Whisper the Dead (The Lovegrove Legacy) (4 page)

“I … um.”

“Gretchen, I have been your mother your entire life. You cause more trouble than a houseful of adolescent boys.” She sniffed, looking horrified. “And you reek of magic.”

She winced. “It’s only a little magic,
Maman
,” she said in what she hoped was a soothing voice.

“It makes you a target, Gretchen,” she snapped, not sounding the least bit soothed. “Surely you must realize that by now.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“I think we should pull you out of that school,” her mother added suddenly. “You would benefit more from a proper finishing academy.”

She was already pretending to attend lessons at a finishing school, instead of the Rowanstone Academy for Young Ladies. To the Beau Monde she was learning how to draw, speak French and Italian, play a harp, and embroider. In reality, she was learning the history of the witching families, how to work spells, and how to send her wolfhound-familiar out into the world. And also, sadly, embroidery. Adding hours and hours of actual curtsying, elocution, and deportment? She shuddered. “You can’t be serious.”

“What has magic ever done for us?” her mother asked bitterly. “Besides poison my sister’s mind and divide my family?”

“I know all about Emma’s mother,” Gretchen said quietly. “It wasn’t like that.”

Lady Wyndham lifted her chin, retreating behind her customary haughty disdain. “She made her choice. And I made mine.”

Gretchen wanted to say that Theodora made her choice in order to protect Emma, but her mother wouldn’t understand. She’d never see past a baby born on the wrong side of the blanket, never mind to a Greymalkin warlock. “It’s not that simple,” she said instead.

“I’ll tell you what’s simple, Gretchen. Find yourself a husband before it’s too late. Social power is the only real power left to a woman. Use it.”

“You can’t keep me from the academy,” she argued. “
Maman
, I’m a Whisperer. It’s already … uncomfortable.”

“All the more reason to turn your back on that world.”

“That’s not an option anymore. Aunt Theodora’s binding
spell wore off. I am who I am, now,
Maman
. Whether or not you approve.”

She pulled away and slipped into the parlor before her mother responded. Penelope slid her arm through Gretchen’s. “Do you want me to play a pirate’s song?” Penelope was an accomplished singer and already famous for her performances at the pianoforte. Lady Worthing’s dinner party was to be followed by the arrival of more guests for the musicale.

“Tempting, but my mother would smack you with more than her fan,” Gretchen said.

“She didn’t even notice last time.” Penelope grinned.

“Girls,” Lady Wyndham snapped from the doorway. “Mingle!”

“Honestly, my mother should work for the Order. She’s worse than a Keeper when it comes to tracking. I’m starting to feel like a wounded deer.”

Emma snorted, joining them. “Try having antlers on your head.”

“I thought One-Eyed Joe gave you a cameo for that very purpose,” Gretchen said as they wandered farther into the drawing room.

“Your mother made me take it off before we went in for supper. She said it wasn’t appropriate evening wear.” She grinned. “I told her neither were antlers, and then she got all quiet and scary so I worked the Fith-Fath glamour to hide them myself.”

The end of the room was cleared of furniture except for rows of chairs facing the pianoforte and harp in one corner. Beeswax candles dripped in silver candelabrums and sconces set
into the cream-colored walls. The ceiling was a mosaic of frolicking lambs and rosy-cheeked cherubs. “Gah,” Penelope said, when she glanced up. “That’s ghastly.”

“Why are there so many moths about?” Gretchen fanned one away from her face.

“It’s been a bad spring for them,” Emma agreed. “My windows are covered at night.”

“Insects in the drawing room.” Gretchen grinned. “My mother will turn rabid.”

It was another half hour before the men joined the party in the drawing room. The other guests trickled in, trailing the scents of rain and the yellow London fog pressing at the windows. When Cormac, Viscount Blackburn, arrived, Penelope glanced at Emma. “If you and Cormac are still trying to pretend you barely know each other, you should probably stop looking at each other like that,” she pointed out. “Not to mention, you’re in very great danger of setting the carpet on fire. I’m positively blushing.”

“You are not,” Emma said, though her own cheeks were pink. She looked away. Cormac and his friend crossed the room to greet their hosts.

“Who’s that with him?” Gretchen wondered. The tall blond man looked so icy and proper, she felt an instant need to wrinkle him. His cravat was white and spotless; it may as well have been made out of snow. Despite the chiseled Grecian-statue perfection of his features, there was something slightly dangerous about him.

