So Enchanting

by Connie Brockway

  “No,” she repeated then. Raising her voice, she cried out, “Amelie!”

  “Fanny!”

  She spun around at the sound of Amelie’s voice. With a sob of gratitude, she ran down the hall toward the door through which Amelie’s voice had come.

  “In here! Hayden is hurt!”

  Fanny grabbed the handle, but it was locked. She looked around for something to use to pry open the door, but Bernard’s home was as unadorned as a monk’s cell. The only things he’d ever spent money on were his stamps and his clothing. The house, for the most part, was empty.

  “I have to find the keys,” she called out. “Do you know where they are?”

  “I don’t know!” Amelie answered. “Perhaps his stamp room. There’s a desk. But be careful. The dogs are vicious, and Bernard is nearby.”

  “Where?”

  “Why, right here, Mrs. Walcott,” Bernard McGowan said.

  Chapter 39

  “Dear Lord”—Bernard McGowan tsked coming through the open front door—“how much money must one pay nowadays for an adequate guard dog?”

  Fanny froze, her gaze on Bernard. Behind her Brutus and Caesar had emerged from the darkness under the stairs and were slinking toward her, panting laboriously. For a second she wondered if she could somehow rouse them to turn on Bernard, but it was a short-lived thought. Animals reacted to her emotions, not her will, and right now her predominant emotion was fear. Like tuning forks responding to some inner vibrations she emitted, the dogs had begun shaking and anxiously licking their lips.

  “Brutus! Caesar! Heel!”

  Fanny jerked at the sharp, vicious crack of Bernard’s voice. She’d never heard him sound like this before.

  Caesar yipped, but didn’t move.

  “I should just shoot the damn things,” Bernard muttered, and now Fanny saw that he had a rifle with him. Her fear jumped to another level. He raised the gun and fear became dread.

  “Don’t shoot them!” she cried, terror-stricken.

  As if she’d dropped the flag at Ascot, the dogs broke, launching themselves forward, streaking by her and through the front door past Bernard, who turned to watch them disappear down the drive in amazement, his rifle still leveled against his shoulder.

  “When I find those curs, I shall ship their carcasses back to their breeder and demand a refund,” he said.

  “You scared them,” Fanny said, trying to find a conciliatory tone. “They thought you were going to shoot them.”

  “How would you know that?” Bernard asked. “No matter.”

  He looked her over with a sigh of forbearance. “Well, Fanny, I must say I didn’t expect you. Didn’t Lord Sheffield have the courtesy to tell you your charge had eloped with his nephew? Admittedly he lacks polish, but he was raised as a gentleman.”

  She wouldn’t tell him anything.

  He shrugged. “Not that it makes any difference. The end shall be the same.”

  “What end is that?” she asked.

  “Yours, I’m afraid. And Lord Hayden’s. And Miss Chase’s. Three.” Now he looked saddened and a little perplexed. “I would so much prefer if it were only one. I tried. I did.”

  “You meant to kill Amelie.”

  “But only Miss Chase,” he said. “I’m not a murderer. Well, I mean, I am a murderer. Or will be.”

  “You don’t have to be,” Fanny said gently. She dared not move. All she could do was hope to keep Bernard talking, to buy some time so that whatever madness possessed Bernard passed, leaving them all unscathed.

  She’d known Bernard for years. He’d been a friend to them. He’d been one of the few sources of companionship they could rely on. He was not a murderer.

  “Yes,” he said. “I do. I have tried to think of some other way in which I might acquire the Two-Hump Yellow. I have spent countless hours devoted to the task. And there is none.”

  “Then maybe you don’t need the…humps.”

  Her words clearly disappointed him. “No. You’re wrong. I must have it,” he said. “Mrs. Walcott—Fanny—have you never experienced passion?”

  Her thoughts flew to Grey. “Yes.”

  “Then you understand. When one is in the hold of a passion, one is not accountable for one’s actions.”

  “No, Bernard,” she disagreed calmly. “The nature of a person should inform his passion, not vice versa.”

  His skin grew ruddy. His lips tightened. “I thought you would understand.”

