Gray shut his mouth abruptly as Sophie whirled to face him across the expanse of their bedroom, more nearly afraid of her than he had ever been before. The gods knew that he had witnessed more than one display of fury, of outrage, of self-destructive anguish—had been caught up in the destructive wash of her magick, had suffered for it, though never so painfully as Sophie herself—but never till this moment had that fury, that outrage, that anguish, with all the force of their shared magick behind it, been directed squarely and consciously at him.
He had not expected her to be pleased by Kergabet’s proposal to send him alone to the Normand border, or with his own inclination to accept it—naturally not. After all, however, she had encouraged him to work with Lord de Vaucourt, despite the latter’s making it insultingly clear that her own assistance was not wanted; she had conceded, if reluctantly, to his meeting with Henry Taylor, before Amelia’s flight rendered the subject moot. Had he not had some justification for supposing that she might be similarly understanding in this case?
Sophie’s face was starkly pale, save the twin scarlet patches of her cheeks; her eyes, darkened from warm brown to the black of water under river-ice, sparked dangerously, and her hands clenched ivory-knuckled in the folds of her sea-green gown.
“I had rather go with you than alone, love,” Gray said. She glared at him, dashed furious tears from her eyes with one trembling hand, but appeared to be letting him speak. “Can you doubt it? I had a thousand times rather have you with me, for my own sake; and for yours, I had rather—I had always rather—you had useful work to do than be mewed up in idleness, waiting. But can you not see—it is as you told me, when Vaucourt would not accept your help, though he so badly needed it—this is a matter of more import than either of us.”
To his vast (if secret) relief, Sophie appeared to be listening.
“Kergabet has not much liking for the notion of sending you into what may soon become a field of battle,” Gray continued, “but if the choice were his alone, I believe he should agree to it, for he knows both of us well enough to . . . to believe what we may be capable of, if he cannot altogether understand it. But, Sophie, it is not Kergabet who must be persuaded, and certainly not I; and I cannot blame him for wishing to set things in motion at once, rather than spending”—he had nearly, disastrously, said wasting—“the gods know how much time in attempting to persuade your father.”
“I could persuade him,” said Sophie darkly. “As I persuaded your mama to leave off her badgering, not so long ago—”
“But you would not,” said Gray, attempting to keep his tone both gentle and implacable. “Not in such a case. And, besides, love, that is a method for the moment only; you should not be out of his sight for a quarter of an hour before he had all of London in an uproar, searching for you to bring you back to him, when instead—”
“When instead we ought all to be seeking the Professor et al., yes,” said Sophie.
The righteous fury had all gone out of her now, and left her resigned and sadly diminished. Gray—near tears himself, to his shame, for he liked leaving her no more than she liked his going—held out his arms, and Sophie crept into them.
“You will come back to me,” she said, her voice muffled by the fabric of his coat. “You will come back safe, and not . . . not . . .” What words was she repressing, behind that swallowed sob? “Promise me.”
“Of course, love.” Gray bent to kiss the top of Sophie’s ear. And if by some mischance I am too long about it for your liking, I expect you shall turn up again to rescue me.
CHAPTER XVII
In Which Sophie Loses an Argument
Sophie saw Gray off just after sunup—with solemn, quiet dignity, their true farewells having been made in the privacy of their bedroom, in the course of the night just past—and, having watched the anonymous hired carriage round the turning of Grosvenor Square and out of sight, turned back towards the house and climbed the steps with leaden feet. At the top of the steps she paused for a long moment, breathing slowly and carefully, and drew the veil of her concealing magick over herself from head to toes. I am carved from marble, like the statues of Ceres and Proserpina in the square. I am clothed in armour, as wise Minerva, and no barbed word can pierce it.
Then she pushed open the door.
Breakfast was a painful ordeal, and Sophie escaped Mrs. Marshall’s volubility, Sieur Germain’s silent remorse, and the cautious, quiet compassion of everyone else, as soon as she decently could, wishing all the while that she had thought to ask for her breakfast on a tray in her room.
Having retreated thither, however, she found it still worse, strewn with Gray’s possessions—those not needed for his journey rooted out of their proper places and not yet tidied away—but firmly and indefinitely bereft of Gray himself; having indulged in a brief, useless, and infuriating fit of weeping, she smoothed away the evidence of her distress, tidied her hair, put on her best hat, and went downstairs to request conveyance to the Royal Palace.
* * *
Sophie had never before sought an audience with the King of her own volition, without prior invitation, and the process proved frustratingly lengthy—a just punishment, Sophie reflected, for her frequent reluctance to visit her father. After all, he is the King of Britain; he has more pressing matters to attend to than a visit without portfolio from a wayward child.
Or had he, on the contrary, deduced the purpose of her visit, and did he seek to avoid discussing it?
In any event, after being twice told that His Majesty was occupied with urgent business, and on a third visit kicking her heels in the rose-garden for well over an hour, she was at last summoned by a steward and conducted to His Majesty’s study.
“Sophia!” King Henry rose from behind his desk and came forward to kiss her. “You are well, my dear, I hope?”
