Cursing, Christian saw the golden carriage disappear into the ashes, which swirled away before the Thwaite horses could reach them. They drove through the sooty mark on the cobblestones twice, just to make certain, but nothing happened.
The coachman finally halted the horses, and Roger helped the ladies disembark. Christian jumped down from his seat and ran into Seadown House. In the kitchen there was a roaring fire, and the maid tending it shrieked as he grabbed up a kettle of water and threw it on the flames. He coughed as the steam rose up in his face, grabbing a poker to stir the ashes and make sure no lick of fire still burned.
“Your lordship, your ladyship,” the scullery maid said tearfully when her master and mistress entered. “I was waiting up to make you tea, but then he tossed the kettle on the fire,” she finished, pointing an indignant finger at Christian.
“It’s all right, my girl,” Lord Richard said kindly. “We needed some wet ash for … removing our masks. Glued on, you know.” He tapped the edge of his mask, which was quite noticeably tied on with a ribbon. “You run along to bed, and we’ll take care of it ourselves.”
The scullery maid clearly thought her master had gone mad, but was in no position to argue with him. So off to bed she went, with many fearful looks over her shoulder.
As soon as she was gone, Christian looked to the others to see if they were ready. Roger and Dickon drew their long knives, and Lord Richard nodded. Christian spoke the rhyme and waited, but nothing happened.
Roger came forward and tried it, and so did Marianne, Lady Margaret, and Dickon.
“She’s shut us out,” Christian said. “And Poppy is trapped there.”
“I’ll fetch Eleanora,” Roger said. “It might work for her.”
Roger came running back into the kitchen only a few minutes later, face white and sweat glistening on his forehead.
“She’s gone.”
They all gaped at him.
“Eleanora’s gone, and there’s soot all over the carpet in her bedroom.”
“The Corley,” Lady Margaret gasped.
“Now that she has them both, what will she do?” Marianne clung to her mother’s waist, and Lady Margaret put an arm around her daughter.
Christian punched the rough stones of the fireplace, feeling a dark satisfaction as his knuckles sparked with pain and blood blossomed across the split skin.
“Let me try,” Lord Richard said, his voice brittle.
“Sir, if you would,” Christian said gratefully.
“I will not say it is my pleasure,” Lord Richard said, with a ghost of his usual humor.
The elegant earl took out his handkerchief and spat into it. Then he laid the white square over the damp ashes in the hearth and knelt beside it.
“Corley, Mistress, Queen of Glass,
Open the doors that I may pass.”
At once the broad hearth stretched itself up into an arching doorway. Lord Richard turned and raised one eyebrow at Christian.
“Your Highness?”
Christian didn’t need to be asked twice. Short sword gripped tight, he strode through the ashes with his companions at his heels. The floor turned from sooty hearthstones to glass, and then the glass turned sticky, and they fell through a hole into nothing.