Niall frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I told you—I just got here this afternoon. The weather slowed me up until today. Believe me, if I could have gotten here sooner, I would have.”
“Why?”
He leaned forward, and she tugged the blankets closer to her chin. He ignored the gesture. “Because I love you, and I’m here to rescue you, one way or another.”
That time she laughed out loud.
“Quiet!” he said, glancing anxiously at the door. “What’s so funny?”
“Because I cannot think it was anything but a joke—and a feeble one, at that.”
“I am not joking, damn it! Pen, no, don’t look so angry. I want you to come away with me. We’ll ride to Dublin and get a special license from the archbishop and marry as soon as we can.”
Pen smothered another urge to laugh. “Oh, shall we? Tell me, how many other young women have you tried that line on? Mr. Keating—”
“You used to call me Niall,” he muttered.
“I used to believe that you loved me, too.”
“But I do!”
“Is that why you tried to seduce me in the library that afternoon? Because you loved and respected me and wanted to marry me? Usually it is the custom in the civilized world to hold the wedding ceremony before the consummation.”
“No, it’s not why I tried to do what I did,” he said calmly, to her surprise. “And, yes, I do want to marry you. I did it to try to save you, because I love you.”
That was the second time he’d said something like that. What could he possibly mean? “Save me? I’m sorry, but that simply is going too far. Did you feel you had to save me from the perilous condition of virtue? Is that why?”
He looked down at his lap for the space of a few breaths, then up at her once more. “I’d rather not say why. All I would say is that while you remain . . . er, untouched, there is danger that you will be forced to do something that would eventually cause you great distress. I wanted—want—to save you from that.”
Why, the sheer, brazen gall of him! “I . . . oh, really! Am I supposed to believe that?”
“Pen.” To her alarm he began to crawl up the bed toward her, pinning her under the blankets. “Pen, please. Let me—let me do this. Let me make love to you. Later tonight, as soon as we’re sure everyone is abed, we’ll take a horse for you and ride to Mallow. We’ll get the coach there and be in Dublin in a couple of days, and I swear we’ll be married as soon as we get the license.”
“Quite an admirable plan, but I think you’ve neglected one important point: What makes you think I want to marry you?”
He stared at her, and she might have laughed if she hadn’t been so angry. “Mr. Keating, your mother told me about your—your doings on the Continent. If you think that I have any desire to spend the rest of my life with a man of such vicious, dissolute habits, then you are more lacking in wits than I’d thought.”
Niall had grown pale, but his determined expression did not alter. “Those were lies my mother told you, all lies. Pen . . . oh, Pen, you have to believe me. Nothing of what she told you is true. She was angry that I was trying to stop her plans—”
“What plans?”
He fell silent again, then sighed and squared his shoulders. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this. . . . It would be so much easier if you could just let me—”
“If you don’t tell me, I shall scream.” Pen drew in a deep breath and opened her mouth.
“No!” He shook his head frantically. “Don’t do that!”
“Well? I’m waiting, then.”
“Blast it, Pen, why—”
She opened her mouth again.
“All right, I’ll tell you! Mother’s been practicing magic with you, hasn’t she? She’s told you that she has a special magical project she needs your help with. Am I right?”
Pen watched him warily. “So?”
“And she’s told you that it has something to do with bringing me and the Duke of Cumberland together, right? But nothing more specific than that? No explanation of the actual magic you’d be doing?”
“As a matter of fact, she said—” What had she said, exactly? Something about bringing them together so that Niall could have a father’s guidance and put aside his profligate ways. Had there been anything else?
He shook his head. “Pen, my mother is using you.”
“What? Oh, that’s just grand, coming from you.”
“I’m telling you the truth. She’s using you. Yes, she wants to bring me closer to the duke so that maybe he will, at least informally, accept me as his son. Only she doesn’t want him to just be the duke, or just the ruler of a little German principality. She wants him to be the king. Of England.”
