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Safed was waiting for her in the hall. This wasn’t completely uncommon; Adelaide had been running late all day which meant, of course, that she was now home late and Safed’s dinner was consequently delayed. He blinked resentful green eyes at her as she applied the button hook to her shoes.
"Yes, I know, I know. The cat’s supper is undoubtedly more important than all the magical disasters in England combined," Adelaide agreed, moving on to the second boot. "You are hard done by and miserable and don’t deserve this kind of ill treatment. It would never have happened if Kitty hadn’t moved out."
It had of course been Kitty who’d demanded they get a cat, just as it had been Kitty who had told their parents she wanted to get a job rather than looking for a husband straight out of school and Kitty who had suggested that she and Addy should share a flat. Adelaide had happily tagged along on all these adventures, since she definitely didn’t want to get married, and now she had a cat and a flat all to herself. Not ideal in some ways, like when she was late to dinner, but very nice when she wanted to hide from the world.
"Reggie wasn’t back today," Adelaide continued once she and that cat were both settled down to their suppers. "It's been nearly two weeks; at some point someone is bound to notice. I'm beginnging to think I should have called the coppers the first day. I wish something would happen. Not that I could say what the first day was; it's not like he kept a regular schedule. Men," she muttered in a specific tone she knew was borrowed from her mother but couldn't prevent herself from replicating. Safed, with accurate feline intuition, gave her baleful look and began to clean his tail. Adelaide rolled her eyes and cleared away the dishes.
Adelaide contemplated her options as she did the washing-up. She could, of course, tell the prime minister, but she had no doubt he wouldn't listen; he had never acknowledged her existence in the four years she'd worked for him and it seemed unlikely he was going to start any time soon. And even if he did hear the words, the likelihood he would ascribe her worries to hysteria was high enough for Adelaide to know better than to take her chances. She liked her job. There weren't that many options for a girl who needed a pass token to get into the Barrel, especially not one with a distressing independent streak. The freedom to govern her own office came with its challenges -- like this one. What was she supposed to do when her colleague seemed to have disappeared? Presumably his family would make it be known soon if he really was missing.
She missed Kitty desperately -- this was the kind of thing it would be nice to have someone to talk over with. Or even Kitty's friends. Adelaide was comfortable, even happy, to come back to her own home every evening, to pet the cat and read a book most nights (there was a reason Safed remained her cat more than Kitty's, despite Kitty having been the one to bring him home and name him). Kitty got home late or not at all six nights out of seven and still had boundless energy to face the morning. That had always worked well for Adelaide, as on the rare occaisions she did feel the desire for companionship she could simply tag along with Kitty to one of her suffragette meetings or join the odd impromptu party that regularly sprung up in their kitchen. But naturally they were Kitty's friends, not Adelaide's, and after her marriage none of them had made an effort to keep in touch. It had been the same leaving school; Adelaide remained on regular correspondance terms with several of her old classmates but she was under no illusions that connection would be kept up without the clockwork regularity of her own letters. Mostly Adelaide didn't bemoan being more of a social afterthought than a friend -- there was no point in crying over what couldn't be fixed and since she was a naturally solitary type, most of the time it didn't bother her that much. It bothered her now, that there was no one to talk about Reggie to. Safed had departed on his own business and it made the rooms feel even emptier than usual. Adelaide pressed her lips together and sat down at her desk, pulling a paper toward her and listing out people she could maybe talk to and when and what help they might be able to offered. If should could at least figure out what the best plan was she'd likely be able to sleep.
The next Monday morning, when a boisterous stranger walked into her office declaring himself Reggie's replacement, Adelaide couldn't help shaking her head at herself. I wish something would happen, indeed. You didn't have to have any magic to regret hastily spoken wishes.
"Shall I like to be married to you think?" Adelaide contemplated the uninspiring boiled egg that was all she'd had the energy to cook that evening. "Kitty seems positively smug about it."
Safed made eye contact then ostentatiously stuck a paw in the air and started washing his stomach. Of course he had no opinion on the institution -- he went and had unlawful congress with any cat he could attract and never bothered to worry about it. Adelaide was making the assumption she'd be engaged tomorrow, but perhaps not after all. She didn't like to contemplate how she would feel if Robin turned her down. She'd sent him home to talk things over with Maud and Edwin but she felt sure her reasons for suggesting it were convincing. But then -- she didn't always see eye to eye with the rest of the world regarding what was logical or a good idea.
She’d been more nervous raising the idea to Robin than she’d expected to be. That her proposing would surprise Robin was natural and expected; he was a very nice man, but he didn’t see beyond the end of his nose unless the future was dropping into his head sight unseen. But he was a kind man; after all, if he had not been, she’d never have considered this step. Even if he was deeply shocked by her boldness (which was extremely unlikely, given both his personal affairs and the way he seemed entirely unbothered by Maud throwing herself into any number of unfeminine situations), it was unlikely to occur to him to hold a grudge about it.
