So Enchanting

by Connie Brockway

  It was a high-stakes game she played, hoping to divert his suspicions by inviting them, and she could not tell whether she succeeded. She moved away from him, putting distance between them. Having done so, she could for the first time see more than his shoulders and face.

  His wet shirt clung to his upper torso, molding tight to the planes and angles of a brawny chest, flat, corrugated belly, and muscular arms. Water made the fine cloth transparent, revealing the dusky hue of his skin and the black hair covering his chest.

  She looked away, praying her flesh was still too cold to raise a blush. He leaned toward her, bracing his weight on one fist planted on the ground between them. The movement did fascinating, subtle things to the muscles along his rib cage and shoulders. No wonder he’d handled her weight so easily. He was composed of nothing but brawn and bone and dark, bronzed skin. Like some dangerous predatory animal.

  And that, she reminded herself, was what he was: a predator focusing his sights on anyone stupid enough to attract his notice. A bird of prey set loose in the skies above London to rid it of vermin. Like Alphonse. And her.

  Caution and common sense came crashing back.

  Divert by invitation? The man was a seasoned investigator and a renowned barrister. She’d been an idiot to think to play games with him. She had only one hope of coming out of any encounter with Lord Sheffield unscathed, and that was not to have any encounters.

  “Good God, you’re shaking like a leaf. We have to get you warmed up.” He stood and scooped her up again into his arms. This time she was not nearly so comfortable. She was aware of each shift of tendon and sinew against her body, of the breadth of his hand spanning her waist, the rise and fall of his chest with each breath he took.

  “You can put me down.” Her voice was chill with fear. “I can walk.”

  “Nonsense. You don’t weigh more than a drowned cat.”

  “Put me down,” she said, taking refuge in flinty imperiousness. “I am not a sack of flour to be manhandled about at your discretion.”

  Spots of dark bronze appeared high on his cheeks. Without another word, he set her on her feet and stepped away.

  “I shall send someone with your jacket as soon as I return to Quod Lamia,” she said.

  “It can wait until this evening.” He looked embarrassed, angry, and confused by her abrupt coldness. Which was good. She knew it was good. But it seemed a poor sort of way to thank him for rescuing her and reassuring her and holding her and making her remember how it felt to have someone take care of you rather than always being the one to take care.

  “Thank you,” she said, hating the stiff formality in her voice.

  “My,” he said. “If that didn’t sound like it cost you a pint of blood.”

  She flushed, pretending not to hear. Could he never act in the prescribed manner? Why didn’t he just bow and go away, like a normal man? She fought back a retort and instead turned away. She heard his footsteps behind her. She looked over her shoulder.

  “Please. It isn’t necessary for you to come with me. Quod Lamia is only a quarter mile through that pine wood,” she said, nodding toward the wood’s edge. “In fact, I insist.”

  There was nothing he could do but acquiesce, but this he did with poor grace.

  “Fine,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. He just stood there.

  “Are you going to just stand there and watch me?” she asked.

  “Unless you object to that, too,” he said.

  Oh, she wanted to. She wanted to stay, too. She could feel the heat of battle rising in her veins, a singing sort of vibrancy she had come to feel comfortable with. From the pine wood, some gray jays began squawking loudly.

  Oh, God. They felt it, too.

  “Good-bye, Lord Sheffield,” she said, and hurried away, all too aware of his eyes on her.

  And the scolding chatter of a dozen jays.

  Chapter 12

  Grey watched Fanny stomp her way into the pine grove and disappear. Only then did he turn.

  Dictate to him where he must go and whom he could watch, would she? The sun and the brisk breeze coming off the mountains had nearly dried his shirt, but his trousers and socks were still wet. And cold. And bloody uncomfortable. All of which he deserved for acting like such a raw, heated, untutored boy.

  By God, he couldn’t believe the woman had actually made him blush. Blush. He hadn’t blushed since he was sixteen and a doxy purporting to be Cleopatra’s “spirit” had landed in his lap hands first. There had been nothing spectral about her fingers.

