Betraying Season

by Marissa Doyle

  “It didn’t seem to be too wearing a task for the poor boy, Mother.” Doireann rolled her eyes.

  “No, it was rather a pleasant one,” Niall said easily. Sometimes agreeing with Doireann was the best way to shut her up. “Now that it’s done, may I ask again why I was supposed to be so charming to her?”

  “It’s not done yet, my dear one. It’s only just started. I didn’t know that her governess was ill. That will make it even easier.” Mother looked at him, and her smile faded into sternness. “I want Miss Leland so in love with you by May that she’ll do anything for you.”

  “What? In love?” Niall suddenly felt wary. “Why? What will she need to do for me?”

  “Mo mhac ionuin.” Mother pulled him across the room and pushed him into the sofa. “My dear, dear son. Please, trust me. We need Miss Leland’s help. What better way to get it than to make her love us?”

  “Her help in what? Mother, what is going on?” He started to rise, frowning, but she pushed him back down again with just a glance.

  “Shhh. All in good time, darling. All in good time. Just keep going on as you have begun, and all will be well.”

  Doireann stretched and yawned. “Oh, for God’s sake, Mother. Why don’t you just put an attraction spell on the chit and save the poor boy the trouble of being charming?”

  “Don’t be an idiot.” Mother’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You know very well why that wouldn’t work. I need her to come to us of her own free will, not under influence of a spell.”

  Niall took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I like the sound of this. It’s one thing to befriend her. It’s another matter entirely to set out to entrap her.”

  “Niall, Niall! Miss Leland is a grown woman with a season’s worth of experience in matters of flirtations and love affairs. She’s not made of glass. She won’t break if she’s eventually disappointed in love.” Mother bent and dropped a kiss on his head, then swept from the room.

  Doireann rose from her seat. “Just go on as you have begun,” she mimicked. “Poor girl. She’ll be putty in your hands. Dare we trust you with her?”

  Niall closed his eyes for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I should like to discuss this some other time, Doireann. Perhaps in the next century?”

  “Oh, does Mummy’s little diddums have an achy-wakey head? Poor iddle mannikins.” Doireann’s voice twisted in a parody of sympathy. “Just do what Mummy tells you, and evvyting will go better again, Mummy promises. . . . Good God, it makes me want to puke, the way she fawns over you just because that bloody duke got you on her.”

  “I didn’t ask to be the duke’s son.” He and Doireann seemed to have this conversation at least twice a year. Well, it was March, after all. They were probably due for it about now.

  “I know. And you don’t have to be so damned nice about it to me all the time. That makes it worse, somehow.” Doireann pirouetted around the couch and leaned over his shoulder, laughing. Her quicksilver moods left him dizzy sometimes.

  “Poor Niall, to have to deal with both Mother and me,” she whispered in his ear. “Between us we’re probably enough to sour you on women forever. Well, iddle mannikins, take your sister’s—pardon me, half sister’s—advice.”

  He sighed. “Yes?”

  “Watch yourself while you lure sweet little Miss Leland into falling in love with you. Make sure that she doesn’t make you the biter bit.” She laughed and kissed his cheek, then tugged a lock of his hair hard enough to hurt.

  Niall sat staring into the fire long after she had danced, chortling, from the room. It didn’t feel right, setting out to intentionally trifle with a girl’s affections like this. It would be nice if Mother would stop being so mysterious about her plans, but he knew from long experience that she would tell him when she was ready to and not before. There wasn’t much he could do but play along until then. In the meanwhile, flirting with a beautiful young woman certainly beat brooding about his life and reading about German railroads.

  “Don’t worry, my dear. It will be all right.”

  Pen looked up from her book into Dr. Carrighar’s face. “Who said I was worrying?”

  “That was the third sigh you have fetched up from somewhere near your toes. Unless you find it too close in here, I must assume that you are worried, or nervous, or otherwise perturbed. Don’t be. After the initial shock, they’ll get over it. You are as advanced as they are in your studies—you won’t be a drag on them. In fact, you might give some of them a run for their money.” Dr. Carrighar leaned back in his chair and gave her an encouraging smile.

