Home From The Sea: The Elemental Masters, Book Seven by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online Page B

right then, how do I look?” Sarah turned in place. Nan smiled.
    “It’s a good thing Lord A isn’t bringing any handsome young men with him or they’d be smitten,” Nan replied, and held out herarm. Neville pushed off his perch, flapped once, and landed lightly on it. Grey flew to Sarah’s shoulder.
    “Peases?” Grey said hopefully. She’d missed English garden peas in Africa.
    “Memsa’b promised,” Sarah reminded her. Grey whistled happily.
    Neville just chortled. He hadn’t met a food that humans ate that he didn’t like, but Nan could tell that he was looking forward to some real English cheese again. And maybe a nice bit of rare meat.
    The four of them went down the stairs to the parlor set aside for Memsa’b, which was where the adults of the school ate when they were not dining with the children—the original dining room of the house having been taken over for school use. Nan preferred it for small gatherings, and she suspected Memsa’b did too; she couldn’t imagine how a small family could manage to dine comfortably in such a big room.
    Maybe people who’ve grown up in houses like this are just used to it
, she thought, as Gupta, on duty at the door, opened it and announced them. The others were already seated and having an animated discussion; Memsa’b wasn’t one to enforce formal manners of waiting and going in to dine when the gathering was among friends.
    Lord Alderscroft did have someone with him, but he wasn’t a susceptible young man; he was one of his older cronies from his esoteric circle. Everyone looked up at Gupta’s announcement, and the gentlemen rose. Nan flushed a little. She’d forgotten that gentlemen did that. Even… or perhaps especially… in that odd archeological household, that wasn’t the norm.
I’m going to have to get used to English manners again.
    “Miss Sarah, and Miss Nan,” Lord Alderscroft greeted them genially. “Your year away has done you good.”
    Sarah took Grey from her shoulder and set her on her perch next to Sarah’s chair. Nan did the same on her side with Neville. Sarah laughed. “If you mean we are both absurdly robust looking and burned as brown as gypsies, you are right, my lord. I was glad to have gone, but gladder to be home. I hadn’t realized how much England had become my home until I left it.”
    Grey turned her head sideways and looked at Alderscroft with one yellow eye. “No peas,” she complained. Then she looked pointedly down at her empty feeding cup.
    “Well, we certainly should not deprive the gracious lady of her peas any longer,” Alderscroft declared, which the servants took as the signal to begin the meal.
    Alderscroft asked both the girls any number of questions about their experiences in Africa, while his colleague spoke quietly to Sahib and Memsa’b. Some of them were political; they couldn’t answer all of them. “That’s quite all right,” he assured them. “If you happened to hear—or sense—something, that would be useful, but if you didn’t, you didn’t. I am merely casting out my line at random, and waiting to see if the salmon of knowledge bites it.”
    “I really didn’t have much in the way of psychical experiences at all in Africa, my lord,” Nan confessed. “Only in Egypt, and then…” She paused for a moment. “… then, the experiences I had were related to the far, far past, rather than the present. Truth be told, while I didn’t feel unwelcome at all, I got that sense that both in Africa and in Egypt, the local spirits were not particularly interested in
me.”
    She looked to Sarah, who nodded. “I had the same impression, sir. I suppose if there had been the ghost of a European with an urgent message about, I would have been sought out, but in Africa, our local shamans were clearly the…” She sought for a word.
    “Authorities?” Lord Alderscroft offered.
    “That’s as good a word as any,” Sarah replied. “Like goes to like, I suppose. If we were Elemental mages, it