  “I do. Let us go, Bernard. The Yellow Humps will wait.”

  “Two-Hump Yellow Wrong-Kneed Camel! ONE-CENT!” The words exploded from Bernard with a spray of spittle.

  There would be no reprieve. No convincing Bernard to back down. He was gone from them. She hadn’t been aware of when reason had ceded its place to this mania, but somewhere over the weeks and months it had.

  “How will killing us get you your stamp?”

  He was marching down the hall toward her, his face twisted, the gun barrel bobbing with each stomping stride. She cowered back, and he grabbed her upper arm and jerked her in front of the door where Amelie was held. He shoved a key in the lock, gave it a twist and kicked the door open, shoving her inside.

  “Ask them!” he said, slamming the door shut behind her.

  “But why is he keeping us here this long if he intends to kill us?” Fanny asked. They had been in this bare room for what seemed like hours, and the light coming through the clerestory window was growing tepid with the waning day.

  Amelie had bound Hayden’s arm as best she could, but she had told Fanny sotto voce that the bite was deep and there was nothing she could use to clean the wound. She feared infection. Fanny didn’t have the heart to point out that it was likely Hayden wouldn’t live long enough for infection to set in. None of them would.

  “Because he intends to take us somewhere else,” Hayden said, shifting his injured arm and grimacing. They had huddled together against the wall, Hayden with his good arm around Amelie, Fanny on the girl’s other side.

  At Fanny’s questioning look, he elaborated. “Because he doesn’t want our bodies to be discovered here.”

  “He told you this?”

  Hayden nodded grimly. “How could he explain the murder of two of his neighbors and a baron’s son in his house? He couldn’t.”

  Fanny leaned her head against her knees, trying to think of some way to subvert Bernard’s plan.

  “Where will he take us, do you think?” she asked, little expecting an answer. Hayden surprised her.

  “He is going to take us all to Quod Lamia and burn the house down. With us in it.”

  Fanny’s head snapped up. “Did he tell you this?”

  Again, Hayden nodded. “He said the place is a fire-trap waiting to happen.”

  All those papers and books and journals and boxes, all the accumulated clutter of six years. Bernard was right. Quod Lamia needed only a spark to go up in a blaze.

  “I have heard that being burned alive is a terrible death,” Amelie whispered.

  “We’ll refuse to go. He’ll have to shoot me,” Hayden vowed tautly.

  “No,” Fanny disagreed sadly. “He’ll have to shoot Amelie. Do you really think you could bear seeing her shot, not fatally, but in some excruciating manner?” She didn’t need him to answer. “Of course not,” she said more gently. “We’ll just have to do as Bernard says.”

  “Then we’re lost,” Amelie said.

  Fanny did not answer. She let her forehead fall against her knees again.

  “The dogs,” she heard Amelie say.

  “What about them?” Fanny murmured.

  “Maybe I could turn them against Bernard. Maybe I could cause them to—”

  Oh, God. This, too? Why not? A clean slate at the end of days—wasn’t that what all sinners longed for?

  “You can’t make them do anything, Amelie,” she said.

  But Amelie had been inspired by the idea. She scrambled away from the wall, turning to face Fanny and Bernard. “I know I wasn’
t able to commune with them earlier, but I wasn’t prepared. If I concentrate very hard, they might be made to—”

  “You can’t make them understand anything, Amelie. You never could.”

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “Donnie MacKee’s runaway team, my pony, the ravens, they all responded to me—”

  “They respond to me,” Fanny broke in, and though she spoke quietly, her words sent a visible shock through Amelie.

  For a second, no one spoke. Fanny felt Hayden’s gaze, but she had eyes only for Amelie. A dozen emotions appeared and disappeared on the girl’s face. She sank down off her knees.

  “I don’t believe it. You don’t even like animals.” She didn’t speak with much conviction. Fanny could almost see the girl reworking various incidents in her memory, trying to ascertain Fanny’s place in every scenario where she felt she’d communed with animals, and realizing that Fanny had been present at every one of them.

  “I’m sorry,” Fanny said quietly.