  Dr. Carrighar had long since retired from his positions as chancellor and professor of metaphysics at St. Kilda’s University. But he had retained a position as tutor to a handpicked group of scholars, chosen by him to be tutored in magic, as well as the more conventional subjects offered at the university. Today would be the first day that Pen would join in a tutorial session, and despite her brave words, she was worried. Females did not attend university. Would Dr. Carrighar’s scholars mind sharing their tutorial with a girl?

  Dr. Carrighar knew she could keep up with his regular students—at least he kept saying so. Pen herself was reserving judgment until after she had met them.

  Footsteps and a murmur of voices in the hallway outside the study told her that her wait was over. She sat straighter in her chair, at the far edge of the semicircle drawn around Dr. Carrighar’s writing table, and clasped her hands tightly in her lap as the doctor replied, “Come in!” to the knock on his door.

  Norah came in first, bobbing a curtsey. “The students, sir,” she announced, and shot Pen a fierce look that was probably meant to be encouraging, though on Norah’s homely face one could never be sure. Pen assumed the best and smiled her thanks back at the maid.

  Four young men shambled into the room, scuffling their feet and flapping hats to rid them of the worst of the latest rain. The first stopped dead when he saw Pen and nearly caused a pileup of his three cohorts as a result. After that first shocked look, he bobbed his head and quickly claimed the seat farthest from her. It was almost comical, and Pen might have giggled if she weren’t so very apprehensive.

  The other three students shot her looks of varying surprise and uneasiness as they too filed in, and there was a minor scuffle to see who could get the next farthest seat. The ultimate loser, a tall, redheaded young man, took the chair by her with ill-concealed irritation and pulled it as far from her as he could while twitching aside the folds of his academic gown, as if casual contact with her would taint them.

  Dr. Carrighar made the vague, rumbling sound that usually preceded his speeches. But right now it was accompanied by twinkling eyes, and Pen realized that he was muffling a laugh.

  “Miss Leland,” he finally began, “these are the messieurs Doherty, Sheehan, Quigley, and O’Byrne, my students of magic. Gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that we have been joined by my houseguest, Miss Penelope Leland, who is visiting from England.”

  There was a silence. Pen pretended to examine one of the botanical prints hanging on the wall with great interest so that she wouldn’t accidentally meet anyone’s eyes. Then one of the students, the small, dark-haired one who had entered first, squeaked, “Er, just for today you mean, of course.”

  “Just for today, Mr. O’Byrne, and just for as long as her visit lasts. She has come here expressly to study, and I thought that both you and she would benefit from each other’s knowledge.”

  One of the students—she couldn’t tell which—smothered something that sounded suspiciously like a snort.

  “Yes, Mr. Quigley?” Dr. Carrighar inquired mildly.

  “Nothing, sir.” It was the second youth from the end, the one with sandy brown hair and a long nose. “Just a cough, sir.”

  “I have something to say, if Fergus isn’t brave enough,” said the student closest to Pen. Just now his face matched his spectacularly red hair. He shot Quigley a quick, contemptuous look, then turned to Dr. Carrighar. “We’re here
to learn, sir, not play nursemaid to a visiting English who has the fancy to play bluestocking for a week or two. I object to her being here.”

  Dr. Carrighar appeared to consider this. “On what grounds do you base your objections, Mr. Doherty?”

  “Why, on what I just said,” Doherty replied, scowling.

  “I see.” Dr. Carrighar made a steeple of his hands and tapped them against the end of his nose. “Miss Leland may choose whether or not to consider herself a bluestocking, but she may claim the title of serious scholar with all due truth and honor. She is indubitably from England, but I can and do emphatically vouch for her right to be here. It is my tutorial, after all, and you are here because you have been invited. I have invited her as well. If you do not feel comfortable in her presence, you are certainly welcome to leave.”

  Doherty blinked. “But, sir. She’s a woman.”

  Pen tried to maintain a gracious expression, but inwardly she seethed. He has spoken the word woman in the same tone he might have used to say smallpox.

