No Perfect Magic

by Patricia Rice

  “Only that he is loud and coarse, and he’s hiding something. Is he out there now?”

  William processed this amazing statement. “Will you be able to tell what he’s hiding if I bring him in here for questioning?”

  “I cannot read minds,” she said. “I only hear what they’re feeling, and even that is uncertain because people generally do not feel just one thing. Unless they’re in a rage, maybe,” she added, wrinkling her perfectly proportioned nose.

  “Will you let me interview him, then?” Will asked. “Perhaps Addy and Rose can go out where he can see them, and we’ll see how he reacts. I’d rather not have him near you. He looks the sort to take advantage any way he might.”

  Her eyes widened in understanding. “Yes, I know the sort. And it would figure that sort would be the first to arrive.”

  By this time, the girl and maid were watching them, and the new arrival could be heard blustering from the front of the inn. Rose, of course, could not hear him. She simply hugged Tiny and studied the adults for answers.

  “I’ll let you know if he seems a possibility.” He forestalled any attempt for the duke’s daughter to solve this on her own. Malcolm women had a tendency to take things too far, he’d learned from watching his brothers’ wives. He’d been mad to agree to this expedition.

  Will let himself out. Snapping his fingers, he brought Ajax running from the kitchen.

  Butler had handed the fellow an ale and listened to his tale of woe. Will took a seat nearby, and let Ajax sniff the air. Connecting to the dog’s senses merely told him that the oaf stank of horse shit and ale. He could tell that on his own.

  “You’re missing a daughter?” Will asked as the man roared his tale.

  “George Acres,” Butler said in introduction. “Harry’s brother.”

  Will didn’t offer his hand or his name. He let the sailor speak for himself.

  “My wee daughter was no more than a babe when I saw her last,” George cried, drowning his sorrow in a swig of ale. “M’wife stole her, she did. Came home from sea to find strangers in my home and no sign of her a’tall.”

  “How long ago was that?” Will asked, sipping from his mug.

  “Ten years, ten years I been without the comfort of me own family! How’s a man to live like that, I ask ya? It’s a right sin, it is. You the gent what found the lost girl?”

  “Did you tell him we’d found a girl?” Will asked the innkeeper.

  “Not nothing of the sort,” Butler said, polishing a glass. “Just asked if any children had gone missing of late. Ten years is a little more than lately.”

  Will wouldn’t have been particularly suspicious of the error if the lady hadn’t said the blustering fellow was hiding something. He probably shouldn’t be suspicious now. The man had in all probability lost his family when his wife ran off with someone more useful than a belligerent drunk who was never around. It would be perfectly natural to assume the missing child was his own missing daughter. But if the fellow hadn’t looked for her in ten years, then chances were good that he was up to something.

  “Sorry, old fellow.” Will dismissed him by returning to his coffee. “No one has found any ten-year-old girls around here.”

  “She be older than that now,” George said eagerly. “And comely, like her ma. Bring her along and let me tell for myself.”

  The terrier yipped in the lobby. George didn’t even turn to look. Will assumed that ruled him out as knowing anything about Rose since she and the pet were inseparable.

  “Did you ever ask your wife’s family where she might be?” Butler asked as William stood up.

  “The snobbites live up Edinburgh way. I’ll not be going after a woman what don’t know her place,” George said bitterly into his ale. “A man’s got a right to expect his dorter to look after him.”

  Will snorted at that self-centered twaddle. The only thing the drunk was hiding was an eagerness to grab a lost female to do his bidding. He walked out and herded Addy and Rose back to the safety of the salon.

  At Lady Aurelia’s questioning look, he shrugged. “He’s a drunken lout looking for a child he hasn’t seen in ten years. I doubt his interest is a moral one.” He glanced at Rose, who climbed up in her chair and returned to her hot chocolate and cakes, unfazed by the encounter.

  If the girl didn’t recognize George Acres, then he wasn’t of any interest.

  “I should speak with the vicar,” Lady Aurelia decided. “He will preach at me for not attending regularly, but he knows more about the village than anyone.”

