One Touch of Magic (2 page)

“As did yours.” For one moment, Miles allowed himself to remember that day, the smoke and mud and blood, the stink of death. It had been hell on earth, and this man had also faced it.

Miles shook his head to try to clear it of the horrible images, and stared out at the busy London street. People bustled about, going on their business, not even seeing the men sitting there. Sometimes, a well-dressed gentleman or lady would eye his officer’s uniform with puzzlement, or frown as if they knew him from somewhere, but they, too, were quick to pass.

“What did you do before you went into the Army, Lieutenant O’Riley?” he asked.

“I lived and worked on my uncle’s farm in Ireland, and was very good at it, if I say so myself. I would have gone back there after the war, but there was a quarrel with my cousins, who own the land now.” Lieutenant O’Riley eyed Miles speculatively. “You wouldn’t happen to have a farm, would you, sir?”

Miles laughed. “I fear not! My father was a younger brother, before his death last year, and had only a very small estate. It’s mostly given over to raising horses.”

Then he thought of something. His uncle, Lord Ransome, had a vast estate, with much farmland lying fallow. There had to be many jobs there, and he, Miles, was his bachelor uncle’s heir. . . .

A great wave of self-disgust broke over him. It was all his mother chatted about, him inheriting Ransome Hall, but he could not wish for anyone’s death to bring him good fortune. Even though he and his uncle were not close—Lord Ransome was a dedicated scholar and antiquarian, something that military Miles could not fully appreciate—he liked the old man. And what he did with his land was his own business.

Miles just had to find some other way of helping these poor, gallant men.

“Death! Destruction! Betrayal!” Phoebe Seward gasped melodramatically, twirled about in a flare of bright yellow silk skirts, and fell back onto a settee, one hand pressed to her brow. “The curse is upon me!”

Sarah laughed helplessly, and pushed aside the piles of books and papers on her desk. Who could concentrate on studies when Phoebe was about? “Oh, Phoebe, do stop,” she gasped.

Phoebe peeked at her from beneath her hand. “Aren’t you just the tiniest bit worried about the curse, Sally?”

“Not a bit! Except that it has scared some of my more superstitious workers away. Thora’s Treasure, and its accompanying curse, is just a legend. All places like this have them. That site in Ireland John and I worked on supposedly had leprechauns guarding it! I never saw hide nor hair of the little men, though.”

Phoebe lounged back on the settee, stretching her legs out on the brocade cushions. “What about the cave-in at the cellar of the old leather-worker’s shop?”

Sarah shook her head. “That was merely some of the aforementioned superstitious workers trying to frighten me away. Some of them believe that if I leave, and the village is covered up again, Thora will not be tempted to smite anyone. But I will not be frightened away by such nonsense. This work is far too important, and we have learned so much from it already.” Sarah picked up one of her sketches from the village, a plan of the great-room of a house. “There is much still to be found, I am sure.”

“Such as treasure?”

“Such as burials, and goldsmiths’ shops, and bakers!”

Phoebe sighed. “I have always said you have no romance in your soul, Sally Bellweather.”

Sarah laughed. “Perhaps not. You have enough romance for both of us! You and my sister Mary Ann. And I have better things to worry about than curses.”

Phoebe leaned forward, her golden hair falling back over her shoulder. “Has something happened that you have not told me about? Something to cause you worry?”

“The new marquis is coming to Ransome Hall. I had a letter last week from his attorney.”

“Oh, no! Does he want you to leave?”

Sarah shook her head. “Not at present. But he will want to meet with me to . . .” She dug about in her papers until she found the letter, and read a bit of it aloud. “To discuss my future tenancy of the property.”

The paper trembled in her hand. The Viking village was located on a corner of the estate owned by the Marquis of Ransome. The old marquis had been a friend of Sir John’s, and had gladly let them do what they liked on it, had even rented them this house, an old hunting box. He had continued the arrangement with Sarah after John’s death, but now the marquis himself had died, nearly a month before.

