Betraying Season (28 page)

“Could I? R-really? You’d want to teach me?” she stammered.

Lady Keating laughed. And all at once they were standing once again, the chairs vanished, and the sweet, musical wind blew in their faces like the breath of the Goddess herself, and Lady Keating put her hands on Pen’s shoulders and kissed her forehead.
“M’inion,”
she murmured. “My daughter you will be, from this moment on. You will come to Bandry Court, and we will work together, you and I.”

Two days later, Pen watched the spires and hills of the city of Cork give way to green countryside as she, Doireann, and Lady Keating began their journey to Bandry Court.

It had been easier than she’d expected to manipulate Dr. Carrighar into giving her permission to go on such short notice. The memory of their talk still made her a little ashamed of herself, but she’d done what she’d had to do . . . and it had worked, hadn’t it? It wasn’t Dr. Carrighar’s fault that Doherty had been an idiot and decided that he was in love with her. But it had been easy enough to burst into tears in the doctor’s study and say she couldn’t face another tutorial with Doherty, or even feel at ease knowing he was in the house . . . and just as easy to make him feel as if Doherty’s advances were the result of his lack of vigilance. He’d turned pale and been quite speechless, then agreed readily enough to her leaving with Lady Keating for a visit to Bandry Court. Doireann had suggested using that approach to asking his permission, and Pen had to admit that it worked well. She’d comforted herself with the fact that Mary Margaret had already said she should go. Having her backing had surely helped.

And with Dr. Carrighar’s permission given, she hadn’t needed to trouble poor Ally. Pen now understood why she slept nearly around the clock. Surely Lady Keating’s motive in giving Ally the fairy whiskey had been kindness. After all, it had saved her from a great deal of discomfort. Pen hadn’t asked her about it yet—there had hardly been time what with packing yesterday, and she hadn’t wanted to visit the Keatings in case she saw Niall. . . .

Niall. When Lady Keating had picked her up just now, she’d been almost afraid to enter the carriage for fear that he would be accompanying them. Several hours in close proximity to him, even with his mother and sister present, would have been dreadful. But Lady Keating had seen her hesitation as she put her foot on the step and glanced inside.

“He’s not here. How could I do that to you, my dear? No, he left early this morning for a visit at a friend’s house near Kinsale. I understand Charlotte Enniskean was to be there as well.” She pursed her lips.

Kinsale was in the opposite direction to where they were going. Pen had been relieved, then . . . well, surely it couldn’t be jealousy she felt. Not now. No, Charlotte was welcome to charming, debauched Niall. Would
she
let Niall have his way with her if they happened to find themselves alone in a quiet sitting room?

The thought that she might be doing just that in the near future made Pen want to shudder. His caresses that day in the library, his words had all felt so genuine, as if he truly had been swept away by his feelings for her. But she couldn’t think about that anymore or it would drive her mad. Heaven knew it nearly had over the last two days. Thank goodness that Lady Keating was taking her away.

The sky was a steely gray as they rattled over the road north to
Bandry Court. The winter had been a hard one, and the roads were bad as a result, still rutted and very muddy. Even in Lady Keating’s well-sprung carriage, they were being jounced about quite unmercifully. Pen hoped that the gray clouds wouldn’t decide to rain and make their journey even more uncomfortable.

In the seat facing her, Doireann sat with closed eyes and nodding head. It was difficult to believe that anyone could nap while being shaken and bumped like this, but Pen was grateful: It meant she didn’t have to make conversation with her.

Doireann had been more like the lions than ever lately. Even with her eyes shut and her breathing in the slow regular rhythm of sleep, Pen got the unsettling feeling that Doireann was watching her. Why? What had she ever done to make her so watchful and distrustful? Did it have anything to do with Niall? He had said that he never knew where he stood with her, either—

She had to stop thinking about Niall.

“Tell me about Bandry Court,” she said quietly, turning to Lady Keating beside her. “Is it quite old?”

