Andrew was caught up in the maelstrom, and was thrown about like a cork in a hurricane. The power was beyond his control now, or Marina’s, or indeed anyone’s. It was its own creature with its own laws, supremely indifferent to the wishes of a few puny humans. In the depths of the storm he thought he sensed others—one, two, a dozen, more—who found themselves unwitting channels for a power with a will of its own. He lost sight and sense of Marina, lost sight and sense of Reggie, clung only to his own identity, desperately, praying, as the competing waves of power battered him indiscriminately, and finally drove him down into darkness.
And his last thought was that if Marina was not to survive this confrontation—he didn’t want to, either.
The last thing he heard was a dreadful wailing, a howl of the deepest and most profound despair and defeat—and the sound of demonic laughter.
Then he lost track of everything, and knew nothing more.
He woke in a bed in his own sanitarium; he knew that ceiling—it was the one above his bed. He coughed, and suddenly there were half a dozen faces looking down at him. And among the faces around his bed was the one he wanted to see most.
“Marina!” The word came out as a croak, from a throat raw and rasping.
“Alive, thanks to you,” she said, her eyes dark-circled, her voice heavy with exhaustion, her smile bright and full of an emotion he hardly dared name. “And well, thanks to my—our—friends. And so are you.” She turned her smile on the three men, who looked equally exhausted. “Clifton bridged the power-well of the rectory to the greater power of the other Masters—and got a bit of a shock!”
“I should say,” Davies admitted, rubbing the side of his head, as if it still ached. “Never have I seen such an outpouring of power—not only from the Masters we had telegraphed, not only from your Undines and the lesser Water creatures, but from the Mermaids and Tritons, the Hippocampi and other salt-water powers all the way down at the sea, and from the Air, the Sylphs, the Winds, the Fauns and other Earth creatures, the Salamanders and Dragons of Fire—things I can’t even put a name to! They cleansed the earth for you, Andrew! And you reached for your power and it answered with more than I have ever heard of!”
“And you did exactly what that irascible old reprobate told you to do,” Sebastian said, as words failed the Reverend Davies and he shook his head in wonder. “You unwound that curse and wrapped it around Reginald and tied it back to Madam, and then—” He shrugged. “Well, we don’t precisely know what happened then. All we know is that when the brouhaha faded out, when Marina woke up and demanded that we go rescue you, and Thomas and I went into Oakhurst to find you, you were sitting on the front stoop looking as if you’d been in a bare-fisted bout with a champion and come out the worst. Reginald was in Madam’s study, slumped over the body of the poor wench he’d killed—unconscious, exactly as the curse made Marina—and Madam was in the same condition in the next room. The servants were just starting to wake up, so Thomas whisked you away before they saw you, and I laid into the footman, trying to get him to wake up. The servants found Reggie and Madam, by the way—” He grinned sheepishly. “I did take credit for the lad with the finger he’d chopped off, though. Someone had to, and no one could prove that I wasn’t the one who’d used that hot poker to save his life. They couldn’t prove I was any farther into the manor than the kitchen either, which is just as well for all of us.”
“Police?” he managed.
Clifton Davies nodded. “Called, been, gone. Coroner too. He says that Reggie and his darling mother poisoned each other—like they tried to poison you, my dear—” he patted Marina’s hand “—and before Reggie succumbed, he killed that poor girl—Marina’s maid, a lady of, hmm, negotiable virtue with a bit of a past. They say that he slaughtered her in a state of dementia. We suggested that they ought to be seen to by doctors, specialists. I’m told that they’re going to be moved to some place in Plymouth, under police guard, in case they might be feigning their state.”
“And meanwhile, I am living here—convalescing—until they are far away from my estate,” Marina said firmly. “I do not intend to set foot there until they are gone.” She smiled, charmingly, a smile that made him melt. “Besides, it’s perfectly proper. My guardians are here, and you’re not only my physician, you’re my fiance.”
He blinked. Not that he minded, but—when had that happened? “Now wait a bit—” he said.
“Are you saying you don’t want to be my fiance?” she asked, her serene smile wavering not at all.
Of course he wanted to! He couldn’t imagine spending the rest of his life with anyone else! But she was so young—it wasn’t fair to her—”No, but—dammit, Marina, you’re only seventeen!”
“Almost eighteen,” she interrupted.
“You’ve never been anywhere but Blackbird Cottage and Oakhurst!” he continued stubbornly. “You’re wealthy, you’re beautiful, you’ll be pursued by dozens of suitors—”
“—none of whom are worthy to polish your scalpels,” she said impishly.
“And I don’t want you to miss that!” he cried, voice cracking, as he gave words to what he was really afraid of. “I don’t want you to look at me across the room one day, and wish that you hadn’t gone so fast, that you’d had your London season, that you’d had a chance to be petted and courted, seen at the opera and Ascot—had all those things that you should have—”
“Very nicely put, Doctor,” Lady Elizabeth said, patting his hand complacently. “And she’ll have all those things. A little thing like an engagement to a country doctor is not going to put off those hordes of suitors. I intend to see she gets that London season myself. And when she’s had her fill of it, she’ll come back here, and marry you, and between all of Madam’s money and her own, I do believe you’ll be able to turn Briareley into a first-class establishment.”
He blinked as the three women laughed together, exchanging a glance that excluded all the mere males in the room. “Ah—” he managed, and dredged up the only thing he hadn’t exactly understood. “Madam’s money?”
“I’m the only heir—I’ll have all her property and Reggie’s too in a few months,” Marina said—with just enough malicious pleasure that he felt a rush of relief to see that she was human after all. “I doubt that they’ll live longer than that. I’ll be cleaning up the potteries, of course—which will mean they won’t be quite so profitable—but there will still be enough coming in, I believe, to make all of the improvements here that you could wish.” She made a face. “And in addition to having that delightful London season, I’m afraid I’m going to have to learn how to run a business—”
Oh, my love! I won’t let your season be spoiled! “You’ll have help,” he assured her. “Surely there must be someone we can trust to guide you through it. Or even take over for you.”
“My man of business, to begin with,” Lady Elizabeth said airily. “And after that—I think I can find a business-minded Earth or Water Master to become your manager. Someone who, needless to say, will be as careful of the land, the water, and the workers as he is of the pounds and pence.”
“Needless to say,” he repeated, and suddenly felt as if he was being swept up again in something beyond his control.
But this time, it was something very, very pleasant. And it was all in the hands of these utterly charming women, one of whom he had loved almost from the moment she had walked into Briareley to help a little factory-girl she didn’t even know.