Plenilune (7 page)

Their perusal and her assessment were interrupted by Rupert’s arrival. She was careful not to look up at him, but a strip of mirror inserted between the fireplace and the mantle allowed her an inconspicuous view of his person. He stepped in with a mottled book, pencil, and ruler under one arm, a compass thrust into the breast-pocket of his tunic.

“Is that your star-work?” asked Skander. He deposited the gown book in Margaret’s lap and rose. With a little sniff he folded his arms impassively.

“You might call it that,” Rupert said.

The two of them drifted apart with Margaret uncomfortably in between. Rupert stationed himself in a chair with an end-table drawn close to support his things; Skander wandered back to the shelves to look at books. Margaret, with nothing else to do, continued to idly turn the pages of her book, looking but barely seeing what passed before her eyes.

The clock over the mantle showed a quarter to two when at last a big black fellow, dressed trimly in white, emerged from a small second door in the south wall and began wordlessly to build up a fire in the grate. Margaret cast him only a cursory glance before automatically returning to her book, but Rupert broke her concentration by asking in a low, strangely gentle tone,

“Did you see anything that you liked?”

Rather perversely she saw, not the red dress, but Rupert’s water-logged travelling outfit leaking on the train-car seat. She kept her countenance with the perfection of an Englishwoman and did not reply.

Skander banged a book on the shelf and whistled to himself under his breath.

“Hmm,” said Rupert after a while. He picked up his pencil and began sketching on a paper—she could see him in the mirror—and with a little painful jerk of his brows added, “They are only suggestions. The patterns can be altered and made in any colour and fabric that you like.”

With a round, mare-ish gesture she lifted her head and regarded him briskly, snapping out the book with it open to the page she wanted. “Since you are being so generous, I will take this dress.”

She felt Skander turn at the window behind her, but he did not come forward. Rupert put down his pencil and squinted faintly, for the light was in his face, running his eyes over the image. There was a little of the dubious in his tone as he asked, “You are sure this is what you want?”

“I am sure.”

He raised his eyes to hers. His pupils had shrunk almost to nothing and, once more, the pale blue was nearly washed out to white. “Well, then. I’ll have Rhea begin at once. You can work on measurements after tea. Livy.”

He caught the eye of the big black man who nodded without a sound and, having made the fire, came across and took the book from Margaret. The long, powerful dark fingers reaching toward her, powerful enough to snap her neck in half if they liked, made something clench inside her, but she willed herself to offer the book with icy politeness. Big black Livy folded the book shut, his finger among the pages, and withdrew from the room.

After that the silence that settled was aching. Margaret stared, unseeing, into the new fire, trapped in an odd stillness that was not calming. Why did all the silences of this place sound like the silence before a scream? Why did the stillness of this house feel like the stillness before a storm?

“Miss Coventry.” Skander slid a book off the shelf, turned it over, and approached her with it. “Here is something you might like. Do you know
The Tempest
?”

With a little startled breath she turned, reaching a hand for the book. “
The Tempest
? By William Shakespeare? Of course I know it!” He placed the book in her hands and she pressed it in her palms, gazing down at the fine, straight, cloth-bound spine. “He is one of our own.”

She could hear the smile in Skander’s voice. “There! I thought that might bring a smile to your face. I’ve always liked that book. I read it as a boy, and looked at the pictures before I could read.”

When she looked into the mirror, Margaret caught a swift, dark look on Rupert’s face. It was almost the look of murder, but mirrors could be tricky, and she thought she could be mistaken. She hoped she could be mistaken. She dropped her eyes to the book and began turning back the pages. There was a bit of scrawl on the frontispiece but she could not make out the signature. She turned to the title page and the
dramatis personae
, with each page pulling in the alluring scent of old book. She had never read
The Tempest
—truth to tell, she admitted to herself, she was not fond of plays. But it was Shakespeare: it was as English as English could be, and she clutched it desperately for the sake of sheer familiarity. It was touching of Skander to fetch it for her; with a feeling of gratitude mingled with self-loathing, she realized her homesickness must be apparent.

