Weather Witch

proper place for her here, in her father’s apartments. She will require clothing and shoes. Not much, but something. A small allowance for necessities.”

Bran nodded, a slow move at first, but a nod nonetheless. “Fine, fine.” He glanced around her, down to where the watchman pointed to spots along the hall and talked about the things making Holgate what it was. “Come here, child—Meghan, is it?”

The tiny head turned, curls bobbling. She bounced her way back to them, but slowed her skip to a modest walk as she approached, lowering her gaze, her plump lower lip jutting out as she prepared for rejection. “Yes, sir?”

“Yes, papa will serve. You are to stay with Maude tonight and move into my quarters on the morrow. What think you of that?”

“If it please you, sir,” she said with a little curtsy.

“It would, Meg. It would please me greatly,” he said, though the words fell flat. “But it will be difficult at first. An adjustment for us both.”

“Yes, sir—papa,” she said, raising her eyes to meet his at the correction, a smile pressing dimples into the corners of her mouth once more.

He froze, still as a rabbit catching scent of a wolf, seeing himself there in the twist of her lips and dimples so deep they seemed to cut straight to the bone. “Now go,” he whispered, watching how she slipped her tiny hand into Maude’s and they trotted away, taking much of the light away with them.

He retreated into his chambers and, closing the door, slid the bolts back into place. A child. He had a child —someone who would go on beyond him and bear some part of him into the future. Someone to carry his name and deeds beyond his eventual demise.

He had his immortality and quite by accident. But she was there. And so very small, so slight and frail and so seemingly ephemeral.

Chapter Five

Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind …

—THE BIBLE

Philadelphia

Down the hallway and up one flight of stairs Laura and Lady Astraea went, the only noises the echo of their shoes on the wooden floor, the sound of breathing, and the occasional strangled sob uttered by Lady Astraea.

Arriving at Lady Astraea’s door, Laura moved to open it, withdrawing when her ladyship reached out as well. “I did not do it, you know,” Lady Astraea said in a strained whisper. “I have never lain with another man. I have never even imagined it.” She wiped clumsily at tears leaking from her eyes. The small bit of makeup she used to color her cheeks in the European fashion smeared on the heel of her hand and she stood a long minute staring at the lace ringing her delicate sleeve and just barely showing the tender white flesh of her wrist.

“I believe you, milady,” Laura assured, pressing down on the door’s handle to pop it open. “Here. In we go.”

Inside, Laura secured the door, moved the fireplace poker, and checked the connecting door. She turned the key in that one’s lock and slid the bolt home.

She set the candles first, eyeing the stormlights with curiosity. She had heard all linked stormlights would extinguish once it was known the family had lost rank. They would be cast into the literal dark as much as their name had been cast into the figurative. While the room now blushed with a cool cast of light, Laura realized she had only ever seen the Astraea rooms illuminated by steady stormlight. The flicker and flare of flame would make everything strange in comparison.

Lady Astraea moved ghostlike across the broad floor to sit on the edge of her bed, fingers smoothing out the small wrinkles in the quilt her mother had helped her make years ago—a quilt that had laid silently in her hope chest until Morgan Astraea came along. She smiled a moment, remembering.

But reality caught her again and she coughed, drawing her arms tight about her shivering body.

“Oh, milady,” Laura cooed. “Have no worries. There is a bit of a chill in the night’s air. I shall build you a fine fire to warm your body and brighten your spirit. Nothing cheers me so much on a grim day,” the girl said, shuffling about the fireplace to set the kindling and find the firestarter, “as a merry fire.”

She arranged the tinder and coaxed a fire to life, humming softly as she did. The humming became enunciated, the words growing clear.

No storm that ever strikes

Shall leave me helpless and afraid

And if darkness lingers heavy

I’ll be fearless and brave

But if ever I am wary

If ever I am scared

I will listen to the wind

For the answer’s always there

The sun burns like an ember

The air is cool and calm

But nothing lasts forever

In this world you must take on

The ground will shake and tremble

As the clouds divide

Rivers flood the land

Lightning parts the sky

When there is no one there to guide you

And no one there to help

Your courage is the key

To freeing yourself

“What is that?” Lady Astraea’s question stopped her.

“What, milady?”

“That tune?”

“Ah, it is called ‘Reeling.’ A play on words, if I am correct. My good father used to sing it to me as he dandled me on his knee. I think I might someday sing it to my own wee one, God grace me with one,” she said with a smile.

Laura picked up the song where she had left off, singing,

The sun burns like an ember

The air is cool and calm

But nothing lasts forever

In this world we must take on

The ground will shake and tremble

As the clouds divide

Rivers flood the land