Author's Note: I started writing this after bingeing the show in a day, because wow Enzo Cilenti is so pretty. Then I kept working on this while I read the book, which took, uh...a bit longer than a day. Then my word count hit 30,000, and I realized I should maybe share this with somebody instead of just hoarding it away in my google drive.
So, I really hope you guys like it! The good thing is, I have just a ton of this already written up. There are still some bits I need to finish or iron out, but for the most part I should be able to keep this updated on the regular. Still, kudos and reviews are a massive motivational factor for me, so any and all feedback is greatly appreciated!
(For those of you who've been readers of my Monsters and Men, I promise I haven't given up on it yet! But, uh...this is a pretty good reason for why I haven't had much time to work on it. Sorry!)
December 1809
Georgiana felt the magic before she even stepped down out of the hackney—that pull , as if a hand had curled itself around her very soul and was gently working at twisting it free. At first she assumed it was the house, with the only two practitioners of English magic nestled within; but the pull was leading her away from the house, or at least across the street from it.
She sighed as the driver handed her down (by touching as little of her hand as was possible)—she was anxious to see Jonathan, of course! And yet... Well, she was also curious . Who could possibly be doing magic here, out in the street? What if it were some evil magic-doer, here on wicked business? She couldn't allow such a thing! Not with all she could do to stop it!
Though, if she were to be discovered...
No matter. Surely, Jonathan would have to know someday. Was that not one of the reasons she had come, to see if he would recognize her for what she was, now that he was a magician?
She thanked the driver and asked him to wait; with her promise of an extra guinea, he agreed. So she turned down the street and lost herself in a crowd until he found a place for his cab and was too distracted with tending his horses to bother watching her. Then she circled back around, crossed the street, and followed that pull.
She nearly laughed when she spotted it, the man-shaped shadow tucked away against a hedge. It was a well-crafted, well-executed spell—she likely would not have noticed him herself, if his mere casting of it had not led her like a beacon. This must be Mr. Norrell's man, the one Arabella had warned her about.
"It is as though he clothes himself in darkness," she had said. "He merely appears from nowhere, and then leers there in your periphery, all large and dark and imposing. I do not know how Jonathan stands him, nor why Norrell would even employ such a creature but for some dreadful purposes. Do be careful, Ana, as you are almost sure to encounter him at the house."
Arabella did not like him, and so for a moment she considered igniting the hedge to see him scramble; but it was a lovely hedge, still flourishing though winter was well underway, and it would be a shame to destroy it. And anyway, if the man were capable of this measure of magic, what more could he do?
That, she would endeavor to find out.
She stopped before him, far enough away to not make it obvious that he was being baited, and stood there looking up at the house. After a moment of feigned contemplation, she took out one of the letters she had in her pockets and perused its contents, then folded it up and tucked it back away, then squinted up at the house with something like renewed interest.
Eventually, after her most thorough elaboration on all of Mr. Norrell's steward's unsettling qualities, Bell had begrudgingly admitted that the greatest of these was his severe cleverness, paired with a rabid curiosity. "One has the sense," she had continued, "that by the time he has blinked, he shall know all of one's most treasured secrets, or enough to enable him to find them out within the span of a letter or two. Really, I do not know how Jonathan can bear it."
Indeed, the man was certainly out here watching for something. She could only assume that it was herself, though how he had known she was coming when no one else in the house possibly could have was beyond her—for now.
Whatever his purpose for hiding in this hedge, it did not take long for the man's fabled curiosity to win out. The pull of magic shifted, tugging her from her thoughts, and a deep, cold voice growled, " Have you business with Mr. Norrell? "
"Ahh," she laughed, turning to find herself face to face with the man, "the shadow speaks!" She took a step back, as he was situated quite wholly within her personal space, and gave him an appraising look; she could sense no more magic being cast by him, though bits of it seemed to cling to him—a lingering shadow about his eyes, and fingers, and the tail of his great-coat. There was something about his eyes, large and dark and watchful, that she could understand Arabella being unsettled by; and there was something to his voice that seemed to linger inside her head though he had long since stopped speaking. "But good heavens," she found herself murmuring, still distracted in studying his dirtied nails and worn clothes and solid (if slender) build, "is that your actual voice?"
