Tournament of Ruses

by Kate Stradling

  “Umquam occultato,” he said succinctly.

  “Umquam occultato,” she echoed. That warmth of magic streamed down her arm into the tree. This time she managed to keep her fingers in place.

  “My turn?” asked Will.

  “By all means,” said the Prime Minister dryly.

  Flora stepped out of the way and watched, fascinated, as Will traced the exact same pattern onto the tree bark. When he touched the seal, however, the words he softly spoke were different.

  “Aefre aetluta thu.”

  Flora looked to the Prime Minister but saw nothing amiss in his expression. When she shifted her attention back, she found that Will had extended the second cup of magic back to her.

  “What am I to do now?” she asked naïvely.

  “Scatter them both within the circle,” he replied. “We’re done for today.”

  “Let’s hope it took,” said Prime Minister Moreland grimly.

  The group of visitors began to gather everything they had brought, leaving Flora to disperse the magic. She assumed from their lack of attention that she could do it however she pleased. After she had sprinkled the strange substance from one cup, she simply dumped the contents of the second onto the nearest withered rosebush.

  The Morelands had brought the trees on a sled. They stacked the empty pots and shovels on it for the return trip. Dr. Grayson bid the company farewell and set off through the side gate alone, presumably to go home. It was late afternoon already.

  Will and Viola were set to leave with the sled and Gregor. Prime Minister Moreland stood with Charlie and Edmund on the porch and beckoned for Flora to join them. As she approached, she walked into lightly falling snow and looked up in surprise. The overcast sky had renewed its quiet storm. At her feet, the snow had already begun to stick. The ground was frozen once again. Flora looked back over her shoulder to the well, only to discover a light layer of snow across the whole yard. The covered well was nowhere to be seen.

  “How does it look?” Nicholas Moreland asked her.

  “It—” she said haltingly. “So it’ll return back to normal now?”

  “Within the ring everything will continue to grow in a perpetual spring,” he replied. “Outside, it will appear completely normal. Only you and Will and those you have authorized—such as Edmund—will ever be able to find the true path to the well. Everyone else will wander your garden in its proper season. That is the effect of the spells that we’ve laid this afternoon.”

  Flora stared, hardly believing that such a thing could even be possible.

  “Neat, huh?” Edmund chirped.

  “Charles, Edmund, you’d better go ahead with those two,” said Prime Minister Moreland. “I suppose it’s well past time that I have a little chat with Lord Dalton. He will be home soon, won’t he?”

  “Don’t tell him,” Flora whispered impulsively. The three Moreland men started in surprise. “Don’t tell him,” she said again. “If you don’t have to, and if he never has to know, if it can be kept concealed from him, don’t tell him.” She was having a hard enough time wrapping her mind around everything that had occurred. She couldn’t imagine how her father would come to terms with it. The Dalton family had always been respectable, tradition-bound people. Magic had no place in their lives. “Is it possible not to tell him?” she asked, though, for she realized that she had requested a rather unreasonable thing.

  “He’ll be just like Mother!” Edmund declared, and Charlie promptly cuffed him on the back of the head.

  Prime Minister Moreland spared a dry glance toward his youngest son. “It is possible, Miss Dalton. Are you sure you want to carry this secret alone, though?”

  “I think it would really trouble my dad,” she replied decisively. “I’d rather keep it to myself and spare him the worry.”

  Relief flashed across his face. It must have been a strong emotion for it to manifest even in that instant, Flora thought. Nicholas Moreland had one of the most impassive faces she had ever seen, a trait that he had no doubt developed through his many years in politics.

  “Very well,” he said. “Then we shall all take our leave here. Thank you, Miss Dalton, for your cooperation. We’ll be seeing you again very soon, no doubt.”

  True as that statement probably was, Flora didn’t like the sound of it one bit.

  Chapter Ten: The Order of Things

  The backyard is buried in snow once again. At least, that’s what it looks like. The closer I get to the ring of trees and the well there, the more it looks like springtime. There are new buds on the rosebushes already. I should give them a proper pruning now rather than waiting for the real spring to hit. The ring of new trees, too, looks like it's already begun to grow, even though they are fresh transplants. It boggles the mind.

  What’s even more boggling is that no one else has noticed anything new in the garden at all. Mrs. Finch caught me coming back from my inspection of the circle this morning and she seemed not to even realize that those trees had not always been there. It makes me wonder if the magic upon them is really that strong, or if the rest of the residents in this household are simply unobservant.

  Sadly, it could very well be the second option.

  I’m still not certain that I’ve done the right thing in withholding all of this from my dad. Part of me feels like he has a right to know. At the same time, what has been told cannot be un-told. If he were to react badly—if he were to denounce Prime Minister Moreland in a meeting of Parliament, for example, for certainly that strange ritual we performed was hardly something he would have wanted his traditional, respectable daughter to take part in—then it would be entirely my fault.

  Look at me. I’m becoming as over-dramatic as Georgiana Winthrop. And speaking of dear Georgiana, I found her application to be consort. I feel so much better about my own now.

