The Midnight Queen (28 page)

Mrs. Wallis nodded, evidently satisfied. For a moment, indeed, it seemed that this simple and elegant solution might suffice, but the servant who opened the morning-room door a few moments later was not the formidable Treveur but the young housemaid, Daisy, who had been in the household only a month. She curtseyed swiftly and not very neatly to her mistress, darting frightened eyes at the various occupants of the room, and announced in a terrified whisper, “'Tis a Professor C-c-callender, the M-m-master of Merlin C-c-college . . . I asked 'im to wait b'low, m'lady, but 'e would not . . .”

*   *   *

Jenny, moving more quickly than Sophie had thought possible, propelled Daisy back out into the corridor, whispering in her ear, and shut the door. Whirling to face the room again, she began hurrying her guests away from the window and across the room, where, disguised by potted shrubs and an ornately carved wooden screen, a connecting door led into the breakfast-room. They tumbled through the doorway—first Joanna and Mrs. Wallis, then Master Alcuin; then Gray, a stack of incriminating books swept haphazardly up in his arms; and at last only Sophie, whose feet seemed as staggered and dazed as her mind, tripping over each other and hampering her efforts to flee, remained in the morning-room with Jenny.

Just as Joanna was reaching for Sophie's hand to pull her through after the rest, the other door opened again, and poor Daisy, stammering more than ever, repeated her announcement.

Jenny, her flushed cheeks the only indication that anything was amiss, sailed back across the room to greet her importunate caller. Behind the carved screen Sophie stared, frozen, ignoring Joanna's outstretched hand and Gray's increasingly frantic whispers. Just in time she spied the book Gray had dropped, and summoned it to her hand. When her fingers closed about the worn leather binding, she found them clutching at it like some sort of talisman.

The Professor was now actually in the room, and he was, she found, not so terrifying here as he had been in the abstract. Though her first thought had been to flee, she had now a strong desire to see how her erstwhile paterfamilias conducted himself, and to hear what he would say. Batting the reaching hands away, therefore, she pulled the breakfast-room door to as quietly as she could, before ducking down behind the rose-tree.

After all, if she could not conceal herself from one overconfident and unimaginative man, whom she had been used to regard as supremely stupid, what hope was there that she and her friends could somehow foil the more formidable part of his confederacy?

“Professor Callender,” said Jenny calmly, “this is a most unexpected honour, indeed; I had not thought to meet you again so soon. Will you not sit down?”

The Professor was evidently not in a temper for polite conversation. “You have something of mine, Lady Kergabet,” he said.

“I beg your pardon, sir.” Jenny's distant courtesy conveyed both puzzlement and disapprobation. “I do not take your meaning.”

“My daughter Sophia,” said the Professor, between set teeth. “I beg you will not play games, Lady Kergabet. I have every reason to believe that she is here.”

“I am afraid, sir, that you are quite mistaken.”

“You continue to deny, then, that you conspired with your unscrupulous brother to lure my daughter away from her home and her friends?” the Professor demanded. “To persuade her into a foolish elopement, with the object of—”

But Sophie, fuming at his adjectives, was not to discover what he imagined Gray's object to have been, for Jenny had had enough. “Certainly I deny it,” she said frostily. “I am heartily sorry that you should have lost your daughter; such a fate is to be pitied. If, however, you have come here only to frighten my housemaid and to impugn my brother's honour and my own, then I shall thank you to take your leave, sir.”

It was impossible to imagine a clearer dismissal, but Appius Callender was not so easily put off. Peering stealthily through the gap between two carved oak-leaves, Sophie saw, to her dismay, that he had begun striding about the room, thrusting his umbrella-tip under and behind the furniture and dragging aside the window-curtains, as though he imagined them all to be concealed there. Jenny exclaimed indignantly, but to no avail.

Sophie herself was safe enough, presumably. The Professor had scarcely seemed to see or hear her when she lived under his own roof, except on that last, dreadful day, but she trembled for the others, who might still be just beyond the door at her back. At any moment it might occur to him to employ a finding-spell—she wondered that he had not done so already—and even if it did not, they were hardly well enough concealed to escape a determined seeker. Creeping on hands and knees, therefore, she inched backwards until her boot-toes touched the door-sill, then sat up and leant her back against the door, reaching one hand up to grasp the handle. While the Professor had his back to her, peering under Jenny's worktable, she turned the handle sharply and fell backward into the breakfast-room, where she fetched up squarely against her sister, knocking her, and Gray's stack of codices, to the floor. Why had they lingered here?

