The Golden Season (40 page)

He rose to his feet, at the door in a trice, and flung it wide. Lydia stood at the end of the hall surrounded by a circle of gentlemen and footmen, milling and barking at her like a pack of little dogs around a particularly vicious lioness. She was magnificent in her disdain, nonchalantly peeling off her gloves as she ignored the commands of the yapping men.

“Are you by chancing looking for me, ma’am?” he asked from the doorway.

At the sound of his voice, her head snapped up and the smile and eagerness that broke over her beautiful face took his breath away. How could he let her go now that he’d seen her again? Did she know what she risked by coming here? And not only to her reputation.

At the expression on his face, however, the joy faded. She took a small breath and raised her chin. “Why, yes, Captain Lockton. I am.”

In answer, he stepped aside from the door and bowed deeply, sweeping his hand toward the anteroom in an invitation to enter. Again her chin hitched up and she sailed toward him, the men before her fussing and fuming.

“You must leave here at once, Lady Lydia! At once!”

“Captain Lockton, women are not allowed in this club!”

“Lady Lydia, you cannot be here!”

“Consider your membership, sir, to be revoked!”

Neither Lydia nor he paid the men or their lackeys the slightest heed. Lydia glided past Ned into the room. He turned around, shutting the door behind him.

“Ma’am?” he said, inclining his head.

Whatever she read in his face caused her to blush and her sangfroid to falter.

“Why haven’t you answered my letters?” she demanded.

“Forgive me if something you wrote required an answer. I have not yet read them,” he said. God, she was beautiful. A pale green bonnet framed her fine-boned face, the tilted eyes luminous in the dim light of the cloistered room. Her lips were paler than he recalled, her skin more fragile looking. Was Smyth treating her well? He didn’t even dare ask.

“You didn’t read them?” she repeated.

“No, ma’am.”

“Why not?” she demanded, coming closer to him.

He did not know how he could reply
. Because the pain is already nigh unbearable?
And how would that admission help either of them?

So instead he simply bowed his head and said, “Forgive my rudeness, Mrs. Smyth.”

Her eyes widened in what looked like surprise. “I hope you are not addressing me, sir, because that title belongs to another.”

He frowned, uncertain of what she meant, only certain that he must be misinterpreting it. “Excuse me, ma’am, but I do not take your meaning.”

“Had you read my letters,” she said, a little storm brewing in the deep purple eyes, “you would already know my meaning, Captain. I am not Mrs. Smyth. I am Lady Lydia Eastlake. My marriage to Mr. Smyth has been annulled.”

A strong man, indeed. But she’d already taken him out at the knees once and now she did so again. His breath came out in a whoosh, as though he’d taken a blow. “How?” he demanded, eyes riveted on hers. “
How
?”

“Before we wed by special license, Mr. Smyth signed a contract in front of witnesses in which he promised to deliver to me the sum of fifty thousand pounds by four o’clock Wednesday last. Mr. Smyth did not deliver—at least that is what he told his godfather, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and since no check was ever cashed, the archbishop was obliged to annul the marriage on the grounds of fraud.” For the first time a smile touched her face, a gamin smile he found irresistible. “In return for a substantial bequest.” She tipped an eyebrow at him.

He could not speak. He didn’t trust himself to move. He’d thought all hope dead and now, suddenly, to discover it was not. His heart beat painfully in his chest, his throat closing with emotion.

She frowned and swallowed, a little nervous. “Which Mr. Smyth happens to be able to provide as he has recently come into a great inheritance having followed certain stipulations of his deceased grandfather—God rest his soul—by marrying before the old gentleman died.” She glanced at him. “Oh, not me. As you well know, the church does not consider that an annulled marriage was ever a marriage at all. No, Mr. Smyth has married a Miss Kitty La Grasa.”

Her face pokered up as she considered. “I wonder how much of the ready Mr. Smyth has laid out for special service from the church this month.” She looked at him. “What do you think?”

“Why didn’t you come to me?” His words came out in a hoarse whisper. “Why didn’t you trust me? When I saw Cod strike you I
died
that I was not there to take the blow, to protect you, to shield you, that you had not given me that right! If he had—” He broke off, unable to go further.