  Now, let Fanny Walcott imply that he was reluctant to let her go and he pinked up like a virgin. Because he had been reluctant, damn it. Even though his ministrations had begun innocently enough, there had been little innocence left by the time she demanded he put her down in that crushing tone of voice.

  His actions had started out noble. He had been walking past the small loch on his way to Little Firkin to further his “investigations” when he’d spied the dinghy bobbing low in the water. Thinking it had come loose of its mooring, he’d wandered down to offer his assistance, arriving at the shore just in time to see Fanny shoot to her feet in the center of the boat, sit down again, and promptly sink.

  He’d shed boots and jacket and been in the water before he even realized what he was doing. His heart had thundered in panic as he swam, matching an inner litany suspiciously like a prayer. No. No. Please. Not after I’ve finally found her. Please. Let me be in time. And when she’d disappeared beneath the water, then abruptly resurfaced, and he’d snatched her to him, nothing save death could have wrested her from his grip. His preoccupation with the woman had become something more, something…potentially dangerous. He could not remember the last time he’d felt this sense of jeopardy. But jeopardy from what? And threatened by whom? That slender black-haired tartar? Though he periodically kept company with one of several intelligent and lovely ladies, not one of them had ever so fascinated him.

  There was only one viable explanation: The excitement of the moment had led him, the least fanciful of men, to succumb to a fit of fancifulness. That was it. Her narrow escape from tragedy had produced in him a heightened emotional state. There was probably even some sort of biological imperative that could have explained why. There. A rational explanation. He liked rational explanations. He depended on them. He lived by them.

  Satisfied, Grey turned back to Collier’s lodge. He doubted he’d have discovered anything about the threat to Amelie Chase in Little Firkin, anyway. But because he’d promised his efforts and he did not lie, he would go tomorrow.

  He entered the lodge through the kitchen and met the startled stares of the middle-aged cook and her husband, both peeling vegetables at the sink. The pair, who worked for His Lordship, had come ahead of Grey and Hayden to open Collier’s newly refurbished lodge.

  Grey stripped his jacket off and tossed it across the table. “Twinnings, isn’t it?” he asked the man, hopping on one foot as he took hold of his boot heel.

  “Yes, milord,” Twinnings said, setting down his carrot. “Can I be of service, milord?”

  “Indeed you can, Twinnings.” Grey grunted as he tugged on his boot heel. “You and Mrs. Twinnings have been here a few weeks now. You must have had conversations with some of the locals.”

  “Of a limited variety,” Twinnings intoned.

  “What is the general feeling toward Miss Chase and”—he jerked the boot free and sent it spinning across the tile floor—“Mrs. Walcott?”

  Twinnings, bless the man, was far more astute than McGowan. He understood at once what Grey was after.

  “Resignation, sir. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “That ain’t so, Mr. Twinnings,” Mrs. Twinnings said. Not to be outshone by her husband, she spun around, a half-peeled potato in her hand. “There is also a dollop of chagrin about Miss Chase and a heaping spoonful of umbrage with regards to Mrs. Walcott.”

  Ah. Culinary metaphors. He liked the woman at once. “Why do you think that is
?” Grey asked, yanking off his other boot.

  “They’ve no doubt Miss Chase is a witch, but it makes them feel at odds with themselves. Not because she’s a witch, as they say there’s always been witches hereabouts, but because they must harbor her.”

  “Harbor?” Grey handed his boots to Twinnings.

  “There’s a line between ‘coexisting’ with a witch and ‘harboring’ a witch, and it’s clear it’s one they feel they’ve crossed,” Twinnings explained, patiently waiting for Grey to strip off his sodden socks. “But they’re practical folk, and the economic advantages to harboring witches are apparently considerable.” He waited for Grey to divulge a bit of gossip. Grey disappointed him.

  “Still, makes their consciences wiggle a bit,” Mrs. Twinnings insisted.

  “Wiggly enough to try to get rid of Miss Chase?”

  “Get rid of Miss Chase?” Twinnings breathed, shocked.

