Thomas

Emmeline treated me with kid gloves in the days following. She meant well, truly, but I wished that she wouldn't. I needed my strong-willed wife, the one who reminded me of my place and did not let me forget who was in charge in my absence. Sometimes I even saw the timid girl who'd blown out of a storm from two years ago, unsure of what to say so she said nothing.

And then, one evening, while we were preparing for bed, she finally asked the question.

"Tom, what was Francis like? Growing up?"

I paused midway through unbuttoning my waistcoat and looked over at her. She never once broke eye contact, which meant the question was completely serious. "Besides what the letter said?"

"Knowing his mental state at one point in time does not tell me anything about him," she said, pushing a hand through her hair before dropping it heavily. "And you do not speak about him...I figured that subject was taboo."

A fair point, I suppose. I would have liked to think that Francis was in his perfectly right mind, but even the best physician would have said he was not. He saw things only he could see, heard voices only he could hear, and believed the Devil himself was after him half the time. And nothing, not even the encounters with these strange men, could have caused that.

"The first thing you should know is that Lucian was wrong." I crossed over to the bed and pulled off my boots. "Francis's mind was never perfectly sound."

"Tom, I'm sure that's–"

"No, Emmeline, it isn't." I swung my legs onto the bed and leaned back against the pillows. "Francis was trapped in a world of visions and voices only he could sense. Sometimes there were periods where it seemed he had left it. But they always came back."

"So when he saw the things he drew..." Emmeline's brow furrowed, and she slid her hand into mine. "No one believed him. He was the boy who cried wolf."

"Yes. My parents must have thought that somehow his visions were becoming more vivid." I let out a heavy exhale. "I only wish I could have been here for him. Besides Lucian, only I knew when he was delusional."

"And he knew he was not when Francis gave him that box." Her hand tightened in mine. "Everything he said was perfectly true."

This time I nodded.

"Is that when..." Emmeline began, but trailed off.

"When he took his own life?" I said, and she nodded. "I believe so, yes. I was away at war during that time, so I am unsure of the timeline."

"But now you believe him." She leaned into my side, dropping her head to my shoulder. "After all these years."

I kissed her hand, lingering there before resting my lips on her hair. "Not even someone like Francis could conjure up something this terrible."

She said nothing, only took a deep breath and nestled closer to me. I almost believed, when I discovered what she had been through, that a piece of Francis had been returned to me. In her I saw his same gentle sensitivity, his generosity, his desire to help someone no matter what they had done to him. Perhaps at first, that was what compelled my feelings to grow. But there was one distinct difference, the one that I could not have predicted would seal them and make me proud to have her as my wife. She found it within herself to continue living, despite what she'd experienced. She had the strength that my poor brother did not. And that, I believed, was what made us better.

||

"Heard about this unrest in France lately?" Ray said, the next time they visited.

We were watching our wives and our children walk down the garden path in front of us. Little Georgie kept reaching out and tugging at Phil's blanket, and Lady Violet would gently chide her and pull her back. As for Eddie, he was clinging to Emmeline's dress, chirping "Mama" when her attention shifted.

"Does it worry you?" I had heard of it as well, and something told me it was going to explode into something else, something violent and unstoppable.

'A bit, yes. The French fought against us in the war. It tells us nothing about their willingness to do it again." Ray tugged at his waistcoat.

"I do not doubt it," I said, just as Emmeline stopped to adjust Phil. Eddie was stretching his arms up, in the hope she would pick him up. I reached him first, scooping him up and setting him on my shoulders, legs dangling down around my neck.

Ray wiggled his fingers at Eddie, and the boy caught them and shook them about, making him grin. "He already knows how to shake hands, it looks like."

"His mother is the one that teaches him his manners. For the most part."

Our moment of levity disappeared quickly. Ray leaned in close, so the women could not hear, and said, "I only advise you, Tom, to not let this war tempt you. Not the way the last one did."

"What should I do, then, if it comes to us?"

"Weather it, I say. Ride it out. I doubt the idea of leaving when you've family back home is very appealing."

"No, but I know what is," I said, thinking of my brother's drawings. "I believe it is time we had a formal meeting with this Captain Blanchard."

Ray nodded, but said nothing. I hoped that meant he agreed.

||

Our initial encounter with Blanchard came while we were in London, once again at work on Order business. Ashbury insisted we be thorough, which made for many long nights locked in the board room of Elemental Advancement, drafting the same few paragraphs over and over until he was satisfied. It was on those nights I missed my wife the most, alone at the Leicester Square address with our sons. Lady Violet and little Georgie would be joining us in two days' time, but until then, Emmeline virtually had no company.

"Distracted again?" Ashbury, sitting across the table from me, looked up from his parchment. He had a pipe in his mouth, just like his old father, and was puffing away at it.

