“The elder daughter is comely enough. I hope for her sake her blood runs truer than her sister’s.”
My cheeks burned as the voices muted, moving out of range. I tried to push the conversation from my mind. I hated that people could speak so casually of my family, dismissing us—me—as so much gossip.
A fresh wind plucked at my hair and sleeves, and I smelled tobacco and cinnamon. My heart lifted; Freddy had come. I straightened and turned to face him. I was tall for a girl, nearly of a height with Freddy.
He took my hand, linking my cool, gloveless fingers with his gloved ones, and led me to a bench. “I’m sorry I was late. I was held up talking with Lady Dorchester.”
I smiled down at our joined fingers. Lady Dorchester had three single daughters, each more homely than the last.
Freddy cupped my cheek with one hand, rubbing his thumb along the curve of my jaw, across my lips. His light touch left a powerful tingling in its wake. I lifted my face to his.
I was absurdly aware of how close his mouth was to mine, of the fluttering of my pulse in my throat, of the cold stars overhead. My eyes slid shut. Freddy bent his head and laid a kiss like a prayer on my mouth.
My whole body sang, sparks dancing from my toes to the crown of my head.
I did not know what to do with my hands. They fluttered upward, brushing tentatively against his chest, until Freddy captured them with his.
Freddy broke the kiss first, drawing back to grin at me and then tugging me closer.
I laid my cheek against his shoulder, the stiff fabric of his coat cool under my fingers. Delight bubbled inside me, like champagne, and I pressed my lips together to keep from giggling like a schoolroom miss. “You wished to speak with me?”
“I…I only wanted to see you. To hold you, like this.” I felt him smile against my hair.
My mouth curled in response, though only the darkness saw it.
“I heard voices,” Freddy said. “You weren’t seen?”
“No.” I remembered the conversation I’d overheard, and the bubbles in my stomach popped all at once. I drew back. “Freddy, why is there rioting in Manchester? And who are the heretics? I thought they were those protestors we saw in Hyde Park, wanting to be rid of Luminates entirely, but one of the men said my father was a heretic. I don’t see how that is possible.”
Freddy was quiet for so long I began to fear he would not answer. At last, he drew a deep breath. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand.” He dropped a kiss on the tip of my nose.
Perhaps the kiss was meant to convey his affection, but all I sensed was the patronizing note. “Let me try to understand.”
In the distance, a bell tolled the quarter hour. Freddy turned toward the house; the faint light thrown our way illuminated the smooth planes of his face.
“We should go.”
“Go?” For a moment my mind raced with wild ideas of flight to the border, to Gretna Green, where runaways could marry without a formal license.
“I promised your sister I would watch her performance.”
“Oh.”
When I did not move, Freddy held his hand out to me. “Come. Surely you wish to see Catherine’s charm-casting?”
As Catherine’s charm-casting was unlikely to be anything less than perfect, I had no wish to see it. Freddy and I had never talked of my magic—or lack thereof—but he must know. Everyone knew, even strangers in my father’s garden. He should have guessed how much it would pain me to witness what I could never have. That he could not see my reluctance, somehow, led a cold fear to curdle in my breast.
Besides, I had no way to enter the ballroom unseen.
As if he read my thoughts, Freddy added, “I’ll sneak you inside.”
It seemed churlish to keep refusing. I stood, my long skirt falling in heavy folds around my ankles. “Very well.”
Freddy muttered a spell, his hands inscribing an arch in the air. A shimmering bit of air split like a torn seam: a portal. I’d never seen one performed before. Only the Lucifera Order could manipulate space, and my family were Elementalists or Coremancers.
When I hesitated—spells were sometimes unpredictable in my presence—Freddy took my hand. “It will be all right.”
At his touch, a kick of excitement sparked through my body, tamping down my momentary fear. Freddy tugged my hand gently, guiding me into the portal. The light blinked in and out around me, and then we were through. We stepped out of the portal into a shadowed alcove, partially screened by a potted tree. I wondered if Freddy had spied this out beforehand, prepared for just such a contingency.
The room was stiflingly hot after the garden, despite the rose-scented breezes that circulated. Tiny droplets of water, like so many winking jewels, hung suspended above our heads by Papa’s magic, joining and then separating in intricate patterns over the assembly.
Peering around the tree, I saw Catherine in her white gown at the heart of the room. My parents and grandmother were nearby, my father’s face flushed with wine, my mother’s pale with tension. Mama knew, as I did, that no matter how lovely Catherine was, failure in this moment would compromise her marriage prospects. No nobleman would want a wife who could not ensure that his heirs carried magic. Except Freddy. Though we had not talked about marriage in so many words, Freddy had often hinted at it. His willingness to overlook my lack of magic only confirmed my belief in his open mind, his generous heart.
With a final squeeze of my hand, Freddy strode forward to stand by my father, and Catherine’s face lit like a bonfire. As Catherine closed the distance between them and rested her hand on his arm, spikes of dread shot up and down my spine.
My father spoke. “Lords, ladies, exalted members of the Circle.” He nodded to a small cluster of men and women standing near my sister, tonight’s chosen representatives from the powerful coterie who controlled Luminate magic. “Thank you for joining us. This is a momentous occasion. It is the night my daughter Catherine leaves behind her girlhood and becomes a woman, the night she becomes a full Luminate of the Elementalist Order. I trust you shall be as dazzled by her debut spell as I have been all these years raising her.”