Betraying Season (27 page)

Pen interrupted her with a laugh, a short, harsh sound that she did not know she was capable of making. “Yes, well. It doesn’t appear as if he wants to be reformed by me.”

Lady Keating reached up and took Pen’s chin in her hand. Her fingers were cold and trembled slightly. “My dear, you don’t know how much your pain hurts me. But there is another way you could help him, if you don’t despise him utterly.”

Pen dropped her eyes from Lady Keating’s intense gaze. Did she despise him? Of course she did; she’d hoped to marry him, but all he had been interested in with her was a game, to make her another notch in his bedpost. But despise him beyond all recall?

She remembered their talks and spirited discussions of history and politics, interspersed with companionable silence. There had been real friendship between them at first; no other young man of her acquaintance had been so intelligent, so stimulating a conversationalist, so much fun. Could she forget that side of him so completely as to loathe him?

“N-no,” she said at last. “I—I don’t wish to see him, but I can’t wish him ill.” Well, not too much ill. Nothing that would leave scars. At least, not deep ones. “I hope that he can overcome this . . . defect someday and live a happy, upright life.”

“Oh, my dear, that is all I wish for him as well. It is all I think about, all I work for.” She took a deep breath. “Perhaps the time has come for me to share some other information with you. It is not . . . it is not something that I have told anyone else, ever. Too many people could be hurt by it, and so I have kept it to myself all these
years.” She looked at Pen with an expression half proud, half ashamed, in her green eyes. “Niall is not Lord Keating’s son.”

Oh, dear. What should she say to that? Wasn’t Lady Keating aware of the gossip that even she, a newcomer to Cork, had heard? “I—” she began.

“No, my dear, you don’t have to say anything. What can you say to such a statement? Nevertheless, it is true. Before my husband inherited the title, he was a soldier, an officer in the Duke of Cumberland’s Fifteenth Dragoons. I came to London when they were there—we had been married only a few years, you know. And then I met the duke.” She sighed, and her eyes grew dreamy and distant. “I tried, but I could not deny my feelings for him when he indicated his interest in me. My marriage had been an arranged one.
This
was love. We had a brief time of heaven together, but I was already married, and he was the king’s son—there was no future for us. I have his son as a living reminder of that love.

“Niall has always been a restless boy. He has his father’s brilliance and boundless energy as well as his handsome face and figure. His poor father—Lord Keating, that is—is a good man, but he has been ill so long that he has never been able to be a father to him, and so Niall fell by the wayside. But I have dreamed . . . if Niall could be united with his father—his real father—perhaps it would give him the strength and purpose to turn his life around and prove himself worthy of such a parent. It would give him his proper place in the world. Do you see? Do you understand what I hope for?” She took Pen’s hands and gripped them.

Pen remembered all the unpleasant things she wanted to inflict on Niall when he spent the evening glued to Charlotte Enniskean at the Whelans’ dance. Funny that it never occurred to her to do anything
to Charlotte. Was it because, deep inside her, she knew it had been his fault?

Men! First Doherty and now Niall. Was this all they cared about? Getting under a girl’s skirts? Their education, their future, their very honor were forgotten or ignored at the sight of a pretty girl. Or else they coldheartedly pursued women who they thought could be helpful in their careers, like that awful Lord Carharrick who’d chased Persy last year. No wonder it had taken Ally so long to find a man she could respect enough to marry.

Lady Keating cleared her throat. There was an odd note in her voice as she spoke. “Niall attempted a great wrong on you, and he will be made to pay. I cannot let what he tried to do go unpunished. But we can ensure that it never happens again, if you will help me.”

Oh, it certainly never would happen again. At least not to her. “I think so, but how can I be of help in this? What can I do?”

“Ah, a great deal.” She fixed Pen’s eyes with hers once more. “Listen.”

Pen waited, unable to tear her eyes away from Lady Keating’s. Then she heard it: a soft sighing sound, as of wind blowing through long grass, and a thin, silvery thread of tune.

“Music,” she whispered. “I hear music.” Or was it music? Was it just the wind playing those sweet, flutelike notes?

“Yes.” Lady Keating’s eyes narrowed in concentration.