  “You’re sorry?” Amelie echoed, her expression unreadable. “You let me think I was special and it was you all along?”

  “Special?” Fanny’s lip curled around the word. “There is nothing ‘special’ about being a freak. You know what ‘special’ means, Amelie? It means being separated from everyone and everything you love. It means standing on the outside, looking in. I told you that you weren’t a witch. I tried to convince you there was nothing unusual about you except your reputation. I never treated you as anything other than what you were,” Fanny said.

  “But don’t you see? I wanted to be unusual.”

  “You don’t know any better. You’re young. The world hasn’t dealt with you yet.”

  Amelie waved away her words. “You should have told me,” Amelie said. “You should have trusted me.”

  “Yes and yes,” Fanny said, each accusation a lash she accepted as her due. Fanny raised her hand imploringly. “As far as I know, I am singular,” she said. “Everyone I have ever cared for is different from me. Including you. And everyone who has ever known about my difference has in one way or another distanced themselves from me.”

  Amelie continued regarding her coldly.

  Fanny tried again. “You’ve always wondered why I didn’t speak about my past or my husband. I’ll tell you why now. My family lived in Surrey. I was just a toddler when they realized how animals responded to me. I think at first everyone was charmed. Until one day I was angry with my brother, so angry that…well, the dogs on the estate…” God, this was hard. “They were worked into a frenzy of rage. They attacked him and he was crippled. He’s never forgiven me. I was afraid after that. I was afraid to ever feel anything too strongly. Until I met my future husband.”

  Amelie was watching her, wide-eyed. Hayden, too.

  “He wasn’t an army officer. He was a fake spiritualist. Alphonse had heard about my rapport with animals. He’d decided to court me before he’d ever even met me. Not that I knew that at the time. He told me I was ‘special,’ that I had a ‘gift from God.’ He asked me to make use of that gift in his séances. I did, because Alphonse said he understood what I was and loved me because of it. And that he could help me control it and we could in turn help others.”

  This was so much harder than she’d have ever imagined it would be. But then, she’d never imagined telling anyone. “Except he didn’t really feel that way. The day he fled, he sent a message through his mistress, telling me that I gave him the ‘heebie-jeebies.’ Those were his exact words.” She looked away from Amelie. “My dear husband, to whom I’d given my body and my heart, didn’t want either. He had just been using me to help him defraud people.”

  She gave herself a little shake. She had to pull herself together. Confession might be good for the soul, but all she felt was defiled. “Six years ago, in London, Grey Sheffield exposed him, and me, as frauds. Alphonse fled the country and died shortly thereafter in a railway accident. He left me behind.”

  “Grey knew you? He recognized you?” Hayden asked.

  “Yes.” She bowed her head. “He thought I was perpetuating some sort of fraud here. He thinks I am lying now. Or mad.” She inhaled a deep, shuddering breath.

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you, Amelie. I didn’t want to ever have anything to do with my ‘special gifts’ again. All I wanted to be was normal. Not mad. Not…‘different.’ And living here with you in Little Firkin, for a while I was,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster.

  “I wouldn’t have cared,” she heard Amelie whisper.

  Fanny looked up and met Amelie’s gaze. And she believed her. She smiled and reached out to touch the girl’s cheek. “I know. But I did.”

  “Very pretty.” They swung toward the sound of Bernard’s voice. She hadn’t heard him enter. He stood just inside the room with the rifle pointed at them. “But now it’s time to go.”

  Chapter 40

  Donnie MacKee drove a fine buggy, the seats well sprung and padded, the backrest high, and the wheels well-oiled. He liked his cart almost as much as he liked talking. And best of all he liked the money Grey had given him to make this evening ride to Flood-on-Blot.

  Grey barely noticed him.

  On the western horizon, the sun was rolling down the slope of a white-shouldered mountain, spreading a veil of pink and mauve behind it. To the east, the dusk seeped across the landscape like mist. Grey appreciated none of it. His gaze was fixed, his thoughts on Fanny.

  He’d come to the conclusion that Fanny sincerely believed she had preternatural abilities regarding animals. But a man would have to be mad to share that belief just because he loved her.

