Lady of Magick

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  Though, of course, it was also true that Sophie’s father was a very poor hand at denying her anything once she had set her heart upon it.

  “I suppose,” said Joanna, “if Jenny can spare you, and if Lady MacConnachie does not object to a second passenger . . .” She looked about for pen and ink. “I must write ahead to Sophie, to—well, it is too late to ask permission, I suppose, but I shall at any rate have warned her; she is not overfond of surprises. And I think we must tell Jenny that Sophie has invited you—”

  “I do not much like lying to Lady Kergabet,” said Gwendolen doubtfully.

  She stiffened a little in offence at Joanna’s bark of incredulous laughter.

  “How can you say so?” Joanna demanded. “You told her for months that you were writing letters to your father, when it was no such thing!”

  Gwendolen’s mouth tucked down at the corners, an odd admixture of amusement and wounded dignity. “It was perfectly true,” she said, “about writing the letters. I wrote a great many of them, though some are too much blotched to read and contain language not fit for a lady’s ears. I do not believe Lady Kergabet has ever asked what was in my letters, or whether they were put into the post.”

  It was so exactly what she herself might have done in like circumstances, that for a long moment Joanna could do nothing but gape at Gwendolen, true, delighted laughter bubbling up under her ribs. At last it surfaced—she could not help it—and in an entirely uncharacteristic moment of abandon, she flung her arms about Gwendolen, as if Gwendolen had been Sophie, and still shaking with laughter, hugged her tight.

  Gwendolen’s longer arms came up about her back, tentative and gentle, and she laid her cheek against Joanna’s hair.

  This did not feel like embracing Sophie, not at all.

  Joanna broke away and stepped back, shaking her head to clear it. “Pen and ink,” she said, and Gwendolen grinned at her, and plucked a pen from the chaos of Joanna’s dressing-table and a fresh sheet of paper from the neat stack on her desk.

  * * *

  At last the provisioning and mending were finished, the trunks packed—Joanna’s concealing a dispatch-case full of letters for Lord de Courcy, for Sophie, and for Lucia MacNeill—and the day of departure arrived. As arranged months since on Joanna’s behalf, they were to travel with the Alban envoy’s wife (known in London as Lady MacConnachie, and in Alba, as she had explained at some length to Jenny and Joanna, as Sìleas Barra MacNeill), who was returning to Din Edin to relieve her mother from the care of her children. In her company—for she was a cousin of Donald MacNeill and his daughter, as well as the wife of Oscar MacConnachie—they should be adequately vouched for and require no additional letters of entry from the Alban court.

  Jenny embraced Joanna, kissed her on both cheeks, and peered down into her face with a familiar mixture of affection and anxiety. “You will be on your best behaviour with Lady MacConnachie, Jo?” she said quietly, not for the first time. “I know that she is very trying, but remember that she is doing you a great service, and—”

  “Yes, Jenny,” said Joanna. Then she counted ten in Greek—a trick she had learnt from Gray—and held her tongue, whilst Jenny adjured her to be careful, to keep a tight rein on Gwendolen, and, should any danger threaten (“which Lady Juno forbid”), to take shelter with Lord de Courcy, and to drag Gwendolen and Sophie and Gray with her, “by the hair if need be.”

  All decorum vanished when Rozena brought Agatha out to see them off. Joanna had meant to say her nursery farewells earlier in the day, before Lady MacConnachie’s arrival, but Agatha and Yvon had been both asleep, and she knew better than to wake them. Yvon she had merely kissed, inhaling the warm milky smell of his fine hair, but Agatha was not so young that Joanna could forgo a proper leave-taking; here she was, therefore, weeping buckets on the muddy pavement before the Kergabets’ front door because Aunty Jo and Gwennie were going away.

  “We shall be back soon, Agatha, I promise,” said Joanna, crouching on the pavement with her skirts rucked up awkwardly in a (probably futile) effort to keep them out of the mud, and smoothing hot tears from Agatha’s face with her thumb. “Not tomorrow, or the next day; it may seem a long time, but we shall come back, and it will be as though we had never gone away. You shall have all sorts of new things to show to me, you know, and perhaps Yvon may have learnt something new also, and you shall be the first to tell me of it.”

