Duainfey (12 page)

"Miss Stanton." Ferdy bowed, and offered his arm.

The child hesitated, looking from him to Becca.

"Please, sir, you needn't put yourself out for me. You and the lady were talking.

I—"

"Nonsense," Becca said, rallying. "We are old friends and will prose on for hours unless someone brings us to a sense of propriety. Miss Stanton, you really must seize the moment! Ferdy is an excellent dancer." This unlikely assertion happened to be nothing less than the truth; Ferdy brought the grace of a natural athlete to the dance floor, and Dickon had insisted that he learn the steps properly. The result was an adept and kindly partner.

Miss Stanton looked somewhat less terrified, though she addressed Ferdy once more. "If you would rather stay . . ." she began.

"Certainly not," Ferdy said stoutly.

"Oh, you must dance with him, now!" Mrs. Settle said. "He will be quite cast down, you know, if you refuse."

Miss Stanton blinked, doubtless wondering, Becca thought, how she had gone from misguided courtesy to
refusing
poor Mr. Quince.

"I—" She struggled briefly, then gave it up with a shy smile. "Thank you," she said, placing her hand timidly on Ferdy's arm.

He smiled down at her and guided her gently onto the floor.

"Well!" Mrs. Settle said, looking about her with an air of purposeful busyness. Apparently she spotted someone else in need of a partner and bustled off, leaving Becca alone.

It was odd, being alone in the very middle of what she was certain Caro would classify tomorrow as a "mad crush." Becca had seen—indeed, been an unwilling part of—several mad crushes, and could testify as to the difference. No matter. They had a achieved a good amount of company, and Caro would be right to claim it a triumph.

The band struck up again. A servant came by and Becca surrendered her empty cup, then forcibly relaxed into her seat to watch the dancing.

Little Miss Stanton was charmingly naïve in her movements, displaying a natural grace as her shyness melted. Celia Marks danced like a wooden doll—or so Becca had always thought. However, hers was obviously the minority opinion, for Becca had never attended a dance where Celia had not stood up for every set.

Dickon was partnered with Amanda Dornet, which was very good of him, and her plain, good-natured face was positively glowing with pleasure. Caro went by on the arm of Leonard Jestecost, neither one looking best pleased—Leonard wishing to be with Celia, of course, and Caroline doubtless wishing to be on Altimere's arm.

 . . . who was not, Becca noticed, among the dancers.

She found herself more than a little sorry for that. It would have been interesting to—how had he phrased it—behold the gift of his power. Very likely he was in the card room with the other gentlemen whose duty to their hostess had been done.

An odd duty, she owned, reliving that moment when he had come to her in the receiving line, insisting that she dance with him and—what had he said? Tell him everything?

Well, she had danced, and though she regretted angering Sir Jennet, still she could not be unhappy that she had. As to the telling of everything—but that had only been a pretty absurdity. Perhaps it was what everyone in his country said—

"So, the angry little man has established his dominion and left you alone?" As if her thought had conjured him, Altimere was before her, smiling, and holding two cups.

"Sir Jennet is playing at cards," she said, and was absurdly glad to hear her voice sound so calm.

"Sir Jennet is a fool," Altimere said matter-of-factly. "He does not know how to value you." He extended a cup. "I bring wine."

"Thank you." She took the cup with a smile.

"It is well." With a swirl of coattails, he sat in the chair next to her. Raising his cup, he touched it to hers, lightly.

"To fulfillment."

"Fulfillment," she said, tipping her head. "An odd toast, sir."

"How so? Do you not wish to be fulfilled? In your art? In your life? In your
kest
?"

"I am not certain that I know what you mean by fulfillment," she murmured, and he laughed softly.

"It may be that the words I use—approximations, you understand—are not as correct as I would wish them. Perfect communication may be achieved, perhaps, only if you partake of my language." He sipped his wine. "But that is a matter for later, perhaps. Certainly, it will wait until you have told me everything. But first—" He touched her cup with a light forefinger. "Drink. The wine is good."

Smiling, she sipped, to find that the wine was indeed good—then looked up at him with a shake of her head.

"I'm no storyteller, sir. If you would like to know something, I'm afraid you will have to ask me."

