A Season of Spells (A Noctis Magicae Novel) Read online

  “Perfect,” Joanna pronounced, straightening up again with both hands resting on Gwendolen’s shoulders.

  As Gwendolen reached for the ear-drops, their eyes met in the mirror—cheeks flushed, eyes shining—and they shared a secret, promising grin.

  “Aunty Gwen!” said Agatha. “Do you suppose Mr. Trenoweth will ask you for the first two dances?”

  Gwendolen’s smile went rather fixed. “I suppose he may, duckling,” she said. “He must ask someone, presumably, though I do not know why he should ask me in particular.”

  She turned her head this way and that, examining the effect of the ivory rosebuds in her dark hair.

  “Oh, but I know why!” Agatha crowed. She had got her feet under her, and scrambled up to stand on the bed’s low footboard, clinging to the bedpost with one arm—imagining, Joanna knew, that she was a sailor standing lookout up aloft. “Mr. Trenoweth’s sister is Lady Lewes, and she came to call upon Mama once, and said that she hoped he might ask you to marry him! . . . but I do not know what Mama said about it,” she added, now sounding rather cross, “because Rozena found me and made me come out from under the sofa, and so I did not hear any more.”

  Joanna (who knew exactly what Jenny had said, and to whom, and why) stifled a chuckle at her disgruntled tone; but her mirth died away as, out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Gwendolen’s face.

  “I think I hear Rozena calling you, Captain Agatha,” she said. “Run away now, and we shall be sure to come and see you before we go.”

  Agatha clambered down the end of the bed with what she fondly imagined to be a nautical cry and slipped out of the room, closing the door firmly behind her.

  When the sound of her running footsteps had faded, Joanna caught Gwendolen’s hands in hers, turned her away from the looking-glass, and peered up into her eyes. “None of that,” she said firmly. “We have had all of this out before, and you know that Jenny is with us and not against us.”

  Gwendolen briefly squeezed her eyes tight shut, then opened them again and sighed. “Yes,” she said. “I do know it, Jo.”

  “And Mr. Trenoweth has not been making a nuisance of himself?” Joanna said.

  Another sigh. “No, not particularly. He is a perfectly unobjectionable young man, you know, now that he has set his matrimonial sights elsewhere.”

  “I am glad to hear it,” said Joanna. “Now, before we go downstairs—”

  The words began what had become a sort of ritual between them, for occasions of this kind, when they should both be spending most of the evening dancing with other people. Gwendolen continued it by casting an approving eye over the tiny pink roses in Joanna’s hair, her garnet earrings, her new gown of rose-pink satin, the silver buckles decorating her dancing-slippers; Joanna returned her glance for glance, enjoying the blush that spread prettily over Gwendolen’s sharp cheekbones as she grew conscious of being admired.

  Joanna tipped her face up towards her friend’s, and for just a moment lost herself in the press of Gwen’s lips upon her own—so familiar now, yet always half-unexpected, always astonishing. Her hands found Gwen’s hips, her waist; crept up her spine to press her closer.

  “You look very lovely,” said Gwendolen, drawing back at last, too soon.

  “And so do you,” said Joanna. “As you know very well.”

  Gwendolen, being taller, held out her arm—bent at the elbow, as a gentleman does for a lady—and when Joanna tucked her hand under it, pressed it close against her ribs. “Shall we go, Miss Callender?” she asked.

  “Certainly, Miss Pryce,” said Joanna, matching her light, untroubled tone; and, moving as regally as either of them knew how, they swept out of her bedroom, along the corridor, and up the stairs to the nursery, to bid farewell to Captain Agatha as promised.

  * * *

  Joanna was afterwards to look back on the beginning of that summer as a sort of idyll—no different on the surface from the years that preceded it, but bathed in a rosy glow of affection, freed (to some degree, at any rate) from the shadow of their shared but always unspoken anxiety by Jenny’s explicit promise to entertain no offers of marriage for either of them, no matter how apparently eligible. Less than a month before Lucia MacNeill’s anticipated arrival in London to make the acquaintance of her betrothed, the ladies of the royal household were consumed with preparations, and the Kergabet ladies with them; but though the endless talking-over of tedious minutiae sometimes frustrated and bored Joanna and Gwendolen almost past bearing, they had only to meet one another’s eyes, and the tedium gave way to relief and occasional jubilation.