"I miss my wife," I said, setting my quill in the ink pot and shaking out my hand, stiff with cramps. "Surely when you are married yourself you will understand."

"Father wants me to take my time in finding the proper lady," said Ashbury, his emphasis quite clearly on the word lady. "He does not want any mongrel grandchildren, you understand. Our blood is very pure."

"Yes," I said tightly. I knew he was taking aim at both Emmeline and our sons, but I would not let him see that it offended me. He must have derived great enjoyment from trying to provoke me, but I would be the first to take the wind out of his sails.

"I wonder, Captain Haywood, what your father would think of your wife," he went on, in that calm emotionless way that made my fists curl. "No last name to speak of, no family, no inheritance or estate..."

"He only wanted heirs, Lord Ashbury, he did not care how I got them," I said, and for once I felt a trill of satisfaction at the way his own fist tightened on the tabletop. "And she may not have had any of those, but she has more emotion and feeling than ten of London's finest ladies put together."

Then from downstairs came a distant boom, as if a powerful gust of wind had blown the doors open. It made the lantern flames shudder, and stopped our conversation. We glanced at each other, and then the doors of the boardroom before we were both on our feet.

We saw him as soon as we reached the gallery. He had five men with him, and two of them carried long curved swords with a strange golden glow along their blades. I stopped and pulled Ashbury into the shadow of a column, just as Blanchard looked our way. He gave me an indignant glare, but I put a finger to my lips to keep him quiet.

"Fan out," I heard him say, his voice coarse and rough. "Take no prisoners. You see someone, you kill them."

I leaned sideways, just enough to see around the column. The two men with swords stayed near their captain, while the other three pulled out pistols and proceeded up the stairs. Blanchard was visibly uneasy, his hand curling and uncurling around the pommel of his sword. I wondered briefly how he had found Elemental Advancement and why he was here in the first place, but I had no time to think on it further, because there was a man with a pistol coming in our direction.

I took a moment to brace myself, and then flew straight at him, landing a punch right on his jaw. He grunted and stumbled into the rail, dropping the pistol. I heard it go clattering down the steps. Right as I hit him again, three sets of feet came towards us. I shoved him over the rail just in time to see another man behind him. He raised his pistol, finger on the trigger, but stumbled before he could fire, hit in the stomach by Ashbury's air. That allowed me to jump at him, trapping his arms to his sides while I wrestled the pistol away. He threw his head sideways, into my nose. I heard a crunch, and by the following second I had blood running out of it. Finally I managed to yank the pistol away and rammed the barrel of it into the man's head, knocking him out. The third man was blown back by Ashbury, trying to walk against the wind and failing.

There was a thud from behind me and I whirled, seeing the men with swords advancing on Ashbury from behind. I raised the pistol and fired, hitting one in the arm. He yowled and dropped the sword. The other leaped towards me, and instinctively I took a step back. That made me collide with Ashbury, whose concentration broke for a split second. He glanced behind him just in time to catch the gleaming sword across his shoulder.

The sound that came from him was one I'd never heard before. It was a high keening wail, so unlike him that at first I was unsure of its source. But when I saw the sword flare up silver, the same colour as his eyes, it occurred to me all at once. Those blades had the power to steal an Elemental's Essence. I darted between him and the man still standing, firing twice at his midsection. He lurched and then collapsed. I spun again and dispatched the one sneaking up behind me. And that was when I saw Blanchard, without a scratch, standing at the top of the stairs.

"You fight well, Captain Haywood," he said. "As a soldier, I can see how valuable you must have been to your fellow men."

"And you do not seem to fight at all," I answered, wiping my bloody nose on my sleeve. "Tell me, do you do any of the dirty work yourself, or do you have your henchmen do everything?"

"I do some. With certain prisoners. Those that are harder to break, you see."

I raised the pistol, aiming it at him. "Tell me why I shouldn't kill you here, on the spot."

"Because then you would never find out why this all happened, would you?" His expression was smug, and it appeared he knew as well as I did that I wouldn't do it. Even if he was the reason my brother was dead, and I was almost certain he was the one who had beaten and tortured Emmeline, I couldn't do it. Not until I knew the truth. I dropped the pistol slightly, and he nodded. "I thought so."

"I could wound you and interrogate you," I said, although that option did not seem nearly as appealing, nor as satisfying. "And then when I have everything..."

"You would kill me?" he finished. "Captain Haywood, you must see by now that is not the solution to everything. In a war, possibly. But we are not at war, we are simply starting a new movement."

I hesitated. He was surprisingly well-spoken for a man who spent all his days on the sea. That moment allowed the last man still intact to come at me from the side, but I caught his movement out of the corner of my eye, spinning towards him and whacking him in the windpipe. Again he dropped the sword he'd been brandishing and reeled backward. I helped him along by kicking him squarely in the chest. He smacked into the nearby column and slumped to the ground.

