Heart's Magic (45 page)

"Sure." He had to sit up
and lean, but the bow hadn't gotten knotted and was easily pulled
free. Elinor kicked them off, stepped out, and sat back down.
"Afraid o' wot?" he prompted.

"Very nearly everything.
Losing the magic, mostly." She sighed again. "My mother is a
singer. Opera. A very, very good one. She could have been the toast
of Europe. The world. But she gave it all up to marry my father and
raise all of us. I did tell you I have six brothers and sisters,
didn't I? I have to invite every one of them and their respective
spouses and children to the wedding."

"All right." Harry didn't
care how many relatives she had or how many people she invited to
the wedding, as long as she married him.

"Mother has always said she
gave it up willingly--singing professionally. She hasn't given up
singing altogether. She sings at church sometimes, and at musical
nights at home and at the neighbors. She always said she wouldn't
trade one minute of one day with all of us for any amount of money
or adulation. And I think maybe--"

Elinor's speech slowed, as
if she picked her way through to the truth. "I think that was what
frightened me the most. That I might love someone--you--so much
that I would give away my dreams. My--my
self.
"

"Don't you know I'd never
ask that of you?"

She smiled, touched his
cheek, relieved his heart. "Of course I know. I think I was afraid
it would just--
happen.
"

She bit her lip, losing
herself in memory again. "And you know, now I think back, I
remember times Mama was invited to sing, but didn't. Evenings when
the crowd was larger than expected and..." She looked up at Harry,
her face wrapped in confusion. "Do you suppose Mama has stage
fright? Maybe she really
did
prefer being at home with us."

Harry drew Elinor in to lean
against his chest, where she belonged. "She's
your
ma. You know her better'n me
who's never met 'er. Do you think your Dad's the sort who would
make her do anything she didn't want to do?"

"No, never." The answer
sounded instinctive. "In fact, I overheard him once telling her she
didn't have to sing if she didn't want to. Encouraging her not to
sing." Elinor shifted position against him. "I was in my
suffragette period then--"

"And you aren't still?"
Harry interrupted, teasing.

She poked him with a finger.
"Hush, you. I thought he was oppressing her, keeping her from doing
what she wanted. I wanted magic so badly then, you see, and the
whole world seemed to be conspiring to prevent me from having it.
But what if--" She sat up and looked at him, hands resting on his
chest for support. "What if he was setting her free to do what she
wanted? What if she didn't want to perform, but felt obligated? It
isn't freedom, is it, unless you're free
not
to do things if you'd rather
not?"

"True. So that's what
changed your mind?" He stroked a hand up her arm and back down
again, covering her hand on his chest.

"No. I just figured that
bit out this minute."

"Then wot did change your
mind?" He needed to know.

"You did." She turned her
hand, capturing his hand laid over it, and brought it to her mouth
for a kiss. That was good. "You and Nigel."

"Nigel.
Cranshaw?
" That didn't sound so
good.

Elinor laughed and kissed
his hand again. Then she leaned against him for another bit of a
cuddle. "The demon kept talking about all Nigel had sacrificed for
the magic. You see, I thought that I needed to sacrifice--give up a
husband and family of my own in order to have the magic.

"But there you were, loving
me. Offering me everything I ever could have wanted. Magic
and
love. And suddenly, it
just seemed--wrong. Wrong and stupid not to take the gifts God had
for me. So I decided to stop being stupid and afraid, and grabbed
hold of you with both hands."

She sat up and looked him
in the eye. "I am not letting go, Harry Tomlinson, and you had
better not let go either."

"Never," he swore, taking
hold of her elbows with both hands. His heart was so full he didn't
know how to hold it all. So he didn't. He gave it to his
woman--love, magic, whatever was there. He had finally found
home.

March 15, 1864, turned out
to be a very busy day indeed. In the morning, Harry and Elinor were
married in the wizard's guild conservatory since it was larger than
his own. It could fit inside of it all their magician friends, some
two score or so of Elinor's relatives--not all the relatives she
had--and whatever strangers managed to squeeze in around the edges,
or so it seemed to Harry. Most of the last were students, he
thought, of either wizardry or sorcery. Romantical young
ladies.

The wedding breakfast,
which was actually a luncheon, took place in the Great Hall of the
Magician's Council. Nowhere else available was large enough for all
the invited guests. Besides, it wasn't every day that the head of
the council married the wizard's magister. The celebration was so
long and so boisterous, Harry and Elinor had no time to change for
their afternoon appointments. Elinor wore her wedding finery to
Buckingham Palace.

Elinor's gown of palest
green satin taffeta did have the long train required, though she
really should have had more plumes for her hair. Harry changed into
knee breeches in the carriage conveying them there.

The other magisters had
managed to escape the festivities soon enough to go home and
change. Amanusa and Jax, Grey and Pearl, and Thom, met them in the
front foyer, where they had been waiting several minutes for them
to arrive. Harry was trying to walk and fasten his knee buckles at
the same time while they came through the door. He managed to get
his breeches buckled up by the time they walked through the miles
of corridors and climbed the mountains of stairs to a grand
antechamber, where again, they waited.

Less than ten minutes
later, the door opened and they were ushered into the diminutive
black-clad presence of the queen of England. Pearl was indeed
smaller than the queen. Elinor was at least two inches taller.
Amanusa, of course, towered.

