He gritted his teeth. There was a reason he didn’t come to Yorkshire.
Sebastian shone his torch beam onto the fountain with its carved stone rams, then over to the stately archway over the manor’s heavy wooden front door, now partially overgrown with ivy that swayed in the night’s breeze. Beyond the beam would be another stone archway leading around the side of the manor, where the servants’ wing jutted out, and then to the gardens beyond.
“Qué casa linda,” Sebastian murmured, then glanced at Wesley. “What a pretty home.”
“Yes, well,” Wesley said brusquely, “more importantly, it’s got lots of whiskey.”
He had just unlocked the door when Sebastian moved in front of him. “Let me go in first.”
“Why the hell—”
“We hope Blanshard will follow your false trail to the Lake District, but he knows about this manor, doesn’t he?” Sebastian’s voice wasn’t much more than a whisper. “If there is magic here, let me stop it before it hits you.”
“Iamarmed, you know,” Wesley said testily.
“You brought your revolver?”
“I was nearly murdered by a human match last night, of course I brought it. However much magic is in something, I suspect I can still stop it with a bullet.”
“But I can take it down with a thought and no death,” said Sebastian. “Let me go first. After all, I am here as your bodyguard, yes?”
Wesley’sbodyguard. This looker. The very idea sounded exactly like the type of yellowback novel or penny dreadful Wesley absolutely and most certainly had never read.
“Fine,” he said, his own whisper a little too high. “But do remember I can shoot things, won’t you?”
He stepped behind Sebastian into the foyer, and then into the great hall. The room was eerily quiet in the way abandoned houses often were, as if the dust muffled everything in the same way as newly fallen snow. No moonlight came through the heavy velvet drapes, shut tight to the world, and the air was musty and uncomfortably still from months without movement.
“Are we good?” he murmured to Sebastian.
“I think so.” Sebastian was shining his torch around the room, from the covered paintings to the covered furniture. “But we should stay careful.”
They left their hats on the hat stand in the foyer. Their footsteps were too loud on the marble as they crossed to the wide, curved staircase tucked into the corner.
“Normally I’d offer you a guest suite of your own,” Wesley said, as they climbed to the first floor. “But they’re in another wing.”
“Oh.” Sebastian chewed on his lip. “That would be too far for the magic, yes. But I don’t need a suite of my own, I can sleep anywhere.”
Wesley could too, although it wasn’t a fact he advertised. There were standards one must demand, after all, and he didn’t want Sebastian judging him. “We’re staying in the master’s chambers,” he said, as they reached the chambers’ door.
Wesley had only stayed in here twice; first when he’d unexpectedly become lord of this manor, and then when he’d come up for Blanshard’s godforsaken party. Still, the sitting area was exactly as he remembered: a man-height fireplace flanked by a burgundy settee and two high-backed chairs set around a black walnut table, and a selection of trophies of his father’s hunts: a buck’s head on the wall, a stuffed fox, a tiger rug on the floor.
He heard Sebastian swallow audibly.
“Oh, come on,” said Wesley, leading the way in. “Where did you think I learned how to shoot, bymagic?”
“I was trying not to think about it at all,” Sebastian muttered behind his back.
“Christ, you’re as bad as my mother was. She used to make my father keep everything in the trophy room. First thing he did when she died was redecorate both of their chambers.”
Wesley set his torch on an end table, facing upright so the beam could illuminate more of the space. Sebastian was shining his torch around the room, from the giant bed with its gold canopy to the balcony’s glass doors to the gilded ceiling.
“So we are...staying together...in just this one room?”
There was a new note in his voice, the first sign of actual nerves Wesley had ever heard. “You’re the one who said we have to stay close so your magic will work,” Wesley snapped. “These quarters are private intentionally; there are no other rooms close to this suite, and most of the bedrooms in this home no longer have furniture anyway.”
“I didn’t—”
“Are you seriously that weak for animals?” Wesley went on, because he had no intention of explaining why he’d started allowing the furniture to be sold. “I mean, all right, we can debate the ethics of safaris, I have read the arguments, but these animals are all quite dead already.”
