Lora of Two Worlds

With the East Manor deeds back in hand, the great prop of the Odenheim income was safe. The brothers would most likely be following Leon into Augustburg in time to come; the private manors could wait their day. The Eastern Capital’s market had gone duller and duller of late — and here lay one thread of the reason: land gathered year by year into fewer hands, great houses feeding and clothing themselves off their own acres, and the trade thinning out with every season of it. Word of East Manor’s return ran fast to the household-troops’ camp. The troops’ gladness goes without saying; it was the tenants of East Manor who wept for very joy. Lora laid the deeds away in the brocade box and handed them over to her father, all grins: ”Father — there’s nothing on earth I’m worse at than the keeping of little things. Back in my convent-school days I was forever losing this and dropping that...” ”Hm? And how is it you know that? When did you remember it?” Lora put out her tongue. Months had gone by, and she had clean forgotten she was supposed to have ”lost her memory.” All that was left her was the fudge: ”Lucy told me, Father. I was out at East Manor today — and that day, Steward Coltrain told me there’s a little courtyard by the hill, where you and Mother kept company when you were young. I mean to go and see it.” She went skipping off, and behind her the old gentleman grumbled on, red to the ears: ”What keeping-company? When your mother played, it was forever ’casting pearls before swine’ — and me forbidden one word!” And East Manor truly held so quiet a little courtyard — set between the Great and the Little — where a low earthen hill rose, and a stone-flagged path went winding and winding to the top. The tenants had once meant to cut the wild silkworm-thorn trees off that hill and put fruit trees in their place; but the General had said the silkworm-thorn’s leaves feed the silkworms and its branches make bows — and the hill had been left standing full of them to this day. By now the trees had grown tall and thick. Once up on the path, the hill stopped feeling small altogether — you might have walked into wild mountains, far from anywhere. Roland had said it: St. Agnes’ Eve, the festival young ladies love best — and Lora had never gotten her proper keeping of it. Today the manor would make it up to her, Faye Horn and her brother thrown into the bargain, of course. Lora had no liking for the women’s carriages — wooden-doored, wooden-windowed, sealed up tight, poor things for seeing any country through. What she liked were her brothers’ carriages, their windows nothing but curtains, to be flung open whenever she pleased. Just as the carriage was working out of the small road and about to swing onto the highway, a woman in a veiled hat standing at the roadside called it to a stop. No guessing needed — Dorothy Dunbar. Her maid Ruby stood at her back. She lifted the veil of the hat. Thinner by far than she had been; the round face gone to a pointed chin, and her eyes the larger for it. A faint smile: ”I knew you’d be riding in a man’s carriage. You haven’t changed a whit.” ”Dorothy! It’s been an age! Weren’t you gone to Augustburg? What brings you back so soon — my mother isn’t home yet herself.” The last time Lora had seen her had been up in the loft of the Dripping-Rain Pavilion, in the Royal Gardens. Dorothy gave the bitter smile: ”I came back on St. Agnes’ Eve itself — and never went near the palace banquet. I’ve come to ask a favor of you. May I get up into your carriage?” Seated close together in the carriage, the two of them sat a little awkward. Dorothy opened the box she carried, took out a folding fan in its sleeve, and held it out to Lora: ”In Augustburg, I was the reason Lord Felix missed the palace banquet. This is his fan. I know that day he only gave it me to break the circle they had me standing in. Now it goes back to its owner. I had my freedom to admire him. And of course he had his freedom to refuse me. He owes me nothing.” Lora wouldn’t take the fan. She laughed: ”Of all things in this world, I’m the very worst at carrying messages — too little carried, too much carried, or the look carried wrong — every one of them a sin on my head. I’ll be seeing him directly. If your heart is set on returning it, come along with me.” ”No, no, no — the two of you meeting, with me thrown into the middle of it? How awkward that would be. And you needn’t carry any message. Only put the fan in his hands. He’ll understand everything there is to understand.” Everything she had come through had burned the arrogance off Dorothy Dunbar, and the well-bred young lady underneath stood out plain to see. She saw that Lora only watched her and smiled, and never put out a hand. She sighed: ”You and I have known each other since we were children — not the closest of friends, maybe, but we know each other down to the roots. Girls brought up in houses like ours — few of them ever live the heartless, carefree life you do. Even that smile of yours, the one that sees through everything — I hate it so. Let me tell you the Augustburg business too — else you’ll never consent to take this fan. At the first, my parents couldn’t bend me, and they went to the Grand Princess’s mansion to speak my heart for me. My cousin refused me — and so I agreed to my aunt’s counsel and let myself be presented at court. Then that affair in the Royal Gardens took my qualification for the palace away, and the rank of a King’s lady that my aunt had labored so hard to arrange for me became a laughingstock among the noblewomen of Augustburg. I hadn’t meant to go to Augustburg this time at all. Only Father said I owed my aunt the account face to face — and so I went, scalp stiff with dread. Lora, do you know? Girls like us — first or second in the whole Eastern Capital — carried into Augustburg where the noble daughters flock together, we’re the plainest rose in a garden full of them. At a small banquet at Prince Ambrose’s house, two women laughed at me — couldn’t catch the King, so now making up to the Prince. I couldn’t hold my tongue, and answered for myself — and they only doubled down... The Prince is my own cousin. He didn’t stand up for me — he said instead that I might come into his household as a junior mistress. I could have crawled into the ground for shame, and there was no road out for me. I never dreamed my cousin Felix would stand up and say he had long set his heart on me, and beg me to weigh his suit — and there, before the whole room, put his fan into my hands to speak his mind... I...” ”Isn’t that a good thing? Cousin doesn’t promise lightly. If he could say it out loud — what if it was meant?” Dorothy lifted her face, the tears hanging on her long lashes: ”Lora Odenheim — how can you have been so simple, your whole life through? How can you not know what my cousin thinks? He was only sorry for me — and hating those ill-meaning women of the capital. He — he was only being just.” ”All right. If you truly won’t see him — I’ll return it for you.” As if I needed reminding! If I weren’t the simple one, would a beauty like me have reached twenty-seven in the modern world without landing one boyfriend? After parting with Dorothy, Lora stood with the fan in her hand, and her thoughts ran long and deep: This Prince Ambrose, it seemed, was no great shakes of character either. In history he had been a pretty-boy schemer, all labor and guile — and when King Waldemar came to the throne, the man died of an illness no one ever named. My Leon was still the best of them: no gobbling of elixirs, no wading in beauties, and a care for the people’s bread besides. ”My lady — look. Who’s that?” Shawn, mounted, was calling to her through the curtain. She threw it up and looked out — and there stood Norton, with Steward Coltrain beside him, waiting for her under the archway of East Manor’s gate. ”Norton! Two days, no more — why aren’t you flat in your bed? What are you doing ranging about? What if the wound tears open on you?” At East Manor there weren’t so many of the city’s ceremonies to mind. The carriage had barely stopped before she was down out of it: ”And I’ve brought you medicines — blood-building, breath-restoring. You’ll have them brewed up and drink them by the clock.” ”M-my lady. Godfather says — says I’m to serve you as ox and horse, and pay you back.” Norton was still pale about the face, but the color in him was good. The boy was solid timber — he was mending fast. ”What your godfather said was: next life around, you can be my ox and my horse and pay me back. This life, you’re just Norton!” Lora was glad all the way through. A whole crisis — dissolved as easily as this. Coltrain said it with a full smile: ”My lady — the wheelchair you drew is built. Only, whether it’s what you meant, that we can’t say.” ”What — as fast as that? I’d have sworn it wanted months of work!” A fine thing, this — today she could hand him a surprise.