  Love should not rob a person of his integrity or reason. Yes, in a perfect world, love and truth should go hand in hand, but Grey knew better. Love guaranteed nothing. Certainly not happy endings. Look at his father, who’d loved a wife, then a daughter, then lost them both and finally lost himself in seeking to find them again.

  “Whoo-ee! Will you look at that?”

  Uninterestedly, Grey looked up to see where Donnie MacKee was pointing. Behind them, a churning cloud of black wings rose in a dark column above Little Firkin.

  “Never seen so many ravens crowdin’ the sky at one time like that. Must be a thousand. Strange is what that is.”

  “An omen?” Grey suggested with weary derisiveness.

  Donnie rested his index finger alongside his nose, nodding sagely. “Aye. An omen fer a certainty.”

  Grey scoffed, his gaze on the black cloud. He might as well believe that Fanny had sent the birds spiraling up to the heavens like that. Hadn’t she claimed animals reacted to her emotional state? If that were so, then those birds represented an emotional upheaval of epic proportions.

  Just as it would take a leap of faith of equally epic proportions for him to act on that theory.

  By both nature and choice, he was a man of science, not faith. The thought had never left him feeling so empty.

  “What do you think. Lord Sheffield?” Donnie asked, slowing his team.

  “I think they’re migrating,” Grey said. “Drive on.”

  In order not to risk anyone seeing him march Amelie, Hayden, and Fanny at gunpoint, Bernard walked them cross-country along the slope of the mountain, keeping to thickets of trees and down in the rills cut by the spring snowmelt. To further assure their cooperation, he kept Amelie in the back, with his rifle’s barrel aimed between her shoulder blades. Around his torso, he’d wrapped a long length of sturdy rope whose purpose Fanny did not want to guess at.

  Above them swirled an ever-growing flock of ravens. The heather and grass around them shifted and whispered with the passing of countless small bodies. But nothing impeded their progress. Fanny hadn’t expected anything else. But both Hayden and Amelie clearly did. They kept looking back at her, their expressions desperate and questioning.

  “I’m not their master,” she finally said, the burden of their expectations too much to bear. “I’m not privy to their language. I can’t direct
them. They’re just anxious and scared.”

  At this outburst, Bernard paused their march. “What are you talking about, Mrs. Walcott? To whom are you referring?”

  “The animals!” Amelie swung around. “Have you not eyes, Bernard? Can you not see? We are surrounded by animals and they…they are all Fanny’s minions.”

  For the first time that day, Bernard looked truly startled. His gaze flew to the air, and for one brief instant Fanny held out the hope that Amelie’s ploy had worked and that Bernard would be so unnerved by this unexpected avowal of witchcraft he would let them go, or at least drop his guard. It was a short-lived hope.

  “Dear heavens, you both really believe you’re witches, don’t you?” He shook his head, seeming amazed and saddened. “Such madness. I never suspected.”

  His sadness was as brief as Fanny’s hope.

  “Soon enough ended,” he murmured, and jabbed Amelie with the rifle barrel.

  Hayden saw and jerked toward Bernard, his face livid.

  “Stop, Lord Hayden, if you want Miss Chase’s last hours to be painless.”

  Hayden stopped. But only just.

  The boy was having a difficult time, torn by his inability to act and his fear for Amelie’s safety. Thank heaven his native good sense had thus far prevailed. But if Bernard kept provoking him, Fanny had little doubt he would end up dead sooner rather than later.

  Finally, they reached Quod Lamia. Once more, Fanny watched hope die in Amelie’s eyes as it became apparent that no one was there.

  They entered the house through the back door, Bernard looking about. “Do you ever throw anything away?” he asked after a second, smiling. He didn’t seem to expect an answer.

  He motioned them into the drawing room. “First you, Lord Hayden. Miss Chase, if you would be so kind as to tie Lord Hayden securely to the chair?” He cut a length of the rope he’d carried and tossed it to her. “Most securely. I will be checking.”

  Without recourse, Amelie complied. True to his word, Bernard checked the ropes and so discovered that she’d left a space between Hayden’s wrists that might allow him to slip free.