“Lucia, please,” she said, laughing a little, for Roland had been so addressing her for some time in his letters. “I am, yes. I have had no opportunity since arriving in London, but I hope I shall do so; Joanna Callender tells me that she and her friend Gwendolen Pryce are in the habit of riding in the park every morning before breakfast—I am not perfectly sure which park she meant—and perhaps I may be able to join them on some of those excursions.”
“Miss Callender is a thorough horsewoman,” Roland said. “Though I wish she would not insist on riding astride.”
“Whyever not?” said Lucia, baffled.
Roland blinked at her. “Why, because—because it is not proper for a lady,” he said.
When in Rome, Lucia reminded herself, and smiled. “In Britain, perhaps,” she said mildly, “but in Alba I assure you it is accounted entirely proper.”
“Ah—I—of course,” Roland said, his cheeks flushing up once more. “I meant no offence! I have been endeavouring to learn your customs, as you know; but Oscar MacConnachie is not much interested in riding, and Lady MacConnachie still less.”
“Sìleas Barra MacNeill is no horsewoman at all,” she acknowledged, and noted with approval that though Roland had referred to her cousin in the British manner, he was not confused by Lucia’s using her Alban name.
A second long pause followed, in which Lucia cudgelled her brains in search of something to say. She had once hoped that they might become sufficiently acquainted through the exchange of letters as to make this meeting more reunion than halting introduction; but her correspondence with Roland had begun very formal and continued stilted and awkward, and she had concluded that if friendship and intimacy were ever to grow between them, it could not be by that means.
But this alliance was for the good of Alba; her father and she, with their most trusted advisors, had debated for more than a year how best to play their hand—her hand—and had their choice not already paid off handsomely, in the bride-gifts which had helped save her people from starvation? In the friendship between Sophie and herself which had, quite literally, helped to heal Alba’s ills?
And no matter how fraught and fragile their kinship, surely no brother of Sophie’s could be entirely uncongenial?
Perhaps Roland too had been thinking of Sophie, for just as the excruciating silence was threatening to stretch past breaking, he said, “Sophie has been trying to make me promise to study at the University, when—when I come to Din Edin.”
Lucia concealed a rueful smile at this evidence that he had as much difficulty as herself in speaking aloud the words when we are married.
“You do not much like the notion, I collect?”
Roland’s full lips quirked. “I am not stupid,” he said—Lucia thought frantically back over her words; had she suggested that she thought him so?—“but I am no scholar. I do not see how anyone should choose a stack of dusty books telling how mages took their tea in my great-grandfather’s time, over a fast gallop through the deer-park on a fine day.”
Then his cheeks grew pink again, and his bright blue gaze slid away from hers, as he grew conscious of the oblique insult in his words.
“You are a man after my brother’s heart,” said Lucia, entirely without thought; “I predict that the two of you will get on famously.”
“I hope we shall be good friends,” Roland said, and now he smiled shyly, “as I have been with my own brothers.” After a moment he added, in what seemed a corresponding burst of honesty, “Mostly.”
The recognition struck Lucia, all unwelcome: It was not Sophie, at all, whom Roland put her in mind of, but her own fourteen-year-old brother, Duncan.
“I am sure you shall,” she said, returning the smile to cover her unease. “And I hope you may change your opinion of the University, when once you have made its acquaintance. If dusty books are not so much to your taste, perhaps you may follow in Sophie’s footsteps in the School of Practical Magick. The University is a famous place for making friends, you know.”
Roland looked thoughtful. “I suppose it must be,” he said slowly; and then, in a confiding rush, “My brother Harry is wild to study magick at Merlin College, when he is old enough. I wish he may persuade my father to let him go; but it is not at all the done thing, you see, as it is in Alba. Jo—Miss Callender went to school when she was younger, in Kemper, and she is forever telling Harry stories of her escapades. I am sure the most of them are her own invention, but,” he concluded, rather wistful, “I think perhaps I should have liked to go to school with a crowd of other boys—besides my brothers, that is.”