“Father,” she said, attempting a smile. “I am well enough; and yourself?”
“As you say,” he replied, drawing her with him to sit on a lion-footed sofa at the far end of the room from the desk. “Well enough.”
They spoke for some time—a little awkwardly, perhaps, but no more so than was usual for the two of them—of matters of mutual interest; the health and well-being of the Grosvenor Square family and of Queen Edwina and her sons having been duly canvassed, His Majesty revealed that the King’s Own Cavalry Regiment, in which Prince Edward held a captain’s commission, was preparing for active duty in Normandie, and wished to know how, in Sophie’s opinion, matters stood between Prince Roland and Lucia MacNeill—which forced Sophie to admit to herself, if not to him, that she had no longer the least idea.
At last she could bear the weight of her unspoken purpose no longer, and without further preamble said, “Do not you think, Father, that I have a duty to assist in the search for my sister?”
King Henry raised his fine-drawn white brows. “Your sister?” he said.
“Stepsister, then,” said Sophie impatiently. “We were brought up together, in the same house, the same family, such as it was; my mother was the only one Amelia ever knew, for her own died when Amelia was no more than a baby. We believed ourselves sisters for seventeen years; and I am capable of many things, Father, but not of overcoming an attachment seventeen years in the making.”
A year ago, three years ago, indeed, she should not have believed herself capable of such a speech; for some time before the sudden and irreversible disruption of their lives, Amelia and she had antagonised one another as, perhaps, only sisters can, when the comradeship of childhood has been curdled by jealousy and resentments only too clearly understood. But now Amelia was missing, very likely in dire trouble, and whatever Sophie’s feelings towards her might be in the ordinary way, it was impossible to imagine abandoning her to her fate.
“And Lord Kergabet has sent Gray to Normandie to look for her,” she continued, rising from the sofa and turning to face her father. “Not that only, of course, but partly that.” She had be
en wrong, she saw by his expression of surprise, to suppose that he had guessed her reason for wishing to see him; had he thought that Gray should for a moment consider not telling her where he was going, and why? “I am only asking to be permitted to follow him there, and help in whatever way I am able.”
“It is quite impossible for you to go to Normandie, my dear,” said His Majesty. To his credit, he spoke regretfully, but a reluctant denial was a denial nevertheless, and brooked no protest.
Sophie drew breath, nevertheless, and made one. “On the contrary, Father,” she said, “it is quite impossible for me to remain here without my husband. You have not forgot, I hope, what befell the last time Gray and I were separated by hundreds of miles?”
Gray, had he been present, might have pointed out (as he had pointed out to her during one of the quietly stormy conversations that preceded his departure) that unless the separation were a long one, and as he was not likely to be imprisoned under interdiction in the course of this journey, the likelihood of those consequences’ being repeated was small. He might very well have been swayed, too, by the King’s perfectly sensible assertions as to the dangers to which she would be exposed, so near the contested borders.
He was not present, however, being at that moment somewhere between London and the military garrison at Ivry, on the river Eure, and Sophie therefore felt entirely free to make use of whatever weapons might best serve her purpose.
“Sophia, a cavalry regiment is no place for a woman—”
“Have none of the officers wives, or daughters?” Sophie persisted. She turned on her heel and began to pace, lest the nervous energy engendered by this conversation spill out in some less acceptable manner.
She knew, and her father must also be well aware, that armies attracted camp-followers—the wives and sisters and daughters of the common soldiers, who in return for a half share of the daily ration did the cooking and washing for their own men and many others besides—and that therefore it was entirely likely that the Ivry garrison had already plenty of female inhabitants. It is no place for a gentlewoman, I suppose he means.
Rather than giving voice to any of these unhelpful thoughts, she said, “Women serve in Donald MacNeill’s household guard. Ceana MacGregor—Lucia’s guard captain—was the finest archer of her clan when she was my age.”
Her father raised his eyebrows.
“I may not be capable of drawing a bow or swinging a sword,” said Sophie, in answer to his unspoken question, halting and folding her arms, “but a mage-officer trained me in defensive and offensive magicks. I am not helpless, Father, I assure you!”
The King sighed. “It is not that I think you helpless, my dear,” he said. “Only that I do not wish to fling you headlong into danger, to no good purpose.”
“But you are sending Ned,” said Sophie quietly.
Ned will be King of Britain one day, he might have replied, and her defence is part of his duty; or, Ned has been trained in arms, and in defensive magicks, since he was a child. He might even have circled back to his original argument, by pointing out that Ned was a man, and she a woman, and the battlefield was not her place.
Sophie was prepared to rebut any or all of these answers: She was the Princess Royal and owed a duty to her kingdom as much as Ned did; she had seen real combat (if on a small scale), as he had not. Instead, however, her father looked at her with every one of his years writ clearly on his face, with the weariness of ages in his blue eyes (so like her brothers’; so different from her own), and said, “I have lost you once, Sophia. I could not bear to lose you a second time, knowing so well what I had lost.”
Oh, Ned, thought Sophie, adding this to her mental list of things which she knew but must never reveal to any of her brothers.