“But that’s impossible!” This was making no sense. “Victoria is on the throne.”
“It’s not impossible, if Victoria were to be . . .” He paused, as if searching for the right word. “To be removed.”
“Removed? What do you mean . . . oh!” Pen dropped the blankets she still clutched and stared at him.
Niall nodded. “ ‘Oh!’ is right. Until the queen has children, the duke is next in line for the throne. Mother wants him to be king and me to be recognized as the king’s son, if an illegitimate one. After all, look at the late king’s family of bastards—one of them was made an earl. I heard her, Pen—I heard her discussing it with Doireann.”
He inched closer, resting his hands on either side of her hips, and spoke very quickly. “She can do it, but she needs your magic as well—something about the Goddess and the Maiden and the power of the Three. She’s been planning this for a while now, and I’m ashamed to say I helped her at first. I agreed to flirt with you and be charming so that you’d love me and want to help Mother help me . . . until I fell in love with you, and until I learned just what it was she planned to do about the duke. When you told me how you’d helped save the queen last year, I knew you’d never want to have anything to do with such a plan. But I was afraid to tell you what I knew because . . . well, because I had deliberately set out to make you fall in love with me.”
“On purpose. You did it on purpose,” Pen said dully. Her head had begun to ache almost as badly as it had the day she healed Doherty. It had all been a game to him, then.
“I—God help me, I know that. But only at first. After the night of the dinner party, I resolved that I was going to fall right back in love with you. I didn’t know then that Mother planned to kill the queen. And once I found that out, all I could think of was to make sure that she couldn’t use you—”
Something snapped inside Pen. “Stop it!” she cried. “I don’t want to hear any more. Have you been listening to yourself? Do you know how ridiculous this story sounds? Your mother told me about you, you know. All about your drinking and roistering and wenching through Europe. Did you have to tell any of your conquests there such an outrageous story to get them to go to bed with you?”
He drew back. “None of that is true! I never—”
“I saw you! I saw you flirting with Charlotte Enniskean and her cousins. And Doireann told me how you are at parties and balls—”
“Oh, I see. So you’ll listen to Doireann and Mother, but not me?” he said in a harsh voice.
“Whose story do you think is more believable?” she retorted. “Your mother is a Banmhaor Bande. She could never use the Goddess’s magic to kill an innocent girl like the queen—the Goddess would never let her, and she knows it.” She took a deep breath and slipped out of the high bed, crossing to the door as she spoke. “I’ll give you ten seconds to get down that ladder. If you are not on your way down by the time I reach ten, I will open this door and scream. Very loudly.”
“Pen—”
“One.” She pointedly put her hand on the doorknob.
He climbed off the bed and turned toward the window. “Fine. That’s your choice, then.”
“Two.”
“Go ahead and help murder your dear friend the queen. Her death can
only benefit me.”
“Three.”
He slid one leg over the window’s edge. “Pen, think about what you’re doing—”
“Four.” She rattled the doorknob menacingly.
“All right!” He swung off the sill and onto the ladder but still stared at her through the window. “Good-bye, Pen Leland. If we meet again, maybe in London next season, you’ll pardon me if I don’t pursue an acquaintance with you. It’s hard to chat about the weather when one’s heart is breaking—”
“Five!” To her horror, she had begun to cry.
He gave her one last anguished look and disappeared from sight.
Pen slid to the floor and huddled there against the door, knees drawn to her chest, still staring at the window. After a few moments, the top of the ladder vanished too. But it was nearly an hour before she could bring herself to go to the window and shut it against the night air that now seemed to have grown bitterly cold.
The next morning Pen slept late. It had taken her several hours after Niall left to stop crying and calm herself sufficiently before exhaustion could do the rest and send her into a deep but unrefreshing sleep. She finally awoke just past ten and dressed hurriedly, pausing only to bathe her eyes in cool water in an attempt to keep them from looking too red and puffy—an attempt that wasn’t entirely successful, as she saw when she looked in the mirror.
