The Magicians and Mrs. Quent by Galen Beckett

Author:Galen Beckett
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Epic, Fantasy, Fiction, General, Fantasy fiction
ISBN: 9780553589825
Publisher: Random House Digital, Inc.
Published: 2008-07-29T04:00:00+00:00

W HEN I OPENED my eyes again, the green light was gone. The only illumination came from a single candle. I sat up and found myself on a sofa in the front hall. A dark shape hulked nearby: one of the hunting trophies, I supposed—a shaggy brown bear.

The shape moved toward me.

I had little time to feel fear, for as the figure stepped into the circle of light I saw that it was not a bear. Still, the comparison was not unfitting, for there was an ursine quality to his curling brown mane and to his heavy, rounded shoulders and the weight of his step.

“Mr. Quent,” I said. My voice was faint.

“Miss Lockwell,” came his rumbling reply.

Now fear did come over me, nor was it a fanciful dread of shadows. I remembered the secret room, and the painting, and the suffocating green light. I remembered falling and then, just as the darkness came, a pair of strong arms bearing me up off the floor.

“Mr. Quent,” I said again. It was wrong of me to go into the room. I do not know what possessed me. I can offer no defense. I can say only that I promise to never return there.

But I could not draw in the breath these words required. My heart fluttered in my chest like a bird in a cage.

“Perhaps you should lie back down, Miss Lockwell. I do not believe you are fit to rise yet.”

His voice was low and measured, and I wondered at it. Why did he not berate me for my transgression? I knew him to be capable of the harshest words of reproof. Why did he not use them upon me now? Certainly this time I deserved them!

Astonished, I could only do as he suggested and lie back down on the sofa. The light of the candle grew and shrank by turns.

For several minutes I lay there, motionless. Stunned, really. All the while he stood just on the edge of the light. He might have made for a foreboding figure, only somehow he wasn’t. It was as if his form was a solid column, a buttress that held the darkness back. At last the throbbing in my head receded and the candle’s flame burned more steadily.

Alarm cut through the dullness in my brain, and I sat back up. “The children! I left them alone. I must see to them at once.”

“There is no need for that,” he said. “Mrs. Darendal gave them their supper, and I have put them in their beds.”

“You!” I gasped.

“You seem very surprised. I do not know why. They are quite easy to carry. Easier than yourself, Miss Lockwell. You seem small enough, yet you are something of a burden to bear.”

I shrank back against the sofa, mortified. Of course he had carried me. How else could I have gotten down here?

“How poorly you must regard me,” I said at last. I looked down at my hands in my lap. “But know it is no more poorly than I regard myself.

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