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Morwen still felt unsettled when she and Ynyr reached the Morgan Hall stables. Jago came out to meet them, giving Morwen his hand as she slid down. He eyed her as he took the halter rope. “Good ride, you?”
Morwen didn’t want to tell him about the old woman, or even that she had been in the castle. He wouldn’t betray her confidence, but he would worry. She mustered a wan smile. “Lovely,” she said. “Perfect day.”
“Oh aye?” Jago led Ynyr to the water trough, where the big horse dipped his muzzle and drank thirstily. “Looking a little peaked, you. Tired, mebbe?”
Morwen followed him to the trough and stood with her hip against the weathered wooden vat. She lingered, not wanting to leave Ynyr, enjoying the sound of Jago’s lilting Welsh accent. She cocked her head, trying to guess how old Jago might be. Her mama was forty, which Morwen had figured out on her own, because Lady Irene refused to celebrate her birthdays. Her papa, of course, was really old, at least sixty. Jago seemed to be somewhere in between.
Jago was terribly handsome. He had long, lean legs and straight dark hair that fell over his forehead like a horse’s forelock. His eyes were narrow, tilting down at the corners as if he were perpetually sleepy. He gestured toward the hall with his head. “I think Mamselle is looking for you.”
“Mademoiselle is always looking for me, Jago.”
“Lucky girl.”
“Oh yes. Lucky me.” She straightened and reached to give the horse a final pat on his massive hindquarter. His skin rippled at her touch, and she gave a wistful sigh. “I’d rather stay here with you,” she said. “I could sweep the tack room.”
“Do me out of a job, you,” Jago said, and gave her one of his rare smiles. The corners of his sleepy eyes lifted when he smiled.
She smiled back, a real smile this time. In Jago’s steady company, the old woman with her layers of rags and mysterious remarks seemed far away. She had nothing to do with Morgan Hall, after all. Morwen resolved not to go back to the ruin, ever.
“Off now, my girl,” Jago said. “Lessons, I believe.”
“I suppose. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He inclined his head to her, and when Ynyr had finished drinking, led him into the shade of the stable for his rubdown. Morwen turned toward the big Georgian house that was her home.
Jago was right, of course. Mademoiselle Girard would be waiting in the schoolroom, an art book open on her desk, or a passage from some old Greek philosopher for Morwen to puzzle out. There would be reproaches, the scolding over Morwen’s going out without a hat, going unescorted, riding bareback, or whatever infraction had caught her attention.
Morwen kept a good pace over the green lawn, but she paused in the side garden, where the sorrel tree’s feathery leaves had turned a brilliant scarlet. A great white hydrangea made a backdrop for clumps of lobelia and lilyturf. She bent to brush the blossoms with her fingers. The gardener saw her and tipped his cap, and she waved to him before she started inside.
She would like to live out of doors, she thought. Perhaps to be a gypsy, one of those dark, intriguing folks who wandered the country in caravans, telling fortunes and hawking jewelry and cloth. She had seen such caravans twice. There had been children in them, children who tumbled about on the grass or ran laughing alongside the motor, free as foxes on the open land. It seemed a life far preferable to her enclosed one. She was sure they never had to sit through Sunday services, or make pointless conversation in someone’s parlor.
Her mother knew none of these thoughts, because she never spoke them. Lady Irene had said once, in her hearing, that she was “a surprisingly biddable girl.” Morwen had stifled a laugh. She could have told her mother—if she had cared to hear it—that she acted biddable because it was easier. Lady Irene would be surprised by her daughter’s true spirit, which was a good reason for Morwen to keep it to herself.
She trudged in through the open French windows of the morning room and started through the foyer toward the main staircase. At the sound of her step on the polished floor, Chesley, his black suit protected by a long white apron, put his head out from the dining room. “Ah, Miss Morwen,” he said. His voice was as thin as he was, and she always thought it sounded gray somehow, like his hair.
“Yes, Chesley,” she said, wishing she could have escaped up the stairs without having to see anyone.
“Her Ladyship is asking for you.”
