She caught her breath. “You cannot possibly be saying that you want me to stay!”
“Is that so revolting to you?” He still didn’t let go of her hand, but he looked stricken. “I know I might never be rid of this curse — ”
“Oh, that’s nothing!” she exclaimed.
“Well, then, would you consider it? Would you allow me to speak to your father, once the King allows me to?” His gaze begged her. “I know you are my friend — and I have not had a real friend but Eric in a very, very long time — but would you ever consider wedding me? I know this is very sudden. Perhaps this offends you, but I hope not, and I am afraid that once you can leave here, your father may decide the only way to make sure you are safe is to arrange a marriage for you, with someone you don’t even know. At least you know me, and you like me. Many good marriages are made in friendship. I don’t ask you to love me, but — I don’t think I can do without you, now that I know you.”
She found herself stammering. “I…I suppose so…if the King allows it…if my father…”
“That’s all I ask.” He kissed her hand before releasing it. “You deserve to be more than anyone has allowed you to be until now. That may be the only gift I can give you that will equal a part of what you can give me. If you stay with your father, you won’t really have that. If another marriage is arranged, I think you would have less than you have with your father. In my house, you will have freedom.”
She hardly knew how she got back to her rooms after they parted. She felt very much in a daze, not exactly sure how she felt about him. That she liked him immensely — oh, yes. Absolutely. But love? Not so sure of that…
Not sure at all.
He was right, though, in that the longer she stayed in her father’s house, the more she would become the unregarded old maid, the glorified — and unpaid! — housekeeper. And the more Genevieve would fester, pushed by The Tradition into an equally unhappy role. Her only escape would be that one she had wistfully contemplated, the little herbalist shop, perhaps to grow into a Granny…
No, definitely to grow into a Granny. Granny and the Godmother just about said as much.
But now, she was going to be a sorceress — she wasn’t going to be a witch, the equivalent to the wizard, she was sure of that. Her talents definitely did not lie in that direction. She had been brought into the circle of those who knew about The Tradition, and had spoken to a Godmother! Sebastian had just offered her her own household, and if the servants were on the unconventional side, well, so was she…
But was that enough without loving him? And did he love her? “I don’t think I can do without you” was not quite the same.
Genevieve is perfectly prepared to make a match for the twins without any love involved, she reminded herself. And the twins will jump through a fire for a title or enough wealth. Why should I be worried about love when my husband and I would be friends, not just partners in an…exchange?
She put both hands to her temples. There were still two months to go before either of them could do anything about this. The King was not going to lift his edict, which was that three moons must pass since the one when she had been bitten. A great deal could happen in two months’ time. Look how much had happened to her in one! Sebastian might decide he loathed her. She might decide she loathed him. They both might decide this was the best idea of the century. The Godmother might oppose it. The King might oppose it. Her father might oppose it. A mob of torch-bearing peasants might discover that Sebastian was a werewolf and come storming the Manor.
They might actually fall in love.
They might…
She made her way into her bed, hardly noticing Sapphire’s ministrations, but the Spirit Elemental didn’t seem to take any offense. She had been certain that she would never be able to sleep, and took up the book on The Tradition with the certainty that she would still be reading by morning.
With the predictable result that she fell asleep with the book still in her hands, and woke in the morning, rather earlier than usual, with a slightly stiff neck and no more idea of what she was going to do than she’d had when she went to bed last night.
She wrote out her usual letter to her father, telling him about everything except Sebastian’s proposal — and the way that Eric had beaten the poacher. She got it into the box before her father would be at his desk with a sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted him to do was not find his usual letter, since he already knew she was going out with Eric, and would assume that something terrible had happened to her. His letter was not in there yet, so all was well. Sapphire hovered at the closet, the movement back and forth of her ribbon telling Bella that the servant didn’t know what clothing to bring out.
“Is Eric back yet?” she asked.
The slate rose, the chalk scratched. “No” came the reply. “Mesa this morning. Not back 4 5 mor daze.”
Message? How — “How on earth does he get a message back here?” she asked.
“Pijin.”
Oh…well, that made sense. She knew there were several households in the city that kept pigeons for carrying messages. For that matter, her father had some, at the warehouse, for sending urgent messages back and forth from the port. And given that Eric wasn’t a magician, a pigeon or a human messenger would be the only way for him to let Sebastian know if he was going to be delayed or detained. A human messenger was not a good choice, all things considered.
Well, in that case —
“The same thing I wore last night,” she declared. “A pair of Sebastian’s breeches, one of my bodices and a shirt of some sort.” If Sebastian was offering her freedom — well, she would see how he took to her walking about in breeches.
Sapphire whisked out of the closet with a pair of rather lovely, buttery fawn-colored suede breeches, a bodice of a darker brown and a cream-colored blouse with huge sleeves caught up by ribbons at the wrist that she didn’t even know she had. And just as Sapphire finished lacing up the bodice, there was a faint tap at the door, it opened and a pair of beautiful, soft, brown leather boots came gliding in.