A brief but painful sympathy gripped Lucia, for the little boy Roland had once been—though considering that little boy’s doting mama, his panoply of playthings and carefully vetted tutors, the small army of servants undoubtedly devoted to his needs and wishes, made her sympathy recede somewhat. Nevertheless—
“Miss Callender is a good friend of yours, I suppose?” she said, before the strong temptation to say, We shall not let our children be lonely, as you were, could quite overcome her better judgement.
“Yes,” said Roland. “That is—she is Sophie’s sister, and a sort of assistant to Sieur Germain de Kergabet—oh, but you will know all of that already, for you met Miss Callender in Din Edin, did you not?—and of course you will have heard how all of us first became acquainted—”
“I have not, in fact,” said Lucia, taking pity on him, “but I hope you may tell me of it, another time?” For Sophie never would consent to tell her that tale, and Lucia continued desperately curious. “Oh! And I have brought you something.”
Roland’s eyes brightened, like—alas, yes, exactly like—Duncan’s on being offered some treat.
Lucia opened her reticule, extracted the small, flat parcel, carefully wrapped in fine linen dyed scarlet, and handed it across to Roland; their fingertips brushed, for just a moment, and he ducked his head. We shall never make a diplomat of you at this rate, Your Royal Highness.
He turned the parcel about in his hands—strong hands, with a horseman’s calluses; Lucia spied a scraped knuckle on the right hand, and a spot of ink on the left—before carefully tugging on one end of the bow-knot. The wrapping fell away, and Roland studied the slim codex thus revealed, whose title, stamped in gold leaf upon the front board, he perhaps did not recognise as meaning Poems of the Inner Isles.
“You are fond of poetry, I know,” said Lucia, abruptly shy. “It occurred to me that you might wish to become better acquainted with some of the poetry of Alba. And,” she added, “that verses might make your study of Gaelic a less onerous task. I . . . I have not much patience for poetry myself; I enlisted the aid of my cousin Ciaran Barra MacNeill, who is my father’s serjeant-at-arms and a great collector of poems, to guide my choice.”
Roland drew one index finger along the book’s spine. “I thank you,” he said, looking up at Lucia, “very much indeed. This is a most thoughtful gift, Lady—that is, Lucia. I . . . may I hope for your assistance in translating it?”
He looked as doubtful, hopeful, and off-balance as she felt, and, perversely, Lucia took heart from the knowledge that they both were equally at sea.
“I should like that very much,” she said.
They smiled at one another, faces half-turned; the silence now seemed more hopeful than otherwise. Before either of them could make any further overture, however, Queen Edwina came bustling back again to observe their progress, and to exclaim at and fuss over Lucia’s gift in a manner which made Roland blush furiously and Lucia wish she had left the accursed book in Din Edin, and the moment dissolved once more into awkward, limping conversation.
* * *
“I understand that Lucia MacNeill has invited you to take tea with her in her rooms?” said Queen Edwina.
“Yes, ma’am,” said Sophie.
The Queen nodded. “You may do so,” she said, as though Sophie had been asking her pe
rmission, or seeking her approval. “And then, of course, you must speak with Roland; and afterwards—”
“Am I to be a go-between, then?” said Sophie, daring to interrupt. “Or a spy? I must tell you, ma’am, that I have no great liking for either notion.”
Her stepmother regarded her steadily. “Roland admires you,” she said (she did not add, the gods alone know why, though Sophie could hear the sentiment hovering unspoken), “and Lucia MacNeill, I am told, considers you an intimate friend; hence His Majesty’s request that you act as a guide and companion to her whilst she remains in London. All that your father and I ask of you, Edith, is that you refrain from encouraging either of them to . . . to seek out objections.”
“Sophie,” said Sophie firmly.
Queen Edwina blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“My name is Sophie, ma’am. Not Edith.”
“Your name is Edith Augusta Sophia,” said Queen Edwina, in a tone which suggested she was exercising patience in speaking to a small child, or a simpleton.