  “Yes, I am aware of that fact.”

  “None of the great magic wielders—at least, not the real ones—have been women. Only men were chosen to be Druids. Women aren’t capable of doing more than curing warts and concocting love charms for the incredulous. Hedge-witch nonsense. I thought we were here to study serious magic, and we can’t with a woman among us.”

  Dr. Carrighar’s face was bland and smooth. “You think so, do you?” he asked gently.

  Pen glanced at Doherty. Couldn’t he sense the mounting annoyance in Dr. Carrighar’s tone?

  The young man in the third seat—Pen deduced that it must be the one named Sheehan—shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Maybe we ought to give her a chance, Eamon. We don’t know what she might be capable of.”

  Eamon Doherty shook his head. “Dr. Carrighar, you should know that only men can wield true magic.”

  Pen felt herself flush with anger. What about Ally? What about Persy, who had bested Dr. Carrighar’s own son last year in a magical duel? This Doherty probably couldn’t hold a candle to either of them. She opened her mouth to start to refute him, but caught Dr. Carrighar’s faint shake of his head.

  “I am sorry you labor under that misapprehension, Mr. Doherty,” he said. “Perhaps I have been remiss in allowing your personal preferences to indicate the course of our studies thus far. It was, I see now, an error. Let us discuss what reading you have done since our last meeting, and then I think we will explore a new topic.”

  Doherty glowered. The one called Quigley tried to do his best to copy Doherty’s expression, and O’Byrne and Sheehan looked cautious but agreeable. Pen remained silent, but pulled out the notes she had made on Eriugena.

  She did not volunteer any comments during the discussion that followed, but answered the questions Dr. Carrighar put to her as quickly and concisely as she could while ignoring Doherty’s barely concealed sighs and impatient shifting in his chair. Even so, the atmosphere remained strained. Pen was grateful when after two hours Dr. Carrighar put down the old-fashioned goose-quill pen he had toyed with through the tutorial.

  “I think that will do for today,” he announced. “For our next meeting on Saturday, I should like you to begin researching the role of the Triple Goddess, also called Danu or Dana, in Irish myth and magic. Come back and tell me what you find, and we shall construct our investigations accordingly.”

  Eamon Doherty slammed his book shut, stuffed it with his notes into his leather haversack, and left the room without speaking after shooting Pen a burning look.

  “ ‘The Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone, three goddesses and one,’ ” recited Patrick Sheehan as he wound his muffler around his neck. “My gran could have told us about the Triple Goddess.”

  “Which one? The Maiden or the Mother? No, it must have been the Crone,” said Quigley contemptuously. “Did they get together for cozy chats over tea?”

  “Go easy, Fergus,” muttered O’Byrne as Sheehan turned a dull red.

  “Gran got milk from her cows and eggs from her hens all winter when she asked the Goddess’s blessing on them at midsummer,” he said to Quigley. “When your husband is dead and you’ve got six mouths to feed, there’s not much better magic than that.”

  “None better, indeed,” Dr. Carrighar echoed. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.”

  Quigley left, his nose in the air. O’Byrne nodded briefly to Pen and followed him out. Sheehan finally finished with his muffler and turned to Pen. “Failte,” he said to her, then ducked his head and left.

  Pen turned to Dr. Carrighar.

  “It means ‘welcome,’ ” he said. “Well, one and a half out of four is not bad, for the first day. Sheehan is a good-hearted lad, and O’Byrne was mostly civil. I think they will all come around, eventually.”

  “I hope so.” Pen sighed and slumped in her chair. Those two hours had felt more like six.

  “Excuse me, sir, miss.” Norah stuck her head around the door. She looked excited. “There’s callers, if you please.”

  “Callers?” Dr. Carrighar raised one eyebrow. “At the front door or the back?”

  Norah opened her mouth and closed it, and held a small silver tray out to him. He leaned forward in his chair and took the cards it held.

  “Lady Keating and Mr. Niall Keating,” he read aloud. “Front door, I assume, then.”