Safed moved on to his tail, rearranging his body so he could continue to keep an eye on Adelaide as he worked. She wondered how the conversation with Maud was going. She had been the recipient of Kitty’s thoughts on her three offers of marriage – Adelaide wondered which form of confidence to younger sibling Maud was receiving now. Probably most similar to Manraj Singh, which was encouraging seeing as Kitty was indeed positively smug about her married life and that offer had come from their grandmother, filtered diplomatically through their parents. Nanji had considered it a gift from the gods that their parents’ marriage, organized entirely by the participants, had ended in anything other than utter disaster, and that good luck couldn’t be expected to come on the family more than once in her lifetime. Adelaide wasn’t sure whether Nanji had started cultivating Manreet Singh before or after Billy Byatt started pursuing Kitty in earnest but by the time he proposed she’d definitely rustled up a solid counter-offer. Adelaide remembered clearly sitting at the table, talking it over with Kitty and doing her best to be a useful sounding board for questions like, “But do I really, truly love Billy?”
Adelaide was fairly sure she wasn’t cut out to fall in love with people so she had had no really useful response. She felt better able to help with the realistic logic trees – what would happen to Kitty’s job if she married Billy Byatt or Manraj Singh, and what sort of house she’d live in. How interesting the breakfast table conversation would be was harder to judge. Although they knew Billy fairly well, how cranky someone would be earlier in the morning was an enigma. And of course Manraj Singh was a largely unknown quality, having come to England only for university. In some ways, the conversation currently underway in Spinet House was undoubtedly a mirror of that fraught and busy evening, with Robin debating with Maud whether he ought to take the practical, if somewhat bloodless, offer being made to him or hold out for romance. Although a large difference was that Edwin Courcey, who even Adelaide could tell was the love of Robin’s life, would undoubtedly be an active participant in the discussion. In some ways, Edwin’s presence was a great comfort to her, in that neither she nor Robin would need to consider whether their marriage was intended to be anything but a convenience to society and a measure of protection from Walter Courcey. In others, it worried her. In a different world, there would have been no space for her proposal because Robin and Edwin, like her parents, would undoubtedly have been married within months of meeting each other. Was it fair to push her way into a relationship that didn’t need or especially want her? But aside from the encroaching habits of Walter Courcey, Nanji was getting restive about Adelaide’s future. And if she married someone of Nanji’s choosing, she would be expected to truly marry him. Unlike Kitty, who had giggled over her first kiss at school and speculated mischeviously about her wedding night, Adelaide entirely failed to see the appeal. Like magic, romance appeared to be something Kitty had gotten both their shares of. So it would be nice to marry someone who had absolutely no interest in kissing her, much less anything else. And it wasn’t an entirely lopsided arrangement; she had a well-invested competence that would be useful for Robin much-mortaged lands and she was frankly itching to take over his meetings with his steward after listening to him try to interest himself in land and money management and largely failing.
She hoped these benefits would strike Maud and Edwin, the same way Manraj’s assumption that Kitty would keep on working and his comfortable London townhouse had played into Kitty’s decision – one that had definitely turned out for the best, seeing as Billy’s mild selfishness had been much more profound than they’d ever guessed. Obviously, Adelaide would never end up the glowing centre of a thriving household the way Kitty had; that was the sort of thing that wasn’t for her. But the idea of going to home to somewhere that she had a place, things to do – it had some appeal, even if it was a place she would have to push a bit to get. Well, that was the story of her life, wasn’t it? She’d had to push for her education and her job; it naturally followed that she’d have to bestir herself to bring about a marriage. Sometimes she thought it might be nice to have a life like Kitty’s, full of effortless talent where things just appeared for you, but then again you had fewer options to choose from if you restricted yourself to waiting for things to come to you rather than going out and finding them yourself.
Safed, done with his bath, and perhaps unnerved by how long Adelaide had been sitting at the table, stalked over and head-butted her into petting him. Adelaide laughed. “Will you like being moved to that massive Blythe pile in Groverner Square?” she asked him. “Will you catch any mice whatsoever there or will I still be expected to feed you out of the kindness of my heart?”
Kitty managed to hand Adelaide's niece off to her nursemaid for most of the morning so she could stand with her sister during her wedding ceremony but in deference to Kitty’s family schedule, they planned a wedding dinner rather than a breakfast. Babies were very demanding, as it turned out. Nowhere near as much as twins, their mother said with a pointed look. Kitty did however seek her sister after luncheon out to give her a crushing hug and heartfelt good wishes. After she headed up to the nursery, Adelaide wandered aimlessly around the public rooms of her new home. She didn't find Robin or Edwin anywhere so likely they were taking some time just for the two of them. Adelaide would have worried about Edwin being too alone these past few weeks as wedding preparations reached their fever pitch except that he was having such a good time reinventing English magic from first principles that you couldn't pity him for much these days. Still, he and Robin undoubtedly wanted to reconnect and reaffirm their devotion after Robin's legal marriage that morning. Adelaide caught a glimpse of her parents deep in discussion with Polly Alston on the terrace, but left them to it. As she rambled through the front hall, she saw Maud approaching from the kitchen stair, dimple hovering at the corner of her mouth.
Maud, like Kitty, gave Adelaide a tight hug, and whispered in her ear, “Congratulations, sister.”