“That’s Tobias Lawless,” Penelope said, her long black curls
sweeping over her shoulder as she tried to turn subtly on one heel to get a better look at him. “He took off his jacket the night of the fire at the Pickford ball, remember?”

“No,” Gretchen said crisply. His blue eyes snapped onto hers as if he had heard her. The blasted man was looking down his nose at her. “I don’t.” He looked away dismissively. That was even worse.

“Pity.” Penelope gave a little sigh. “He has lovely shoulders.”

“You’re incorrigible.” Emma grinned, nudging her.

“My mother says the human body is a beautiful miracle to be appreciated.”

“My mother says the physical body is something a lady ignores.” Gretchen rolled her eyes. “Of course she only says that when my nose is itchy or I’m starving for cake.”

Emma’s mother, having recently turned herself into a deer, didn’t say much of anything at all.

“Why is he staring at us?” Gretchen grumbled. “Surely he’s seen the Lovegrove witches before.”

“He’s not staring at us.” Penelope smirked. “He’s staring at
you
.”

“Don’t be daft,” she said, dismissing the very notion. She winked. “I haven’t done anything worth staring at yet.”

“And you’ll keep it that way, Gretchen Thorn,” her mother snapped from behind her shoulder. “Tobias Lawless, Viscount Killingsworth, is heir to the Starkwood earldom. So if he’s looking at you, you’ll smile prettily.”

It explained why all the ladies watched him over their fans, but not why he was watching
her
.

“And he is unmarried,” her mother announced in a fervent whisper best suited to declarations involving kings and kingdoms.

“Oh, mother,” Gretchen groaned. She met Emma’s sympathetic glance. Penelope was too busy looking curiously at Tobias.

“Lord Gilmore is also unmarried.”

“He’s thirty-seven!”

“And he has a duchess for a sister,” her mother replied, as if it negated all arguments. “Choose, Gretchen. Or I will choose for you.” She sailed away as conversation quieted and the guests were urged to take their seats.

Someone’s marriageable young daughter sat at the harp and sang with the enthusiasm of a cat trapped in an icehouse. Her father eyed all the young men hungrily.

“Hide me, won’t you?” a young man asked, sidling up to Penelope. He glanced imploringly at the cousins. His eyes were strikingly moss green. “He keeps staring at me with his quizzing glass. I feel as though I’m sitting exams again.”

Penelope chuckled. “Are you married?”

“No.”

“Then Lord Herringdale is most definitely looking at you.”

“He’s rather fearsome. Am I to assume that is his unmarried daughter currently abusing the harp?”

“Yes, but she’s harmless.”

“Good to know. And I do beg your pardon,” the young man added with a bow. He was very handsome. Penelope was already starting to melt. “We haven’t been properly introduced but I was feeling rather desperate. I am Lord Beauregard. And you have quite saved me, Lady … ?”

“Penelope Chadwick,” Penelope replied. “And my cousins, Lady Emma Day and Lady Gretchen Thorn.”

“I am in your debt.” His brown hair tumbled over his forehead and his crooked smile was charming. He bowed again, wine sloshing over the rim of his glass. Drops splattered onto Penelope’s pink gloves, staining them across the knuckles. He flushed, mortified. “I am very sorry, Lady Penelope,” he apologized. “I have the manners of a beast. Please, allow me to have those cleaned for you.”

Penelope only smiled. “They’re only gloves, my lord. I’ll have them dyed burgundy and start a new fashion.”

“You are as kind as you are beautiful.”

Penelope blushed. Emma and Gretchen grinned at each other behind her back, turning slightly away so as not to intrude. After a few minutes, Emma drifted away, mumbling something about tea, and Gretchen eased back into the shadows of a large potted palm tree.

By the time Penelope took her turn at the pianoforte, Gretchen had reached one of the side doors. She stepped back swiftly into the safety of the hall, narrowly avoiding knocking over a passing footman. “I’m very sorry, miss,” he said, even though she was the one flying out of nowhere.

She helped him steady his tray before vanishing into the library. It was full of leather-bound books and shadows. A candle burned in the far window, and another on one of the tables. The scent of dust clung to her as she eased deeper into the comforting darkness.

