Lady of Magick

by Sylvia Izzo Hunter

  And it seemed that she had decided—very much to Joanna’s surprise, and also to Gwendolen’s, if her wide eyes and open mouth were any indication—to persuade Mr. and Mrs. Pryce to lend her, for some indefinite period, their eldest unmarried daughter.

  “We should of course expect you to continue whatever allowance you were accustomed to grant Gwendolen for her clothing and pin-money, before her removal to the Griffith-Rowlands’,” she said pleasantly, between sips of tea from a delicate porcelain cup painted with laurel-leaves, “and to contribute as necessary to any extraordinary expenses; otherwise, however, we should treat her as a member of the family, with the same privileges and opportunities as are afforded to my sister-in-law Joanna.” She smiled. “Through such an arrangement, you should be offering her the best possible opportunity of establishing herself in the world, at comparatively little trouble and expense to yourselves.”

  Mr. Pryce’s expression conveyed suspicion as well as considerable relief; his wife, on the other hand, had altogether ceased to pretend that she was not delighted at the prospect of going home without her stepdaughter, rather than with her.

  “This is a very generous offer, Lady Kergabet,” said Mr. Pryce, slowly, warily. “Extraordinarily generous, for Gwendolen has not been brought up to such high aspirations, and though Mrs. Griffith-Rowland was kind enough to take her on as a favour to my wife, she seems not even to have made a success of such a little thing as teaching a few children their letters. I am curious, I confess, as to what benefit you can be expecting to gain in return.”

  Joanna controlled an instinctive wince and felt Gwendolen, close beside her, fail to do so; such a question, from a guest to his hostess, dangerously approached outright insult, and to hear her beloved Jenny, generous and patient almost to a fault, so nearly accused of some base ulterior motive, made her long to disregard her own counsel to keep silence.

  At the same time, however, she could not be sorry that Gwendolen’s father hesitated even thus much before seizing the opportunity to be rid of his troublesome child.

  Jenny chose to ignore the implied insult entirely. “You do not give Gwendolen sufficient credit, I think,” she said. “And if she did not succeed with the Griffith-Rowlands, she is in excellent company; did not you know that those children have had six governesses in the past three years?”

  There was another long silence, during which Gwendolen’s nervous fidgeting with the fabric of her skirts grew so obtrusive that Joanna put her own hands over Gwendolen’s to still them. Gwendolen glanced aside at her and produced a tense, miserable smile, which Joanna could not altogether manage to return.

  Mr. Pryce turned to his daughter at last and said, “Gwendolen, why did you never tell me that you were unhappy?”

  Gwendolen stiffened, and turned her hands the better to clutch at Joanna’s.

  “I told you so often and in so many ways that I could not begin to count them,” she said, her voice shaking with suppressed emotion. “Before you sent me away, and certainly thereafter. Once, when you were gone to Cardiff—perhaps she has never told you?—I put up my hair and dressed in a suit of Owein’s old clothes, and saddled my pony, and ran away to seek my fortune; I had ridden near forty miles by the time young Hugh Penrys caught up with me to bring me back. It is no fault of mine that you would never hear me.”

  At this moment, though Joanna would never have dared mention it to either of them, her resemblance to Sophie was astonishing—which perhaps explained the surge of protective ire that quickened Joanna’s pulse as she spoke.

  “Gwen—” Mr. Pryce began.

  “Do you know, Father,” said Gwendolen, “why I clapped hold of Lady Kergabet’s offer with both hands?” Her grip on Joanna’s hands was excruciatingly tight. “I wrote to you that I was lonely and miserable—that if I did not bribe the boot-boy to post my letters for me, Mrs. Griffith-Rowland would open them and read them—that I was to have had a day out every fortnight, and after three months had had none at all—all of those things, and worse ones—I did what I had sworn I should never do, and begged you to rescue me, or to send me sufficient coin to come home myself by the mail-coach—and all of your replies ran the same way: You are only homesick, and feeling sorry for yourself; or, I am sure you must have misunderstood; or, You shall learn to like it.”

