Chapter 7
Edmund arced sideways to avoid an imminent collision on the dance floor, as easily as he’d do the same while riding.
Or, for that matter, navigating the pavement in Oxford, with its many bicycles, undergraduates, visitors, and periodic automobiles.
Once he’d guided them to a more open space, he went back to the conversation he’d been having with his sister.
Ros had grown another inch or so while he was away.
It was all the more obvious when they were dancing.
The rest of her looked more adult as well.
Mama had permitted her to put her hair up properly this year.
She was wearing a rather flattering sea-green dress.
It had belonged to their Aunt Laura and been refitted to suit Ros’s tastes and the current fashion.
All of that realisation made Edmund feel suddenly very old.
Also as if he were likely to be called on to duel for her virtue in the imminent future.
Papa couldn’t do that kind of thing. It would give too much away.
Edmund was known for both his bohort and pavo play, as well as his brains.
He had not been deft enough to hide them fast enough earlier in his life.
Or the needs of the war had not permitted it.
“What are you thinking about so hard, Ed?” Ros was one of the few people who could get away with that nickname.
“You.” No reason not to tell the truth, and plenty of reasons to do so. “You’ve grown up more. I was wondering if I’d have to duel in defence of your virtue sooner than later.”
Ros snorted. At least that had amused her.
“Thank you, no. Not interested in that sort of bother.” To be honest, he’d wondered about that topic for a good six months now.
Ros had found a knot of close friends far more competently than Edmund had managed.
There were plenty of people he got on well enough with, but what Ros had was different.
At any rate, she’d been clear that she didn’t think of Jasper that way. They’d grown up together, with Jasper’s father as head of Papa’s stables. And he didn’t think she considered Leo Fortier like that, either.
“Not even with your friend Peter?” Edmund would and could press a little. Peter was a different question. He hadn’t seen nearly enough of Peter and Ros together to have a proper judgement.
Ros did not say anything for a moment. Then she shoved one hand against where his met hers, just enough magic behind the push to put him off balance and stumble.
“Don’t, Ed.” It was a tender place, then, and Edmund couldn’t figure out how to interpret that.
Certainly, he wasn’t up to that kind of puzzle in front of several hundred members of the notable families of Albion while dancing.
It might mean she wanted there to be something and Peter didn’t, or that she didn’t want and Peter did.
She went on relentlessly, making it absolutely clear that she had been learning much more than Arabic from Uncle Alexander. “I had been noticing, dear brother, how you have been studiously avoiding dancing with any of the eligible women of your generation.”
“It is also your generation, or near enough,” Edmund protested, but he knew it was in vain. “I danced with Ursula.”
“Ursula does not count. She has made her choices.” Ros said it sternly, and then softened slightly. “You can’t save each other the way you have been.”
“No.” He shrugged. “We both know we couldn’t make a pair. Not with us both Heirs.” He got on well with Ursula. More to the point, he trusted her, and that wasn’t true of many people. He was absolutely certain they’d continue to back each other’s projects and goals for a long time.
But even a companionate sort of marriage wasn’t an option.
That had been true long before she’d fallen firmly in love this autumn.
Their land, the connection and obligation and responsibility to the land came first. It always would, for Edmund and for Ursula Fortier and for Anthony Edgarton in due course.
Thinking of Anthony made him think of Anthony’s sister. “I danced with Rowena.”
“Also does not count. She’s not looking.
And doesn’t need to.” That was true. Rowena had her work.
She treated it like a sort of vocation that was near enough religious in her case, if more to a particular dance of magic than to a specific deity.
Like Merry and Ros, she was free from the familial expectations around the land magic, at least if she chose to be.
Ros contemplated for a few steps. “Are you actually considering it?”
“In the abstract, yes. At the moment, not really. Who should I avoid dancing with, in case they get ideas?” Edmund could, at least, enlist his sister in that project. For one thing, she often knew angles he did not, because she knew someone’s younger sister or brother.
