Lady of Magick

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  The Prince turned towards her with a glad cry of “Joanna!” Then seeming to register her general failure to fling herself into his arms, he said, somewhat deflated, “Did not you like my sonnet?”

  “Roland,” said Joanna, exasperation once again overriding amusement, “you have no business to be writing sonnets to me! Or to anyone else, for that matter—but most especially to me. What would your mother and father say?”

  Roland looked down and scuffed at the turf with one shoe. “I do not see that it is any of their business,” he muttered.

  “Of course it is their business!” said Joanna. “You are second in line to the throne of Britain, until Ned has a son.”

  “But Sophie—” Roland began.

  “I should not take Sophie as a pattern, if I were you,” said Joanna. “Unless of course you have been yearning all this time for a draughty garret in Oxford, and said nothing about it to anyone.”

  Roland had, Joanna remarked not for the first time, a very stubborn set of the chin.

  “She would not give up the man she loves, for any consideration,” he said; “I call that noble and admirable.”

  With an effort, Joanna refrained from rolling her eyes. “You may call it what you like,” she said, “so you do not attempt to follow her example. You had much better take up a less dangerous pastime than writing sonnets to unsuitable young ladies.”

  “I do not write sonnets to unsuitable young ladies,” said Roland, visibly stung; “only to you.”

  Joanna’s face heated, whether in outrage or embarrassment she hardly knew. “Roland, you cannot—”

  “My dearest Jo!” He strode forward and, before she could retreat, had trapped both of her hands in his and was gazing earnestly down into her face. “You must let me tell you—”

  “Let me go.” The words emerged with surprising firmness, considering the flailing panic of her thoughts, and he obeyed her at once, stepping back a pace with a look of some alarm. Immeasurably relieved, Joanna drew a breath and said more calmly, “I am going to give you some good advice, such as you might receive from your wise and sensible elder sister, if you had one.”

  Instead of which, you have got Sophie, she added, to herself. The gods help us all.

  Roland groaned, but Joanna persisted: “If you must write love-poetry, choose some other object—the Lady Venus, perhaps, or the beauties of Gaia.”

  “I am not in love with Venus, or with Gaia.”

  Joanna nearly laughed aloud. “And you suppose yourself in love with me? Roland, you know I am extremely fond of you, but you have not the least idea what it is to be in love.”

  “Well, no more have you,” said Roland, looking wounded.

  “In any case,” said Joanna, “even were your father inclined to let you choose your own bride without interference—which, for very sound reasons, he is not—there is not the least possibility of your ever being permitted to marry me. I must conclude, therefore, that you wish to persuade me to some dalliance; and that, I tell you plainly, you shall never do.”

  “That is not what I—that is not at all—” Roland stammered, crimson-faced. “I wish to persuade you to an engagement.”

  Joanna was so shocked that she laughed aloud. Surely, surely, he could not be serious? Quite apart from the far grander marriage which his father was already secretly arranging for him, how could he possibly imagine such a thing?

  Roland’s stiff posture grew stiffer, and his red face redder, at this effrontery.

  “I do not see why my father should object,” he said. He began to pace, forward and back around the near rim of the fountain. “My father likes you very much, in fact.”

  “As the Kergabets’ protégée, and Sophie’s sister, he may,” said Joanna, who was herself rather fond of King Henry. “I daresay he finds me amusing. But your mother does not; and in any case it does not follow that I should for one moment be tolerated in the character of your wife. Roland, the daughter of a convicted traitor! You cannot seriously suppose it. But this is all beside the point, because I do not want to marry you.”

  This, at last, seemed to make an impression; he stopped in his tracks and regarded her with a gobsmacked expression that nearly made her choke.

  “Why not?” he demanded.

  “Firstly,” said Joanna, “because I am very fond of you and your brothers, and wish you every happiness, which is exactly what you should not have, if you married me. And, secondly”—raising a hand to forestall his protest—“because it is my dearest ambition not to be a princess.”

  This was not strictly true, in that Joanna had many ambitions more definite and positive than that one, but it was true enough for present purposes.

