-1Nineteen Days

Synopsis

Edmund Oakley turned up on their doorstep with a brilliant smile, a bagful of magic and a promise that he could make Danika Grey fall in love with him in nineteen days. Alosha knew that she had to stop her sister from marrying him. There was no way that someone could be this perfect unless he had some sort of sinister ulterior motive…

Chapter One

The Wincolt Play

The altogether catastrophic afternoon had triggered a chain of dismally disastrous events that ended, inevitably, in Danika Grey dangling by a hair ribbon over a two-storey drop.

Every time Something Big happens, it is usually at the end of a chain of events. It is easy to say that if Alosha hadn’t woken up late, then she wouldn’t have collided with Danika on the stairs, and Danika wouldn’t have had a new dress in which to see the play…and so on and so forth.

But that is all mere speculation. So let us be straightforward, and let us start at the beginning of things.

It was Sunday, and at two o’clock the Grey sisters were going to see a Rhys Wincolt play in the city square with their cousin, Claire. They had been very excited all week. Rhys Wincolt’s plays were famous for their witty dialogue and clever twists; Wincolt himself lived in the great capital as Chief of Entertainments to the King. He was very well-renowned.

Unfortunately, however, Alosha Grey had a riding lesson scheduled at ten in the morning. I say this is unfortunate because Alosha--as Fate would deal it--had an infallible tendency to oversleep.

So it was that at a quarter to ten, the maid, Loren, found the elder Grey sister still obstinately tangled in her sheets.

Loren took decisive action and shook her feather-duster in the young lady’s face. “Miss Grey! Miss Grey, wake up! Master Dunworth shall nag you good if you’re tardy again!”

Alosha peeled her eyes open to see little puffs of dust and feathers wafting in her vision. She groaned, rolled over and buried her face in her pillows. The late nights weren’t doing her much good.

“Miss Grey, I strongly advise that you remove your nose from those cushions and--”

“I’m up, I’m up,” grunted Alosha, and swung her legs to the cold floor. Loren fetched a dressing robe and slung it around her mistress’ shoulders. Alosha said sleepily, “What time is it?”

“A quarter to ten,” said Loren mildly.

Alosha sat up. “What?” The robe tumbled from her shoulders. She leapt around the room, pulling on breeches and riding boots and a clean blouse and running a brush through her hair. “Master Dunworth is going to nag me good if I’m tardy again; why, oh why didn’t you wake me up?”

Loren said, “I did, Miss,” and busied herself picking up clothes.

“Don’t forget to make the bed,” Alosha called, seizing a cloak and soaring out of the room. She skidded on the tiled landing, caught her balance and bounded past the rooms belonging to Danika and to Trevor, their older brother, who had been away for months in the military. Without pausing to slow down, she caught the railing with one hand and swung herself around a corner, onto the stairs--

--only to crash headlong into Danika, who was coming up the opposite way.

Arms and legs splayed in all directions.

Alosha saw the laddered railings and the smooth edges of the steps bounce past her line of sight. Her right foot and her tailbone took most of her weight.

Danika slipped and staggered left, tripping over the skirts of her own dress. There was a loud ripping noise.

Both sisters found themselves on their backs and staring straight up at the mosaic ceiling.

Danika struggled into a sitting position and said, “Oh, no.”

“What is it?” Wincing, Alosha lifted herself gingerly onto one elbow.

Danika had her hands buried in the pretty pleats of her sky blue dress. It was a rather lovely garment, trimmed with lace all along the collar, with little lacy cap-sleeves and a beaded bodice, and a full, round skirt that went all the way to the ankles. It was Danika’s favourite dress, and she held it now in her hands and cried, “My dress!”

Alosha looked, and saw what was wrong. There was a huge piece of fabric torn off from the hem and hanging, loose and ugly, spouting tufts of lace like hairy white warts. “Oh, no,” she echoed in dismay. “Your best dress, Danika! Oh, Danika, I’m so sorry!”

Danika said mournfully, “I was all ready to wear it for the play this afternoon, Alosha! I had matching white slippers and a blue hair ribbon. What am I going to do?”

“I’m really sorry,” said Alosha, more softly. She sat on the step and fingered the ripped hem with regret.

“It’s all right,” said Danika, but she looked sombre as she climbed uncertainly to her feet.

Alosha felt quite terrible. “Tell you what. I’ll take you shopping after my riding lesson. We’ll have lunch in town and buy you a new dress, whatever gown takes your fancy, and I’ll pay for it. And we can come back and get changed before the play.”