  Grey, who’d been musing over the matter on his way back to the lodge, held up his hand. “Do not let your imagination run away with you, Twinnings. I mean ‘get rid of’ as in frighten the girl away.”

  This explanation for the letter struck Grey as being far more reasonable than the idea that someone actually meant to kill an innocent girl. Or even an innocent witch.

  Mrs. Twinnings answered. “I don’t think so, sir. I’d say most of the folks hereabouts is too lazy to kill the goose what laid the golden egg. They been expectin’ a nice little golden egg for years, and with only a few more to go, it don’t make sense someone would choose now to get all morally affronted, like.”

  “Morally affronted,” Twinnings scoffed. “How would you know?”

  “I know people,” Mrs. Twinnings stubbornly declared.

  “Then what is your opinion of Mrs. Walcott?” Grey said.

  “Never met the lady,” Mrs. Twinnings said, adding before Twinnings could speak, “Neither has he.

  “But,” she went on, “from what I hears tell, she’s a lady keeps her own company, has a right sharp tongue, and doesn’t take no guff from no one.” Mrs. Twinnings’s expression grew sympathetic. “Course, bein’ a woman alone up here and head of a household and then havin’ to get these Scottish heathen men to do for you would be a trick and a ’alf ’less you did have a tongue like a razor.”

  “Anything else?”

  Mrs. Twinnings shrugged. “A bit flinthearted. Won’t even let Miss Amelie keep a pet dog.”

  “She’s unkind to Miss Chase?”

  “No, you misunderstand. She’s loves that girl. It’s just not her nature to be all lovey-dovey. Why, from what I hear, this spring the girl and Mrs. Walcott both come over sick, and even though she were the sicker of the pair, Mrs. Walcott gets out of ’er bed to tend the girl through that night and the next. And when they’re well, she makes sure the girl has anything her heart desires. Anything money can buy. ’Ceptin’ livestock in the house. Can’t say I blame her. My sister had a rat terrier once that she kept in the house, and that dog peed all over—”

  “That’s enough,” Twinnings said, returning from laying Grey’s socks by the stove. “Excuse her, Lord Sheffield. She forgets to whom she’s speaking.”

  But Grey wasn’t paying attention. Another idea had occurred to him. Two pieces of information kept being repeated from various sources: Fanny Walcott was devoted to Amelie, and Fanny had been “beside herself” when the girl had fallen ill this spring.

  If nothing else, he was convinced that Fanny’s affection for Amelie was real. And though logically he knew that affection did not preclude one from using another for one’s own purposes, he knew Fanny would never put the girl in harm’s way. He did not even pause to consider why he felt so strongly or even if it was rational. It was just true.

  When Amelie had grown so gravely ill, Quod Lamia’s isolation and the town’s dearth of qualified medical care must have been borne in on Fanny with frightening significance. Had the episode so shaken her that she’d written the anonymous letter in the hope that Amelie would be removed from Little Firkin before something even more dire occurred?

  Grey considered. The hypothesis fit with the known facts. It made sense. It even allowed for his unprecedented feeling that Fanny Walcott was not a heartless cheat and a fraud. True, she would still in effect have been perpetuating a deception, but at least her motive had merit.

  But then he thought of her expression as she’d begged him for reassurances that Amelie Chase’s boat had not been sabotaged. Could she be that good an actress? He did not know.

  He did not trust his own judgment where that woman was concerned. He was too close; there was too much past between them; she engendered too many things for Grey, and most of them at odds with one another: disapproval, empathy, condemnation, excitement, challenge, camaraderie. Desire.

  Whatever was going on here, he knew in his bones that Fanny Walcott was at the center of it. But what was it? Only she knew. He had one thing working to his advantage: She still did not know that he recognized her. If he could provoke her enough, she might give herself away and in doing so reveal her plan.

  It was worth a shot.

  “Will there be anything else, milord?”

  “What?” Grey looked up to find Twinnings waiting attentively.

  “Can I be of further service, sir?”

  “No, that will be—” Grey stopped and considered Twinnings.

  “Milord?”

  “Twinnings,” Grey said, “do you fish?”

