“And if I do? I don’t see that it is anyone’s business but mine.” Her headache was increasing. Was it so obvious? Or was it only that Daphne was far too insightful for Sophia’s comfort?
“It matters to everyone who cares about you. Sophia, aren’t you worried you’re pushing yourself too hard?”
Sophia flung her teacup at the fireplace, making Daphne jump as it shattered and sprayed its fragments in all directions. “No, I am not,” she said, grinding out each word, “and I believe I know better than you how much Dreaming is too much. I do not recall inviting you to comment on my appearance or my actions, but then what else could I expect of a scatterbrained child like you?”
Daphne stared at her, her eyes wide and her mouth slightly open in astonishment. Then she vanished with a faint pop. Sophia realized she was on her feet, her breath coming fast and hard as if she’d been running. She held the saucer to her shattered teacup in her left hand and lifted it to examine it, feeling as if she’d never seen anything like it before. Then she threw it, hard, after the teacup, and was satisfied by the chiming sound it made as it smashed against the back of the fireplace.
She picked up Daphne’s abandoned cup, thought about throwing it too, but settled for pouring the remaining liquid over the flames and listening to them hiss like an injured animal. She felt like one herself, struggling and suffering in the course of vindicating herself, with no support from the people who supposedly cared about her. Everyone was obsessed with the amount of Dreaming she was doing, when she was the Extraordinary Seer and knew better than they did what her capabilities and limits were. And she had not even begun to reach those limits.
She left the drawing room and went back to her bedchamber. Her headache had diminished somewhat; shouting at Daphne had helped relax her. Perhaps she had been a little harsh, but if Sophia did not challenge Daphne on her occasionally dangerous Bounding experiments, Daphne had no right to criticize Sophia’s use of her own talent.
She lay down fully clothed on her bed and settled in to meditate. Her enemy seemed focused on destroying the Dreams Sophia had of Lord Endicott’s criminal activities, so Sophia would turn her attention to the black-haired man. Dreaming of him would lead her to her quarry from a different direction, and then it would not matter what the enemy Seer tried. She would not let that unknown woman defeat her.
In which Sophia reaches her lowest point
ou look lovely tonight,” Sophia said to Cecy, who sat opposite her in the carriage, her red pelisse trimmed with ermine pulled close around her. Cecy glanced at her, then went back to looking out the window. Given Cecy’s naturally cheery temperament, it was the equivalent of punching Sophia in the face.
If she will not accept my offering of peace, so be it, Sophia thought, sitting back and looking out the other window. Her head would not stop aching, her fingers were frozen inside her gloves, her left shoe pinched her toes, and she was certain her new gown, with the demi-train and the puffed sleeves, made her look awkward. Not that anyone would care, once she produced the Duchess’s Vision.
A pity she was forced to attend this dinner party with Cecy, or she would deliver her Vision and then return home immediately. She could not even remember what the Duchess wanted her to See, nor why she had agreed to it, but it had no doubt been because the Duchess was a relentless woman who never failed to gain whatever she wanted. That included the Duke, who had been a confirmed bachelor before Clarissa Taylor, as she had been, set her sights on him and his title.
The Duchess had simply worn Sophia down until it was easier to give in than to endure her teasing any longer. She was like a terrier, yapping away until she got what she wanted or was hauled away by force. Since no one dared lay hands on the Duchess… Sophia tried to remember what she had promised, but came up with nothing. If her head would only stop throbbing for five minutes!
The carriage pulled up in front of the Duke’s townhome, and Peter assisted Cecy and Sophia out. He refused to meet Sophia’s eye, which satisfied her; the fewer reminders she had of the previous evening’s debacle, the better. It had been—
Sophia nearly stopped in the middle of the pavement. No. Mr. Rutledge was to be in attendance tonight. Of all the people in the world she least wanted to see! Her headache intensified until she imagined its throbbing was visible. She took a deep breath and calmed herself. He would not be so crass as to approach her, or attempt to speak to her, as if nothing had changed between them. The Duke’s fondness for entertaining guaranteed the party would be large, and no one would think it strange that Mrs. Westlake and Mr. Rutledge, who were such good friends, found no opportunities to speak to one another all evening.
