Chapter Thirty Two

Fortunately, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror before she left her bedroom and so remembered she was in a night bonnet. She stopped, tore off the bonnet, took her hair down, and undid the buttons of her nightie until it showed a pleasing hint of cleavage.

Violet’s body had lovely long silvery hair that curled gently at the ends when it was loose. She also had had rather more going on up top than Mira did when she first married Adra. He’d never had any complaints, but Mira was guiltily glad to have more on offer in this life. She wrapped a colorful fringed silk shawl around her shoulders and snuck out into the hall.

The entire house shut down in the wake of the incident downstairs. Thankfully Papa was staying overnight in his office, otherwise the house would have been loud again for a different reason once he found out what Andrei did. Mira still silenced her footsteps with a quiet spell so as not to draw anyone’s attention in case Cecily or Vesper heard her and decided they wanted to chat. She was fond of both the girls, but she had other business on her mind now.

Now that the inscription had been applied and she’d grounded herself in the current standards of spellcraft, it was safe to start using her magic again. Really, she should have done it earlier and puppeted Andrei and Bryn out of the house like a pair of marionettes. She had no excuse except she’d been tired and in pain, but neither had stopped her before.

Maybe she had (foolishly) thought she was safe at home.

There was a narrow bar of light under the door of her study when she checked. Bingo.

Adra didn’t need to sleep. He would fake it next to her sometimes, mostly when he wanted to be cuddled through the night. Other times, he just haunted her immediate vicinity so he could demand attention as soon as she woke up.

He’d put a muffling spell up on the study door along with a magical tripwire, but Mira spotted both without trouble, now that she knew who she was dealing with. Working carefully, she unraveled both spells so that he wouldn’t be alerted when they fell. This wouldn’t have worked if he’d been actively supporting the spells from his own reserves, but these were ‘set-it-and-forget-it’ type wards.

Normally, she’d call that sloppy, but (given the progression of spell development in this era) Mira was perhaps the only person on this planet who could silently disarm a spell like this.

Adra, as Colvin, was hunched over his desk with his face in his open palms and his elbows braced on the table. There was a speaking crystal propped up on a book by his side with the image of an upset man projected on its surface. He wasn’t wearing a bowler hat and wore palace livery, so wasn’t one of Adra’s men.

“I won’t repeat myself,” Adra said, sounding much deeper and older than he did when he was pretending to be her human assistant. “Find a solution. If I see another drop of her blood again then I’m going to make sure that I see all of yours too.”

He banished the image on the crystal with a wave and it was replaced by that of one of the Bowler Hats.

“Report,” Adra growled.

“The blonde one’s been confined to his suite for now,” the Bowler Hat said. He’d taken off his hat and Mira could see his shiny bald head and the ring of horny growths on it that his hat had been hiding from her. “The blue one is in the hospital, but I heard that he’ll be facing a review board before he’s allowed to return to his post.”

Adra lifted his face and sneered. “So they sent him to his room to think about what he did?” He shook his head. “Keep monitoring him. If it ever looks like he’s about to approach my wife then I authorize you and your men to intervene. Cause an accident. Interrupt him. Whatever it takes. Try not to kill him, but if you have to then I’ll deal with it..”

“Seven wants to sleep inside now,” the Bowler Hat said while nodding hard. “He caught the baby crying on the back step before lights out. He says he can wear a bandana in the house.”

“The baby?” Adrea frowned. “Ah, you mean the downstairs maid.” He sighed and rubbed the spot between his brows with one hand as he let the other fall heavily onto the desk. “I’ll consider it. For now, tell him to check the windows every hour. Start scouting for one of ours to replace her if she quits; someone who can pass up for human close.”

“Yessir,” the Bowler Hat grunted and Adra dismissed the call with another tired wave.

He leaned back in his chair to stare at the ceiling and Mira dispelled the magic that quieted her steps. Then she pushed on the door to deliberately make it creak. Adra sat bolt upright and turned to face her for a tense moment before he relaxed and stood.

“It’s very late for you to be up, miss,” he said, using his Colvin voice. “Did you need me?”

He froze when Mira reached up to touch his cheek. It was harder to speak than she’d thought it would be. Part of her still thought she might have been wrong, right up until she heard him address his subordinates. That had been Adra speaking.

“Yes,” she whispered. Yes, she did need him. She’d needed him every second since the moment they’d parted, but she hardly knew where to start now that she had him back.

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Adra’s ears turned a fascinating shade of pink, but he stepped away quickly to put distance between them. “I’m flattered,” he said, low and rough with his gaze fixed on the floor. “At any other time, I would welcome your interest, but you’ve had a bad shock today. I cannot, in good conscience…”

“Adra,” Mira interrupted him before he could finish doing the honorable thing and stop her from throwing herself at him. “Are you really going to keep acting like you don’t know me?”

He froze and slowly, slowly lifted his face to meet her gaze. “Mira?” he asked, not in Colvin’s voice, but instead in his own. Whatever wisp of doubt she still had were dashed violently away by the sound of her name from his lips.