“You don’t have to do that,” said Danika hastily. “Your money--”

“I want to,” interrupted Alosha firmly, and smiled. “You and I both know I’ve ruined your things far too many times. I owe it to you. Honestly.”

Slowly, Danika smiled back. “After your riding lesson, then. I’ll be waiting in my room! Don‘t waste any time time flirting with old Dunworth as usual!”

Alosha pulled a face. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she called at her younger sister’s departing back, and carefully tested her weight on her injured ankle. It howled in protest. She turned her right foot inward a little bit, and her ankle howled slightly less. Pigeon-toed, Alosha minced her way down the stairs and toward the stables, rubbing her tailbone.

Master Gregory Dunworth, despite being Alosha’s senior by ten years, was a relatively handsome fellow. Nevertheless, Alosha certainly did not flirt with him. Danika had no idea what she was talking about. Alosha was happily engaged, for heaven’s sake.

Dunworth took her riding in the vineyards behind the manor, up and down the earth-packed aisles between the dancing, weaving grapevines. He corrected her trotting posture and her centre of gravity and the grip she held on the saddle with her knees. “Is there something wrong with your right foot, Miss Grey?” he inquired.

Alosha wanted to tell him politely no, it was more her coccyx that was bothering her, having been bounced against a hard saddle repeatedly for the past hour. But every time she glanced at him and tried to open her mouth, all she could see were Dunworth’s sideburns, which were growing out into comically curly tufts. She bit her lip hard and remained silent, trying not to chuckle.

When the sun was getting close to its zenith, they trotted back to the stables. The raw scent of horse and manure rushed out from the flung-open doors to welcome them.

Alosha stumbled slightly as she dismounted, and Dunworth quickly caught her about the waist. “Are you all right, Miss Grey?”

“Yes, thank you, Dunworth.” Alosha smiled brilliantly at his shoes (neatly avoiding any sort of interaction with his sideburns) and began removing the tack from her horse. “I’ll write you a cheque for the lesson, as usual, and mail it to you.”

“Thank you, Miss Grey,” said Dunworth, holding his hat in his hands.

“I’ll see you next week then,” said Alosha, smiling and turning back toward the house.

“Oh,” said Dunworth. “Yes. Goodbye, Miss Grey!”

As Alosha hobbled into the building, she spotted one of Father’s old canes leaning by the back door. She used it to make her way upstairs.

“Are we going now?” Danika shouted excitedly from her room.

Alosha yelled back an affirmative as she changed into a simple pinafore and slipped a cropped mantlet around her shoulders. She bent over her dresser, scrawled out a quick cheque for Dunworth and sealed it in an envelope, and then fetched her purse and all her money from her wardrobe.

Danika appeared in the doorway, her bright red hair neatly pinned up in a demure coil, her brown eyes wide and shining. “Mother took the carriage to go to Sunday market with Eorin,” she said. Eorin was their younger brother. “We’ll have to walk into town. I hope you don’t mind. I suppose we could always go another day…”

Alosha looked at her ankle, and then at Father’s cane, which was leaning innocuously against the foot of her bed. “No,” she said with more confidence than she felt. “Walking will be absolutely wonderful.”

After lunch and shopping, the Grey sisters flew back into the house and buzzed around, preparing for the Wincolt play. Dialogue bounced between them like firing cannons.

“Claire will be here in half an hour!”

“Do you think it will fit me? I didn’t even try it on!”

“Oh, I hope Mother gets back in time with the carriage, or we’re going to miss the play for sure…!”

“I’m so glad you spotted that hair ribbon, Alosha, it matches perfectly!”

“Don’t forget the tickets!”

“Oh, ah!--where did I put them again?”

“Top drawer of your dresser, Danika.”

“Found them, thank you! Are you ready?”

“I’m ready, let’s go!”

They stepped out of their parlours. “Oh, Danika,” said Alosha sincerely. “You look lovely.” And she did. Alosha had bought her younger sister a custard yellow dress with a sleek, ankle-length skirt and a daringly sleeveless cut. The vivid colour set off the highlights in Danika’s fiery hair beautifully. She wore the same white slippers and a new yellow ribbon.

Danika twirled and laughed. “Oh, Alosha, how on earth are you going to earn back what you paid for this dress?”

