Betraying Season (32 page)

Pen quickly drew to the side of the window, then peered around
the edge, shading her eyes from the moon so that she could see into the dark shadows below. Could it have been an animal? A deer or an escaped sheep looking for tastier fare than meadow grass? She squinted down, waiting for whatever it was to move again.

No, not an animal, but a tall figure, swathed in a cloak and hooded so that she could not even see if it was male or female. It paused in the edge of the shadow cast by the garden wall, then hurried across the garden and out of her sight.

Pen turned away from the window. If anyone was sneaking about the gardens of Bandry Court in the moonlight, she had no particular desire to know why—well, apart from the usual curiosity, of course. Right now she had Lady Keating’s book to read. She carried the bedroom candlestick from her dressing table to her nightstand, tossed her dressing gown across the foot of her bed, and climbed under the covers. She glanced toward the window once more and saw that the moon was framed there, beautiful if a bit on the overdramatic side. Just like one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s gothic novels. No wonder there were people sneaking about in the rose garden. She smiled and picked up Lady Keating’s book.

Circle Magick, when worked in ye Triple Goddess’s Name, is the Most Powerfull of ye Magicks that we do. It differs from the common Raising of the Circle, the Summoning and Adding to of Power, in this Way, a Way that we save for the Most Solemn, Needful, and Direst of Purposes.

Solemn and needful. Well, that would probably describe how Lady Keating felt about doing this spell for Niall and his father. Hopefully dire wouldn’t come into it.

The Way that it Best be Accomplished is to take you the Goddess’s Form: three Must take the Position of ye Virgin, ye Mother, and ye Crone, in Fact and in Form, so that She can work the Best through Them. So then Find you One Who is yet a Maid, and One a Woman that bear a Child, and One that has ceased in her Lunary Cycles or Soon shall do So. On a Night when the Moon be at Her Fullest, let Them come together and raise you the Circle in the Name of the Goddess, and then will You Of a certainty have great Potency, even over Life and Death and across the Seas.

Lady Keating’s ancestor evidently had difficulties with grammar. Pen chuckled, then frowned at the book in her hands. What connection did this have to their work together? Surely it couldn’t have anything to do with the
draiocht
to bring Niall to the Duke of Cumberland. The three of them couldn’t do this sort of magic. She would not venture to guess whether Lady Keating qualified as a Mother or a Crone, but certainly both she and Doireann had to be counted in the Maiden category—

A stealthy scraping sound from somewhere near the window made her look up. A tall, hatted figure in a dark coat was peering at her through the open window. As she stared, openmouthed, it swung one leg over the edge. It was Eamon Doherty.

Pen gasped, too shocked to make more than a squeaky inhaled sound, and yanked the covers up to her chin as he finished clambering over the window frame. The top of a ladder propped against the side of the house was just visible behind him as he dropped to the floor and adjusted his clothes.

“Nnnnn . . . wwwwh—” Pen stopped trying to speak and drew in a deep breath. Screaming would be much easier than trying to be coherent just now.

“For God’s sake, Pen, don’t shout!” he hissed, glaring at her. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“B-b-but, Mr. Doherty!” she whispered, cowering against her pillows. “How did—why are you—” An incongruous indignation seized her. Since when did he think he could address her as Pen?

He looked at her in confusion for a brief instant, then grinned. “Oh. I forgot about that.” He reached up and took off his hat.

It was Niall.

Pen very nearly did scream then, but he leapt toward the bed and launched himself at her, falling across her legs and covering her mouth with his hand.

“Don’t scream!” he whispered urgently. “It’s me! Doherty and I thought we’d borrow your spell so that I could come to Bandry Court and take a room over at the inn in the village without being recognized. It would have been all over the countryside within ten minutes that Mr. Keating was staying at the inn and not with his mother.”

Pen squirmed under his restraining hands and jerked her head to one side. “What are you doing here?” she whispered back, just as fiercely. “How dare you come sneaking into my room like this after—”

“Blast it, Pen, keep your voice down. Please don’t make me cover your mouth again. You’ve got to listen to me—”

“Why should I? What could you possibly have to say to me? Oh, why did you have to come here just when I was starting to forget you—” She broke off in a muffled squeak as he covered her mouth again.

