Bewitching Season (17 page)

“Then you must be the Duchess of Revesby’s granddaughters. She is a good friend of mine, you

know. I always look forward to her being in waiting with the queen. How lovely to meet you. You

don’t know who I am, do you?” She laughed a small ringing laugh, and the lavender ribbons in her

cap fluttered. “I’m Sophia, the king’s sister. What are your names again, my dears? Persephone and

Penelope, isn’t it?”

“That’s right, Your Highness.” Persy began to relax. Was this all? Had she run after them just

because she was a friend of Grandmama’s? Maybe she hadn’t seen her doing magic after all.

“Lovely names for pretty girls. I don’t see many young people these days. Even my niece Victoria

seems to be too busy to visit as much as she used to. Of course, with her birthday approaching I’m not

surprised, but still …”

Persy felt Pen take a deep breath next to her. “Our birthday is coming too, Your Highness. It is the

same day as the princess’s,” she volunteered.

The lavender ribbons quivered. “What an interesting coincidence! That settles it. You must visit me

at Kensington and tell me more about yourselves. Will the day after tomorrow suit? I should so enjoy

it.”

Persy gulped.

“Really?” Pen squeaked. “You really want us to visit you, Your Highness?”

“Oh, yes. I shall expect you at three. We’ll have a nice chat, and I shall make some of my rosewater

biscuits. I love to bake, you know. Well, I had better get back before everyone wonders where I am.

Good-bye, girls. I shall see you on Thursday.” Trailed by her attendant, who cast them a curious look

before following her mistress, Princess Sophia swept back into the Presence Chamber.

Sally Louder was nearly panting in amazement. “Why, you—you’ve just been invited to tea by the

king’s sister! My word! You’ve never met her before? And your grandmother’s a duchess?” She

looked like she was about to explode.

“Kensington Palace,” Pen murmured, and her face grew pink. “Do you think we’ll see her? Do you

think there’s any chance?”

“Well, I intend to go looking for her if I have the chance.” Persy stared after the retreating princess.

“Go looking for Princess Victoria?”

“No! I meant looking for Ally.”

“Invited to tea with Princess Sophia?” Frances Leland, dowager Lady Atherston, exclaimed that night

at dinner after getting a complete report on the afternoon’s events. “Did you hear that, Ann? How

singular.”

Persy and Pen, still in their court dresses and feathers but minus the trains, were dining with the

adults that night.
No, wait—we are adults now,
Persy thought as she followed her family and

Grandmama Leland’s friend Lady Harrow into the dining room.
We’re supposed to be here.

Papa’s mother was a slim, upright woman with a sharp eye and equally sharp tongue. When her

husband died and her son inherited the title, she insisted on leaving Mage’s Tutterow and purchasing

a house for herself not far from London, where she could keep an eye on the foibles of her wide circle

of acquaintances. Mama would sometimes read bits of her letters aloud to the girls, smothering her

laughter when she came to a particularly amusing part—which always seemed to be too amusing for

the girls to hear. Persy wondered if they would now be allowed to hear those parts, now that they

were out.

Grandmama’s best friend, Lady Harrow—or Lady Horror, as Charles had christened her—was a

widow whose chief characteristics were her insatiable curiosity and her unvarying dark interpretation

of events large and small. Persy looked at her plump form and wondered if Grandmama enjoyed her

company in spite of or because of these attributes.

Lady Harrow took a sip of wine. “Sophia always was an odd duck, locked up in Kensington like

that. All the old king’s daughters were—those that didn’t get away.” She patted her upper lip, with its

faint mustache, with her napkin. “Of course, there’s her son—”

Mama cleared her throat slightly and gave Lady Harrow a quelling look.

“Nonsense, Parthenope. The girls are out now. They’ll need to know these things, especially if

they’re going to mix in those circles,” said Grandmama Leland, cutting into her quail with gusto.

“I suppose you’re right,” Mama sighed. “It’s not easy to remember that they’re grown women.”

“Of course they aren’t. They’re still girls. But they have to start learning about the great wicked

world.”

“Is Princess Sophia wicked?” Pen asked, looking interested.

Grandmama Leland put down her fork. “No, my dear, just bored and lonely. The late King George

was very fond of his daughters, you see, and didn’t want to let them go. And there were not many

potential husbands of appropriate rank and religion available for the princesses when they were

young—this was in Napoleon’s heyday, you know. So he and Queen Charlotte kept them sequestered

and dragged them about from palace to palace, like a movable nunnery. When she was nineteen

Princess Sophia caught the eye of one of her father’s equerries, General Garth, and had an affair with

him, which led to the birth of a son. It’s not talked about, of course. She’s continued to live her drab

little life, back and forth between court and Kensington. I daresay you two were enough of a novelty

to catch her fancy. It will not hurt anyone if you cheer her up for an hour or two.”

“How romantic,” Pen said when her grandmother had finished.

“Not at all, my dear,” Lady Harrow interjected. “General Garth was a good thirty years her senior,

and should have known better. It is pathetic and sordid if you ask me—”

“We didn’t,” Persy muttered to Pen. Mama shot her a look but remained silent.

“—and highly peculiar to invite a pair of girls whom she had never met, just out, to take tea with

her. You will not let them go, Parthenope, will you? What business that dotty old woman’s got with

them is what I should like to know. Nothing savory, I am sure.” Lady Harrow shook her head.

“Gracious, Ann! She’s harmless. What unsavory business can she be up to?” snorted Grandmama

Leland. “You see mischief and deception behind every tree. I suppose it makes life more interesting,

but sometimes it’s just plain silly.”

“I rather think it will be good practice for the girls,” Mama added coolly. “Surely no harm can

come to the girls at Kensington Palace, of all places. And whatever
rumors
there might be around the

princess, she receives at court with the king and queen—”

“Oh yes, the queen who allows her husband’s illegitimate children to appear at court—” Lady

Harrow sneered.

