But the charabanc and then the wagons kept going, and that was when the word “gatehouse” connected in her mind with the house at the gate, and she stared at it in awe, realizing that here was a house just for a man and his family to live in so he could tend the gate. And that was all he did!
The cavalcade continued on up a twisting lane that led through wooded and meadowed land that looked exactly as well groomed as a park, and then turned a corner—
And there it was, and Nan blinked in surprise and even shock at the place that would be their home for the next month.
It was a chaotic, glorious pile of a place, a mishmash of styles and eras, and if Nan could no more have named those styles and eras, she could certainly tell that the blocky stone tower with its slitlike windows that anchored the left was nothing like the mathematical center of more cream-colored brick and tall, narrow windows, which was in turn, nothing at all like the florid wing thrown up on the right. The only unifying force was that except for the square tower, it was all built of the same mellow cream-colored brick of the wall, and that was all.
And it was enormous. Easily three times the size of the school.
Nan looked around her, and so did the rest of the children, eyes as wide as they could stretch—at manicured parkland that could easily hold three Hyde Parks and then some—at the huge pile of a building, that promised endless opportunities for exploration—at the glimpse of gardens in the rear, and beyond that, a hint of water. And for the first time they all understood that all of this was, within reason, theirs for the month, to run in, play in, explore, hide, make up stories in and act them out—
And it was Nan who summed up all their feelings in a single word.
A word which burst out of her like a cannonball out of a gun.
“Cor!” she shouted in glee.
Mem’sab, being handed down out of the charabanc, merely looked up and smiled.
8
MUCH as he admired and depended upon Lady Cordelia, there was some relief for David Alderscroft in being in a place to which she could not go. Here in his club, surrounded by men and the things of men, with not even a hint of women about (the few maidservants kept themselves discreetly out of sight as best they could), there was a sense that one could let down one’s guard and relax.
Not that Cordelia was like most women, but still… here, one didn’t have to be so terribly careful of manners and speech, and if one made a faux pas, a man would simply wave it off, where a woman would stew about it for hours. Women were grand ornaments to life, but even the best of them forgot that a man needed to be a man among men on a regular basis.
Small wonder that many men all but lived at their clubs even when they did not have rooms there. Even working men knew the pressure of too-attentive female companionship, and had their pubs and their coffeehouses. He never felt quite so comfortable as when he was at the club, with women restricted to the Visitors’ Parlor and Visitors’ Dining Room—and if there were females in a resident member’s rooms, well, that was his business and had nothing to do with the rest of the members. One could have sisters and a mother, after all. And aunts. And if they were deuced attractive sisters and aunts, who might or might not have careers on the stage, well, such things happened. So long as they did not intrude on anyone else, it was none of his business. Here, not only were the members incurious about who came in and out, so long as it was discreet, they were incurious about what came in and out, and a phenomenal number of them were Elemental Mages, occultists, or had had brushes with the uncanny. Here, they knew how to keep secret and silent when odd things happened. And here he had chosen to make the headquarters of his new incarnation of a much older Elemental Masters’ Master’s Circle.
The Master’s Circle, or White Lodge, was an ancient magical tradition, created for the purpose of self-policing one’s own kind, as it were. Originally intended to hunt down and destroy the enemies of the members, it had evolved to the more civilized function of ensuring that no Elemental Master within its jurisdiction attacked another, or attacked those not blessed with magic.
It had been at its most active during the Regency, when the notorious Hellfire Club (which actually had very little in the way of true Magical power) and those modeled after it (some of which did) had flourished. Since that time, it had declined to little more than a social group that occasionally did some investigative and disciplinary work. One of the most recent had been the ill-fated, though ultimately successful, attempt to track down and bring to heel a wayward Fire Master—the attempt that had cost David’s own father so much. It had been David’s idea, not Cordelia’s, to revitalize the lodge and make it more effective. In this, he flattered himself, he had been quite successful—enough so that he heard that he was being called the “Wizard of London” now.
Truth to tell, Cordelia did not much like the Circle. He suspected that she resented the fact that she was not permitted inside the club and had not been invited to join, but really, a woman had no real place in a Master’s Circle—
Well, most women. There were a few, a very few, who like the few neck-or-nothing riders in his Hunt Club, could keep up in terms of energy and sheer instinct for the kill with the best of the men, but they were rare indeed. He could not imagine Lady Cordelia in such a position, with her cool, calm demeanor and immaculate manners. She would regard much of what the Circle did with distaste, as “dirtying her hands.” For heaven’s sake, he couldn’t even imagine her on the back of a horse in hunting dress, much less traipsing across the countryside in search of a rogue magician!
So he ignored her obvious disdain for the work of the Circle, as he ignored nothing else she said or did, and went early to the meetings of the Circle so he could enjoy the masculine ambience of the club before he picked up his arcane duties.
This particular Master’s Circle had been the one to which his father had belonged, and it had been when his father had been unable to muster an adequate hunting party and had been injured that had made David take notice. He had decided then that the situation simply would not do, and began rectifying it.
Now it was a matter of sending a few messages across the city to muster a full-strength hunting party within the hour, and within three, a Circle of Initiates could be assembled.
There were, in fact, enough Mages and Masters in the group to gather a Circle Trine if the need arose, and that had not been the case since the Circle had first been formed. Possibly the fact that the Circle had been moved to London, where most of the members at least had town homes, had made the difference. Perhaps it was because in London there simply were so many people it was not at all difficult to find enough Mages. Perhaps it was because it was in a men’s club; it was easy to give the wife the excuse that one was going to one’s club in order to slip out. Granted, Mages usually married Mages, but women with the Talent were still women, and inclined to favor commitments to dinner parties over commitments to the Master’s Circle—and were equally inclined to be both far too curious and far too suspicious when a gentleman had to be evasive about where he was going and what he was doing.
Nor could they manage to keep the secrets secret.
But a man could say, “I’m going to the club,” and a woman would nod and think nothing more of it.
And perhaps that was the main reason for the success of the Master’s Circle. A man could come here, do the Work of the Circle, and return home late, and the spouse would ask why so late a return, and a man could say “Oh, Lytton went off on one of his shooting stories and we lost all track of time,” or “A billiard game turned into a match, you know how it is,” and if there were no signs of inebriation or the presence of floozies, there would be no further questions.