Betraying Season (15 page)

Only a fool trifled with a witch. And here he was, trifling with one in about as enormous a way as was possible.

If she’s a witch, she should be able to protect herself,
said a small, dubious voice in his head.

Could she? Could anyone, where their emotions were involved? Love was blind, and lovers blinder. Even witch lovers. Look at Mother and her duke.

Pen saw him as genuine and sincere, and was responding to his deceitful flirtation with honest emotion. Damn it all, the last thing
he wanted was to make her fall in love with him, then find him out as a lying scoundrel.

What could he say to Mother? Nothing that she’d accept. To her, Penelope was a tool. Unimportant, except as a means to get to the duke. She’d already said as much. His sudden attack of conscience wouldn’t hold any water with her.

Niall threw himself on his bed, staring morosely at the plaster knotwork on the ceiling. If he was lucky, his blasted cravat would throttle him before he had to deal with any of them.

A soft scratching at the door made him sit up. “Yes?” he called.

The door opened, and Doireann came in. She shut the door and leaned against it. “Still awake, little boy?” she asked. Her color was high and her green eyes hard and bright. Evidently she and Mother had had words after he left.

Niall rose. “Are you all right, Doir?”

She shrugged and gestured with one hand, and his cravat untangled from his neck, snapped itself smartly against his cheek, then flew into a corner and collapsed in a limp heap.

“Thank you.” Niall did not allow himself to rub his cheek where the fabric had stung him. Doireann was incapable of doing him even a small act of kindness without adding some little edge to it. It had always been that way from the time they were both small, when he had tagged everywhere after her, trying to keep up with his fierce, fearless big sister.

“You’re welcome.” Doireann straightened and grinned at him. “So what did you think of Mother’s exhortation? Are you ready to move in for the kill? Miss Leland will make a charming corpse, undoubtedly.”

Don’t react. Don’t let her see.
“It will be interesting, I suppose.
Doir, about you . . . I don’t want to pry, but you and . . . it was Brian Lenehan, wasn’t it? Sir Dominic’s son?”

“Why, Niall, what a question to ask a lady!” She pressed a hand to her cheek, pretending to be shocked, then laughed and tossed her head. “What about it? What if it was? I wanted him. He wanted me. It was an equal exchange, unlike most relations between men and women these days. Come on, dance with me.” She curtsied to him and grabbed his hands, digging her nails into them.

It was easier to humor her than to argue. Niall waltzed her around the room in careful arcs, skirting the furniture. “Do you love him?”

Doireann froze in midstep, a black scowl on her face. Then she laughed again and resumed their dance, taking over the lead from him. “Insofar as I love anyone—for what they can give me. Brian gave me pleasure, not to mention the joy of tweaking Mother’s nose. It was worth it for that alone, almost. Why?”

“Because though you may not choose to believe it, I’d like to see you happy. I expect Father would give his consent to your marrying Brian even if he isn’t the oldest son. He’s an honest, well-meaning sort, and there’s a substantial estate and all, so you’d always be comfortable. . . .”

To Niall’s surprise, Doireann neither laughed nor scowled as he trailed off. Instead her face was thoughtful.

“Good God, Niall. After all the years I spent making your toys vanish and putting your stupid dog up on the roof of the stables when we were small, you still seem to care about me. Why? Our Christian upbringing at Mother’s knee?” She gave a short bark of laughter. “The unimpeachable code of honor you imbibed at Harrow?”

“Or the fact that you’re my sister, no matter what, and I care about you? God knows why,” he added, to forestall her derision.

“Ah! So even half blood is thicker than water, eh?” She led them into a tight turn, then another. “Brian
is
a fine boy. He worships the ground I tread upon, which is even better. I could do worse, no matter what Mother promises after we’ve done her little deed.”

“Just what
is
Mother planning?”

She laughed again, but he could sense that she was not amused. “You don’t really want to know. Take my word for it. But it will all work out for the best. I promise you that, little brother. This has been an interesting talk.” After another series of turns, she came to rest at the door, dropped his hands, and curtsied to him.

