Betraying Season (5 page)

When the maid came to announce that the coach was ready to
bring Pen home at the hour she’d specified, Lady Keating rose and took Pen’s hands. “Must you go so soon?”

“I don’t like to leave Ally—I mean, Mrs. Carrighar—alone too long while she’s feeling unwell,” Pen explained. Lady Keating’s hands were warm on hers. She wore a curious ring on her right hand, made of heavy silver wire elaborately braided around a cloudy, pale green stone.

Lady Keating tsked in sympathy. “Such a pity she’s ill. Is it our climate?”

“No. That is, I expect she’ll be over it in a few months,” Pen replied without thinking, then winced inwardly. Had that been too bald a reference to Ally’s condition in front of strangers? She withdrew her hands from Lady Keating’s and pulled her gloves on. Then Niall unobtrusively helped her on with her mantle, and she forgot her embarrassment in awareness of his proximity and warm, clean scent.

Lady Keating nodded. “Of course. Then it is all set. I shall pick you up at two on Thursday and bring you to my dressmaker so we can order you a proper cloak, and bring you back here for tea again so that Mrs. Carrighar can have her rest.”

Pen blinked. When had that been decided? But now Niall Keating was bowing to her again, his eyes sparkling.

“It sounds good to me, Mother,” he said cheerfully. “May I see you out to the carriage, Miss Leland?”

When Niall came back into the drawing room, Lady Keating was pacing the room, her face aglow. “You were perfect, my love! Simply perfect!” she cried, taking his hands and squeezing them. “Miss Leland could not help but be smitten with you.”

“It didn’t seem to be too wearing a task for the poor boy, Mother.” Doireann rolled her eyes.

“No, it was rather a pleasant one,” Niall said easily. Sometimes agreeing with Doireann was the best way to shut her up. “Now that it’s done, may I ask again why I was supposed to be so charming to her?”

“It’s not done yet, my dear one. It’s only just started. I didn’t know that her governess was ill. That will make it even easier.” Mother looked at him, and her smile faded into sternness. “I want Miss Leland so in love with you by May that she’ll do anything for you.”

“What? In love?” Niall suddenly felt wary. “Why? What will she need to do for me?”

“Mo mhac ionuin.”
Mother pulled him across the room and pushed him into the sofa. “My dear,
dear
son. Please, trust me. We need Miss Leland’s help. What better way to get it than to make her love us?”

“Her help in what? Mother, what is going on?” He started to rise, frowning, but she pushed him back down again with just a glance.

“Shhh. All in good time, darling. All in good time. Just keep going on as you have begun, and all will be well.”

Doireann stretched and yawned. “Oh, for God’s sake, Mother. Why don’t you just put an attraction spell on the chit and save the poor boy the trouble of being charming?”

“Don’t be an idiot.” Mother’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You know very well why that wouldn’t work. I need her to come to us of her own free will, not under influence of a spell.”

Niall took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I like the sound of this. It’s one thing to befriend her. It’s another matter entirely to set out to entrap her.”

“Niall, Niall! Miss Leland is a grown woman with a season’s worth of experience in matters of flirtations and love affairs. She’s not made of glass. She won’t break if she’s eventually disappointed in love.” Mother bent and dropped a kiss on his head, then swept from the room.

Doireann rose from her seat. “Just go on as you have begun,” she mimicked. “Poor girl. She’ll be putty in your hands. Dare we trust you with her?”

Niall closed his eyes for a moment and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I should like to discuss this some other time, Doireann. Perhaps in the next century?”

“Oh, does Mummy’s little diddums have an achy-wakey head? Poor iddle mannikins.” Doireann’s voice twisted in a parody of sympathy. “Just do what Mummy tells you, and evvyting will go better again, Mummy promises. . . . Good God, it makes me want to puke, the way she fawns over you just because that bloody duke got you on her.”

“I didn’t ask to be the duke’s son.” He and Doireann seemed to have this conversation at least twice a year. Well, it was March, after all. They were probably due for it about now.

