Betraying Season

by Marissa Doyle

  “Don’t move till I’ve had a chance to look at your head,” commanded a soft voice. It was accompanied by a pressure on his chest, as if someone were holding him down. “I don’t think you hit it on the stones. Not like . . .” The voice trailed into silence.

  He opened his eyes and tried to focus on the source of the voice, but they weren’t working right. All he could see was a blaze of silver light crowning a figure bent over him . . . or did the light shine from the figure itself?

  “Can you hear me?” He felt gentle fingers stroke his forehead, brushing back his hair, then trace the contours of one cheek. “Thank goodness you aren’t wearing that horripilatious hat again tonight or I would have stomped on it.”

  That horripilatious . . . “Pen?” he whispered, and blinked furiously.

  Her face finally swam into focus, but it didn’t help. For some reason, her face, her hair, her bare shoulders—good lord, what was she wearing?—all seemed too bright for him to look upon. He tried squinting, which helped a little.

  “Oh, good, you are awake.” She sat back, sounding relieved. Niall wished she’d start stroking his face again. It had felt almost as if she cared about him again.

  “Do you think you can make it back to the house on foot in a little while?” she asked him. “I’m afraid Doireann took your horse. If not, I could do a carry spell to get you home. It might be tricky since you’re awake, but it worked on Lady Keating.”

  “Pen?” he said again. What was she talking about—his horse, and Doireann, and Mother—

  Memory came crashing over him then like a storm wave. Mother’s ritual to kill the queen, and Pen standing there looking like a Sidhe princess, bare-armed and -legged, holding a glowing sword over her head. “What happened?” he said, trying to sit up.

  She pushed him back down again. “Nothing did. Well, not nothing. But the queen is safe.”

  There was something in her voice, both great sorrow and great joy. “And?” he asked. “Why are you glowing, anyway? Did you paint yourself with phosphor?”

  Pen held up a hand and surveyed it. “Am I glowing? Oh, dear. So that’s why Mrs. Tohill and the footwomen looked so startled. Odd that it doesn’t look any different to me.”

  The physical ache in his head was rapidly being replaced by a mental one. “Pen, what the devil happened?”

  She sighed. “I owe you an apology, Mr. Keating. You were right about the danger to the queen, but fortunately it was averted.”

  “That sword you were holding, was that it? How did you—”

  Pen didn’t seem to hear him. “And I’m afraid your sister has run away with someone named Brian, and your mother—” Her voice caught. “Your mother has sustained a serious head injury. She will survive, but her memory has been . . . altered. She won’t remember anything about the queen and the duke and what she’d tried to do. And I fear she’ll require care from now on.”

  Niall tried to absorb all this information, but instead found himself mostly preoccupied with wondering what the fact that she had called him Mr. Keating meant. Then the rest of her words sank in. “Mother’s memory—how do you know that?” he asked. Did this mean she wouldn’t remember any of this—the plots, the lies—

  “I know,” Pen replied quietly, and he saw her glance down at her right hand. Mother’s ring was on it. For a moment he stared at it too.

  “Mother’s no longer Banmhaor Bande, and you are,” he said slowly. “That’s why she’s lost her memory. You saw the Goddess, didn’t you? That’s why you look so . . . so . . .” What did she look like? It was hard to see her expression by the waning moonlight and by her own mysterious glow, but there was something different in the set of her shoulders, in the way she held herself. Something more assured, more confident, but at the same time more quiet and self-contained.

  Well, that would explain the Mr. Keating business. If she was now Banmhaor Bande in Mother’s place, she was one of the most powerful witches in Ireland. What did she need him for, tagging along after her?

  He struggled to sit up. Right now all he wanted to do was find a quiet dark room to hide in till he could come to terms with everything that had happened. If he was lucky, he would have sorted it out by, oh, Michaelmas perhaps. Michaelmas of next year. Except for losing Pen. He wasn’t sure he’d ever recover from that.

  “What are you doing, Mr. Keating?” Pen pushed him back down. “You’ve gone quite pale again. I don’t think we’d better risk your trying to walk back to the house, after all.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he muttered.