  Joanna’s fingers had gone numb.

  “And so you did,” said Mrs. Pryce, “or so we concluded you must have done, when your letters ceased being full of grievances.”

  “I had no more coin to bribe the boot-boy,” Gwendolen said, low, “and so then I had to write what would please Mrs. Griffith-Rowland. You suppose me a liar, I know, and you suppose correctly; but it was in those letters that I lied, not in the others.”

  “You were always such a fanciful child, Gwen!” her father exclaimed. “How were we to know that—”

  “Mr. Pryce, some things are better left unsaid,” said Jenny quietly.

  Mr. Pryce subsided, his face taut, one eyelid twitching.

  “As your daughter has told you,” Jenny continued, “she left the Griffith-Rowlands’ house with me, in broad daylight, and with no attempt at concealment. It seems to me that if, as you say, you knew nothing of this, and have had no letters from her these several months, your inquiry into her whereabouts has been strangely delayed.”

  “Why, my husband began making inquiries the moment we learnt that the Griffith-Rowlands had returned without her!” Mrs. Pryce exclaimed, indignant. “They seemed quite as astonished to find she was not with us. But such things must be done discreetly—one cannot simply write to all one’s acquaintance to ask whether they have seen one’s child—imagine how everyone would talk—”

  “And what brings you now?” Abruptly letting go Joanna’s hands, Gwendolen leapt to her feet again and began pacing back and forth, as though physically incapable of keeping still for another moment. Joanna flexed her numb fingers. “Why now, and not at once? What was in Lady Kergabet’s letter that brings you down from Clwyd pell-mell at this late date?”

  “Your mama believed—”

  Gwendolen whirled and pointed a shaking finger at him. “She is not my mama,” she hissed. “Mama would never have left me with people who—she would never—”

  Her voice cut off abruptly, swallowed into a choking sob, and, dropping her arm, she turned on her heel and ran out of the room.

  Mr. Pryce gaped after her; his wife looked affronted.

  “She only wanted you to believe her when she told you the truth,” said Joanna, rising. She had not puzzled it out before, but now, having seen them all together, she could draw no other conclusion. “To show her that you valued her as much as your wife’s children, and to take her part for once. Not to wait until you had something else to gain.”

  And without staying to witness Mr. Pryce’s reaction to her words, or even to apologise to Jenny for having insulted her guests, she stalked out of the morning-room.

  As soon as she was out of view of its occupants, she picked up her skirts and ran.

  CHAPTER XII

  In Which Joanna Reveals More Than She Intended, and Sophie Asks Unwelcome Questions

  Joanna halted outside the door of Gwendolen’s bedroom, abruptly unsure of what to do. The door was very firmly closed, and from behind it came blurred sounds that seemed very like furious sobbing; her welcome seemed uncertain at best.

  She could see no particular benefit to be gained from caution, however, and accordingly rapped smartly at the door and said, not loudly but loudly enough to be heard, “Gwen! May I come in?”

  Listening hard, she heard a ragged in-drawing of breath, and the scuffing knock of stout country boots against the footboard of a bed.

  “Go away,” said Gwendolen’s voice, thick with tears.

  “No,” said Joanna.

  Beyond the door, the air went very still. Joanna held her breath.

  After a
long moment, Gwendolen said, “I have nothing to say to anyone.” Another ragged breath. “Least of all you.”

  There was defiance in her voice, and a deliberate attempt at cruelty, but beneath it lurked something Joanna knew very well. She drew a deep breath and shut her eyes, laying one hand flat against the door.

  “Shall I tell you about my mother and father?” she said, in a conversational tone.

  Gwendolen said nothing, and Joanna carried on as she had in any case intended. It was not so very difficult, so long as she was speaking to a faceless, voiceless door, which could neither mock nor pity her.