"We will meet again, you'll see," Blanchard said, having not moved the entire time. "And then we'll have the truth."

Then he turned, coattails swirling behind him, and ran down the stairs and out into the night. I surveyed the damage. At least two men were dead, and three injured. Ashbury was lying on his side, blood soaking across the entire back of his waistcoat. I knelt down next to him and felt for a pulse on his wrist. Very faintly, I felt it against my thumb. But it was slow, which meant I didn't have much time to get him help.

I made short work of Blanchard's men. Each of them had rope on their belts, and I used it to tie their feet and hands. Then I propped them all against the wall and bound them up together. I hurried back to the boardroom for a scrap of parchment and a quill, and wrote a brief three-sentence account of what had happened. I left it in the middle of the boardroom table, where the others from Elemental Advancement would see it.

After that, it was time to deal with Ashbury. I rolled him on his back, seized his arm, and hauled him up, slinging it around my shoulders as I did. He sagged against me, a dead weight. I knew he felt I owed him a favour after he agreed to make the Order a reality. I hoped this would suffice.

||

The women were still awake when we stumbled through the front door, making such a racket I was surprised to learn afterward that Phil and Eddie had slept right through it. I heard their voices coming from the drawing room, and then the doors opened, revealing Karen, one of the maids, and Emmeline close behind. Both of them rushed forward at the sight of us, Karen taking Ashbury off my hands and Emmeline catching my face, inspecting it with a furrowed brow.

"You're bleeding again, Tom, what happened?"

"Just a broken nose, nothing that cannot be fixed easily," I said, withdrawing from her to help Karen haul Ashbury upstairs. "We'll need a doctor regardless."

I knew Emmeline didn't like being ordered around that way, but I didn't realise the true effect my curtness had on her until the doctor arrived. By then Ashbury's skin was as white as the sheet, and he was trembling and mumbling incoherently. His skin was beaded with sweat, and his hands twitched seemingly without control. The doctor shooed me out as he tended to Ashbury, and I found Emmeline out in the corridor, arms crossed and her scowl dark.

"So am I one of your gentlemen colleagues now?" she said, her voice cold.

I shook my head, momentarily bewildered. "What? I–"

"What do you expect me to think, Tom, when you come home covered with blood? How can I not be concerned, when lately it seems I see you so little already?"

"Emmeline, don't..."

"Don't what?" She raised a brow, eyes narrow. When I didn't answer, I caught the barest of a lip curl. "You may well keep things from me, and I cannot force them from you. But when you treat me that way, in front of other people, then it may be no small wonder to you why we are even having this conversation."

"You mustn't think I did it on purpose, Emmeline," I said, hearing an edge enter my voice. "You are my wife. The only one who knows more about me than anyone else."

"Then tell me what happened. Why is your nose broken and bleeding, and why does Lord Ashbury seem to be hovering on the brink of death?"

I wanted to tell her everything, about Blanchard and the attack and why Ashbury was in the state that he was. But when I opened my mouth to explain, nothing came out.

"So that is how it will be?" She dropped her arms and ran a hand over her face. "You cannot tell me, or you will not. It is getting far too predictable, when something like this happens."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked, stung. She knew me only too well, and yet I was offended that she used it against me.

"You retreat, Tom, have you noticed? After the raids, after Lucian, after Francis's box. You see me, but only to fulfill a need. You do not talk to me, allow me past your walls. And I would accept it, if you only told me why."

"You never asked," I said, and as soon as it was out I realised that made it worse, not better.

"I thought I wouldn't have to, Tom. We share the same house, the same bed, and have children together. Surely the least you can do is not treat me like a stranger." She sighed heavily, rubbing the back of her neck slowly. "I may not be awake when you come up, so I suppose I will say good night now."

"Emmeline–" I said, just as the sound of the door opening came from behind.

"Good night, Tom." She was across the hall in three strides, touching my chin with her fingertips and kissing my cheek. Then she was gone, and a moment later I heard her feet on the stairs.

"Captain Haywood," said the doctor's voice, making me turn around. He was the same one who had treated Emmeline during the fever, a time that seemed even more distant now. "I was hoping I would find you out here."

"Is that so?" I said, surprised. "And why is that?"

"Yes." He came out into the hall, closing the bedroom door after him. "This is quite an unusual set of symptoms given a wound of this nature. What, exactly, were the circumstances?"

As I recounted the details of the attack to him, I now saw the point Emmeline had been making. I had a much easier time talking to these men, with whom I had a professional relationship. But they were not raising my children, calling me home every day, giving me a love that seemed so without inhibition or expectation of return. And yet now I saw it. Marriage was a dialogue all its own, with its own rules. It was keeping things private, but only for a short time. The issue was not mine alone, not anymore.

