“Oh, look!” Annabel said. “He’s sweating! That’s pretty useful, actually.”
“I’ve always thought so,” Isabella said, observing Raoul with an assessing eye. “I keep telling him he’ll have to get out of that habit if he wants to be a diplomat.”
“I don’t want to be a diplomat!”
“That’s probably a good idea,” Annabel said. “You’d never make it. As a Guardsman, you’re very good.”
Raoul looked flustered. “Thank you, your highness!”
“But don’t you think it’s a good idea to be very truthful with your future monarch?”
“I don’t—I didn’t—Yes, your highness.”
“All right, then. When you met with Melchior—wait a minute. Was Luck there, too?”
Raoul gave up all pretence of a straight face, and closed his eyes for a pained moment. “Yes, your highness. It was like this: I was told to meet with Luck and Melchior to arrange for a guard for your carriage. They were already talking when I got there; something about a couple of Old Parrasian threats that had been left at the manor and in the post tubes. Melchior said that he had already arranged to be at the school when you got there. He mentioned they were in need of a master, but he was grinning, so I got the idea that—Well, that’s only surmise on my part, your highness.”
“You think he created the vacancy,” nodded Isabella. She looked amused. “That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve seen how Melchior works before: he’s rather ruthless.”
“Old Parrasians?” Annabel frowned. “They’re those ones who picket the streets and carry signs about Parras for Parrasians and No queen, No problem, aren’t they? The ones they call anti-Royalist nowadays.”
“Exactly,” said Isabella. “Awful people! They’re worse than the Royalists, and the Royalists are pretty annoying.”
“So it was Old Parrasians who attacked us on the road?”
“I don’t know,” said Raoul. He looked rather relieved to be able to say so truthfully. “We suspect so, but I don’t know for sure. I’ll have to speak with Melchior about it when we meet to—”
“Oh, how interesting!” Isabella said instantly. “You’re still going to be keeping in touch with Melchior, then?”
Raoul made a small, inarticulate sound of annoyance.
Annabel grinned at him. “What are you going to be, a stable boy?”
“I’m going to be a footman at the local inn, thank you very much!” said Raoul, forgetting himself. “A stable boy inde—er, I mean, I’ll be posted at the local inn, your highness.”
Isabella tutted at him. “The cheek of some people! Give them a drop, Nan, and they’ll take a bucket!”
“Speaking of drops, and buckets—!” said Raoul, with a meaningful look at the heavily laden bucket nearby that was buzzing with flies. “I’d be a bit more careful if I were you, Belle!”
“Threats and insults,” Isabella said confidingly to Annabel. “That’s where it starts, Nan! You’ll have to keep your eye on this one.”
“So there have been threats I knew nothing about, and warnings—about which I also knew nothing,” Annabel said thoughtfully, ignoring both Isabella’s arch look and Raoul’s protests. “Not to mention a guard that I knew nothing about, and now two spies at my school.”
“That you knew nothing about,” added Isabella. “It strikes me as unfair, Nan!”
“Yes,” Annabel said shortly. “That’s how it strikes me, too. Moreover, it strikes me that I’m not being taken very seriously, and that’s annoying. We should do something about that.”
“If it helps, your highness,” said Raoul; “I take you very seriously indeed!”
By the time they went back to their suite, the crowd in the lower corridor had well and truly cleared, though enough of the girls still loitered hopefully to make Annabel think that Melchior had been roomed very close to the spot they’d last seen him. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said for their own corridor and their own suite; the hall was full of girls. None of them quite looked at Annabel or Isabella, as if they were there simply on the way to their own rooms, but the few around the door had the determined air of girls about to begin an all day social assault. Annabel was very familiar with that look; she’d seen it often enough through the window when people began to call at Melchior’s manor to meet her. These girls wanted to meet the future queen—and unlike Isabella, it seemed as though they weren’t planning on being open about it.