She didn’t hide in libraries because she was a bluestocking like Penelope, forever prattling on about poetry, but rather
because at most musicales and balls, it was the room least likely to be occupied. Couples were more interested in stealing kisses in conservatories, and old ladies sleeping off too much brandy generally escaped to the parlors, which left the libraries blessedly abandoned.

And luckily she knew the Worthing library as well as her own, right down to the popular novels hidden on the back shelf by the balcony. Good thing too; just last week she’d been trapped in the Brookfield library for hours with nothing to read but tracts on sheep shearing and the benefits of rotation crops. She’d fallen asleep somewhere between lentils and Egyptian onion farming.

The contrast between fighting off the Rovers and pasting a polite smile on her face for the single sons of earls was too stark. Residual magic burned through her. She was surprised the air around her didn’t crackle. Her mother shouldn’t begrudge her a stolen moment in the library, not if the alternative involved magic shooting off the ends of her hair. Hardly subtle.

Not to mention hardly marriageable material.

On second thought …

Better not. She’d already pushed her luck by going off with Godric.

Egyptian onion farming it was then. She walked along the book shelves, reading titles and glancing into the glass-fronted cabinets displaying painted globes. It was dull and dusty and soothing. Her witch knot stopped aching.

Until someone grabbed her arm, yanking it behind her back and spinning her around. Her cheek pressed to the cold glass of
a curio cabinet. Pain shot up to her elbow when she tried to move. “Who are you?” a man asked, his voice quiet and cold in her ear.

“Who am
I
?” she barked back. “Who the hell are
you
?” He evaded the kick she aimed at his most sensitive parts. Her skirts wrapped around her knees, hobbling and infuriating her. He turned her roughly around.

Tobias Lawless.

She wasn’t sure which of the two of them was more surprised.

Someone so chilly and perfect and wearing such a flawless cravat shouldn’t be mauling ladies in dark libraries. He also shouldn’t have several short iron daggers tucked inside his cutaway coat. It probably said something unsavory about her character that the sight of those daggers made her like him a bit more. But only a little bit.

“Let me go.” She yanked down savagely, breaking his hold. He didn’t move back, and his body continued to block her against the cabinets. The glass rattled.

“What are you doing?” He stepped closer still. She had to tilt her chin up.

“I am currently being accosted,” she snapped, driving the heel of her shoe into the top of his foot. He fell back a step, growling in his throat. Growling. He really didn’t seem the type.

She made a proper fist, not like the ones girls made when they hadn’t practiced before. She’d already punched a Rover tonight. She was very comfortable punching Tobias, Lord Killingsworth. Eager, in fact.

“What is
wrong
with you?” she asked finally. “Are you drunk?”

“Certainly not.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I’m the one being mauled and yet
you
take offense?”

“I can smell it on you,” he answered, which was no answer at all. “There’s no use prevaricating.”

“I don’t usually bother lying about perfume,” she replied, now more bewildered than concerned.

“Not perfume,” he ground out, as if
she
was the frustrating one. “Dark magic.”

Her eyes narrowed to angry slits. “I beg your pardon.”

“As you should.”

She aimed for his head. It was big and fat and so perfectly groomed, how could she miss?

He caught her wrist and squeezed. Hard. He shouldn’t have been fast enough.

An iron-nail pendant in the shape of a wheel slipped out from under his collar. Gretchen stared at it, then transferred her glare to his haughty, unkindly beautiful face. “I knew it.” Her smile was better suited to one of the animals in the zoological gardens. “You’re a bloody Keeper.”

“Which is how I knew you’ve been playing with magic beyond your ken.” He leaned in slightly. “I can smell it all over you.”

“What you smell,” she returned, drilling her finger into his chest until he stumbled back a step, “is some poor witch’s funeral nearly ruined by a bunch of Rovers. Who the Order is meant to keep controlled, if I’m not mistaken.”

And now he was
sniffing
her.

Oh, he was being very subtle about it. Some other girl might have thought he was interested in her, that he was flirting or leaning in for a kiss. But she knew better.

“
Now
what are you doing?” she asked, exasperated.

He froze. “Ascertaining the truth.”

“By flaring your nostrils?” She rolled her eyes. “Honestly, does that work on all the girls? You can’t gull me, Killingsworth. You’re not the first Greybeard I’ve met.” She shoved him, mostly because she could. “Now stop it.”