This is a work of fiction.

All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed

in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

dark destiny. Copyright © 2012 by Mary Jo Putney, Inc. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s
Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Putney, Mary Jo.

Dark mirror / M. J. Putney.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Sequel to: Dark passage.
Summary: Tory and her friends receive an urgent summons, leading the
young mages known as Merlin’s Irregulars to ask Rebecca Weiss, an untrained
telepath from 1940, to join them in 1804 and stop Napoleon from invading
England.
ISBN 978-0-312-62286-2 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-1-250-02017-8 (e-book)
[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Space and time—Fiction. 3. Boarding schools—
Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction. 5. London (England)—History—19th
century—Fiction. 6. Great Britain—History—George III, 1760–1820—
Fiction. 7. Napoleonic Wars, 1800–1815—Fiction. 8. France—History—
1789–1815—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.P98232Dar 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2012004624

First Edition: July 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 chapter 1
Lackland, En gland, Autumn 1940

A fighter plane roared menacingly over the farmhouse just as

Tory bent to blow out the candles on her birthday cake. She
froze—she would never get used to destructive flying machines!
But she could pretend to be brave. She drew a deep breath and
blew. The seventeen candles for her years were easily extinguished,
but the one added for luck flickered persistently before guttering
out. She hoped that wasn’t an omen.
Her friends around the table applauded. Those who’d come
from 1804 with Tory were enjoying the twentieth-century birth-
day customs. The five of them would return to their own time
in the morning. She was glad to be heading home, but she’d miss
her twentieth-century friends.
 2 • M. J. Putney

“Did you make a wish?” Polly asked. The youngest Rainford,

she belonged to this house and this time. Though she was still
weak from a bout with blood poisoning that had almost killed
her, her mischievous smile had returned.
“Indeed I did,” Tory replied. “And it was hard to decide what
to wish for!”
Her life had changed so much since she turned sixteen a year
ago. Then she had been the well-brought-up Lady Victoria Mans-
field, youngest child of the Earl of Mansfield. Most of her thoughts
had been turned toward her upcoming presentation to society,
where she would look for the best possible husband.
In the year since, she’d become a mageling, an exile, and one
of Merlin’s Irregulars, sworn to use her magic to protect Britain.
Not to mention being a traveler through time and an unsung
heroine of Britain.
Best of all, she had fallen in love. Her gaze drifted to the
young man who sat at her right, looking impossibly handsome.
Justin Falkirk, Marquess of Allarde and her beloved. He gave her
a smile full of the warmth and intimacy that had grown between
them in the last months.
“Time to cut the cake!” Lady Cynthia Stanton, who was Tory’s
roommate back at the Lackland Abbey, was eyeing the dessert
hungrily. “Mrs. R., if I come back for my birthday, will you make
me a cake like this?”
“I will,” Anne Rainford, their hostess, said cheerfully. “But give
me some warning, please. This cake required almost a month’s
worth of our sugar rations. I’ll need to save more coupons to create
another cake this size.”
“You won’t want to take another beastly trip through the
mirror just for a cake, Cynthia.” Tory got to her feet so she could
cut properly. “But you can have the first piece of this one.”
 Dark Destiny • 3

The round cake had a thin layer of white icing, and “Happy
Birthday, Tory!” was spelled out in rather uneven red letters. The
same red icing had been used to draw little red rockets exploding
around the edges.
Tory could have done without the explosions, but Polly had
been pleased with herself for coming up with the idea. After all,
war had drawn together this group of magelings from two differ-
ent eras and forged lasting friendships.
Mrs. Rainford was sitting on Tory’s left, and she held out
a small plate to receive the first slice. “Here you are, Cynthia,” Tory
said as she set the wedge of dark fruitcake on the plate. Mrs.
Rainford handed it across the table.
“I’m going to have trouble waiting until everyone is served!”
Cynthia exclaimed. “I still haven’t recovered from burning so
much magic in France.”
“As the birthday girl, I give you permission to eat now rather
than wait for the rest of us,” Tory said grandly. “We all need to
eat to build up our strength for the return journey through the
mirror.”
Cynthia didn’t hesitate to dig in her fork. After the first bite,
she smiled blissfully. “This is wonderful, Mrs. R. If I didn’t hate
traveling through the mirror so much, I really would come back
for my birthday. I’d even bring sugar so you could make the cake
without using up your rations.”
“That’s not a bad idea!” Nick Rainford exclaimed. “Sending
sugar, I mean. How hard would it be for you to throw sugar
through the mirror?”
“We could do that,” Elspeth replied. “Our sugar comes in big
loaves that have to be broken into smaller pieces, but they’d throw
very nicely.”
“Tea and butter and bacon and all kinds of other things are
 4 • M. J. Putney