He raised his eyebrows. "I am to choose what is to be revealed, and the order of revelation, as well? You cede me much power, Miss Beauvelley."

Her lips parted.

He raised a hand. "If it is the custom of this land, so be it. I will ask, after consideration." He sipped his wine, amber eyes quizzing her over the rim of the cup, then sat for a time, head to one side, like one of Dickon's more intelligent hounds.

"I begin to understand the pleasure of this tradition, so different from my own," he said at last, and slowly. "How shall I lead? With a bold question, which tempts your disfavor—or shall I flatter you and win your trust?"

Becca laughed. "If it were me," she said, "I would ask what I most wanted to know."

"A hint!" Altimere smiled his cool, thin smile. "Very well, then, Miss Beauvelley—my first question . . ." He paused, perhaps for effect, raised his cup as if to sip, but instead murmured, so softly she scarcely heard—

"Why have you chosen to join your
kest
with that of the angry Sir Jennet?"

Very nearly she laughed again, but she spied Celia Marks staring at her from the dance floor, and sipped her wine instead.

"Firstly," she said to Altimere, "I have no . . . power. I am a ruined woman, and crippled—broken—into the bargain." She raised her shrouded left arm slightly. "No one would
wish
to marry me, except for their own gain. Thus, we have Sir Jennet." She smiled suddenly, feeling a degree of—lightness, as if speaking the unvarnished truth to this stranger had in some way . . . freed her.

Altimere moved his hand in a gesture reminiscent of Lady's Quince's dismissal of her spouse. "Yes, yes," he said, sounding slightly impatient. "It must be clear to the meanest intelligence that Sir Jennet profits greatly from this proposed alliance. But you—what profits come to
you
?"

The country beyond the Boundary must be strange beyond all imagining, Rebecca thought.

"I profit by making an unexceptional marriage," she told Altimere.

"Unexceptional," he repeated, and touched the tip of his tongue to his lips, as if he tasted the word for sweetness. He sipped wine, and Becca did, watching his face the while, wondering what alien thoughts passed through his elegant golden head.

"No," he said eventually. "It will not do. Miss Beauvelley, you force me to an uncomfortable conclusion."

She raised her eyebrows. "Indeed? And what would that be, sir?"

"I conclude that you are, for reasons you choose to conceal, allowing yourself to be seen as a helpless pawn in this game of alliance. That is your right and your privilege as a woman of power. And yet . . . I wonder if your
kest
has misled you. Surely, it cannot have escaped your attention that this man means to do you harm. To place yourself wholly in his hands—it is a bold act. But is it a wise one?" He leaned back in his chair, smiling once more.

"I could become fond of this form of tale-telling. Mayhap I will introduce the mode, when I return."

"It were wisdom," Rebecca answered slowly, "because it appears to be the only choice available." She took a hard breath. "Now, if you please, sir, I would ask a question of you."

"But how diverting! I accept, of course."

"You say that Sir Jennet means to do me harm. I wonder how you know this."

He tipped his head, his expression arrested. "Is it possible—but I am forgetting how young you must be!" He paused, and looked earnestly into Rebecca's eyes. "I know this, Miss Beauvelley, because I have seen it. It is . . . a small power . . . that I have."

"Saw it?" Rebecca considered him doubtfully. "Could I . . . see it, as well?"

For a moment, Altimere said nothing, and she began to fear that she had offended propriety. Just as she was about to apologize, he inclined his head.

"I am honored that you think my small power worthy of witness. Here." He reached out and touched her wine cup. "Look into the cup, at the surface of the wine . . ."

Obediently, she bent her head, regarding the glassy liquid with interest.

For a long moment, nothing happened, save once again the sensation of her head filling up with honey, warm and sweet . . . and suddenly, before her, precisely as if she were looking through a window, there was Sir Jennet!

He wore a heavy coat, as if he had just come in from the outside, and he walked down long, dark halls that made Becca shiver as she watched, they seemed so chill and inhospitable. At the end of a particularly long, dim hall, he came to a door, which he pushed open without ceremony.