“Good heavens,” said Isabella lightly. “It’s a little busy this afternoon, isn’t it?”
She didn’t seem to expect a reply, which was just as well, because Annabel was too busy taking in the reactions of the girls around her to do so. Some of them looked slightly sheepish, some faintly amused, and some downright poisonous. Isabella ignored all of the looks, poisonous or otherwise, and towed Annabel safely through the press to their door.
The girl closest to the door said in a friendly fashion, “We came to call on you both.”
“Isn’t that nice, Nan?”
“Very nice,” said Annabel glumly. She didn’t feel like being polite, but she knew she would have to be whether or not she wanted to be. It was probably very good for her, but it didn’t make her appreciate it any the more. “I suppose you’d better come in.”
The girl looked uncertain. “What, all of us?”
“Good heavens, no!” said Isabella briskly, much to Annabel’s disappointment. She would have preferred to get all of the visiting over in one fell swoop. “A new rule popped up in the list this year; very odd! Trenthams prefers student meetings to be kept to an attendance of fifteen or less students when the meetings occur in private rooms.”
“What about our clubs?” indignantly said one of the girls in the hallway.
“Don’t meet in a private room and you’re free to do as you like.”
“Funny timing,” said Annabel, in an undertone. “A new rule appearing just when you’re due to come back after an absence of two years?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Isabella said. “Is it reasonable, Nan, I ask you, to link the circumstance of my having precipitated a small—a very small—riot the day before I left—”
“Precipitated or orchestrated?” Annabel asked, grinning. The girls in the hall were, variously, listening avidly or open-mouthed in shock.
Isabella continued serenely “—to the circumstance of there being one or two new rules in the official charter this year?”
“I’m surprised there aren’t more new rules,” said a small, plump, dusky haired girl, “after the things that happened two years ago. They want to get a running start this time, I should think. They couldn’t pin a single thing on you because there were no rules against any of the things that happened. You’ll have to take us in lots of ten or fifteen, your—er—”
Annabel might have let her flounder for a little bit longer, but the girl hadn’t done anything really wrong. It wasn’t her fault that Annabel didn’t want to entertain. She said, “If we’re being polite, you can call me Miss Ammett.”
A ripple of change ran through the crowd of girls—a changing of expression, or perhaps just a murmur of surprise.
One of the other girls said, “Just Miss?”
Another one said, “And what if we’re being friendly?”
“Come along, Nan,” said Isabella. Annabel wasn’t sure if she said it to make a point, but the girl who had asked about being friendly went a little bit pink. “We’ll do what Delysia says. Ten at a time, and you can decide between yourselves which ten should come first. Just don’t cause a riot, or the Awesome Aunts might blame it on me.”
Annabel found herself swept away through the door to the rising babble of roughly fifty girls each trying to press her superior claim to going first. She shut the door behind herself and Isabella with some thankfulness.
“That’ll give us a bit of respite,” Isabella said. “Not much, but enough to settle a few things.”
“What things?”
“Most imp
ortantly, tea.”
“Oh good!”
“Not as much as you might think,” Isabella warned. “You won’t get a chance to drink much; you’ll be too busy answering questions and giving out tea. The problem is that we aren’t allowed to have magical means of warming, and if we keep calling up for trays of tea the kitchen will eventually rebel. So we’ll have to make do with our fireplace and the hob, and that’s bound to be a nuisance. At least it’s not the good stuff—I hate having to give out the good stuff.”
Annabel grinned. If there was anything she knew how to do after a childhood spent with Grenna the witch, it was making a fire. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll take care of that.”
“Good heavens, can you light a fire?”
“Officially, no,” Annabel said. “Melchior says it isn’t a really queenly thing to know how to do. But since I’ve spent most of my life not being a queen, it didn’t occur to me not to learn how.”
“I wish I knew how to light a fire!” Isabella said enviously. “I’ve tried, but I really can’t make it work! Even if I get a spark, it never will catch! You wouldn’t believe how lowering it is to try and coax a flame that won’t be coaxed, Nan!”