  Agatha screwed up her face and howled.

  “Agatha,” said Joanna, “look at me.” She inflected her voice with just a hint of the tone which Jenny used when she wished to gain her daughter’s immediate compliance, and Agatha instinctively swallowed a sob and opened her swimming eyes.

  Joanna caught her small hand and, looking at her very seriously, said in a low tone, “You must be very brave, and look after Yvon and Mama, as I should do if I were here. I am sure you may be trusted for that; is it not so?”

  Agatha nodded. Two last tears tracked down her cheeks, accompanied by a loud, determined sniff. “Yeth,” she said firmly.

  Joanna smiled at her. It was odd, she thought, how quickly and how thoroughly Agatha and Yvon (and Jenny and Kergabet, and Gray, and lately perhaps even Gwendolen) had insinuated themselves into the space in her heart formerly reserved for Sophie alone. “I knew that I could,” she said; and, holding out her arms, she continued, “Now Gwendolen and I must be getting into the carriage, in truth, for else Lady MacConnachie will be so very cross!”

  She swung Agatha up into the air as she said this, whispering loudly, and Agatha giggled, and kissed her, and allowed herself to be handed over to Rozena.

  As Gwendolen was climbing the steps into Lady MacConnachie’s carriage, Joanna ran back for a last embrace of Jenny, who held her very tight for just a moment, and whispered in her ear, “Remember your manners, Jo!” in a tone which clearly said, I shall miss you very much.

  * * *

  Their northward journey was plagued by badly maintained roads, sleet, mud, and even, on one very unpleasant day—though it was March—by snow so heavy that Lady MacConnachie’s coachman could not see the heads of his wheelers, and insisted on leaving the road to take shelter until the storm should have passed. Despite these hardships, both Joanna and Gwendolen remained on their best behaviour, reserving their less charitable remarks—of which there were many, for Lady MacConnachie seemed unable to muster more than three sentences on any subject apart from the weather, London fashions, and her children—for the privacy of their bedchamber after dinner. To Joanna’s secret relief, Gwendolen was an entirely unobjectionable travelling companion: She was tidy in her habits, was content to be silent when there was nothing interesting to be said, and, when it so fell out that a particular night’s lodgings had only one bed for the two of them (it went without saying that Lady MacConnachie could always command a private chamber for herself), kept herself considerately to her own side of the bed. She was not so cheerful at night as she was in daylight, but Joanna, in whose mind the problem of Roland was receding, and the happy anticipation of a reunion with Sophie looming larger, the farther they came away from London, did not give this observation much thought.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  In Which Gray Receives Ill Tidings, and Sophie Receives a Gift

  On a bright, chill morning early in March, shortly before the end of the University’s second term, Catriona MacCrimmon called for Sophie in Quarry Close for a visit to her seamstress: Catriona meant to depart within the next se’nnight to visit her parents on Leodhas, and had been commissioned to have new gowns made for her mother and younger sister; and she and Gray between them had contrived to persuade Sophie that the latter was also due a new gown or two. Gray was still finishing his breakfast when Catriona’s knock sounded upon the front door, and upon Sophie’s jumping up to answer it, he allowed his attention to drift to the journal at his elbow, open to a paper arguing for the existence of aetheric currents which could be diverted to c
arry thoughts from one mind to another and setting out an experimental protocol for demonstrating this phenomenon. By the time Sophie returned to the table to drop a farewell kiss on the top of his bent head, he was so deeply absorbed in the authors’ arguments that he could muster only the most perfunctory response; he vaguely heard Sophie’s cheerful farewell to Donella MacHutcheon, who was engaged in scrubbing the kitchen floor, and Catriona’s to himself.

  The sound of the front door closing behind them, however, called him back to the world of matter long enough to shoot the bolt, then to go to the sitting-room window and peer out of it, until he saw Lord de Courcy’s men Menez and Williams (the one dressed as a crossing-sweeper, and the other loitering at the turning into Grove-street with a broadsheet spread open in his hands) fall in a discreet distance behind.

