Lady of Magick (21 page)

“I do not doubt it,” said Sophie. “But Roland has made a special project of befriending his unexpected sister, and often tells me things that really he ought not. I do hope . . . I hope he is not truly distressed.”

Gray did not ask, as many might have done, why she should suppose that Roland might be distressed by the prospect of marrying a clever and very handsome young woman who stood to inherit a kingdom.

“I am sure,” he said, “that your father will not hold Roland to any arrangement which causes him genuine distress.” He hesitated, then went on: “Have you . . . have you any particular reason to suspect . . .”

“He is . . . he has a preference for some other woman,” Sophie admitted, reluctantly. “I have not the least idea who she is, but from the hints in his letters I believe his regard is not reciprocated.”

The warm hand on her back faltered momentarily, then resumed its steady rhythm.

“I do not much like this manner of arranging things,” Sophie sighed, “but Roland is old enough and certainly impertinent enough to make his position clear, if he should object to marrying Lucia MacNeill; and if the news of the match is made public at home, and is shortly to be announced here also, it would appear that he has not done so. Only . . . I hope they may find some way to be happy together.”

Gray, wisely, attempted no reply.

Sophie turned over the last page of Joanna's letter, which had formed the envelope, and found on the bottom third of it a postscript, hastily scrawled, which she had not remarked before:

P.S. I have opened this up again, Sophie, to give you a piece of news that will please you: H.M. is sending a great convoy of waggons loaded with grain and salted meat and such to Alba—for the storehouses, you know—as part of the bride-gift, and they are on their way already! J.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Gray, listen—”

*   *   *

The betrothal was formally announced in Din Edin in the middle of January, and was received with heated discussions in drawing-rooms and public-houses—opinions seemingly divided between approbation and disapproval—as well as further public demonstrations both for and (in the great majority) against. To Sophie's astonishment and dismay, the news of the bride-gifts described in Joanna's letter, far from changing the minds of the doubters, seemed to fan the flames of their objections; the charge that Donald MacNeill had sold his daughter—or even Alba itself—in return for the right to glean from the fields of Britain, stooping like a beggar for the leavings of her harvest, seemed to be on the tip of every tongue, to shout from the pages of every broadsheet.

Sophie began to wonder that Donald MacNeill and his daughter should not be having serious second thoughts.

For Gray and herself, the month that followed was a constant trial. Formerly more or less unremarkable members of the University community, of no especial interest once their novelty had worn off, both of them—in common with every other British subject presently resident in Din Edin—had abruptly become notorious.

Reflecting on what her own feelings must have been had she found herself in Lucia MacNeill's position, Sophie had taken the earliest opportunity of approaching her future sister-in-law with felicitations and a request to speak with her in private.

“Of course,” said Lucia MacNeill, graciously enough, though evidently puzzled.

There being no other immediate demands upon her time, she led the way to her own carrel in the Library and borrowed a second chair in which she invited Sophie to sit.

“If you will permit,” said Sophie, still on her feet, “I should like to set a ward.”

Lucia MacNeill did not trouble to hide her astonishment. “Certainly,” she said, “if you think it needful.”

She watched Sophie's spellcasting with a shrewd interest, which Sophie found rather unnerving.

“I have a confession to make to you,” said Sophie at last, sinking into the proffered chair.

“To me?” Lucia MacNeill said, frowning.
Does she suspect? Surely she must suspect.

“To you,” said Sophie. She had thought carefully about what to say but found the words skittering away from her, and instead stammered, “As . . . as my brother's betrothed.”

Lucia MacNeill's frown evaporated into undisguised shock.

Sophie, feeling miserably guilty, looked down at her hands, clasped tightly in her lap.

“So it is true,” said Lucia MacNeill, after a long moment. Sophie raised her head abruptly. “You
are
the Lost Princess.”

Sophie nodded.

“And Prince Roland's sister.”

“Yes,” said Sophie. She swallowed around the dry lump in her
throat and added, in the spirit of honesty, “His half sister, at any rate.”