She needn’t have worried. When she slipped into the breakfast room, where chafing dishes of eggs and oatmeal and the local sausage still simmered gently on the sideboard, it was to see Lady Keating uncharacteristically slumped in her chair at one end of the table, staring at a half-drunk cup of coffee. There was no sign of Doireann.
“Good morning. I’m sorry I slept so late—I suppose our hard work caught up with me,” Pen said brightly, sidling toward the food. If she could busy herself with eating, Lady Keating might not notice her swollen eyes and reddened nose.
“Good morning, cinealta Penelope. Don’t apologize; I didn’t get here much before you.” Lady Keating did not even glance up.
Pen paused. Lady Keating’s words had been spoken in a dull monotone, so different from her usual resonant, slightly theatrical tones. “May I bring you a plate?” she asked. “Eggs? Toast?”
Lady Keating didn’t stir. “No food, thank you, though you are a dear to offer.”
Something was evidently very wrong. Pen stared down at the dishes. She didn’t feel much like eating either, but that might make Lady Keating think that there was something wrong with her. She took some scrambled eggs and toast and a sausage and seated herself, not too close to Lady Keating. One of the footwomen appeared from nowhere with a fresh pot of coffee and filled their cups, then vanished once again.
Pen picked up her fork and resolutely attacked her eggs while covertly watching Lady Keating. Should she ask her what was wrong? Might she be ill? That would explain her refusing to eat, though if she were that ill she probably would have stayed abed. Had she received some bad news, then? Or had something upsetting happened during the night, something that—
She nearly dropped her fork. Could Niall have been found on the grounds? Did Lady Keating suspect that he’d tried to see her . . . or maybe even succeeded?
But Lady Keating’s mood did not seem to be aimed at her. What could it be, then? “Shall we be going up to the hill this morning?” she asked, pouring milk into her coffee and trying to sound offhand.
Lady Keating stirred. “Yes, we shall, but it will just be the two of us for this morning.”
It was on the tip of Pen’s tongue to ask why Doireann wouldn’t be working with them, but something in the grim edge to Lady Keating’s voice stopped her. Could this bad mood have anything to do with Doireann, then? Had Niall gone to see her as well? Or did Niall even have anything to do with this?
Surely Lady Keating would have said something if it did, though, if only to ask if he’d attempted to see her. So evidently Niall had gotten away from Bandry Court without getting caught. Was he already on his way back to Cork? Or back to Kinsale, where he could forget his sorrows in Charlotte Enniskean’s willing arms? Surely he hadn’t expected her to believe that his own adoring mother had locked him up in their house. . . . Pen mentally shook herself. No more thinking about last night.
She stole another look at Lady Keating. Whatever had happened to put her in this mood, she wouldn’t add to it by telling her about Niall’s clandestine visit. After all, she’d handled him quite well on her own, if she did say so herself.
“Thank you for the loan of your book, ma’am,” she said instead. “I found it very interesting.”
Lady Keating looked up with a hint of her old smile. “Ah, yes. So you read it?”
“Not the entire book, but all the parts that you had marked. I can finish the rest later if you wish me to.”
“No, that won’t be necessary. Not unless you wish to.” She seemed to be trying to throw off her gloom, at least to some degree. “When you are finished eating, shall we go and get a little work done before luncheon? Nothing too strenuous, I don’t think, but I’m not sure that circle raising is strenuous for you anymore.”
Pen warmed under her praise. Dear Lady Keating. “Oh yes, let’s. I’m done.” She took a last sip of coffee and rose from the table.
It was just her and Lady Keating working on magic alone together not only that morning, but also the afternoon and next day. Pen couldn’t help breathing a sigh of relief, though without Doireann they could not raise as potent a circle. Her attitude had been so much more changeable lately, bouncing between friendliness and hostility without any apparent cause, that Pen felt constantly on her guard with her.