“With much toil and hard work,” grinned Alosha, and glanced in the hall mirror. She didn’t have Danika’s princess clothes, but she was satisfied with her appearance. Horse riding and running around all morning had brought a soft flush into her cheeks, and wisps of her hair stood off her forehead.

Danika dragged on her arm. “You look amazing, Alosha, as always. Come on, I heard the doorbell--that must be Claire.”

It was indeed their cousin, Claire Fontelle, and she had brought a carriage with her. She was the youngest of the three, and very modern and unimpressed and silver-tongued. “Luckily I had the foresight to figure out that your mother wouldn’t be back in time,” Claire drawled when the Grey sisters answered the door. “What on earth would you two do without me? Nice dresses, by the way. Danika, that colour makes you look quite like a sun goddess.” She led the way down the path in front of the Greys’ manor.

“Is that a good thing?” said Danika worriedly as she climbed into Claire’s carriage.

“Yes!” said both Claire and Alosha, and they all laughed.

The ride into the city was short and pleasant. The wide, pebbled road wound between the vineyards for a good mile, and past the outer townhouses, and through the inner wall of Girusa. Here the street became cobbled and the carriage-horse found easier footing. The driver stopped the vehicle a couple of streets away from the city square, and opened the door for the young ladies.

It was turning into an unseasonably hot autumn afternoon, a little too stale to be comfortable, with hardly a breeze in the blazing sky. They crowded under Claire’s sun-umbrella (eliciting yet another “what would you do without me”) and made their way through the streets.

Because of the heat, not many people were out for leisure: the only other pedestrians were people holding tickets for the play or labourers about their business--a baker-boy wheeling a canvas-covered cart of fresh pastries, and a dark-skinned shoe-shiner setting up his ragtag stall, and a couple of slippery-looking men in their best suits, hoping to take a pretty girl home for the night. They leered as the Alosha, Danika and Claire walked by.

The entrance to the city square was guarded by theatre officials who stopped them and asked to see their tickets. The man examined the slips of paper and smiled. “Front row, ladies.” He had a foreign, jaunty accent.

“Front row!” groaned Claire.

“What is so bad about being in the front row?” said Danika, patting her hair. “We get to be closest to the stage.”

“A stage that stands on a wooden platform two storeys in the air,” said Claire wryly. “We’ll be craning our heads back for the next few hours, I’m afraid. Trust me, your neck will literally scream at you for the rest of the day.”

“It’s not so bad,” said the theatre official encouragingly. “At least you’ll get to sit in the shade. A stage as high as that casts a fairly big shadow.” He ushered them in, and Alosha led the way through the crowds, weaving from row to row across the wide, sun-baked square. Heat seemed to ooze off the cobblestones in waves.

At last they found an empty bench at the front, between a group of portly gentlemen and a young, affectionate couple who seemed far more interested in entwining themselves into a single entity than in Wincolt theatrics.

Alosha settled herself between Danika and Claire, and untied her bonnet, and rested her father’s cane upright against her knee, and folded her hands in her lap. Claire had landed the unenviable seat next to the loving couple. She held one hand up to shield her vision and muttered to Alosha, “Perhaps they shall suffocate one another to death, and then we shall have more sitting room once they remove the corpses.”

Alosha sniggered, and Danika hissed, “That’s horrible!”

The orchestra burst into fanfare overhead.

“What’s really horrible is our view!” whispered Alosha. “I can’t see a thing except for the soles of that violinist’s shoes!”

“Sshh!” said one of the portly gentlemen indignantly.

The play began. It was a classic Rhys Wincolt entitled ‘An Unimportant Matter’, which was of course an irony because the whole play was about a very important matter which none of the characters recognised as being important at all, at least not until the very end. And in the classic Wincolt fashion, all the events of the play were inextricably linked to one another, like an intricate weaving, or a series of loops in a necklace, or--rather more to the point--the very events of this chapter.

Pay close attention. You see, if Alosha hadn’t woken up late, then she wouldn’t have crashed into Danika on the stairs, and Danika would not have ripped her dress, and they would not have gone shopping. And if Danika hadn’t been wearing her lovely new yellow dress, she would never have possibly come to the attention of the lead actor when he called for a volunteer from the audience.

The lead actor--his character’s name was Orion--bowed low and declared with a sweeping gesture, “If the red-haired maiden wearing the beautiful yellow gown can hear me, I’d like to request the honour of having her on this stage with me.”

Danika stared at Alosha, wide-eyed.