  Roland, inexplicably, appeared heartened by what she had intended as a thorough set-down. “I shall say no more at present, then,” he said cheerfully, and gave her his best courtly bow, with a brotherly kiss to follow.

  And then, whistling, he strode away, leaving Joanna alone in the Fountain Court with the peacocks and her own exasperation.

  * * *

  The following day brought a letter from Sophie, the first in more than a fortnight. Joanna—suffering still under some irritation of spirits, as a result of her conversation with Roland—had gone for a ride in the park in lieu of both breakfast and morning calls. She had been particularly eager to avoid a planned call upon Mrs. Griffith-Rowland, with whom Jenny felt obliged by Kergabet’s position to maintain an acquaintance, but whom both she and Joanna cordially disliked; having seen Jenny’s carriage and pair in the stables, she was hopeful that she had succeeded in this object.

  And, better still, a letter from Sophie! She snatched it up from the salver in the hall and broke the seal at once.

  “Din Edin?” she said aloud, upon reaching the middle of the second page. Was it wise of His Majesty to be sending Sophie to Alba whilst he himself (or, at any rate, Lord Kergabet) was in the midst of negotiating Roland’s betrothal to the Alban heiress? Did he, in the teeth of all evidence to the contrary, imagine her in the role of envoy? Surely not. But then, King Henry had a blind spot where Sophie was concerned, the size of the boulder of Sisyphus.

  “Jenny!” Joanna bounded up the stairs to the first floor with no thought to propriety, or to the smell of horse which clung to her skin and clothing. “Jenny, you will never guess—”

  She stopped short on the threshold of the morning-room, staring at the stranger who had taken possession of her accustomed seat.

  “Why, Jo, dear!” Jenny turned, smiling, and beckoned her in. “I had nearly given you up for lost. Come in and meet our guest.”

  Joanna approached warily; the stranger rose to her feet, at which she seemed inclined to stare. She was tall—at least as tall as Jenny—and the gown she wore, severely cut from some stiff, heavy fabric in an unflattering shade between mustard and chestnut, emphasised her bony wrists and elbows.

  “Miss Pryce, may I present my sister-in-law, Miss Joanna Callender; Joanna, Miss Gwendolen Pryce.”

  Miss Pryce raised her head just long enough to meet Joanna’s eyes as they exchanged ceremonious curtseys. The face thus glimpsed was all planes and angles and wide dark eyes: An interesting face, Joanna thought, which might have stories behind it.

  This thought did not prevent her frowning when Miss Pryce resumed her former seat on the sofa, leaving Joanna to perch on the edge of a hard chair lest Madame Joliveau, the housekeeper, scold her for covering the furniture with horse-hairs.

  “Miss Pryce has come to stay for a month or two, perhaps,” Jenny continued, in the light, almost careless tone which (to Joanna’s experienced ear) suggested that a great deal lay unspoken beneath her words. “Jo, as you are on your way upstairs, perhaps you will save me the climb, and show Miss Pryce her room? Madame Joliveau has had her things put in the small bedroom on the second floor.”

  “Of course,” said Joanna. “If you will follow
me, Miss Pryce?”

  “Thank you, Miss Callender,” said Miss Pryce, faintly; “thank you, Lady Kergabet.”

  “What brings you to London, Miss Pryce?” Joanna inquired, as they climbed the stairs to the second floor—this being the least intrusive of the many questions which presented themselves to her mind.

  “My stepmother has persuaded my father that I ought to be a governess,” said Miss Pryce. She glanced sidelong at Joanna.

  Joanna frowned. “But Agatha is rather young for a governess, surely?” she said, puzzled. “She is not yet three.” And Jenny had said our guest, not the new governess.

  “Agatha—that is Lady Kergabet’s daughter? No; to the Griffith-Rowlands, who are my father’s neighbours in Clwyd, when they are not in London. They have got four children, and—”

  She stopped abruptly, and shut her mouth into a tight straight line. Joanna revised her assumptions, and began to regret that she had not gone out with Jenny after all; evidently this had been no ordinary morning call. “I am a little acquainted with the family, yes,” she said.