  All too soon, however, a hired carriage deposited Mrs. Edmond Marshall in Grosvenor Square to disturb the peace of its occupants. Ostensibly her purpose was to be of use to her daughter—presently expecting her third child—but Joanna rather suspected her of a desire to make use of Jenny, or at any rate of Jenny’s connexions. Or perhaps, if one were being charitable, Mrs. Marshall might simply (in common with half the kingdom, to judge by the influx of persons into London at present) have been possessed of a desire to gawk at Lucia MacNeill of Alba.

  At any rate, there was nothing to be done but to make Jenny’s mama welcome, and to keep her—so far as possible—from fretting Jenny into a state of misery. It was a task in which Joanna was grateful, this time, to have Gwendolen’s assistance.

  “I tell you,” she said, low, as they stood on the steps of Lord Kergabet’s house, watching two footmen assist their visitor’s descent from her equipage, “Mrs. Marshall the elder is the most tiresome woman I have met in the whole of my life.”

  “Oh, come, Jo!” said Gwendolen, grinning behind one hand. “Did you not travel the whole way to Din Edin with Lady MacConnachie, and live to fight another day?”

  * * *

  Eight days later, Joanna and Gwendolen sat pressed close together on the window-seat in Joanna’s bedroom, listening to the rain.

  “I did not think anything could be more tiresome than a long journey with Lady MacConnachie,” said Gwen, after a moment, “but now that I have spent fully a se’nnight in the same house with Lady Kergabet’s mama, I must admit that you were quite right.”

  She reached for her reticule, rummaged in it briefly, and handed over two silver coins.

  Joanna took them from her with a triumphant grin; but her conscience smote her, and, sighing, she handed them back and folded Gwen’s fingers gently around them.

  “I ought not to have taken your wager,” she said. “I knew how it would be, for she stayed here a month entire when Agatha was born, and drove Jenny nearly to distraction; she was not nearly so horrid when you met her here before, being so pleased to have a grandson at last. It would not be fair of me to take your coin.”

  “Well, then, I ought not to have wagered!” said Gwen, laughing. “We cannot be everlastingly going back on our word to one another, Jo, only because one of us occasionally makes an idiotic bet; and I assure you that I should not let you off if our positions were reversed.”

  Joanna considered this. Then a thought struck her, and—feeling greatly daring, for it was full day, though pouring with rain, and this window plainly visible from the square below—she said, “Very well; I decline to accept your coin, but you may pay your wager in kisses instead.”

  Gwen gave her a long, stern look, then drew the curtains and did so.

  CHAPTER II

  In Which Mrs. Edmond Marshall Is Inexplicable, and Sophie Conceives an Idea

  Sophie and Gray parted from Lucia at their last halt before reaching London, she to travel in Oscar MacConnachie’s carriage to the Royal Palace, and they to continue to Lord Kergabet’s house in Grosvenor Square. Lucia had been brought up from infancy in the knowledge that she might one day be named her father’s heir, and was as well versed in the concealment of private trepidation as anyone of Sophie’s acquaintance; whether her composure were real or assumed, therefore, was almos
t impossible to determine, but Sophie knew very well that she herself, in Lucia’s place, would have been quaking in her sturdy calfskin boots.

  “Do you suppose . . .” she began, peering through the window of their carriage as the other receded into the distance—then, changing tacks, “It will all go off very smoothly, I am sure. Oscar MacConnachie knows what he is about.”

  Gray chuckled—showing, Sophie could not help thinking, rather less care than he ought for the well-being of their friend—and said, “I notice you do not say the same of Sìleas Barra MacNeill.”

  Sophie waved this away impatiently. “Of course I do not,” she said. “Nobody could, you know—though she is all very well in her own sphere, of course, and she is Lucia’s cousin, which Lucia may find comforting. I hope it may be so, at all events.” She grimaced, keeping her face turned away from Gray’s so that he should not see it. “I should not have been averse to having Cousin Maëlle to protect me, when first I went to stay with my mother-in-law.”