“Yes, the lovely princess in the front row,” said Orion playfully. “Won’t you climb up here and join me? I am in dire need of a volunteer.”

“He’s asking me,” gushed Danika, flapping her hands about in a frenzy. “He’s asking me to be part of a Wincolt play! Oh, I don’t know what to do!”

Claire said, “Stop waving your arms around and climb up onto that stage, you halfwit!”

The audience was clapping and chanting. Orion and the other actors leant over the side of the stage, beckoning for Danika with wide smiles. “Go on,” whispered Alosha, giving her sister a small shove.

Shyly, Danika rose from the bench with her skirts gathered in her hands. She blushed as she looked out across the sea of faces. Never had there been so many eyes on her. With trembling hands and an equally shaky smile, Danika began to climb the steps onto the high wooden stage.

Alosha watched her younger sister ascend with a faint feeling of apprehension. The platform was so high, and Danika wasn’t immune to her own fair share of slips and falls. One wobbly step, one misplaced foot, and she could tumble more than six feet to the ground.

But it seemed Alosha had nothing to be worried about. Danika reached the top of the platform without mishap, her eyes dancing with unconcealed excitement, her cheeks flushed and rosy. “Oh, gosh!” she exclaimed, and her voice carried down to Alosha and Claire on the wind. It sounded grand from such a distance. “It’s so high up here!”

“It’s not so high, my dear,” said Orion, dipping into a low, elaborate bow. His loose maroon robe fell away from his front enough to reveal a well-oiled, muscled torso. Alosha smothered a laugh; she could imagine Danika already swooning.

“It’s terrifying,” said Danika faintly.

“Tell you what will make it less terrifying, my lady,” said Orion chivalrously. “If you would give me the pleasure of joining me in a Spanish waltz.” He extended one lean, tanned arm. “Shall we, my princess?”

Alosha didn’t breathe once as her sister spun around the towering stage with the handsome, well-oiled lead actor. Danika had always been a very good dancer. It was one of the rare moments when she shed her self-consciousness and her normally shy exterior. She tended to dance with her eyes closed and her arms flung out, completely surrendering to the sweet music. When she moved like that, she did look quite like a red-haired princess--or even a Daughter of the Sun. Orchestral music swelled around the whirling partners like the ebb and flow of tossing waves.

At this point, the kissing couple next to Claire decided that they were bored of the Wincolt play. They disentangled themselves from one another and stood up, invoking a chorus of “Get out of the way!” and “Duck down!” from the audience members behind.

“Sorry!” hissed the young couple, hunching over and shuffling along the front row. They squeezed apologetically in front of Claire and moved to pass Alosha.

That was when the young woman tripped over Alosha’s cane.

It had been leaning unobtrusively against her knee, one end against the ground. The girl caught her foot on it, and, crying out, flailed against her much larger lover. The heavyset young man staggered hard against the wooden platform.

The platform on which the actors, and Danika, stood.

With a frightful crack, one of the supporting beams snapped out of place. A splinter flew out and narrowly missed Alosha’s left eye.

The symphony dissolved into out-of-tune squeaks and screeches as the stage began to sway. A wooden pole emitted an ominous creak. Alosha screamed, “Danika, get down from there!”

The actors scrambled for the stairs. In the commotion, something happened--Orion pushed her out of his arms--and Danika, poor, pretty Danika, lost her footing and slid on the wooden floor of the platform and went over the edge.

Her new, crisp yellow hair ribbon caught on a nail for a second.

She screamed blue murder. Her white shoes kicked in a panic, suspended two storeys off the ground.

“Move.”

Alosha Grey pushed Claire Fontelle aside. She pushed aside the young lovers--both the heavy young man and the helpless young woman--and she pushed aside the portly gentlemen. In one extraordinary leap she was out of the crowd and under the platform, her arms outstretched to break her sister’s fall.

And not a second too soon, for at that moment Danika’s hair ribbon snapped, and she plummeted.

Alosha’s mind was a red buzz, but she had the situation under control. She would let her sister fall onto her; her body would be enough to cushion Danika’s fall. Everything would be all right.

Well, it would have been, if he hadn’t materialised like magic out of thin air, and shoved Alosha aside, and caught Danika easily over both arms like a groom holding his bride.

Danika gasped and clung to his shoulders. Not even noticing Alosha, she gazed up into the cornflower blue eyes of her rescuer. A vague smile tugged over her lips--and she fainted.

Alosha Grey put her hands on her hips.