  “My mother married my father in an effort to purchase safety for herself and my sister Sophie,” she said, “and greatly regretted it before long. He would not . . . he . . . she knew that he would continue his, his demands upon her, which she found . . . unpleasant, until she had given him a son. She hoped that I should be her deliverance, but her hope was thwarted. She gave me a name meaning ‘gift of God’—the god of the Judæi, it appears—in a spirit of bitter irony, and looked at me always as though she could scarcely bear the fact of my existence.

  “Though I must concede,” Joanna added, in belated justice to her mother, “that she was always patient with me, and never cruel.”

  Or cruel only in the smiles and caresses she gave so generously to Sophie, and never to me.

  Never before had she said any of this to anyone but Sophie—not even Lady Maëlle, who had always stood in place of a mother to her, could have any notion how much of this history she had pieced together in the course of the past several years.

  “Jo—”

  “And my father’s history I am sure you know,” Joanna said, sorry now that she had begun this tale but possessed of a reckless determination to finish it. “It was in all the broadsheets, after all. As for me, he fed and clothed me, and sent me to something resembling a school, for which I suppose I must be grateful to him; and when I was eight years old, he bought me a pony, because my sisters would not leave off badgering him until he agreed. I loved him then, I think, for Gwenn-ha-du’s sake—that was the pony’s name, because he was black and white—and I wish I had not, for it made everything worse, later.

  “When I was thirteen, he set a trap for my brother-in-law that nearly killed me by mistake; and when Sophie and I ran away from home, he—”

  The polished wood of the door parted from Joanna’s spread hand. Startled, she opened her eyes and beheld Gwendolen’s blotched, swollen face, half hidden behind the handkerchief with which she was blotting her nose and cheeks.

  “You have made your point, Jo,” said Gwendolen. Her voice was blurred and muffled.

  The words might be callous, but above the handkerchief her dark eyes were soft with compassion. Joanna—who had meant only to show Gwendolen how fortunate she was to have had, once, a mother who loved her—turned her face away and gripped the door-jamb. Gentle Brighid, noble Aesculapius, spare me from being sick here in the corridor.

  Gwendolen’s hand smoothed circles against her bowed back.

  “I told him,” Joanna said, low-voiced, through gritted teeth. “Your father. He understands, now, I believe, so far as he ever will.”

  She swallowed once, again; the sharp nausea was passing, but she felt trampled and wrung out.

  “What, Jo?” said Gwendolen. “What did you tell him?”

  Joanna repeated her words, as best she could remember them, and watched Gwendolen’s face set in lines of bitter satisfaction.

  She wound an arm diffidently about Joanna’s shoulders. Joanna returned her embrace with equal caution, and allowed herself to be shepherded by degrees through the door and into Gwendolen’s bedroom.

  They perched side by side on the edge of the bed, which was mussed and rumpled, the pillow squashed and tear-stained.

  Their arms stole wordlessly about one another’s waists, and they leaned their shoulders together.

  “My father came to London in search of Sophie,” Joanna said, speaking indistinctly into Gwendolen’s shoulder, “because she was necessary to his scheme. By that time I do not suppose I still believed him fond of me, and the gods know that I had no great love for him; but I confess I should have liked to believe that he had at least remarked my absence.”

  Most people, Joanna reflected, would have leapt to reassure her that of course she had been missed. Gwendolen, wisely, held her tightly and said nothing.

  * * *

  They sat in companionable silence for so long that the hesitant rapping at the door startled them out of all proportion to its volume.

  The door opened to reveal Daisy, her freckled face pinched with worry. “Miss Pryce,” she said, bobbing a little curtsey. “Miss Joanna. M’lady wished me to say that dinner will be served in ’alf an hour’s time, if you like to come down, and that there will not be any guests to dinner.”

  “Thank you, Daisy,” said Joanna. She cast a sidelong look at Gwendolen, who was staring at the laurel-leaf pattern of the carpet as though her life depended on learning it by heart, and nudged her shoulder gently.

  Gwendolen nodded, though she did not look up.

  “You may tell Lady Kergabet that we shall both be down to dinner,” said Joanna to Daisy.

