The Great Game (Royal Sorceress)

by Nuttall, Christopher

  “You killed an innocent child,” Gwen said, flatly. Somehow, she would have been happier knowing that she had been adopted. “What sort of punishment do you think you deserve?”

  “What sort of life do you think the child would have had?” Lady Mary demanded. “A known bastard” – Gwen had never heard her mother use any such word before – “in a society that blames the child for the sins of the parent! He would have been isolated, unable to grow and develop... if I’d kept him. If not, I would have had to hand him over to someone else to raise and I couldn’t bear the thought of giving him up...”

  “So you killed him instead,” Gwen said. “You could have given him to one of the servants to raise...”

  “I would have had to see him as a servant, or else favour him,” Lady Mary said. “Do you not remember the Duke of Holdernesse?”

  Gwen winced. The Duke had had an affair with one of his chambermaids, eventually getting her pregnant. She’d died in childbirth, but he’d kept the boy, even though he could never have acknowledged him as a heir. And then he’d married a respectable woman and had a legitimate heir... until the day his bastard son’s jealousy had got the better of him. The Duke’s happy life had died along with his wife and younger son. Polite Society had gossiped for months afterwards.

  And even if Lady Mary had given the unborn child the benefit of the doubt, she would still have had to explain her pregnancy to Lord Rudolf. He would have known that the newborn baby wasn’t his child.

  “I should tell everyone,” Gwen snapped. Her mother’s pale face went completely white. “Why not? You had a child killed because keeping him around would have exposed you.”

  “I had no choice,” Lady Mary insisted. “I...”

  “You gave up that choice when you let someone else into your bed,” Gwen snapped back, angrily. Or had her mother been as ignorant as Gwen herself? Lady Mary had never read books her mother had forbidden her to read. She might well not have realised that she could get pregnant until it was far too late. “Didn’t you even think about the possible consequences?”

  “I was young and in love,” Lady Mary said. She looked up at Gwen, eyes pleading for understanding. “Don’t you understand why I sheltered you so much? I didn’t want you to have to make the same choice!”

  Lady Bracknell might have been the same, Gwen thought. If she hadn’t been so controlling, her daughter would never have written such compromising letters... and ended up being blackmailed by Howell. And if Gwen hadn’t scared so many possible suitors, would she have given herself to someone and ended up compromised herself.

  “You would have driven me into rebellion,” Gwen said, harshly. “If Master Thomas hadn’t come for me...”

  “Your place in society was destroyed,” Lady Mary said. “You can never be part of Polite Society...”

  Gwen started to laugh. “Why would I want to be part of Polite Society?” She demanded. “How much of it is even polite?”

  Her mother stared at her. Lady Mary had always defined her place in life by her position in society, rising up when she married Lord Rudolf, falling down when her daughter proved to be a magician. To her, a place in society – the chance to determine fashion and look down on those below her - was what made life worth living. It was a validation of her self-worth.

  But Gwen would never have that, not even if she wanted it. Polite Society would prefer not to deal with the Royal Sorceress at all. The only person who might be close to her position was a Ruling Queen, a woman sitting in a man’s chair and wielding power as a man. Queen Elizabeth’s success had come from her refusal to marry, knowing that it would dilute her power... Queen Mary of England and Mary of Scotland had both weakened their positions when they married, even though they had needed to provide heirs. That, at least, wasn’t something Gwen had to worry about.

  “There were hundreds of files in Howell’s safe, mother,” she said. “Hundreds of names, some of them familiar, some of them famous. How many others in Polite Society have dark secrets like yours? All you really do is conceal your own sins and ruthlessly work over those unfortunate enough to have their sins revealed, hoping that it will save you from your own mistakes. Why don’t you just admit to your sins and forget about them?”

  “You had the benefit of my training,” Lady Mary said, flatly. “You should know that it doesn’t work like that.”

  “Of course not,” Gwen snapped. “Who cares about the truth when all that matters is protecting one’s good name?”

  It hadn’t been that long since John Wilkes had been forced to flee to France for what he’d written in his newspaper. With all of the new newspapers looking for ways to ensure that they lasted longer than a year, how long would it be before some of them started digging into the lives and times of the aristocrats who ruled the British Empire. The new laws on freedom of the press had been intended to prevent the politicians from covering up their own mistakes; Gwen suspected that it wouldn’t be long before they realised that they’d made a dreadful mistake. And if Howell had gathered so much blackmail material, who knew what a newspaper could gather... and print.

  “I don’t want to see you again, mother,” Gwen snapped, making the final word an insult. “You’re a...”

  A hand fell on her shoulder and she jumped.

  “Gwen,” Lord Rudolf snapped. “Come with me.”

  Gwen cursed herself as Lord Rudolf steered her out of her mother’s study. She should have heard the door opening behind her... how much had her father heard? Lord Rudolf had been more inclined to focus on his son rather than his daughter, but he’d been worried about Gwen before Master Thomas had made him an offer. And yet... he didn’t know what his wife had done before they were married. What would he feel if he did?