“Hush! You were getting too loud—”

“Dratted well right I was!” she mouthed against his hand. What was he doing here? Was he under the illusion that climbing into her room with a ladder was impetuous and romantic, and that she would throw herself at him as a result? Well, if he was, then he didn’t know Penelope Leland.

“Please, Pen, hear me out. You don’t know what I’ve been through just to get here.” His blond hair was rumpled, and he hadn’t shaved today. Why did he still have to be so good-looking even when disheveled? Even worse, why did she still notice?

“I don’t really care,” she tried to say. Maybe she should bite him. It would relieve her feelings and maybe make him let go—

His eyes pleaded as desperately as his voice. “Can’t we talk about this quietly and rationally? Please, darling—”

Darling? Now that was definitely going too far. Her scowl must have been ferocious, for he nearly snatched his hand back.

“Please, just let me talk to you. Please?”

Pen narrowed her eyes as at him as she considered. He’d startled her, climbing in her window like that and looking like Doherty—Doherty, of all people! She jolly well wanted to know what Eamon Doherty had to do with Niall’s being here. Very well; she’d let him talk. If he tried anything threatening she could put an immobilizing spell on him and scream for Lady Keating.

She nodded and Niall withdrew his hand. She saw him watch her carefully, in case she changed her mind. When she remained silent, he sighed and rolled off her, moving to sit on the foot of the bed. She drew her legs up and huddled under her blankets.

“All right, Mr. Keating,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “Perhaps you could begin by explaining what you’re doing in my bedchamber, and why you looked like Eamon Doherty,
and—” Then it struck her. “The hat! He did borrow my spell! It was the same one I did on your hat that day when we found him.”

Niall nodded. There were lines of care and worry in his face that she’d never seen there before. “It was his idea. On the journey up here, I couldn’t help wondering what you would do when you saw his face looking in your window, and which you would find more alarming, his or mine.”

“It was a toss-up,” she retorted. “How did you come to meet with him? I thought you were in Kinsale, working your wiles on Charlotte Enniskean. Or wasn’t that challenging enough for you?”

He closed his eyes and looked pained. “I wasn’t in Kinsale. I haven’t left our house in Cork until a few days ago. Mother made sure that I couldn’t leave it, but Doherty happened to call to return my hat. I prevailed on him to remove the enchantments she had put on the house to keep me prisoner—”

Pen snorted. “If—and I repeat
if
—she was keeping you from leaving the house, it was probably for a very good reason. Like preventing you from coming here.”

“And he kindly did so,” he finished, ignoring her comment.

“So was that you creeping about in the rose garden half an hour ago? Where’s your cloak? And what about the rhododendron bushes the other day? Was that you as well? How long have you been skulking around here, waiting to do something as stupid as this?”

Niall frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I told you—I just got here this afternoon. The weather slowed me up until today. Believe me, if I could have gotten here sooner, I would have.”

“Why?”

He leaned forward, and she tugged the blankets closer to her
chin. He ignored the gesture. “Because I love you, and I’m here to rescue you, one way or another.”

That time she laughed out loud.

“Quiet!” he said, glancing anxiously at the door. “What’s so funny?”

“Because I cannot think it was anything but a joke—and a feeble one, at that.”

“I am not joking, damn it! Pen, no, don’t look so angry. I want you to come away with me. We’ll ride to Dublin and get a special license from the archbishop and marry as soon as we can.”

Pen smothered another urge to laugh. “Oh, shall we? Tell me, how many other young women have you tried that line on? Mr. Keating—”

“You used to call me Niall,” he muttered.

“I used to believe that you loved me, too.”

“But I do!”

“Is that why you tried to seduce me in the library that afternoon? Because you loved and respected me and wanted to marry me? Usually it is the custom in the civilized world to hold the wedding ceremony before the consummation.”

“No, it’s not why I tried to do what I did,” he said calmly, to her surprise. “And, yes, I do want to marry you. I did it to try to save you, because I love you.”

That was the second time he’d said something like that. What could he possibly mean? “Save me? I’m sorry, but that simply is going too far. Did you feel you had to save me from the perilous condition of virtue? Is that why?”