  * * *

  And down to dinner they were, as composed as half an hour’s determined application of cold water and towels, hair-pins, and fresh gowns could make them. Jenny kissed them both, one on each cheek, and smiled kindly, and a little sadly; otherwise no reference was made by anyone to the events of the morning, unless it were in their unaccustomed quiet. Joanna was certain that Jenny had taken the opportunity of Gwendolen’s absence and her own to apprise her husband of developments, for though Kergabet was too well bred, and too kind, to knowingly raise an awkward subject at the dinner-table, his manner towards Gwendolen—otherwise perfectly natural—was just solicitous enough to give him away.

  Mr. Fowler, by contrast, apparently labouring under some compulsion to fill the void left by the pensive near-silence of everybody else, subjected the company to a lengthy disquisition on the subject of peculiarities in the tax rolls of Maine.

  “Prince Roland inquired after you,” Sieur Germain told Joanna, when the family had gathered in the drawing-room after dinner, “and hopes you are quite well.”

  “Does he?” Joanna pretended to be watching Gwendolen and Jenny opening the pianoforte and paging desultorily through the music in the rack, though in the absence of Sophie and her magick, such an activity could hold no charm for her.

  When she again felt able to look at Sieur Germain, she found him studying her with disconcerting interest. As he seemed about to speak, she forestalled him by saying, “I hope Jenny is not terribly cross with me over my behaviour to Gwendolen’s father.”

  He regarded her in honest perplexity. “I do not know why you should think so,” he said.

  “He was—that is, they were—Jenny’s guests,” said Joanna doubtfully. “And I was very uncivil to him.”

  “I am assured—” Kergabet began. Gwendolen glanced briefly in their direction, and he sank his voice still further: “I am assured that he heartily deserved it.”

  This remark—considering its source—so astonished Joanna that she nearly laughed aloud.

  * * *

  “I wonder that Mór and Rory do not make a match of it,” said Sophie, looking after them as they strode away, the last of her small supper-party to depart into the damp November night, bickering amicably with Mór’s friend Sorcha MacAngus over the results of some experiment of Mór’s. “They seem certainly to be in one another’s confidence, and very fond of each other; and it seems to me . . .”

  Her voice trailed off. Had she been thinking, as Gray had found himself doing of late, that Rory MacCrimmon seemed likely to benefit from spending less time in his sister’s company? Catriona had of course left the house with her brother, but she seemed someho
w apart from the rest of the laughing, animated group. She had in fact, it occurred to Gray now, behaved rather peculiarly all evening—laughing at things he said which had not been particularly amusing, and leaping in abruptly to turn the conversation, for no apparent reason, when the others began to talk of crop failures and the opening of the clan storehouses in their own clan-lands. And not for the first time.

  Gray hesitated for a moment, his gaze levelled at Catriona’s retreating back, but at last said, “I do not think such a marriage would suit either of them.”

  “No?” Sophie turned, catching something perhaps in the tone of his voice, and frowned at him in puzzlement. “Why not? That is, I do not say they are in love; but, but nor was Jenny with Kergabet, and yet—”

  “Because . . . because Rory is a Greek,” said Gray. “And Mór MacRury likewise.”

  Sophie’s frown deepened. “You do not mean that they were born in . . . in Athens or Sparta,” she said slowly. “Or Crete.”

  “No,” he acknowledged, when she had run through her sadly limited knowledge of Greek city-states, and paused (even as one small corner of his mind made a list of improving books upon the subject) to choose his words with care. “I mean . . . I mean that the gods do not make everyone alike, where the desires of the heart are concerned. Marriage is a joy for some, but only a necessary expedient for others; some would gladly marry but can find no partner, whilst some choose not to marry despite perfectly eligible offers; some seek companionship amongst those of their own sex in preference to others, and some may find it in any. You have read the verses of Sappho, I am sure?”

  It was not, he felt compelled to acknowledge, the most transparent of explanations, but Sophie seemed to find it adequate, for her frown was smoothing out into an expression of enlightenment.

  After a moment’s thought she astonished him by saying, “My cousin Maëlle is one such, I think. A Greek.”