  Chapter 13

  It took Hayden two hours to find and dress in an outfit he deemed suitable for an evening in the company of an angel. It took Sheffield fifteen minutes. Which was, Hayden noted, ten more than he usually spent.

  Bernard McGowan picked them up from Lord Collier’s hunting lodge in his carriage and conveyed them past the small loch where Grey had found Fanny earlier, and a short distance up the mountain.

  They arrived at a large, many-cornered, various-storied house built of quarried stone. The broad porch spanned the entire front before wrapping around the west facade, while the east corner of the house sported a fat tower irregularly punctured by oriel windows and capped by a slate roof. In short, it was as modern-looking a home as any found in London’s more fashionable suburbs, made doubly incongruous by its wild backdrop of mountains.

  “This is Quod Lamia,” McGowan said as they descended from the carriage. “A handsome place, isn’t it? I believe in America the style is known as Queen Anne.”

  Before McGowan could knock, the massive front door swung open, revealing a crooked old man exuding a strong scent of whiskey. He waved them in with an air of resignation, taking their coats before leading them down a broad hallway cluttered with tables, statuary, and various unrecognizable contraptions and thingamajigs into an even broader and more cluttered drawing room.

  “Ploddy was Colonel Chase’s batman,” Bernard explained as the old man shuffled off. “Poor chap has a bit of drinking problem. Mrs. Walcott does well to keep him sober most days. It looks as though this isn’t one of them.”

  Hayden looked around in fascination. The room resembled a magpie’s nest, overflowing with gimcrack and gewgaws. Having learned yesterday—and what a wonderful day it had been!—the history of those who lived in the house, he found it odd that every surface bore evidence of exhaustive travels no one living here had ever undertaken. There were bell jars encasing exotic butterflies, etchings of noble edifices in Greece, leather-bound tomes in Arabic script, delicate ivory oriental figurines, hand-colored daguerreotypes, and brightly feathered examples of the taxidermist’s art. Unfortunately, a fine layer of dust covered much of these treasures. Hayden sneezed.

  The room stood in need of a thorough cleaning and some sort of attempt at organization. Stacks of newspapers and journals jockeyed for space on tables already littered with books and clippings. Had he thought it a magpie’s nest? More like a tinderbox. God help them if a fire ever broke out.

  “Gentlemen.” Mrs. Walcott appeared in the doorway, her hands folded
at the waist of a modest pearl gray gown, a few touches of lace discreetly embellishing its neckline. She surveyed them with much the same look an iron-fisted governess might wear upon being presented with a trio of pupils whose reputations as troublemakers had preceded them.

  She’d be a stunning woman, Hayden thought, had she worn a softer, more feminine expression instead of such a sardonically assessing one. It unnerved a chap. It also reminded him of someone…

  “Amelie will join us momentarily. In the meanwhile, may I offer you something to drink?”

  Hayden was just about to accept when a light, feminine voice hailed, “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  “Miss Chase…” Hayden’s words trailed off into love-struck silence.

  Amelie’s soft lips parted as though she were going to speak, but instead they curved into a shy and radiant smile.

  Hayden never would be able to recall exactly what she wore that evening, only that it was something pale, frothy, and light, a cloud of shimmering lace and tulle that rustled when she moved and revealed the sweet swell of her bosom, the slope of her shoulders, and the tiny span of her waist. She looked like a fairy-tale princess come to life.

  Hayden gaped at her. In London, had he become so completely speechless, he would have felt gauche. But this was not London, and besides, he’d never been rendered speechless by the sight of a young lady before. But it wasn’t simply the sight of her that beguiled him; it was Amelie herself.

  She was utterly unlike any young lady he knew. Her enthusiasm for, well, everything was infectious. Her eagerness to experience and enjoy things was contagious. When he was with her, even the most mundane things seemed interesting. He felt interesting.

  So, abandoning himself to his newly besotted state, Hayden wallowed in his intoxication. A rosy hue washed up Amelie’s neck and into her cheeks. But she did not look away.

  “Lord Hayden,” she said, her voice a little husky.