Morwen had one foot on the lowest tread, but she paused. “Mama?”
“Yes, miss.”
“Where is she?”
“In her boudoir, I believe.”
“But, Chesley … why does she want me?”
Chesley blinked, slowly, as if he were an owl, and not a very bright one. “Not for me to say, miss,” he said, and withdrew into the dining room.
Morwen hesitated, one hand on the newel post, one foot on the stair. The setting sun made the narrow leaded glass windows beside the front door glisten, and the wood of the newel post was warm beneath her hand. She looked up the stairs, into the cooler shadows of the second floor, doing battle with an urge to run back to the stables.
It was something Jago always said that made her straighten her riding skirt, smooth her wind-ruffled hair with her fingers, and start up the staircase with strong steps. He meant it to apply to work in the stables or in the schoolroom, but it applied equally to dealing with Lady Irene, though Jago would never dare to say so. It was a proverb, one his mam used to say: “Labor postponed is labor increased.” Facing her mother invariably meant work, a test of some kind, or a scolding. Her mother might overlook a fresh crop of freckles, but if she had something on her mind important enough to want to see her daughter outside of teatime or dinner, it was bound not to be pleasant.
Morwen knocked on the door of Lady Irene’s boudoir, a nice, firm knock. Her mother’s voice, low and smoky, answered at once. “Entrez.”
So it was to be French. Morwen let herself in. When she had closed the door behind her, she said, careful of her accent, “Bonjour, Maman.”
Lady Irene could have quibbled with this, insisting she say bonsoir, but it seemed that was not the point of this interview. She pointed to the upholstered chair opposite her own brocade settee. “Sit down, Morwen.”
Morwen kept a wary eye on her mother as she obeyed, but there was no hint of her mood in her cool gaze. The inner door from the boudoir was firmly closed, as always. Morwen—and everyone else except Lady Irene’s personal maid—was allowed only in the sitting room. Morwen had never seen her mother’s bedroom.
They looked much alike, the two of them. Both were tall, slender, with thick dark hair and eyes to match. Morwen’s nose was longer, and Irene’s eyes a shade darker, but the resemblance always caused comment when they were seen together.
Suddenly, oddly, Morwen thought of the crone in Old Beaupre Castle. Her face seemed to overlie Lady Irene’s, as if a shadow had fallen over the younger woman’s features. The slender nose, the thick eyebrows, the full lips—
The phenomenon faded when Morwen caught a surprised breath.
Irene arched an eyebrow. “Something surprises you in my appearance?”
Morwen sank back in the chair and shook her head. “No,” she said.
Her mother didn’t press the issue. Lady Irene had no real interest in anything that didn’t directly affect her. Morwen had figured this out by the time she was ten, and by the time she was twelve she understood that everyone else in Morgan Hall—the servants, her father, even Jago—had known it for years.
“Chesley said you wanted to see me.”
Irene laid aside the book she had been reading. Her face still revealed nothing of her intent. “Where did you go this afternoon?”
“I took Ynyr out for a ride.”
Irene pursed her mouth, just for an instant, and again the image of the crone at the ruin seemed to superimpose itself over her face. When she spoke, it faded. “I know you went for a ride, Morwen. I want to know where.”
“Along the river.
Not far.”
Irene leaned forward, and her voice hardened. Her eyes did, too, and in that moment she wasn’t pretty. She looked mean. “I’m going to ask you one more time, and I want an answer. Where did you go?”
Morwen, for an instant, considered lying to her mother. Why would Irene care, after all, that she had explored the ruined castle? In the usual run of things, she was content to let Mademoiselle manage such matters. She looked into her mother’s eyes and recognized the storm of temper building behind them. Irene’s tempers were fierce, though rare. When she was angry she could be stunningly cruel—to maids, to her husband, to her daughter. Rank made no difference, and the edge of her tongue was sword sharp and swift. It would probably be easier, in the end, to tell the truth.
Morwen shrugged. “I went to the castle.”
“Why?”
“When Mademoiselle took me, she wouldn’t let me go in. I wanted to see what’s inside.”