“If you could talk it into being—” said Annabel, before she could stop herself.
Isabella began to laugh, but smothered it quickly. “The other things are just a warning or two. Don’t let any of the girls get too friendly unless you plan on having them as friends for life. If once they begin calling you Nan, you’ll have to put up with impertinences for the rest of your rule, and oblique references to marrying off your children.”
“Children? Isn’t that looking a bit too far into the future?”
“Not for them,” Isabella said firmly. “If there’s anything you can say about the girls who come to school here, it’s that they always have an eye to the future.”
“If I let them call me Nan they’ll expect our children to marry? What about our children?”
“Good heavens, no!” said Isabella. “It’s extremely unlikely that I’ll ever marry. I’ll leave that up to Kit and Susan; I’ll be much too busy with my little Papa’s ambassadorial business to be playing those sort of games. And I can’t ask you for anything else other than what I’ve already put in our agreement, so you’ve no need to worry that I’ll hang on your sleeve all my life. Well, I can’t; I’ll be out of New Civet for most of the time.”
“All right, I won’t get too friendly,” said Annabel, feeling at the same time relieved and a little disappointed. “What else? Melchior already taught me how to pass the tea things.”
“The other thing…Now, don’t be offended, Nan—”
“What now?” demanded Annabel. This time it was her turn to stifle laughter. “I suppose I’m not fashionable enough to be receiving visitors.”
“Your clothes are very fashionable,” Isabella said, with an edge of disapproval, “but they don’t at all suit you. More importantly, for an afternoon visit at school you should be casually elegant. Better take off your overdress.”
“I can’t go around in my underdress!”
“Of course you can! It’s the height of fashion to take afternoon callers in your underdress, provided that you wear an afternoon or evening wrapper. Something to show how elegant and at ease you are, you see. Sheer sleeves and floating overskirts are the thing; I’ll have to see if I don’t have something for you.”
“But the girls—”
“They’ll still be waiting in twenty minutes,” said Isabella, without baulking. “As a matter of fact, I’m certain they’d still be waiting tomorrow morning if you chose to make them wait. This is a matter of great importance.”
“What about the kettle?”
“I’ll look after the kettle. Take care of your overdress, Nan.”
Annabel grumbled, but did as she was told. By the time she unbuttoned herself and struggled out of the dark blue overdress she’d been wearing since the morning, not only was the kettle over the hob and beginning to sound like it was boiling, but Isabella had already changed her own overdress for a gauzy, floating thing and was looking thoughtfully between another two she had laid out on the bed.
“Yellow or blue?” she asked.
“Yellow,” said Annabel, who always did like a brighter colour if possible.
“Yes, I thought so,” said Isabella, throwing the yellow one back on the bed. “Not at all suitable. I wondered if we could get away with it, but I think not. Blue it is.”
“Rude!” said Annabel, but she caught the blue wrapper Isabella threw to her despite that. It was too pretty to fall on the floor, and it wasn’t that she was opposed to blue, after all. She just liked bright colours when she could have them. She slipped her arms carefully into the sheer sleeves, wary about catching her nails in the fine fabric, and buttoned herself up at the front.
“Oh, how lovely! How did they make it so fine?”
“Magic-made,” Isabella said. “Perfectly lovely, isn’t it? Ah, and that reminds me. You can’t do magic.”
“Not a speck,” Annabel agreed. “Why? Do I need to?”
“Well…” Isabella hesitated. “The thing is, I’m a dreadful magic user, and I won’t be able to tell if any of the girls tries to start up a spell this afternoon.”
“I thought the Aunts said magic was strictly prohibited!” protested Annabel, her fingers automatically seeking the pencil staff. She had a moment’s panic before she remembered it was in the pocket of the overdress she’d just taken off. “If they can’t get spells in—!”
