Page 45 of A Sorceress Comes to Call
“No, that’s the oddest thing. It was much larger than that. The size of a horse or a cow, I’d say. And it kept moving back and forth, but it always kept the trees between us. Like it knew that I was there, and didn’t want me to see it.”
“What happened next?” asked Lady Strauss.
Mrs. Green spread her hands helplessly. “I went back to bed. Although apparently I never left it at all, since I dreamed the storm on top of everything else. And here I’d been thinking that the wind was real and half wondering if the glowing beast might be as well.” She sat back. “Good thing that it was a dream, because think what a mooncalf I should sound like, insisting that I’d seen a great glowing creature stomping around the grounds!”
“I expect Samuel would set out to hunt it,” said Hester dryly. “He’s gone out on the strength of flimsier tales.”
The Squire snorted from behind his newspaper. Mrs. Green laughed. “When they tell you to chase your dreams, I suspect they mean something else entirely. Though I do wish my dream had given me just a glimpse of whatever it was. A white stag, like in the old stories, do you think? A Questing Beast?”
“Perhaps it was a unicorn,” said Master Strauss, who had been picking at his eggs and pretending he wasn’t fascinated. “They’re supposed to glow, aren’t they?”
“I fear,” said Penelope archly, “that it’s been many years since a unicorn would gladly suffer my presence.”
There was a half beat of silence and then everyone burst out laughing, except for Master Strauss, who turned beet red. Penelope leaned over and patted his hand, murmuring something that Cordelia couldn’t hear, and he smiled at her, but his blush did not recede.
A glowing creature the size of a horse. A creature that watched her through the trees. Could it have been Falada?
No. It was a dream. She said it was a dream. Everyone else would have noticed if there was wind.
But she remembered suddenly the trip home from the church, her mother waving her hand, and the wind that came from nowhere, making the branches of the hedgerow bend down before her.
Cordelia’s eyes flicked briefly to her mother. Evangeline’s eyebrows had drawn down and she was no longer smiling.
“I hope you wanted to see me for more than gossip,” said Hester, letting herself into Lady Strauss’s suite the next evening. “Otherwise my knee will have words with you.” The walk to the guest wing involved two flights of stairs, one up, one down, and she could tell by the ache that the barometer was dropping.
“Gossip, yes, but also brandy.” Imogene lifted a bottle. “Danielle, love, will you leave word we’re not to be disturbed? Hester and I are going to get blindingly drunk, I think.”
“Are we?” Hester exchanged a wry look with Imogene’s lady’s maid. “Well, in that case, tell the housekeeper to have a footman or two on hand to help me back to my chambers, if you would.”
Danielle shook her head. “I suppose there is no point trying to talk you out of it, madam?”
“Is there ever?” asked Hester. Lady Strauss made a rude noise. Danielle dropped a perfunctory curtsy and left, shutting the door behind her.
Hester dropped onto a chair and sighed with relief. As pleased as she was to see Richard, the effort of pretending not to be in pain around him could be exhausting. Not that he would think less of me, but it pains him to see it, and I would rather not be the object of pity.
And yet… and yet…
Last night, after dinner, they had both retired to one of the sitting rooms. She’d embroidered and Richard had read a book—some stultifyingly dull volume on novel irrigation methods. They hadn’t spoken for more than an hour, just sat in their chairs, not too far from one another, in a silence so companionable that Hester wanted to drink it down like wine.
Imogene moved the tea tray closer and poured a spot of brandy into each cup. “I played cards with her.”
“Oh? And?”
“And I think you’ll have a sister-in-law by month’s end, unless you do something drastic.”
Hester’s eyebrows shot up. “All that from a game of cards?”
“I know you don’t think much of it, but you can tell more about a person in the way they play games than from hours of conversation. I threw the first few hands, just to see what would happen. She wasn’t taking me seriously until she lost the next four or five, and then she became annoyed.”
“And?”
“And she became polite. Very, very polite. If she could have politely cut my throat in the parlor, she’d have done it. There is a woman who does not wish to be crossed.”
“Who won?”
“She did. She decided that she was going to win and I decided that I liked living.” Imogene gestured with the flask. “But she was good, too. Didn’t miss a single opening, didn’t dither. Once she decided that it mattered, she was savage.”
Hester groaned. “That’s what I’m afraid of. She’s decided that marrying my brother matters.”
