“So, then,” said Lucia MacNeill bemusedly, “whilst I have been blaming myself for giving you the means of putting your life in danger, you have been using it to set my kingdom to rights?”
“And to save half a dozen lives,” Gray added, “for I think Cormac MacAlpine must have killed all of us sooner or later, and himself with us—though I do not believe he meant to do either.”
Sophie flushed and looked down into her soup-plate.
“And now this . . . spell-net . . . is linked to me.” Lucia MacNeill very evidently did not know what to make of this development, and Gray could scarcely blame her.
“I believe so,” said Sophie. Now that they were speaking about magick and not about her bravery under fire, she was perfectly able to meet Lucia MacNeill’s eye. “I hope it was not all my imagination,” she said, a little wistful, “for it was a great satisfaction to me to help in such a way.”
Gray slid closer to her on the narrow bench and surreptitiously rested his hand on her knee.
“If what you say is true,” said Lucia MacNeill thoughtfully, “then you held the fate of the whole of Alba in your hands.”
“I suppose I did,” said Sophie, and took another mouthful of stew.
“And you might have done anything at all with that power,” Lucia MacNeill persisted, “but you chose to use it to heal our wounds.”
“Of course I did!” Sophie sat up straighter and put down her spoon. “Do you tell me that you should have done differently?”
“No, no!” said Lucia MacNeill. “I should have done just as you did, and counted myself lucky to have such a chance. But I am the heiress of Alba, Sophie; and you are—”
“Your sister, or nearly,” Sophie said gently. “A welcomed guest in your home, as well as in your kingdom, and a student at your University. I was not born in Alba, Lucia, but that does not make me indifferent to her fate.”
“No,” said Lucia MacNeill, a little subdued. “No, I see that. But—” She hesitated, then plunged onward: “You gave it up. You held the power of life and death over an entire kingdom, and at the first possible opportunity, you chose to give it up.”
Sophie looked genuinely astonished at this. “Of course I did,” she repeated.
For some time thereafter, the three of them ate their mutton stew in meditative silence.
* * *
As well as magistrates’ men to take charge of the prisoners, the Malmhìn NicNèill was met on the quay at Dùn Breatainn by the private secretaries of both Donald MacNeill and Lord de Courcy, each of whom had brought with him a carriage and driver for the purpose of conveying his charges to their destination. The difficulty was, however, that the distribution of charges and of destinations seemed not to be altogether clear.
The foreign mages were to remain in Glaschu for the period of their convalescence; Donald MacNeill had dispatched instructions for their proper accommodation, together with a purse of coin and the formal request that the local magistrates should hear their evidence as soon as they should be well enough to provide it. Mr. Powell had strict instructions from Lord de Courcy, who had in turn received them from His Majesty by way of Sieur Germain de Kergabet, that Joanna and Gwendolen (now respectably clothed in a sober travelling-gown from Lucia MacNeill’s trunk) were to be returned to London with all safe speed—a course of action which Sophie regarded as eminently sensible, and Joanna as the height of injustice—together with an invitation for Sophie and Gray to return to London likewise, if they so chose. On the other hand, Ciaran Barra MacNeill carried both strict instructions to return Lucia MacNeill to Din Edin by any means necessary (though Sophie suspected him of exaggerating the vehemence with which the request had been delivered) and an invitation for Sophie and Gray to return to Din Edin as guests of Donald MacNeill, or to their house in Quarry Close, whichever they might prefer.
Mr. Powell had also brought Joanna’s and Gwendolen’s effects and a considerable stack of letters collected from Quarry Close—most of them directed to Gray, half a dozen to Sophie, and two to Joanna. The first of these made her roll her eyes, and she tossed it aside unopened; the second (in the direction of which Sophie recognised Jenny’s hand) she slit open with an expression of trepidation and read through very quickly, before folding it up again and stuffing it into the very bottom of her reticule. Her face was pink and her shoulders hunched when she turned away to look out at the harbour.
A surreptitious glance at the neglected letter showed it to be from Roland. Sophie frowned thoughtfully, and refrained from rocking the tenuously balanced boat.
* * *
“What had Lady Kergabet to say to you, Jo, that made you squirm so?” Gwendolen inquired, sotto voce, as Lord de Courcy’s coach rattled out of Glaschu.
Joanna hunched her shoulders and jerked her head at Mr. Powell, who sat gazing out of the window with a careful appearance of insouciance.
“She chastised me for taking criminally foolish risks with my own life, and with Sophie’s and yours,” she said at last, too low (she hoped) for Mr. Powell’s ears, “and for frightening her half to death—as though Sophie’s mad schemes were all my fault.”
