“If it is a trap,” said Joanna, aiming for a calmly reassuring tone, “it is a very clumsy one.”
“In any case, half of them are mages themselves,” said Gray. “Unless our information on the subject is very much out of date. And if Henry Taylor expects me to come to his aid, or considers me likely to believe anything he says—”
“And this information which he claims to have?” said Joanna. “What of that? He must know something—perhaps not where the others are now, but at any rate where they have been, and how they contrived to escape.”
“Not to mention who helped them,” Gwendolen put in. When Mr. Fowler gave her an astonished look, she said, “Well, it is perfectly evident that someone must have done!”
So it was indeed, in Joanna’s view, though Sieur Germain and his investigators had been at considerable pains to keep their conclusions on this point from reaching the public ear, lest they inflame the rumours of conspiracy already circulating.
“I am perfectly ready to speak with him,” said Gray, “if Sieur Germain has no objection. But as to Amelia’s being exposed to such a risk—”
“I have an objection!” Sophie exclaimed, leaping to her feet. Gray twisted round in his seat to look up at her. “I have numerous objections—quite apart from Amelia’s going, which of course is perfectly impossible. To begin with—”
“But if I might speed the others’ recapture,” Gray said, almost too softly for Joanna’s ears to catch. He had caught Sophie’s hands—curled into fists at her sides—and engulfed them both in his larger ones, clasped close to his lips. “You would not have me shirk that task, love, surely?”
Looking away in some discomfiture, Joanna met Gwendolen’s eye across the table, and knew at once that she, too, had been unable to continue watching Sophie and Gray.
“No,” said Sophie, with a small, defeated sigh. Joanna heard the rustle of her gown as she resumed her seat, and looked back along the table to see her prop her elbows upon the table-cloth and bury her face in her hands. Her voice, when next she spoke, was muffled: “No, of course I would not.”
Gray’s hand was on Sophie’s shoulder, but his gaze was steady on his brother-in-law’s face. He did not see, therefore, the moment when Sophie raised her head from her hands, nor the terrifying light in her dark eyes.
Oh, gods and priestesses. She has had an idea, and I fear we shall all of us regret it.
“What say you, my lord?” said Gray.
Sieur Germain, grim-faced, replied, “Such a summons seems to me highly likely to indicate a trap. I cannot forbid you, of course; but I should strongly counsel you not to go alone.”
“He need not be alone,” said Sophie. Straightening away from Gray’s hand on her shoulder, she unfolded herself from her chair, turned to face her husband and brother-in-law, and closed her eyes.
“Sophie—”
The transformation took only a moment—so skilled was Sophie now, so thoroughly in control of her magick, that the intervening stages were scarcely visible to Joanna’s eye—and by the time her eyes opened once more, one sister had vanished and the other appeared.
“He need not be alone,” Sophie repeated, in perfect mimicry of Amelia’s voice, and smiling Amelia’s slightly superior smile, “for Miss Callender can go with him.”
The silence which greeted this pronouncement was so thick that Joanna’s ears fairly rang with it.
“That is a perfectly idiotic notion.” It was Gwendolen who spoke at last; all of them turned to look at her, and she coloured a little but did not look away. “Begging your pardon, Mrs. Marshall. If, as you suppose, these men have set a trap to catch mages, why in Hades should you wish to deliver up two mages instead of one?”
Sophie looked down Amelia’s nose at Gwendolen, so entirely Amelia that Joanna shivered. “You seem, Miss Pryce,” she said, in Amelia’s most icily condescending tone, “to be labouring under a misapprehension. I have no notion of delivering up anything to anyone, and myself and Mr. Marshall to Henry Taylor, I assure you, least of all.”
“Nevertheless, Sophie”—Jenny had now found her voice, it appeared—“I must agree with Gwendolen. I do not see what advantage—”
The faux Amelia shook her head briskly, in the manner of a hound with water in its ears, and abruptly was Sophie again. “Have you met my sister Amelia, Jenny?” she demanded, laughter warring with exasperation in her voice. “The advantage is that whatever they may expect of Amelia, they shall not be expecting me.”
