But there was no use torturing myself over that now. So before Amy could pursue the matter any further, I said, “I need your help.”
“Oh?” She sat down at the writing table, arranging her skirts around her, and looked at me expectantly. “Is this about Wrexham? Or am I finally going to find out what you were angling after in that meeting? What do you care about the elves?”
I pushed myself upright before I could lose all of my momentum entirely. “It’s nothing to do with elves or with Wrexham,” I said firmly. “It’s about Miss Banks. But not only her...”
Amy listened carefully as I laid it all out, her eyebrows drawing down with concentration. When I finished, she sat in silence for a long moment.
“You know,” she said finally, “the Boudiccate won’t be happy about this idea at all.”
“The Boudiccate? What business is it of theirs?” I frowned at her. “They aren’t the ones who train magicians.”
“But they do run the country,” Amy said patiently. “And your mother made them certain promises when she allowed you to attend the Great Library yourself.”
“What promises?” I demanded. “I was never told of any!”
“Because you were doing your best not to notice any of the politics of it, as I recall,” Amy told me. “Still, it must have occurred even to you at some point, mustn’t it? One female magician could be called a rare exception. Two, though...well, that might begin to change the rules—and not just for magic.”
“Oh, their blessed rules.” I rolled my eyes. “The Boudiccate is entirely too hidebound and you know it. You would be a part of it, if they weren’t so ridiculously attached to their traditions!” I waved an impatient hand. “How could you not tell me the real reason why you were denied Mama’s place all those years ago?”
“Someone told you that?” Amy’s lips compressed. She laid one hand on her rounded stomach as if to protect it. Then she sighed. “I suppose it was always bound to come out one day. But what would have been the purpose in telling you at the time? You would only have raged and kicked up a fuss and missed all of your important exams to come running to defend me—and truly, we were dealing with more than enough already, in the wake of your mother’s passing. No one needed any more pain added to that moment.”
“What about you?” I demanded. “You fought for me to get my place at the Great Library. Why wouldn’t you let me fight for you, too, when you needed it?”
“Because it wouldn’t have worked!” Amy said. “Cassandra, only think. The members of the Boudiccate are the proudest women in this land. Do you actually imagine they would have responded well to noise and humiliation in the public realm? Do you believe they would ever have welcomed a new member who’d been forced on them with that sort of battle? I know you like to approach everything with a battering ram, but these women require subtlety.”
“And you’re willing to make do for the rest of your life with that cursed subtlety and compromise?” I snorted. “Being part of their circle but not-quite-one of them forever?”
“Rather than lose my husband? Yes! A million times over.” Amy’s tone hardened. “You come from a family that always loved you, Cassandra, even when they didn’t understand you. I think sometimes you forget how many advantages you have even now, even after everything that’s happened to you.”
I bit back an angry retort as I absorbed the look on her face...and the undeniable sting of truth in her words.
Amy had been my mother’s goddaughter since birth, but after her own parents had died, she’d been shifted from home to home among her various aristocratic relatives—too high-ranking to be fobbed off on strangers, but too inconvenient to be welcomed in any one household for long. She hadn’t had a permanent home of her own until she’d finally reached the age of majority and been taken in by my mother, first as Mother’s assistant and then as her political protégé.
She’d always been so good at adapting to every situation that I sometimes forgot how she’d first developed that skill. And of course, I had only been a girl when she’d arrived all those years ago. It was hard to remember now that she hadn’t always been a natural, essential part of our family, negotiating between me and my mother at our worst and saving all of us from one another more than once.
I released my held breath with a heavy sigh and relaxed my clenched fingers from around the bedcovers. “I love you,” I told her, “even when I don’t understand you.”
“I know you do, darling.” Amy pushed herself up from her chair to join me on the bed. “I’m the only reason you and your brother both remember to change your clothing and even eat proper meals now and then.”
“That’s...ah.” I winced. “Well, that is true, of course, but it’s not why I love you, and you know it.” I aimed her a sidelong look as she settled in beside me. “Does Jonathan know, by the way? Why you weren’t given Mama’s place in the Boudiccate?”
“Oh, really.” Amy shook her head at me. “Your older brother is a historian. Did you think he couldn’t research the truth of that for himself? He even offered to release me from our marriage at the time.”
“Ha.” I bumped shoulders with her companionably. “Clearly he doesn’t know you so well after all. As if you would ever let go of anyone you cared about!”
“Never,” Amy agreed blithely. “You and Jonathan have been caught in my wicked clutches forever.”
I tipped my head against her shoulder, clinging to the moment even as I felt the minutes tick away. More snowflakes melting against my skin...
She let out a gasp and grabbed my hand. “Cassandra!”
Frowning, I let her place my hand on her rounded belly. “What’s wrong? Are you in pain? Or—oh!” Her belly bounced hard against the palm of my hand, and I jerked back instinctively.
Then my brain caught up with me. “Was that—?”
“Your new niece.” Amy’s face was alight with joy. “She must have wanted to greet her aunt! I’ve been waiting and waiting for her to finally introduce herself.”
I stared at her, struck dumb. Then I looked down at her rounded belly, covered by her elegant dark green, ivy-patterned cotton gown.
Holding my breath, I placed my hand with the utmost care in exactly the same place it had rested before. Waiting.
Nothing happened.
Amy laughed. “Don’t look so glum,” she said. “You’ll see plenty of her in just a few more months, you know!”
“Of course.” I took a breath and forced myself to smile and draw my hand back as if it genuinely didn’t matter.
As if I would have months to feel the baby kick, any time I wanted to.
As if I would be there when she was born.