“He is searching the room!” she whispered urgently, as Gray and Master Alcuin helped her and Joanna to their feet. “He will try a finding next—you cannot stay here—he will see the door in a moment—”

Gray already had hold of her left hand, and Joanna of her right; Master Alcuin was gathering up the scattered books; and before she could continue, all five of them were along the corridor and creeping down the service stairs.

At length they found themselves in the kitchen, where they were greeted with considerable displeasure by the large and redoubtable Mrs. Treveur; her consternation vanished, however, to be replaced by a wide smile, when she caught sight of the youngest member of their party. “Dim'zell Zhoanne!” she cried.
“Mont a ra mat ganeoc'h?”

“
Mantret on
, Itron Treveur.” Joanna returned a breathless apology for their intrusion. No sooner had she begun to explain their situation than Mrs. Treveur broke in with a torrent of reassurances.

“It is quite all right now,” Joanna told Master Alcuin, who was all too plainly defeated by the tide of rapid Brezhoneg, “for Daisy ran straight away to fetch Treveur and Harry—the footman, you know—and they are gone upstairs to throw him out.”

A moment later they were joined by all three of the aforementioned and by Jenny herself, in a state of formidable wrath.

“He suspects,” she told her guests, as they followed her upstairs. “He is certain that Gray and Sophie, at least, are concealed somewhere on the premises; he was certain that I had you both hidden at Kergabet, when he came there in pursuit of you, and with far less reason—”

“Alas,” said Sieur Germain, who had joined them in the morning-room—and in some haste, for he still wore his gloves and carried his hat, and his great-coat was beaded with water. “Alas, Dimezell Sophie, I fear that he has excellent reason to seek you so fervently now.”

“You have learnt something new at Court, then?” Gray demanded eagerly.

“I am very sorry,” Sieur Germain began, with an apologetic look at Sophie. “My efforts to investigate, I fear, have alerted some member of the conspiracy to your being in Town—”

“Or perhaps,” said Joanna, “it is only Mrs. Wallis's morning calls, and her letters to half of London.”

“Whatsoever I have done, Miss Joanna, has been always in your sister's interest,” the latter declared. “There is more at stake here than you appear to understand.”

“My dear,” said Jenny, “we know already that Sophie's stepfather suspects her presence here; what I cannot understand—nor Sophie—is
why
, after so many weeks' apparent indifference to her whereabouts, he should suddenly be prepared to risk making a spectacle of himself . . .”

Sieur Germain looked grim. “He has need of her,” he said.

Gray glanced at Sophie, who sat forward in her chair with face in hands. “Lord Carteret and Lord Merton—he, I believe, is both your second Oxford assailant and the
M
of Lord Carteret's diary—have lately been spending a great deal of time with the Iberian ambassador,” Sieur Germain continued after a moment. “Carteret has, according to some at Court, ambitions of completing the great alliance contemplated by His Majesty more than a decade ago; the knowledge that the lost Princess is within his grasp perhaps suggested to him a swifter and less costly means of cementing it than whatever he had previously in view. The Iberian royal family have not forgot that once a princess was promised them in marriage and not delivered. The prince who was to have been Dimezell Sophie's husband has been wed long since to a daughter of Bordeaux, but the present Emperor has no son and has recently lost his second wife. The more the ambassador learns of the powerful magick that is said to run in the late Queen Laora's family, the more he enters into His Majesty's lively interest in finding her daughter. His Majesty has proved more difficult to persuade of the merits of the scheme, but Lord Carteret, it seems, presents at least the appearance of perfect confidence in his eventual agreement.”

Sophie raised her head. Her dark eyes were enormous; only the fading marks left by the pressure of her fingers lent any other colour to her face.

“Then,” she said—she it was, though the voice in which she spoke was so unlike her own that all of them turned to gape at her—“should they find me now, I am condemned now as surely as I have ever been.”