“Nan, I really worry about you! Of course it’s prohibited! That is not to say, however, that none of the girls will have smuggled something in. Well! Only look at me! You have no conception of the amount of things I’ve already smuggled into the school, and it’s only the first day!”
“Smu—what have you smuggled in? You only had a box of chocolates!”
Isabella sent her a demure look. “But only think of all the time I had in the village! Allow me to demonstrate.”
To Annabel’s astonishment, the other girl swept up her skirts at the front until the whole of her stocking and garter on the left leg were shamelessly displayed to the room.
“This, Nan,” said Isabella, with the air of one giving vital instruction, “is a smuggling garter. You’ll notice the small pockets, the useful loops, and the reinforced nature of its construction.”
“The reinfo—is that a bottle of lilly-pilly oil?”
“Of course! There are times when other people should be usefully asleep.”
“How much have you got there?”
“About as much as I have on the other,” Isabella said cheerfully. “Most of it was already there when I met you, but I had to restock with Verisimilitude pills at the apothecary in the village. One trusts that they are the true thing and not a fake, since one does not have the magical aptitude to test them.”
“Oh, does one! What if the Aunts caught you?”
“The Aunts catch me from time to time,” Isabella agreed. “It’s good for them, poor ducks. If they don’t catch me once or twice a semester, they begin to think that I’m completely out of their control and talk about sending me away for the good of the school. Honestly, I think they might have been glad I was gone for two years.”
“Did you really start a riot before you left last time?”
“Riot is a bit strong,” protested Isabella. “If it comes to that, did you really bring the castle back and make it swallow Mordion?”
“It wasn’t exactly me,” Annabel muttered.
“Exactly. These things happen from time to time, and who can say who is at fault?”
“The girls seemed pretty sure.”
“Sheer jealousy, Nan; sheer jealousy. By the way, are we advertising your relationship to Melchior?”
“Good grief, no!” said Annabel. Melchior might be up to something that he hadn’t seen fit to tell her about, but although Annabel was prepared to be annoyed about that, she wasn’t prepared to ruin his
game. “There’s no need for them to know who my guardian is.”
“Exactly my thoughts,” agreed Isabella. “We should strive to preserve some mystery, after all. Are you ready?”
“No,” Annabel said gloomily.
It was too late, of course; Isabella was already opening the door. Annabel went to check on the simmering kettle, amused in spite of herself, and wondered exactly how Isabella was planning on running this afternoon.
The first ten girls came in with the air of an expedition to see the local faire animals, while Isabella closed the door firmly behind them and went to attend to the tea making. Annabel, who might once have been annoyed at their attitude, now looked across at Isabella and tried not to grin. Isabella was preparing the tea, but there was a certain sparkle in her grey eyes that Annabel recognised. Isabella was having fun. It was surprising how much better that made Annabel feel. If Isabella was enjoying herself, then there was no reason for Annabel not to enjoy herself, too.
Perhaps just a touch of her cow-face, enough to make her more expressionless than usual without making her look actually stupid—that was it! thought Annabel, catching sight of herself in the over-mantle glass. Let them try to get an expression out of her by surprise now.
The other girls looked around at each other uneasily, and it was left to the girl who appeared to be the leader—the one who had asked about being friendly—to sigh impatiently and make introductions.
“I’m Lady Caroline Boyyd-Smyth,” she said. “I know everyone here at Trenthams, Miss Ammett, so if you would like a more ahem,” she glanced delicately toward Isabella, who was making tea with shadowed, dancing eyes, “up-to-date knowledge of who it is good to know at school.” She sent another delicate, faintly disturbed look around the room, as if to imply that the entire room didn’t quite hold up to that standard, and added confidentially, “You can always speak to me in my rooms, Miss Ammett.”
“Thanks,” said Annabel. “Who’s everyone else?”
The dark-haired girl who had spoken outside the door—Delysia, had Isabella said?—giggled into her handkerchief.
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