True to Skander’s word, the book was beautifully illumined. The margins, like the more ancient texts that Britain had produced, were crammed full of fishes and sea-birds, thunder-blasted pines and the narrow trickle of water down sea-worn rocks. The prow of a foundered ship wedged itself in a margin, showing its shivered stern on the opposite. Men in ragged garments knelt on a shore. A man with one arm around a maiden raised his other arm as if to plead with the heavens. But the shackled spirit himself had his own full page. In body he was strangely featureless, but in genius masculine, tall, beautiful, standing legs apart and with his back to her, turned to give her his profile. There must have been a wind in his face for his hair stood wildly on end, and there was a smile on his face that was meek, pleasant, but somehow unnerving. He had about himself more magic than mere ink could bestow. She gazed on his serene, god-like face and felt a strange thrill: Rupert, splendid as a racehorse, might have been like this once. Only the light flicker in the ink eyes was not to be found in the cool, deadly depths of Rupert’s.

Then she remembered that Skander was hovering nearby and that she was looking at a naked spirit. She hastily turned the page. And for a thankful while the book kept her occupied. She looked at all the marginal illustrations and, that done, returned to the beginning and began to read. The fire rose up in the grate, building as time passed and as Skander threw to it an idle log as one might throw a dog a bone, and she felt it warming her shins through her skirts. The soft scratching and shifting of pages from Rupert’s quarter went on, broken only at intervals by the deep chiming of a clock somewhere in the house. Skander had sunk himself into a chair and was deep into a book. She glanced up at him once to see his eyelids had fallen shut, though he still held the book upright; she smiled a little secret smile.

But when she glanced round again she saw Rupert looking at her through the fireplace mirror and she felt a sudden stab of guilt, though for what she did not know. With an effort she held that gaze, arching a brow inquisitively, but because it was like looking at a painting, she did not think to speak. He stared and stared, and she made herself stare back, far longer than was polite, far longer than was reasonable, with the firelight dancing on their faces and the light of daring in their eyes. At last—it made Margaret thrill a little with a red sense of victory—Rupert broke his gaze off and returned to his star-work.

For a long while after that the only sounds were those of Skander’s book falling to his lap and he was quite asleep and the tinselly rustle of the fire that was slowly putting Margaret to sleep as well. The characters on the pages swam beneath her vision—warm, yellow-coloured pages that were veined with darkness like a kind of marble. A dark, despairing kind of weariness that faded her vision to grey at the edges was slowly overcoming her, but she did not like the thought of sleeping with Rupert about. She fought off the sleepiness, trying to pull each word bodily out of the page and understand what the playwright was trying to say. She had to stay awake…

4 | The Devil’s Hunting Grounds

“Did you rest well?”

Margaret unfolded her napkin on her lap, careful not to meet Rupert’s gaze. She and her captor and his cousin were seated in the dining room over late tea, grouped about one end of the table where the cluster of lit candles sent little koi-coloured flecks of light across the polished tabletop. In the cracks between the closed curtains she could occasionally see the silver gleam of light in the sky that was the earth; all else was quenched in night’s dark.

“I did,” said Margaret, “well enough,” and passed on the soup tureen.

With a little sniff that she was coming to know of him, Skander unfurled his own napkin with a violent flick and said, “I was reading Dante’s first instalment of his
Comedy
. I don’t advise doing so before a nap. It gives one the most curious dreams.”

Margaret, who had never read but had heard of the
Inferno
, canted her head politely and opened her mouth to ask about the dreams, when Rupert interrupted.

“I don’t know why you read such rubbish.” His voice, though low, was rather cutting. With a deft flick he had the ladle out and was curling a bit of soup round-wise into the curve of his own bowl. “I don’t know why I still have it. It’s so full of lies.”

The air crackled between the cousins. The light, amiable nature that hung so well about Skander’s big shoulders seemed to slip away like a cloak: the man sat heavily, broodingly in his chair, spooning out his own soup, but watching Rupert sidewise from under his brows. Rupert was busy making his own cup of tea with a bit of brandy to stiffen it, but he took the time to raise a daring look at his cousin, a look that was to Margaret like a rapier, so light it was, so cold and bladed.