A faint hint of amusement seemed to cross his face, but it was quickly hidden by a frown. "What business do you have here?" he asked, and she thought, perhaps, she should be thankful that he had swept past her question. "And what manner of magic is this?"
Now that did surprise her; she turned fully to him and drew herself up, straightening her spine. "My business and my magic are my own," she snapped, and narrowed her eyes, wondering if there was something she had missed. She would not have thought Norrell to be so liberal with his knowledge—a spell or two, here or there, certainly; a couple of tricks to help his protector be more and more intimidating. But an awareness to detect her , when she was not even casting? No one could do that but the birds of the sky and the Raven King himself, or so she had been told.
She took another step back and eyed him from the soles of his shoes to the brim of his hat, but found nothing further to explain such remarkable knowledge. All in all, there was little of note to his appearance, beyond the intentionally-imposing affectation, his height (he was a good few centimeters taller than her, which was no mean feat), and... Well, she had to admit it: he was quite handsome, if one could only look past the scruffiness, and the scariness . Even so, much of the appeal seemed rooted in his enormous, intelligent eyes.
Her curiosity regarding this strange creature won out over her own sense of self-preservation, and she asked him rather desperately, "You must be Mr. Childermass; but what know you of magic? "
He did not seem offended by her audacity, but he narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "If you presume to know me, madam, then you have me at a disadvantage."
She laughed, taking solace in the fact that he was at least as unsettled by her as she by him. "Indeed, I have you at several. But I mean no harm to you, Mr. Childermass, nor to your employer. I am Ana Erquistoune, and I am expected by Mr. Strange, though not for several days yet. I have just quit Arabella, with intention to inform him of my early arrival."
He rather glowered at her (evidently displeased to find himself lacking in information) and took a step forward, trying to tower over and intimidate her. She met his eye solidly—she was too tall herself for such a move to be effective, and he would come to find she was not easily frightened. Still, he growled, "Then why were you lurking across the street?"
She shrugged, secretly delighting in having gotten under his collar; she would not be cowed by him, nor any man. "I wished to take the measure of the man who would return magic to England," she answered, more-or-less honestly. And then, decidedly more honestly, added, "I fear all I have learned is that he has a most remarkable man in his employ. And I do not lurk ."
His clever eyes searched her face carefully; after a long moment, the man smirked and tilted his head to the side. "Come," was all he said, and he turned and left to cross the street, giving her little choice but to follow.
She did so, and found herself led not to the front door of Mr. Norrell's house, as she had expected, but rather to the alley beside it and around to the servants' entrance. It was certainly not the first time she had been kept from using the main door, and she knew it would not be the last.
"We shall see what Norrell thinks of you," he informed her, holding open the door. "And if I find you to be lying to me, I will throw you out myself."
"Thank you," she said cheerily, stepping through the door. She found herself in a kitchen with three other women who all stared in varying degrees of confusion and suspicion—at least until they spotted her companion, at which point they shrugged and returned to their duties.
He nodded to them, and then led her out of the kitchens and the servants' quarters, and along a winding route through the house, almost certainly with the intention of leaving her disoriented and unable to find the way on her own. Finally, he opened a wood-paneled door, and led her through into an immense and well-furnished library.
It was one of the most remarkable rooms her eyes had ever seen, everywhere lined with books all bound in matching calf-skin; and between the leaf-printed green wallpaper and the domed ceiling and the dark wood and the rustle of turning pages, she had the impression of having wandered into some enchanted forest inhabited not by creatures, but by books .
Mr. Childermass cleared his throat, and three sets of eyes turned to him; he opened his mouth—presumably to introduce her—but was cut off by a cry from near the fireplace.
" Georgie! "
She turned and grinned. " Jonathan! " He had already risen to his feet, and she happily hurried over and rather flung herself into his arms. "Oh! It is so good to see you!"
"And you!" he cried, hugging her tightly. "But so soon? We had not expected you for several days yet!"
"Did you not?" she asked, pulling back to fix him with a look of suspicion. "Indeed, our coach was met with such lovely weather, I thought you had surely cast some magic to bring me sooner!"