“I know. And you don’t have to be so damned nice about it to me all the time. That makes it worse, somehow.” Doireann pirouetted around the couch and leaned over his shoulder, laughing. Her quicksilver moods left him dizzy sometimes.

“Poor Niall, to have to deal with both Mother and me,” she whispered in his ear. “Between us we’re probably enough to sour you on women forever. Well, iddle mannikins, take your sister’s—pardon me,
half
sister’s—advice.”

He sighed. “Yes?”

“Watch yourself while you lure sweet little Miss Leland into falling in love with you. Make sure that she doesn’t make you the biter bit.” She laughed and kissed his cheek, then tugged a lock of his hair hard enough to hurt.

Niall sat staring into the fire long after she had danced, chortling, from the room. It didn’t feel right, setting out to intentionally trifle with a girl’s affections like this. It would be nice if Mother would stop being so mysterious about her plans, but he knew from long experience that she would tell him when she was ready to and not before. There wasn’t much he could do but play along until then. In the meanwhile, flirting with a beautiful young woman certainly beat brooding about his life and reading about German railroads.

“Don’t worry, my dear. It will be all right.”

Pen looked up from her book into Dr. Carrighar’s face. “Who said I was worrying?”

“That was the third sigh you have fetched up from somewhere near your toes. Unless you find it too close in here, I must assume that you are worried, or nervous, or otherwise perturbed. Don’t be. After the initial shock, they’ll get over it. You are as advanced as they are in your studies—you won’t be a drag on them. In fact, you might give some of them a run for their money.” Dr. Carrighar leaned back in his chair and gave her an encouraging smile.

Dr. Carrighar had long since retired from his positions as chancellor and professor of metaphysics at St. Kilda’s University. But he had retained a position as tutor to a handpicked group of scholars, chosen by him to be tutored in magic, as well as the more conventional subjects offered at the university. Today would be the first day that Pen would join in a tutorial session, and despite her brave words, she
was
worried. Females did not attend university. Would Dr. Carrighar’s scholars mind sharing their tutorial with a girl?

Dr. Carrighar knew she could keep up with his regular students—at least he kept saying so. Pen herself was reserving judgment until after she had met them.

Footsteps and a murmur of voices in the hallway outside the study told her that her wait was over. She sat straighter in her chair, at the far edge of the semicircle drawn around Dr. Carrighar’s writing table, and clasped her hands tightly in her lap as the doctor replied, “Come in!” to the knock on his door.

Norah came in first, bobbing a curtsey. “The students, sir,” she announced, and shot Pen a fierce look that was probably meant to be encouraging, though on Norah’s homely face one could never be sure. Pen assumed the best and smiled her thanks back at the maid.

Four young men shambled into the room, scuffling their feet and flapping hats to rid them of the worst of the latest rain. The first stopped dead when he saw Pen and nearly caused a pileup of his three cohorts as a result. After that first shocked look, he bobbed his head and quickly claimed the seat farthest from her. It was almost comical, and Pen might have giggled if she weren’t so very apprehensive.

The other three students shot her looks of varying surprise and uneasiness as they too filed in, and there was a minor scuffle to see who could get the next farthest seat. The ultimate loser, a tall, redheaded young man, took the chair by her with ill-concealed irritation and pulled it as far from her as he could while twitching aside the folds of his academic gown, as if casual contact with her would taint them.

Dr. Carrighar made the vague, rumbling sound that usually preceded his speeches. But right now it was accompanied by twinkling eyes, and Pen realized that he was muffling a laugh.

“Miss Leland,” he finally began, “these are the messieurs Doherty,
Sheehan, Quigley, and O’Byrne, my students of magic. Gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that we have been joined by my houseguest, Miss Penelope Leland, who is visiting from England.”

There was a silence. Pen pretended to examine one of the botanical prints hanging on the wall with great interest so that she wouldn’t accidentally meet anyone’s eyes. Then one of the students, the small, dark-haired one who had entered first, squeaked, “Er, just for today you mean, of course.”