She rose, moving slowly as if dazed, and went silently out of the room, waving a hand vaguely above her head as she passed through the doorway.

Jenny stood up and made to follow her, but was stopped on the threshold by Master Alcuin's warding-spell. He snapped his fingers to release the wards; as Jenny hurried after Sophie, and Joanna after Jenny, he and Gray looked at one another in utter amazement.

“She walked through my wards,” Master Alcuin breathed, awed. “
Straight through
, as though they were not there at all.”

There was an odd, choking sound, from somewhere behind them, which Gray could not at first identify. He turned to look and could not quite believe his eyes: Mrs. Wallis was laughing. It was a laugh with no joy in it, and very little mirth.

“She is so very like her mother,” she said. “May the gods help the Iberians.”

In Which Jenny and Joanna Solve a Difficult Problem

Dinner that evening
was a subdued and melancholy meal, which no one seemed eager to prolong.

In the drawing-room, Sophie, intending to occupy her hands with fancy-work in hopes of calming the turmoil of her thoughts, found herself and her baby's bonnet inextricably cornered by Master Alcuin and Joanna, apparently in collusion. All through dinner she had felt some undercurrent—gazes averted, quiet conversations cut awkwardly short—whose meaning, set against the events of the morning, she trembled to consider.

“Jenny and I have found the answer, Sophie,” Joanna began, characteristically both cryptic and blunt.

“The answer . . . ?”

“No matter what you may have been told, Miss Sophie, you cannot be
made
to marry anyone, if you refuse,” Master Alcuin told her gently. “But it is certainly within the rights of the paterfamilias—and certainly of the royal paterfamilias, whether father or brother to yourself—who must consider the good of the kingdom above all else—to make your life a misery until you do agree. And princes and princesses, in general, cannot expect to marry for love.”

Sophie stitched doggedly, and would not raise her eyes.
Next he will begin to speak of my duty to the kingdom.

But instead he said, “A prior legal marriage, however, and particularly a marriage
confarreatio
, must materially weaken their cause . . .”

Here Master Alcuin paused delicately, and Joanna leapt into the fray. “Jenny says the Iberians are very much concerned with virginity, you see. They require an ordeal, as part of the wedding-rite—”

Sophie's needle pricked her finger, and she yelped in pain.

“What,” she demanded, looking up at last, “what on
earth
are you suggesting?”

“Really, Sophie,” said Joanna, with some impatience, “you must see that we are thinking of your marrying Gray.”

This time Sophie ran the needle deep into her thumb.

“And supposing,” she said, folding the injured digit into her fist, “supposing
me
willing to take such a step, why should you imagine that
he
will agree to it?”

Master Alcuin looked puzzled; Joanna threw up her hands and exclaimed, “You must be altogether blind, if you cannot see that he has been violently in love with you since—since—”

“‘Violently in love,' indeed,” Sophie scoffed. “I cannot think where you find such expressions, Joanna.”

“It is perfectly true,” retorted her sister. “Have you not seen how he looks at you? And besides—Gray has said himself that your magick is more powerful than his, and his, as you must have heard Master Alcuin say fifty times, is very great indeed; do you expect to find many other men who . . . He is not very handsome, certainly, and rather an odd sort of man altogether, but as you are rather odd yourself—”

“And
that
is your reasoning—that he
must
love me, and I him, because
you
consider both of us ‘odd'? Joanna,
really
.”

“That is not what I meant, at all!” said Joanna.

“I hope that you will not dismiss this idea out of hand, Miss Sophie,” said Master Alcuin.

Sophie again took up her
broderie anglaise
, sighing over the minuscule spots of blood she had left on the fine white muslin. Resolutely ignoring both sister and teacher, she bent her head and plied her needle as calmly as she could manage, but beneath that calm exterior roiled feelings more agitated, more violently alternating between fear of the future and a certain ludicrous hope, than Joanna could possibly have conceived.

*   *   *

Gray stood at the window of the breakfast-room, gazing fixedly out at the ubiquitous autumn fog that blanketed Mayfair. Their breakfast eaten, the rest of the household had gone about the business of the day—all but himself and Jenny, who had waylaid him as he made to leave the room.