The musical sighing grew louder, and now Pen could feel it, a warm, gentle breeze that blew across the back of her neck, lifting the fine hairs that had escaped from her coiffure after Niall’s passionate embraces. Or was it something else that sent shivers down her spine—an otherworldliness, a sense of something that was not from the here and now?

“What is it?” she whispered. Now a scent of greenness and moisture surrounded them, like a spring meadow just after a rain.

“Can’t you guess?” Lady Keating smiled, then leaned forward and gently blew into Pen’s eyes. She blinked, and in that instant the library, with its comfortable sofa and shelves of books and curios, vanished. Instead, she and Lady Keating were standing on the crest of a great grass-covered hill under a lavender-blue sky. All around them, rolling plains of grass stretched away, dotted with lower hills and clumps of tall trees. On the horizon, the dark line of a forest met the grass, but how far away it was Pen couldn’t judge because the air, though clear and invigorating, seemed to shimmer slightly as the wind blew through it.

“What . . .” She tried to form a question, but the words bubbled and seethed in her mind and would not come together. Had she fallen asleep in the middle of talking to Lady Keating? Or was her mind playing tricks on her?

Lady Keating laughed, and the sound of it seemed to ripple and blend with the music of the wind. “I’m sorry to have startled you, my dear. But it just seemed easier to show you than to try to explain. Welcome to
An Saol Eile
—or at least to the part of it I know. It doesn’t do to explore too far into these lands unless one is prepared for a very long and perhaps strange journey.”

“
An Saol Eile,”
Pen repeated. She had heard those words before. Hadn’t Corkwobble once used them, to talk about—

“It means ‘the other life.’ So much more poetic than ‘the land of fairy,’ don’t you think? And more apt. Have you ever seen a place that is more alive?” She looked up into the sky, a small smile just touching her mouth. In the soft light, her lips looked very red and her skin glowing and translucent, like alabaster. In fact, all of her
suddenly seemed . . .
more.
It was as if she’d been magnified—no, intensified, like wine distilled into brandy.

And it wasn’t just her. The grass blowing around them was so green that Pen could practically taste it, and the air felt like champagne as she breathed it in, going straight to her head and making her feel almost tipsy. Fairy. How did Lady Keating know about the world of fairy? How could she—

“It is very simple, my dear.” She reached up and brushed a loose strand of hair out of Pen’s eyes. The ring she always wore, the silver one with a green stone, positively glowed. “I know about it for the same reason you do.”

“I don’t understand.” She had fallen asleep somewhere along the way and was dreaming it all—these colors and scents and feelings could exist only in a dream.

“It’s not a dream, my dear.” Lady Keating bent and ran her hand through the grass at their feet, then brushed her dew-soaked fingers across Pen’s cheek. A rivulet of it rolled down to the corner of her mouth, and she could taste it, like a rare liqueur.

“Can you taste a dream? Oh, Penelope—I will not call you Miss Leland, for it is not a name that matters here—I think you do understand. This place is real, and you are not dreaming. As soon as I saw you that day in the street, I knew who, or perhaps I should say what, you are. Or at least I strongly suspected and soon realized that I was right. You’re a
bean draoi
—a witch, though I hate that English word. And so am I. It was why I was so drawn to you from the very start. What a coincidence for us to have met, though perhaps not so coincidental. When magic-wielding people meet, it is usually for a reason, though that reason may not always be evident at first.”

“You’re a . . . a
bean draoi
? Really?” Pen stared at her, then looked away. The slightly drunk feeling that she was getting seemed to intensify. “I mean—yes, of course you must be, or else we wouldn’t be . . .” She gestured, indicating the green plains around them. “I’m sorry, I’m just—”

“A little overwhelmed? Is that so surprising? Come, my dear, of course you are. Though there are more of us in Ireland than in your home, it should still be a surprise to meet a fellow
bean draoi
.” Still holding Pen’s hands tightly in hers, she raised them, arms outstretched. “You know me as Lady Keating of Loughglass. That is my husband’s name and title. But I have a name and title and lands of my own that I inherited in my own right. What you see here is part of my land. The rest of it is in the mortal world, around my home at Bandry Court.”

