But after all, she was in a very different social circle from theirs, and far lower in class, as merely the daughter of a country vicar. She had been out of their social class back then, too—but she had deluded herself for a while that social distinctions did not matter. The vicar and his family were always welcome in the homes of the ennobled and wealthy—provided, she now knew, that they did not overstep their place, nor (in the case most especially of a daughter) dare to think they could actually fit in…
***
She felt the old bitterness creeping into her thoughts, and ruthlessly throttled it down. Don’t be a fool, she scolded herself. If you were to ask most of them if they would trade places with you, if they were honest with themselves, they would. How many of those girls she had once called “friend” were now shackled in loveless marriages to men whose sole qualification for the position of husband was a pedigree, wealth, and the interesting distinction of being an Elemental Mage? Half, surely. Among the Elemental Masters, there was the commonly-held sentiment that if one was not wedded for family or love by the time one reached the age of twenty-one, the best one could do would be to at least marry someone appropriate, of the right breeding, from whom one would not have to conceal one’s magic, even if you scarcely knew the prospective spouse, and had less in common with her than an Oxford don with an Irish bricklayer.
Yes. And I was common as dust and without a penny to my name, and no Elemental Magic. Small wonder… She stifled the rest of the bitter thought.
It had taken Isabelle part of the morning and a steady perusal of the present and past editions of Burke’s Peerage to find out what had become of Beatrice DeLancy. She was now Lady Beatrice—or rather, as etiquette would have it, Lady Nigel. Lady Nigel Lytton, to be precise. And since Lord Nigel had figured nowhere in Bea’s adolescent daydreams, it was probably safe to assume she could be counted among those who held with the philosophy of “marry appropriately.”
Isabelle mounted the steps of the elegant townhouse, after paying the cabbie, and was let in by a faintly contemptuous butler. I have faced down psychic vampires, old haunts, and dacoits, my lad. You do not frighten me a bit. She sent in her card, with the added words, nee Carpenter neatly printed after “Harton.” But she was damned if she was going to be ashamed of the address of Harton School for Boys and Girls on it, nor was she going to pretend she was anything other than what she was. She’d tried to do that once… and look where it had gotten her. If this meant she cooled her heels in the hallway, only to be told that “My Lady is not at home,” so be it. One snub was not going to kill her, and Beatrice was by no means the only name on her list.
In fact, she had gotten herself so completely prepared for rejection, that when Bea came flying down the stairs in her soft pink morning wrapper (much to the horror of the supercilious butler) her hands outstretched in greeting, it took her so much by surprise that for a moment she simply gawked at her old friend, dumbfounded.
Fortunately the moment didn’t last; she was too used, after all these years, to thinking on her feet.
So it was to her feet that she jumped, and the two of them met in an embrace which wiped out all of the years in between their last meeting and this one, after which Beatrice drew her up the stairs and into her dressing room.
“The Harton School! Now that is the last place I would have expected to find you, so no wonder I had no idea you were in London! Who is this mysterious Harton?” Bea asked in teasing tones, as she settled Isabelle in a comfortable chair and handed her a plate of sugar biscuits. “He must be something remarkable to have turned you into a schoolmistress! I thought you were going to go become some sort of female guru amongst the Hindus!”
“Frederick is rather more than remarkable,” she replied, noting with amusement, that, aside from a slight fading of the yellow-gold of her hair and a slightly plumper figure, Bea hadn’t changed a bit. “I could equally ask you who Lord Nigel is.”
Bea shrugged, dismissed her maid with a little wave of her hand, and picked up the teapot. “Nigel isn’t the love of my life, but he doesn’t bore me to death either. We both had to marry or our families would have nagged us to death about it, and at least we were friends. But you, Belle—who is this Harton fellow? Did you meet him in India? Tell, tell, tell!”
“There isn’t that much to tell,” she replied. “He was with the Army; he’s common as clay, God bless him, and straight from the streets of this very city, but a very kind and childless gentleman recognized him for what he was, saw to his education and bought him his commission—”
“Ah, another paranormal like you, then?” Bea asked shrewdly.
“Something like, though his Talent lies in clairvoyance and clairaudience rather than telepathy and psychometry,” she admitted with a slight smile.
“Well, being able to see what was going on over the next hill would be quite useful for a soldier, I would think!” Bea chuckled, pouring her a cup of tea. “A good thing he had a mentor, though!”
“A very good thing. His mentor owned a bookshop here in London specializing in rare and Esoteric volumes as you might expect—and I am sure you will be unsurprised to learn that I frequented the place. By that time, Frederick was already in India and had earned his way up the ranks. When this gentleman discovered I was determined to go to India, he sent me with introductions to some teachers of his acquaintance, and that was where I met Frederick.” All perfectly true so far as it went—though her explanation did not go nearly far enough—
“And you are leaving out all the good parts, I am sure,” Beatrice retorted, wagging a finger at her. “Curses and dacoits, phantoms and secret societies, and all manner of dreadful menaces that the two of you faced, which you are sworn not to tell anyone because it all involves occult oaths.”
She had to laugh, because Bea was actually far too close to the truth! “Something like that, yes. With the one detail that I can tell you, that it was love at first sight for the two of us and when he was discharged, we—and some fellow native occultists—decided to come back here to put up the school, so that children with psychical talents would have somewhere to go to learn how to manage themselves.” She sighed. “And a school that would care properly for the poor little dears who might not have such Talents, but who still were being shipped back to England. There are more bad schools than good, I fear. And it is useful for anyone dealing with even ordinary children to have some occult talent.”
“Fellow occultists!” Beatrice’s eyes sparkled. “This becomes more interesting all the time! Hindus?”
“One Gurkha, one Sikh, and one Moslem,” she replied. “And a motley assortment of our old servants from India, so we do have some Hindus among us. And Buddhists.” She thought for a moment. “I am reasonably sure there are no Sufis, Jainists, or Farsi, but I would not be willing to swear to that.”
“Good heavens, Belle, you brought back the entire cross-section of the subcontinent!” Bea seemed delighted. “At some point I am going to have to visit—and now that I know your school exists, I have somewhere to refer children who are Talented rather than Magicians. That is exceedingly useful. I know I can count on you to be practical and caring, and too many of these people mean well, but haven’t the common sense of my canary.”