  She leaned over him and ran her fingertips over his forehead, a small frown of concentration on her face. He wasn’t sure whether to beg her to stop or to do it again and again.

  “I could try to do something about your head before I bring you back to the house, if you’d like,” she said. “It’s hurting you, isn’t it? Stunning spells can do that.”

  “You mean, heal it? Like you did for Doherty?”

  She smiled but would not meet his eyes. “If it wouldn’t bother you too much. After all, Eamon Doherty survived my ministrations and he disliked me, too. Perhaps it’s my fate in life to heal people who’d rather I didn’t. Here, let’s turn you a little so that I can see—”

  “It’s not my head that’s hurting the most right now,” he said, struggling to keep his voice steady as hope suddenly flared up. She thought he disliked her? Was that why she was calling him Mr. Keating?

  “No? That’s very odd.” Her fingers fluttered over his forehead again. “I can feel it here, and here—”

  He reached up and gently clasped her hand, then guided it down to rest against the left side of his chest. “This is what’s hurting me the most right now. And if there’s anyone on earth with the power to mend it, it’s you.”

  Still as one of the stones, she knelt there, staring at her hand pressed against his heart.

  “Pen?” he inquired.

  “I said horrible, horrible things to you the other night,” she whispered. “I believed all those dreadful lies Lady Keating told me about you. How can you still—”

  “I’m not going to get into a ‘who was worse to whom’ contest with you. All that’s in the past now. The only horrible thing I can imagine is a future without you in it. I love you, Pen. I know you’re the Goddess’s lady now and you probably don’t need me.”

  “Not need you?” she interrupted. “But—”

  “But I had already written to both our fathers about asking you to marry me the night after the Whelans’ ball, and it might be difficult to explain why that might not happen—”

  He never got to finish the sentence. Suddenly an armful of Pen was upon him, pressing the air out of his lungs with the force of her embrace, not to mention preventing any further words by the simple expedient of covering his mouth with hers. Cooperation seemed inevitable, and then vital.

  “Well, that was quite effective.” He grinned up at her when she finally came up for air. “The heartache’s definitely cured, and after that kiss, I’m not even noticing the headache. A few more of those and I’ll be ready to take on the world.”

  Pen laughed and shook her head, then pressed her fingertips against his forehead again. The pain vanished. “You’ll have to take on the world, headache or not, and so will I,” she said, climbing to her feet and holding out her hand to help him up. “Beginning right now. You must make at least a token attempt to find Doireann, and decide how your mother will be cared for.”

  He accepted her hand and scrambled to his feet. “I know I must. But first I need to find out if you’ll be willing to do all that taking on of the world with me beside you.”

  She looked up at him and then away, her unbound hair blowing over her bare shoulders, and he realized she was wearing little more than a shift. But she didn’t seem at all cold. Maybe that glow that still lingered around her kept her warm.

  Then suddenly she laughed. “I suppose that is our answer.” She held up her right hand, the one bearing his mother’s ring. The
stone in it was glowing bright green. “If the Goddess approves of my marrying you, who am I to say no?”

  FEBRUARY 1839—LOUGHGLASS HOUSE, CORK

  “A special courier has just arrived with letters for you, sir . . . er . . . madam. . . .” Moylan, Lord Keating’s butler, standing in the doorway of the library, turned a violent shade of red and averted his eyes.

  Pen tried not to giggle as she straightened her dress and slid off Niall’s lap and onto the sofa beside him. Poor Moylan. This was the third time he’d walked in on them kissing since they’d arrived at Loughglass to visit Lord Keating on Sunday, and today was only Tuesday. Well, goodness, she and Niall had been married a mere six months, after all. Maybe in another five or ten years they’d be able to behave decorously when alone in a room together. Until then . . .

  “Special courier?” Niall raised an eyebrow and held out his hand. Moylan shuffled reluctantly into the room and proffered a silver tray with two cream-colored envelopes on it. Pen caught a glimpse of a large crest on the topmost one as Niall took them. “Thank you, Moylan.”

  “Sir. Madam.” The butler, still blushing bowed and fled.

