled look.
“I saw you coming,” she explained before Ellie could ask.
Stepping aside, she ushered Ellie in out of the cold.
I like this place, Ellie thought as she stepped inside. The kitchen was a big, comfortable room, warm and filled with the smell of baking bread and something savory—soup or stew, Ellie wasn’t sure which. Whatever it was, it smelled delicious and made her stomach rumble. At a large wooden table by the window, Donal lifted a lazy arm in greeting. He had a bowl of soup in front of him, a thick chunk of bread beside it.
“We were just having some lunch,” Bettina said. “Are you hungry?”
“Famished. But I don’t want to impose.”
“I’ve just invited you. Por eso, it’s no imposition.”
Regarding her, Ellie was struck again by the wonderful character in the other woman’s features. Maybe there’d be time to capture them in a small sculpture, if Bettina would be willing to sit for her.
“Then, yes,” Ellie said. “Thank you. It smells so good.”
“Doesn’t it? It’s one of Nuala’s soups—she’s the housekeeper and cook here. Chantal says she must have gone to chef school.”
“And graduated at the head of her class,” Donal put in. He pointed at his bowl with a spoon. “This stuff is bloody poetry.”
Ellie raised her eyebrows. Compliments from Donal? What was the world coming to?
“Can I meet her?” Ellie asked.
Bettina shook her head. “Not this afternoon.”
She waved Ellie to the table as she spoke. Crossing to the stove, she filled a third bowl, cut a generous slice of the fresh-baked bread, and brought them back to the table with her. Ellie inhaled the steam from the soup when the bowl was put in front of her, breathing in a heady mixture of spices, herbs, and vegetables.
“Nuala’s gone into town for the day,” Bettina explained as she regained her own seat. “I don’t think she’ll be back before supper. Did you want to leave a message?”