A Distant Magic (3 page)

Book Two

LIGHTING THE
TINDER

1752

Chapter
THREE

L
ONDON
1752

J
ean Macrae surveyed the dockside crowd with amazement.
"Did everyone in London come to see me off?"

"Very likely," Lady Bethany Fox said placidly. "The sun is shining, and saying bon voyage is a good excuse for amusement. After you've sailed away on the tide, I expect that most of this lot will end up at someone's house, eating and drinking like there's no tomorrow and having a gay time of it." The silver-haired woman gave Jean a hug.
"Give my love to the children. If I weren't so old and frail, I'd come myself."

"Not children, Lady Beth. They're getting married, after all!" Jean said, laughing, as she returned the hug.
"Why not come? The
Mercury
is one of Sir Jasper's ships, so you'd be
treated as a queen the whole way."

Lady Bethany looked briefly tempted, but shook her head. "No, my
dear, this is your adventure, not mine."

Jean eyed her with misgivings. Lady Beth might look like an innocent grandmother, but she was one of the finest sorceresses in Europe and the leader of the British Guardian Council.
"Is this an adventure? I thought I was making a genteel trip to see friends
marry."

The older woman's eyes glinted. "Adventure may strike at
any time."

"I hope it doesn't strike Jean," said her big brother, Duncan.
"You look so undersized that it makes me nervous to think of you going such a
distance alone."

"I have Annie, I'm traveling on a Polmarric ship, I'll be met at the dock in Marseilles—and you know perfectly well that I'm not the least bit fragile!" she retorted.

"Granted that these days you dress as primly as a nun, but you can't fool me," he said dourly.
"Knowing your past exploits can't help but make a brother anxious."

She smiled. Ten years her senior, Duncan often acted more like a father than a brother.
"My wild days are behind me. I'm now a proper spinster aunt."

"Maybe the wedding will be a good example to you," her brother said hopefully.
"Make you more marriage-minded. Three honorable, prosperous, highly eligible men
have asked me for your hand, and you didn't want any of them."

And that wasn't counting the two men who had asked Jean directly. Those she hadn't mentioned to her brother. There was no sense in frustrating him even further.

Duncan's wife, Gwynne, said firmly, "Leave Jean alone,
Duncan. Better to be a happy spinster than a miserable wife."

Jean grinned at her beautiful sister-in-law. "And as a spinster,
I'm useful as a nursery maid with those handsome children of yours."

Gwynne grinned back. "Precisely." She hugged Jean. "Have a
marvelous time, Jean. And think of us in cold, drafty Dunrath while you are
wintering in the Mediterranean sunshine."

Since Duncan was the best weather mage in Britain, Dunrath was quite comfortable, but it wouldn't be the same as Marseilles. Jean dreamed of warmth and Roman ruins.

"I'm glad we got here in time!" Megan, the petite Countess of Falconer, slid through the crowd and caught Jean's hands.
"We have wedding gifts for you to take. I wish I could be there." She patted her midriff.
"But it's not a good time for me to travel."

"I shall write you every detail," Jean promised. After hugging Meg, she turned to Simon, the Earl of Falconer. The chief enforcer of the Guardians, he'd always seemed rather alarming when Jean was younger. Marriage to Meg had relaxed him considerably.

Simon hugged her with one arm since he was carrying a large basket on the other.
"I'll take the gifts aboard ship so they can be stowed properly. Give my best
wishes to Moses and Lily and Jemmy and Breeda."

"I will, and I promise that I'll encourage them to visit England soon." Simon and Meg had rescued the four young people from an appalling captivity, where they had been mentally enslaved,
"enthralled," by a rogue mage. Jean had helped the four thralls recover from that captivity, and she'd become something of an honorary aunt in the process. She looked forward to seeing them again after four long years. Letters weren't the same.

Jean finished her farewells, needing to conceal a few tears. She had never traveled outside of Britain before, nor been away from family for months at a time.

Yet when she stood on the afterdeck and waved good-bye while the
Mercury
eased down the Thames, excitement triumphed over regrets. Except for the Rising seven years earlier, when Bonnie Prince Charlie had upended the lives of her and much of Scotland, she had lived a quiet life. She was ready to taste a wider world.

Her companion and maid, Annie Macrae, was weeping copiously beside her. A little concerned, Jean asked,
"Are you regretting this trip to Marseilles? You can be put off at Greenwich if
you'd really rather stay."

Annie shook her head vigorously. She was a distant cousin of Jean's; there was a family resemblance, but she was taller, more roundly built, and her hair was more auburn than red. In the valley of Dunrath, she was known as a braw fine lassie.
"Oh, no, Miss Jean, it's glad I am to be going! Every lass in Dunrath envies me.
But a leave-taking for such a grand journey deserves a good cry."

"No doubt you're right," Jean said as she passed her handkerchief to Annie.
"I simply haven't a proper sensibility."

"That's because you're a heroine, Miss Jean. Heroines don't have
sensibility."

Jean blushed and turned her gaze back to the river, watching London slip away. Ever since the Rising, the people of Dunrath had regarded her with ridiculous awe. She was no heroine. She'd been wrong-headed and terrified and desperate, and it had taken Gwynne and Duncan to save them all from disaster.

Annie's remark was a good reminder that adventures were not only frightening but devilish uncomfortable. She would leave them for the young and foolhardy.

The voyage was peaceful and a little boring, though it was pleasant to sail into warmer weather. Jean could hardly contain her excitement when they passed Gibraltar and entered the Mediterranean. The Middle Sea, the center of the world. Even the light was different from Britain, warmer and more luminous.

Jean read and chatted with the handful of other passengers and slept well, until the night she was shocked awake by the numbing clamor of an alarm bell. In these waters, it could only mean one thing.
"Pirates!"