Sarah knew nothing of the new Lord Ransome, except that he was the old marquis’s nephew, and a military man only lately returned to England after valiant service on the Peninsula and at Waterloo.

She feared a military gentleman might have no patience with her work, with the scholarly nature of it, and the fact that it was a female who led the project. She had tried not to think of it these past few days, tried to just enjoy Phoebe’s visit, but it was always at the back of her mind. She had hoped Lord Ransome would stay away for a good long while.

Phoebe came and took the letter from Sarah’s hand to read it herself. “Surely, though, this new lordship will see the importance of what you are doing! He has to let you keep on, as his uncle did.”

“I pray you are right, Phoebe.”

“I know I am. Your work is valued by scholars all over the kingdom.”

Sarah looked up at her dearest friend. They had been friends for so very long that Phoebe was one of the few people Sarah felt she could share her true doubts with. To the rest of the world, she always kept up a careful facade of self-assurance and coolness. It was the only way she could maintain respect in the scholarly world she and John had occupied.

“Will the opinions of scholars matter to a major in His Majesty’s Army?” she asked. “Or will he see it as a waste of good property?”

Phoebe put the letter back down on the desk. “I should stay with you until Lord Ransome comes. I will write to Caro, and tell her not to expect me next week.”

Sarah shook off her moment of vulnerability, her instant of doubt. She was always strong—she had to stay strong now. “Nonsense, Phoebe dear! Your sister needs you, and I know you are eager to see your new baby nephew. And did you not say Harry will join you there?”

Phoebe blushed, and turned away with a carefully careless little laugh. “My husband will not miss me for a few more days! And baby William will still be there next month.”

“But he will be so much bigger. No, I cannot be selfish and keep you here. It is not as if I will be all alone. My sister Mary Ann is coming to stay, and Neville Hamilton will return soon from his wedding trip. He has been of invaluable help at the village, and perhaps he could speak to Lord Ransome, if the marquis has no wish to have dealings with a woman. So, you see, Phoebe, you
must
go to Caroline, or there will be no room here!”

Phoebe still looked doubtful, but she smiled and went along with the talk of Sarah’s family. “How is dear Mary Ann? Did she not have an infatuation with poor Mr. Hamilton last year?”

“A schoolgirl infatuation only! I hope she will be over it, now that he is married. She is to make her bow next year, and Mother has great hopes for her.”

Phoebe sat back down on the settee, watching Sarah closely. Sarah knew what that speculative look meant—her friend was up to some scheme.

“So Mary Ann is to go to London!” Phoebe said cheerfully. “And what of you, Sally? Have you not considered going to Town? You would be a much better chaperone for Mary Ann than your mother. And you could stay with Caro and me! What fun we would have! And think of all the eligible gentlemen you could meet.”

Sarah laughed. So it was another plea to go to Town! She should have known. Phoebe had been trying to persuade her of it for months, dropping hints here and there about the delights of the Season. Phoebe, a voracious novel reader and happily married herself, was convinced no woman could truly be happy without romance in her life.

“I cannot go next Season,” she said. “I have my work here.” And her one Season, where she had met Sir John, had been a crashing bore, so vacuous and such a waste of time. She had no desire to repeat it.

“This work cannot last forever,” Phoebe said gently. “Surely it will be done before the spring, which is months away!”

“After the excavation is finished, I will have to write about it. I have no time for London fribbles.”

“It would not be all balls and routs,” Phoebe argued. “You love the theater, and there are the libraries, the British Museum, antiquarian societies you could join! I know you did not enjoy your Season very much, Sally, but things are different now. You are a widow, and can do as you like. We could have such fun.”

It
did
sound tempting, when Phoebe put it like that. She was a member of several antiquarian societies already, but kept up with them only by correspondence. A chance to attend their meetings in person would be most welcome, as would the chance to visit museums and libraries. The society of the nearby village of Upper Hawton was most congenial, but had nothing like that to offer.

She looked over her cluttered desk, at the drawings and notes that represented her work. The work she
owed
John. He had been a good husband to her, had given her a good life. The work on the village was far from over; she could not abandon it for the frivolities of Town.