Lucia MacNeill leaned forward a little, and Sophie squared her chin and looked the heiress of Alba in the eyes. They were beautiful eyes, of a calm clear blue, and fringed with long russet-gold lashes; and in them Sophie read both challenge and entreaty.

But for their colour, in fact—and the fine-drawn heart-shaped face from which they regarded her—they were Joanna's eyes to the life.

“You are not much alike,” Lucia MacNeill remarked. “Unless the portrait I was sent is very unfaithful indeed.”

“No,” Sophie agreed, a little wrong-footed by this sudden turn of the conversation. “Roland favours his mother, and . . . I suppose I must favour mine.”

Lucia MacNeill sat back in her chair, squaring her shoulders. “I could wish that you might have told me sooner who you are,” she said. “In the circumstances.”

“I knew no more of the circumstances than rumour could tell me,” said Sophie, “until my father's letter reached me not a se'nnight ago, and I did not like to proceed on the strength of rumour alone.”

This explanation was received with a slow, thoughtful nod, after which Lucia MacNeill tilted her head on one side, Joanna-like, and said, “I can see that with the priests of the Cailleach encouraging riots in the streets, this might not seem the best moment for such a revelation. But what I cannot see is—well—why hide to begin with?”

Sophie sighed. “If you knew what my life was, at Oxford,” she said, “you could not ask me that question.”

“Tell me, then,” Lucia MacNeill suggested, with a wry smile.

Sophie smiled hesitantly back at her, and did.

*   *   *

Catriona MacCrimmon called upon Sophie in Quarry Close for the express purpose of discussing the news; not (so far as Sophie was able to observe) because she suspected Sophie of being in the secret, but because she knew no other Sasunnach visitors to interrogate. Catriona's manner was overbright and brittle—very like the evening
of the Marshalls' supper-party, when she had interrupted Sophie's conversation with Rory on the subject of clan storehouses. Earlier in their acquaintance, Sophie might have taken it at its face value and concluded that Catriona favoured the Alban heiress's marriage with a British prince and was eager to know all about him; now, as so often of late, she was baffled and wrong-footed, unable to deduce what Catriona might be at.

“I fear the match is not well looked upon everywhere in Alba,” Sophie ventured, testing the waters, “though Lucia MacNeill herself is so highly thought of. It seems to me a good thing—the cementing of a friendship, so that each kingdom may have less fear of the other—but perhaps you do not agree?”

Catriona smiled broadly with her lips, and not at all with her eyes.

“Can any true friendship subsist between such unequal parties?” she said. “Between a great kingdom such as yours, with its standing army and its vast lands and great treasuries, and little Alba?”

“I . . . I had not thought of the question in quite that way,” said Sophie, wishing now that she had not asked.

Catriona's smile took on a pitying edge. “I did not suppose you had. It is the privilege of the powerful never to consider such questions from the perspective of the powerless.”

Sophie blinked.

Catriona patted her hand, and Sophie fought to control her instinctive recoil. “The stones are cast, now,” she said, not unkindly, “and what is there for the likes of us to do, but learn to live with the consequences?”

But she did not look as if she meant what she said.

*   *   *

The heiress of Alba might be perfectly able to keep a secret; but having told Lucia MacNeill the truth, Sophie found herself increasingly unable to justify hiding it from her closest acquaintance.

Eithne and Una were full of questions for their one Sasunnach friend, almost none of which Sophie could answer:
How long has this match been in the offing? Is it true that London is sending waggon-loads of
food to Alba? What does your King intend by it, and by the match itself? What can you tell us of this Prince Roland?

“As for the marriage arrangements, I do not believe I know much more about the matter than you do,” she said at last, helplessly. “Except that I can certainly vouch for the bride-gifts of stores against famine, for I had that news from my sister. This match must have been under discussion for some time—such things are not decided overnight, I know—but I cannot recall that any such thing was talked of when last I was in London—”

Her next words fled her mind temporarily as she took in the astonishment on her friends' faces. She gathered her wits about her again, and went on: “I can tell you something of Prince Roland, however, because—and I am sorry not to have told you before—because—because he is my half-brother.”