She swung out of her bunk bed, grabbed the cloak hanging on the back of the door, then scooped her pistols from her small trunk. She spent a few moments loading while Annie rolled over and peered down from the upper berth, her face pale in the moonlight that came through the porthole.
"What's happening, Miss Jean?"

"There's a chance Barbary pirates have been sighted. Probably it's a false alarm, but you stay here while I find out." As Annie gasped and ducked under her covers, Jean raced from the small cabin and up the stairs. Armed crew members were taking stations, and the two swivel-mounted cannon were now manned.

Pistol in hand, Jean found a quiet spot by the wheelhouse where she wouldn't be in the way. For a tense quarter hour, she waited along with the crew.

Then the lookout high on the forward mast called out, "'Tis a
Venetian trading ship, not a corsair!"

"Are you sure?" Captain Gordon called back. His spyglass was sweeping the horizon.

"Aye, sir, 'tis no pirate galley."

After more long moments, the craggy captain lowered his spyglass.
"Very well. Off-watch crew can return to your berths."

With chatter and sighs of relief, most of the crew members headed below. Captain Gordon was walking toward the stern of the ship when he saw Jean in the wheelhouse shadows.
"Good God, Miss Macrae! What are you doing up here?"

Jean gestured with her downward-pointing pistol. "I was preparing
to defend my virtue if necessary."

Gordon looked startled. "Do you know how to use that?"

"I'd demonstrate, but a shot would just alarm everyone again."

He nodded approval. "You were in the Highlands during the Rising,
weren't you? That would encourage alertness and knowledge of weapons."

"So it did." She lowered the pistol to her side, her fingers trembling in reaction now that the danger was past.
"Also, my father was on a ship attacked in these waters. He and Sir Jasper
Polmarric were traveling together."

"Your father was on that voyage? That attack is why Sir Jasper
takes such precautions on all his ships. All Polmarric vessels have extra
cannon, and we're required to train our crews how to react in an emergency.
We'll have more drills now that we've entered into the Mediterranean. In fact, I
planned on holding one tomorrow, but then I'd have warned you and the other
passengers not to worry."

"That would have been pleasant," she said wryly. "After waking up
to the alarm bell, I'll not get to sleep again soon."

"Walk with me," he suggested. "After any alarm, I like to check that all is well." As she fell into step beside him, he added,
"Mind you, only a nervous young lookout would mistake a Venetian galley for a
corsair, but the men are extra careful now that we're in the Mediterranean. I'd
rather have false alarms than miss a real pirate."

"Have you ever been on a ship attacked by corsairs, Captain?"

"Once, when I was a lad." He frowned. "It's a bad business, and
worse if Englishmen are captured. The Catholic countries have religious orders
like the Trinitarians, who devote themselves to ransoming slaves, but the
Protestant countries are not so well organized."

"I didn't know that." She remembered back to her father's tale of the attack on the
Hermes.
"Even if one is ransomed, there would be unpleasant years in slavery." Unpleasant, and quite possibly fatal.

"And worse for a woman." He glanced at her. "A pretty young lass
like you, with that red hair, would bring a high price in the Barbary slave
markets."

She laughed and brushed back her windswept hair. She hadn't powdered it or worn a wig since leaving London. Much easier to leave it natural and simply tie it back. The sailors and other passengers had become used to the blazing color by now.
"It's nice to know that red hair is good for something."

"You'd be purchased for a sultan's harem for sure," he said with a chuckle.
"Rarity value, you know."

"I shall take that as a compliment." They had reached the bow of the
Mercury,
so she continued,
"I think I'll stay here for a while, if you don't mind. I love the feel of the
wind in my face."

"We'll make a sailor of you yet, Miss Macrae." Captain Gordon continued on his inspection of the schooner. Jean had enjoyed the captain's company, but now she was ready to be alone. The best thing about this voyage had been long hours with nothing to do but observe the weather. The Macrae family produced the best weather mages in Britain—her brother was merely the latest of a long, distinguished line.

But controlling the weather was almost exclusively a masculine talent. A Macrae female might have a modest talent for managing the elements, but the great weather mages were always men. It was most unfair.

Not that Jean had ever been a magical prodigy. Plenty of established mages had told her that she had substantial power, but she'd never learned how to use it fully. Except in really desperate circumstances, which was an alarming and uncertain business.

As a girl coming into womanhood, she had believed that she would get past her problems and learn to use power as easily as most Guardians did. But that had never happened, and she'd largely stopped trying. In a family of mages, someone needed to be practical, and at Dunrath, that person had been Jean. She'd become a capable estate manager during her brother's years of traveling. After Duncan's marriage, his wife, Gwynne, had encouraged Jean to study magic more deeply, and that had been useful for scrying and small spells. But a great sorceress she'd never be.

She'd never be a wife, either. She had always sensed that she wouldn't marry a Guardian. She had pledged herself to her childhood sweetheart, Robbie Mackenzie, and had even followed him to war.

Ah, he'd been a bonnie lad, the only man she'd ever loved. Robbie had been a mundane, and she'd never told him about the Guardians, thinking her own power wasn't great enough for it to matter to their marriage. But he'd died at Culloden, and, despite the best efforts of her family and friends, she'd met no one yet to take his place.

No matter. She was a good teacher and an excellent shot, and too much a Macrae not to enjoy weather. To her great satisfaction, on this voyage she had discovered that she had a dash of the family magic. She could reach beyond the visible sky to sense distant winds and storms. She had influenced weather patterns a little as well. It was not entirely luck that had granted the
Mercury
such a smooth voyage.

Closing her eyes, she absorbed the south wind and imagined the dry, mysterious African deserts from whence it came. Strange places with strange names…

She really should have started traveling sooner.