"You are saying these men have the power to harvest Essence?" he said when I finished. "With one cut of a blade?"

"I do not know," I admitted, glancing towards the bedroom door. "Would Lord Ashbury not be dead if his Essence was gone?"

"That is the general understanding, yes." He tugged at his waistcoat, and then pulled out a handkerchief to mop his brow. "And how long these effects will last I cannot say."

"What will we do, then?"

"I have cleaned and dressed the wound, and given him a tincture of opium to help him sleep. But he must be watched carefully, in case there is a change. If that happens, you must let me know straightaway. Do not hesitate, because it may be the difference between his survival and his demise."

"Thank you, Dr Kent."

He clapped my arm, squeezed it, and gave me a meaningful look, something that told me he'd heard the entire conversation out here. Then he was gone. I poked my head inside the room, seeing Ashbury asleep under the bedcovers, and told Karen to come fetch me when she grew tired or if anything changed.

When I finally made it upstairs, I was surprised to find a candle still burning on the dresser. Our boys were fast asleep, Phil in the bassinet and Eddie in the day-bed in the window. Emmeline was also, facing Phil. She shifted as I climbed in beside her, but didn't wake. I resisted the urge to fit my body to hers and bury my nose in her hair. She had made it abundantly clear what I had to do in order to earn my way to that once again. I rolled on my back and stared up at the canopy for what seemed like hours. I had made this bed for myself. Now I had to lie in it.

||

I woke feeling less rested, not more. The sun shone weakly through the window, which was empty. The bassinet and the other side of the bed were as well, which meant Emmeline had gotten Phil and Eddie up before I woke.

I got up, changing into a clean shirt before washing the blood off my face and shaving carefully. I had three days' worth of growth, given that our last three nights had had little to no sleep. The whole time the events of last night replayed in my head. That attack had either been strategic or random. I couldn't help but wonder if it was simply to scare us or if they'd actually been there for something.

I was surprised to find Ashbury at the breakfast table when I finally made it down, completely dressed. He was sitting adjacent to Emmeline, Phil on her knee, with one arm in a sling. The both of them looked up when I entered, and for once their coldness matched.

"Good morning," I said as I sat down, taking the chair opposite Emmeline. "How's the injury, Lord Ashbury?"

"Better, thank you." He leaned forward to spoon up some soft-cooked egg. "And your nose? I daresay it needed the improvement."

"I am only glad it was not worse."

Emmeline looked back up, eyes flicking between us as though trying to figure out why we were suddenly acting so amiably towards one another. Phil, sucking his thumb, blinked at me with his round, mismatched eyes. Ashbury cleared his throat tentatively, setting down his silverware.

"That man, Blanchard," he said. "He is harvesting Essence? It is not just a rumour as the others tell me?"

"If those blades his men were carrying were any indication, then yes."

"What does he want with it?" For once his tone of voice was not condescending, only the slightest bit curious.

"God only knows."

Then there was a knock, and the footman poked his head in. "Lord Northampton, milords and lady."

All three of us were on our feet in seconds as Lord Northampton, Ashbury's father, came in. He was tall and thin, with a sharp, beak-like nose and hard blue eyes. And even though he was getting on in years, he still stood straight, as if he had a board strapped to his back.

"Father," said Ashbury stiffly.

"Charles," Northampton replied stonily before turning to us. He gave a single nod to Emmeline and to me, maintaining eye contact the entire time. "Milady. Milord."

Emmeline returned a shallow curtsey, and with a murmured "Excuse me" slipped past the footman. I noticed Northampton's eyes follow her out, and then his eyes were back on me.

"Lord Dorchester, I understand you are the reason my son is alive."

"Yes, milord," I said, although I knew this show of friendship would not last long. "Although I must say he proved himself rather splendidly."

That got a surprised glance from Ashbury, but I pretended not to notice. Northampton bent just shallowly at the waist, as though he were looking for something he might have dropped on the ground.

"That is all a father wants to hear, Lord Dorchester. I am glad that the families of Ashbury and Haywood may finally put aside their differences in light of this event."

"Yes," I said, and I knew that had Ray been here, he would have agreed. That was the sensible thing to do anyway, now that it seemed we were facing a threat none of us could fight.

"Then may I rely on you, Lord Dorchester?" Northampton came forward and extended his hand. "Will we be able to work together and not against?"

I took it and grasped it tightly. We did not need any more enemies at the moment, and although Ashbury was and would most likely continue to be a thorn in my side, he was not the threat. The both of us being Elementals helped greatly.

"Certainly, Lord Northampton," I said. "I believe we may be able to find a way to do exactly that."

--

(Anyone spot the foreshadowing in Lord Northampton's words??)