Adelaide felt her eyes fill briefly. Maud, of course, knew this wasn’t a real marriage. And yet, she was so welcoming. Having two sisters. Adelaide pulled back when her face was back under control and raised an eyebrow at the unwieldy basket looped over Maud’s arm. “It’s a surprise,” said Maud with a grin. “I already sent Robin and Edwin out the Orchard – you go join them and I’ll get the others.”
“I expect they didn’t want to be interrupted, Maud.”
“Then they should have ignored me and gone to Robin’s room,” Maud said with supreme indifference to the likelihood of anyone actually ignoring her. “Go on, now.”
Adelaide, no less able to ignore Maud’s directives than anyone else, dutifully made her way to the orchard, where she found Edwin leaning into Robin on an oiled blanket. They pulled apart as she approached and she felt a pang at the sight – Adelaide had known Edwin Courcey for nearly five years, and it was only in the last six months she’d learned he could smile. The unfairness of it – that Edwin would never get to be married to Robin, that she was married because there was no way to explain to her parents that she didn’t need to be in love with anyone to be happy, that if she didn’t marry all she could realistically foresee is an unstable future relying on Kitty and Manraj to support her when, inevitably, her job was offered to a man. But then Edwin directed his surprising smile at her and Robin jumped up to offer her an unnecessary hand to sit on their blanket despite there being several others available and Adelaide found herself feeling sentimental all over again at the kindness of her friends.
“Thank you,” she said to Robin and he grinned.
“Maudie says we have to have a private party after all the formality,” Robin explained. “I sent Violet for some champagne,” he added with a wink.
It wasn’t long before the others arrived – Alan Ross and Jack Alston as well as Maud and Violet – settling onto the blankets and making desultory conversation. Mr. Ross was supposed to be writing up the event for his position at the paper, but he didn’t seem overly bound by any scruples when it came to the laws of accurate reporting. “It makes you doubt everything you read in the paper,” Maud teased him with wide eyes.
Adelaide let herself be carried along with the funning conversation, teasing Edwin about his lack of wedding gift. As she watched him form a snowflake for Robin, she was again struck by their romance and hoped again that neither Robin nor Edwin would come to hate her for intruding on their happiness.
“There is a real gift as well,” Jack said, as if he too had seen the profoundness of Edwin’s snowflake and wanted to offer something in keeping with the tone of the moment. “Beehives, and two swarms, for Thornley Hill. It’s part of making bargain with the land, even for unmagical people. You talk to them. Announce things – births. Weddings.”
“A bargain.” Robin sounded serious too. "Then let’s do it properly. I think I remember how it works.”
Adelaide was rather astonished to hear him say so, as her memory of the garbled retelling of the previous swearing Robin had observed was that Edwin had been ringed in fire, out of magic, and both of them thoroughly exhausted. Still it seemed he retained the basics, and didn’t stutter too much. His appendix was unconventional, perhaps, but land magic had always been more focused on the intent than getting the wording exactly right. “The people we love,” he concluded, looking around at all of them and clearly including them in his word.
“You too, Addy,” said Edwin, observing the ritual as if he were taking notes. Land-pledges by non-magicians: a case study.
Adelaide swallowed. This seemed a step too far in the wrongness of excluding Edwin from Robin's marriage. She got up slowly trying to find the right words to express this. Looking down at Edwin, it seemed he had a don’t-look-at-me expression that would put hers to shame. Not surprising, perhaps, with a brother like Walter Courcey. “I will if you will,” she said, offering her his hand. He looked up, surprised but not necessarily displeased. They were, after all, three together now.
Adelaide felt a rush of… something as her blood fell on the roots of Thornley Hill’s apple orchard. Something like Edwin’s snowflake. Something like Kitty’s joys in complex legal bindings. Something, in short, like magic. Adelaide raised her hands and did the cradle for light. Something simple that children learned, before everyone had realized it was no use teaching her cradles. She felt it again, the awareness of the orchard and the rush of something into cavities of her body that she hadn’t realized she even had. She thought there was a sparkle in her fingers.
"Robin?" Maud asked.
"I don't know," Robin replied.
"I think it took," Edwin said, clearly still focused on Robin. "I think --"
“Yes, I think it took. Ah, Edwin?” she said, catching his attention. She performed the cradle again, this time with a thought for precision. Her fingers definitely glowed. The third time, it was a proper light, like the guidelights in a ducal mansion. The rush didn’t subside. She could feel Thornley Hill, the drive up to the house, the horses in the pasture, the exact hedgerow where their field bordered their neighbours. And she could feel Robin and Edwin, all mixed up in it. There was no mistaking their presence in the magic of the land, because it felt exactly like both of them. And as they looked at her in shock and delight, she knew that they both looked at her as she looked at them – with care and fondness and an endless desire for presence. She hadn’t ruined them because even though she’d been the one to propose the idea, they had willingly welcomed her in. And Robin’s land welcomed her now, willingly sharing what magic is possessed. She covered his mouth because she wasn’t sure if she was going to laugh or cry and this was no time for hysteria. But what things she’d have to tell Safed when he came to sleep on her feet that evening.