  She had no time for reflection as her father pushed her into his study, a large room Gwen had been barred from for most of her life. David had only been allowed inside after he’d matured and gone to work for the family business; Gwen recalled daring him to slip inside when they’d both been children and bored. The last time she’d been inside was when Lord Mycroft and Master Thomas had arrived to take her away.

  “You don’t upset your mother like that,” Lord Rudolf said, as soon as the door was closed. “The butler said that you were angry, but...”

  Gwen scowled openly. There was no escaping the scrutiny of servants, was there?

  “This is unacceptable behaviour,” Lord Rudolf said. “And you have been pressuring the Milton Family...”

  It took Gwen a moment to put it together. Of course; Lady Mortimer’s niece, the same one who had taken Polly’s jewels, had married into the Milton Family. She found it hard to believe that she’d actually had the nerve to complain to Gwen’s father about it, but it did make a certain kind of sense. Most fathers had absolute authority over their offspring until they were married – and even then, they maintained some influence. Gwen was young and unmarried... and wouldn’t be expected to do anything without her father’s permission.

  She couldn’t help smiling. Was Lady Mortimer’s niece completely insane?

  “This isn’t funny,” Lord Rudolf thundered. “You are my daughter and I cannot afford to have you doing anything that would threaten the family name. I order you to abandon whatever you are doing with the Milton Family.”

  “No,” Gwen said, flatly.

  Lord Rudolf stared at her, then reached for his belt buckle. “You are my daughter,” he repeated. “I will not tolerate disobedience...”

  “I am not your daughter,” Gwen said. The anger she’d felt towards her mother grew stronger; how dare anyone, even her father, try to pressure her into doing anything? “You signed me away to Master Thomas, remember? He became my legal father the moment you signed the papers.”

  “And he died,” Lord Rudolf snapped. “You reverted back to me.”

  Gwen met his eyes, refusing to budge. “I read the legal papers very carefully,” she said. “There was no formal provision for anything of the sort – I dare say that Master Thomas
suspected that you might try to use me for your own political schemes. His death emancipated me – after all, you already cut me off from my biological family. And I have his fortune. Do you want to start a legal battle that would make you a laughing stock?

  “I’m not under your authority any longer,” she added, a moment later. “We can talk, as mature adults, if you like, but you can no longer command me.”

  She felt an odd moment of bitterness. What would her life have been like if her father had taught her, rather than her mother? David had become a stuffed shirt, a businessman and then a politician, but would Gwen have gone the same way? But then, Polite Society frowned on trade and would definitely frown on a girl handling trade... even though quite a few small businesses were owned and operated by women. Gwen’s value lay in marriage and that had been destroyed the day she’d first used magic.

  Her father glared at her, but he took his hand away from his belt. Whipping a son or daughter – or a servant – was common in society, but striking an aristocratic adult would have been assault; the victim could have sued or challenged him to a duel. She watched him thinking, hoping that he drew the right conclusions. The last thing she wanted was a public struggle between her and her father.

  But he knew that Gwen was right; he had no legal claim on her... and if he did try to sue for her guardianship, he’d make himself a laughing stock. And then there was the problem of Master Thomas’s fortune; Gwen could afford a long drawn-out legal battle, if she was determined to maintain her independence.

  And I have friends in high places, she thought, quietly.

  “So it would seem,” Lord Rudolf said, softly. For a moment, she wondered if he’d read her thoughts before realising that it was unlikely. “But I do insist on you apologising to your mother.”

  “Later, perhaps,” Gwen said, as she headed for the door. The anger that had driven her to come to her father’s house and demand answers from her mother was still there, but mixed with sadness... and guilt. “Right now, I have to go home.”

  “Gwen,” Lord Rudolf said. “Until you apologise, you will not be welcome in this house.”

  “Duly noted,” Gwen said, opening the door. “And tell your friends that I will not fail in my duty, no matter what pressure they bring to bear upon me.”

  With that, she walked out of her father’s study, leaving him alone.

  Chapter Thirty

  What happened to you?”

  Gwen climbed into the carriage, silently thanking God that she’d asked the coachman – and Sir Charles – to wait for her. Having to walk back to Cavendish Hall would not have been the best thing to do, even if she’d only walked as far as the nearest cab station.

  “I had a... disagreement with my parents,” Gwen said, as she sat down. Now that she was away from them, she was shaking, although she couldn’t tell if it was rage of fear. The anger that had driven her onwards had become muted, overridden by bitterness and despair. How could she have been so horrible to her own mother? But how could her mother have been so horrible to her?

  Sir Charles tapped the wall separating them from the coachman. “Take us to Cavendish Hall,” he ordered, then looked at Gwen. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  Gwen hesitated, unsure. She wanted to talk, but did she have a right to share her mother’s secret any further? But she trusted Sir Charles; he’d gone with her into Howell’s lair and helped her arrest his people. And he’d had his own problems with his family. Maybe he would be able to offer good advice.

  “Howell had something on my mother,” she admitted, and then went through the entire story. “I don’t know what to do any longer.”

  Sir Charles put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t think about it while you’re angry and hurting,” he said, softly. “When you calm down, you can think about it rationally.”

