Shannon Delany - Weather Witch

Bran slammed the peephole shut, squinting. “There is no delivery of such great import that should pull a man from his privacy at this hour. Find me first thing in the morning,” he ordered.

As he turned away more knocking sounded. A distinct and rapid rapping. “Sir, good Maker,” came the high-pitched voice of Maude, the head servant. What brought her to his door at such an hour raised many questions in his mind. He and she had parted ways weeks ago and he had already seen her enjoying the attentions of another man. “Good Maker,” Maude tried again, “I really must insist…”

He rubbed his eyes and fiddled with the locks on his door, grumbling his way through each. “Dear God, Maude, what could possibly have been delivered at such an indecent hour and of such great import as to cause you and a watchman to be at my door demanding my attention?”

The door groaned open and he glared at them both with equal vitriol.

One hand tucked behind her back, Maude looked over her shoulder and made a soft cooing noise. The watchman shifted his substantial weight from one foot to another, peering behind Maude’s back.

“What?” Bran demanded.

“Have a care, you’ll frighten the poor dear…”

“The poor—?” He dodged around her, shoving Maude aside.

There was a squeal and a blur of movement as a child dashed behind Maude’s skirts to hide again.

“Now, now,” Maude soothed. “Come out, lovey. He’s not nearly so frightening as he first seems. And he’s the Maker—a very important man. Your papá is quite the figure in Holgate.”

“Papá—” Bran looked from Maude to the little girl the guardsman nudged forward and back to Maude again. “Impossible.”

Maude laughed. “I cannot imagine how you’d dare say that, good Maker.” She startled him with a bold wink. “Such things have been known to happen to young men sowing their wild oats.”

Bran’s gaze glued itself once more to the child.

She was small and slender with sallow skin and deep hollows around large green eyes. Shadows nested in her delicate features, winter resting on her heart-shaped face far more than the blush of spring or rosy summer. Curls so pale they rivaled moonlight tumbled down from the top of her head, giving her a halo in the light afforded by the gathering of the three adults’ stormlight lanterns.

“How old are you, child?” he asked, his eyes thinning as he thought back over the few lovers he had taken in his loneliest moments.

Her brow creased as her little lips worked to form the words. “Five, sir,” she carefully annunciated. “My good mother, God rest her soul, bore the Christian name of Margaret.”

Bran blinked. He remembered a Margaret—a Peggy, truly. He had spent eight days that varied in description from being greatly leisurely to filled with intense exercise in her company while his apartments were refurnished after a particularly successful Making of a Hub Witch. “Margaret,” he whispered, seeing bits of her reflected in the child. He crouched before the child, bringing the lantern right beside her face. Yes, he saw Peggy in her, no doubt—the shape of the lips, the slight upturn of the tip of her nose, the irrationally lengthy eyelashes that made her eyes a shade darker from their shadows. He snorted.

“And how might you prove she is my get?”

“Your get?” Maude asked, watching intently as he again rose to his full height. “She is no man’s get. She is your child. Do you not see yourself in her?”

He looked away.

Maude bent at her waist and now she held the lantern aloft so he might better examine the child. That light bounced off the top of Maude’s breasts as well.

Bran swallowed and focused, looking again at the girl.

“Look. Look at the shape of her eyes, Bran,” Maude whispered so intimately the watchman raised a heavy eyebrow. “Those are your eyes. Yes, a different color and yes, lined with far longer lashes but … they are your eyes.”

Bran’s jaw jutted out, but he looked at her. Hard.

“And here,” Maude said, jabbing the girl’s ribs so that, startled, she jumped and giggled, little arms wrapping around to protect herself from Maude’s fingers as they scurried across her side. “There!” Maude exclaimed. “See your dimples on her cheeks?”

“I have no dimples.”

“Oh, you do,” Maude teased. “When you smile. It’s a rare moment, true enough, when the Maker smiles, but I’ve seen it once or twice.”

Bran looked at the watchman. “Take her. For a moment.”

The man’s face scrunched up, making him even less visually appealing, but he grunted and said, “Come now, li’l dove. We’ll walk just a bit down this hall. Not far at all,” he promised. “With me.”