  “‘Georgiana is the precious youngest daughter of Lord and Lady Carlton Winthrop,’” Flora read aloud in her most gushing voice. “‘Her grace and beauty are renowned throughout Lenore, as is her kind and gentle nature. She takes great delight in extending a hand of friendship and charity to those in less fortunate circumstances than she’—great delight in lording her own superiority over them, more like—‘and she counts among her close friends the daughters of every noble house in the country.’ Yes, but do they count her as a friend? Every noble house—I suppose that includes mine now.”

  She sat up from her recumbent position and pondered this thought. Would Georgiana’s other friends be reading her application in this sickly sweet tone of voice if they got hold of it? Flora only dared to do so in the safety of her bedroom, with the door locked and only after everyone else in the house had gone to bed, but she still knew it was ungenerous of her.

  But, well, Georgiana was a pill, and reading her ridiculous application aloud made Flora feel somewhat better. Thus, she resumed.

  “‘As consort to the Eternal Prince, she hopes to serve as an ambassador from the citizenry, and her many established connections will serve admirably in that endeavor. She takes great delight in music and art. She has been learning to play the harp since she was a child of nine and at present her skill upon that instrument rivals most music-masters of Lenore.’ I wonder if the music-masters would agree with that,” Flora remarked peevishly. She had never heard Georgiana play the harp, of course, but she supposed that if she had played since she was nine she probably was very good at it. Somehow that bothered Flora, that Georgiana Winthrop was good at anything other than belittling others.

  The application concluded, “She loves to dance and has a very graceful figure. She is a modest and virtuous young woman and will be a priceless jewel to her husband, as she has been to her family since the day she was born.”

  Flora read over it with a disgruntled frown. Georgiana had been a plague upon her thoughts this evening, and she had assumed that reading the ridiculous application would somehow dispel those feelings, but it only made them worse. Georgiana’s application was one that included a picture—an
exquisite, delicate little pastel portrait—and while Flora would have liked to say it was overly flattering to the girl, it was actually quite an accurate depiction. The paragraph, too, while elevated and exaggerated in its language, still conveyed a description of a most accomplished young woman. Flora was exceptionally annoyed.

  Word of her assignment with the consort applications had spread, and she laid the fault at Georgiana’s doorstep. The actual culprit might easily have been Augustina or Dorothea, but none of them would have been at Flora’s house if not for Georgiana, so she bore the brunt of Flora’s blame. While Flora knew this was unjust, it allowed her some solace against the chaos she now faced.

  No sooner had the streets been cleared of snow than people were beating a path to her door, it seemed—and not just girls. She had a stack of calling cards from men and women alike, most of whom she had never heard of. They had come to invite her to lunches and dinners, card parties and evening dances, and Flora, far from being delighted, was horrified.

  Mrs. Olivette herself had appeared that very afternoon and somehow convinced Mrs. Finch to let her into the house. Flora had hitherto avoided any direct encounters, but she couldn’t claim not to know the fashionable woman. She sat with her for almost half an hour. Mrs. Olivette began with sly remarks about the applications, but her slyness escalated into brazen inquiries: did Flora find any candidates better represented than others? Might Flora allow her just the tiniest peek? Would Flora disclose the details of her task?

  She even dangled a free subscription to the Conservatory if Flora was of a mind to let her be useful in any way, and offered to let Flora arrange the applications in her own private room there—and even keep them there, if she would like!

  It was all Flora could do not to growl at the enterprising woman. Through the whole interview, she staunchly clung to a convenient lie: she wasn’t allowed to share the task with anyone, by orders of the Eternal Prince himself. The Prince had given no such orders, of course, but neither had he given her permission to show the applications to anyone. Besides, of all the lies she’d told about his search for a consort, this one was downright tame.

  Thus Mrs. Olivette went away again unsatisfied in her aims, and Flora breathed a sigh of relief. She had expected the woman to leave in a huff, but instead she had been all graciousness. Flora suddenly understood what it meant to be well-connected, that people would fawn over her even in their disappointment. It made her dread even more her fate when everyone discovered her lies about the tournament.

  The doorbell pealed again an hour after Mrs. Olivette’s departure, and—to Flora’s great dismay—Mrs. Finch admitted the visitor.

  It was Georgiana herself. She had come, she said, to visit “dear Flora,” as she had not seen her in “quite ages, darling creature!” Flora supposed that in Georgiana’s dramatic world, two days really was like an eon.

  “I won’t be long, dear Flora,” she gushed. “I just thought, as your particular friend, that I should stop by and see how you were faring. I heard that Mrs. Olivette came to see you earlier.”

  No surprise there, thought Flora. “Yes. It was so very kind of her.”

  “She stopped by to see me as well,” said Georgiana. “She does that from time to time, you know, checking up on us all like she’s our second mother. It’s sweet, don’t you agree?”

  Flora didn’t, but she couldn’t very well say as much.

  Georgiana continued with an affected expression. “I’ve been hearing so many things about you! How busy you suddenly are! Why, scores of people have come to see you over the past couple of days, have they not?”

  “They’ve only left their cards and such.”