  “He should be coming. Are you comfortable here? Shall I ask for anything else?” Will had spent time as an innkeeper’s son. He knew the basics of offering hospitality. He simply had never needed to use his knowledge since he had no home of his own. He’d grown up in an all-male household after Maeve’s death, one with servants to attend guests. But even he knew a lady of Aurelia’s status ought to be treated with kid gloves.

  “Unless you know someone who plays loud music, we will simply keep shouting at each other. You might look into your weeping kitchen girl and tell your cook that raging at her won’t help.” Aurelia beamed at him expectantly.

  Addlepated, but quite possibly right. Will gave a finger salute, checked to see that everyone was settled in, and jogged off to the kitchen.

  Aurelia almost broke out laughing when a fiddler began playing loudly in the tavern. It was mid-day and even she knew fiddlers did not play until evening, when the tavern was full.

  The kitchen girl had stopped weeping shortly after Will had left the room. Since the cook had also gone silent, Aurelia assumed she was no longer in a rage. There were other, more subtle noises, as expected in an inn full of people. But on the whole, the level of cacophony was less than a house party full of aristocrats. Everyone here was working and minding their own business.

  Mr. Madden had performed the equivalent of miracles—without being told. She knew better than to become used to his brand of magic. He was a traveling dog trainer who never stayed in one place long, but it was nice to have acceptance of her eccentricity for a while.

  She heard the vicar’s excitement in his greeting when he finally arrived in the lobby. Even the fiddler stopped—to doff his cap, she expected. She braced herself for the church man’s effusiveness. She hated being like this. She would run and hide if it were not for Rose. But she couldn’t abandon the child to an orphanage if it could be prevented.

  Will accompanied the vicar when they entered the salon. Mr. Richards was a round, affable gentleman of middle age. He bowed and beamed at Aurelia, then everyone else in the room.

  “What a charming gathering! Thank you for inviting me to join you.” He took the seat Aurelia indicated, and a maid returned with a full teapot.

  Rose looked at him with curiosity but returned to her paper and hot chocolate.

  The vicar did not appear to recognize her. Disappointed, Aurelia glanced at Mr. Madden, hoping he would stay this time. He hesitated, then took a chair beside the fire, out of the way. It was as if his large size blocked the worst noise the way her tapestries did, and she relaxed.

  “We are hoping you will solve a mystery.” Aurelia poured the vicar’s tea and nodded in the direction of Rose. “We have found a misplaced child, and so far, no one has come forward to claim her.”

  The vicar studied Rose’s bent head with a frown. “She has not been taught her manners, but she’s a pretty child. I would remember seeing her at services.”

  “She cannot hear us unless we shout,” Aurelia told him. “It must be hard to teach a child who cannot hear or speak.”

  The vicar’s eyes widened, and he stopped reaching for a teacake. “I have heard. . .” He puckered up his brow. “I know I should not listen to gossip, but it’s difficult to scold my parishioners when they have no other topic of conversation.”

  “Gossip is how a village survives,” Aurelia suggested. “It warns us of dangers and celebrates triumphs.”

  “It can be very wrong, as well.
People see with blinders sometimes. But I have heard of a couple newly arrived this past week or so. Titus Brown has several sheepherder crofts he lets out. He’s said the young couple appear to have some troubles, but my horse has an injured hock, so I haven’t been out that way lately.”

  “What makes you think this couple has a child?” Will asked from his place by the fire.

  “The gossips,” the vicar said with a sigh. “They talk of a devil child and a witch who walks the night. I had hoped they might take Brown’s cart into town of a Sunday, but they did not.”

  A devil child and a witch. Aurelia could almost feel Mr. Madden twitch in exasperation. Her reaction was a little more concerned.

  Chapter 4

  Will had never done a reverse rescue before, but if Rose had been living out with the sheep, he knew how to find out where. He rummaged through his pockets filled with various scent identifiers that he squirreled away for training. Finding one of Rose’s torn stockings, he gave it to Ajax to smell. Then he set the bitch off over the hills in the direction of Titus Brown’s crofts. Singing quietly to let Ajax know he was there, he rode behind her, keeping an eye out for the unusual.