Cecy did not wait for Sophia, but climbed rapidly up the steps, where she was announced by the footman. Sophia walked more slowly, wishing with all her heart that she could be elsewhere, then put on a smile she thought looked genuine and passed through the tall, white entryway. It was larger than the Barhams’ drawing room, with grey-streaked marble underfoot, a high white ceiling above, and white walls unadorned save by sparkling lights. It gave Sophia the impression that she had entered some fairy prince’s icy palace. Even the railing of the curved stair that circled the room and the ironwork of the chandelier had been painted white, as if someone had made an effort to eradicate every trace of color that might ruin the palace’s frozen perfection.
Sophia handed off her pelisse to the footman and quickly made her way into the drawing room, which was not much more inviting than the entryway but at least did not make her feel as if she were about to be bleached to suit the décor. It was well-lit, with pale blue walls that somehow managed not to look frozen, and was empty of furniture except for a pianoforte in one corner and a couple of chairs and a sofa grouped in the middle of the room, all of them unoccupied despite the crowd milling about on the Duchess’s extravagant Oriental carpets. Paintings on the walls depicted country scenes, most of them of men riding to the hunt, and to Sophia they looked washed out, dull, with little of the animation one might expect to see in such lively subjects, as if they too were frozen in place.
She and Cecy had been a little late to arrive, due to their mutual unwillingness to seek one another out, and nearly thirty people turned to look at her when she entered the drawing room. It was unnerving, having so much attention focused on her, and she responded the way she always did, which was to half-smile and nod. Richard had always said it made her look mysterious, like a sibyl out of Greek myth. She would rather be thought mysterious than awkward and tense, which was how she actually felt.
The crowd parted for her as she moved forward, which forced her to continue, as she had only stepped into the room because it was expected and now she had no destination in mind. She settled for circling the perimeter of the room, nodding and half-smiling at everyone, exchanging meaningless greetings with people she knew. Mr. Rutledge was either not present, or not visible; probably not present, she thought, because he is so fat he would be obvious, and then she felt guilty at having had such an ignoble thought. Mocking and exaggerating his physical attributes just because she was angry with him should be beneath her. Her headache had gone from throbbing to a steady pain that felt as if her head were swollen to twice its size.
“Mrs. Westlake. How good to see you,” the Duchess said. Sophia made her curtsey. The Duchess was a fair-haired woman of middle age, with protruding front teeth and too-thick eyebrows, and her smile was lopsided, giving others the impression that she was smirking at them. Tonight she was gowned spectacularly in coquelicot satin with strings of rubies around her neck and in her hair; it was far too ornate, far too gaudy, for—actually, Sophia could not imagine an occasion for which the Duchess’s garb would be appropriate, but her Grace had never been one to care about other people’s ideas of what was appropriate. “And what an unusual gown. So daring of you.”
“Thank you, your Grace,” Sophia said, conscious now of how terrible she must look to elicit such a comment from the Duchess. She would burn the awful gown when she re
turned home.
“But then I imagine you need not worry about your appearance now that you are—but I forget myself,” the Duchess continued, leaving Sophia confused as to her meaning. The Duchess delighted in keeping others off-balance. “I hope you are prepared for my Vision. You will See for me before we go in to dinner, as I believe anticipation is hard on the digestion. Everyone here is naturally agog to see you perform.”
Like a trained animal, barking on command, Sophia thought, but said, “That seems wise, your Grace.”
