If possible, my voice got even higher. “Marriage?”
“Oh, I’m aware that to your mother it was a dirty word,” she said disdainfully. “She despised the very idea. She always wanted to be a scholar, of course. I suppose she got her wish, after all, locking herself away in that Tower for twenty years. So strange to think that the pair of you were holed up in that draughty old place all this time! It belongs to our family, did you know that? Part of an old holding given to us, oh, centuries ago. It was too marshy to be of any real value, and so no one really ever went there.”
“I didn’t know that,” I whispered, still recovering from the idea of marriage.
She cupped my cheek. “So unfair to you, my dear. You are young and pretty and nobly born. She had no right to keep you from the family and lock you up away from the world. Why, you were no better than a sort of servant to her!”
My little helpmeet.“It wasn’t like—”
“And your clothes!” She interrupted me, looking me up and down in distaste. I flushed. “Please don’t be embarrassed, my dear. None of this is your fault. No, you had no say in any ofit. But you are home now, and I will make sure to outfit you as befits a lady.”
“But I don’t want to get married,” I said. “I have to find my mother. I can’t …”
“Oh, of course we will search for your mother! Together. And when we find her, and that book she is so passionate about, we will bring her here, and she can continue her work on it in comfort. Don’t you think she would like that, my dear? I’m sure that, deep down, she wants the best for you—a comfortable life and a family.”
I did want a family. Perhaps not in the way she meant, but … I had only just found my home, my name. My aunt. She watched me with those wide, iridescent blue eyes as I thought.
“Do you promise me that we will keep looking for her?” I hedged.
A flash of something in her face, quickly smothered again by a smile.
“Of course. I will continue making inquiries.” She tapped her fingers on the bed frame, her face creasing in a pretty frown. “It is terribly inconvenient to lose the Book Man. No one had a network quite like his.”
My stomach dropped. I stared at her. She met my gaze and laughed a little. “How insensitive you must think me! Of course I am just heartbroken to hear of his demise. But I am afraid a selfish part of me is also heartbroken that we have lost his wealth of knowledge. Never you mind. There are others. I think you said your mother corresponded with many other bookmakers?”
“Yes, but I don’t know …”
“Now that I know where she has been hiding, I will send someone to the Tower to retrieve her things. Perhaps some of her notes and letters remain.”
Why did this make me feel so uneasy?
Milady seemed ready to turn and go, but I stopped her.
“Milady …”
“There is no need for such formality. Please call me Aunt Sybil.”
That was going to take a lot of getting used to. She simply looked too glamorous and remote for such a name.
“Aunt Sybil,” I said with some effort, “do you know of someone named Patrick?”
She went very still, all smiles gone. “I beg your pardon?”
“Patrick? I met …”
She turned, and her eyes were ablaze, making me take an involuntary step backwards. “Where did you meet him?”
I was taken aback by her reaction. “On my way to Quell, and then … tonight, at Plaguenight …”
She took several rapid steps towards me and grasped my hands. “My dear,” she said, “you must stay far, far away from Patrick Foley.”
A fluttering against the window. Was it just the rain outside?
“Who is he?” I whispered.
“An ambitious little weasel,” she said coldly. “Who works against me at every possible opportunity.”
I frowned. “But he’s just a traveling magician, and I think some kind of … criminal? A black market dealer of some kind?”