“Very interesting indeed,” she repeated. With another grin, she slipped around the door.

The day after the party at the Keatings’, Ally did not come downstairs to take her usual place on the sofa in the drawing room. At breakfast Michael put a matter-of-fact face on it, saying that she had decided it would be easier for everyone if she just stayed in her room. But Pen sensed the anxiety in his too-cheerful manner and excused herself after a few hasty mouthfuls of bacon and toast to check on Ally herself.

Ally lay propped in bed, languidly sipping a glass of water tinged a faint yellowish green. In her white nightgown and plaited hair, she looked uncharacteristically girlish and vulnerable.

“Oh, good morning, Pen,” she said. “I thought that sounded like your knock. How are you today?”

Pen inspected Ally’s breakfast tray and noted that she had eaten her toast and eggs. “I’m fine. What’s more important is, how are you?”

Ally smiled a slow, heavy-eyed smile. “Not bad, really. Two eggs this morning. Aren’t you proud of me? So long as I have my medicine as soon as I eat, I’m fine. No nausea or discomfort.” She held up her glass to the morning light and contemplated it with an air of drowsy satisfaction.

Pen studied her. “You look better. Your face is filling out again.”

“Is it? I hadn’t noticed.” Ally yawned and took another sip. “I suppose that’s a good thing, though.”

“Of course it is! You can’t grow a healthy baby if you’re not healthy, and that means getting enough to eat and keeping it down.”

“Mmm. That’s true.” Ally finished the contents of her glass, carefully set it on her bedside table, and settled back onto her pillows.

Something about her air of lazy contentment bothered Pen. It was so un-Ally. “Michael said you’d decided not to come downstairs today. Don’t you feel well enough, now that you’re stronger?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Ally shrugged. “I’m so sleepy all the time that it seemed silly to come downstairs and nap on the sofa. Why not just stay here and keep out of everyone’s way? Michael’s gone all day, and you’re busy with everything.” She gestured vaguely. “And it’s more comfortable up here. More peaceful.”

Pen nearly goggled. Was this the same brisk, energetic Ally who had seemed to be everywhere when she was their governess?

“Well, I suppose it’s important that you get your rest.” She took Ally’s unresisting hand. “But this just doesn’t seem like you. You’ve always been so busy and in charge, and it feels very odd not to have you . . . well, being
you.
I miss you horripilatiously. Sometimes it’s as if you’re not even here, lately.”

Ally closed her eyes. “I’ve not gone anywhere. You’re being fanciful, Pen. And please stop using that silly word of Charles’s.”

That sounded a little more like Ally. “Well, it feels that way. Sometimes you feel as far away as Mother and Persy back in Hampshire, and I don’t know who to talk to about some things.”

A faint frown appeared between Ally’s brows, and Pen could have bitten her tongue. Poor Ally was just starting to be able to keep
down the mildest of foods, and here she was, whining to her like a six-year-old.

“I don’t want to burden you. You’ve got enough to worry you right now,” she added quickly.

Ally gave a small sigh. “No, it’s all right. What do you need to talk about?”

What didn’t she need to talk about?
No, keep it simple.
“Oh, I don’t know. Little things, really. Like last night at Lady Keating’s dinner party. It was, well, it was alarming in a lot of ways, and I don’t know what to do or think about it all.”

Ally didn’t open her eyes. “’M listening,” she mumbled.

Pen held Ally’s hand more tightly and tried to choose her words carefully. “I had to do magic there, to keep a vase from falling on Doireann Keating’s head. I don’t know if anyone noticed. And I don’t know how the vase could have fallen in the first place, because there was something in front of it. Nothing all that momentous, really, but I’m—I don’t know. Something feels not right about it.”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

Should she continue? It was such a relief to be talking to someone who understood. “And Niall Keating. He’s becoming very friendly, but I don’t know if it’s just a flirtation to him or something else. It’s not as if this were London and I could judge his intentions by how he behaved to other girls.”