Gwendolen hummed sympathetically and tilted her curly head on one side. “To be fair, Jo—”
“And then she thanked me,” Joanna continued, “and blessed me in the names of a dozen gods, for saving her brother’s life, and told me—” She swallowed hard. “And told me that she should have been proud to be my mother.”
“Oh,” Gwendolen murmured. She inched closer to Joanna on the leather-cushioned seat, and clasped her hand, and said no more.
* * *
That night, however—Mr. Powell having grudgingly consented to a full night’s halt, rather than another change of horses, because Lord de Courcy’s coachman insisted upon it—she turned from the dressing-table and said quietly, “I have a confession to make to you, Jo.”
Her tone—hesitating, almost fearful—froze Joanna in the act of unfolding her nightdress.
“H-have you?” she said.
Gwendolen ducked her head, as though studying her hands. Joanna, drifting closer, found herself studying them likewise: still long and slim and graceful, and now perfectly clean, they bore the unmistakable signs of their recent ordeals in new blisters, scratches, and ragged, broken nails.
The silence stretched out unbearably. “Gwen, we are good friends, are we not?” said Joanna at last. “Whatever it is—”
Whilst she was speaking, her right hand, smaller than Gwendolen’s but similarly marked, had crept forward of its own volition and her fingers woven themselves into Gwendolen’s soft curls. Now Gwendolen’s face tipped up towards hers, and her dark eyes were wary, troubled.
“Jo,” she said, “have you ever been in love?”
“No,” said Joanna at once, “and—”
“Nor have I,” Gwendolen said. “That is—I had not—until we were caught and thrown in that horrible place; and then I could not mistake it.”
Joanna frowned. Why should those words make her stomach churn? I ought to be happy for her, surely. But then, Gwendolen herself seemed more tense and anxious than happy.
“May I . . . may I ask who . . .”
“Oh.” Gwendolen’s lips twisted in wry self-mockery. “I hoped,” she said, bending her head again, “I hoped that she might feel the same. But I see I was mistaken.”
She spoke so quietly that Joanna was not altogether certain of what she was hearing. She dropped to her knees, feeling as much at sea in this conversation as though she had been attempting to comprehend some complex magickal working, to bring their faces closer to level.
“I am not sure I understand you,” she said carefully.
To her dismay, rather than explaining further, Gwendolen flushed crimson and turned her face away, twisting nearly out of her chair in her attempt to escape. Joanna clutched at her knee, at her elbow, feeling obscurely that
they ought not to be so far apart; Gwendolen subsided, but kept her eyes averted.
“Please,” said Joanna, half ashamed of the urgency in her voice. “I daresay you think me very stupid, but—”
She could go no farther, however, because Gwen was kissing her.
* * *
For a long moment, Joanna sat frozen, with incoherent questions bubbling up in her mind like soapsuds from a washtub. Then the warm lips on hers withdrew fractionally, and without conscious thought she tilted her head and rose on her knees, chasing them.
Gwen’s breath huffed out warm against Joanna’s skin, a soft Oh; Gwen’s hands came up to cradle Joanna’s flushed cheeks, her uptilted head. When they broke apart again, a long and breathless moment later, her eyes were wide and soft, and a dazed, delighted smile—an entirely new smile, such as Joanna had never before seen—lit her face.
“Oh,” said Joanna, stunned almost speechless. “I—oh.”
She reached out blindly; Gwendolen caught hold of her hand.
“Yes,” she said.
They beamed at one another, holding tight.
* * *
In the end, having packed Joanna and Gwendolen very firmly into the ambassadorial coach with Mr. Powell—from whom they had extracted a promise to personally deliver his passengers to Lady Kergabet at Carrington-street and no one else—Sophie and Gray ascended into Donald MacNeill’s carriage with Lucia MacNeill, Ciaran Barra MacNeill, and a shaken and chastened Catriona MacCrimmon, who had hardly spoken a word since going aboard ship.
“Are you quite sure you wish to stay, cariad?” Gray had asked Sophie that morning, tenderly cradling her bruised left wrist in his right hand, and examining a livid bruise on her temple.
“The spring term is scarcely begun,” said Sophie stoutly, though in truth she was rather leery of what sort of climate they might find in Din Edin upon their return. “I have no intention of leaving my year’s work half done.”
And Gray had grinned at her, and clapped her carefully on the shoulder; and for the first time since his departure from Quarry Close, she found herself inspired to grin back.
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Lady of Magick Page 45