Bewitched (3 page)

The stranger stopped in a relatively quiet corner and turned to gaze at the dancers. “Do you believe in justice, Mr. Bentham?” he asked.

“Justice? Well… I daresay… yes, I—”

“Good.” The stranger contemplated the dancing couples as if they were intriguing insects under a microscope. “For that is what Lady Margaret wants you to do: help her to satisfy justice.” The man gave him another of these disconcerting stares.

To satisfy justice? The words made Bentham quake inside. “A duel?” he whispered disbelievingly. How could she expect him to fight a duel for her?

Again, the stranger laughed. “Nothing quite so dramatic, Mr. Bentham. It’s rather simple, actually: she wants you to open the door for her into the family of the Earl of Rawdon.” The thin lips lifted into an unpleasant smile. “Years ago, Lord Rawdon did my lady a great injustice, and it is time to right it.”

Bentham rubbed his hands. “Indeed, indeed.” This sounded easy. Most certainly better than repaying the money. “But how am I supposed to—”

“Lord Rawdon has got a younger brother.” Once more the stranger focused his attention on the dancers. “An
unmarried
younger brother. And by a happy coincidence you happen to have an unmarried daughter—if you catch my drift.”

Bentham’s mouth opened. “The… the… I…” Isabella? He was to sacrifice his only daughter?

The younger man turned his head a little and caught the expression on Bentham’s face, and he laughed-a slick, smooth sound. “Ah, never fear. Your daughter, your
real
daughter, is quite safe. For by chance, haven’t you happened to gain the responsibility for a young ward?” He cocked his head to the side, wordlessly inviting Bentham to follow his gaze, to look at the dancers.

Bentham’s eyes widened.

“A most happy coincidence, don’t you think?” the stranger asked softly. “Bourne’s little brat. Pair her off with him. You will be given some … assistance.”

“Assistance?” Bentham echoed. Yet when he turned, the stranger had already disappeared.

~*~

“She did
what
?” Drew burst out laughing. He fell sideways and rolled onto his back on the black leather seat of the carriage. One foot braced against the door, he crossed his hands behind his head and threw his friends a smug look. “Serves you right for attempting to break my heart.”

They had left the ball and were now headed to other entertainment.

Fox rolled his eyes. “Soul, ” he corrected in a mutter.

Cy frowned. “I’ll tell you which part of yours is going to be broken: your neck, if you continue lazing around like this.”

“Did I say ‘soul’?”

Fox’s eyebrow arched. “You did.”

“Fiddle-faddle.” Airily, Drew waved a hand. “
You
said you were going to break my
heart
. Don’t you think a man would remember a threat like that?”

“Or,” Cy continued with a sigh, “you might just bump your head and addle your brains.”

Fox leaned close. “His brains are
already
addled,” he disclosed to his friend in a stage whisper.

“Ha!” Drew struggled upright and pointed a finger at him. “Whom did Miss Bourne laugh at, hmm? You or me?” His smirk flashed a dimple in his cheek.

Fox couldn’t help himself: he grinned. He had always found Drew’s chubby cheeks highly amusing, given that the rest of the man most definitely did not incline toward chubbiness. Yet, with his curly blond hair and puppylike brown eyes, Drew generally resembled an oversized cherub.

“Touché.” Still grinning, Fox raised both hands.

“Got you there, didn’t I?” Drew’s nose wrinkled. Looking like a big, fat tomcat that had just devoured a particularly tasty mouse, he tapped his fingernail against his teeth. “But did you not find her delectable?” A dreamy look came over his face. “A face like a French porcelain doll…”

“With a body as plump as a peach,” Cy provided helpfully.

“Ah, no, Cy!” Drew grimaced. “That’s crude.”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice her body!” His friend shook his head.

Drew adopted a pious expression. “In matters of the heart, my dear Lord Stafford, a man tends to concentrate on the… um…
inner
values.”

Fox and Cyril exchanged a glance before both burst out laughing. “Dear God, Drew!” Cy managed to gasp after a while. He wiped his eyes, which had overflowed with merriment. “These
tendres
of yours always turn you into a raving lunatic!”

“Quite true.” Fox agreed with a chuckle. “You spout the most nonsensical notions that would do any March hare proud. Why, it puts a man quite off developing a
tendre
himself.”

Drew cocked his head to the side. “Foxy, Foxy, Foxy.” With an expression of utter sadness he shook his head. “Don’t tell me the charms of Miss Bourne left you cool as a cucumber. This would be most shocking indeed!”