  Gray’s chuckle this time was low and rather bitter. “Nor I,” he said. “You do remember, I hope, cariad, that we may well be staying with her on this occasion also, in a manner of speaking.”

  “I remember,” Sophie sighed. “Of course I remember. But at any rate we shall be in Jenny’s house; it is not quite the same as actually living under your parents’ roof.”

  They spoke thereafter of anything and everything but the Marshalls of Glascoombe, and spent a good deal of time pointing out to one another scenes and landmarks which they had had no sight of since their last visit to London—on the occasion of Prince Edward’s wedding, nearly two years past. As an attempt to take their minds off the coming ordeal, it was (at least in Sophie’s case) an abject failure. But at any rate, she reflected, they should not waste this last precious sliver of private conversation in dredging up past hurts and irritations.

  * * *

  The household which assembled to greet them had been translated from the house in Carrington-street to a much larger and more imposing one in Grosvenor Square, more befitting the dignity of Lord Kergabet’s present position on His Majesty’s Privy Council; and not only Joanna and Gwendolen Pryce but also Gray’s mother joined Jenny, her children, and their nursery-maid in the silver-papered hall where Treveur and his minions were attempting to divest the newcomers of their travelling-cloaks and hats.

  Jenny had written to warn them that she expected a maternal visitation at some point during the summer; his mother’s presence, therefore, did not startle Gray—until she approached him, beaming, and put up her face to be kissed.

  “Mama,” he said, nonplussed. He kissed her cheek, and when he unbent his neck again was further startled to see her turning to greet Sophie with even greater effusiveness.

  Over their heads, Gray met Jenny’s eyes, as full of bafflement as his own thoughts. Sophie and his mother had avoided coming to blows during their first and only sojourn in the same house, but only just, and according to Jenny and Joanna, Mrs. Marshall the elder habitually referred to Sophie as that girl and had more than once dropped dark hints about love-spells. What could possibly be behind this sudden change of heart, if such it was? Gray knew not whether he ought to feel wary or relieved, and instead of indulging himself in either, turned his attention to his niece and nephew, and submitted to being climbed upon, as though he had been a tree.

  * * *

  “Your mama seems friendlier,” said Sophie, meaning, She appears to detest me less than formerly. She tugged at the bedclothes; Gray grumbled good-naturedly but ceded her a further hand’s breadth of coverlet. “Perhaps time—or absence—has reconciled her to your unfortunate choice of bride.”

  Gray, tucked up behind her, shifted slightly so as to kiss the top of her left ear. “I hope she may be sincere, cariad, for your sake,” he said—meaning, she suspected, I hope she may be sincere, but I should be surprised to find her so. Or perhaps this was only the effect of her own deep caution with respect to her mother-in-law.

  “And she mentioned to me after dinner,” Sophie went on, “that your brother Alan went up to Oxford in the autumn, at last, and is reading alchymy at Plato College! Does not that sound as though he were turning out rather better than you feared?”

  “It does,” said Gray. “For which I thank all the gods, for I have not the least idea to which of them thanks may be owed in this case. Now, why should she have told you that, I wonder?”

  “Gray.” Sophie’s attempt at a reproachful tone ran afoul of a strong urge to laugh, and Gray kissed her ear again, and drew her closer. She wriggled round to face him, laid a hand on his cheek, and said seriously, “If your mama is inclined to be conciliating, love, I do not mean to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “Of course you do not,” said Gray, with a fond smile just visible in the cool glow of the magelights they had called to light them to bed. “And may it so continue.”

  Sophie drew breath to ask him what he meant; he tilted his head and kissed her, however, and she forgot her question entirely.

  * * *

  The Marshalls of Din Edin were not by nature early risers, but the arrival at their door of morning tea, heralded as of old by Daisy’s quiet knock—together with a suite of morning noises quite different from those of Quarry Close, or of a country inn-yard—brought them down to breakfast at an hour which even Jenny, surely, could not consider excessively late.