“Has it occurred to anyone,” said Joanna, “to ask Amelia’s opinion?”
To judge by the looks that were turned in her direction, this suggestion was quite as shocking as Sophie’s had been.
“After all,” she continued, pressing her advantage, “she is not a child; she is six and twenty, or nearly, and surely knows her own mind. Perhaps she may know what this Mr. Taylor is about; perhaps he may be willing to tell her things which—”
“Six and twenty or not,” said Lady Maëlle, “and child or not, Amelia remains a ward of the Crown so long as she is unmarried—as do you, Joanna, you may recall. And, as the duly appointed representative thereof, in respect of your sister, I have every right to decide what is, and is not, in her best interests to be told.”
Joanna and Sophie exchanged a look.
“And do you not think, Mrs. Wallis,” said the latter pointedly, “that enough harm has been done already in this family by the keeping of secrets?”
Lady Maëlle winced—just visibly—at the use of her quondam alias and, when Jenny said firmly, “I quite agree,” acquiesced gracefully enough to Amelia’s being consulted.
“Gwendolen,” said Jenny, when this largely silent skirmish had been won, “will you run up to Miss Callender’s room, please, and ask her to come down and speak to us in the morning-room?”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Gwendolen at once, and, with a single enigmatic glance over her shoulder at Joanna, hastened out into the corridor.
* * *
“Miss Pryce has been a very long time in fetching Amelia,” said Sophie, worrying at the edge of the fichu which she had taken out of her work-basket for the purpose of hemming it. “Ought one of us to—”
“No,” said Joanna firmly. “Of all of us, Gwen is the least likely to irritate her simply by existing; we can do no good by—”
She broke off, following Jenny’s startled gaze.
Gwendolen stood in the doorway, one hand gripping the jamb; she was out of breath, as though she had been running, yet her face was pale.
“Miss Callender is not in her room,” she said. “Nor anywhere else in the house, so far as I can discover. Her bed looks as though it had not been slept in, and Mr. Treveur says that her boots were not put out to be cleaned, though I am quite sure I saw them last night when I put out Joanna’s and mine, and she has left the small drawer of the dressing-table ajar—the drawer where I used to keep my coin-purse, when that dressing-table was in my bedroom in Carrington-street—and I opened it and found a stray copper coin that had rolled to the back”—here Gwendolen held up her other hand and opened it palm up to show the coin’s dull coppery gleam—“but otherwise it was quite empty. And—”
“Enough,” said Lady Maëlle, so sharply that Joanna started in her seat. “Has any of you seen Amelia this morning? Joanna?”
Joanna shook her head numbly, and one by one the others did the same.
“She went up to bed very early yesterday evening,” said Jenny, her voice slow and heavy. “Do you not recall?” Joanna, her heart sinking, did. “She had a sick headache, she said, and I did not doubt her, for she did look ill—I had begun to remark it at dinner. I remember I asked her whether I had not better send you up to her, Lady Maëlle; but she said no, she was going to sleep straight away, and should be quite well in the morning—”
“You ought to have told me,” said Lady Maëlle. Joanna flinched fro
m the furious anger in her voice.
The expressions breaking across their faces, as severally they arrived at the conclusion that, in fact, no one had seen Amelia since the previous afternoon, exactly echoed the sick panic which clutched at Joanna’s heart and roiled nauseatingly through her belly.
“I can see now that I ought,” said Jenny—her voice perfectly calm, though her face was waxen and her hands clenched tightly on the arms of her chair. “But at the time—”
Lady Maëlle drew breath to speak again; Joanna, hoping to forestall her, said, “Has she had any more mysterious letters? Had she any yesterday?”
Treveur and Madame Joliveau were summoned. No, said Treveur, there had been no letters for Miss Callender by the morning post yesterday, nor the evening post either. However, yesterday being the first of the month, he had been occupied all the afternoon, together with Madame Joliveau and Lady Kergabet, in the settling of the household bills; he was not prepared to swear, therefore, that no letter or message could have entered the house by any other means. Indeed, they agreed, there had been a quantity of messengers, couriers, and so on coming to the door at all hours, since this dreadful business of Dim’zell Joanna’s father (here he nodded at Joanna, an apology for having drawn this connexion), and though all the staff of course had strict instructions to let none of these persons past the front door . . .