The chamber beyond was lit by a single lantern, the ceiling lost in gloom, the black plank floor black unrelieved by any covering. There was no fire; the hearth looked as if it had been cold for centuries. A woman huddled over an embroidery frame next to the lantern. She wore a tattered and none-too-clean robe that seemed inadequate for what surely must be frigid air, and her dark hair lay in a tangled, greasy mass along her shoulders. She looked up as Sir Jennet approached and Becca sucked in a breath as she recognized her own face.

Her own face, but—desperately thin, with shadows under her eyes and the bloom of fever along staring cheeks.

"Well, madam?" Sir Jennet said, his voice stern and angry. "How do you go on?"

"Badly," the woman—she!—answered in a faint, shaking voice. "It is cold; I am ill. I ask again for coal, for warm clothing, for a maid."

"And where will I get the money for such frivols?" he asked. "The repairs are costly and necessary. One day this hall will reflect to my honor, as a wife who cannot even dress herself surely does not!"

Of a sudden, the scene vanished, as if someone had drawn a curtain across the window. Becca blinked, and blinked again, at the confusion of a bright, loud ballroom. She was shivering, though the room was quite warm.

"How . . ." she whispered, staring into the depths of the cup again. "How was this done?"

"As I said," Altimere murmured. "It is a small power that I possess."

She looked up into grave and unreadable amber eyes. "Have I just seen the future?"

Altimere frowned, his winging golden brows pulled together slightly.

"The future hangs upon choices made," he said slowly. "What you have just beheld is the outcome of one choice. Other choices may lead to other outcomes."

Becca bit her lip, looked into the cup, and back to his face.

"Show me another choice," she commanded.

He inclined his head. "Look, then."

She bent her head. Once again, the window formed, and she looked out into a wild garden, glorious with strange, exotic blossoms and herself in a dress of shining silver, her hair gleaming in an intricate knot, a diamond collar glittering 'round her throat. She moved slowly among the flowers, and the trees reached down to her, stroking her sleeve, and her shoulders—

The curtain closed. Becca took a breath—another—before she looked up into Altimere's strange eyes.

"I can assist you in the choice from which that future declines," he murmured.

She looked out over the ballroom, her vision darkened by the memory of that cold prison room in the north, her thoughts spinning in the aftermath of viewing so delightful a garden.

"Ah," Altimere murmured. "The so-pleasant Mrs. Snelling approaches with a lady upon her arm. I apprehend that I am about to be asked to do my duty to the house." He rose and smiled down at her. "I am at your service, Miss Beauvelley," he said softly. "I believe you might find an alliance with me to be . . . of benefit."

With that, he rose to greet Mrs. Snelling and the lady. Rebecca raised her glass and drank what was left of the wine, her thoughts in turmoil.

She would not, Becca told herself firmly, marry Sir Jennet. It was not the first time this afternoon that she had assured herself of this, and she had a sinking feeling that it was not nearly the last.

Despite her strength of purpose undergoing periodic wiltings, she was steadfast in her decision. Even should she discount Altimere's parlor trick with the wine cup—and a wise woman did discount magic—even then, she could not discount the bracelet of bruises around her left wrist or the angry man who had all but dragged her from the dance floor, to fling her into a chair, and—No. She would not marry him.

She had, however, wronged him; which she had freely admitted to Mother last night—or, rather, early this morning—as the two of them sat tete-a-tete in the elder lady's dressing room.

"Your indiscretion angered Sir Jennet very much," her mother said, inspecting the bruises circling Becca's wrist. "That may be a reminder to you, my love, to behave with the good sense and circumspection you have labored so long to achieve." She shook her head. "You must apologize to Sir Jennet. Yes—I know he hurt you. That was ill-done of him. But the first fault was
yours,
Becca. He would have had no cause to be angry if you had behaved as you know you had ought."

Becca had hesitated, the vision in the wine cup still strong in her mind. Almost, she spoke—but her mother had leaned forward at that moment and clasped her hand.

"Promise me, Becca!" she said earnestly, tears standing in her blue eyes.

And so Becca had promised.

Her father, on the other hand, had not bothered with promises, but had descended immediately to orders, leavened with sarcasm.

"A fine way to treat your affianced husband. By all means, show that world that you are still the wild, abandoned piece of baggage that should have broken her neck in that accident and saved us all pain and grief!" He had shouted.