Irene’s expression didn’t change, but Morwen knew better than to be deceived by that. She could look one moment as if she were carved from ice, and the next erupt into screaming fury. She said coolly, “Who did you see there?” When Morwen hesitated, her voice dropped. “Morwen. Tell me who you saw.”
Morwen’s belly turned cold. The resemblance in her mother’s rigid features to the grimy, creased ones of the woman in Old Beaupre Castle shocked her. She wished she could unsee it, drive the impression from her mind. She remembered now the odd feeling of recognition she had experienced when she first saw the crone’s face, and shuddered.
“What was that?” Irene snapped.
“What?” Morwen breathed, shrinking back into her chair.
“You shivered. You’re hiding something from me!” Lady Irene leaped from the settee and seized Morwen’s arm. “I won’t have it!”
Morwen looked down at her mother’s long white hand and thought of the dirty one resting on Ynyr’s dappled forehead. A conviction began to grow in her, and with it a rebellious spirit. She spoke in English, hardly believing the words were issuing from her own mouth. “Mother. Take your hand off me.”
Such a thing had never happened before, and the shock of it was effective. Lady Irene actually gasped, and though Morwen suspected she didn’t mean to do it, she lifted her hand.
Swiftly, with the agility of youth, Morwen edged out of her chair and out of her mother’s reach. Irene’s face flushed scarlet, and then, in an instant, paled to a deadly white. She stood glaring at her daughter with her hand still outstretched. Her voice was as brittle as a watch crystal, dropped so low Morwen almost couldn’t hear. “How dare you?”
Morwen trembled with the realization of what she’d done, and the consequences there were likely to be, but she also trembled with a sense of power. It was a bit like riding Ynyr at his ponderous, ground-eating gallop, looking down on the earth and on the upturned faces that gaped at her passing. She felt taller, and stronger, and freer than she had ever felt in her short life. “I’ve done nothing wrong, Mother. Why should you be angry?”
“You’re hiding something.” It was a hiss, snakelike, dangerous.
“Why do you say that? I told you where I went.” Morwen’s back pressed against the boudoir door, but she kept her chin up.
Her mother drew a breath through pinched nostrils. “I know how deceitful girls can be.” She turned away and stalked to her dressing table. She swept her long skirt aside and sat on the frilly stool before the mirror. In the glass she met her daughter’s eyes. “Don’t go there again, Morwen. I’ll have Ynyr sent away if you do.”
It was the worst punishment she could have invented. It wasn’t clear to Morwen what the punishment was for, but she didn’t dare ask. “I won’t.”
Lady Irene blew out her breath and turned to the mirror, picking up a hairbrush as she did so. Her color returned, and her expression settled into one of perfect calm. “Tell Chesley I won’t be down for tea,” she said. “He can send up a tray.”
Morwen said, “Yes, Maman,” and made her escape before her mother’s unpredictable temper could flare again.
Much later, after the stiff, silent dinner was over, dinner dress exchanged for a nightgown, hair brushed out by her maid, and lights turned off in Morgan Hall, Morwen lay gazing out at the blanket of stars glistening above the Vale of Glamorgan, and wondering what her mother had suspected.
Irene often knew things she shouldn’t. The maids and Mademoiselle whispered that Lady Irene had eyes in the back of her head. It never benefited anyone to lie to her, neither Lord Llewelyn nor the staff nor her daughter. She had an uncanny knack for discerning the truth.
Today, though, Morwen considered her to have been particularly unfair. Irene herself often disappeared for hours at a time, and neither her maid nor Chesley could say where she had gone or when she would return. Morwen, as a rule, was glad for her mother to absent herself, but tonight, as the stars wheeled above the Vale and the big house slept around her, Morwen lay wakeful and uneasy.
She kicked off her blankets and padded to the window in her bare feet. Lately she often felt itchy and restless. Her bosom was beginning to swell, and her monthlies had begun a few months ago, making her belly ache and her skin feel too tight for her body. Now she knelt in the window seat, savoring the coolness that seeped through the glass. She gazed out at the gardens and the long, low roof of the stables. Starlight made silvery shadows beneath the trees and the shrubs. The graveled drive glittered with it, and the empty paddocks were painted in shades of gray. Morwen idled away half an hour peering up into the star field, trying to remember which of the constellations was which. Yawning, she had just started to unfold herself from the window seat when something moved against the shining backdrop of the drive where it curved past the stables and up toward the house.