“I thank you both,” said Jenny at last, and sent them away to question the housemaids, the parlourmaids, the footmen, and (on the subject of Miss Callender’s boots) the boot-boy, George—if possible, without exciting their curiosity.
Joanna thought again of horses and stable doors, and rather fancied that Jenny and Kergabet were thinking the same, but there must be some effort made, at least to delay—for surely they could not prevent it altogether—the moment when Amelia’s sudden departure should become fodder for the sort of talk which all were desirous to avoid.
Meanwhile Sophie and Gray had been muttering together in a corner of the morning-room—in their case, an almost infallible sign of magickal doings. Upon the departure of Madame Joliveau and Mr. Treveur, they emerged from this conference to resume their seats upon Jenny’s new green-and-gold-striped sofa; their faces were grave, and they held hands quite openly (Gray’s huge left hand quite eclipsing Sophie’s right), as though they could not quite bear to let go.
“That was a finding-spell, I presume,” said Kergabet. He glanced out of the window, repressed a sigh, and looked at Mr. Fowler, who said, “I shall go and see about the carriage, sir.”
Of course, thought Joanna, very belatedly; they ought to have been about their business long since, and should have been, if not for Henry Taylor, if not for Amelia.
“It was,” said Gray, as the door was closing behind Mr. Fowler. “Either Miss Callender is not within eighty miles of this house, or she is in the company of someone capable of working an extremely strong warding-spell, and of recognising the wisdom of doing so.”
“This Henry Taylor,” said Jenny at once; “could he do so, do you think?”
Gray’s russet-gold-brown eyebrows drew together in a doubtful frown. “I should not have said so,” he said, “particularly in light of the description of him which we had this morning—exhaustion and starvation do not tend to strengthen one’s reserves of magick. On the other hand . . .”
His voice trailed off, and for a long moment he said nothing but stared vaguely in the general direction of the window, from which were visible the tops of the trees in the square.
“On the other hand?” Sophie prompted patiently.
Gray turned away from the window, blinked several times, and said, “On the other hand, I have not set eyes on Henry Taylor for the best part of seven years, and even then, we were not friends; I have no reason to suppose my impression of his capabilities at all accurate, and of course no means of knowing what else he may have contrived to learn since last we met.”
“Nonetheless,” said Sophie, “if, as we believe, Amelia left the house yesterday evening after the rest of us went up to bed—the evidence of the boots, you know—I think the most likely explanation is that she has already got more than eighty miles from London, rather than—”
“Why eighty miles, Sophie?” said Joanna.
“I am drawing a logical inference,” said Sophie primly. “After the . . . the business in Alba, we recruited all of our colleagues to experiment with finding-spells, so that if anything of the sort should ever occur again . . .” She swallowed, cleared her throat, and continued: “My range is fifty miles, and Gray’s, thirty; ergo, working together, we ought to be able to manage eighty at the least.”
“Mrs. Marshall,” said Gwendolen, sitting up very straight, like a pointer which has caught a scent, “what if—I wonder—the spell you sang, in Din Edin—might that—”
Joanna stared at her, bemused; this inarticulate jumble of words was quite unlike Gwendolen’s usual mode of expressing herself. But she knew very well what sort of spell was meant, and it seemed that Sophie did also, for she said at once, “I am quite prepared to try it; but you know, I think, that on the occasion you speak of, I had had . . . considerable assistance from Lucia MacNeill—”
“Well, as to that,” said Joanna, “surely Lucia MacNeill would have no objection—”
“You may be sure of it, but I am not,” Sophie retorted. “But in any case, Jo, the effect would not be at all the same, because now we are not in Alba.”
Joanna and Gwendolen sat back in disappointment; Lady Maëlle, whose outrage appeared to have subsided to an impotent simmer, said bleakly, “I apologize for my intemperate words, Lady Kergabet. The blame is mine; I have known that child since the age of three, and ought to have seen that she was scheming.”