“So it is,” Sophie acknowledged, “but I am Sophie.” It seemed a foolish thing to insist upon—but if so, surely the Queen’s own insistence upon Edith was no better?
Queen Edwina frowned; before she could reply, however, Sophie drew a steadying breath and said, “I should like us to be friends, ma’am, so far as circumstances permit. And my friends have always called me Sophie.”
It was a gamble; and, like many another such, it failed.
“You must not think me ungrateful for the care and affection you have bestowed upon my sons,” said the Queen, “but surely you cannot imagine that anything resembling true friendship can subsist between us.” Her small, soft hands—entirely free of calluses and ink-stains—smoothed down her figured muslin skirts; then she raised her eyes again to Sophie’s face and, perhaps misinterpreting her expression, added in a kinder tone, “You need not fear that I wish you any ill, Edith.”
With some effort, Sophie refrained from wincing. She has no power over you that you do not grant her yourself. “No, ma’am,” she said.
“Your father may rely on you, then, I trust, to carry out his wishes with respect to Roland and Lucia MacNeill?”
Sophie hesitated before replying, uneasy in the extreme. But if she had only to avoid encouraging either of them to object to the other . . .
“Yes, ma’am,” she said at last.
The Queen gave a brisk nod of satisfaction. “You may go,” she said, gracious in victory; and Sophie, after a nonplussed moment, made her escape.
* * *
Lucia MacNeill received her with a quite astonishing enthusiasm, considering that they had last met less than a fortnight since. Having sent one of her attendants to procure the makings of tea, she then banished them all to the sitting-room and poured tea for Sophie in her bedchamber—an awkward makeshift, certainly, but no more so than many an impromptu meal they had shared in Din Edin, in the years since their bizarre joint venture on the Ross of Mull had made Lucia an intimate of the Marshalls’ tiny house in Quarry Close, and Sophie a regular visitor to Castle Hill.
“May I ask you a question, Sophie?” she said.
“Of course,” said Sophie, accepting her cup of tea.
Lucia poured for herself; looked down at the delicate cup and saucer in her hands, then up at Sophie; and at last said, “Tell me truly, what is there between Roland and your sister Joanna?”
Sophie, astonished, paused with her teacup halfway between saucer and lips. “They were the best of friends, once,” she said, “though there was some coolness on Roland’s part, I understand, when he learnt of her part in arranging his betrothal—behind his back, as he saw it.”
“Hmm,” said Lucia. “Yes, perhaps that may explain . . .”
They sipped their tea, both frowning in thought.
An old and half-forgotten notion occurred to Sophie—oblique complaints, a letter impatiently tossed aside—and she added, “I have a theory that at one time Roland fancied himself in love with Joanna, a fancy in which she of course could not encourage him.”
“Oh!” Lucia’s fine arched brows rose, and her lips twisted in a rueful little grimace. “Yes, certainly your sister must have found such advances most unwelcome.”
“It is only a theory of mine, as I said,” said Sophie, wishing that she had not said anything at all. “I may be quite wrong—though it does account for several remarks of Roland’s, and one or two of Joanna’s, which at the time I could not at all make out. But even if it was not all my own fancy, Lucia, it was years ago.”
“Indeed,” said Lucia. “But in any case, it is not as though Joanna were on the hunt for a husband.”
Sophie blinked. It was true that Joanna seemed remarkably uninterested in marriage, matchmaking, and young men generally, though the Kergabets’ extensive acquaintance must include—at least from the pragmatic and determinedly unsentimental perspective which Joanna appeared to have adopted for herself—many very eligible candidates. Sophie had not much expected her sister to fall desperately in love, but it seemed reasonable to suppose that she should prefer an establishment of her own to a perpetual dependence upon one or other of her relations; and, Joanna’s personal fortunes being what they were, a good marriage was undoubtedly the best means of achieving that goal. But then, Joanna had political ambitions, which very few potential husbands were likely to encourage; and besides—
“She is very young to be thinking of marriage,” said Sophie.