“Ah, Drew, you know how Fox is.” Cy heaved a dramatic sigh. “While we all wallowed in calf love at Eton, not even sweet Nettie at the baker’s could wrench a sigh from the depths of Mr. Stapleton’s chest.”

A little self-consciously, Fox shrugged. “The little blonde? You know I prefer women of a more Italian hue.” Though he never dabbled in matters of the heart. For those, he had on good authority, could bring a man to ruin in no time at all. He shrugged again, to dislodge the uneasiness which gripped him: the tickle of ice down his spine, the tightening of his guts.

The bland smile he gave his friends proved a bit difficult to fabricate.

They were silent for the moment, and the sounds of London intruded into the cozy space inside the Stafford carriage. A city like London never slept—not even in the darkest hours of the night when the Wild Hunt was said to haunt the land.

Not that such a thing as the Wild Hunt had ever existed, of course. It was nothing but an old wives’ tale, the remains of a pagan past when Britain had been caught fast in the clutches of superstition. Luckily, science and progress had erased all such fancies and replaced them with rational thought. Yes, rational thought. It was something in which Fox believed above all else. Always had. Not for him the fanciful notion of love ever after.

He rolled his shoulders in an attempt to shake off his irrational worries once and for all. For what was there to feel uneasy about? After having witnessed what had happened to his brother, had he not sworn never to shackle himself to any woman, be it in love or—heaven forbid!—holy matrimony? Not that his friends would understand his rationale; certainly not Drew of the thousand
tendres
.

Besides, if Fox ever married, he would have to divulge the crude facts about his birth to his wife. How distasteful would that be? Certainly nothing he wanted to contemplate! There might be other men who were born in similar circumstances and who didn’t seem to care a fig whether the world at large knew about it or not. Fox, by contrast, would never willingly consider making himself vulnerable to society gossip.

Cyril cleared his throat. “Ah well.” He clapped Fox’s shoulder. “There you’ve got your explanation, Drew, why our friend here wasn’t as smitten with Miss Bourne as you were. Now, then…” He rubbed his hands. “All this talk about women and peaches is enough to make any man lusty, don’t you think?”

Glad for the change of topic, Fox stretched his limbs and yawned. “Absolutely.” While he might consider matters of the heart, and indeed marriage itself, a waste of time, matters of the flesh were an altogether different cup of tea. “What do you suggest?”

“Well…” Cy looked from one man to the other. “It all depends on whether you are in the mood for some sweet talking, or just some jaunty rut, doesn’t it?” He looked at them inquiringly.

Fox glanced at Drew. “A jaunty rut,” they said unison, and grinned.

“For of sweet talking,” Drew pointed out, “today we most definitely have had enough.”

“All right, then.” Cy raised his walking stick to rasp against the front partition of the carriage. “In this case I’d suggest Madame Suzette’s. Any objections, gentlemen?”

There were none.

Chapter Two

The next day, London woke to the news that a young gentleman named Henry Boothby had committed suicide. “His Braynes were Spleweth over the Walls of his Appartement,” one newspaper put it, with a regrettable lack of delicacy and an even more regrettable grasp of orthography. Before he murdered himself, young Mr. Boothby had apparently written a note—printed in whole by the newspaper, of course—saying he could no longer endure the
ennui
of buttoning and unbuttoning. Sadly, even in death he had to follow the dictates of the fashionable world and sprinkle his sentences with French terms.

Turning the page, Amy grimaced and started nibbling on another biscuit while she digested other horrors London had to offer.

In the meantime, Mrs. Bentham’s kitchen maid laid out to the cook her plan on how to stake a slug. “I lets it crawl over me skin ‘ere. Look.” She waved her hand in front of Mrs. Hodges’s face. “‘Ere. And then all I needs to do’s stick the slug onna thorn. And as soon as the slug’s dead, the wart’ll be gone!” she ended triumphantly.

“Now, now, girl, don’t excite yourself thus,” Mrs. Hodges growled. “Get on with peeling the potatoes instead.”

“But Mrs. Hodges!” Ethel wailed.

“Sticking a wee beastie onto a thorn…” The cook shook her head in agitation. Frills of gray hair escaped from under her enormous white bonnet.