also rationed,” Nick said thoughtfully. “If you can send them
through the mirror, we could—”
“I will not have a black market operation run from my house,”
Mrs. Rainford said firmly. She handed another plate of cake to
Rebecca Weiss, who was staying with the Rainfords to study
magic. “But some sugar now and then would be nice.”
“We can arrange that,” Allarde said as he clasped Tory’s hand
under the table. She could feel his amusement.
She bit her lip, thinking how much she would miss this free-
dom to be together when they returned to Lackland Abbey. Male
and female students were strictly separated in the abbey. Only
in the Labyrinth, the maze of tunnels below the abbey build-
ings, could they work together as they secretly studied magic. And
only there could she and Allarde have the privacy they craved.
“What is a black market?” Tory asked as she cut more slices.
“Illegally selling rationed goods, and Nick would dive right in
if I let him,” Mrs. Rainford said with a laugh.
She laid her hand on Tory’s, but before she could continue,
magic blazed from Mrs. Rainford through Tory to Allarde, kin-
dling another blaze of magic from him. Allarde’s hand clamped
hard on Tory’s and he exclaimed, “No!”
“Justin?” Tory said dizzily, shaking as she channeled power
and shock between Allarde and her hostess. “What . . . what just
happened?”
His gaze was unfocused. “I . . . I saw Napoleon invade En-
gland. Barges landing, soldiers pouring off. French soldiers march-
ing past Westminster Abbey.”
The Irregulars gasped with horror. The threat of invasion had
been hanging over their heads for months as Napoleon Bonaparte
assembled an army just across the English Channel from Lack-
 Dark Destiny • 5

land Abbey. Jack Rainford, one of the 1804 Irregulars, asked,

“What makes you say that?”
Tory felt Allarde’s effort to collect himself. “Mrs. Rainford
and I both have foreteller talent, and Tory’s ability to enhance
magic seems to have triggered a vision of the future when the
three of us were touching.” He glanced at their hostess. “Did you
see images of invasion?”
“I . . . I saw Napoleon in Westminster Abbey,” Mrs. Rainford
said unevenly. “But that was fear, not foretelling! We know from
history that Napoleon never invaded.”
Allarde shook his head. He was still gripping Tory’s hand with
bruising force. “I don’t know about your history books. What I
saw was an event that may well happen if we don’t act. We need to
return home immediately. If and when the invasion takes place,
Lackland will be a major landing site.” He swallowed again. “I saw
French barges landing in Lackland harbor and soldiers pouring
off. The village was burning.”
Jack Rainford rose from his chair. “My family!”
“The French are not going to invade!” Mrs. Rainford repeated.
“I’ll get a history book and show you.” She left the room, her steps
quick.
Tory took a swallow of tea for her dry throat. Mrs. Rainford
was a schoolteacher and well educated, but Allarde’s magic was
powerful. “Foretelling is what might happen, not necessarily what
will happen, isn’t it?”
Allarde eased his grip, though he still held her hand. “This felt
very, very likely.”
Mrs. Rainford returned with a textbook. As she thumbed
through the pages, she said, “There’s a chapter about how close
Napoleon came to invading, but he didn’t.” She found the chapter
 6 • M. J. Putney

she was looking for and caught her breath, her face turning
white.
Tory peered at the book and saw that the letters on the page
were twisting and flickering like live things. The words couldn’t
be read.
Mrs. Rainford said in a choked voice, “I remember what this
chapter said, but . . . it doesn’t say that anymore.”
“The text being in flux here suggests that the history isn’t set,”
Allarde said grimly. “Perhaps Napoleon just made the decision to
launch and that’s why we had the visions. If the Irregulars can do
something to prevent the invasion, that might be why history rec-
ords say that it didn’t happen.”
“If the past has changed, wouldn’t the present also be differ-
ent?” Rebecca, raised by two scientists, frowned as she tried to
puzzle it out.
“Time travel is a mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand
how it works,” Jack said, as grim as Allarde. “But there is danger
at home and to my family. I can feel it like a gathering storm.”
Elspeth, the fifth Irregular, rose. “We need to leave right away.
We haven’t much to pack.”
Ever practical, not to mention hungry, Cynthia said, “We
should take the rest of the cake. It will help us recover from the
mirror passage.”
Knowing that was true, Tory tried to eat her slice, but it tasted
like straw. She and the other Irregulars had faced the dangers of
war here in 1940, but her own time, her home and family, had not
been threatened. Not until now.
“I’ll pack the cake and some cheese,” Polly said briskly.
As the party dissolved, Nick caught Tory’s gaze and said with
deadly seriousness, “You’ve done so much for England in my time.
 Dark Destiny • 7