  Gwen scowled at him, angrily. “Every time I think about it I get angry,” she said, crossly. “Does it ever get better?”

  “You’re young,” Sir Charles said. “Trust me on this; everything hurts badly at first, from the pain of discovering the truth about your mother to learning that you’ve been sent into an ambush by some paper-pusher in London who can’t read a map. The further you are from the event, the less anger you will feel. Then you calm down and deal with it.”

  “Wise advice,” Gwen said, sarcastically. “How did it work out for you?”

  “I went to India and had no contact with my family for years,” Sir Charles said. “They gave me the name and nothing else; I built my own legend. Everything I mentioned in dispatches was all my own work. My family might want to embrace me again, but it is far too late.”

  Gwen had to smile, despite the bitterness and anger and rage. “They might think better of you now,” she said. “You’re a hero.”

  “That won’t count in the long run,” Sir Charles admitted. “Why do you think Lord Nelson is one of the loudest voices demanding war with France?”

  “Because... he needs a war to boost his reputation,” Gwen said. Lord Nelson had been famous for thrashing the French – and burning Tripoli to teach the Barbary pirates a lesson – but it had been nearly twenty years since he had last gone to war. The public would eventually forget why they loved him and then his enemies would pounce on him – and Lady Hamilton. “Are you going to start a war?”

  “We were trying to prevent one in Central Asia,” Sir Charles reminded her. “I think we succeeded, for the moment.”

  Gwen sighed. “I don’t know what to do about my parents,” she said, softly. “I didn’t even know that my mother could do that.”

  Sir Charles snorted. “What makes you think that she was the only one who had an abortion before she married?”

  “... Nothing,” Gwen admitted. She was still astonished that her mother and grandmother had known where to go to get an abortion. “How many others are there?”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have destroyed those papers,” Sir Charles said. “You could have found out.”

  Gwen shrugged. Part of her would have been tempted to use them if they had survived.

  “I tell you this,” Sir Charles said, softly. “There isn’t an aristocratic family alive that doesn’t have a dark secret buried in its past. Someone born on the wrong side of the blankets, someone killed because they were in the way, someone pressured into voting against their interests... sex, drugs, French dancing... it’s all there, hidden in their memories and little else.”

  “I know,” Gwen said, miserably. “I just... I just never thought that it could happen to my family.”

  She’d heard the stories, the whispers that moved faster than horses or even mental communication between Talkers. The families that had locked a mad aunt or child in the attic, refusing to even admit to her existence; the families that had concealed magicians far less uncommon than Gwen herself; the families that had muscled their way into Polite Society through a mixture of intimidation and bribery... but she’d never really grasped that her own family could have secrets. Or more secrets; Lady Mary would have kept Gwen herself a secret, if she could have done so.

  Lord Rudolf had gone into trade, she recalled, when few aristocrats would sully their hands with actually earning money. What questionable deals had he made when he invested heavily in airships? How many of them would come back to haunt him now that he was respectable, with children at the forefront of their professions? And how many problems would David inherit when he took control of the family? There was no way to know, short of asking her father – and he was unlikely to give her a truthful answer. Her mind shied away from using Charm on him. It would have been worse than anything Howell had ever done.

  “Me too,” Sir Charles said. He looked down at the wooden floor, seemingly unwilling to meet her eyes. “I used to think that I was my father’s son – I still think of him as my father, after everything that happened. But I wasn’t... and I only found out when I discovered that my younger brother was named as the Heir in the will. If I’d been magical, maybe it would have been d
ifferent for me...”

  Gwen felt a pang of guilt. The men who’d operated the farms had insisted that magical children be treated exactly the same as children who had been born to their adopted families, but they’d had problems convincing the adoptive parents that they should treat the farm children as their firstborn heirs. No one had anticipated Sir Charles’s older brother – his adopted brother – dying shortly after Sir Charles was adopted, leaving him as the nominal Heir. It must have been a terrible shock to discover that he had been effectively disowned – and then that he was no true blood relation of the Bellingham Family.

  “Maybe,” she said, softly. “Polite Society is cruel, isn’t it?”

  “It has always been cruel,” Sir Charles said, with surprising fury. “I loved India, Gwen, because my birth or status didn't matter there, not among the natives. All that mattered was being able to represent the Empire; to fight and show the natives that we were the ones who deserved to rule. You’d be surprised how many India hands come from families that would prefer to be rid of them, or how little they want to go home.”

  Gwen wondered just how true that was. She’d never really thought about the world that existed outside Polite Society until Jack had rubbed her nose in just how many horrors there were in London, scant miles from Whitehall and the heart of the British Empire. The toffs either never realised that the poor were there, any more than Gwen had, or exploited them ruthlessly. Quite a few of the aristocrats who were forced to visit the Healers had contracted something unpleasant from visiting cheap brothels near the Rookery.

  But India might be the same; a handful of aristocrats, British and Indian, ruling over a vast country, teeming with natives. Who knew just how happy the Indians were with their new overlords? Sir Charles had told her that one rebellion had been nipped in the bud, but how many others would there be in the future? Jack had brought the British Empire to its knees. What might an Indian do if he developed magic?