“She is older than Roland,” Lucia pointed out, “who certainly is very young to be anyone’s husband, but no one else seems much inclined to object on that account. And you had been married nearly two years at her age, by my reckoning.”
“I had,” said Sophie, frowning at no one else as much as at the remarks that had followed it, “and you know my thoughts upon that subject.”
“In any case, that is not what I meant,” said Lucia. Sipping her tea, she regarded Sophie sidelong, as though attempting to gauge the effect of her words in advance of speaking them. “I meant—well—Gwendolen Pryce, you know.”
“What of her?” said Sophie.
Her thorough bafflement must have shown in her face, for Lucia’s eyes widened and she said, sounding almost dismayed, “Oh! Sophie, you cannot mean—do you tell me that you did not know?”
“Lucia MacNeill.” Sophie deposited her teacup very precisely on the corner of Lucia’s dressing-table and clasped her hands together in her lap. “You are my dear friend, and very nearly my sister, and I am enormously fond of you; but if you do not cease talking in riddles—”
Lucia had the grace to look abashed, and hastily said, “Your sister, I believe, is not seeking the companionship of a husband because she has already a companion who suits her better.”
In itself, this did not much clarify things; but in the context of Lucia’s previous remarks upon the subject of Gwendolen Pryce . . .
“Oh,” said Sophie, feeling thoroughly at sea. “I . . . I had not considered that possibility.”
It had not escaped her notice, of course, that amongst the ladies of her father’s court there were some whose eyes alighted with appreciation and affection not upon any gentleman, but upon one another; and, for that matter, Mór MacRury, one of her closest female friends in Din Edin—and once Lucia’s tutor—shared with a lady lecturer in Astronomy both her lodgings and a companionship which looked to Sophie very much like a happy marriage.
The notion of Joanna’s being likewise companioned had never crossed her mind. But the moment she began to consider it, the fragments of observation fell into place—the constant presence of Gwendolen says in Joanna’s letters; the small half smiles, the chaste but affectionate touches to shoulder or elbow; the tone-deaf Joanna’s apparent pleasure in sitting by the pianoforte whilst Miss Pryce played and sang; the two dark heads bent close together over a book—and she said, “I am a foo
l.”
“Sophie?” said Lucia, hesitant now. “You are not . . . distressed by this news?”
Sophie looked up sharply. “No!” she said. “That is . . . yes; if there is indeed so strong an attachment between my sister and her friend, I am very much distressed that Joanna should not have trusted me with the knowledge of it. But as to the nature of that attachment: no, certainly not.”
“No,” Lucia repeated. “No, of course you would not be, in that way. But, Sophie, I should not have said anything about it to you, had I for a moment suspected that you did not know already.”
No, Sophie reflected: Lucia, so much more the diplomat than herself, would have refrained from even such delicate hinting as she had first engaged in, had she not supposed Sophie already in the secret.
“You must not blame yourself,” she said. “I cannot think how I failed to see it. And I understand, of course, why Joanna and Miss Pryce should wish to be discreet; but I cannot understand—but never mind, Lucia! What else did you and Roland talk of, then?”
“Of riding, a little,” said Lucia. “And poetry, and Gaelic, and—” She stopped abruptly, and for whatever she had been about to say substituted, “this and that.” A small, sardonic smile, then: “I fear I shall be forced to cultivate a taste for romantical poetry, or your brother will have nothing to do with me.”
“Roland is perhaps too much inclined to be romantical,” said Sophie, “but he is not a fool—though I cannot deny that he is a very young man, with some of the follies thereof. And now you are here, and have begun to be properly acquainted, I am sure he cannot fail to appreciate his good fortune.”
Lucia smiled tightly and sipped her tea. “I do wish,” she said, returning cup to saucer, “that your younger brother did not remind me quite so much of my own.”
Sophie winced. “Lucia . . .”
“Will you make me a promise, Sophie?” Lucia set down her teacup altogether and gazed earnestly into Sophie’s eyes.
“Of course,” said Sophie at once.
A Season of Spells (A Noctis Magicae Novel) Page 4
