A Breath of Frost (20 page)

“This school isn’t a punishment,” Mrs. Sparrow assured them. “It’s an honor and a privilege. You ought to consider yourselves very lucky indeed.”

“Lucky?” Emma echoed. “I’ve been chased through goblin markets, caged, forced to walk a gangplank blind, and threatened
at every turn. You’ll forgive me if ‘lucky’ isn’t quite the word I’d choose.”

Mrs. Sparrow clucked her tongue. “That’s quite enough of that.” She gave them each a silver ring set with a miniature painting of a blue eye surrounded with pearls. “To avert the evil eye,” she explained. “We find they go a long way in preventing accidents. You are required to wear them while at school.”

“I’ve seen these before,” Penelope said.

“They were a fashion in polite society several years ago. They serve the same purpose as the more traditional beads from Greece, but we find them less conspicuous.”

The doors to the drawing room were opened by a footman. “The carriage is ready, ma’am,” he announced, bowing.

Behind him the hall filled with girls streaming out of the ballroom and up the stairs out into the courtyard. They seemed perfectly healthy and happy. One girl had smoke rising from her hair, but she didn’t seem too upset about it.

“You see?” Mrs. Sparrow said gently. “There’s nothing to fear.” She waved her hand at the footman. “Show her in.” To the cousins she added, “You even know some of our students.”

Lady Daphne Kent entered the room, her white dress spotless and her blue ribbons perfectly in place. “You asked to see me, headmistress?”

“I did, yes. You know these young ladies, do you not?”

Daphne looked at the cousins. Something flickered in her face. “I do.”

“Excellent,” Mrs. Sparrow said briskly. “Doesn’t that put your mind at ease? I’ll leave you to reacquaint yourselves while
I give Thomas the carriage directions.” She left to talk to the footman.

“You’re a witch?” Penelope blurted out. “Is
everyone
a witch now?”

“Don’t be absurd,” she said dismissively. “Our families know each other because of our shared magical blood. It’s why we all grew up together. And also because your families needed to be watched, for all our sakes.” She sniffed. “You look dreadful, by the way. Did you fall in the Thames?”

“Hello to you too,” Penelope muttered.

“What’s your familiar then?”

“I don’t know,” Penelope replied. “Perhaps I don’t have one.”

“All witches have one,” Daphne said impatiently. “And some are more acceptable than others.”

Emma thought back to the afternoon in Hyde Park. “Deer,” she declared with a great deal of certainty.

“Passable,” Daphne said, with obvious reluctance. She turned to Gretchen.

Gretchen shrugged. “Don’t know. Maybe Penelope’s right.”

“It would be an animal you see in spirit-form or as a real creature who is drawn to you and has been since you were little.”

“Dog.” Gretchen smiled slowly, winking at her cousins. “The pink kind.”

“Dog. Common,” she declared. “As expected.”

Gretchen’s smile died. “Is that so? And what’s your familiar then? A shrew?” She was tired, frustrated, and nettled beyond good sense. “And your talent? Ringlets so tight they stunt your
brain?” She didn’t admit that her own talent amounted to honeybees buzzing in her brain.

Daphne’s eyes narrowed. “You would benefit from a proper finishing school, Gretchen Thorn.”

Penelope held Gretchen back as she tended to answer remarks with her fists if she wasn’t stopped. Emma just rubbed her face wearily. Mrs. Sparrow approached them with a pointed smile. “There now. I’m sure you’ll all get along splendidly, won’t you?”

They looked at one another with resigned distaste, evil-eye rings glinting in the light.

“Yes, Mrs. Sparrow.”

When Emma was shown back
to her rooms, there were three new trunks stacked by the door as promised. She was so exhausted she felt as though she were floating inside her own head. She wanted nothing more than to sleep, but she knew if she lay down her mind would only continue to race in circles. She went to the window and stared up at the sky to count the stars and had to crane her neck at an awkward angle to see anything at all. She felt bruised all over; one more ache hardly signified.

Cassiopeia, Libra, Orion
.

With every constellation and every star, her chest felt less compressed, her mind less like a thread pulled too tight and about to snap. She rifled through her trunks until she found a nightgown and then contorted herself like the acrobats who balanced on horseback at Astley’s Amphitheater in order to undo her corset by herself. She found her mother’s box packed with
her books, jewelry, and a miniature of her, Gretchen, and Penelope that Aunt Bethany painted last summer.

Her life suddenly resembled one of those swoony gothic novels Penelope loved so much. Which was all very well and good in literature but rather a different matter in real life.

For one thing, in a novel surely Cormac would have rescued her instead of handing her over to his unpleasant brethren.

And yet, he had seemed to genuinely want to help her when he’d forced her to hide at the ball and again with the iron nail in the goblin markets. Popular opinion claimed women were mercurial and difficult to understand. Clearly, they had never met Cormac.

She was sure it said nothing particularly complimentary about her character that she found herself thinking about him at all. And to think, he’d been a witch all this time. And Daphne! She couldn’t imagine anyone less likely to be involved in witchery. Daphne acted as though she didn’t have a thought in her silly little head beyond the next soiree and the state of her silk slippers. And here she was carrying an immense secret her entire life.