  By now they had reached the small bedroom—it was the one Sophie had slept in, briefly, before her marriage to Gray, with the same kingfisher-blue coverlet still upon the bed—and Joanna opened the door and stood aside politely for Miss Pryce to enter it. A sad little trunk and threadbare carpet-bag, she saw, had been stacked beside the dressing-table.

  “Oh!” said Miss Pryce, in a tone of gratified surprise. “How lovely!”

  She stood in the centre of the blue-and-ivory carpet, gazing about her at the small, prettily furnished room that was to be hers, as though it had been a palace; and for the first time she smiled. A small and hesitant smile it was, but it gave her narrow, rather saturnine face the spark of animation which had hitherto been lacking. Yes, thought Joanna at once; I rather thought so.

  * * *

  Joanna left Miss Pryce to her unpacking and descended the stairs to demand explanations of Jenny.

  Jenny, however, was not to be drawn.

  “Her father and stepmother placed her in a very unfortunate situation,” she said, “and I am helping her to get out of it”; and no more would she say about the sudden advent of Miss Gwendolen Pryce in Carrington-street, except to adjure Joanna to be civil to her.

  “I hope I am civil to all your guests, Jenny,” said Joanna, a little affronted—but only a little, for it was true that she was often quite uncivil about them after they had gone.

  Jenny patted her hand in silent apology. “But what were you coming in such a hurry to tell me, Jo?” she said.

  “Oh!” said Joanna, diverted instantly, though only temporarily, from Miss Pryce. “You will never guess: Sophie and Gray are going to Din Edin!”

  * * *

  Governess or no, Miss Pryce, it transpired, was very fond of children. Agatha—for whom Miss Pryce represented that almost magickal thing, a new and interesting person who did not speak to her as though she were a simpleton—was instantly smitten; and no sooner had Miss Pryce made Agatha’s acquaintance than she was dragooned into a game of hunt-the-slipper in the nursery.

  Joanna had other concerns to occupy her—chief amongst them, at present, the implications of Sophie’s visit to Din Edin, which she must lose no time in bringing before Sieur Germain and Mr. Fowler; it was no hardship to be spared an afternoon of pretending to be baffled by Agatha’s entirely transparent hiding-places, and she told herself sternly how absurd it was that she should begrudge Agatha’s worshipful attention.

  She penned a brief reply to Sophie’s letter and, setting it aside, sat down again with her notes and Mr. Fowler’s from the previous day’s meeting with Oscar MacConnachie, which she had still to read through, transcribe into longhand, and copy out fair for Lord Kergabet’s files. The first two of these tasks required her full concentration, but the last left her ample attention to spare for the puzzle of what—for it was evidently not a distaste to other people’s children, and surely the owner of that dreadful gown and that pitiful carpet-bag was not the woman to abandon her situation on a whim—should have made Miss Pryce’s situation with the Griffith-Rowlands so very unfortunate as to lead her to seek refuge in a household of complete strangers.

  * * *

  After dinner that evening, when the gentlemen joined the ladies in the drawing-room, Joanna at once sought out Sieur Germain; Mr. Fowler, she remarked with some amusement, appeared to be paying awkward court to Miss Pryce.

  “And is it true that His Majesty has given his permission for this venture?” she demanded, having given him a précis of Sophie’s letter.

  “So it would appear,” said Sieur Germain. “You know of course that His Majesty finds it difficult to deny your sister anything; and in any case I saw no compelling reason to advise him against it, as things stand. Of course she shall be guarded, as she is in Oxford—and Lord de Courcy will keep an eye, and can dispatch both of them back to Britain at once, should the need arise.”

  “I think you underestimate Sophie’s capacity for attracting trouble,” Joanna muttered—almost, but not quite, under her breath.

  Sieur Germain smiled grimly. “Her father may, but I assure you that I do not.”

  “She has invited me to visit them in Din Edin next spring,” said Joanna. “I thought, perhaps, we might turn such a visit to our own purposes . . . ?”

  “I expect so.” Sieur Germain’s smile curved up in approval. “I expect so.”