But she could not bear to disappoint Phoebe, either, not when her friend was only trying to help, and looked at her so hopefully. “Perhaps,” she said. “We will see how things are going here later, after—after Lord Ransome arrives.”

Phoebe smiled. “I will be content with that—for now. But we must find some merry things to do this week, some assemblies or card parties before I must leave, and you must face the new marquis.”

Sarah laughed. “Indeed! But perhaps, if I am fortunate, I will never have to meet Lord Ransome after all.”

“How so, Sally?”

“Perhaps the curse of Thora’s Treasure will smite him down before then!”

The breeze was soft and warm against her cheek, the sun hot where it beat down on her head. Sarah leaned back on her elbows in the sweet-scented grass, closing her eyes to let the summer day wash over her.

She knew it was just a dream; it had the blurry edges of unreality, the perfection a real day would lack. She also wore something that looked suspiciously like a nightdress, loose and white and soft, with tight sleeves, bound at the waist with a thin silver chain. Her hair spilled over her shoulders onto the ground.

Never
in real life would she have gone about so disheveled! She intended to enjoy this dream while it lasted, though. It would vanish, as so many others before.

She lay flat on the grass, and opened her eyes to stare up at the spreading branches of the ancient tree above her. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting shifting shadows around her.

Suddenly, a face appeared between her and the sky, a figure leaned over her. A man, a beautiful, godlike man, with golden hair that fell to his shoulders, and eyes a color to rival the sky. And he was smiling at her,
her
, a smile full of secrets and a hot sweetness.

He smiled as if he knew her—intimately.

“So here you are,” he said, his voice rough and rich. It sent a shiver along her skin to hear it. “I have been looking for you. You are always running from me.”

“I am not running now,” Sarah murmured. As if compelled by some overwhelming force beyond her control, she slid her hand behind his neck, drawing him down to her, closer and closer. His hair was satin soft to her touch, his skin hot.

Sarah’s eyes drifted shut. Never had she felt like this before, never! A terrible longing seized her in her very heart. She wanted his lips on hers,
needed
them. . . .

A sudden chill touched Sarah’s flesh, driving away the heat of a summer’s day’s passion. She tried desperately to hold on to the dream, reached out for it with a cry, but it slipped away. As all dreams do.

She sat up to find herself in her own chamber in the hunting box. She had kicked aside the bedclothes, and the breeze from the half-open window was cold on her legs.

She rubbed at her face, her head aching with unfulfilled longing and the remnants of sleep. “It was just a dream,” she whispered. “Just a foolish dream. Like all those others I have had.”

Just a dream. But
who
was that dream man?

Miles Rutledge, the new Marquis of Ransome, sat on top of a tree-shaded hill, surveying his uncle’s land, spread out before him in a patchwork of green meadows and speckled farmland.

Or rather, it was
his
land. He could not get used to that idea. He did not feel in the least like a landowner, or a marquis. He was just plain Major Rutledge, and all the bows and uncertain expressions on the faces of the tenants as he passed were most unsettling. It left him with the strange sense of being in some unreal dreamworld, one he would awaken from to find he was back in the dust of Spain, sleeping on the sun-baked ground.

But the dirt beneath his horse’s hooves now felt very solid, as Zeus pawed at the ground, eager to be off on a gallop. The Ransome estate, spreading as far as the eye could see, was real. What he had seen of it today was prosperous and tidy, yet strangely underused. Fields that could be under cultivation, providing jobs and food, lay fallow. His uncle had been a scholar, wrapped up in his studies of ancient Britain, and obviously not much interested in the mundanities of the modern world.

Miles thought of all the men who had returned from brave service in the war to find no jobs, no way to take care of their families. It made him feel so helpless—and angry.

Mr. Benson, the bailiff of the estate, rode up to Miles’s side, breaking into his thoughts. “So, we’ve seen most of the estate today, my lord—the most important sections, anyway,” he said.

“You’ve obviously been a fine caretaker since my uncle died, Mr. Benson,” Miles answered. “And perhaps even before that?”