Laura Kinsale by Uncertain Magic

Author:Uncertain Magic [Magic, Uncertain]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

“Hobbies,” Faelan called them, but Roddy would have given the surefooted local ponies a prouder, sweeter name to match their setting. The road that skirted the wild peninsula of Iveragh between the mountains and the sea was new, but Faelan had chosen older ways, overgrown paths that wound in and out of valleys and clung to the sides of cliffs where the waves rolling in from the Atlantic echoed an eternity below. They traveled in a blowing mist, she and Faelan and one extra pack pony, a fog that made the rocks to their left no more than a mass of slightly darker gray and the pitch to their right a single step into nothing. But the ponies never faltered; they placed one hoof in front of the other, heading home, passing wild grass and furze dripping with gleaming mist in the hopes of the oats they were sure would be waiting.

It seemed to Roddy that the fog thickened with each mile, as if they were heading into the far unknown reaches of the earth, leaving life and land and frail humanity behind. She found herself oddly pleased with the notion. Somehow this atmosphere was magic, a shining cloud out of which the most fantastic of dreams might coalesce. There, if she looked hard enough, she might see the golden towers of a castle in the distance, or feel the mysterious flutter of an angel’s wings. She felt, if she would only listen, that someone sang to her through the shifting prisms of sunbeams in the vapor.

Fog had only been fog in Yorkshire. It had never felt like this.

She had caught Faelan’s fever, it seemed. She loved Iveragh already. Ever since they had left Dublin, this place had pulled at her, an eagerness that was physical, that had made her as impatient as her husband with the gliding trip down the Grand Canal from Dublin. The new inns along the water had been lovely and well kept, and the green and gold countryside moved past in stately beauty beneath the late-autumn sun, but it was all a transitory picture.

Something stronger called them, even though the weather, the quality of the inns, and their mode of transportation had worsened with each change. In Tullamore the canal ended, and the hired chaise could not seem to go fast enough on the smooth, uncrowded roads. Through Roscrea, to Limerick and Castleisland, where they had abandoned Martha and chaise and baggage and mounted good Thoroughbred hunters. Even those were temporary, though, for when they had arrived at the little town of Glenbeigh in a dismal rain, Faelan had traded one hunter for three hobbies, and sold the other horse on the spot. After one night in a tiny inn where the bed smelled of mice and the chimney smoked too badly for a fire, Roddy had been happy to set out on the road to Iveragh.

She shifted in her stiff sidesaddle, careful not to throw the balance of the shaggy pony beneath her.

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