The insouciance fled from Lydia’s expression, revealing her pain. “There was no time. I did not dare. I was afraid you would kill him.”

He shook his head.

“I wrote. I explained. I told you when the annulment proceeded. I told you when it was signed. I sent word by messenger, by letter, by emissary. And this”—she made a quick sweeping gesture around the room—“bastion of male solidarity refuses to admit ladies under any circumstances.” Her lips pressed together primly. “Until today, and they had no choice lest they wished to physically assault a lady.”

And he had not given her the benefit of reading her words. He had not trusted her. For long minutes they stood regarding each other, Ned raked by guilt over the wrong he’d done her, and Lydia waiting for some sign, some indication of his feelings. But Ned was ever good at concealing his emotions and suddenly, abruptly, she’d had enough.

“For the love of God, Ned,” she finally burst out. “Why am I always fated to be the pursuer? Why am I always so rashly exhibiting love that you so carefully conceal? What must I do to persuade
you
to work at attaining
me
?”

His eyes widened.

Her ire was rising as she spoke, her indignation fanning the color in her cheeks, the brilliance in her eyes. “First the maze, then the Spencers’ masquerade, then I come to your town house, and now, now this! I am worse than Caro Lamb, by God, I am. And I will not have it any longer. I have pride,
too
, Captain Lockton, and I am
done
with you and your much vaunted honor—”

And then he was before her, sweeping her up into his arms and kicking open the anteroom door and striding down the hallowed, women- free halls of Boodle’s, past the gape- mouthed members and the laughing attendants. She gasped and clung to his neck as he kicked open another door and they were outside and he was striding down St. James.

Horses reared as their drivers checked in astonishment, passersby bumped into one another as they ogled and strained to see, shopkeepers and their clients ran out their doors, and street urchins fell in line behind them, laughing and hooting. And in the fashionable bow window of White’s, the dandies spontaneously stood and applauded.

Down St. James he strode, Lydia locked tight in his embrace, heading for the office of the Archbishop of London, whose mother, perchance, happened to have the maiden name of Lockton. He only paused once to look down at her, and nothing was concealed in his expression.

“I love you, ma’am,” he said. “And you shall never be done with me.”

 

It was noon in Little Firkin, Scotland. Not a traditional witching hour—midnight being considered more conducive to mayhem and maledictions—but as the townsfolk were always fast asleep by midnight and unwitnessed mayhem was generally acknowledged amongst witchly communities to be a wasted effort, it would have to do.

Besides, every indication suggested that noon was the new midnight. To wit: At exactly twelve o’clock a cock crowed, the bell tower clock struck
thirteen
times, and a weird sound (which later would be identified by a certain skeptic as the Bristol-Fort George train but right now was pretty much universally recognized as the cry of a soul consigned to hell) echoed mournfully through the tiny hamlet.

Otherwise it was a perfectly lovely spring day. The sun glimmered on the river dancing along the town’s eastern boundary and shimmered on the snowcapped mountains encircling the small valley that sheltered Little Firkin.

Lovely day or not, what with the clock, the cock, and the eerie moan, the people of Little Firkin—no strangers to portents, portents being their bread and butter, so to speak—stopped what they were doing and paid attention. Those leaning over their back fence for their daily chin-wag hurried to the front yard, while those inside poked their heads out of their front doors. Half a dozen shopkeepers and an equal number of tavern owners—Little Firkians having long ago discovered that living in close proximity with the supernatural was a thirsty business—crowded their windows to see what Something Wicked This Way Came.

On cue, a wind nickered to life in one of the town’s few alleys and skittered forth, kicking up a dust devil of leaves and halfpenny candy wrappers as a voice like a strangled cat pealed through the town center.

“Aieeeee!”

Little Firkin rubbed its collective hands together in anticipation. Women with small children shoved their tots behind them, while those with older brats squawked and flapped their arms, shooing them off the street like hens quarantining chicks before a storm. The old geezers in town towed their stools out to get a ringside seat at the anticipated proceedings.