Emma fiddled with her mother’s patch box. She’d tried hairpins, brooch pins, and the tip of a sharp knife, but the last compartment simply would not yield. She was determined to try again and decided on the letter opener from the writing desk. She tried delicate maneuvers, finally giving up and jamming the tip in and wrenching it back and forth. Her finger slipped and slid along the edge of the blade. The force of her grip sliced her skin open, blood welling to the surface.

She sucked at the cut instinctively, glaring at the box, then her small wound. It wasn’t deep, merely insult added to injury. The copper taste of blood on her tongue made her think of Aunt Bethany explaining that witchery was in the blood. Feeling foolish but with her heart thundering in her ears, Emma squeezed the cut until a drop of blood fell onto the lock.

When she tried lifting the lid this time, it opened easily.

Inside was a small piece of antler lying on a bed of salt and rowan berries. She lifted it gently, the antler soft as velvet. It was wrapped in black thread and struck through with an iron nail. The tip of the nail was bent double around a strip of leather on which were knotted two rings, one silver, one gold. The antler was small and light and didn’t seem to particularly warrant as much fuss as the locked box suggested.

Until her blood smeared against it.

Warmth tingled through her, starting at her heels and traveling up her legs, spreading through her stomach and chest and up her arms, gathering at the crown of her head. It felt as though her head had suddenly caught fire.

She felt her eyes roll back as the darkness claimed her.

1796

Theodora wore her red cloak because her father hated it so much
.

She paused for effect in the doorway to the breakfast room
.

“Theodora Ophelia.”

She doubled back and poked her head into the room to flash a grin at her father’s disapproving face. “Yes, Papa?”

Her sister Bethany smiled into the jam pot. Her other sister Cora just sighed
.

“You know I don’t like you wearing that cloak,” her father said
.

Theodora fluttered her eyelashes innocently. “You don’t?”

“It’s common,” Cora sniffed
.

She rolled her eyes. “You’re just pouting because whenever you try to wear this color it makes you look like a boiled potato.”

“Theo, it’s not safe to draw attention,” her father insisted
.

She leaned against the doorjamb impatiently. “It’s just a cloak. And I’m only going to the woods,” Theodora huffed. “Honestly, why must you be so dramatic?”

“The Greymalkin are out there still. Do you want them to find you?”

Superstition held that the Greymalkin were drawn to bright color and bold people. Theodora couldn’t figure out why they’d care if her clothes were drab or if she dressed like a peacock—so long as her magic was strong enough to feed them. But she knew better than to ask her father. He still woke screaming, remembering the deaths he’d seen at their hands when he was a boy. She’d only meant to tease him with the cloak, to prove she was too old to be told what to wear
.

“Oh, Papa,” she said. “The Greymalkin haven’t been seen for years. They were banished by the Order. And anyway, everyone wears bright colors now. You’ve seen Lord Babbington’s frock coat. I defy you to find a brighter rainbow.”

“It’s hideous,” Cora agreed
.

“Lord Babbington isn’t a Lovegrove. None of them are. And anyway, he’s proving to the Families that he’s not afraid.”

“Well, I’m not afraid either.”

“But we’re an ancient family, Theo. Far older than the Babbing-tons. That requires certain sacrifices and precautions. You know this.” He pushed his half-eaten breakfast plate away. Her mother passed him a cup of fresh tea. “The Sisters killed seven people that one night alone.”

“In Windsor Forest?” she asked gently
.

“Well, no.”

“There, you see? And everyone knows Greymalkins prefer town to nature. There’s nothing to worry about.” She pressed a loud kiss on the top of his head. “I’m only going for a little while. It’s been raining for days and days and I can’t bear to be cooped up a minute longer.”

She bolted from the house before he could order her to change or stay behind altogether. She wouldn’t obey, of course. She couldn’t set that kind of precedence, not now that there were murmurs of a marriage contract being brokered for her with either the boy next door, Alphonse Day, or one of the sons of the Order. The son of Lord Babbington, to be exact. He wanted the prestige and power of the Lovegrove witches and the Hightowers, knowing nothing about witchery, wanted the Lovegrove country estate
.

She had absolutely no intention of being known as Lady Babbington for the rest of her life. Alphonse wasn’t much better though. He had the advantage of not being a witch and so hadn’t been raised on a steady diet of fear and secrecy like the Keepers’ children. But he had all the warmth of a Greek marble statue
.

Besides, she was nearly seventeen years old—she fully intended to have a proper coming-out ball and her own Season in London to dance and flirt before she was sold off. Cora was visiting, having just returned from her honeymoon and she was only eighteen; but she’d at least had half a Season. And she seemed happy enough, blushing and asking Bethany to paint a miniature of her husband
.

Theodora couldn’t imagine ever asking anyone to paint a portrait of Alphonse Hightower. Or anyone by the name of Babbington
.

And just as if he’d read her thoughts and wanted to curtail her fun already, there he was. Alphonse rode a beautiful horse and sat with the proper, rigid posture usually reserved for soldiers and spinsters
.

“Blast,” she muttered, diving behind one of the two giant gargoyles flanking the front door. She waited until he was occupied with swinging out of the saddle, the stableboy holding the reins and blocking
his view somewhat. She darted to the yew hedge, which was accented with trees trimmed into pyramids and perfect circles. She hopped from tree to tree, tucking her bright red cloak close to her body. Her magic worked best when it had a focus. It was especially good at augmenting spells. It was absolutely no use at all in hiding from unwanted suitors
.