“Not here,” Lady Cosgrave said. “He would hardly deign to step into this house, I can assure you. We are far below his touch as mere humans, you know.” She grimaced. “He can hardly bear the humiliation of our treaty, I believe, for all that it saved both of our nations all those centuries ago. But he was spotted on our grounds yesterday afternoon, so my husband transported me out to meet him...as any gracious hostess should.”
The look on her face said everything about the reception she had received. “He claimed he was here on behalf of his king, ensuring that everything was in readiness on our end despite the inclement weather. Needless to say, I assured him that all would be prepared for the solstice celebration...and naturally, he didn’t utter a single word of reassurance in his turn before he disappeared. But if anything isn’t perfect in our circle in six days’ time, I can safely swear that he, for one, will be more than delighted to seize upon it and present it as evidence to his king of our inadequacies as allies.”
“Wait.” I sank into my seat. “You’re saying the solstice ceremony is in six days’ time?”
“Keep up, girl!” Mrs. Seabury snapped. “When did you think it would be? Spring?”
“I...hadn’t thought about it at all, actually.” Of course I knew the winter solstice must be coming soon, but I hadn’t consulted the almanac for a date. After all, it hadn’t had anything to do with me until now. No one I knew was so antiquated as to actually celebrate the twin solstices anymore—except, apparently, the elves.
Perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that they were old-fashioned.
But the elf-lord’s deadline to me had suddenly taken on a new significance.
If anything isn’t perfect in our circle...
He was planning to confront me in the midst of the ceremony itself, wasn’t he? I seriously doubted that two high elf-lords had been lurking in the grounds of Cosgrave Manor yesterday...and I couldn’t imagine any act more beautifully designed to disrupt a treaty ceremony than the capture and abduction of a daughter of the Boudiccate.
Lady Cosgrave might well allow me to be taken for the sake of the treaty. But it would be an outrageous slap in the face of our nation for Lord Ilhmere do it at such a moment, just as our long peace was being reaffirmed. And if the ceremony was disrupted...
“Cassandra,” Amy said, “you haven’t poured yourself any tea. Aren’t you thirsty?”
“What?” I snapped out of my thoughts to find all the ladies looking at me with more or less impatience. “Forgive me,” I said, straightening in my seat. “Too much politics and my brain shuts down, apparently.”
Mrs. Seabury let out a crack of laughter. “So much for that bloodline! Poor Miranda. All her hopes...”
Lady Cosgrave hummed a disapproving, “Hmmm.”
The semicircle tightened back in on itself as conversation resumed, leaving my gauche interruptions behind. I sat in invisibility-seeking silence for all the rest of it, keeping my thoughts to myself.
But I could sense Amy’s gaze on me more than once in the next quarter of an hour, and I knew I hadn’t fooled my sister-in-law in the slightest.
Jonathan was in his and Amy’s bedroom when we arrived, seated at the small writing table with two piles of papers stacked around him, a bottle of ink on the table, and even more blue ink smeared through the top of his thick brown hair.
Oh, dear.
“Are the footnotes really that bad?” I inquired, as I closed the door behind myself and Amy rustled into the room ahead of me.
“What footnotes?” Jonathan demanded. He pointed accusingly at the stacks of papers with one ink-stained finger. “Those are not footnotes. Those are a maze designed to drive men mad! The printers have jumbled them all out of order, and as I don’t have any of my reference books here to consult—”
“My poor darling.” Amy put her hands on his shoulders and dropped a kiss on his ink-stained hair. “Could you look for them in Lord Cosgrave’s library?”
“Ha! That’s all tedious spellbooks and magical treatises from top to bottom. As if those were of interest to anyone with a—no.” He let out a heavy sigh and grabbed hold of his hair, tugging hard. “Forgive me, both of you. I’m just—”
“Frustrated,” I completed for him as I plopped myself down on the end of their bed. “Why don’t you send the journal a letter and tell them they’ll simply have to wait until you’ve finished your visit so you can consult your own books and fix their errors?”
“And let the article be delayed again?” Jonathan’s voice rose to a pained bellow.
“Shh,” said Amy soothingly. “Dearest, I had a chat with young Miss Fennell over breakfast, and it seems she’s been studying some very rare documents about the elven court in hopes of being chosen as the next ambassadress. But she’s having quite a bit of trouble deciphering some of the ancient annotations, so she could do with an expert’s advice and help. She’s in the library right now...and I did promise that you would take a look at them for her. You know how difficult those old manuscripts can be for people without any practice reading them.”
“They’re probably half-full of ancient Deniscan terms, if they’re about the elven court.” Reluctant interest crept into Jonathan’s voice. “If they really are some of the older manuscripts, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt for me just to glance through them...although I ought to keep fighting with these damned footnotes...”
“Later,” Amy told him firmly. “After you’ve had a chance to clear your mind. You know it always makes you feel better to lecture people about history.”
“Rascal.” Jonathan scooped up her hand and kissed it. “But you’re absolutely right, of course. It does. And you’ve put up with more than enough of it already.” He pushed his chair back and brushed down his rumpled waistcoat. His hair, of course, was still standing up in all directions, so Amy stood on tiptoes to pat it down as he shrugged on his dark blue morning coat, which he’d laid over the back of the chair. His lips curved into a worryingly mischievous grin as his gaze landed on me. “Everything resolved now with Wrexham, eh? Last night—”
“You are going to forget what you saw last night,” I told him sternly.
“Ha!” He did up his buttons as his expression turned smug. “You can’t cast any spells of silence on me now, little sister. And if you think you can glare me out of remembering exactly what I saw, in vivid detail—”
“Library!” Amy said firmly, and pushed him toward the door. “You don’t want Miss Fennell to give up on those manuscripts and leave before you get there, do you?”
Shrugging, Jonathan allowed himself to be guided from the room. Just before he closed the door behind him, though, he stuck his head back in for one last comment. “I remember everything!”
“Argh!” I would have thrown a pillow at him if there had been time. But he slammed the door shut, laughing, just as I lunged across the bed to grab one.
“You two,” Amy said calmly as she walked back across the room, “deserve one another.”
“Oh, shush.” I slumped back onto the mattress, suddenly feeling every hour of the sleep that I’d missed.
Of course I’d remembered every detail of last night, too...all night long. It had not been conducive to a good night’s rest.