A Breath of Frost (27 page)

“I invited her,” Sophie replied with her gentle smile, setting the basket on a side table. “We ran into each other in the hall. Quite literally.”

“I’m not convinced we can trust her. She’s a Lovegrove, after all,” Daphne said. “And everyone knows their magic doesn’t work quite right.”

“Oh, Daphne.” Sophie winced. “Don’t be rude.”

“Let her stay,” Jane sniffled. “I need all the magic I can get.”

“Jane’s father sent word earlier this evening that he’s officially signed her betrothal contract to Charles Fulcrum,” Sophie explained as Emma sat on the rug, tucking her toes under the hem of her nightdress. Someone’s familiar, a tiny burrowing owl, hopped across the rug to stare at her.

“And you don’t care for him?” She hazarded a guess, considering the state of Jane’s handkerchief and the piles of half-eaten sweets in front of her.

“I don’t know!” Jane wailed. “I’ve never even met him!” Her blond hair was damp on her cheeks. She ate another handful of toffees. “My life is over!”

“I think you’re lucky.” Lilybeth fluttered. “Your Season has barely begun and you’ve already had an offer of marriage! My oldest sister had four Seasons and not a single offer. She’s twenty-two now and my mother’s given up hope for her altogether.”

Emma remembered her Aunt Mildred’s incensed speech about being unmarried and dependent on her brother’s goodwill. Was it any better to be dependent on a stranger one’s parents had picked out? A husband controlled his wife’s property, her access
to her own dowry, and even what she could buy in the shops if he wished it. Emma shifted uncomfortably. Her own father would be hoping to do exactly as Jane’s had.

“My parents knew each other for years,” Catriona said. “And my mother still throws the dinner plates at his head.” She shrugged. “Anyway, you won’t die at his hand.” The girls sitting around her edged away. She just smiled benignly and helped herself to one of the stolen cakes.

“She’s right,” someone else said. “There are no guarantees either way.”

“And would you rather become an ape leader?” Lilybeth shuddered.

“I don’t like that term.” Another student frowned at her. “We shouldn’t call one another names.”

Daphne rolled her eyes. “Spinster then, whatever. The reality is the same. Women who don’t get married are ridiculed and pitied, unless they have wealth or power.” Her expression hardened. “And I have no intention of being pitied.”

Lilybeth shook her head. “I want to get married.”

Jane wept harder. Sophie patted her shoulder. “Let’s begin the ceremony,” she suggested. “It will make you feel better.”

“What ceremony?” Emma asked as the other girls slid off their seats to sit cross-legged on the floor.

“There’s a secret tradition for girls about to be married,” Sophie explained as she helped Jane sit on an embroidered cushion in the center of the circle. “Rose-petal candies for beauty, and other little charms to help her in her new life.”

“So she’ll know true love,” one of the girls sighed. “The
rose petals will make certain Charles finds her the most beautiful of all. It’s so romantic.”

“It’s about power,” Daphne said firmly. “Just as I said before.”

The ritual was simple but it seemed to give Jane comfort. The air smelled like sugar and beeswax and the candlelight was so soft it looked like honey. Lilybeth smeared rose oil on Jane’s forehead and hands, saying, “So that Charles always looks on you and smiles.”

Sophie fed her a spoonful of honey. “So he speaks of you sweetly.”

Daphne held up a small hand mirror painted with an image of Artemis holding a bow with a nocked arrow. “So that you remember who you are,” Daphne said. Jane looked at her own reflection silently.

“Did you bring the portrait?” Daphne asked.

Jane pulled the gold chain she wore over her head, revealing the small cameo on the end. “I had that strange old man at the goblin markets carve it for me last month when my father first brought up the possibility of Charles Fulcrum.”

“Good,” Daphne approved. “My father says his work is uncanny.”

Jane ran her thumb over the cameo. The white shell gleamed on a smooth background painted red. Charles had a long nose, tousled hair, and a shy smile, if the carving was anything to go on. “I suppose he’s handsome enough. I might grow to love him, if he’s kind.”

