Free Labyrinth Gate by Kate Elliott

before we go out. It is possible for you to look quite presentable, Maretha, even though we don’t have a maid. If only you’d try.”
    “Is it?” asked Maretha, not looking up from a list of the evidence compiled by her father, written here in his crabbed handwriting, supporting his theory of the existence of Pariam, the city of the labyrinth.
    “You know I will help you whenever you wish. You and Uncle Raymond have been so good—”
    A light chime sounded from the corner of the room. Maretha sighed and set down her pen.
    “Shall I go down?” asked Charity quickly, setting down a ribbon she had been about to braid into her hair.
    “No,” said Maretha. “You should finish dressing. It can’t be Papa ringing, since he’s in the study with the new secretary, so it must be Molly to say there’s a visitor. I’d have to see them in any case.” She examined her inkstained fingers with some dismay, cast a brief glance at herself in the mirror, sighed again, and left the room.
    As she walked down the narrow stairs, she considered Charity. She was fond of her, as sweet and good-natured an impoverished cousin in an already impoverished house as anyone could wish. But Maretha, who had never been brought up to think about her looks, had in the last three years gained a vivid impression from Charity: that though, with a little more effort, she, Maretha, might be pretty, could in fact be desirable and attractive, underneath was that constant, unspoken assumption that beauty like Charity’s could never be hers.
    And why should it? she thought in anger. You never thought twice about it before she came, because you were too busy with your father’s scholarship and with maintaining a house on no income. And now—
    But Molly stood at the bottom of the stairs. The housekeeper’s face was ashen with fright.
    “Why, Molly,” Maretha began. “Whatever—”
    “Hush, mistress,” hissed the woman. “I didn’t know what to do, so I put him in the library. And I daren’t go bother Professor Farr. He’s that put out if I disturb him with the new secretary, seeing as they’re setting all in order finally. But I daren’t turn him away.”
    “Never mind, Molly.” Maretha walked past the woman to the library door. “I’ll see the visitor.”
    Molly’s face flushed red and she reached forward like a drowning person grasping for line. “No, miss. You mustn’t—”
    But Maretha had opened the door. With a warning glance for Molly, she stepped inside.
    And halted, struck motionless from surprise and sheer, instantaneous horror.
    Of course she knew who he was, though she had never met him, had only had him pointed out to her once from a great distance. Impossible to forget.
    “You are Miss Farr,” he said.
    He was beautiful, of course. Any human with so much sorcerous power, gained by foul means or fair, must surely choose to be handsome. But behind that beauty—a chill. Deep and unfeelingly cold. She felt it immediately, even as she stared at him: hair so rich a yellow that it seemed unnatural, especially set against skin almost as pale and fine as Charity’s—though this paleness suggested that cast of skin touched by night and moon’s glow more than by sun. He looked younger than his reputation. Surely a man so inured to unspeakable diversions should look as dissipated as those rakes who merely drank themselves to death, or at least be not as slender and well-formed as the perfect fit of his conservatively dark coat and trousers showed him to be.
    But it was impossible to be taken in by his fairness. “My lord,” she said at last, knowing she was staring and that he was scornful of her inability not to stare. She met his eyes now, steeling herself, knowing what she would see: eyes so dark as to be black. Enchanter’s eyes—all color lost, drained away.
    He took off his gloves, a careful, deliberate process that revealed white hands. She waited, sure he did it to test her; it took her full complement of courage