  Then he sat down at the table again, refilled his teacup, and propped the Transactions of the Royal Society of Natural Philosophers against the teapot, so that he should not get a crick in his neck.

  It was midmorning, and the earlier bustle on Quarry Close had died away, by the time he finished the paper and laid aside the journal, already mentally composing a letter to the editor. He was just standing up from the table, stretching limbs which had grown stiff without his remarking it, when there came another, more assertive knock at the door.

  Two of Lord de Courcy’s three guardsmen having gone with Sophie, Gray was cautious in opening the door, first peering sidewise out of the sitting-room window to determine who might be standing on the step; he was at first relieved to see that the caller, though a stranger to him, wore the royal arms upon his coat, and then mildly alarmed at what news such a courier might be bringing.

  He drew back the bolt, threw open the door, and said, “What news?”

  The stranger gave him a perfunctory bow and a sealed letter. “For you, sir, by way of the Ambassador.” He spoke in Latin, rather than English or Français, and his accent was not altogether familiar.

  Under other circumstances Gray might have remarked this more strongly, but by now he had broken the seal on his letter and begun to read it, and all else had gone entirely out of his head.

  “I must go and see Lord de Courcy at once,” he said, keeping his voice even with some difficulty; the letter had infected him with so strong a feeling of urgency that it was almost a physical ache.

  “Of course, sir,” said Lord de Courcy’s man; “I have a carriage waiting in Grove-street.”

  “I must . . . I must pack a valise, and—oh, horns of Herne! Where has Sophie gone?”

  “Maighistir?” Donella MacHutcheon emerged from the kitchen, drying her hands on her apron. “Is all well?”

  Gray blinked at her to bring her kindly, frowning face into focus. “No,” he said, shifting into Gaelic. “It is—my father is—will you fetch my valise from the stair-cupboard, if you please, and put . . . and put some of my linens into it?”

  “Of course,” said Donella MacHutcheon, and hurried away.

  Within the quarter-hour Gray, valise in hand, was striding up Quarry Close, a headache collecting behind his eyes at the prospect that lay before him.

  * * *

  Both grateful for and exhausted by a day in the company of Catriona MacCrimmon, her seamstress, and the helpful clerks of Din Edin’s wool- and linen-merchants, and carrying wrapped parcels of new handkerchiefs, gloves, and stockings which one or all of the former had insisted she needed, Sophie unlocked the door of the house in Quarry Close and set down the parcels with a sigh of relief.

  “Gray?” she called, first into the sitting-room and then up the stairs. “Gray, are you there?”

  A brief prowl about the house established that he was not. Sophie tried to recall whether he had mentioned a plan to dine elsewhere, and could not—which might mean, she reflected rather irritably, that he had said nothing, or that she had forgot it, or that his plans had altered in her absence, or all three. It was a pity, for she had been looking forward to amusing him by an account of the more absurd details of her shopping expedition, and to learning what it was which had so absorbed him at breakfast-time. But perhaps, she thought, poking up the banked sitting-room fire and sinking dispiritedly into her armchair, she was after all too tired to speak to anyone, even Gray.

  It was not until she had dozed off before the fire, and awakened chilled and stiff in the dark because the fire had gone out, and rebuilt it and called fire to light it again, and wandered into the kitchen to see what Donella MacHutcheon might have left for their supper, that she discovered the folded sheet of writing-paper propped up amongst the tea things, unsealed, with her name written upon the outside in Gray’s most careless, haphazard scrawl.

  She sat down at the table and unfolded it. There was a plate of oatcakes beside the tea-tray; she reached for one (for by now she was very hungry) but let it fall again, scattering crumbs upon the scrubbed table-top, almost as soon as she had begun to read.

  Cariad, the letter read,

  I have just had word by way of Courcy that my father is very ill and has asked for me, and that if I do not go at once, it may be too late. I am loath to leave you alone, but Joanna and her friend will be here presently to bear you company; and of course I hope to travel very swiftly, and shall return as soon as I may. You will understand I hope that if my father is at all minded to attempt a reconciliation, I cannot let the opportunity pass.