“Parts of it are. There is a great deal left of the medieval keep and walls, and some sign that those were built around even older structures. It is set on a hill, which is where the ancient Irish preferred building their fortifications, so I should not be surprised if there had been a dwelling there since, well, forever.” Her pride in her house was evident. “It grew over the years, and my great-grandmother added on and modernized a great deal in the 1780s but worked around anything that was already there rather than tearing it down. She added several bedrooms, a gallery and drawing rooms, and a library as well as better quarters for the servants. It is a bit of a hodgepodge, but a lovely one. I always resent the time I
must spend in town or elsewhere, because it takes me away from Bandry Court.”

Pen remembered that Lord Keating lived in seclusion at Loughglass. Was that what Lady Keating meant by “elsewhere”? Would she ever meet him, now that Niall—

Drat. There she went again. She stared out the window, hoping for distraction. There was an intensity to the colors in Ireland—the greens more verdant, the browns richer, even the gray of the sky more forbidding—that was deeply satisfying. The greening land was cut haphazardly into fields, some brown and plowed, some left rough and untouched, here and there dotted with tumbledown hovels. It was not remotely as tidy and orderly as the land around her home in Hampshire, and signs of poverty were frequent. Despite the relative peace that prevailed right now, Ireland was a deeply wounded place, divided in religion and politics. Heartbreaking beauty, side by side with heartbreaking pain, and both called out to her. As much as she loved Mage’s Tutterow,
this
somehow felt like where she belonged. If only there were some way that she could stay here and truly make it her home. She’d thought she had, but Niall . . .

Pen was awakened by the ride’s not becoming bumpier, but smoother. She opened her eyes and sat up straight, easing the tension in her shoulders. Why had she let herself fall asleep? She hated dozing off in a carriage; it always gave her a ferocious crick in her neck.

“Awake, my dear?” Next to her Lady Keating was still sitting upright, hands folded in her lap, as if she had not moved a muscle since their brief stop at an inn for a cup of tea and a quick snack. “Very good, as we’re nearly there.” She gestured toward the window.

They were just passing a small stone cottage. Two young girls in brown linen dresses stood beside it, mouths agape as their heads
turned to follow the carriage’s passage, and a stout woman pegging laundry to a clothesline dropped a deep curtsey.

“My gatekeeper, Mrs. Coffey,” Lady Keating commented, returning the woman’s greeting with a nod and wave. “She was widowed a year and a half ago, so I gave her the cottage and the position. My Mistress requires that her daughters in need be looked after.”

Pen nodded in reply, but her attention was fixed by the view in either of the side windows: Two immense pillars of stone, easily twelve feet high and half that in girth, stood sentinel on either side of the road. They were an uncompromising gray, speckled with lichen, and looked as if they’d been there since the dawn of time.

“And that is my gate,” Lady Keating added. “I don’t think that any smith’s work in iron or brass, no matter how fine, could outdo these.”

“No, indeed,” Pen agreed fervently. They brooded over the road, almost seeming to watch the carriage as it rolled past them and up the lane. She could well imagine that the two silent, almost menacing stones could keep unwelcome intruders out as effectively as any iron gate.

A short distance past the cottage and gate, the road dipped down and over a stone slab bridge that spanned a tiny brook, then climbed again into a copse of trees, mostly yews and holly and young oaks. When they emerged from the trees, Pen could see that they’d entered a rolling upland. It was much like the down country near Newmarket back in England, but impossibly, richly green, even under the lowering sky. Here and there, indeterminate gray shapes dotted the grass; she was not sure from this distance if they were more mysterious stones or merely sheep.

Crowning one of the hills was a great stone pile of a house,
looking to Pen a little like another ancient druidic monument, apart from the smoke rising from its chimneys and the neat gardens and outbuildings surrounding it. Beyond it was an even higher hill, and this one was topped by standing stones. It looked almost exactly like the vision of
An Saol Eile
Lady Keating had shown her.