The child glanced at Maude for consent before following as he bade.

“How can I care for a child, Maude? Yes, I can make one, and granted, she appears to be mine, but—” He shook his head and yawned. “What of her mother?”

“Dead, sir. The fever took her. A working girl found her with this little lovey curled at her side, a note bound to her.” She dug into one of the pockets inside her skirt and withdrew a scrap of paper. “Here.”

His hands shaking, he read it aloud. “Brandon Marshall of House Dregard, father of my dear sweet kitten, Meghan, do raise her well and true. In time she will come to love you greatly and you her.”

“The girls could not afford to keep her and they did not trust the poorhouses or the workhouses as many of them had barely survived such themselves.”

He nodded, his lips pursed. “As they themselves instead turned to the whorehouses?” he asked with a smirk.

“At least they have some small bit of independence left. But she needs you. A lass needs her papá.”

“I have no way to keep her.”

“You have fine apartments. A wee scrap of a child needs little room.”

“But time. She’ll require time.”

“She is old enough to assist in your library.”

“And when I am in my laboratory? Is she old enough to help in my laboratory or the tower top? To see the things that make me a Maker? Is that what she should see at such a tender age—this kitten”—he snapped out the words—“this little dove?”

Maude looked away. “You cannot let her go with you there, Bran. Not yet. Not so young. Such things would terrify her. Wound her. But you cannot send her away. I will not allow it.”

His eyebrows rose, arching. “You will not allow it?”

“Please, Bran. Do the right thing. When you are in the laboratory or the tower top send her to me. Wherever I am. The kitchen, the laundry … wherever. A child needs a place where she’s looked after. Even if it is a place like this.”

“And tonight?”

“Tonight she may sleep in the servants’ quarters with me. But tomorrow morning I will need to make a proper place for her here, in her father’s apartments. She will require clothing and shoes. Not much, but something. A small allowance for necessities.”

Bran nodded, a slow move at first, but a nod nonetheless. “Fine, fine.” He glanced around her, down to where the watchman pointed to spots along the hall and talked about the things making Holgate what it was. “Come here, child—Meghan, is it?”

The tiny head turned, curls bobbling. She bounced her way back to them, but slowed her skip to a modest walk as she approached, lowering her gaze, her plump lower lip jutting out as she prepared for rejection. “Yes, sir?”

“Yes, papá will serve. You are to stay with Maude tonight and move into my quarters on the morrow. What think you of that?”

“If it please you, sir,” she said with a little curtsy.

“It would, Meg. It would please me greatly,” he said, though the words fell flat. “But it will be difficult at first. An adjustment for us both.”

“Yes, sir—papá,” she said, raising her eyes to meet his at the correction, a smile pressing dimples into the corners of her mouth once more.

He froze, still as a rabbit catching scent of a wolf, seeing himself there in the twist of her lips and dimples so deep they seemed to cut straight to the bone. “Now go,” he whispered, watching how she slipped her tiny hand into Maude’s and they trotted away, taking much of the light away with them.

He retreated into his chambers and, closing the door, slid the bolts back into place. A child. He had a child—someone who would go on beyond him and bear some part of him into the future. Someone to carry his name and deeds beyond his eventual demise.

He had his immortality and quite by accident. But she was there. And so very small, so slight and frail and so seemingly ephemeral.

Philadelphia

Down the hallway and up one flight of stairs Laura and Lady Astraea went, the only noises the echo of their shoes on the wooden floor, the sound of breathing, and the occasional strangled sob uttered by Lady Astraea.

Arriving at Lady Astraea’s door, Laura moved to open it, withdrawing when her ladyship reached out as well. “I did not do it, you know,” Lady Astraea said in a strained whisper. “I have never lain with another man. I have never even imagined it.” She wiped clumsily at tears leaking from her eyes. The small bit of makeup she used to color her cheeks in the European fashion smeared on the heel of her hand and she stood a long minute staring at the lace ringing her delicate sleeve and just barely showing the tender white flesh of her wrist.

“I believe you, milady,” Laura assured, pressing down on the door’s handle to pop it open. “Here. In we go.”