Amy put her elbow onto the table and rested her chin on her hand. Dear heavens, the whole of London seemed a madhouse! Who would have thought it? She turned her attention to the servants. “And if you just let it crawl over your wart and don’t stick it onto a thorn afterwards?” she suggested to the kitchen maid. “It seems to me that it might be just the slug slime that—”

“Oh, but Miss Amy, that’s not how the charm works!” Ethel protested. “Ya needs t’ let it crawl o’er your skin and then stick it onna thorn, and when the slug’s dead the wart’ll be gone.”

The charm. Amy suppressed a sigh. Growing up in the country, she knew a lot about charms: a Shepherd’s Crown placed on a window ledge outside would keep the devil away; the possession of a Fairy Loaf would ensure bread in plenty; a Hag Stone suspended at the entrance door would keep witches away; carrying a horse chestnut would work against rheumatism; and carrying around the forefeet of a mole, cut from the poor animal while still alive, would forever free their bearer from toothache.

Amy snorted. These were not magic. Not
real
magic.

Real magic made getting rid of warts easy. After all, they were just misbehaving bits of flesh. All you had to do was to persuade the warts to, well, drop off. That would leave a tiny scar, of course, but you couldn’t just take things away from a body and not expect any consequences. Still, this was most certainly better than tormenting a hapless animal. For real magic you didn’t need dried bat wings or glibbery toad eyes or things like that. Instead, it was all a matter of skills and talent. And concentration.

Of course, there was that accident with the portraits and, even worse, the accident with the frog. But that had been years ago, and Coll had been just thirteen and believed he could transform the frog into a prince. After all, you always heard about how it was done the other way around, didn’t you? Amy’s nine-year-old self had found it endlessly entertaining to wade through the ponds on the estate with her horde of cousins hunting frogs. However, the entertainment value of the experiment had rapidly sunk when they later were all covered with sticky blobs of frog remains. Transforming a frog into a prince had turned out to be slightly more complicated than they had thought.

“You know, you really shouldn’t be here, Miss Amy.” Mrs. Hodges checked on the soup that was boiling over on the fire. She turned and pointed her ladle at Amy. “What if the mistress finds out about it?”

Amy clasped her hands in her lap and aimed for an innocent expression. “Does Mrs. Bentham ever venture downstairs, Mrs. Hodges?”

“Well, of course not.”

“See?” Amy gave the cook a winning smile. “And I just can’t help finding your kitchen so very cozy.” Also, this was the only place in the house where a person could escape Isabella tormenting the fortepiano.

“But where shall I find a slug?” Ethel spoke up in a wail.

The poor slug. With real magic it could have been spared its slow and painful death; yet after the Blue Incident, Amy’s uncle had put a spell on her that would prevent her from mouthing any sort of spell or making contact with her family in any way for the foreseeable future. Instead of weaving spells or being led astray by her cousins, she’d been packed off to London to search for a husband. And that was that.

Amy sighed.

All because of one regrettable slip of concentration, or rather miscalculation. Could it be helped that she enjoyed testing the scope of her magical talents and putting together new spells? The one that should have turned her room at Three Elms cobalt blue had been an ingenious idea if anybody asked her. And exciting—a cost-effective way of redecoration. By mere accident the spell had gotten slightly out of hand.
Careless
, Uncle Bourne had called it. Or rather, he had shouted. But really, her spell had done no serious harm: neither had any strangers seen the blue manor house, nor had the effect proved to be long-lasting. By the next morning all traces of blue had already vanished.

She pursed her lips.

The vexing thing was that even without the Blue Incident it would have been only a matter of time before she would have been sent off to some fashionable town or other to find a suitable husband. After all, she was of marriageable age, and she well knew it did not do to lose time over such important things as the husband hunt, otherwise one would be considered firmly on the shelf before too long.

“And I really wouldn’t want to spend the rest of my life as a hedge witch in a quaint cottage at the edge of a good, old English village and be called Nanny Something-or-Other,” Amy muttered to herself. Even though the slug population would have rejoiced over their escape from a horrid death.

She heaved another sigh.

Sometimes she wished she had been born a man: then she could have taken a respectable profession and would have neither had to trouble herself with problems of matrimony nor with keeping her magic secret from a doltish husband. Furthermore, she wouldn’t have needed to grant this same doltish husband any liberties with her body, just to secure herself a place in society. To imagine that Mr. Polidori’s hero let the horrid Lord Ruthven marry his sister just so the girl wouldn’t face social ruin! Thus, what the poor thing faced instead was being sucked dry by a vampyre. Marvelous.