Jonathan Fanshawe is awakened by the sound of insistent knocking. Few years back he might have been concerned by such urgent peruse of his attention in the middle of the night. Is someone dying? Has anyone been deadly injured? Or struck by a sudden illness?
Nowadays emotions that sudden late visitors strike in him could no longer be described as worry. It is mostly just an annoyance.
He yawns and sits up. His hand reaches to his night table for a candle and matches to light it up with. Then he considers if he should change from his night clothes since he doubts he will be able to fall back asleep after this interruption. Another set of urgent knocking makes him finally grab the candlestick and head towards his entrance door.
“What took you so long, Jonathan? I could be dying!”
After dinner, they had gathered in the drawing-room to talk. Mostly they surrounded Niccolò and asked him questions about his experiences and life. About his skills on the violin and his performances, about his time spent in the Baciocchi court , and about his general self. The stories told about him were many and greatly exaggerated: most of them were false; he didn’t say which ones were true.
Several things about the great Paganini had drawn Jonah to seek him out. They had gotten on quite well, and the more Jonah learned about him, the more he knew his other acquaintances would like him just as much.
So now they were in Jonah’s house in London, all conversing and getting to know the violinist who has been the talk of Europe, and especially England now that he was here.
Personally, Jonah thought that anyone willing to be in a room alone with Mordechai Lukas for any extended period of time was a brave soul indeed. His favourite way to do it was to make sure the man was thoroughly distracted. The thing was, Jonah was a man of many talents, but distracting Mordechai without the use of his hands, blindfolded and gagged, was a little beyond him. The others never really saw it, the coldness that lurked in the large man, just saw him as grumpy and solitary, never really a threat.
Jonah knew differently, could feel the icy coldness of the other man’s fingers as they gripped onto his waist. He knew Mordechai could fling him into the domain of his patron at a moment’s notice. He wouldn’t be able to do a thing.
Rating: G Fandom:The Magnus Archives Characters: Jonah Magnus, Robert Smirke (Mordechai Lukas and George Gilbert Scott are noted as present, but do not play a large role) Ao3 Link: archiveofourown.org/works/32753245
“To define is to limit.” -Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
From the beginning, the company of Jonah Magnus is a mixed blessing and
curse for Robert Smirke and his attempts at balancing the Powers.
