I remembered the chill disdain on her face as she’d dismissed my loyal, loving sister-in-law the day before, and my own expression set in rigid lines despite my best attempts to keep it neutral. “You wished to discuss my lesson plan, too?” I inquired.
She gave an irritated sniff. “Oh, really, Cassandra. Let’s not waste our time in pointless fencing when we have only a few minutes to ourselves.”
...Before she had to join Annabel Renwick, I assumed—and I remembered Miss Banks’s words from last night.“She has Lady Cosgrave entirely under her thumb.”
I would have felt more empathy for any woman under threat of blackmail if she hadn’t saved herself by damning Amy and threatening my school.
“You may tell me whatever you came to say, Honoria.” I turned away from her, gathering up my assorted books and tossing my words over my shoulder. “But let’s not pretend to any privacy between ourselves, if you please. Anything I say to you will only be repeated to Annabel Renwick the moment she asks, won’t it? She seems to have taken priority over all of your old friendships.”
“Areyouspeaking to me of loyalty?” She let out a surprisingly bitter laugh. “I’m coming to you now to offer you this chance only because of my fondness for your family. You’re still Miranda Harwood’s daughter, whether you admit to it or not—so somewhere inside, no matter how deeply you’ve buried it, Iknowyou must still have that sense of duty and of principle that your mother fought so hard to instill in you.”
I was grateful that she couldn’t see my expression with my back still safely turned. “This has indeed been a delightful conversation. However, if you’ll excuse me, I have my next lesson to plan, and you—”
“You haveno ideahow much danger we’re all in, if this disastrous venture actually succeeds. Were you even watching those girls in your class this morning, eating up everything you fed them without a second thought?” Lady Cosgrave had always been famous for her charm, but her voice lashed out now like a whip. “This isn’t some jolly girls’ adventure club you’re leading! It is a revolution that could toppleeverythingAngland stands for.”
“Oh, for—!” I bit off an intemperate curse as I swung around, clasping my gathered books to my chest. “Honoria, no one is trying to topple anything. Didn’t you see the pure joy in those girls’ faces?”
“I saw exactly what you’d planned to show us all in that little demonstration,” she snapped. “I saw a tide of change that won’t be turned unless you call a halt to itnow, before it’s too late. And I don’t just mean closing this school; I mean going to the newspapers and telling every one of them that it was a terrible mistake ever to have conceived of it!”
At that, I laughed out loud, and my shoulders relaxed. “That isnevergoing to happen,” I assured her. “If you remember my mother at all, you should know better than to expect any daughter of hers to be cowardly.”
“And what kind of future do you want for your own daughters?” Lady Cosgrave demanded. “Once we’ve lost every gain we made in the pastseventeen hundred and fiftyyears?”
“I beg your pardon?” I blinked, looking past her to Miss Fennell. The younger woman’s lips were pursed together, and I couldn’t begin to guess at her true thoughts behind her lowered gaze. At last winter’s house party, surrounded by friends her own age, she’d been loud and expansive, with all the flair and magnetism of a future leader, but in her subordinate role here as an assistant—with secrets in danger from more than one of her superiors—she was keeping herself unnaturally mute, all her vibrancy dishearteningly repressed.
It felt wrong...and it was a reminder: I wasn’t only fighting for my own students now.
“Look at the new Daniscan Republic,” Lady Cosgrave told me. “Or the elven kingdom up north, cheek-by-jowl to Angland itself.Orhalf the nations on the continent, for that matter! What do they all have in common?” She answered her own question before I could: “Men. They ruleeverything. Do you have any idea how easily that could happen here as well?”
“Don’t be absurd. From Boudicca onwards, we havealways—”
“Because we had an agreement!” she snarled. “An agreement thatboth sidesfollowed without exception. Itoldyour mother even one woman magician was too many—but those girls in your class are a tipping pointthat will crash our ship entirely.”
Behind her, Miss Fennell’s lips opened as if to speak—but Lady Cosgrave swept straight past whatever diplomatic protest her younger cousin might have offered.
“How many months do you think it will take,” she demanded, “for the first opinion pieces to arrive in the national newspapers, insisting that gentlemen be allowed to enter politics now that our old agreement has been broken? And how much longer do you think it’ll be before people start to say the gentlemen would do abetter jobof it on their own?”
“They couldn’t,” I said flatly. “Everyone who’s studied history canseewhat a remarkable job we’ve done.”
“Ha! The general public,” said Lady Cosgrave, “doesn’t care a jot for history. All they want is to feel comfortablenow—and just wait until the next unpopular decision about taxes or tariffs has to be made. Or the next economic recession! Some enterprising group of gentlemen is going to leap at that opportunity and start trumpeting their greater talents in the newspapers,exactlyas you did when it came to your own self-aggrandizing demands.”
I set my jaw and strove for patience. “I never said that women were naturallybettermagicians than men. I only said that we should be allowed—”
“Half the worldis already ruled by men who claim we have no right to any power at all! Have you paid even the slightest attention to the way that women are treated in the elven kingdom? They aren’t even allowed to choose their own husbands, let alone make decisions for their nation as a whole. I was the ambassadress there for three years, remember! Isawwhat they endure.”
“And I believe you,” I said sincerely.
Unlike the fey, the disdainful elves had never deigned to mingle with human society. Although our two nations were finally in the midst of an uneasy peace, the truth was that after all our long centuries of war, any true friendships would have been unthinkable even if any elves had been available to form them...and even then, no Anglish woman with any pride could have stomached them.
Elven gentlemen were only rarely glimpsed outside the secrecy of their own northern kingdom, and no elven ladies were ever allowed outside it. Still, I had heard horror stories all my life of the depth of their subjection. The punishments that those ladies received for any infractions of their oppressive laws were notorious throughout Angland for their brutality.
“But none of those other nations have beenruledby women for over seventeen hundred years. Moreover...” I frowned, thinking it through as levelly as I could. “If mendodemand a place in politics to mirror women’s acceptance in the field of magic...would that be such a terrible thing?”
It would be a shocking change, admittedly; an unsettling adjustment that would take some time even for me to wrap my own mind around. Like everyone else in Angland, I’d grown up with the firm and undisputed understanding that men were far too emotional and irrational to ever be trusted with practical governance.
But hadn’t we also all been told that women were too rational and hard-headed to ever successfully work any magic?
“It’s a new era for all of us,” I said. “It may take some time for everyone to settle into our new positions. I imagine there will be controversies along the way. But Boudicca herself overthrew the government of this nation, sent the all-powerful Roman Empire packing, and devised a whole new form of governance despite what hadalways been done—so I don’t think any of us nowadays have to be too cowardly to aim fortruejustice and equality, no matter which field we’re speaking of.