  Pen patted her hair to see how badly Niall had disarranged it. “Perhaps we need to be a little more careful. I should be mortified if he complained to your father about us.”

  “If he did, Father wouldn’t care. You’ve bewitched him quite as thoroughly as you have me.” Niall put the letters down and gathered her into his arms. “And both of us are delighted.”

  “Hmmph.” But Pen couldn’t help being pleased—not to mention relieved—at how life had resolved itself since the spring. Well, mostly pleased.

  She had left Bandry Court almost immediately after breakfast the morning after the draiocht. Niall had to reassure the staff and arrange for Lady Keating’s care, as well as attempt to find out where Doireann had gone, and it was not possible for her to stay at the house with him without a chaperone. A grim-faced though polite Padraic drove her back to the city, and she spent the long drive dozing after her mostly sleepless night and drifting into snatches of nightmare. Fortunately, the roads were still in poor repair after the rain, and she was frequently jarred awake.

  Another carriage was just pulling up to the Carrighars’ house as she arrived in Cork. To her surprise, a very familiar-looking slender woman with exquisite posture alighted from it, followed by a plump, sour-faced woman who looked about her fearfully as if expecting an attack. Pen didn’t wait for anyone to open the door for her, but jumped out of the Keatings’ carriage as soon as it had come to a stop.

  “Grandmama?” she called. “Is that you?”

  The slender woman turned. “Penelope, my dear! What perfect timing! Have you been making calls?”

  Pen hugged her right there in the street, which made the other woman sniff disapprovingly. Pen ignored her; Lady Harrow, Grandmama’s constant companion, didn’t approve of much. “Grandmama, I’m delighted to see you,” she said, slightly breathlessly, “but . . . well, what are you doing here?”

  The dowager Lady Atherston looked past Pen at the Keatings’ carriage, from which Padraic was unloading her trunk. “Hmm, I see you’ve been away. Well, child, I’m here because I’ve been sent by your parents to vet a certain young man of this city who sent them an earnest if slightly incoherent letter requesting formal permission to pay his addresses to you,” she announced.

  “I’m not sure I would have called it slightly incoherent,” Lady Harrow put in.

  “Nobody asked your opinion, Jane dear. I thought it was charming. Your sister thought it was serious enough to warrant investigation, but your father is caught up in the queen’s coronation. So I volunteered to come and investigate, since I’ve always wanted to visit Ireland. Now, some tea would be welcome just now—”

  “They do have tea in Ireland, don’t they?” Lady Harrow asked suspiciously.

  “The crossing didn’t agree with her,” Grandmama murmured, taking Pen’s arm. “Just ignore her. My goodness.” She examined Pen’s face. “You’ve grown up a great deal since you came here. You’re quite the lady now, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Gran.” Pen smiled to herself. “Yes, I am.”

  Lady Atherston set about examining both Niall’s credentials and the city of Cork with her customary energy. When Niall returned to Cork a few days later, she subjected him to a thorough examination over a two-and-a-half-hour-long tea, and even managed to arrange an invitation to Loughglass to meet Lord Keating. But what delighted Pen most of all was the fact that Grandmama’s constant companion on her jaunts around the city was Dr. Carrighar. Pen and Ally frequently wished they could have been stowaways in the Carrighars’ carriage in order to eavesdrop on the unlikely combination of the lively if acerbic Lady Atherston, the gloomy Lady Harrow, and Dr. Carrighar, who defied easy description. Indeed, Dr. Carrighar went so far as to order a new coat and trousers in the current style. Pen wondered if Mary Margaret was watching and enjoying the sight of everyone “getting stirred up.”

  Corkwobble had been supplying Ally with a concoction to help assuage her nausea, and it made her far less sleepy than Lady Keating’s fairy whiskey had. He had also set Pen’s mind to rest: Neither Ally nor her baby had been harmed, thank goodness. “Though I wouldn’t be surprised if the babe doesn’t find herself more easy with the fairy world than a bean draoi usually is as a result—present company excluded, o’ course,” he added, winking.