  The duke’s daughter had been easily persuaded to retreat to her sheltered castle with the child and servants—after promising the vicar a contribution for his church roof. Will was relieved that she had the sense to stay behind secure walls where she belonged. He had a bad feeling about what he might find.

  Children and dogs occasionally hurt themselves. They did not continually hurt themselves so as to leave multiple days of bruises. The ugly scent of blood in the puppy’s mind and the fact that no one had come looking for a child added up to disaster in Will’s head. This was his true calling—finding and helping the lost and endangered.

  Normally, he’d be told of a missing child or woman—or upon one memorable occasion, an escaped murderer. His business was to train dogs to follow the lost, swim after drowning victims, and track through snowstorms as well as to guard people. He justified his lack of book learning by believing he made a difference in other ways—not that he could explain that anymore than the lady could explain her peculiarity. Unlike the lady, his occupation allowed him to keep his wits about him, most of the time.

  Fragile fairy ladies belonged sheltered by their fairy hills. Big louts like him, with more brothers and male cousins than he could count, got shoved roughly into the real world at an early age. He’d learned to survive. He doubted Lady Aurelia could endure his rough world for long. Whatever caused her sometimes witless behavior had cut her off even from the privileged confines of her own society. He was relieved he hadn’t needed to argue the point.

  Titus Brown had given him a rough map of his various crofts. Dusk was closing in by the time Will rode toward the last one far back into the hillside. Picking up a familiar scent, Ajax stepped up her pace, even though the mastiff ought to be weary by now. Will prepared himself. He kept his inventive brother Erran’s multi-barreled pistol in his coat pocket and a musket on his saddle. Usually his size was sufficient to deter any threat, but he had a suspicion Rose feared men for good reason.

  Ajax uttered a mournful howl that sent cold shivers down Will’s spine. The dog had found a stronger scent. As he rode over the ridge, Will easily located the one-room stone hut on the far side. There was no cover out here to hide behind and no way he could approach silently. He felt like a moving target for anyone watching from the one window.

  The mastiff followed a trail past the cottage and down the cliff in the direction of where they’d found the child. Since he’d ordered her to follow Rose’s scent, that was telling in itself. Will whistled her back.

  Even in gentleman’s garb, he didn’t have the ability to look unthreatening. Stoically, he rode up to the hut, waiting for a musket blast or a mad farmer rushing at him with a shepherd’s hook. He could manage that last but musket balls were damned painful and often deadly.

  He saw no movement in the unglazed window as he approached. That didn’t ease the tension in his shoulders as he dismounted. Given the scene in the puppy’s head, no movement probably meant no life.

  He rapped on the crude timber door and received no response. Ajax pushed worriedly at the gap beneath the wood and whined. With night closing in and the drizzle turning to rain, it was damned cold out here. Will smelled no smoke, although there appeared to be a supply of peat and coal in the bin by the door.

  The door latch wasn’t fastened. Will lifted the warped planks and swung them wide so what little light remained outside could pour into the hut. No one shot at him or shouted. Ajax pushed past, but her tail wasn’t wagging. She whimpered and sniffed at a bundle of clothes near the hearth—a bundle that moved.

  Will had pulled dead bodies from ponds and half-alive ones from snow drifts. Neither involved buckets of gore and seldom involved women. He could smell the stench of blood and evacuation and steeled himself as he approached the huddled form in front of the dead fire.

  The blood had dried. The form was female. Heart in throat, Will crouched to find her pulse in search of some sign of life. He had to stop breathing to feel it, but she was not dead. Yet.

  And then the shawl wrapped around her arms wiggled and uttered an almost infinitesimal gasp.

  Will wasn’t a praying man, but he sent pleas to the heavens now as he pushed the shawl back.

  A small thatch of matted hair and a wizened baby face appeared.