Her Majesty congratulated
them on achieving their new ranks. She thanked them for dealing
with the "difficulty" at Waterloo Station and the more recent one
in Whitechapel. She expressed hope that something could be done
about the dead zones. But when Harry began to tell her what they
planned, she indicated the interview was over. Moments later, they
were bowing, curtsying, and backing out of the room.

"That went well," Harry
said, neither quietly nor sincerely.

"It did, actually." An
elderly gentlemen with bushy gray sidewhiskers below bushy gray
hair stepped forward.

"Lord Palmerston." Harry
bowed to the prime minister.

Elinor sank into another
deep curtsy, awed all over again. She didn't know how awed the
others were, but they were all bowing and curtsying too. Jax might
not be too awed. He'd known and served Henry VIII. Prime ministers
had not been important then.

"She spoke with you above
ten minutes," Palmerston said. "Always a good sign. She is
impatient with governance these days. Call on me one day in the
next little while, will you, Tomlinson? Need to hear what you plan
to do about these zone things. When you've had time to settle in to
your new marriage. Felicitations, Mrs. Tomlinson."

"So I shall, sir." Harry
bowed again as Elinor murmured her thanks, and the prime
minister--
the prime
minister!
--wandered off again.

"All I ever wanted was the
magic," Elinor said to Harry as they followed the footman back down
the long corridors.

"Got to take wot comes wif
it, doncha?" Harry seemed to have fallen hard into his Cockney
after restraining it so heroically for so long.

Unfortunately, their day
was not yet ended. They went directly from their private audience
with the queen to presentation at court, with the Prince of Wales
and poor deaf Princess Alexandra presiding in his mother's
place.

As they moved through the
succession of crowded rooms, Elinor became slowly aware of the
subtle sensation of magic whispering past her.

"Do you feel that?" she
asked Harry.

"Feel what?" he snapped.
Harry did not take well to crowds, especially posh ones.

"I do." Amanusa touched her
arm. "Sorcery--but not."

"It
wants
to be sorcery, I think," Elinor
agreed. She went up on her toes and craned her neck, trying to see
where it might be coming from.

"It's like--" Pearl cocked
her head, one of her plumes tipping dangerously to the side. "Like
some of the girls, on testing day. So full of magic they'll explode
if they don't use it."

"
Exactly.
" Elinor barely kept from
crying out in exultation as Pearl said precisely what she meant.
"So where is she?"

They entered the next,
ultimate room where finally they would all be presented. The entire
royal family was present, those who hadn't married and gone to live
elsewhere or gone off on world tours, and were old enough. Which
meant that besides the Wales's, Princesses Charlotte and Helena and
Prince Alfred graced the room.

Elinor feared she was
terribly rude because she was so distracted all during her approach
to the prince and princess, hunting the sorceress-to-be. She did
manage to pay attention during the few minutes they actually spoke
to her, accepting their congratulations on her wedding and her
accession to the magister's position. She hoped she sounded
sensible and intelligent, but had no memory of what she
said.

It was only as they were
leaving, without quite so much rigmarole as when departing the
queen's presence, that Elinor saw. She looked at Princess
Charlotte. Princess Charlotte looked back at her, the wild magic in
her blood gazing out through her eyes.

"Oh, dear, sweet, heavenly
beings--" Elinor whispered.

"Amen, amen." Amanusa must
have seen, too.

"What is it?" Thom
whispered, looking from one to the other. "What's
wrong?"

"Do you see?" Pearl
whispered to Grey.

"Yes, my pearlescent one, I
do."

"God 'elp us all," Harry
muttered.

"Amen." That came from
Jax.

"
What?
" Thom sounded quite
annoyed.

They reached the doorway
and could turn and walk, without worrying about falling over
anything or anyone. Thom held his peace until they reached the far
side of this room, then he caught hold of Harry's elbow.

"I realize," he said through
gritted teeth, "that I am new to my position, that I did not go to
Paris and I have not been a part of this since the beginning. But I
am magister now and I will
not
let you shut me out. What the bloody hell is going
on?"

"Accept my humblest
apologies, Thom." Elinor put a placating hand on his arm, ignoring
Harry's reflexive rumble. He didn't like her touching other men.
"It's just--it was obvious to us. We could see it plain as day.
It's not your fault you couldn't."

"What?" He somehow managed
to keep his explosion quiet. "What did you see?"

"Only one of the most
powerful incipient sorcerers in England today," Amanusa
said.

"Barring yourself," Jax put
in.

Amanusa smiled at him.
"Perhaps."

"Who?" Thom snapped. Then
he seemed to realize where they had all been looking, and went a
little pale. "One of the royal princesses?"

Every one of them nodded
solemnly.

"Princess Charlotte,"
Elinor whispered, looking about to see who might overhear. The room
was so noisy, no one could.

"What does it mean?" Thom
looked from one of them to the other once more, obviously wanting
answers. Elinor didn't know that they had them. "What will happen
now?"

"We're blockin' traffic."
Harry led the way out of the room to the less-crowded chambers near
the exit.

"Well?" Thom
asked.

Elinor shrugged helplessly.
So did Grey. The others simply held their silence.

It was Harry who spoke.
"What it means," he said slowly, "is that on top of all the other
things we got to deal with, like dead zones, and armored machines,
and a split council, and wanderin' demons, there's a princess with
more sorcery than she knows wot to do with, and magic ain't
somethin' princesses do. It means that one way or the other, all
hell's about to break loose here in Buckingham Palace."

He shrugged. "What's one
more thing?"