Chapter Six

T he evening was going well. The music was excellent, the singer with whom she had had a duet was brilliant, and the audience—a glittering host that put her in mind of a fairy court—were darlings.

"Next song," hissed the conductor, recalling her to her duty. Guy had allowed her to smoke a pipe of opium in the carriage. It was a stronger batch than any she'd had recently—not just enough to smooth off the world's sharp edges, but sufficient to erase sharpness altogether and cloak her surroundings in a kindly mist, through which she saw only brief glimpses of detail.

Part of the mist was the light each person emitted. She could usually see that light, unique to each person and changing with their mood and their health, but it was always stronger and easier to perceive when she was drugged or drunk or both. Tonight, most of the people here were happy and relaxed.

Look at them standing and clapping, the man who looked like Jowan among them.

Tamsyn stole another look at him, the stranger who reminded her of Jowan. His light was largely a true green, with touches of sky blue and veins of gold. Good colors.

The orchestra played the introduction to her next song and Tammie's training took control, drawing her away from her thoughts and prompting the deep breath she needed for yet another aria, this one from a little-known opera by an English composer.

Caught up in the music, she ignored the audience, singing not for them but for Jowan. Wherever he was, and whatever he was doing.

The duet and two more songs before the break, she had been told. One more song after, and then two encores, if the audience asked for them, and they would. Tammie was in fine voice. She was untouchable, immortal, incomparable. Sure enough, they clapped, and they cheered. After her third number, they would not sit down until the duke, a handsome man despite his age, shouted to ask them to be seated.

Once he had the attention of the room, he held it. In the dream world that waited to engulf Tammie, he wore a crown, not unlike the one she often visualized on Guy, but emitting light where Guy's crown sucked light in. A king of light, with an aura of clean pure blue rather than a king of dark, whose red-black aura hurt the eyes.

They were both tall and broad-shouldered, but the duke was slim-waisted where Guy's indulgence of all his senses showed in his expanding paunch. The duke's hair was iron-dark tipped with frost and Guy's was sandy-fair and fading to white.

The duke was still talking but Tammie, since people were no longer paying her attention, let her slender grasp on reality drift. Perhaps she would not sing again tonight.

If she did, she would like to sing for Not-Jowan. The more she looked at him, the less certain she was about him being a stranger. Certainly, he smiled at her as if they were friends. He might be just a regular stage-door lecher, sure that every singer could be had for a price. But Tammie was an expert at detecting lust, and she was surely not deep enough in the opium dream to miss it if it was there.

It wasn't. Those eyes held something else. Curiosity? Concern? Those eyes so like the eyes of the boy who had been her dearest friend. Jowan would, she supposed, be twenty-three now. Yes. Twenty-three. She was twenty-three and so was Jowan. He would have grown taller and broader. This man was taller and broader, but he had Jowan's eyes.

People were moving, forming into queues. Was the concert over? She glanced at the duke, and he smiled back. "Would you care to have a seat, Miss Lind? We will not be long, and then they will expect their reward."

Reward? What kind of a reward? Tammie obediently sat in the chair the duke indicated and waited to find out. Her mind kept spiraling away. Soon, she would sleep. Sleep and dream. Perhaps of Cornwall, and at the thought, Bodmin Moor rose in her mind, and the children who used to play there, escaping from their lessons to ride the half-wild moor ponies.

When the duke touched her shoulder, she found it hard to let go of the dream.

"Miss Lind? It is time for your next song."

Guy materialized behind the man. "The duke said you would sing your encore pieces, Tammie, if enough people signed up for the raffles. You have your encores ready, do you not?"

Tammie could sing in her sleep, and perhaps she had sometimes done so. She nodded to the conductor, who had her music, and sang a lullaby that was all about the baby's father who had, as the song lamented, "gone for a soldier". The first encore was "Greensleeves", which was always a crowd-pleaser. She had prepared a third aria to finish the evening, but another idea occurred to her. A song for Jowan, if it was Jowan.

Guy glowered when she crossed to speak to the conductor, but Tammie ignored him. The dreams were crowding her now, the audience turning into mystical beasts before her eyes and the ballroom fading away as ivy and other creepers pulled down the walls to show castles and forests beyond.

One of the musicians carried a chair for her to the front of the stage and gave her his harp-lute. She played a brief introduction and launched into a ballad from home—one she had never before sung on stage, but that was as much a part of her as her bones.

It was a Cornish lament, about a girl who was lost on the moor, taken by the fair folk, and the miner boy who wandered the moors day in and day out, unwilling to give up searching for his beloved. Even in Cornwall, where few now spoke the old tongue, most people would not understand the words of the song, but the music carried the sentiments.

Jowan, if it was Jowan, learned the lament when she did. Could he see, as she did, the elf king rising up from the bog to pull the girl down, then trying and failing to do the same to her sweetheart?

The man was mouthing the words of the chorus as she sang them. It was Jowan! It must be. Her hands on the harp lute fell still and she repeated the chorus one more time, unaccompanied, the miner boy's lament for his stolen beloved floating out across the large room.