Lady Keating seemed pleased with their work, though. Under her tutelage, Pen began to be able to better control the amount of energy she put into a spell or magical command, so that she did not waste it and tire herself out. Raising the circle had become second nature to her, so that she no longer had to watch Lady Keating for cues but could close her eyes and go inward, gathering and strengthening her will to make her augmentations even stronger.
As they returned to the house that afternoon, Lady Keating slipped her arm around Pen’s waist and gave her a gentle hug. “Sometimes I—” she began, then trailed into silence.
“What?”
“Oh, sometimes I can’t help wishing that you and I had come together sooner, so that I could have taught you more. I feel that we are so alike in so many ways—our strengths and abilities . . . not that I’m disparaging your dear Mrs. Carrighar, of course, but if you’d been born my daughter . . .” Her voice became ever so slightly wistful. “I would have been a very happy woman if you were my—but this is just idle daydreaming. We are not allowed to choose our families in this life, alas.”
She shrugged and went on to speak of something else, but Pen hardly heard her. Lady Keating wished she were her daughter. Pen loved her own dear mama and was sure Lady Keating must love Doireann, but Lady Keating would have chosen her.
At the house, Pen paused before opening the door. “May I tell you something?” she asked, feeling shy but determined.
“Of course you may.”
“I . . . I know it sounds silly and childish, but while I am here with you, you are my mother.”
“Ah, my dearest girl.” Lady Keating’s green eyes grew misty. “You are indeed my child.” A slightly strange smile touched her lips, but before Pen could decipher it, she drew her into her arms and embraced her tenderly. “You are truly mine.”
Doireann did not make an appearance for the next two days, not even for dinner. Only on the third morning was she at the breakfast table when Pen came down. Her mumbled “good morning” was sullen and her manner chilly, as if Pen, not she, had been avoiding everyone for the last few days.
Lady Keating, when she came in, hardly even acknowledged Doireann’s presence. She ate her breakfast in wintry indifference, addressing an occasional remark only to Pen, which was uncomfortable in the extreme but seemed to confirm her guess that Lady
Keating’s bad mood must have had to do with Doireann.
Fortunately, their mutual frostiness didn’t extend to their work up on the hill. Doireann slipped into her place in their circle raising as if she’d never been away, her power casual and almost lazy but still measured and strong. She seemed surprised, though, at the advances Pen had made.
“At this rate, she’ll be ready for the full ceremony in no time,” she said to Lady Keating as they stood on the hilltop.
Pen wished Doireann would stop talking about her as if she weren’t there. “A full ceremony?” she asked.
“She was ready several days ago,” Lady Keating said coolly, then turned to Pen. “Doireann is referring to a circle raising by the light of the full moon. The moon is, of course, the Goddess’s planet. When we work the Goddess’s magic under it, it enhances the circle.”
Circle raising by the light of the full moon . . . like in the book Lady Keating had given her to read? Pen turned to Lady Keating, who nodded slightly as if she knew what she had been thinking.
“Yes, Penelope. Tomorrow night is the full moon, the perfect time to perform the draiocht for Niall. Between the power we have already raised together and what we will summon under the moon’s light, we will surely succeed. We shall practice this afternoon, but I shall require all day tomorrow to prepare.”
“Jolly good. I can catch up on my sleep, then.” Doireann yawned and stretched. “Come on, Pen, let’s go for a walk before luncheon. Have you seen the river yet? We crossed over part of it when we got here, down near the gatehouse and the spinney. It’s not much of one, but deep and wet enough for me to get thoroughly muddy in when I was small, whenever I felt particularly cross with Nanny.”
Pen gave her a quick, measuring look. Evidently Doireann was in a good mood this morning. Did she alternate every quarter hour according to a schedule, or were her mood swings entirely random?
“What a charming idea! Yes, let’s do that.” Lady Keating linked arms with Pen and gave Doireann a wide smile.
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