Morwen pressed herself closer to the glass to see better, and caught a startled breath.
A slim figure swept past the towering laurels that edged the gravel, moving swiftly, keeping to the shadows where she could, hurrying toward the house.
Morwen realized with a jolt that it was her mother.
She jumped up and seized her dressing gown from the chair where Rosemary had draped it. She was out the door before she managed to get both arms through its sleeves, and she nearly tripped on its trailing hem as she hurried down the hall toward her mother’s rooms.
She stood outside her mother’s boudoir, arms folded against the chill, and listened for the opening of the front door.
It didn’t come. There should have been at least a click. There was nothing.
Morwen frowned, wondering if her mother had turned off toward the stables, or to the gardens. But the night was half-gone. Surely she meant to seek her bed.
She started when she heard a sound from inside the boudoir, the closing of a door, the clatter of the wardrobe being opened. How could Irene have reached her bedroom without Morwen seeing her?
Puzzled, Morwen lifted her hand. She hesitated, and then, in an act of courage, knocked on her mother’s door.
It opened in an instant. Irene stood frozen in the doorway, glaring at her daughter. Then, throwing her head high, she spun, making the long, shapeless coat she wore whirl out around her, revealing her nightdress beneath it.
“Maman! Where have you been? What were you—”
Irene threw up a silencing hand and shrugged out of the dingy old coat, letting it fall to the floor. A tapestry bag had been slung over her shoulder, and this she dropped onto her settee.
Morwen exclaimed, “Maman!”
Her mother sank onto the settee beside the bag and hissed, “Be quiet! And close the door. You’ll wake the house!”
Morwen stepped into the boudoir and pulled the door shut behind her. “Why are you dressed like that?”
Irene’s eyes narrowed so that her pupils were all but invisible. She whispered fiercely, “Why is it any of your business?”
Morwen’s newfound temper, and the burgeoning heat in her body that made her want to jump out of her skin, flar
ed anew. She demanded, “Why is it your business where I go, but not mine where you go?”
“I’m your mother,” Irene said coldly.
“Du temps en temps,” Morwen snapped. From time to time. She liked the sense that her words had found their mark. She felt a bit like one of the foals, set free in the pasture for the first time.
The two of them stared at each other, Morwen with her pulse pounding in her throat and wrists, Irene with her skin going paler and paler until Morwen thought she might disappear.
At last, with a twist of her lips, Irene said, “Very well. I will tell you, Morwen. I meant to protect you, but apparently you think you know better than I.”
It was dark in the room. Irene leaned forward to take a long match from a box on her dressing table. She set the flame to a candle on the inlaid table between the settee and the upholstered chair. She pointed at the chair, and Morwen, rapt with curiosity, sank into it.
With the flickering candle making shadows dance across the flocked wallpaper, Lady Irene opened the tapestry bag and pulled out something bulky, wrapped in a piece of white linen. She laid the object on the table and began to unfold the cloth.
As the fabric fell away, Morwen caught a startled breath. The thing was lovely, a rounded crystal rising from a base of gray stone, the whole perhaps two handspans wide. The crystal reflected the candle’s flame, glowing as if it were alive. Without thinking, Morwen reached out her hand to touch it.
Irene slapped her hand away. “Don’t!” she commanded.
“Whyever not?” Morwen cried. She cradled her hand against her chest. Although the slap hadn’t really hurt, it offended her. “What’s the matter with you, Maman?”
“You have no idea what this is, Morwen,” Irene said coldly. “But I suppose I’m going to have to tell you.” She refolded the linen, covering the glowing crystal, before she leaned back and folded her arms. She fixed her daughter with a hard gaze. “I hope you’re not tired,” she said. “This will take some time.”
A Secret History of Witches Page 22