Aunt Kade took the hint and asked him if he would care to sit. He did so, studying her with an expression of wonder.
“Of course that is your portrait in the gallery,” he said. “I noticed it at once. It quite puts all the other so-called beauties to shame, and yet it does not do you justice.”
Aunt Kade preened. “It was painted many years ago.”
“But a silver setting enhances the finest gems, and nothing else has changed. Your coloring…”
Inos had heard some outrageous flattery sessions in the previous month, but nothing that could have touched the performance that followed. With quick, deft strokes, like a skilled fishwife filleting, Andor reduced Aunt Kade to simpering blushes. Compliments so excessive could not possibly be intended seriously, yet that did not stop them being effective in the hands of an expert.
Then he turned his attention to Inos. She wondered what heights of hypocrisy he would scale now, but the cynical twinkle was back in his eye again, and he surprised her once more. “But you, ma’am… on reconsideration, I find your appearance most displeasing.”
Inos had been preparing a small smile of ladylike modesty; taken unaware, she stammered. Aunt Kade opened her mouth to protest, then closed it.
“To come so close to perfection,” Andor said, putting his head on one side and pretending to study her, “and then fail to achieve it is a sin against all art. It offends one’s sensibilities. A much lesser beauty that confined itself within its own limitations would not impart this aura of failure, of excessive ambition unrealized.” He leaned back to consider her further. “What is required, I think… yes… what is really needed… is a touch of fire. Then we should see divinity!”
He held out a hand with Inos' brooch on the palm.
Speechless with astonishment, Inos examined the brooch. Aunt Kade expressed pleasure and demanded an explanation.
“A most curious tale!” Andor said solemnly. “Just after dawn this morning I was putting a hunter over a few jumps, over on the far side of the park there, when I saw a bird fly overhead with something shiny…”
Had he told it with a straight face, Inos thought, she would certainly have believed him, but every time Aunt Kade’s eyes left his face he gleamed a secret grin at Inos and she found she was sliding closer and closer to an attack of giggles.
“I believe you can even see the very tree in which the jackdaws have their nest,” he said, rising and peering over the lake. “Yes, there.” He pointed and of course Inos had to rise to see where he was pointing. “No, farther to the left . .” He led her around one of the willows.
In a few moments, still trying to see the tree with the jackdaws' nest, Inos found that she was out of earshot of Aunt Kade.
Still pointing, Andor said, “Doesn’t this place make you want to puke?”
“Oh, yes!” Inos peered along his arm for the benefit of the many disapproving watchers and said, “Raving mad. Is there really a jackdaw tree?”
“Gods, no! I found your brooch on the rug last night. The pin was loose. I had it repaired. Do you like riding?” He was looking back and forth from her to the horizon and she was nodding as if he were pointing out landmarks, leading her eye to the mythical jackdaws. “Fishing? Boating? Archery? Right!”
He led her back to her chair and gave Aunt Kade a disapproving frown. “Your niece tells me she has not yet seen the water caves!”
What water caves?
“Well, we have only recently arrived at Kinvale,” Aunt Kade protested.
“But this is the best time of year to see them, when the river is low. Don’t you agree?”
He skillfully cornered Aunt Kade into conceding that she had visited the water caves in her youth. Thus she could hardly object when Andor announced that he would organize a party of some young ladies and gentlemen to view the water caves. He went on to discuss the annual salmon run, when the rivers were red from bank to bank with fish as large as sheep, to grape tramping in the vineyards, to the giant sequoias, to treasure hunts, to royal tennis, to hayrides and waterfalls and boating expeditions with picnic lunches, to bathing in the natural hot springs, to falconry and fly fishing, to a dozen other entrancing possibilities. There was no suggestion that any of these ventures would involve less than a dozen people and he tossed out the names of very respectable companions, evidently being on terms of friendship with almost everyone at Kinvale and most of the surrounding countryside as well. It was a staggering presentation and it left Inos' head whirling.
“Of course my niece is kept very busy with her music lessons.”
“But my time here is so short!” Andor lamented. “Surely a week or two’s delay in her musical career would not prejudice her future irreparably? The water caves will take a couple of days' preparation, but tomorrow…”
Eventually some of the other ladies decided that he had been monopolized too long, and he was delicately removed to make conversation elsewhere. Inos sighed deeply and smiled down at her neglected embroidery.
Suddenly Kinvale no longer seemed quite so much of a prison. If that stunning young Andor man was going to deliver on a fraction of what he had promised in the way of entertainment, Kinvale was going to be fun. There had been no one in Krasnegar who could even approach him for charm. Or looks. There was an excitement about him that Inos had never met, or even known existed.
She realized that the silence was becoming too expressive. “What a… pleasant person.”
“It is nice to see something well done,” Aunt Kade agreed complacently.
Inos wondered what exactly that remark implied. “Perhaps something is going to happen at last!”
“Perhaps, dear.” Aunt Kade held her knitting away from her again and squinted at it. “But it’s my job to see that it doesn’t.”
2
The moon was a silver boat floating above the sunset as a sodden punt drifted down the river, bearing Inos and Andor… and some others.
“You did not scream, Highness.” Andor’s eyes twinkled like the first stars wakening in the east. “All the other ladies screamed.”
“Did you wish me to scream, sir?”
“Of course! We brutish men gain savage pleasure from hearing you ladies scream.”
“I must ask my aunt to arrange for me to take screaming lessons.”
“Do so! And what did you think of the water caves?”
“They are ugly and dull. They cannot be viewed without getting soaked to the skin.”
“This is true, ma’am.”
“Which is why my aunt declined to come.”
“And several other aunts.”
“Do you think we can go back there—often?”
He laughed, leaning on his pole, bright eyes and white teeth gleaming in the dusk. “I think the water caves only work once. But there are other possibilities.”
The moon was a giant pumpkin, flooding the midnight world with golden light, as the revelers in the hay wain returned from the berry pickers' ball…
The moon was a thin grin in the east as the astonished occupants of Kinvale were awakened at dawn by the strains of a small private orchestra performing on the terrace below their windows, being conducted by Sir Andor in a serenade to honor the birthday of Princess Inosolan…
There was no moon as Andor led Inos out on the balcony. The heavy drapes closed behind them, muffling the tuneful sounds of the ballroom. Stars had been poured liberally across the deep black sky, but there was a taste of fall in the wind, and the air was cool on her flushed skin.
Very gently Andor slid his hands around her and turned her to face him. At once her heart began dancing far faster than all those prancing couples they had just left.