The door opened. “The carriage, sir,” said Mr. Fowler.
CHAPTER XV
In Which Sophie and Joanna Conduct an Uncomfortable Interview
“No, ma’am,” said Katell positively. “And if I did,” she added, with a defiant glance at Lady Maëlle, “I shouldn’t tell anyone.”
She does know something about it, at any rate, thought Sophie. She exchanged with Joanna a look of grim surmise.
“Katell, no one wishes Miss Amelia any ill,” she said. “She and I have . . . we have not always seen things just alike, as you know, but you surely cannot think that I should take this occasion to crow over her mistakes?”
Katell looked away uncomfortably but said nothing.
“But if she is gone off alone, Katell,” Sophie persisted, “anything at all might befall her—she does not know London as Miss Joanna does, or Miss Pryce—she has no magick to protect her, nor any other sort of protection either—and with the Professor abroad in the world somewhere, plotting the gods alone know what—”
They ought not to have brought Lady Maëlle with them, she decided. It had seemed a wise precaution, a reassurance to Katell; but it appeared that Katell’s habit of shielding Joanna from the Professor’s temper had transmuted itself into a determination to keep Amelia’s secrets from her guardian.
“Cousin Maëlle,” said Sophie—dubious of success but determined to make the attempt—“I have just remembered that J—that Lady Kergabet wished very much to consult you upon, er, upon a matter of midwifery. I do apologise—I cannot think how I came to forget—”
Lady Maëlle, of course, was not taken in for a moment, but Lady Maëlle had not in any case been the target of Sophie’s gambit. Her dark eyes narrowed—I see what you are about, Sophie Marshall—but she nodded briskly and, saying only, “We must hope there is no great harm done,” took herself off, very likely to listen outside the library door.
Within the library there followed several further attempts at reasoning Katell into cooperation, which she resisted as steadfastly as before—until at last Joanna’s unwonted patience came to a jarring end, and she interrupted Sophie’s latest Please, Katell, by saying sharply, “Katel
l, I wish you will tell us whatever it is you know about Amelia; but if you will not, it does not much signify, for Lady Kergabet has only to scry something of hers, and then we shall know all of it.”
In several respects, as Joanna must know, this last was not precisely true; Katell, however, could only just call light, and to Sophie’s knowledge had never seen a scry-mage working close to. Sophie was not much surprised, therefore, to see her defiance begin to waver before Joanna’s decidedly unsubtle threat.
The sisters exchanged a meaning look, and by unspoken consent sat back in their chairs and regarded Katell (standing before them with her hands twisted into her apron, her honest face growing pink) in silence. Like both of them before her—for this patient, expectant silence was a weapon which Jenny had deployed against Sophie more than once, and Joanna, in all probability, dozens of times—Katell could bear it only so long.
“It is not fair!” she burst out at last, all furious indignation.
Sophie’s ears pricked; she leant forward, clasping her hands between her knees. “What is not fair?”
Katell paused a long moment—the pause, and Katell’s expression, spoke to Sophie of calculation, though that might be only the effect of her own guilty conscience—but at length said, “That you should be so very cross with Miss Amelia, only for doing what you did yourself.” Misreading Sophie’s expression of dismay, she hastily added, “Begging your pardon, Miss Sophie.”
“Mr. Henry Taylor, I presume?” said Joanna with a sigh.
Abandoning her wary study of Sophie, Katell rounded on Joanna. “And what of it?” she demanded. “Why should not Miss Amelia run away to be married to a handsome Oxford man, the same as her sister?”
“I did no such thing!” Sophie protested.
Joanna and Katell looked at her, briefly united in disbelief.
“It is quite true,” said Sophie, with some spirit, “and Miss Joanna knows it as well as I do, Katell, whatever anyone else may say. Mr. Marshall and I did not run away to be married; we ran away for a different reason entirely, and it so fell out that we were married along the way.”
A Season of Spells (A Noctis Magicae Novel) Page 20