Now, she could see immediately that these boots weren’t new. But the Spirit Elementals had cleaned them, buffed them and refreshed them until they were actually better than new, for they had none of the stiffness of new boots or shoes. Sapphire steadied her as she tried them on. They were only a little too big, not enough to matter, not even enough for an extra pair of socks.
She had a good idea where they had come from — they’d probably belonged to Sebastian’s mother. She doubted very much that he would recognize a pair of her boots. A gown — perhaps. Or perhaps not. But not a pair of boots. Footwear was not exactly memorable.
Not this sort of footwear, anyway. She felt a twinge of amusement at some of the incredible shoes and dancing slippers Genevieve had ordered, both for herself and the twins. And, she supposed, it was possible one of the twins’ would-be swains would remember a pair of that fanciful footgear.
But probably not.
Well, since Eric wasn’t going to be here, and they weren’t going out on a patrol, that left her morning free for other things. Although this might be a test of sorts…
While she watched her father in the mirror, and read his letter, she thought about that. She was supposed to be counterfeiting Eric’s new Under-Gamekeeper. He might be testing her with this, to see if she was up to the challenge of at least a limited patrol alone.
All right, then, she would do it. In her coat, no one would be able to tell she was a woman. And she could get back with plenty of time to put in some work in the stillroom before she met Sebastian for dinner and her magic lesson.
A fine plan.
“I need my horse saddled and ready,” she told Sapphire, who whisked away.
She explained her plan to Sebastian, who readily agreed it was a good idea, ate her breakfast as quickly as she could manage and went out on her ride.
She returned — with a tangle of snares in her saddlebag — in good time to get some work don
e in the stillroom. She had a suspicion about those snares, because they had been just a little too easy to find. And it would not have been difficult for Eric to set them up before he rode off to the city. If that was true, she would definitely have passed the test. And if it was not, she could report with some satisfaction to Eric that Abel had made his solo presence known to the poachers.
There was a basket of things waiting for her on the stillroom workbench when she opened the door: the various items that Granny and Godmother Elena had promised her, and the recipes she would be using them in. There were two she was able to complete before lunch, and three more — which required much more steeping and combining and distilling — that she got started. All in all, a good morning!
She brought the two completed items with her — a powder and a decoction — when she came down to dinner. Sebastian greeted her with a happy grin, and her concoctions with a whistle of appreciation.
“I don’t know what it is, but I have no luck at making these things,” he said ruefully, over rabbit stewed in wine — they still had an over-abundance of rabbits in the larder, thanks to all the ground she and Eric had been covering. “I either measure it wrongly, or I steep it too long or not enough, or I boil it over when I try to distill.”
She paused a moment, and sucked on her spoon. “Maybe I am a witch, after all?” she hazarded. “Witches are supposed to be very good with herbs and potions and all that sort of thing.”
“But so are sorceresses,” he reminded her. “It’s not just what you are good with. It’s what you are good at.”
Well, that was true… She wasn’t any good at Transformations, which was a witch specialty, nor the little cousin of Transformations, Illusions. The stable cats were absolutely indifferent to her, and generally you could not manage to walk through a witch’s house without having to shove aside half a dozen cats. Witches were quite good at sending their spirits out “piggybacking” on animals and birds — her spirit stayed quite stubbornly in her body, refusing to budge.
On the other hand, when it came to the manipulation of sheer, raw magical energy, her control was getting better and more precise every day. And that was certainly the hallmark of a sorceress.
“But if you haven’t any luck making the components — ” she began.
“Ah! You see, a wizard doesn’t have to. That’s why he has an apprentice!” Sebastian laughed. “I’ll tell you the truth — the ‘absentminded wizard’ is more true of me than I would like to admit. Making components bores me, and that’s half the reason why I’m no good at it.”
“Aha, now the truth comes out!” she said with amusement. “Thank Godmother Elena for sending me the ingredients then.”
He snorted. “Godmother Elena was getting tired of sending me the components every time I begged her, and so was Granny when I actually dared to approach her. Which I didn’t unless I couldn’t help it,” he retorted. “It’s hardly difficult for magicians like them. And in the Godmother’s case, it’s not as if she was making them herself! No, it was her Brownies who were doing it.”
“And if she sends components to every whining wizard?” Bella responded. “That’s scarcely a good use of her time!”
“But other wizards have apprentices!” He mock-pouted. “I’ve never had one until now! Apprentices are supposed to do all the boring work for you!”
This was a great improvement over the melancholy Sebastian. She liked this version of him much better.
She mimed a cuff at him across the table. He ducked and grinned.
“All right, let’s go get to work,” she told him. “You’ve stuffed your face quite enough. I want to see if you actually know how to do anything with my hard work.”