Just then Doireann yawned so theatrically that Pen guessed she’d been awake all along, or at least for a while. “Home, are we?” she asked, stretching.

Lady Keating glanced at Pen, one eyebrow sardonically raised, and she knew then that Doireann had been indeed feigning sleep. “Did you have a nice rest, my dear? Yes, we’re home.”

“That’s good. If I don’t get to a water closet shortly, it’ll be—”

Lady Keating closed her eyes and looked pained. “Thank you, Doireann, that will be enough.”

Doireann grinned and winked at Pen.

In a few moments they drew up to the front door of the house. The building was made up of several parts, some obviously very old, some modern. It was saved from too much architectural chaos by being built of the same gray stone in all its parts, and in the end looked like what it was: a place that had been occupied for a very long time.

The front façade where they had stopped was probably medieval, a massive, blocky, square tower, though it appeared that the windows had been enlarged and glazed. To its left was a long wing that looked Elizabethan in age, and to the right was another tower, more recent still, and another long wing set perpendicularly to the rest of the house. It was a little jumbled, but Pen decided that she thought it was charming.

The carriage door opened. Lady Keating climbed out, then
nodded to Pen to follow. Pen accepted the hand of the footman who held the door and alighted from the carriage onto the gravel drive, then nearly froze in astonishment. The footman was a foot
woman.
She wore a footman’s livery coat over a narrow skirt of the same material and trimming, and a powdered footman’s wig. Pen murmured her thanks, trying not to stare.

At the massive planked front door, a tall woman, stately in black silk and crisp white cap, with a bunch of keys at her waist, stood waiting to greet them. “Good afternoon, your ladyship,” she said, curtseying as they approached. “Welcome home.”

Doireann pushed past them without a word and disappeared into the house.

“Thank you. Penelope, my dear, Mrs. Tohill is housekeeper at Bandry Court.” Lady Keating was already untying her bonnet as she crossed the threshold into the hall. Pen followed, smiling a greeting to Mrs. Tohill.

The entrance hall was high-ceilinged and square. Stone floors and walls revealed the age of this part of the house, but deep, gem-colored Turkish rugs and modern furniture warmed and softened the effect. Pen took it all in appreciatively as she unfastened her cloak. More of Lady Keating’s unerring sense of taste.

“Miss Leland is a dear friend,” Lady Keating continued to the housekeeper, handing her bonnet over. “I shall expect everyone to take very good care of her, Mrs. Tohill.”

“Indeed we will, mum.” The housekeeper did not return Pen’s smile, but her manner was gravely courteous.

“Tea in the library, I think, while our bags are brought in. Miss Leland did not bring a maid, so Niamh should look after her while we’re here.”

“Very good, mum.” Mrs. Tohill took their cloaks.

Lady Keating led the way to one of several doors that ringed three sides of the room. It led into a secondary hall that looked to be part of the most recent additions, with a fine staircase and elegant detail to the moldings and woodwork. But as Pen followed Lady Keating up the stairs, she was less aware of the handsome details and more aware of a growing excitement inside her. She was here, Niall wasn’t, and for the next week or two she could live and
breathe
magic, with Lady Keating’s help. It was going to be wonderful.

Niall stared out the drawing room window at the street below. He wished he could open it. After a few days of rain, spring had arrived, and the May afternoon was warm and fragrant, even in town. The carriages clattering past the house had their tops down, and their fashionably dressed neighbors stepped out of the other houses on the street to stroll in the soft air. Just as Pen and he had done, not so very long ago.

Pen. He closed his eyes. Just thinking about her hurt.

Someone knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Niall called, not bothering to turn around. It would just be one of the temporary footmen Mother had hired while she was away. Why she’d felt she had to remove all the regular servants he didn’t know. It wasn’t as if any of them would have helped him. They were too loyal to Mother—or too afraid of her.