“Please enjoy yourself,” her Grace said with a little wave of her hand. “I know political conversation is a pleasure of yours. I cannot see the appeal myself, but a good hostess knows to provide for the entertainment of all her guests.” Her emphasis on “all” made Sophia imagine the Duchess rounding up her politically-minded guests and penning them somewhere away from the fireplace, where their conversation would not disturb more sensible people, and she had to hold back a smile. She would have to tell—
Sophia’s good humor disappeared as she realized the person with whom she was accustomed to sharing such ridiculous thoughts had betrayed their friendship, and as she surveyed the room she realized further that, aside from Cecy, she knew no one here well enough to call “friend.” The realization sent a spike of pain through her head that made her eyes water.
She continued to wander the room, saying a few words to acquaintances but not letting herself be drawn into conversation. The noise, and the warmth of the room, and the pain in her head left her disoriented, barely able to remember why she was there in that overcrowded room. Her words began to sound meaningless, and it surprised her when she spoke a stream of nonsense syllables and people responded as if they understood her speech. She bounced between knots of guests without knowing how she had passed from one to another, until she fetched up against someone who took hold of her elbow with a large hand and tethered her to the ground.
“You look unwell,” Mr. Rutledge said, in a voice lower than usual. The familiar sound woke Sophia out of whatever fugue state she had been in, and she pulled away from his grasp.
“I am perfectly well, thank you,” she said. It came out breathy and weak, and she cleared her throat and continued, more firmly, “Please do not trouble yourself.”
“Your eyes are glassy, and you were weaving. I am astonished no one else noticed,” Mr. Rutledge said. “I believe you should sit down.”
“I did not ask for your opinion,” Sophia said, but the idea of sitting down had some appeal. On the other hand, she did not want him to believe she could be guided by his opinion, so she continued to stand, staring him down despite how uncomfortably acute his dark eyes were. How could he show concern for her, as if nothing had passed between them? “I believe I know whether I am unwell or not.”
His eyes narrowed. “Very well,” he said, and walked away, brushing past her as he went and making her wobble—not enough that he noticed, Sophia reflected thankfully.
As soon as he was well away, she found a chair upholstered with gaudy tapestry work—it still seemed odd that there were only two chairs in the entire room—and fell into it, doing her best to conceal the fact that that was what she was doing. The room wavered, then settled back into place. Perhaps she needed to see Dr. Garland—not, of course, because she was ill, but surely a headache this severe should not last this long?
She put her fingers up to massage her temples again, then dropped her hands to her lap. If Mr. Rutledge were still watching, she did not want to give him the satisfaction of being right about her condition. Which he was not.
“Ah, Mrs. Westlake. Are you ready to begin? A trifle early, but that will give you plenty of time to examine the possibilities of Vision,” the Duchess said. She stood next to Sophia’s chair and clapped her hands three times, loudly enough to cut across the noise of conversation. “Mrs. Westlake has agreed to have a Vision for me,” she called out. “You are all welcome to watch, but do not crowd, and do not speak, as that interferes with her Sight.”
This was untrue. Sophia had had Visions in the middle of a battlefield with no difficulties. On the other hand, the lessening noise accompanied a lessening of the pain beating on Sophia’s skull, so she welcomed the Duchess’s error.
“What object have you for me, your Grace?” she said.
The Duchess sat on the overstuffed chair matching Sophia’s, opposite her and near the arm of the unoccupied sofa. “A ring,” she said, pulling a man’s signet off her thumb.
“And is there something you would like me to See?” Sophia asked. “Something you wish to learn?”
“Whatever you can tell me about its most recent owner,” the Duchess said. She handed the ring to Sophia, who laid it in her lap so she could remove the red silk gloves. “Particularly if you can tell me where he is now.”
“I will do my best, but you must understand Visions of that nature may take many hours to identify,” Sophia said.
The Duchess frowned. “I was led to believe you are the best England has to offer,” she said. “Are you telling me this is not true?”
Sophia smiled at her, wishing she could use whatever hammer was pummeling her head to pound some understanding into the Duchess’s skull. “‘Many hours’ is the best, your Grace,” she said. “Anyone but I might take days to discover such knowledge. I simply do not want to give you false hope.”