As her voice fell still, the assembled guests paid her that highest of all compliments from an audience. A moment of complete silence. And then they were on their feet, clapping and smiling. Probably-Jowan, too. Tammie kept her eyes on him as the duke spoke a few words of thanks and encouraged them to take their seats again for the auction.

Then Guy was at her side, taking her by the elbow. "Come along. I will introduce you to the duchess and then I am sending you home," he said.

"I would like to stay and meet the guests," Tammie protested.

"You are too tired," Guy declared. "I have already told the duchess as much. The song you sang last? It is not the one you prepared."

Tammie blinked at him. Was she tired? It was increasingly hard to think.

"Come along," Guy said again. "You may have a sip of laudanum before you meet the duchess, and then I will give instructions for another dose back at the house when you are ready for bed."

Another dose. Sweet oblivion. Tammie put Probably-Jowan from her mind and allowed herself to be escorted out to the room that had been set aside for her and Guy's other musicians.

"What was that last song?" Guy grumbled as he measured out the laudanum. "It was not on your list."

"They enjoyed ‘Scarborough Fair' and ‘Greensleeves'," Tammie told him. "I thought they would appreciate another simple song. And I was right, Guy, was I not?"

"What was the language?" he demanded. "Where did you learn it?"

Tammie shrugged. "Who knows? It might be Welsh. Or Gaelic, perhaps." She volunteered a little more, minding her words as if they were the gold coins of the old tales. Or knives. Didn't one of the folk tales tell of a girl who was cursed to spit knives with every word she spoke? For certain, if she was careless with what she said, Guy would find a way to turn her words against her.

He leaned over from his seat and grabbed her chin, forcing her to face him. "What is it about, Tammie?"

"A girl who drowns and is lost, and the boy who searches for her," she replied. "Or so I understand. It is a pretty tune, is it not?"

"Pathetic," he replied, examining her eyes as if a different answer might have been written there. "True love and all that nonsense." He must have been satisfied, for he pushed her face away from him, letting go as he did so.

"They enjoyed it," she repeated. "All the sad songs. The estranged lovers who demand impossible tasks as a sign of true love. The lover who bemoans the loss of his fickle mistress. The lad whose sweetheart is lost and gone." It was very sad.

She had made them sad, and they had loved it. All the bright and beautiful people, with their silk and lace and jewels. A host for the elf king. No, but they were not Guy's people. They were the duke's people. Was he, too, an elf king?

It made sense. Her mamm wynn , her grandmother, had spoken of the light elves and the dark elves. Guy was the dark king, so was the duke the light king? And if he was, could he save her? But no. The elf kingdoms avoided one another, if Mamm's tales were to be her guide, and would not risk war for a human girl who had wandered into Guy's clutches of her own free will.

Guy was still frowning, and his aura was even darker and muddier than usual. "Sir Jowan Trethewey is here," he said, abruptly. He was still holding the laudanum out of her reach.

"I wondered," Tammie replied, less interested in the conversation than in the glass of happiness he was withholding. "He was staring at me. I thought it could not be Jowan." Guy would not believe a complete lack of interest. "What would Jowan be doing here, in London, I asked myself. But he kept staring. Was it Jowan, then? The man with the dark curls in the third row, near the middle?"

Guy handed her the glass. "Possibly. He doesn't matter, Tammie."

Tammie downed the drink.

"Perhaps he will call," she suggested when Guy said nothing more.

"You will not see him," Guy commanded. "It is for the best, Tammie. You loved him once. You don't want him to see what you have done. What you have become."

"No," she replied, obediently, and added, "He loved Tamsyn. And Tamsyn died, long ago. Only Tammie remains."

Guy pulled her to her feet and offered her his elbow. "Just so." His voice was dark with satisfaction. "And Tammie is mine."

"Yes, Guy," Tammie agreed, keeping her eyes lowered lest Guy read the rebellion there. Tammie was Guy's, but Tamsyn stirred within her, not nearly as dead as she had believed. And Tamsyn had always been Jowan's, just as Jowan was Tamsyn's.

*

Tamsyn was absent during the auction but appeared briefly at the start of the supper. Jowan recognized the man with her as the Earl of Coombe, but he had changed over the past seven years. Then, he had been a gentleman in his prime, elegant, and sophisticated but also handsome and charming. To the sixteen-year-old Jowan, he had represented the fashionable world—that circle of superior beings who sometimes passed through their village, pausing only long enough to look down their noses at the locals. Jowan had hated that he found the man impressive and somewhat intimidating.

From a distance, he looked much the same, but as Jowan worked his way through the crowd to approach, he realized how much the man had aged in the last seven years. The firm skin beneath his eyes had become bags, his neck had relaxed into jowls, his waist had expanded, and his hair had receded from his forehead.

He was moving from group to group, introducing Tamsyn and stopping to chat for a few minutes. Jowan placed himself in a group with Lord Andrew and several others, waiting for the man to reach them, but Coombe turned the other way and was soon lost in the crowd.

No matter. Jowan would follow as soon as he had finished the conversation he was having with Snowden about inquiry agents. But when he did, he found that Coombe was on his own.