He laughed; at a stroke, she was back on rolling hillsides in summer, with mud on her skirts and twigs in her hair and berries in her hand, with Jon and Gavin at her side. "I am hardly capable of such as that yet," he laughed, bringing her back to the present, in the library. "Although Mr. Norrell—oh! Mr. Norrell!" He broke away from her, grinning at someone over her shoulder. "Mr. Norrell, might I introduce Miss Georgiana Erquistoune, my cousin?" She gasped and hit his arm, a touch harder than she had really intended by his cry of, "Ow! George! "
"Don't ' George ' me! We discussed this!" She sighed, exasperated, and turned; she had hardly noticed Mr. Norrell before, but now she found the master magician a curiously small man with a rather timid face and very critical eyes, tucked away beneath an old-fashioned powdered wig. She dipped into a quick curtsy, still too annoyed to be distracted fully by the man's surprising appearance. "Please forgive my fool cousin," she asked, "and my resulting request for your secrecy. I am come to London not as cousin to Jonathan Strange, but as companion to Mrs. Arabella. It is...better that way."
"It is only Norrell and Childermass, George," Jonathan grumbled—he had always been sensitive to his female cousins calling him foolish, though they had cause to do so with some regularity. "If anyone in London could find the truth of you, it is Childermass. And, anyway, I would hardly embrace my wife's 'companion' as I do my dearest of cousins."
She waved away the flattery, though she knew he meant it; Maria and Margaret had always been fond of the Strange boy, and he of them—but Georgiana and Jonathan had been as thick as thieves. He was the only person with whom Gavin had ever had to compete for her attention. "Indeed, we must be more careful than that. It will not do for you to show such familiarity with me."
" Georgie—!"
"Yes, like that." She sighed at the dejected look he gave her. "I am sorry for it, Jonathan. But it is for your own good."
"How so?" asked a reedy voice across the room; she turned to find Mr. Norrell (and, indeed, Mr. Childermass, though it was certainly not his voice that had spoken) staring at her intensely, suspiciously. "How is such an arrangement to his benefit?"
She looked at the man, astonished, and then down at herself, as though wondering if her skin had somehow lightened when she was not looking—thankfully it had not, so she looked back up at him. "Sorry, is it not obvious?"
Jonathan tried to step in, to clarify; "She means her, erm... Well..."
"My skin ," she finished for him. "My heritage, my colour, whatever you wish to call it. Jonathan Strange, English magician, can hardly pay host to his adopted, Scottish, Black cousin, can he? It is not respectable ."
"...Ah," Norrell eventually murmured, eyeing her carefully with his beady eyes.
"I do not like it, George. You have always been my equal, in all things! To see you lower yourself—"
"I am brought low by having been born, Jonathan, at least in the eyes of England. Whatever you—and my sisters and parents—may think of me, that does not change."
"Are you so content with your station," came the low, gruff voice of Mr. Childermass, "that you do not fight it?"
" Only with all that I am ," she snapped. She took a breath, working to stifle her sudden, sharp anger. "But nor am I fool enough to believe that my wanting for change is enough to make it so. Would you prefer I riot in the streets? They would shoot me like a dog ."
" George! "
" No , I would not prefer that," Mr. Childermass snapped back, though without half her viciousness. "But why not keep your title, force them to see you for what you are?"
"I am always seen for what I am; my name does nothing to change that. Two and twenty years I have borne my title, living under my parents' roof, growing alongside my sisters, though my blood is shared by not one of them. Are you so ignorant to think that is enough? That it would somehow— magically , perhaps?—cause a single person outside of my closest relations to see me as anything more than a blight on my family's good name? To see me as a person , of equal value and worth?" She scoffed, and shook her head. "You are not so ignorant, I can see that plain enough. Pray do not assume the same of me, particularly after having lived it."
The man opened his mouth again, but Jonathan cut him off. "That is enough , Childermass."
Mr. Childermass inclined his head toward her. "Forgive me, my lady."
She looked at him closely, taking note of the coarseness of his hair, the brownness of his yet pale skin. In her head, she cursed herself for not having noticed it earlier. But now she could, at least, recognize where his sense of outrage was coming from.
"That is easily done," she relented. "I understand your concern, likely better than most. But please understand mine: my name can never truly exist unblemished, no matter how loudly I decry that injustice. Now, at least, I am given the opportunity to not also tarnish that of my dearest cousin along the way. That is an opportunity I will take, and gladly, for as long as I am able. The truth is sure to come out someday; but if I might protect Jonathan and Arabella from scandal until then... Well, I would be glad of it."