  A cunning glint entered Georgiana’s eyes. “So it’s not taken up all your time after all. May I ask…? How impertinent of me! But really, you must forgive my curiosity, as your very dear friend. Have you been able to finish the little task that Charles Moreland was helping you with?”

  And there was the true reason for her visit.

  “No,” said Flora. “There were so many applications, you see.”

  “Is Charles still helping you, then?” Georgiana pitched her voice to sound innocent, but the attempt set Flora’s nerves on edge. Georgiana wanted to hedge her bets against failure with the Prince by keeping Charles Moreland in her back pocket, and she wouldn’t tolerate any interference on Flora’s part.

  Flora thought it best to allay her fears. “No. He was only here to help me with the initial instructions. When I’ve finished, he or someone else from the palace will come to get the files.”

  “Oh, you poor dear! So you’ve been left to such an enormous task on your own?”

  Flora, wary of any offers of assistance, quickly replied, “It’s not so bad. I’ve almost finished.”

  A cunning expression crossed Georgiana’s pretty face. “And I trust that you’ve remembered your friends during the whole grueling process, have you not?”

  “Of course,” said Flora. How could she forget them when their applications numbered among the most ridiculous?

  “And what about Viola Moreland?”

  This question took her by surprise. “What about her?”

  “I suppose the Prince would want her application placed favorably,” Georgiana remarked, and her eyes bored into Flora.

  “I haven’t come across Miss Moreland’s application yet,” Flora realized aloud. “There are still several I have to look through. No doubt hers is among them.”

  “Well, I’m sure that her favor with the Prince is already enough of an advantage to her, don’t you think? That is to say, she wouldn’t need an advantageous placement. Oh, but then she’ll probably get her application moved to exactly where she wants it. There are advantages to being the Prime Minister’s daughter, I suppose.”

  She smiled a malicious smile.

  An unpleasant chill ran down Flora’s spine. “As I said, I haven’t even seen Miss Moreland’s application. I wasn’t given any instructions regarding her placement, either.”

  She managed to get rid of Georgiana shortly thereafter, but the annoyance of that meeting had lingered all evening and into the night. As she thought back on it, she didn’t really know what Georgiana had hoped to accomplish, unless she was simply trying to curry favor while attempting to poison Flora against Viola Moreland.

  And, well, the visit had brought something astonishing to Flora’s attention. The moment she retired to her bedroom for the night, she went through each and every folder in the stack of applications to confirm her suspicions. And confirm them she did.

  There was no application for Viola at all.

  Had she accidentally lost it when she slipped on the ice that first morning? Had the Prince ordered Viola’s application withheld so that it could be placed most favorably after the others had been organized?

  As she stared at Georgiana’s perfect portrait now, though, another possibility nagged at her: what if Viola Moreland had no application? What if she intended not to participate in this quest for a royal consort?

  She already had Will. Why did she need to aspire to the Eternal Prince?

  Viola’s favor with the Prince had given her an advantage. Practically everyone agreed that he would choose her, that everything else was just a formality. If she did not enter, though, that would render the position wide open. The advantage would shift to those applicants that possessed qualities inherent to a proper consort: grace, beauty, connections. In short, the advantage would shift to someone exactly like Georgiana Winthrop.

  Flora felt more annoyed than ever.

  If she viewed the applications with an objective eye rather than her personal feelings, Georgiana’s was very good. She had no doubt that the pretty Miss Winthrop would be able to charm the Eternal Prince, too, however stone-faced he might be beneath his veil. She was admired enough by other men for Flora to understand that. Charles Moreland may have claimed he had no intentions of marrying her, but he had admitted to seeking her company. Why would the Prince be any different
?

  Part of her felt like it wasn’t fair. Girls like Georgiana could be as terrible as they wanted behind closed doors and get away with it just by plastering on false smiles and batting their pretty eyelashes in mixed company. Was the rest of the world blind, or were such artifices simply acceptable? Either way, it irritated Flora.

  She didn’t want Viola to have to choose between Will and the Eternal Prince, but she thought it was understood that the Prime Minister’s daughter would participate in the tournament. If Viola didn’t, well…

  Well, Flora didn’t think she could stomach the idea of Princess Georgiana of Lenore.

  She shut the folder and slapped it on top of the stack. Reading through the others wouldn’t help. True, there were many impressive applications, but Georgiana’s was at the top, along with Priscilla Irvine’s and Augustina Markham’s, surprisingly. There were others—one of the two Stratford girls, for example—but that top tier was a very select group. Just looking at those applications made Flora feel dowdy and backward in comparison.

  In a fit of pique she blew out her lantern and pulled her covers up over her head. Sleep would help, and if it didn’t, at least it would render her senseless for a few hours. She could consider the conundrum of Viola’s missing application in the morning.

  “Do you know where the Prime Minister’s family lives?” one of the sentries at the palace gates inquired.

  Flora shook her head. She had decided, in the end, that the best solution to her problem was just to ask Viola about the application outright. There was probably a perfectly good reason it wasn’t with the others. Perhaps her father had been in charge of submitting it and had forgotten. Perhaps the Prince really had held it behind, not deeming it to need whatever organization Flora was supposed to be giving.