  I shall write again to let you know of my safe arrival, and how the land lies. As for yourself, be careful! Do not wander about Din Edin alone.

  Yrs with all love,

  G

  Sophie had met Gray’s father—had spent a fortnight in his household—and try as she might, could not picture him as other than hale, hearty, and coldly indifferent to the presence or absence of his second son. But she knew, too, that whatever might have passed between them since, Gray had craved his father’s respect and approval all through his childhood, and she could not be altogether surprised at his grasping after this chance to receive them. I only hope that you are not to be bitterly disappointed, love.

  Sophie sighed. The single oatcake she had consumed sat heavily in her middle, and the thought of eating the cold ham and pickles she had glimpsed upon lifting the tea-cloth briefly from the supper-tray made her faintly queasy. Instead of sitting down to her supper, therefore, she retrieved her parcels and climbed the stairs to the bedroom to begin putting her purchases away.

  She paused on the threshold, staring. The room was not precisely a shambles—her own things had scarcely been disturbed, and Gray’s were not, objectively speaking, in a significantly greater state of chaos than was usual—but it was clear that the latter had been rifled through by someone unfamiliar with Gray’s methods of organising his possessions. A careful inventory of both bedroom and desk, however, revealed nothing missing but what Sophie might have expected: brushes, strop, and razors; a selection of shirts, drawers, and neck-cloths; the notes for a lecture which Gray had been preparing for the spring term; a pair of trousers in addition to those he had been wearing at breakfast.

  “Well,” said Sophie, speaking aloud to herself, as there was no one else here to call her crackbrained for doing so. “At any rate, I shall have Joanna here very soon.”

  * * *

  The following morning Rory MacCrimmon appeared in Quarry Close just as Sophie was wrestling with the question of how to honour both Gray’s plea not to go about alone and her obligation to appear in her tutor’s rooms at the appointed hour.

  “I had a note from Marshall,” he explained, when she opened the door. “A dreadful business, indeed! He seems to have left in a tearing hurry; we must hope the news did not reach him too late to do any good.”

  “Yes,” said Sophie, torn between affectionate gratitude and exasperation. How like Gray to have made arrangements for her safety, even whilst frantically preparing for an unexpected journey; how like him, too, to forget to inform her what those
arrangements might be.

  The term ended two days later; Catriona MacCrimmon departed for her parents’ home on Leodhas, and Mór MacRury and Sorcha MacAngus on an excursion to the sea-coast, where Sorcha’s aunt and uncle kept an inn; and Sophie—missing Gray, but buoyed by the prospect of Joanna, even a Joanna inexplicably accompanied by a near stranger whom Sophie had not invited—tidied her books and her notes and set about making her small house ready for visitors.

  Lucia MacNeill was nowhere to be found between terms, her time and attention being all claimed by her father and his court, but Una MacSherry called upon her several times, and Rory—evidently taking to heart Gray’s request that he keep an eye on her—nearly every day.

  Sophie was glad of it, for after Donella MacHutcheon had departed for the day, the house was far too quiet. Even the pianoforte was not the panacea it had once been, for it was difficult to find anything to play or to sing that did not somehow remind her of Gray and sharpen her sense of solitude.

  It was worst on rainy days, on which for the most part no one called at all, and Sophie felt shut up in a box like one of Conall MacLachlan’s butterflies. She was more than ordinarily pleased, therefore, on one such day, to perceive through the haze of settled rain a person approaching her front door—swathed in a heavy cloak and an exceedingly unflattering fisherman’s hat, but recognisable at last, by his gait and the determined manner of his approach, as Rory MacCrimmon—and almost ran to open the door at his knock.

  When she had settled Rory into her own armchair by the sitting-room fire, steaming gently, and hung his coat and hat to dry (or, at least, to drip in relative comfort) in the kitchen, Sophie busied herself with the makings of tea, feeling almost herself again.

  She perched in Gray’s chair, nursing her cup of tea to warm her hands, which seemed always to be chilled now, and said, “Have you heard yet from Catriona? I hope your parents and your sister and brothers are well?”