  * * *

  It soon became apparent that Miss Pryce was very fond of horses, as well as of small children; when not embroidering baby’s gowns and bonnets for Jenny, or inventing tales for Agatha, or playing melancholy Cymric songs upon the pianoforte (to Joanna’s ear, at any rate, they sounded very melancholy, but that might be only because they were very slow), she soon took to trailing after Joanna into the stable mews, and making friends with both the grooms and their charges.

  Whilst driving out with Jenny in the carriage and pair one afternoon, Miss Pryce persuaded the Kergabets’ coachman to let her take the reins briefly and, on the strength of this and subsequent trials, was permitted to drive Jenny without other supervision than Harry the footman. Joanna rather fancied that Miss Pryce hankered after a riding-horse; the Kergabets kept none in Town, however, but Joanna’s own mare, Kelvez, and the surly gelding on which the grooms were mounted, for the purpose of escorting Joanna—and no gently bred young lady (Joanna included) was likely to wish to tackle Old Spider-Legs.

  It was with considerable astonishment, therefore, that Joanna, upon entering the stable mews one morning, beheld both Kelvez and Spider saddled and bridled, and Gwendolen Pryce standing between them, both sets of reins clasped in her gloved left hand. Her ordinarily saturnine face wore an expression of unalloyed delight, which rendered her almost unrecognisable.

  “What are you doing?” Joanna demanded. “Where are Gaël and Loïc?”

  “I am going riding with you,” said Miss Pryce. “Gaël and Loïc are gone out on an errand for Mrs. Treveur. Gaël is expecting to ride out with you when he comes back; I offered to tack up for both of you whilst they were out.”

  Spider snorted and tossed his head sharply, yanking on the reins; Miss Pryce, holding her ground without apparent effort, said, “None of that, you great lummox.”

  Spider snorted again, more quietly, shifted his great hooves, and was still. With her free hand, Miss Pryce reached up to gently rub his nose.

  Joanna stared. She did not know how much of Miss Pryce’s tale to believe—Gaël and Loïc surely were not such fools?—but many a young man’s head was turned by a lovely face, and Miss Pryce’s was very lovely when she smiled like that, with the flush across her sharp cheekbones and her dark eyes shining. That aside, Joanna was torn between an impulse to snatch the reins of her own mare from Miss Pryce’s hand and leap into this adventure with both feet, and a dread of the likely consequences to Miss Pryce, to Lord Kergabet�
��s grooms, and to herself if she did so. Perhaps, if they did not stay out too long . . .

  “I like to ride very fast,” she said, after a long moment’s contemplation. “Gaël can sometimes keep up with me; I don’t expect you can.”

  “We shall never know unless we try,” said Miss Pryce.

  * * *

  To Joanna’s further astonishment, Miss Pryce proved to possess a riding habit with split skirts, and rode astride—though upon reflection, it would have been more astonishing had she been able to find a lady’s saddle to fit Spider, or to persuade him to be ridden sidesaddle.

  “Many ladies ride so, in Clwyd,” she said with a little shrug, when Joanna ventured to comment.

  “In Breizh, also,” Joanna conceded. “But I never learnt, because my father would not allow it.”

  In London, however, it was not at all the done thing, and they drew not a few stares on their sedate amble to the gates of the park, from the tradesmen and errand-boys who populated the streets at this early hour. But once on the bridle-path—where today it appeared they were the only ladies present—Joanna quite forgot to notice whether they were being looked at, for it seemed that Miss Pryce could keep up with her after all.

  “Where did you learn to ride like that?” she demanded breathlessly, when they slowed to a walk on a gently curving stretch of the path to let the horses breathe.

  Miss Pryce gave another of her little half shrugs. “My stepmother is frightened of horses,” she said; “the more time I spent in the stables, or on horseback, the less I saw of her. And, of course,” she added with a sort of determined nonchalance which invited Joanna to treat the thing as a most entertaining joke, “it irked her that I should be making friends with the grooms and stableboys, and not with the dull daughters of her horrid friends.”

  This was perhaps the longest speech Joanna had ever had from Miss Pryce, and certainly the most revealing; she was not altogether certain how to reply to it.

  “Has Spider got his wind back?” she said instead, leaning down to lay a hand against Kelvez’s flank. “We had best be getting back, before the Watch is called out after us.”