Lora of Two Worlds

Lora stood looking at that letter, and all unguarded, laughed:

”It was coming sooner or later. And it shows your work so far has carried: the King consents to call you home — that’s one long step forward.

When the Joss Wray affair breaks, the King will rage, yes — but he’ll be weighing out rewards by merit then, and who knows, you may be back in the Princes’ Quarter for good. And then, the Sorensens are a great house...”

She ran on and on, as if the running-on could blanket the uneasiness at her heart.

Leon came up out of the chair all at once, stepped forward, and gripped her arms fast: ”Look at me. I’ll not believe you don’t understand what I mean.”

Lora lifted her face to his. Her eyes had some blankness in them, and still she reasoned with him, in earnest:

”You ask me to rest easy; I ask you the same. From the first I never helped you in order to have you. If you cannot marry me — so long as the first heart in you stands, I’ll go on with my brothers and—”

Leon’s heart cracked across. The first heart? The one that had seized this all-capable girl to smooth his own road? Or the one that would fight for the Lion Seat itself, to build the prosperous Empire she had drawn for him?

He bent his head, brow knotted, and stopped up that little mouth, whatever it was going on about — none of it was what he wanted to hear, and she had not taken in one word of what he’d said either.

It was the same tangled deep kiss as ever — but in the two hearts under it there was none of the old sweetness; there was a heavy, heavy ache.

At last Leon let her go, and his own brow smoothed, and he said, smiling:

”You need only know that we are in love. That is enough. The rest leave to me.” — Ever since he had learned the meaning of ”in love,” he had seemed fond of the word.

”Patience, or the great design goes to ruin — don’t go off hot-headed. The first step is taken, and there’s naught for it but to walk it out.” Lora smiled too, though she wanted, a very little, to cry.

”Now hear me. Anselm Sorensen is a proud old man — he may have no wish to marry his granddaughter into the royal kin at all, let alone to a cripple like me.

Let me think... Sorensen’s son-in-law is right here in Lohenheim. Let the old vice-minister once know how vile I am — and I promise you, a man of his temper would have the girl betrothed to some other house before the night was out.”

”And Sorensen dares defy the King’s warrant?” Lora was astonished. Wasn’t defying the warrant a matter for the headsman?

Leon laughed: ”Has the warrant come down yet? Until it’s received, nothing counts. These great houses intermarry among themselves as it is — a girl past her presentation will have her match all inside their own circle, and no great trouble finding one.”

He drew Lora down to sit on the daybed, and only then bent his head, smiling, to look at her:

”You truly are one of a kind. Any other young lady, in this pass, would long since have cried herself into a rain-beaten blossom... I’d best hold you the tighter — you little loach, the moment trouble comes, you’re for slipping off, and there’s never been a grip could hold you.”

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”Well — you’ve caught me now. I believe you.” Lora blinked and blinked.

”Right. Believe me, and never stop. When I have it all settled, you’ll know. Your travel stands as it was — go home and make ready. Only don’t go wild-thinking. If a trifle like this can’t be seen to, how are the two of us to walk out a whole lifetime together?”

Leon reached out and set straight the pin the tussle had knocked crooked, sat himself back in the wheelchair, and patted the armrest:

”You see this chair — a thing to stifle any man’s pride — and I’ve sat in it all this while. What else can I not endure?”

It was a bad piece of news. But they believed it would be settled fast.

Before the return to Augustburg, it must be settled.

Lora left the Baron’s mansion with something wistful and sore at her heart. She did not go home; the carriage turned toward the Horn residence.

The Horns’ dress-up doll shop, two months open, had caught a fair share of the Eastern Capital’s young ladies’ hearts while the novelty held. And since Roland had gone to his post in the War Office, Faye’s own heart was no longer in Lohenheim.

At word that Lora had come, Faye came flying out like a flame, skirts hauled up in her fists:

”Yvonne — you’ve come to say goodbye? Oh, how I wish I were going with you...”

”Not so fast as all that. Has your brother written?” Lora took her hand and asked.

Faye nodded, then shook her head: ”One letter, when he found the shop-front — nothing since. And your shop? Is it open in Augustburg yet?” By ”your shop” she meant the iron-plate house.

”Mm — Keane went ahead two days ago. And you needn’t fret overmuch. Garnet has a true gift for trade; only she must bring on more apprentices.”

Lora’s own spirits rose a little at the sight of Faye. The girl was a simple creature, one whose every movement set people easy — and it was plain her third brother had a mind on her. But he was the third son, with an eldest and a second ahead of him; there was nothing for him but to wait it out.

”Oh — Faye, the thing I came for: has Garnet finished my clamshell window panel?”

That had been the day Lora asked Leon where one might come by the clamshells Roland had brought back from Augustburg. Nothing costly, that — and Leon had none either.

The two of them hit on it at last: sea-clams there were none, but river-clams had their eaters — so men were sent round the wine shops that dressed river-clams, and a good heap of shells came back.

Picking up one of the triangular shells, Lora learned for the first time how large the Empire’s river-clams ran.

A waiter at one of the wine shops had told Weldon of a woman who’d come asking after those same shells — for the making of caskets inlaid with mother-of-pearl, she’d said. And on a closer asking, the woman proved an acquaintance: Garnet.

The Dawnfolk mother-of-pearl craft was a ripe one. The Dawnfolk country fronts the sea, and beef and mutton run thin there — the flesh of the sea is what they favor.

Sea-clam and sea-conch — the luminous conch above all — their shells were cut and ground to thin leaves, and inlaid on gilded caskets, on the backs of bronze mirrors, on wooden combs and pins.

Lora had heard it with delight past bounds, hurried off to Garnet, and drawn her out the measures of a window frame.

Garnet had never made a window, but the grinding of the shell-leaves was one and the same craft, and she undertook the clamshell window for Lora.

”Done and waiting! I’d never dreamed a window could be made so. I’ve written my father already — next salt-and-iron run, he’s to bring us sea-clam and sea-conch shells, and we’ll have windows like it ourselves.”

Faye drew Lora into the hall, and there on the table lay the panel.

”Oh! What a hand Garnet has — ground flat as flat.” No machines here — nothing but the palm of the hand — and how beautiful it was.

”Hers was only the sample. The rest is our Black Eagle lads’ grinding — strong hands, and they made a race of it, the several of them: sixteen panes, done in no time.” Faye said it with pride.

With the shell-set window panel come home, the last task at the mansion could be seen to.

Channing bore the heavy panel off to the swan-house, and Lora turned in at her mother’s court, to see what there might be for her hand.

All at once she heard her mother’s voice inside: ”I saw his granddaughter on the trip back to Augustburg. A pretty, winsome little thing — no shame to set beside our Lora. The two of them would truly match.”

”A pair made in heaven, then.”

What?

Lora felt the air go short all at once; her mind went white:

Even Mother thought them a match?

And set her beside me?

The grievance that had been pooling at her heart broke its banks on the instant. She walked in with a sob in her voice:

”Mother! How can you set your own good daughter beside an outsider!”