Bandry . . . ban dree . . .
bean draoi
. . . she had never paid much attention to the name before, but now it made sense. Was that why the name had startled Mary Margaret Carrighar? Did she know it too? “You hold a fairy title? But how, unless you’re—”

Lady Keating laughed again. “No, I’m not a fairy. I am as human as you are. And it isn’t a fairy title. It was given to my family by Danu, the Triple Goddess, so many years ago that no one now remembers when. I am one of her—not priestesses, for she doesn’t have a hierarchy. Perhaps the term ‘lady-in-waiting’ best describes it. I serve her, keep her word and bear witness for her in whatever way she requires. It’s a position that can be held only by a
bean draoi
of my family. Your family has a history of the powers, am I right?”

Pen nodded.

“So has mine. One woman in each generation has the power. She inherits the title of
Banmhaor Bande
—Steward of the Goddess—and
all that comes with it, the privileges as well as the responsibilities. Look behind you.” She let go of Pen’s hands and turned her to face the opposite direction.

Not far away was another hill, higher than the one they stood on. Was Pen imagining things, or was the grass even greener and more lush on its flanks, and the light shining on it clearer than anywhere else?

On the summit of the hill were three standing stones arranged in a triangle, silver-gray and exuding an air of deep timelessness, and yet they stood straight and firm, as if raised only recently. Three other stones rested on their tops, linking them.

“That is the Goddess’s place, where I come to speak with her when she summons me,” Lady Keating explained. She dropped a slow curtsey toward them.

Pen copied her, feeling awkward. “Does she . . . summon you often?”

A small line appeared and disappeared between Lady Keating’s brows so quickly that Pen was not sure it had been there. “Not as often of late. But her ways are mysterious and not for us to comprehend.” She waved her hand, and two chairs of carved wood appeared behind them. She gestured for Pen to sit; after a few seconds, Pen realized that her chair was just slightly lower than Lady Keating’s. Well, that was only appropriate; this was Lady Keating’s place, not hers.

Pen looked at the trilithon on the hill in silence. Either sitting down had helped or she was getting used to the intoxicating air of this place, for now she could think more clearly. Lady Keating was telling the truth. She could feel the presence of the Goddess in this place, wherever it was. Lady Keating—a witch and one of the
Goddess’s ladies! It would explain so much, except for one thing. She took a deep breath. “Lady Keating, why are you showing this to me?”

“Ah, my dear. Can you not guess?” Lady Keating smiled at her fondly.

“Er, no, not really.”

“My dear, I sought your friendship because I saw at once you were exactly the type of young woman I wanted Niall to marry: lovely, intelligent, wellborn, wholesome of mind . . . and as a
bean draoi,
worthy of his blood. And also as a
bean draoi,
I hoped that if you came to love Niall, you would be willing to help us with a little piece of magic, one that would serve to remove the barriers between him and his father.”

So that was what Lady Keating had meant by helping Niall. “Us?”

“Doireann and myself. Doireann is a
bean draoi
as well, though sometimes . . .” She shook her head. “But the Triple Goddess’s magic is best worked by groups of three. With three of us working together, united by our love for my poor, dear, flawed boy—I know that he has behaved reprehensibly toward you and destroyed what regard you had for him, but if any shred of it remains, any pity, even, it could be the saving of him.”

Pen sat in her chair and looked down at her hands. She could feel Lady Keating’s eyes on her, pleading. Could she find it in her to want to help Niall now, after he’d just tried to seduce her? Was this the test Mary Margaret had mentioned?

“I must confess . . . ,” Lady Keating began, then stopped.

“Yes?”

“Well, it is just that I . . . it would be a great honor and delight for me if we could . . . that is, if you wanted to . . . to become my pupil for a while. No, not pupil—I can feel your power, and it is very great.
But if we could work together, you and I, and I could share with you what little knowledge I have that you do not already possess. I know you’ve had your excellent Miss Allardyce—Mrs. Carrighar, I should say—to teach you all these years, not to mention Dr. Carrighar himself more recently. But I do not think that they and I necessarily know the same things. Working this spell for Niall’s sake would necessitate some amount of preparation. . . .”

A little thrill coursed through Pen. No more reading long sections of old books written in antique language on dusty, brown-spotted pages, or having to discuss magical theory with the likes of Eamon Doherty and Quigley. No, working with Lady Keating would mean active, practical magic, and it would be
Irish
magic, the warm, wonderful, slightly wild magic she’d had only sips of, the Goddess’s magic. She’d be able to drink it down to the lees, immerse herself in it. . . .