There was a prolonged moment in which nothing much happened—Jonathan put his hand on her arm, and she stood very still, and the man called Childermass stared at her quite intently—but the air itself felt heavy and oppressive, as if something very important had just happened, or was happening, or was about to happen. It was so striking, so tangible, that for a moment she began to wonder if someone in the room were casting magic, if maybe she had been mistaken upon what English magic felt like, if perhaps there was something more—
"I confess," Mr. Norrell began, interrupting her worrisome thoughts and dispelling the strange heaviness, "I have never heard a woman speak as you do, Miss Erquistoune."
She flashed him a wry smile, quite glad for the distraction. "Well, forgive me, sir; but perhaps you should listen to more women speak. I assure you, it is not necessarily that others are less proud than I, but rather that they are more subtle in showing it."
He disguised it as a cough; but there was no mistaking that the noise Mr. Childermass emitted had first been a laugh.
"Anyway," she declared, turning to her cousin with a bright grin, "a lecture is surely not what I came to give. You are a magician now! But, hopefully, not one who is too busy to answer letters from your family?" She retrieved the packet from her cloak—she had counted in the carriage, there were twenty-three pages in all. "The others were very sorry that they could not make the journey down, but I do believe they more than made up for the loss with letters."
"Good heavens!" he cried. "This is all for me?"
She laughed, nodded her head. "Most of the pages are from Margaret, you know how she gets. But we are all very proud of you, Jonathan."
He hugged her again, and tightly, before taking the letters from her hand. "I will get started on my replies as soon as I can, Georgie. I still have some reading yet to do, but I promise, as soon as I'm done—!"
She laughed, leaning around him to examine the text he had been immersed in—there was a sharp, offended gasp from the direction of Mr. Norrell when she touched it (merely to lift the cover, that she might read its title!), so she released it again almost immediately. "' The Rise and Fall of Porter Fontayne '? I have never heard of such a book, nor such a man!"
Jonathan laughed, and nodded his head. "Indeed, Mr. Norrell has been generous enough to share with me a number of rare texts; his library is a treasury of knowledge, and I am very lucky for his friendship."
This was all said with the utmost courtesy and respect; but there was a mischievous look in his eye that promised this would not be the last she heard of Mr. Fontayne, nor of the wonderful library—though certainly not with Strange's esteemed benefactor and instructor present .
"Yes, I can see that quite clearly," she said sweetly, putting a hand on his arm. "In that case, I will take up no more of your valuable time. You will be home for dinner, though?"
"Yes, yes, of course!" He grinned at her, but moved quite obediently back into his seat, and set the letters off to the side of his desk. "Of course. Did you bring our carriage?"
"No, but I have a cab waiting." She leaned in and whispered, "Jeremy Johns was a bit flustered by our early arrival; I did not wish to distress him further."
"Ah, yes, I can see that," he laughed.
"I will show the lady out," Mr. Childermass demanded, though he disguised it as an offer. He had leaned his body against nearly every surface in the library, prowling around to watch her from a variety of angles, and still had yet to be seated.
"Oh, thank you, Mr. Childermass," she replied far too graciously, delighting in the annoyance that tugged at his brow. She hid her amusement by kissing Jonathan's cheek. "I will see you at home, cousin. Do try not to be late?"
"I will do my best, Georgie," he said with a bright grin. Jonathan had always been a strange Strange boy; but as strange as he was, he was equally as fond of her, his far stranger cousin. Even despite his proximity to the sort of man that could truly have her discovered and exposed—exploited for profit or destroyed for heresy, as she had always feared she would be—she was yet glad to be in London, if for no other reason than to have her favorite cousin nearby.
"It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Norrell," she declared, though it had been nothing of the sort, and though the man had returned to his reading (now that he no longer feared his books to be under any danger from her wandering hands) and thus spared her no more than a dismissive wave.
Mr. Childermass came and took her arm to lead her away, though neither Norrell nor Strange appeared to notice the impropriety (nor would she have expected them to). They left the library through a different door than they had entered, but he circled them back to the servant's wing rather than delivering her to the main door. Near the kitchens, he pulled her to a stop and backed her against the wall; this was clearly a man well accustomed to using his height to an advantage, but this did little but to put his face very close to hers.
