Page 56 of A Study in Drowning

“Nothing in particular,” Effy lied, because she certainly was not going to confess that she had been wondering about this since her conversation with Ianto—or admit how intently she’d been staring at him. “It’s just that we go to the same university, but we didn’t know each other there. I just wondered what sort of things you did . . .”

She was flushing profusely, too, gaze trained firmly on the coffee cup cradled in her lap. She heard Preston draw a breath.

“No, I didn’t,” he said. “I mean, I don’t. Sometimes, you know, there are girls you meet, and—well. But it’s never more than a night, maybe coffee the next morning . . . never mind. Sorry.”

He was phenomenally red at this point, staring with stubborn attention at the road, though for a brief moment his eyes flickered to her, as if to gauge her reaction. Effy pressed her lips together, overcome by the inexplicable urge to smile.

She liked when she flustered him. It seemed to be happening more and more of late.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I know what you mean. What a charmer you are after all, Preston Héloury.”

He laughed, cheeks still flushed. “Not in the slightest.”

“I don’t know about that. I find you very charming, underneath all the smugness.”

“You think I’m smug?”

Effy had to laugh at that. “You aren’t exactly the most approachable person I’ve ever met. But I suppose that’s because you’re also the smartest, most eloquent person I’ve ever met.”

Preston just shook his head. He was silent for a moment, staring through the window as the scenery passed by slowly. At last, he said, “There’s a lot to compensate for, when you’re the only Argantian in Llyr’s most prestigious literary program.”

All at once Effy was suffused with sympathy—and with guilt. She remembered how she had berated him on the cliffside, and then again in the pub, pricking at him, questioning his loyalties. “I’m sorry if people have treated you cruelly. I’m sorry for the things I said, when we first met.”

“It’s really all right,” he said, turning to look at her. “It’s just whispers and looks in the hall, mostly. I’m sure you’ve gotten your fair share as the only woman in the architecture college.”

Effy tensed. She realized that, unintentionally, she’d created the perfect opportunity for him to ask about Master Corbenic. She still didn’t know if that particular piece of gossip had reached the literature college.

“It’s not so bad,” she said. A lie. “I knew what I was signing up for.”

Preston inhaled, and it seemed as though he wanted to say something more. In the end, though, he just snapped his mouth shut and turned back toward the road. They lapsed into a slightly uneasy silence as the green hills rolled past, looking as huge as waves at high tide.

Penrhos, Blackmar’s estate, was not technically in the Bottom Hundred. It was still south of Laleston, and the nearest landmark was a busy market town, Syfaddon, where the lamplight pooled on damp cobblestones and storefront awnings flapped in the wind like dresses hung on clotheslines.

Preston’s car inched through the crowded streets, jerking to a halt every few minutes so that a merchant could drag his cart across, or an errant child could escape her mother. The windows of the pubs and shops were bright with the glow of gas lamps.

“It’s not far from here,” Preston murmured. His knuckles were white around the steering wheel, brow furrowed with the immense concentration it required not to flatten an oblivious pedestrian. “Just up the road. Much less remote than Hiraeth.”

Effy watched a fishmonger adjust one of his carp, mouth open so she could see its tongue and teeth. His fish were aligned perfectly on their bed of ice, as neat as bodies in crematory drawers. “Is Blackmar from Syfaddon?”

“No, he’s from Draefen, actually. I think he’s descended from one of those post-Drowning industrialists. Oil or railroads or something like that. Enough money he never had to work a day in his life, which doesn’t make for a very interesting author profile.”

“At least, not as interesting as an upstart provincial genius,” Effy said, as Syfaddon’s market shrank in the rearview mirror. “So you think the publisher—Greenebough—arranged for Blackmar to write Angharad, but publish it under Myrddin’s name?”

“That’s my working theory, yes. Blackmar had the best education money could buy, naturally—he studied literature at the university in Caer-Isel. There’s even a scholarship named after him, or maybe his father?”

“But no one there is studying ‘The Dreams of a Sleeping King,’” she said. “It’s ironic, isn’t it—that his best-known work is commercial tripe, but Angharad is beloved. I mean, why would Blackmar agree to it? It’s not like Greenebough could have swayed him with money—you said he was rich enough already. And if he could write something like Angharad, why is his other work so . . . so middling?”

Preston was quiet for a moment, considering. “You’re right,” he said. “There’s still plenty that doesn’t add up. But that’s why we’re here.”

With that, he turned onto a narrower road, more poorly paved, and lined closely with a fleet of enormous elms. The shadows between the trees looked dense and oily, like the dark itself was moving. It was evening now; the sun listing gently to the line of the horizon, the clouds a bruised violet. It was several more minutes down that dim, craggy road before the turrets of a house rose above the trees in the distance.

The black wrought-iron gates came into view, cutting the house behind them into slivers. House seemed insufficient, discourteous even—what stood before them was a mammoth construction of brickwork and groin vaults, marble columns and sash windows.

Effy hardly considered herself a real architect, but she could calculate the cost of each feature, each balcony and balustrade, and it amounted to a sum that made her dizzy.

Preston stopped the car in front of the gates and they looked at each other, the same unspoken question on their lips, before the gates began to slowly creak open.

He drove up the circular driveway, around an island of immaculately landscaped grass and a marble fountain in the shape of a maiden. Her arms were at her sides, hands turned out and fingers splayed, and water spurted from her open palms.