“—and that is good enough for me,” Mama finished in her best duke’s-daughter tone.

“Well, surely you will go with them, at least?”

“I wasn’t invited, was I? No, the girls will go with my maid to wait in the carriage. Gracious, the

Princess Sophia is probably still half child herself, in mind, what with the life she has led. I am sure

they will get on quite well.”

Lady Harrow tried one last time. “Well, I would not allow a daughter of mine—”

Grandmama snorted. “You have no daughters, my dear.”

“But if I did—”

Just then, Lady Harrow’s wineglass tipped over.

“Oh, Ann,” Grandmama Leland remonstrated as a footman leapt forward with a linen towel. “It’s a

good thing we are not going anywhere else tonight.”

Mama sighed and rang her bell. “More towels, if you please,” she murmured as Kenney hurried in.

“Are you all right, Lady Harrow?” Papa asked, looking concerned.

“But I’d not even touched it!” Lady Harrow squeaked, watching wine drip off the tablecloth and

onto her ample lap. Kenney appeared at her side, and she snatched a towel from him.

Persy looked at Pen, who was calmly eating her dinner. But there was a glint in her eye that gave

her away. She gave Persy a tiny smile.

“Hmmph,” said Grandmama Leland. Persy glanced up and saw her looking at Pen with a small

frown.

As soon as dinner was over and they had gone up to the drawing room, Persy dragged Pen over to

the piano. Under cover of choosing music, she whispered, “You knocked over that harridan’s

wineglass, didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t stand her anymore. She is just jealous because we were invited to take tea with royalty

and none of her granddaughters ever has. I don’t know why Grandmama keeps company with her.”

Pen made a disgusted face.

“Yes, and speaking of Grandmama, she gave you such a look after the wineglass fell. You don’t

think she thinks you had anything to do with it, do you? Pen, listen. What if there is something to what

Lady Horror was saying? Do you think it is usual for a king’s daughter—especially one her age—to

ask a couple of girls to tea? Just because she knows Grandmama Revesby? What if she
did
see me do

that spell today?”

“What will she do, burn us at the stake? Stop worrying. Grandmama says she’s harmless. Just think

—we might get to meet Princess Victoria. And you said it yourself—what better chance will we have

to look for Ally?”

“Are you going to chatter, or play?” called Grandmama Leland to them.

The rest of the evening, Persy and Pen took turns playing and singing while Grandmama Leland

beamed at them and Lady Harrow looked disgruntled at their choices of songs.

But Persy’s mind was not on their music. That was twice in one day that they’d done magic in a

public place. Without Ally there to keep watch over them, they had become careless. They could not

go on this way, especially now that they would be going out into society, or else they’d be levitating

the musicians and changing the colors of the floral arrangements at balls by the end of the season.

Ally would have known about the temptations to do such things, and would have been there to

remind them. She just
couldn’t
have left them voluntarily, despite Lorrie Allardyce’s fanciful

suggestion that Ally had eloped with the Duke of Sussex and was in hiding with him in his enormous

library at Kensington. And if she had not left them of her own accord, then she had been forced, and

was at Kensington against her will. Persy decided that somehow, when they went to visit the princess,

she must contrive to look for Ally.

At the end of the evening, as the two guests prepared to leave, Grandmama Leland embraced both

Persy and Pen.

“Have a pleasant visit with Princess Sophia. I know you will be a credit to your family, girls. I

shall call on Sunday so you can tell me all about it, shall I?”

“Alone, Grandmama, please?” whispered Pen.

Grandmama Leland smiled conspiratorially. “Alone,” she murmured. “We don’t want any more

overturned glasses, do we? Good night, dears.”

9

T
he very next morning, Pen and Persy joined their mother in leaving visiting cards with all her

acquaintances in town. It was a tedious business, and Pen said so.

“Wait until we actually have to make visits, instead of just leaving cards,” replied Mama with a

sigh. Then she recollected herself. “But this is what is done, so you might as well get used to it.

Especially if you want to be invited to balls and parties.”

Actually, invitations had already started arriving in a blizzard of white pasteboard cards, all

begging the honor of their presence at any number of balls, routs, drums, and parties of every stripe,

sometimes several in one evening.

“I’m glad I won’t have to do this sort of foolishness when I’m eighteen,” commented Charles in

smugly superior tones from a corner of the carriage. He had asked to accompany them that morning

out of sheer boredom.

“Oh, yes you will,” Mama answered him. “Perhaps not at eighteen, but as soon as you have taken

your degree at Cambridge and are entering society. You will have to be presented and leave cards

just as we do.”

Charles winced, whether from his mother’s words or from his injured arm banging against the side

of the carriage as they hit a bump in the street.

“You ninny,” Persy whispered to him, under cover of leaning forward to check his arm. “Going

shopping will be as boring as staying at home, and is definitely more uncomfortable. Why did you

come with us?”

“To see if I could get a better look at the fellows who’ve been following you every time you go out

in the carriage. I thought maybe I could get closer to them while you were in the dressmaker’s shop,

pretend I’m a linkboy or something and offer to hold their horses for them.”

“Like you’d pass for a street urchin? Don’t even think about it, Chuckles.” She tried to twist in her

seat to peek out a window without attracting her mother’s attention. Charles smirked at her and stood

right up to look out.

“Please take your seat before you do yourself a worse injury, Charles!” Lady Parthenope scolded.

“Yes, Mama,” he said, and sat, giving Persy a quick affirmative nod as he did so.

So they were still being followed. But why? Could this and the watch on their house have anything

to do with Ally’s disappearance? Certainly there was nothing else that smacked of intrigue in their