He looked down at his lap for the space of a few breaths, then up at her once more. “I’d rather not say why. All I would say is that
while you remain . . . er, untouched, there is danger that you will be forced to do something that would eventually cause you great distress. I wanted—
want
—to save you from that.”

Why, the sheer, brazen gall of him! “I . . . oh, really! Am I supposed to believe that?”

“Pen.” To her alarm he began to crawl up the bed toward her, pinning her under the blankets. “Pen, please. Let me—let me do this. Let me make love to you. Later tonight, as soon as we’re sure everyone is abed, we’ll take a horse for you and ride to Mallow. We’ll get the coach there and be in Dublin in a couple of days, and I swear we’ll be married as soon as we get the license.”

“Quite an admirable plan, but I think you’ve neglected one important point:
What makes you think I want to marry you?”

He stared at her, and she might have laughed if she hadn’t been so angry. “Mr. Keating, your mother told me about your—your
doings
on the Continent. If you think that I have any desire to spend the rest of my life with a man of such vicious, dissolute habits, then you are more lacking in wits than I’d thought.”

Niall had grown pale, but his determined expression did not alter. “Those were lies my mother told you, all lies. Pen . . . oh, Pen, you have to believe me. Nothing of what she told you is true. She was angry that I was trying to stop her plans—”

“What plans?”

He fell silent again, then sighed and squared his shoulders. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this. . . . It would be so much easier if you could just let me—”

“If you don’t tell me, I
shall
scream.” Pen drew in a deep breath and opened her mouth.

“No!” He shook his head frantically. “Don’t do that!”

“Well? I’m waiting, then.”

“Blast it, Pen, why—”

She opened her mouth again.

“All right, I’ll tell you! Mother’s been practicing magic with you, hasn’t she? She’s told you that she has a special magical project she needs your help with. Am I right?”

Pen watched him warily. “So?”

“And she’s told you that it has something to do with bringing me and the Duke of Cumberland together, right? But nothing more specific than that? No explanation of the actual magic you’d be doing?”

“As a matter of fact, she said—” What had she said, exactly? Something about bringing them together so that Niall could have a father’s guidance and put aside his profligate ways. Had there been anything else?

He shook his head. “Pen, my mother is using you.”

“What? Oh, that’s just grand, coming from you.”

“I’m telling you the truth. She’s using you. Yes, she wants to bring me closer to the duke so that maybe he will, at least informally, accept me as his son. Only she doesn’t want him to just be the duke, or just the ruler of a little German principality. She wants him to be the king. Of England.”

“But that’s impossible!” This was making no sense. “Victoria is on the throne.”

“It’s not impossible, if Victoria were to be . . .” He paused, as if searching for the right word. “To be removed.”

“Removed? What do you mean . . . oh!” Pen dropped the blankets she still clutched and stared at him.

Niall nodded. “ ‘Oh!’ is right. Until the queen has children, the duke is next in line for the throne. Mother wants him to be king and
me to be recognized as the king’s son, if an illegitimate one. After all, look at the late king’s family of bastards—one of them was made an earl. I heard her, Pen—I heard her discussing it with Doireann.”

He inched closer, resting his hands on either side of her hips, and spoke very quickly. “She can do it, but she needs your magic as well—something about the Goddess and the Maiden and the power of the Three. She’s been planning this for a while now, and I’m ashamed to say I helped her at first. I agreed to flirt with you and be charming so that you’d love me and want to help Mother help me . . . until I fell in love with you, and until I learned just what it was she planned to do about the duke. When you told me how you’d helped save the queen last year, I knew you’d never want to have anything to do with such a plan. But I was afraid to tell you what I knew because . . . well, because I had deliberately set out to make you fall in love with me.”

“On purpose. You did it on purpose,” Pen said dully. Her head had begun to ache almost as badly as it had the day she healed Doherty. It had all been a game to him, then.

“I—God help me, I know that. But only at first. After the night of the dinner party, I resolved that I was going to fall right back in love with you. I didn’t know then that Mother planned to kill the queen. And once I found that out, all I could think of was to make sure that she couldn’t use you—”