“Tell me,” she said, stepping up beside him, “supposing that we succeed in foiling this plot of Lord Carteret's, what will become of you? And what of Joanna and Sophie?”

Gray frowned. “I hardly know,” he said. “We have not had much leisure, you know, to consider such things.” He tried out in his mind the words
I shall go home
, and found them wanting. What manner of home could Merlin be to him, or his father's house either, if Sophie were not there? “I shall go up to Oxford, I suppose, and petition the College to regain my place there, and Sophie . . .”

What might be Sophie's fate, indeed, if nothing was done to stop it? If a betrothal agreement were signed and sealed by King Henry, could even incontrovertible proof of Lord Carteret's perfidy invalidate it?

“I—I shall miss her,” he went on, doggedly, “both of them, that is—and you also, of course—”

“But you could do very well without me, I think,” said Jenny, “and without Joanna, if Sophie were not in question.”

The room was silent, but for the cheerful crackling of the fire, while Gray considered how to refute this too-apt observation. Then he looked down at Jenny, whose wide hazel eyes were fixed on his face with deep compassion, and at last gave up the battle. “I love her,” he confessed, simply.

“That is very fortunate,” she said, “for she is thoroughly besotted with you.”

“I understand, of course,” Gray continued, “that she cannot possibly—
What
did you say?”

His mouth hung open, and he knew he must look a fool, but Jenny only smiled fondly up at him and said, “Do you think yourself so very difficult to love?”

While Gray struggled to adjust his mind to the idea of Sophie besotted, Jenny pressed her advantage: “And you must see, of course, that a prior marriage—a marriage by contract, properly witnessed and consummated—will be her surest protection against—”

“You cannot be serious, Jenny.” She must be mistaken, surely; she had not seen Sophie's sweet, reproachful face as she said,
I could not ask for a kinder brother . . .

“I am quite in earnest, I assure you; is not this just what you have wished yourself? I should not dream of jesting on such a subject.”

“But—but if—” Gray stammered. “If indeed Sophie has any regard for me, it must be only the effect of gratitude, for I am sure I am the first man who ever was kind to her.”

“Breaking my china when Mama dared to disparage you,” said Jenny mildly, “does not seem very like mere gratitude.”

“But, Jenny—even supposing her to return my feelings, this—it is like one of Joanna's minstrel-tales . . .”

“And why not?” His sister folded her arms. “You have rescued the imprisoned princess, have you not? You have gone on a quest and fought a battle; you seek to save the kingdom from—”

“And in a tale, no doubt,” Gray interrupted, rather savagely, “I should prove in the end to be a wealthy knight, or a prince, and only disguised as a disgraced and impoverished student. In life, alas, it is not quite so easy a thing for a princess to accept an offer of marriage from a man of no fortune, homeless, fatherless, friendless—”

“You dare call yourself
friendless
, Graham Marshall?” Jenny demanded. “Here, in my husband's house, where you have had help and refuge, and all that is in our power to give you? You account our friendship as nothing, and your tutor's too? I should never have thought such a thing of
you
.”

It was all true, every syllable; Gray could offer nothing in reply but the basest self-justifications.

“I am sorry, Jenny,” he said instead. “Truly sorry. I meant—I did not mean—”

“I know very well what you meant,” said Jenny, relenting. “We are both out of temper; I ought not to have spoken so.”

“You said nothing to me that I did not deserve,” said Gray ruefully.

“Gray, hear me.” Jenny sat on the sofa and motioned him to join her, then reached up to take his face in her hands for a moment—gently, as a mother might with a beloved but inattentive child. “Sophie loves you, and you love her; I can think of no other woman who would suit you so well, and she . . . there cannot be many men, Gray, who would esteem her as you do.”

“But who could help loving her?” he cried, indignant on Sophie's behalf. “All courage and generosity as she is, with such intelligence—and so beautiful—”

“There has been some material change in your opinion on that point, I conclude?” Jenny cast a sidelong glance at him. “For only two months ago, you know, you described her to me as ‘very clever and accomplished, and altogether agreeable, though by no means pretty . . .'”

Gray opened his mouth to deny this accusation, but as quickly closed it again.

“Perhaps the Professor's interdiction clouded my mind,” he said, “for she is certainly the most beautiful woman of my acquaintance.”