Livy took the soup tureen from Skander and set it down on the table, making the little fish-mottled patches of light dance.

“Why,” said Skander, picking up his teaspoon and putting it back down for his soup spoon, “do you say it is all lies?”

The rapier darted away, put back in its sheath for now. Rupert closed up the brandy bottle and, by way of Livy, offered it to Margaret. She declined. The bottle was put back up on the sideboard where it cast its own little shards of light, gold and amber-coloured, jinking from the movement of Livy’s hand. She watched it in that long silence that Rupert made, her head turned from the two of them, but she did not see what lay under her eye. She was waiting for his answer.

“Is it that you must get rid of everything?” Skander demanded in a low thrusting tone.

She looked back at them. Rupert had begun to drink his soup in a thoughtful sort of way, but even she caught the smile that was playing at one corner of his mouth. She hoped a bit of soup slid out of that smile, just for the indignity of it. But no soup did.

“When your father died, you made changes to Lookinglass. It is not that I ‘get rid’ of things. This is my house, and it is mine to do with as I please. Also, it is my own opinion that Dante was a liar, and that, too, is an opinion which I am free to hold.”

“Then hold it!” Skander said, rocking back in his chair. “And don’t pass it off on me.”

For a moment, a heartbeat, the time it takes a candle to flicker just one way, the blade was in Rupert’s eyes again. And then, just as quickly, it was gone.

With a sigh very like exasperation, Skander turned to Margaret. In that moment she was achingly grateful for his presence. Without him the meal would have been unbearable.

“Do you have riding things for tomorrow, Miss Coventry?”

She scooped up some soup and set the spoon to her lips. “I believe so. My closet seems to be quite large. I am sure to find something suitable inside it.”

“Excellent. And remember, we leave early, and it is bound to be chilly and fog-some. Dress warmly. We can’t have you catching cold.”

“No…” mused Rupert.

Skander kept her busy, detailing her with facts about his harriers and alaunts, and particularly about his falcon Thairm who was kept upstairs on her perch, but would be coming with them in the morning. He surprised her by relating the story of a big doe the falcon had taken down once, her talons and beak in the poor brute’s eyes. Margaret would never have thought such a small creature could fell something so much larger than itself.

“We have always been good hunters, we Capys men,” he added. “When you come to Lookinglass, I will show you the ballroom floor that is tiled in the pattern of our falcon displayed. It is really quite pretty, and very well done, though I say so myself—it was put down generations ago, so I can’t very well take much credit for it.”

“That’s really very remarkable,” said Margaret a little bewilderedly, “about Thairm. How did you teach her?”

“
I
didn’t, my falconer did. She is a gyrfalcon, a rather rare bird, caught on a migratory flight four years ago. She was quite the haggard at first, but she has done well and I rather trust her. She has the sweetest way of purring after you feed her, though she is pure devil beforehand.”

It was stirring to listen to the warm, round pride that shimmered beneath Skander’s tones as he spoke of his falcon, making her sound more like a pet than a creature to put food on the table or a fury bred to kill. Margaret saw her again, bating madly on Skander’s fist—and she saw Skander hushing her softly, gently, lovingly. Something twisted in Margaret’s gut and the smile on her lips became forced.

She was glad when the meal was over and she could fall back on social habits. She took her leave of them—both gentlemen rose as she left her seat—and, thanking Skander for his conversation, took herself back up to her room. It was a relief, in many ways, to get away.

To her surprise the maid Rhea was waiting for her when she arrived. She had forgot about the dress and about the measurements that needed to be taken. She stood in the doorway to her room, staring at the sewing box and the coil of measuring tape laid out beside her dressing table, and felt a swift jerk of rebellion in her chest. She could tell the maid to go…but that fight had been fought and Rupert had won it—much as it galled her to admit. She stepped into the room and shut the door with a meaningful thump.

Rhea emerged from behind the brass and silver changing partition. She was a little thing, put together rather finely but strongly, and it struck Margaret how tall-seeming she was, though she reached only to Margaret’s shoulder. There was something smooth and quiet and uncanny about the girl’s dark eyes, like a pool in a forest, a pool whose depths she could not guess.