They were not disappointed.

An ancient crone with a face like a withered apple appeared at the end of the town’s main thoroughfare amidst a swirl of dust, her raggedy multicolored skirts shedding bits of decaying lace along with the crumbs from her morning’s biscuit.

“Aieeeee!” The hag’s screech broke into a coughing fit that ended only after she expelled a bit of cat hair. She hoisted an oak bole over her head on stringy little arms and cried, “I come to take Little Firkin!”

A collective gasp of consternation and pleasure rose from the onlookers. A witch-off sounded just the thing for a fine spring day, and this promised to be a right doozy of a witch-off.

For half a dozen years, the old crone at center stage, Grammy Beadle, had been trying to lay her witchly claim over Little Firkin. She lived in Beadletown, twenty miles away up in the mountains, and not a town at all but a ramshackle collection of disreputable crofts populated entirely by Beadles—a race of cattle thieves and malingerers.

About ten years ago one of Grammy Beadle’s grand-children, in what was doubtless an attempt to find something other than her family with which to occupy the old hag, had convinced Grammy that she oughtn’t hide her light under a bushel and should think of extending her reign of terror—or, more succinctly, reign of annoyance—to the other hamlets in the vicinity. It shouldn’t be too hard, this same sanguine grandchild had explained, there not being many witches anymore. And as for the upkeep on Grammy’s potential realm, it would involve only a bit of travel now and again to check up on the constituency.

Grammy Beadle liked the idea. Within a year, she was not only the Witch of Beadletown but the Witch of Ben’s Tavern (Ben and his way station, even by Grammy Beadle’s admittedly liberal definitions, not being worthy of hamlet status) and a year after that the Witch of That Pisshole East of Where All Those Damned Beadles Live.

From there she had turned her malignant gaze south toward the metropolis of Little Firkin, population 217, and it was here that her March of Irritation abruptly stopped. Coming out of the post office at the far end of town was the person who’d stopped her: a red-haired, very pretty, and very young lady dressed in the height of Parisian fashion.

Her appearance gave even Grammy pause. Hundreds of miles from the nearest city, cloistered by ringing mountains and raging rivers, marooned in a backwater of time and place while the rest of the world charged ahead with industrial fervor, a fashion plate was as unexpected as a kootchie dancer at a church social.

A rakishly tilted scrap of straw was perched atop an ingeniously arranged pile of flame-colored hair, while an ostrich feather, dyed to match the periwinkle braid edging a close-fitting velvet jacket, caressed a softly rounded cheek. Her skirts molded snugly about a womanly derriere before belling out into extravagant yards of green plaid that brushed the plank sidewalk. The open parasol resting on her shoulder dappled her pretty face with sunlight.

Grammy Beadle let out a shriek. “Stop, witch! I come to take Little Firkin from ye!”

The young lady, about to say something to her companion, a slender woman as arresting in her dark handsomeness as the girl was in her vibrant prettiness, turned around and faced Grammy.

“I come to take Little Firkin from ye!” the old woman repeated, hobbling down the center of the street.

“Why bother?” the very young lady asked, the lightest trace of a Highlands accent in her voice. “I’ll just give it to you.”

The old woman’s lips compressed. “Oh, no, missy. I’ll not have it said the Witch of Beadletown come by her dark empire through the pity of a young ’un.”

“That’s absurd.”

“That’s the way it be,” grumped Grammy Beadle.

The girl cast an imploring glance at her sable-haired companion. “Just a few minutes?”

“Oh, ballocks,” that lady muttered quite clearly. “But do try to hurry things up a bit, won’t you?” And, taking the girl’s parasol, she retreated to a bench outside the grocer’s.

“Ye canna hurry dark magik,” Grammy snapped, reaching into the tattered velvet bag hanging around her scrawny neck. With an evil cackle, she flung a fistful of something into the air—something that apparently had hard bits in it, because she yelped when the wind blew it back in her face. “Ouch!”

“What was that?” the young lady asked curiously.

“Magik! Magiks made with the feet of a white mouse born during the full moon.”