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"Oh-the song. Very good, Colin. You really do have a talent." It was the longest sentence she'd said all day. He was about to ask her if she'd like to discuss what was troubling her or if perhaps he was mistaken and she was merely practicing to enter a religious order under a vow of silence, when she added another comment. He grinned with relief and with the realization that for a change he was actually glad to hear her say something. "But how do you know Winnie's side of the conversation?"
"A combination of research and poetic license. Ludy, the serving maid, was listening at the door when Rowan told Cook what happened on his ride."
"I think he showed remarkable restraint for someone with his background, don't you?" She rewove one of the few places on the cloak that had remained intact.
"Well, he came off alright in the song, I suppose ..."
"He'd make a handsome king, don't you think?"
By returning his guitar to its sack Colin was able to conceal his frown. Rowan had been decent enough to him, but Maggie was acting, now that he thought about it, a lot the way she had after meeting the unicorn. While Rowan's horns were of another variety, they apparently troubled him enough to cause him to pay a lot of unsettling attention to ordinary brown-haired girls -like his susceptible sister-in-law. It would have pleased Colin a lot better if the bereaved, deserted husband had just gone on bereaving and left his own traveling companion out of it.
"Why don't we try the magic mirror again, Maggie? We ought to find out if we're headed in the right general direction before we go much further."
"I suppose you're right. I wonder why it wouldn't work this morning. Toads! I thought if Rowan could just SEE Winnie he might--oh, I don't know what I thought."
"He did try that once to gel her back," Colin reminded her, disliking Rowan even more because fairness forced him to defend the fellow.
"I know. Where shall we start?"
"Where your aunt left off."
Maggie had pulled the mirror out of her pocket and polished it. She held in her mind the image of Amberwine and of gypsies, the latter image provided by the village fairs and her imagination
freshly fueled by Colin's song. As the rainbow lights flashed away in the darkness, two indistinct pictures, one superimposed on the other, appeared in the mirror.
"Hmtnm, let me try to clarify that," she said, and thought hardest about her sister as she had last seen her, tousled and troubled and burdened by pregnancy. The gypsy wagons that had hung ghostlike over the mirror faded and Maggie and Colin almost wished them back to hide the ugliness of the remaining image.
Amberwine huddled by a stone wall, her hair tangled in a mat that covered her face, so that it took Maggie a while to be certain that it was indeed her elegant sister who swatted the flies away from the sores that covered her arms and thin, bare legs. Her ribs showed sharply above her swollen stomach. As the sounds of a marketplace rattled through the mirror, Winnie suddenly sat up straighter and shoved a handful of hair back from her red, swollen eyes with one sharp combing motion. A peddler's cry sang out over the other noises and Winnie got to her feet, pulling the remnants of her shift over as much of herself as they would cover. The cry was repeated, and Maggie almost lost the picture in her surprise. "That's Hugo's cart!" she said, as it came into view, immediately in front of Amberwine..
At first it appeared as though Winnie might try to round the corner of the building and escape the peddler's notice, but then she seemed to change her mind and drew herself to her full height, managing to look regal and somehow, Colin thought, ethereal and heart-breakingly beautiful, for ail her dirt and mats and sores.
"Why, my Lady Amberwine," exclaimed Hugo, as though he were greeting her in her father's kitchen garden. "Whatever are you doing here in Queenston?"
Though Maggie had difficulty with them, the social graces and their attendant poise had been Amberwine's by birthright, not education alone, and had never deserted her. Now, as ever, she was cool. "Oh, hullo, Hugo. How nice to see you here. I don't suppose you'd have a frock and a bit of bread or something today I might charge to Daddy's account, do you?"
The peddler's tone was sweeter than Aunt Sybil's house. He waved a cutely admonishing finger at her. "Now your ladyship knows I have nothing fine enough for the likes of you on MY humble cart." He gave Amberwine a chance to interpret this as a rejection of her thinly-disguised petition for help, then said. "Actually, ma'am, I've been sent to look for you. Your father is
staying here with a distant relative of your stepmother's. If you wouldn't mind riding in my modest wagon, I could take you to him." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]