  Ajax bayed mournfully. Will wished he could do the same. He despised helplessness, but what could he do? Crippled with anguish, unable to think, he responded like a dog, only with the sense to go outside, where he released his torment in a howl. He had no mate, no pack to call, so he threw his turmoil at the fairy hill on the other side of the valley. “Lela, please, for the love of God, if you can hear me, I can’t do this! I need help!”

  He was a strong man. He could move mountains. He could not save dying women and babes. Realistically, he knew howling didn’t help, but it cleared his head and let him do what he must.

  He was not a man who put words to paper, but he’d picked up pencil and paper at the inn earlier in case he needed to communicate with the child. Not trusting his abilities, he returned to the cottage and kept the message short. Rolling it up, he tied the paper to Ajax’s collar with thread from one of his buttons.

  “Find the lady.” Easily calling up Aurelia’s lovely form and features in his head, he shut his eyes and showed the image inside the dog’s open mind. Dogs didn’t think as men did. He couldn’t pass on scent with the picture. So he fumbled in his pocket for a handkerchief the duke’s daughter had left at the inn and let Ajax sniff it at the same time.

  His bad habit of squirreling away scent identifiers sometimes came in handy. The linen the vicar had rubbed his hands on at tea was in his other pocket. Inns were a good place for locating human musk, he’d learned growing up. The scent didn’t last forever, but dogs had better noses than he did.

  The mastiff had to be tired, but she yipped loyally and trotted off—in the same direction Rose must have taken when she’d run after her pet. Will was glad he couldn’t read human minds. He didn’t want to know what horror had sent the puppy and child fleeing into the night. The brief scene in the puppy’s memory and the blood staining the croft floor was more than enough.

  For good measure, he shouted “Watch for Ajax” at the hills, hoping for a little Malcolm magic. The cry let off steam and made him feel as if he was doing something. It didn’t give him hope.

  He gathered peat and coal and returned inside to heat the chilly hut so the last moments of woman and child would be warm.

  Aurelia ran her fingers over the piano’s keys but she lacked Lydia’s talent. She simply needed to counterbalance her sisters’ whining, the hissing fit of two servants below, and her own tension. With the guests gone, the castle settled into a familiar hum, but she could not relax. Rose wasn’t at fault. The child remained silent in her own little world, entertained by old dolls and books from the
nursery.

  “You are mangling that tune,” Lydia complained from her seat by the fire. “If even you’re bored with no company, why can’t we go to London with Father?”

  “Because Father and Rain aren’t entertaining, and Aunt Tessie won’t go with us. Because the weather is bad this time of year, and we could be stranded at an inn in a rainstorm. Write to our cousins and see if any wish to visit. Make plans for Father’s return. Be useful.”

  An anguished cry played through the back of her mind as she spoke, but she resigned herself to ignoring it. Mr. Madden had not returned, and she could not plunge into the night alone again, not in this rain. It would be madness. She knew people thought she was nicked in the nob at best, demented at worst, but she knew she was rational, most times. It would do no one good if she harmed herself following all the insane voices in her head.

  She had given up on the piano and decided to settle in her room with a book when the cry in her head made her almost double up in pain. She could swear the voice wailed Lela. Mr. Madden? Would he use her childhood name?

  Giving in to folly, she lifted her skirt and ran down the stairs, aiming for the side door and the kennel. She would make certain Mr. Madden had not yet returned.

  A footman entered, waving a paper at her before she could reach for a cloak.

  “Ajax came back alone, m’lady,” he said. “She was carrying this.”

  Swallowing hard, trying not to shake, she took the paper to the nearest lamp and read the penciled scrawl. Brwns crotf. Baby. Bring crat.

  Bring crat? She had no way of knowing if this was Mr. Madden’s writing. It certainly wasn’t the penmanship of an educated gentleman. But Ajax had been with him the last she’d seen.

  And there was that cry. . .

  She’s dying wailed through her head, a very male, very desperate wail.

  Baby. He could carry a baby as he had a dog, but where there was a baby, there had to be a mother, didn’t there?