  Ally was equally relieved. “I should hope that Lady Keating merely wanted me so sleepy and lethargic that I could no longer watch over you,” she observed to Pen. “It quite neatly prevented me from noticing how she was drawing you away from us and into her power. My poor girl, I let you down, didn’t I?”

  Pen took her hand. “Not at all. I let myself be drawn away. And anyway, I’m going to be replaced shortly, aren’t I?” She gestured toward Ally’s growing bulk.

  “And so am I.” Ally smiled and turned Pen’s left hand over, where a gold band set with sapphires sparkled. “You have two new allegiances now,” she said, taking Pen’s other hand, with the Goddess’s ring. “I hope you won’t forget your old ones in the excitement of the new.”

  “No danger of that. I’ve got a goddaughter coming soon to remind me of the dear old ones.” Pen leaned over and gently hugged her.

  Pen returned home in early June, just in time for the queen’s splendid coronation in London, then concentrated on preparing for her August wedding, which Niall came for alone, as neither of his parents were able to travel and Doireann was still unfound. Lady Keating remained at Bandry Court, still imperious but childlike and docile, with no memory of the duke or of the plot to kill the queen or even of her past role as the Goddess’s lady, though she still never touched the teapot when pouring her tea. Fortunately, Mrs. Tohill had a sister who had previously cared for a feeble, elderly lady, and she had accepted the position as Lady Keating’s nurse.

  It was wonderful to have Persy and the rest of her family meet her dearest Niall. Charles seemed slightly dubious about him when he learned that Niall had earned a first in history, his current bane at Eton, but forgave him when Niall asked him to stand as his groomsman at the wedding.

  “Of course I will. I did for Lochinvar last year, so I know all about it,” Charles told him proudly, then deflated. “Except I’ll have to go to the tailor and get measured for s’more swell togs because I’ve grown four inches since last fall. Horripilatious, isn’t it?”

  Persy groaned. “If you don’t stop using that word, Chuckles, I’ll cast a forgetting spell on you and make you stop.”

  After the wedding, Pen and Niall honeymooned at Loughglass, then were back in Cork in time for the birth of Ally’s daughter on October 7—precisely when Corkwobble had said she would be born—and then to Bandry Court for Samhain, for it was time for Pen to see the Goddess. It wasn’t easy at first to return there. But it was while they were there that they received a letter from Doireann. She and Brian Lenehan had fled to Dublin and married there, then
taken ship for India. Niall sent her dowry and an offer to return home, but she refused. Brian had already arranged to take a position with the East India Company before their elopement, and they had settled happily in Calcutta—or as happily as Doireann could ever do anything.

  Niall and Pen had decided to spend some months at Loughglass so that Niall could get to know his father better and begin to take over management of the estate, with occasional visits to Bandry Court to check on Lady Keating and into Cork to visit Ally and the Carrighars and Corkwobble. Pen was happy enough; she liked Lord Keating, who enjoyed nothing so much as having her nearby while he read or tended the orchids and orange trees in his glass conservatory. But she sensed a restlessness in Niall that riding around the estate with the steward and inspecting fields and livestock couldn’t satisfy. When she asked him about it, he denied it, then sighed.

  “I’d be happy to be lord of the manor for part of the time, or later, when we have a family,” he said, staring up at the brocade canopy of their bed. “But right now Loughglass is still Papa’s house, and despite Mother’s condition, Bandry Court is still hers. I’d like to have something that’s my own—”

  “And what am I?” Pen demanded, indignantly bouncing onto his stomach.

  The rest of the conversation degenerated into a mock wrestling match, but it had made Pen think. Perhaps they might travel for a few months. Niall could show her the places he’d visited on his European tour, and they could be silly and romantic in Paris, or Venice . . . and maybe visit Hanover while they were there? She wondered if a part of Niall’s restlessness wasn’t over the one bit of unresolved business in his life: meeting the duke. After all, Lady Keating had held the image of his real father over him for the last ten years. Surely he couldn’t put it out of his mind now without wondering what the man was like . . . well, maybe in the spring. But she should really broach the topic now so that they could prepare.