Una and Eithne gaped at her.

At last Eithne said, “Then . . . it is true that you are the Lost Princess? And not Sophie Marshall at all?”

“It is
not
true that I am not Sophie Marshall,” said Sophie, rather more vehemently than she had intended. “I have been Sophie Marshall since the day I was married, and I cannot help what else I am besides.” She scowled, looking down at the scuffed toes of her sturdy boots. “But . . . but I was born Princess Edith Augusta; that much is certainly true.”

For another long moment, no one spoke.

Sophie raised her head at last—half wondering whether Eithne and Una had somehow vanished whilst her attention was elsewhere—and found them both staring at her as though antlers had sprouted from her head.

“You,” said Eithne, shaking her head. “I cannot credit it.”

“And why on the gods' green earth, Eithne MacLachlan,” Sophie said, with some asperity, “should I tell you such a tale, if it were
not
true?”

“I wish you will not take offence, Sophie,” said Eithne, half apologetic, half defensive. “You must allow that this is entirely
unexpected. And,” she added, “if it
is
true, then, for the gods' sake, why have you never said so before?”

Sophie restrained herself from rolling her eyes. “Lucia MacNeill asked me the same question,” she said. “If my fellow students at Merlin College had been anything like hers, I daresay I should have felt differently.”

Una, meanwhile, had been studying Sophie intently, her head on one side.

“It's said the Sasunnachs' Lost Princess is very beautiful,” she remarked. “And that she can sing the birds out of the trees, and the rocks from the river-bed, like—”

Sophie's snort of laughter at this romantical notion brought Una up short, frowning.

“You may believe whatever you like,” said Sophie cheerfully. She was rather surprised to find that this was, in most respects, true. “It makes no difference to me.”

She was entirely surprised when Una, after another long, considering look, said firmly, “I believe you.”

Eithne—ordinarily so much more credulous—still looked doubtful. “The thing is, you see,” she began, “my mother told our cousin Conall MacLachlan—the butterfly collector, you know—she mentioned to him that—”

“Eithne,” said Una, “whatever it is you have to say, will you for the gods' sake cease
trying
to say it and
say
it.”

Eithne swallowed visibly, and nodded. “Conall MacLachlan spoke to you at the Chancellor's dinner, he said, and concluded that he had been wrong to think you must be the Lost Princess, because you were too plain and too dull, and your singing had no magick in it.”

“Ah,” said Sophie. So Conall MacLachlan had indeed known who she was—and this must explain why he had said nothing about it thereafter. “But that is because Conall MacLachlan has forgot the other magick for which the Lost Princess is renowned.”

“What is that?” said Eithne, frowning.

“This,” said Sophie.

She closed her eyes briefly, imagined herself in her own sitting-room—seated at her pianoforte, alone with Gray—and, for the first time since leaving London, stood in a public corridor and let her native magick have its way. She could not have said precisely what she now looked like, but Gray had shown her, once (or, rather, had made her show herself), how her face grew brighter, livelier, and more colourful when she was happy, when her worries receded, when she was surrounded by the people she loved.

“Oh,”
said Eithne.

“Brìghde's tears!” said Una.

When she felt they had looked their fill, Sophie carefully resumed her plainer, soberer self—which produced another astonished
Oh!
from Eithne—and regarded them both solemnly.

“Eithne MacLachlan,” she said, “Una MacSherry, we are friends, are we not?”

“Of course, Sophie,” said Eithne.

Una nodded warily.

“Then I may rely on you both, I hope,” said Sophie, “to stand my friends still?
I
have not changed, you know; I am Princess Edith Augusta only when I must be, and am Sophie Marshall always, deep down.”

She would not plead—would not say,
Please believe me, I have never lied to you about anything that truly matters
—but she did wish, again, that she had never taken it into her head to keep this secret. Only, it had been so pleasant to be Sophie Marshall and nothing more, so uncomplicated and easy . . .