“I saw it, you know, in August. You had not yet understood your own feelings, but, being so much in each other's company, I felt sure that you would come to an understanding before summer's end, and when you came here—”

Gray tried to frame some objection to this but could not.

“I had intended to let things take their natural course,” said Jenny, folding her hands together in her lap, “for a man in love will seldom take a sister's interference kindly, but circumstances do not allow . . . You both are as good as orphaned; there is nothing at present to be settled on either of you. But—have you not thought?—neither can there be any objection from anyone to your marrying, for apart from His Majesty, here in this house are all the friends and relations that either of you can claim, and you may be sure that all of us wish you joy. A wedding will be awkward to arrange—we can hardly begin it in her father's house, and you have none of your own to bring her to—but . . .”

Having canvassed all these difficulties, she looked earnestly at him and concluded, “Not one pair of lovers in a thousand, Gray, has such a chance, and besides the danger to Sophie, I shall think you very stupid indeed if you do not take it.”

Gray blinked at her.

“I never was so fortunate—or so unfortunate—as to be in love,” Jenny continued, low, “but if I had, I hope I should not have thrown away such an opportunity of happiness for such a reason.”

She had turned her face away.

“Jenny, dear,” Gray said, “are you so very unhappy?”

“I am quite as happy as I deserve,” she said, and, before he could ask what she meant, added briskly, “Now, go and find your Sophie—and send Joanna in to me, for she has been listening at the door quite long enough.”

*   *   *

Gray's hand was on the door-handle, turning it, when he heard the scuffle in the corridor—and a moment later, Sophie's outraged voice: “Joanna Claudia Callender! Mother Goddess, have you no manners at
all
?”

He opened the door; there before him was the author of these words, looking startled and dismayed. “Joanna,” he said absently, looking into Sophie's dark eyes, “go in and speak to Jenny.”

He vaguely heard Joanna's affronted
hmmph!
and the click of the latch as the door closed behind her.

“Gray?” Sophie whispered, stepping forward to touch his arm. “Gray, whatever is the matter? You look . . .”

“Hush,” said Gray. “Not here.” He thought a moment. “The drawing-room! There will be no one there now.” Taking Sophie's hand, he pulled her after him towards the drawing-room door.

She stopped him on the threshold, tugging her hand away from his and turning him to face her. “Gray, what on
earth
—”

He smiled down at her in mute apology. “I should like to speak to you,” he explained, “without an audience.”

Sophie ducked silently under his outstretched arm and into the room, where, like a turtledove returning to its nest, she took up her by now accustomed seat at the pianoforte. Half closing her eyes, she began to play a soft, slow melody in the Aeolian mode.

Gray quietly shut the door.

“Sophie,” he said, sitting down beside her on the piano-bench. Their arms touched; his pulse thundered in his ears. Though Jenny's assertions had quite convinced him at the time, he now began to doubt again whether she had seen aright.

“Joanna tells me,” Sophie said, to his surprise, “that she and your sister have had a—a mad idea.” She did not look at him; her fingers played over and over the same four chords. “She thinks—but it is too absurd—she thinks that you . . .” Her voice grew thick and choked, and she fell silent.

Gray was strangely comforted to find her as flustered and uncertain as he. “Joanna,” he said softly, “is much more often right than you allow.”

Sophie's fingers stilled but did not leave the keys; the unresolved cadence hung fading in the air, a question unanswered. “Do you mean . . . you cannot mean . . .”

“But I do,” said Gray.

At last she turned to look at him, and he seized the opportunity to take her hands in his—hardly able to discern whose trembled more. Her eyes were deep and dark as a moonless night. “I think—I begin to believe that it—that their mad notion is not mad at all.”

But it was no use; he could scarce string three words together while sitting so close beside her, and was in danger of conveying quite the wrong impression. Loosing her hands, he sprang to his feet and began to pace the room, his mind seeking some means of rescuing this scene from absurdity.

Reaching the window, he turned about and nearly ran against Sophie, who had risen from her seat and, to all appearances, followed him across the room. As he drew breath to apologise, hoping that he had not hurt her, she looked up at him—a challenge in the set of her lips, and all the hurts of her girlhood in her eyes.