“He’ll be kind,” Daphne said forcefully. “We’ll make sure of it.”

Emma watched as Jane pulled a hair from her head and wrapped it tightly around the cameo. She added a length of red thread. “She’ll soak it in honey and bury it under a rosebush,” Sophie whispered to her. “It’s supposed to ensure that she has a happy marriage.”

“We have little enough say over our own lives,” Daphne pointed out, as if she thought Emma would protest. “And even less once we become wives. This way, at least, we can protect ourselves, just a little bit.”

The strangest part of the evening so far was that she actually agreed with Daphne on something. Gretchen would fly into a black mood if she ever found out.

“Is it time yet?” Lilybeth asked in a breathless voice, as though she’d been patiently waiting for a Christmas present.

Jane wiped the salt from her tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. “I suppose so.”

The silence the girls had held during the small ceremony shattered. They whispered and giggled and shifted excitedly. “Now what’s happening?” Emma asked Sophie uneasily. She wasn’t used to so many girls in the first place, never mind when they all giggled together. It was slightly disconcerting.

“They say a woman on her betrothal night and on the night before her wedding is especially able to predict the future husbands of unmarried girls.”

The other students painstakingly wrote names on scraps of parchment and folded them up. They were dropped onto a silver tray, the kind butlers used to bring the calling cards of visitors
to the lady of the house. Everyone stood up. Emma did the same, feeling decidedly nervous.

Jane pulled a folded square of parchment from the platter. “Percival MacTavish.”

She spun on her heel, the way Emma and her cousins had done when they were little to make themselves dizzy. She stopped without opening her eyes and pointed to a girl with long brown hair and freckles on her nose. She gasped, clutching her fingers in excitement. Her friends hugged her as if she’d just received an actual proposal of marriage.

“Tobias Lawless.”

She turned and turned, but when she stopped, her hands remained at her side. She opened her eyes, shaking her head. “No one here.”

Several girls sighed, disappointed. Tobias was handsome for all that he rarely smiled. And he would be an earl one day. “He’s frightfully choosy anyway,” someone said, consoling herself out loud.

Jane read out another name. “Simon Watkin.” She turned again, eventually pointing to Catriona. The white of her cheeks, her hair, and her nightdress made her look like moonlight. She blinked. “But I didn’t even put a name in.”

“All the same.” Jane shrugged.

“I’ve seen his death,” Catriona murmured. The girl next to her stepped away, wrapping her shawl tighter around her shoulders, as if Catriona’s gift was contagious.

Jane just reached for another piece of parchment. She giggled. “This is the name of one of the footmen.”

“Yes, but a handsome one,” someone replied with a smug smile.

Jane closed her eyes and dutifully spun around again. Emma wondered if she was getting nauseated. She stopped and shrugged. “No one’s going to marry the footman.”

“That’s all right.” The girl who’d put in his name grinned wickedly. “I actually only want him to kiss me.”

“There’s a spell for that,” someone else suggested, grinning just as wickedly.

“One more circle, Jane,” Daphne interrupted, watching her carefully, like a hawk circling over a field. Emma wondered whose name she’d put in. Jane reached for the last three pieces of parchment.

“Cormac Fairfax.” She flicked open the other two and laughed. “They all say Cormac Fairfax.”

Emma hadn’t written down a name. Three other students had entered Cormac into the pile. For some reason, the thought made her cheeks flames and her back teeth grind. Which was ridiculous. He wasn’t the one for her, he’d made that plain. And he’d obviously been kissing as many girls as the gossips claimed, to have his name written down three times.

Jane twirled and twirled. The candles flickered. Emma’s breath clogged in her throat.

Jane stumbled to a stop.

Slowly, so slowly, she raised her arm. Her finger extended, pointing to Daphne.

Daphne smirked, catching Emma’s eye.

Jane, however, kept turning.

She pointed again, this time to two girls Emma didn’t know.

After one last circle, she pointed again.