“Antigone Howell is eyeing you like some sort of hungry animal.” Edmund would have to ask her the rest of it at home, in private, because Ros’s phrasing made it clear she didn’t care for the woman.
Antigone had also just left school in June, and Edmund suspected that experience of the world would be a dividing factor for a long time to come.
He hoped, when he permitted himself to consider specifics, for the sort of partnership that Mama and Papa had. Where they had skills the other didn’t, and trusted those skills as readily as they trusted their own. Uncle Alexander too, in both cases.
“And not Lowenna Ritt, either.” He did not need Ros’s warning there. Lowenna was absolutely not the sort he’d bring home. The Ritts were snobs, and Lowenna had been awful to Jasper. Not anyone he’d bring into the heart of their demesne estate, even without that. “Don’t give me that look.”
Ros had been peering at him, sharp and determined, but then she relaxed, and laughed a little.
“You might ask Giselle Hallow for a dance, and see what you think?” She’d also left school that summer, but Edmund waited to see if Ros would say anything else.
“I worked with her on some of the house magics. She’s clever.
Leo says Professor Knox thinks extremely well of her alchemical skills.
She’s apprenticing in it. And she’s kind. ”
“I will be glad to dance with her, then, and see what I think. Kindness being a deciding factor.” At that point, their current waltz ended, and Edmund brought the two of them to a tidy stop at the edge of the dancers.
He then escorted Ros first to collect something to drink, and then to join her friends.
He made a slow circuit of the Great Hall, speaking here and there to a wide range of people, repeating the same half-dozen pleasantries over and over again.
University was excellent. Edmund was spending his hols doing a lot of reading, yes.
He expected to catch the demonstration pavo matches, yes.
And of course there were the expected questions about which parties he was planning to be at.
Edmund might not be interested in making a choice of marriage partner, but the rest of the world certainly seemed to have an interest in introducing him to all sorts of women, many of whom he already knew.
He and his family did not get home until nearly two.
Despite that, Edmund was awake and staring at the ceiling before seven.
No one else in the household would be up and about, unless Papa went out to see the horses.
Edmund got up, washed, dressed, and by quarter after, he was downstairs in the library, making a plausible breakfast from what Cook had left out for the early risers.
He spent a solid two hours working on translating portions of Telemachus visiting Menelaus, before he needed to take a break.
The thing about the Odyssey was that it expanded to fill all the available time and space for thought if he allowed it to.
The music room was well-insulated by charms. Also, since the house had been sensibly laid out, it was not under the bedrooms, even with all of them home except Merry right now.
He settled into playing, his fingers still a little rusty.
He was not formally studying music. It made reserving a practice room when he was up at Oxford a particular trial.
The harpsichord was in excellent tune, resonant and charming.
He suspected Papa had been playing more recently.
The Scarlatti kept him occupied and focused for some minutes, working through a series of pieces, turning the page on the sheet music he’d selected.
Long enough, in fact, that he had not even noticed Mama’s arrival.
He turned the last page of the score over to suddenly see her through the music holder, as he automatically lowered his hands into his lap.
“Mama, good morning. I hope you weren’t bothered? ”
“Never, by your playing. Any of you.” Mama gave a brief nod toward the far end of the room.
“Great-Aunt Mathilde was listening when I came in. You may properly calibrate your musicality and skill.” Great-Aunt Mathilde was the family ghost, or at least the most noticeable of them.
The music room was her particular home, though only when she approved of the music.
Edmund let out a breath he had not entirely realised he was holding. “Oh.”
“You have been thinking about something. Also, you’ve been up for a while.” It was very hard to get much past Mama. Of course, she’d come in through the library and would have seen how he’d left his desk.
“I have. I woke up early, and then I was translating and thinking.” Other men his age, Edmund thought, did not talk to their mothers about their thoughts.
It would be imprecise to say that he found it easy, but he found it rewarding.
“I’m up to the part where Telemachus is in Sparta, speaking with Menelaus.
And the end of book four, where Penelope finds out where he is. ”