Jowan, having concluded that Tamsyn was nowhere in the ballroom, asked Lord Andrew to introduce him to Coombe.

"Not a nice man," Lord Andrew warned him. "Aunt Eleanor decided to tolerate him for the sake of Miss Lind's singing, but he would not normally be invited to any of her entertainments."

"We met some years ago," Jowan explained. "Miss Lind was a childhood friend. I had hoped to speak to her."

Lord Andrew shrugged. "As long as you're warned," he said.

Coombe was holding forth to a group of men about his European tour. When Lord Andrew and Jowan approached, his eyes darted sideways, as if he was about to work another disappearance. He must have thought better of it, for he greeted Lord Andrew, saying, "Winderfield. I trust your belle-mere is happy with the performances this evening."

"I believe Her Grace is well satisfied," Lord Andrew replied. "Coombe, I wish to make known to you Sir Jowan Trethewey from Cornwall."

"Lord Coombe and I met long ago," Jowan said, with the minimum of polite bows. "You may remember your trip to Cornwall, my lord since you collected such a treasure there."

"You were no more than a gormless boy, Trethewey," Coombe replied. Up close, the signs of dissipation were even more obvious, from the threading of broken veins on his face and the discoloring of his eyes.

Obvious, too, was the hostility in those eyes.

Jowan ignored it. "Yes, and Miss Lind was no more than an innocent girl. I hoped to pay my respects to my old friend."

"Miss Lind was tired, and an associate has taken her home," said Coombe. "However, you are wasting your time, Trethewey. I can assure you that Miss Lind has no interest in revisiting her girlhood." His eyes narrowed and he shifted into a threatening stance, setting his shoulders, and leaning forward. "Leave her alone. That is my last word on the subject."

He turned his body to shut Jowan out, saying to Lord Andrew, "I do not wish to be rude, Winderfield, but I consider it my duty, as Miss Lind's protector and patron, to keep such annoyances from her. She has moved far beyond past acquaintances such as impoverished baronets from the remote corners of nowhere."

Jowan didn't bother to hide his grin at the lame attempt at an insult, and Lord Andrew, seeing his expression, rolled his eyes. "Lord Coombe, I am surprised to hear you insulting my friends under my father's roof," he said.

"Perhaps you might give Miss Lind my compliments on her performance," Jowan said to Coombe's back. "Drew, thank you for the introduction."

Bran was waiting within sight, and Lord Andrew walked with Jowan to join him. "I'm sorry that didn't work out as you hoped," he said. "Miss Lind is Cornish, is she? I wonder what she really thinks about meeting you again."

"You think Coombe was lying?" Jowan asked.

"I think he lies as easily as he breathes," said Lord Andrew. His eyes were alive with questions, but he had no chance to ask them before another of Her Grace's guests stopped to talk to him about the evening's cause. "Duty calls," said Lord Andrew, and left Jowan and Bran to talk.

Jowan told Bran what had happened. "That last song was for me," he said. "It's one her Granny used to sing to us both." But then why, having recognized him and sung to him, did she run off before they could meet?

"She can't have known you were going to be here," Bran argued.

That was true, and Jowan had followed Tamsyn and the village choir to enough festivals and competitions to know the next question to ask. "Are the musicians still here?"

They were, having a supper of their own in a little room off the ballroom, and someone soon pointed them to the conductor. "Miss Lind's last encore," Jowan asked him after he had introduced himself. "Was that unplanned, as far as you know?"

"It was, as a matter of fact," said the conductor. "We had the accompaniment for ‘Say, Can You Deny Me', but at the last minute, she told me she was going to sing something else. I didn't know the tune. It was Welsh, was it? Sounded a bit like Welsh."

"Not Welsh," said the man who had sung the duet with Tamsyn. "Pretty, though."

"Very pretty," Jowan agreed. He thanked them for their music and left the conductor with a guinea to share with the others.

"That last one was for you," Bran conceded.

Before Jowan could comment, Lord Snowden found them. "Ah! There you are. I have a couple of people I want you to meet." Jowan dropped the topic and did his best to focus instead on the new mine and its benefits to potential investors. Still, at some level, his mind must have continued circling around Tamsyn and the lament.

"Why that song?" he asked Bran as they walked back to the hotel.

"Because she knows you speak Cornish?" his brother suggested.

Jowan shook his head. "She could have chosen any number of Cornish songs, but she picked that one. Is she the maid stolen away by the Bucca Dhu? Is she telling me she is lost forever, Bran?"

Bran shrugged. "Maybe she is asking for rescue? But why didn't she stay? We need more information, Jowan."

He didn't say that Jowan should have questioned Drew, or Snowden and his friends, but he didn't need to. Jowan knew it, but somehow, he felt too raw. "Lady Snowden has invited us to dinner tomorrow evening—or this evening, I suppose, given the time. Business and pleasure, I gather. In the morning, when we wake up, let's see the inquiry fellow that Snowden mentioned, and set him on the trail of Father's solicitor. Then we can call on Coombe again in the afternoon."

"Perhaps this Wakefield can tell us about Coombe, too," Bran suggested.