"What line of business is Mr. Longmire in?" I asked.
"Rope," Patience said. "He's part owner in a small factory."
"Part owner?" Matt echoed. "I thought he said he and his mother were poor. That's quite a rise."
"They weren't poor," Lord Cox said. "My father's allowance was generous. Longmire was educated well too, mostly by his mother. My father told me she was intelligent, witty and beautiful. I sensed he was in love with her, even years later."
"He abandoned her and their child," Matt pointed out. "That's not love."
Lord Cox eyed the legal papers as if he would set fire to them with his glare if he could. "He won't give up until he has what's rightfully his."
Patience pressed her fingers to her lips, her eyes filling with tears as she gazed at her husband.
"What should I do?" Lord Cox asked Matt in a thin voice.
"I can't answer that for you."
"You can't give up the baronetcy for that man," I blurted out. "He's horrid."
Matt squeezed my hand. "But he has the legal and moral right to take it."
With his allowance reinstated after his recent incarceration, Fabian Charbonneau could afford to move out of my grandfather's small house and into a residence near Berkeley Square. It was there that we met to learn the language of magic and attempt to create new spells.
For the first time since starting this endeavor with Fabian, Matt had decided to join me, claiming he had little else to do that day. He sat with us for a while, listening in as Fabian and I assembled words in what we hoped was the right order, but moved to sit by the fire with the newspaper after twenty minutes.
"It's not right," I said, shaking my head at the watch Fabian had placed in my hand. "There are too many words in this spell."
"How do you know?" Fabian asked.
He was immaculately turned out, as usual, with a rich burgundy waistcoat adding some color to his otherwise somber suit of dark gray. The waistcoat looked bare without the gold chain of his watch decorating it. The Patek Philippe chronometer timepiece had a lovely solid feel to it and had grown warm from my attempts to speak our experimental flying spell into it. But it hadn't moved.
"I don't know how," I said. "I just do. This spell is wrong."
Fabian studied the words again. "It has the common words from my iron spell and the paper flying spell mixed with your watch fixing spell. What else can we add to it?"
I shook my head. "It's not what we need to add. All the words are here but they're not in the right order."
"How do you know?" he asked again.
"I just do," I said, repeating myself. "Sorry, Fabian, I know you want definitive answers but I can't give them."
"It is all right, India. Your magic is strong, and I suspect you use this." He tapped his chest. "Rather than this." He tapped his forehead.
"Intuition," Matt said from behind his newspaper. "She uses her innate sense of magic."
Fabian smiled. "Intuition, yes. You are a marvel, India. I have not met another magician like you. Now, play with the words. Move them around or change the way you say them. Use your intuition, not your brain."
I rearranged the order of the words but none worked and my intuition told me they were wrong anyway. I rearranged them again and again, but still something was off. I knew it wasn't the pronunciations. Despite Fabian's accent, I was quite sure we had that part right.
Too many words. There had to be. "Say your iron spell again," I said.
He repeated it and the broken nail he used for practicing lifted off the desk. The spell seemed longer than the one Mr. Hendry had spoken to make paper fly. If only I could hear that one again to be sure.
I crossed out one of the words in Fabian's spell and, for what seemed like the hundredth time, inserted the watch words in place of the iron ones. Then I spoke the new combination.
The watch flew off my palm, skimmed Matt's newspaper, and smashed into the fireplace.
I covered my squeal of surprise with my hand and stared at the pieces on the hearth. "I broke your watch. I'm so sorry, Fabian."
He grinned. "I will get another."
"But it was a Patek Philippe."
"A flying Patek Phillippe"
Matt retrieved the pieces and poured them onto Fabian's cupped hands. "Were you trying to decapitate me?"
"Sorry," I said. "I think I need practice."
"Perhaps I should move to another room."
"That would be wise. Just until I can control it." I turned to Fabian. "How do you control where the iron goes?"
He tapped his temple. "I think where I want it to go."
"Interesting." It would seem the magician's unspoken thoughts contributed significantly to making the spell work. "Let's try it again," I said, as Matt left with the newspaper tucked under his arm. "I'll think about where I want it to go."
"And the speed," Fabian said, chuckling. "Slower, this time."
"Oh, but we don't have another watch. We can't use mine. I've worked on it too many times and it might respond too well. We need an unadulterated timepiece."
He opened the desk drawer and pulled out a plain open-faced watch. "I have another."
"Why didn't we use this one first and save your good one?" I eyed the pieces he'd placed on the desk. I could put the innards back, but I couldn't fix the dented case and smashed glass.
Fabian placed the second watch in my palm. "Try it again, but concentrate on speed and direction. Fly it onto the sofa."
I steadied my breathing, slowing it down, and stared hard at the sofa, then at the watch then at the sofa again. I imagined the watch rising gently from my palm and floating toward a soft landing on the cushion.
I repeated the words in the modified spell, carefully and deliberately. The watch rose and drifted to just above the sofa where it hovered before gently lowering.
Fabian clapped. "You did it! Well done, India."
I retrieved the watch, grinning. "That wasn't hard at all."
We tried it twice more and both times, I steered the watch and controlled its flight. I couldn't stop my smile. It felt marvelous to have achieved something so remarkable. Mere months ago, I would never have suspected I could make a watch fly. The applications of what we'd learned today stretched before me like a hall runner.
Speaking of carpets… "We should try it with a small rug next time," I said. "Or perhaps a piece of leather. But we'll need the right kind of magician."
"I do not know any magicians in London," Fabian said.
"And I don't know many who won't ask for a favor in return."
"What favor?"
"To extend their magic and make it last." I told him about Mr. Bunn, the leather magician.
He grimaced. "Did Glass scare him away?"
"For now." I sighed. "He might return."
"So who will we ask?"
"Mr. Delancey is from wool magic stock. He says it died out with his father, but perhaps he has distant cousins who still possess magic. We could ask him and since he has already received such a magnificent gift of your key, he won't ask for something else." I hoped not, anyway. The Delanceys might just be greedy enough to ask for another magical item to add to their collection.