This time, it was directly at Emma. She jumped, as though she’d been physically prodded. Her witch knot tingled.

“I’m sorry,” Jane said finally, opening her eyes. “I just don’t know who will marry Cormac.”

Emma went from learning
to maneuver with antlers on her head to maneuvering the social pitfalls of a betrothal supper attended entirely by witches.

Since both Jane and Charles were from witching families, this first celebration had a very select list of guests: the kind of people who wouldn’t faint if Emma’s glamour accidentally slipped and she took a turn about the room wearing antlers. And to think, not so long ago she’d worried about being a wall-flower.

“Quit fidgeting,” Daphne snapped when they paused, waiting to be announced. They’d ridden together in the school carriage, equipped with more outriders armed with muskets and swords than a group of schoolgirls usually warranted. Daphne lost no time in telling them it was because she was the daughter of the First Legate of the Order and her father always
saw to her safety. “Mind you don’t tread on my hem when we go in.”

“How about your head?” Gretchen shot back. “Can I tread on that?”

The butler, luckily, chose that moment to interrupt.

“Lady Daphne Kent, daughter of the First Legate.”

Daphne’s entrance was graceful and well rehearsed. The candlelight gleamed on the silver beaded flowers on the hem of her gown and the pearls woven into her hair. She glided between rows of orange trees decorated with crystal teardrops. An orchestra played softly on an upstairs balcony. The ballroom was beautiful, filled with silk gowns and diamond necklaces and cravat pins.

But now that Emma could see past the magical glamours, she noticed details she was amazed had remained hidden for so long. How did one not notice a glowing turquoise-and-green peacock, for instance? Even if it was someone’s familiar and made mostly of magic. Above, several glowing doves circled the room between the glittering candelabras. A cat, two hedgehogs, and the sound of a horse outside in the rosebushes weren’t the only indication that this was no ordinary event.

For one thing, a waterfall of sparkling water cascaded from the railings of the gallery, dissipating into sparkles and tendrils of mist where it braided into rivers of fire from a glittering candelabra, spelling out Jane’s name. She stood below, smiling prettily, and looking nothing like a girl who’d recently eaten three handfuls of toffee while weeping that her life was over.

Daphne greeted her with a curtsy, before she and Sophie
and Lilybeth smiled at a group of Ironstone students, drawing their attention. Some of the focus was pulled away again, however, when the cousins were announced.

“Lady Penelope Chadwick, Lady Gretchen Thorn, and Lady Emma Day.”

By the time Emma’s name reverberated through the ballroom, everyone had turned to stare.

“Are my antlers showing?” Emma whispered, turning her Fith-Fath ring frantically on her finger. It was the first time she’d been out in such a crowd with her antlers.

“No,” Penelope assured her out of the corner of her mouth.

“Blast,” she said. “So it’s just me?”

“Mother warned me this might happen.” Penelope winced. “Witches or not, it’s still polite society. And they love a good scandal. You’ve seen how they still look at Mother.”

“This doesn’t feel particularly polite,” Emma muttered, lifting her chin. Still, she’d faced the magisters on the ship, she could face this. She couldn’t help but scan the guests for Cormac but didn’t see him anywhere. She wondered who else was searching the crowd, hoping for a glimpse of those dark eyes and that wicked smile.

“Well, come on,” Gretchen said, marching them forward as though they were about to take on Napoleon’s army. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Is that them?”

“Which one’s the mad witch’s daughter?”

“The red-haired one, has to be.”

“Oh yes,” Emma said drily, as gossips tracked their progress
around the edges of the room. “This is so much better than being ignored as a wallflower.”

Penelope grinned. “I’m half-afraid Gretchen is going to stab that old man with his own cane. You just know she’s picturing it as a sword.”

Emma had to grin back. Let them stare and whisper behind their hands. She could only feel sorry for them, without friends such as her cousins. They made their curtsies to Jane, who studiously avoided meeting Emma’s eyes, and then hurried off to the refreshment table.