“Papa,” she said—she had never called him so before, but the word was out before she could think better of it—“you cannot protect me by packing me in goose-down and locking me up in a strongbox until the trouble is over! When you opened the box again, Gray and I should both be withered away, as we nearly were when he was Cormac MacAlpine’s prisoner in Alba, and all your precautions wasted.”
She drew nearer to him, and dared to lay a hand upon his arm; he was looking down at her with such intensity, and wearing such a stricken expression, that she scarcely knew how to meet his gaze.
“You do not love me any the less, I think,” she continued, nevertheless, “because I am not so biddable as I might be, or so eager to please.”
As she had hoped, this drew a wry smile and a fond, if rueful, chuckle. “No, indeed,” the King conceded.
“And I swear by the Lady Diana,” said Sophie, taking her courage in both hands, “by fleet-footed Mercury and Ceres of the hearth, that I can be of far more use to you—to the kingdom—in the field than I could possibly be at home. Only send me where my husband is, Father, and you shall see what we may accomplish together.”
It was not an idle promise; though each of them might be powerful alone, the rite of marriage confarreatio had linked their magicks so that together, working in concert, they were capable of quite remarkable things. Reminding His Majesty of the grave dangers of their connexion had perhaps begun to sap his determination to keep her here—out of one sort of danger, but bearing steadily towards the other; slowly, if distance were the only thing separating them, but with terrifying rapidity if things were to go ill with Gray, as they had in Alba—and Sophie hoped that this recollection of its power might complete that work.
Truly, however, she had always felt at sea in her dealings with her father—this near-stranger who knew at once so much of her and so very, very little—and the present conversation was no different.
King Henry, as Sophie had remarked before, knew the value of patient silence in unsettling his opponent. He deployed this weapon now, watching her calmly as she struggled to keep silence also; and before long she broke.
“I shall run away after him if I must,” she said, recklessly honest. “I had rather not—I had very much rather not—I do know the duty I owe to you, Father, though you may not think it—but I shall not let any harm come to Gray on my account.”
“I do not doubt it,” said her father, disconcertingly calm. Does he suppose I do not mean what I say?
“A-and if I am forced to run away,” Sophie went on, “I shall be all alone, or as good as; I cannot ask anyone else to follow me against your wishes—”
“Sophia!” The King held up a hand, and Sophie’s impassioned argument fell away into silence. Again he let the silence stretch, until at last he said, “It was foolish of me, of course, to suppose that you might have grown less reckless with age, or less single-minded. May I propose a compromise?”
His raised brows, the slight tilt of his chin, made clear that the question was not pro forma; if Sophie wished to know in what this compromise consisted, she must say so.
And do I so wish? She could not decide.
But if a path existed which did not require her either to submit to an indefinite separation or to defy her father outright and embark on a solitary flight across the kingdom, did she not owe it to Gray, and to herself, to seek it out?
“You may,” she said, folding her hands together to still their anxious fidgeting.
“Should you begin to experience any . . . symptoms which you recognise as connected with Mr. Marshall’s absence,” said His Majesty, “or should you have reasonable grounds to suppose him likewise affected, you will inform me at once, so that I may arrange for his swift return; and in the meantime you will abide by my decisions on this question, and will give me your word not to attempt to follow him.”
Sophie pressed her hands together more tightly, and said nothing.
“However,” the King went on, “I shall not insist on your kicking your heels at Court; so long as you are adequately guarded, I shall make no objection to your travelling a little way—to Oxford, for example—should you
have some project in view, which I believe you have. You should have less leisure to fret and borrow trouble, I think, if your mind were better occupied.”
“You mean, I collect,” said Sophie, “that in exchange for my agreeing to stay quietly in England whilst Gray is risking his life in Normandie, I shall be indulged in my . . . what was it those learned Fellows called it? . . . my philanthropic fervour, with respect to Lady Morgan College? Are you certain, sir, that you wish to extend your hand into that particular hornets’ nest at present?”
Her father winced, just perceptibly, at her tone. And truly, thought Sophie, was his approval of this venture of hers not precisely what she had been hoping for, when she read the profoundly irritating letter from which she had just been quoting? To do the thing openly and properly, with His Majesty’s backing, and the resources to match her ambitions for the place, and a royal writ to fling in the teeth of those Fellows who thought it their right (nay, their calling) to thwart her?
But the price he asks . . .
She forced herself to consider the matter rationally. If only she could ask someone’s advice—Gray’s, of course, for preference, but then, if Gray were here, she should not have been in this equivocal position to begin with. Jenny or Lucia or Mór MacRury, Sophie was certain, would give her intelligent and sensible counsel; even Joanna could at least have offered another perspective on the matter, though Joanna’s own decisions were as apt to be impetuous as soberly considered.
Well, then: If Gray were here, or Jenny or Lucia or any of them, how might they advise me in this case?
“May I,” she said, looking up at her father, “may I have a little time to consider?”
“Certainly, my dear,” he said. He patted her shoulder—an awkward and diffident but oddly comforting gesture—and returned to his writing-desk, where he took up the topmost of a stack of dispatches and bent his gaze to it, effectively leaving her alone with her thoughts.
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