She would have shoved him away, but from this close she could see that his eyes were searching, wondering, verging on desperation; his voice was low and deep, but soft when he asked, "What are you?"
She leaned her head back against the wall, eyeing him carefully. "You Englishmen are so hard-headed; so confident of your own magic, yet wholly ignorant of anyone else's. But even still... I stood in the library of the only two magicians in England, yet it was neither Norrell nor Strange who noticed anything amiss. Only you ." She reached out, hesitated, then pressed her fingertips against the skin of his cheek, in part to make certain he was real. "From one anomaly to another, I find you fascinating. I might just answer your question someday."
He did not lean into her touch, but neither did he pull away; his eyes narrowed, but did not harden. "Someday? But not today."
She twisted her wrist and curled her fingers, brushed his skin with her knuckles. He was pleasingly cool to the touch, if neither soft nor smooth. "No, not today. But do not worry. I love my cousin dearly, and know that he holds great respect for Mr. Norrell. I mean him nor his precious English magic any harm, for Jonathan's sake if nothing else." She drew her hand away and crossed her arms. "If I did, you would already have felt it. I am not often subtle. You have nothing to fear from me, Mr. Childermass."
"On the contrary, Miss Erquistoune," he growled, "I think I have a great many things to fear of you." He took a step back, and it felt both a loss and a relief, though there was still far too little space between them for decency's sake. Without breaking his eyes from her, he pulled a deck of cards from his pocket, shuffled them with the swiftness that comes of a great deal of practice, and then lifted the first he found. It was spared only a cursory glance, but what he saw brought a quirk to the corner of his mouth—a subtle twist, but a thing that took his features from merely interesting to merely devastating .
"A great many things," he repeated, his voice a rumble she seemed able to feel in her chest, "but not harm. Forgive me, my lady, for my harshness. There are many who would wish my master ill, and I would destroy them. That and mine own curiosity managed to lead me too far. If I must wait to find the truth of you, you will find me a most patient man. But I will find it."
Ana tried not to grin, but it was hardly a battle she could win. Cards of Marseilles? And used to determine whether a stranger were friend or foe? This man was far more interesting than anything she had expected to find in London, and far more complicated than Arabella had recognized him to be. "I do believe you will," she breathed. "And I fear I might even be looking forward to it."
She took a breath, pushed off from the wall, and turned and walked through into the kitchen. The maids were still there, still stared when she entered.
"Sir?" one of the women called, but Childermass waved her off.
"It's alright, Dido."
"I am sorry to have disturbed you," Ana told them with a nod as the man opened the door for her and led her out onto the back step; outside, he took her arm again, and led her in silence to the waiting cab.
He ignored the cabbie entirely, opening the door himself and taking her hand to help her up; but there he stopped, her hand in his, those clever eyes intently searching her face. "Take care, Miss Erquistoune," he said finally, handing her up into the cab.
She looked up at the house, and back at him. "And you, Mr. Childermass."
The carriage ride back to the Strange's was a blur, lost as she was in thoughts of magic and shadows and strange, dark men. It was not until she found herself inside the house, having tea with Arabella, that she realized she had not paid the driver the extra guinea she had promised.
Mary, the maid who had come with her from Edinburgh, came in to clear the tea tray; but before she returned to the kitchens, she stopped and put a hand on Ana's shoulder. "Miss—are you alright?"
"I... Thank you, Mary. I'm fine."
Arabella frowned, leaning forward intently. "You have been most quiet, Georgiana. Did something happen at Mr. Norrell's house?" A dark look crossed her features, and she hissed, "Was it Childermass ?"
"No! I—everything was fine ," she assured them both. "I just feel a little out of sorts—perhaps it was all the magic? " she teased, grinning. "But far more likely, it was only the journey here. I think I will lay down awhile; will you both make sure I am awake when Jonathan comes home?"
They both agreed to, and she excused herself to head up to the room she had been given. She did undress down to her petticoats, and pulled a shawl around her shoulders; but instead of getting into bed, she sat down at the little writing-desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, rifled through the drawers for a pen and ink, and began to write.