Words began to fall out of her. “He’s—I can’t help liking him a great deal. He’s handsome and intelligent and charming and eligible, and I’m sure Mama and Papa would love him. And Lady Keating seems to like me, too. But it’s all happening so fast, so neatly, as if it were planned. I’m afraid, almost—afraid I’ll neglect my studies and make a fool of myself over him. What if it is just a game to him? He
seems so restless under all that charm. I thought his sister was like the lions at the Zoological Garden, napping in the sun. But he’s like the cheetah, pacing his cage. What if he’s just amusing himself with me?”

Her throat burned slightly as she blinked back tears. “Oh, Ally,” she whispered, “what should I do?”

Her only answer was a soft snore.

Pen opened her mouth, then shut it. To wake Ally would be unforgivably selfish. She had been so uncomfortable and miserable before Lady Keating gave her the elixir. If it made her sleepy as well as relieving her discomfort, then that was just something Pen would have to put up with. Surely Ally would wake up later. They could talk then.

Pen sat by Ally’s bedside for another few minutes, watching her. Ally wore a faint half smile, as if she were having pleasant dreams. Well, there wasn’t anything wrong with that, was there? She deserved some relief.

But part of Pen’s mind couldn’t be silenced. For Ally, the person who cared most about her in the world after Mama and Persy, to fall asleep in the middle of a conversation, especially one like that, just didn’t feel right. Lady Keating had said it was harmless, but still . . . was a medicine as powerful as that good for an expectant woman?

Pen picked up Ally’s glass and sniffed the dregs of the medicine. It had a fresh, green scent that reminded Pen of newly mown grass, but with an underlying bitter note. It also reminded her of something she’d smelled recently, but she couldn’t remember what. Something herbal with tincture of poppy added, perhaps? That might explain the sleepiness. Surely it could not be good to have
much of that. But Dr. Carrighar hadn’t been able to find anything wrong with it.

Well, perhaps it was for the best. Would Ally be able to understand her questions about Niall? She had avoided all her suitors before becoming their governess, and her courtship with Michael while he had held her captive at Kensington Palace last year had been anything but usual.

A nearly empty bottle of Lady Keating’s tonic stood next to the glass. She’d sent two more home with them last night, but she might like this empty one back. Pen slipped it into her pocket and left Ally to her slumber, wishing she could stop feeling so uneasy.

Pen planned to devote all her free time that day to the readings Dr. Carrighar set her, mostly seventeenth-century translations of earlier Irish treatises on magic and the Triple Goddess. Not surprisingly, the quaint, antique language made uphill work. For the first dozen pages or so, she was properly attentive. But then some chance word or some stray thought, or sometimes nothing at all, would make her start thinking about other things, like Niall . . . the feeling of his hand on hers last night, or the sound of his voice when he’d half whispered the word
pleasure,
or the way he’d looked at her last night when she’d been called away by Dr. Carrighar.

When that happened, she would give herself a firm mental shake and get on again with another dozen pages until something else tipped her back into daydreams. Finally, after a few hours of feeling like a shuttlecock, she closed her book and stared moodily out the window at the dripping street. Rain again, of course. She would have to pay a call on Lady Keating that afternoon to thank her for the dinner—it was what one did after being entertained at
someone’s house. And she’d have to do it in the rain. How lovely. Would Niall be there too, to see her in all her damp glory? What should she say to him if he were there?

Even though Ally had fallen asleep before they could discuss them, speaking her worries and doubts aloud had helped focus her thoughts. Last year in London she’d rather enjoyed watching the posturing and maneuvering that took place between the sexes at balls and parties: the sidelong glances full of meaning, the dropped handkerchiefs, the giggles and pouts.

But she’d been sitting on the sidelines then. It was different now that it was her. Different now that she’d seen what marriage could mean to two people. Like Ally and Michael. Or Persy and Lochinvar. She wanted the kind of marriages they had. She wanted to find true love.