Thornwood caught her hands. “Calm down. At least they won’t run us out of the village for that. You are usually such a sensible creature. What is bothering you?”
Mouse stopped fighting, crumbling in on herself. “I told John about you and the deal, everything, and he didn’t believe me.”
She burst into tears and sank to the floor. Thornwood was clearly bewildered, judging by his uncharacteristic silence.
She kept waiting for her tears to subside, but they didn’t, and soon she was crying for everything that had happened since 1914. She cried for Bertie, dead in no-man’s-land; for Roger, lost despite being found; for John, so kind but so careful; and even for her uncle, alone in his house, wasting into nothing. But, mostly, selfishly, she cried for herself.
When her sobs subsided to weak hiccups, Thornwood spoke.
“You realize this is a good thing, right? Who knows how the villagers might react to a Faerie returning to England? We are not prepared for that.”
“I know. I even knew he would not believe me, but he called me a liar in as many words.”
“To be fair, you did try to lie to him earlier,” he said. Mouse stiffened. “I’m sorry. Even I can tell that was not the right thing to say.”
“No, it was not.” She straightened, rubbing away her tears with her sleeve. “But you’re right.”
“Everything will be fine. You will forgive each other.”
“How can you be sure?” Mouse asked. Her voice was barely a whisper, more smoke than words. “John has never been this upset with me, and he is the only friend I have left.”
“Not the only friend,” Thornwood said. “After all, you have Smudge.”
He was being kind again.
“That was almost sweet,” she replied, looking anywhere but his face.
“Exactly the descriptor I was looking for,” he said. He rose, helping Mouse to her feet as well. “Now, let me show you the work I’ve done.”
Mouse woke the next morning feeling as though she had slept for a night and a day. Her energy returned with vigor. Smudge sensed it as well, dancing around her feet as she dressed. Opting for a dark skirt, a plain white shirt, and a green jumper, Mouse felt ready to dive deeper into the secrets of the house, even if she wasn’t ready to rejoin Mr.Hobb on the grounds yet. She thought she might take him one of Mickelwaithe’s fine lunches to prove she was still alive and well, although Mouse was sure some of the village gossip from yesterday had made its way to him anyway.
Thornwood’s tour the day before was exciting, despite how exhausted Mouse felt at the time. He could touch up every part of theservant quarters except the mudroom by the back door and work on several rooms upstairs without his spells dissolving like spiderwebs.
“What other centers of power are there in this house?” Thornwood asked when she met him in the study.
“Centers of power?”
“Yes. The boiler was clearly ‘heat,’ and the magic we encountered was elemental. That means the caster likely linked the spell to powerful places or objects related to the elements. Perhaps a windmill?”
“I’m sure we don’t have a windmill,” Mouse said. “Although, there used to be a holy well on the premises.”
“You mentioned the well before. That could be it.”
“Limit your expectations. The Dewhursts filled it in years ago.”
Thornwood waved away her words. “I will determine if it is a potential spot when I see it. Where is it?”
“You’ll have a rough time: It’s underneath the pond in the garden.”
The Faerie sank his face into his hands. “Of course it is.”
Mickelwaithe offered to lock Smudge in the conservatory where she could still see the sky, but Mouse decided against it. Every time she entered the conservatory, with its smothering scent of orange and its cage of lined windows, Mouse wanted nothing more than to hike up her skirts and escape. Mouse’s father disliked the place as soon as they arrived. The cultivation of citrus trees was popular enough in the upper classes, and her father was trained to take care of them, but he always flinched when his duties forced him inside.
“I prefer to leave plants where nature intended them to grow,” he told Mouse once. “There is something unnatural about those plants, like they don’t need tending and they are only humoring us by pretending that they do.”
Mouse thought that perhaps it was the idea of so many livingthings trapped under glass and never allowed fresh air that disturbed them.
It might be irrational, but Mouse did not want to subject anyone else, human or inhuman, to the sensation. If the dragon-dog wanted to play in the mud, why stop her? However, when they ventured onto the grounds, Smudge skidded to a stop on Thistlemarsh’s front landing, eyeing the lawn in distaste.