“Just for today, Mr. O’Byrne, and just for as long as her visit lasts. She has come here expressly to study, and I thought that both you and she would benefit from each other’s knowledge.”

One of the students—she couldn’t tell which—smothered something that sounded suspiciously like a snort.

“Yes, Mr. Quigley?” Dr. Carrighar inquired mildly.

“Nothing, sir.” It was the second youth from the end, the one with sandy brown hair and a long nose. “Just a cough, sir.”

“
I
have something to say, if Fergus isn’t brave enough,” said the student closest to Pen. Just now his face matched his spectacularly red hair. He shot Quigley a quick, contemptuous look, then turned to Dr. Carrighar. “We’re here to learn, sir, not play nursemaid to a visiting English who has the fancy to play bluestocking for a week or two. I object to her being here.”

Dr. Carrighar appeared to consider this. “On what grounds do you base your objections, Mr. Doherty?”

“Why, on what I just said,” Doherty replied, scowling.

“I see.” Dr. Carrighar made a steeple of his hands and tapped them against the end of his nose. “Miss Leland may choose whether or not to consider herself a bluestocking, but she may claim the title of serious scholar with all due truth and honor. She is indubitably
from England, but I can and do emphatically vouch for her right to be here. It is my tutorial, after all, and you are here because you have been invited. I have invited her as well. If you do not feel comfortable in her presence, you are certainly welcome to leave.”

Doherty blinked. “But, sir. She’s a woman.”

Pen tried to maintain a gracious expression, but inwardly she seethed. He has spoken the word
woman
in the same tone he might have used to say
smallpox.

“Yes, I am aware of that fact.”

“None of the great magic wielders—at least, not the
real
ones—have been women. Only men were chosen to be Druids. Women aren’t capable of doing more than curing warts and concocting love charms for the incredulous. Hedge-witch nonsense. I thought we were here to study
serious
magic, and we can’t with a woman among us.”

Dr. Carrighar’s face was bland and smooth. “You think so, do you?” he asked gently.

Pen glanced at Doherty. Couldn’t he sense the mounting annoyance in Dr. Carrighar’s tone?

The young man in the third seat—Pen deduced that it must be the one named Sheehan—shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Maybe we ought to give her a chance, Eamon. We don’t know what she might be capable of.”

Eamon Doherty shook his head. “Dr. Carrighar, you should know that only men can wield true magic.”

Pen felt herself flush with anger. What about Ally? What about Persy, who had bested Dr. Carrighar’s own son last year in a magical duel? This Doherty probably couldn’t hold a candle to either of them. She opened her mouth to start to refute him, but caught Dr. Carrighar’s faint shake of his head.

“I am sorry you labor under that misapprehension, Mr. Doherty,” he said. “Perhaps I have been remiss in allowing your personal preferences to indicate the course of our studies thus far. It was, I see now, an error. Let us discuss what reading you have done since our last meeting, and then I think we will explore a new topic.”

Doherty glowered. The one called Quigley tried to do his best to copy Doherty’s expression, and O’Byrne and Sheehan looked cautious but agreeable. Pen remained silent, but pulled out the notes she had made on Eriugena.

She did not volunteer any comments during the discussion that followed, but answered the questions Dr. Carrighar put to her as quickly and concisely as she could while ignoring Doherty’s barely concealed sighs and impatient shifting in his chair. Even so, the atmosphere remained strained. Pen was grateful when after two hours Dr. Carrighar put down the old-fashioned goose-quill pen he had toyed with through the tutorial.

“I think that will do for today,” he announced. “For our next meeting on Saturday, I should like you to begin researching the role of the Triple Goddess, also called Danu or Dana, in Irish myth and magic. Come back and tell me what you find, and we shall construct our investigations accordingly.”

Eamon Doherty slammed his book shut, stuffed it with his notes into his leather haversack, and left the room without speaking after shooting Pen a burning look.