“Very well,” the Duchess said. “Begin.”
Sophia nodded, closed her eyes against her headache, and picked up the ring.
Whirling images buffeted her, making her sway with their ferocity and speed. It had been several weeks since she had had a Vision, and she was unaccustomed to how strong they were, how many possibilities of past and present and future flowed through them.
Vision was entirely different from Dream. Instead of walking through the images her Seer’s brain created, she looked out through a hundred windows on a hundred different times and places. Some of them were static pictures, powerful moments frozen in place by Vision to show how important they were; others flowed as events unfolded, played out to the end, then started over. Some were hazy, as if seen through gauze; those were Visions of possible futures that might be depending on how the present fell out.
With care, a Seer might trace those Visions to the presents on which they depended, and from there discover what actions might guarantee those futures occurring. And in all these shifting images was one window that showed the present as the person most closely connected to the object saw it.
She opened her eyes to look at the crowd surrounding her, most of them strangers; Cecy and Mr. Rutledge were not in sight. She closed her eyes again—Visions did not depend on ordinary sight—and thought, Echoes. Let us be rid of those. With an effort of will greater than usual, she whisked away the Visions attached to other signet rings in other places and other times. The spinning whirl of images lessened dramatically, to the point that Sophia could begin to make sense of what remained despite her dizziness.
Unfortunately, this was an old ring that had seen much since its creation, and working out which of the Visions pertained to its most recent owner was difficult and slow. “Many hands have held this ring,” she said, thinking to keep her audience, and her overbearing patroness, entertained. “Four hands. A family.” She let herself be drawn into one of the moving Visions to examine it the way she did Dream, but the excruciating pain in her head redoubled, and she blinked away tears and could not bear to do it again.
She sorted and discarded Visions, casting irrelevant ones away, deciding to focus on finding the Vision that would show what its owner saw, wherever in the world he might be, which would take less time than describing all of the images related to him; the Duchess would have no idea that Sophia was, in a sense, cheating her. This was much easier, as that Vision would be a moving one, and most of the Visions associated with this ring were static images she could eliminate.
Her quest was going much more rapidly than she had believed it would, given her headache. Perh
aps she could give the Duchess what she wanted, then excuse herself. Would Cecy respond if she thought Sophia was ill, or was she still too angry?
The Visions had taken on a reddish tinge, like tiny windows rimmed with ruddy copper, and it hurt to look at them directly. “The owner of this ring has a stable of horses of which he is proud,” she said, glancing into one window and then casting it away before it could overwhelm her. “He has… he is a landholder, possibly noble—no, not—I believe he is an Earl—” She was nauseated from the motion of the Visions that simply would not sit still for her. “His property is in Hertfordshire,” she added, and the reddish tinge turned ruby, and then the Visions went still, and her head stopped pounding, and she closed her eyes in blessed relief at freedom from the pain, and everything was black and perfectly still behind her eyelids.
She became aware, after what seemed no time at all, that she was lying down face-first on something soft but prickly, and the beautiful blackness had given way to a reddish brown, and her head had begun to hurt again. Someone rolled her onto her back and straightened out her legs—she had not realized they were bent awkwardly under her until that moment—and then he lifted her and laid her gently on a cushioned surface. “Back away, and give her air,” Mr. Rutledge said. She opened her eyes and blinked up at him. He was looking up and away from her, then Cecy was there, holding her tight and sobbing her name. Sophia reached out with an arm made of stone and laid it on Cecy’s shoulder. “Don’t cry,” she tried to say, but her mouth was too heavy to move.
“Is that how a Vision is supposed to end?” said the Duchess. “I didn’t expect that.”
“Mrs. Westlake has not been well,” Mr. Rutledge said, “and I imagine she simply overexerted herself. I am sure she will oblige you with another Vision some other time.”
Wondering Sight (The Extraordinaries Book 2) Page 14