If there is anything, anything, that I can do to help, send a mes-

sage through the mirror and I’ll come instantly.”
“You saved my whole family,” Rebecca said in her soft French
accent. “I have only just discovered that I have magic, and I don’t
know how to use it. But I pledge everything within my power to
your ser vice.”
Tory thanked them, but she realized with cold foreboding
that even if all the Irregulars and their 1940 friends worked to-
gether, they were few and the French were many. The Irregulars
might not be able to save England.
 chapter 2

Tory had come through the mirror with almost no possessions, so

packing was quick. Allarde was waiting for her in the front hall of
the Rainford farmhouse, his gray eyes haunted. Silently she took
his hand, feeling how upset he was by his vision of invasion. Fore-
telling was not a comforting gift.
When the others joined them, they set off to the ruins of Lack-
land Abbey. Everyone came except Polly, who wasn’t yet strong
enough to walk that far. There was little talk. Jack and Cynthia
also held hands. Since the village of Lackland was Jack’s home
and all his family was there, he was even more tense than the
other Irregulars.
Here in 1940, it was autumn and darkness fell early. The cool
 Dark Destiny • 9

night air carried the drone of distant engines as Nazi aircraft

crossed the English Channel to bomb London. The attacks had
been continuing for months and London hadn’t broken yet, but
Tory had seen pictures of the staggering destruction. Bombs had
fallen here in Lackland, but only by accident, since a small fish-
ing village wasn’t a worthwhile target.
Weapons in her own time were not so devastating, but they
were bad enough. Napoleon Bonaparte had become first consul
of France and ruler of most of Europe because he was a brilliant
and ruthless general. Tory shivered at the thought of France con-
quering England and Bonaparte swaggering through Westmin-
ster Abbey.
In Tory’s time, Lackland Abbey was the school where Tory and
her friends had been sent to be “cured” of their magical abilities.
In this time, the abbey that she knew had been reduced to rubble
by German bombs. Nick Rainford had had to dig a new entrance
to the time portal they called Merlin’s Mirror.
Once she descended belowground to the chalk tunnels they
called the Labyrinth, Tory felt the tug of the mirror’s powerful
energy. She had a special affinity for the mirror’s magic, so she
acted as guide when she and her friends moved through the portal
from one time to another. She brightened her mage light so she
could pick her way through tunnels cluttered with fallen stones.
The group entered the chamber that held the mirror, and Tory
mentally greeted it. The ancient, powerful energy had a kind of
awareness, and it recognized her. She thought of it as a distant
but rather benevolent uncle that approved of her efforts.
She drew a deep breath. “We need to go back to a time shortly
after Jack and Cynthia and Elspeth came through the mirror.
I think you said you came to join us two days after Nick and
Allarde and I were pulled through?”
 10 • M. J. Putney

Elspeth nodded. “It was late at night, after a study session of

all the Irregulars. You’ll probably want to add half a day to be
sure we return later than we left.”
“Time to say our good-byes, then.” Tory’s smile was crooked.
“I hate good-byes.”
Her great gray eyes solemn, Rebecca gave Tory a swift, fierce
hug. “To say thank you is not strong enough.”
Tory hugged her back. They’d shared a perilous adventure in
France that had brought them close. “When we’ve made it safely
home, we’ll send a message stone back to you here. Please send
message stones about how your family is doing in Oxford. I know
you’ll miss them.”
Rebecca stepped back. “I do, but they are safe and so are my
father’s research assistants and their families. They will work hard
to help create the miracle medicine.”
Anne Rainford gave the next hug. “Be careful, Tory. Don’t let
Allarde and Jack kill themselves by being too heroic.”
Tory sighed. “I’ll try, but they are both entirely too noble.”
Nick hugged her last. He was her first friend in the twentieth
century, the person who found her when she’d fallen through the
mirror into another time and was alone and terrified. “If you
need me, send a message and I’ll be back.” He grinned. “I’d like
to visit 1804 and be able to leave the Labyrinth rather than stay
there like a rat in a maze.”
“If you’re needed, we won’t hesitate to call,” she promised. “You
owe me a considerable debt for hauling me through the mirror to
France!”
“I do indeed.” His glance touched Rebecca before moving back
to Tory. “We all work well together. Surely we can stop a French
invasion.”
 DARK  COMPANION

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