“And if I don’t?” he asked archly.
She growled at him. “Then I will stand over you and make you concoct the rest of the list yourself!”
He was not in the least cowed. “Good thing I do know exactly what to make with your welcome bounty, then! Come on, apprentice. Let’s see if you can master the next lesson I have for you!”
17
THE HORSE — SHE STILL DIDN’T KNOW ITS NAME, SINCE Eric evidently didn’t think that the name of a horse was important — eeled his way along a game trail that Bella could scarcely make out. Eric was right, the horses he used did know all the trails. All she had to do was start the beast down one, and it did the rest. She was a little farther afield than usual, but this was an easier part of the forest; easier to spot the rabbit runs and easier to see the snares. As she rode, Bella had that back-of-the-neck-prickling feeling that always came when she was being watched.
Not that this disturbed her. In fact, if it was the poachers, she wanted to be watched. She was proving that even while Eric was disporting himself among the ladies of purchasable virtue in the city, Abel, his new Under-Gamekeeper, was more than adequate to taking up his patrols. This would please Eric, and it would cement her identity in his mind as “Abel.”
In the two days he had been gone so far, she had collected a proper number of snares. Not so many that she could have said for certain that Eric had left them for her to find, but quite enough to prove that she was not slacking off in his absence.
As for Sebastian —
Since the night he had made his proposal, he had not made any more overtly romantic overtures. But his entire manner had changed for the better. He laughed more. He no longer had that haunted look about him. He was even tentatively talking about what he might do if he was given leave to come back to Court. So he had stopped thinking about it as an impossibility and had begun contemplating it as something he wanted to do.
If anything, she was fonder of this new Sebastian than of the old.
She finished her patrol — a good handful of snares, but no rabbits, which was something of a relief, because she was looking forward to something other than rabbit for supper tonight — and headed back toward the Manor.
The feeling of being watched did not ebb…
That’s…odd. Was someone following her? She didn’t look back to see. The horse didn’t act as if it thought there was someone else out here, but that didn’t mean much. I wish dogs could stand being around Sebastian. At least if I went out with a dog, he’d alert me to a follower.
She wanted to get back to the Manor fairly quickly today — there were two more of Sebastian’s components that needed some tending, and more important, the Godmother’s green-faced Mirror Servant had promised the results of his researches into the Traditional tales of protective were-creatures. If they couldn’t manage to break or counter the curse, this might be their only chance of turning it from a liability into something useful.
Something that even the King could approve of, in fact. It would be one thing for the King to grudgingly grant Sebastian the freedom to spend a few days a month at Court. It would be quite another for the King to decide that Sebastian — wolf or man — was an asset.
If someone wanted to trail her all the way back to the Manor, well, that was his time wasted.
Instead, she played the part of Abel to the hilt, whistling once she reached the actual road — she’d have preferred to sing, but her voice would definitely have given the game away. She remembered how angry it used to make her when the Housekeeper would waggle her head when she whistled as a child, and quote the old adage, “A whistling girl and a crowing hen always come to some bad end.” She used to counter it with the other adage. “A whistling girl and a wise old sheep are two of the best things a farmer can keep.” Then Housekeeper would frown and say, “Well, but your father’s not a farmer, now, is he?”
It was, as it turned out, a good thing she had learned to whistle. Especially as she was whistling “Little Ball of Yarn,” a bawdy tune no proper young lady would ever admit to knowing.
She still felt that “being watched” look as she entered the gate into the courtyard and one of the Spirit Elementals closed it behind her, then came to take the horse.
Well, it’s probably nothing but my imagination at this p
oint.
Reveling in the freedom that the breeches gave her, she ran into the Manor and straight for the stillroom.
After ensuring that the next stage of her concoction was well under way — cold-pressing, a long and tedious process, but one which fortunately only needed to be dealt with once every half day or so — she ran back up to her rooms, and impatiently sat before the mirror.
Just when she was getting ready to prod the recalcitrant Servant into appearing — her control of magic had progressed to the point where she was fairly certain she could do just that — his face appeared.
“Greetings, Isabella,” he said. “I have mixed results. I shall be as brief as one such as I can. In my researches, I have indeed come upon creatures who will act as Protectors and who switch from animal to human form. The difficultly lies in the fact that those creatures are invariably one of two types. They are either wholly magical in nature, such as the Fox-Spirit, the Rus Firebird or Zhar-Ptica, or they are, in fact, animals who have somehow gained the ability to become a human.” Even though he had no shoulders, she got the sense of a shrug. “It is as if, I fear, that while transforming from animal to human brings out the best in these creatures, transforming from human to animal brings out the worst in a man, unless it is the purely voluntary and magical Transformation spell, which most Godmothers and a few magicians have mastered — the one that does not require the shedding of blood, nor the belt of the skin of the creature you wish to become.”
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