  Pen looked down at her dress in dismay. She had worn her plainest, most severe gown of gray merino without even a touch of lace or ribbon, hoping that such a sober costume would make Dr. Carrighar’s students take her a little more seriously. Did she have time to run upstairs and change her dress, or at least fix her hair more becomingly? Or maybe a quick summoning spell to bring down a ribbon or her lace cuffs—

  “Shall I bring in tea or such, sir?” Norah asked eagerly. “Mrs. Carrighar was in the parlor, so I took ’em in there to her.”

  “The parlor?” Poor Ally was, as usual, resting by the fire in the drawing room, which had a coal heater in it. The scent of peat smoke from the other fireplaces in the house worsened her nausea. Pen knew she would be mortified to receive guests in her night robe. She shook out her petticoats and hurried down the hall to the front of the house. She’d have to see them as she was, looking most definitely like a bluestocking.

  Lady Keating’s distinctive perfume announced her presence, even with the drawing room doors closed. Pen hoped Ally wasn’t finding it too overwhelming. It would kill her if she were to throw up in front of visitors.

  “Ah, Miss Leland!” Lady Keating rose as she entered. “Since I am carrying you off to go shopping tomorrow, I thought that I ought to reassure your guardians that you will be well protected while under my care.” She turned her smile on Ally. “It is delightful to meet Mrs. Carrighar, though I am sorry to find her indisposed.”

  “A passing infirmity, Lady Keating,” Ally murmured from her sofa. She seemed no paler than usual, and in her quilted satin dressing gown she reminded Pen of a medieval queen, receiving visitors from her bed. “Won’t you ask Norah to send in refreshments?”

  “She’s on her way.” Taking a breath, Pen turned and curtsied to Niall Keating, who had stood silently during their conversation. “Mr. Keating.”

  “Miss Leland.” He bowed, then gave her a long look. Pen remembered again her plain gown and scraped-back hair and wished she could hide behind Ally’s sofa. But his expression was clearly admiring.

  “Penelope has just had her first tutorial with Dr. Carrighar’s students,” said Ally, nodding her into a chair near Niall’s. “A little unconventional for a young girl, I know, but it would be foolish not to take advantage of such an opportunity for learning.”

  “Ah. We couldn’t help wondering who the young men were.” Lady Keating relaxed into her chair. Pen saw her exchange a glance with her son. “Did it go well, my dear?”

  “As well as could be expected. They didn’t quite throw me out of the room, though it seemed a near thing at first. I am not sure if they were more p
ut off by my being female or English,” Pen answered. An image of Doherty’s sneer rose in her mind’s eye.

  “This is a very conservative country, I think you will find. And there are still strong feelings about the presence of the English on Irish soil. Old wounds—and some not so old—that have never fully healed.” Lady Keating sighed. “It is, however, to Dr. Carrighar’s credit that he recognizes your intellectual abilities. What are you studying with them?”

  “Oh, er—” Pen floundered. “Dr. Carrighar was going to give me some readings, since I cannot go to the university library to study. Some aspects of ancient history . . . um, and metaphysical trends of thought—”

  To her relief, Dr. Carrighar came in just then, followed by a harassed-looking Norah bearing a tray of small wineglasses and biscuits. “My heather wine,” he said with a gracious smile. “It came out rather well last year, I thought, but you must be the judge. How are you, Lady Keating?”

  Pen gratefully let him take over the conversation. She would have to concoct a believable cover story for her magical studies. And the sooner, the better, if she was going to start meeting people outside the household.

  “Sitting through that tutorial can’t have been an easy thing to do,” Niall Keating said to her under Dr. Carrighar’s cheerful rumbling. “The greater number of my classmates at Oxford and Göttingen would never have admitted that most women would be as intelligent as they were, given the same education. It doesn’t sound as if students here are any different.”

  “They weren’t. It bothers me that most of them weren’t even willing to give me a chance, though I really can’t have expected otherwise. I tried to look unfrivolous and academic, to make them feel more comfortable.” She gestured at her plain gray dress.

  He gave her an appraising look. “That was sensible of you, but I’ll wager it didn’t work.”