  Mrs. Marshall, it appeared, was yet abed, and though neither was so ill-judged as to say anything about it, Sophie did not think she was imagining the look of relief that crossed Gray’s face, mirroring her own feelings, upon finding his mother absent from the breakfast-table.

  The conversation was at first general and perfectly ordinary, but partook of an ease and candour which had been altogether absent from the dinner-table on the previous afternoon. Mr. Fowler soon afterwards appeared, and by degrees the conversation took a more political turn: first to a dispatch from one of Lord Kergabet’s agents in the Duchies, which reported that the local lord was recruiting foot-soldiers on behalf of some unknown person improbably styled Imperator Gallia, or Emperor of Gaul, which occasioned much discussion and not a little scoffing; and then, by way of the Marshalls’ impressions of Lucia’s state of mind when last seen, to the Kergabet household’s latest news of Roland.

  “Prince Roland,” said Miss Pryce unexpectedly, “hopes that Lucia MacNeill’s conversation may be more lively than her letters.”

  “Does he,” said Sophie, frowning. What could this signify?

  Mrs. Marshall’s arrival in the breakfast-room necessitated a change of subject—which (fortunately or unfortunately) she herself provided, by turning to Sophie with an expectant expression and announcing, “You must tell us all about Din Edin, and the Alban princess.”

  Lord Kergabet and Mr. Fowler exchanged a look, and rapidly though very civilly took their leave.

  “Graham is a most unsatisfactory correspondent,” Mrs. Marshall continued, oblivious. “Though I suppose there cannot be very much to relate, when all of one’s time is spent amongst piles of dusty books! Now that you are come back, however, I hope you may be able to persuade him to put them aside, and go out into society from time to time, so as to make the best of your visit.”

  “Mama,” said Jenny, in a tone of gentle reproof which Mrs. Marshall entirely ignored.

  Gray said nothing. Sophie swallowed her outrage, reminding herself that her mother-in-law, for sound political reasons, did not and could not know the true tale of their first year in Din Edin, nor understand how near she had come to losing her second son for good and all.

  “I believe, ma’am,” she said, when she felt able once more to speak without fatally offending her listener, “we may expect to enjoy a good deal more society during Lucia MacNeill’s visit than ever in our lives before; and I assure you,” she added with a smile, “that I shall be more than satisfied to return to my dusty books at the
end of it.”

  She had meant it as a rebuff, if a gentle one; Mrs. Marshall, however, seemed not to hear it as such, for she said, “Tell me, my dear, is it true that the Alban princess walks about Din Edin unescorted, and plays at being a student?”

  Gray’s head rose sharply, his eyes narrowing. “Lucia MacNeill does not play at anything she does, Mama,” he said. “She is not a student at present, but she is certainly a scholar—a very fine one, indeed, and every bit as clever as Sophie.” This, Sophie knew, was among the highest compliments of which Gray was capable. “It is quite as usual in Alba for clever young ladies to take up University places, as for clever young men to do so.”

  “Which is just as it ought to be, I think,” said Joanna stoutly, and Miss Pryce, after a cautious glance at Jenny, said, “I quite agree.”

  “And she does not walk about Din Edin unescorted,” said Sophie, before any of them could go on, or Mrs. Marshall present some retort. “She has guardsmen lurking in the shadows, always, just as I have.”

  “Have you, indeed?” Mrs. Marshall looked about the breakfast-room (quite empty of royal guardsmen), her eyebrows pointedly raised. “They must be past masters of concealment, I conclude?”

  “Of course I can have no possible need of a bodyguard in Jenny’s house, ma’am,” said Sophie. If I swallow any more outrage, I shall have a dreadful belly-ache.

  By now every eye had turned to see how Jenny would bear her mother’s insult to her hospitality; Mrs. Marshall seemed to recognise at last exactly what she had said, and how it was likely to be understood. Flustered and wrong-footed, she tittered—a startling sound from a woman of her age and dignity—and in an entirely transparent attempt to turn the conversation said, “Genevieve, my love, you are eating no more than a sparrow! I hope you are not unwell? In your condition—”