by Betina Krahn
"I didn't think to ask," she said apologetically, "since the Asher sisters socialize so seldom. But we'd love to have you and Miss Miranda attend our party on All Hallows' Eve."
Graham stared at her in surprise, then mumbled something about having other plans for that night. He stood watching her depart with her future bishop and his brothers and sisters, and wondered at her attitude. The parson's wife and the tavernkeeper—and probably the rest of the village— not only failed to connect the Ashers with their "witchy" superstitions, they seemed to actually respect, even revere, the old ladies. Was he the only one around who suspected— or knew—the truth about them?
Chapter Five
That same morning, Mimi came down to breakfast determined to banish Graham Hamilton's fears regarding her aunts—and failing that, to declare that she would use what was left of her inheritance to fight him in court. But when she entered the breakfast room, she found her old aunts sunk into the doldrums.
"Such glum faces," she chided as she took her seat at the table. "You'll scare Mister Hamilton away."
"He's already gone," Aunt Phoebe announced, with a miserable sigh. "Shaddar went to wake him this morning, and he was already up and gone."
"Left," Aunt Caroline confirmed, "without so much as a word of farewell."
"Having his boots catch fire was probably too much for him," Aunt Flora surmised, wagging her head. "A pity. He had such a marvelously keen nose on him."
Mimi heard only part of what they said. Graham gone? He had just risen and dressed and left the house without so much as a "good riddance" or an "I'll see you in the courts"? It felt to her as if the bottom had just dropped out of her stomach. Gone. He had washed his hands of them and charted a course straight back to his fashionable London offices. And she would probably never see him again. She declared she wasn't hungry and excused herself from the table.
As the old aunts watched her go, Phoebe sniffled and dabbed at a tear. "I was afraid of this. I should have checked his region of conscientiousness, first thing. There's nothing worse than being in love with a man who is deficient in his 'conscientiousness.' "
Mimi went straight to the study and stood in the midst of it, staring at the ledgers and receipts, then at the stuffed chair by the door, where he had sat. She thought of his handsome gray eyes, in all their moods and guises of his lips, firm one minute, soft the next. The sound of his laughter echoed in her ears, the feel of his embrace lingered in her skin, the excitement of his presence still burned in her heart. She realized that against her own best judgment, she had begun to nourish a bit of hope regarding Graham Hamilton.
It was a silly thing, really, daydreaming about him. He was her adversary. And even if they weren't at odds over her aunts, they would still be an unthinkable match. He was a handsome, wealthy solicitor, the head of a prestigious old firm who probably had ladies swooning all over London. And she was only a country girl, the product of an admittedly unconventional household and upbringing, without well-placed family or social connections, and without even a proper inheritance to recommend her in marriage. It was a pure waste of time, thinking about the soft way he said her name and the tenderness with which he touched her face.
She sank into the chair by the desk and wrapped her arms about her waist. Her future was here with her old aunts; she had always known that. But somehow that prospect had been a lot easier to bear before she had glimpsed an impossibly sweet "might have been" with Graham Hamilton.
She roused some time later and began to gather up the ledgers and to stuff the packets of receipts back into their boxes. Her fingers trembled over the bits of binding ribbon she had seen him stroke while deep in thought. She swallowed hard and squared her shoulders and turned to place the books on their shelf—and stopped in her tracks.
Coming through the drawing room, growing louder, was the sound of heavy footsteps—boots with char marks on the toes and heels? Her heart lurched in her chest. When she turned, Graham was looming in the doorway, his hair wind-ruffled and his cheeks cold-reddened. Across his shoulder was a mud-stained leather document pouch, and in his eye was a light of purpose. They stared at each other for a long, decisive moment.
"Now, Mimi Edgethorn," he declared, laying the bags on the table and working the buckles free, "we'll finally get to the facts and figures. I walked into the village this morning and learned someone had found my horse and taken him to the livery. I was able to retrieve the documents which contain incontrovertible proof that your aunts initiated the massive and ruinous withdrawals that violated the terms of your trust."
His smile should have seemed wicked and vengeful to Mimi; it anticipated her aunts' entanglement in legal and perhaps criminal proceedings. But for some reason, she thought it was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
The pleasure that bloomed in her face dazzled him. She was so incredibly lovely. He pulled his eyes away and glanced down at the table where a few packets of receipts still lay. And she was so marvelously organized. He'd never met a woman who understood the basics of a good accounting system, much less actually organized one. He prayed she would also understand the implications of the numbers he was about to put before her.
"Here are letters and the charge drafts." He opened the pouch, and his jaw dropped as he stared in disbelief at the disorganized, mud-caked mess inside. His papers, his proof… they looked as if they had been taken out and ground underfoot in a mud puddle, then returned to the pouch to molder. In horror, he pried first one, then another ruined document from the stack. The ones that didn't tear apart were unreadable, smeared beyond recognition. And some were actually beginning to disintegrate. He looked at Mimi in disbelief.
"B-but… it was all here… and now look at it!"
"I'm sorry, Graham." She couldn't quite contain her pleasure at seeing the mess, and couldn't quite express it, either. She looked up at him with perfect sincerity. "But perhaps it's for the best."
"How can you possibly believe it's for the best, Mimi?" he said, running an exasperated hand through his hair as he stared at the quiet determination in her face. "You started out with more than eighty-three thousand pounds, enough to provide you income for a lifetime, or a fine dowry. And now you're down to just more than fourteen thousand." He could see that the numbers surprised her, but after a moment, she dismissed it with a bittersweet smile.
"Money is just… money."
"Don't you understand what they've done to you, Mimi? To your future?"
"Perhaps not. But I do understand what they've done for me, Graham. And that's just as important." When he settled a dark look on her, she screwed up her courage and prayed that the man who kissed her so tenderly and insisted on protecting her so earnestly would also listen to her. "Will you walk with me, in Aunt Flora's garden? Will you let me try to explain?"
He looked down at her slender hand on his sleeve and felt himself going soft inside. He nodded, and she led him through the center hall and past the breakfast room to a side door, where she snatched a thick shawl from a peg. Once outside, they passed through an old stone portico and emerged in a huge, impeccably kept garden. He paused to survey the brick paths, bushes trimmed in fanciful topiary, small delicate trees, and vast beds of late-blooming chrysanthemums. Beyond was the glass dome of Aunt Flora's conservatory, and he could clearly see both wings of the house and the old stone tower.
Mimi led him along the tranquil paths, pointing out Aunt Flora's favorite flowers and aromatic shrubs, with frequent mention of having helped to plant and prune them. He watched the glow of her cheeks and the unconscious sway of her body, and began bracing for the disaster that always accompanied a close encounter with her. But she paused by a bench set under an arbor and looked at him with a soft, feminine radiance in her eyes, and he simply had to know what she wanted to say to him. When she sat down and patted the bench, he sat down, too.
"I love this garden." She looked around with a sigh, then turned to him. "I don't know if I can make you understand. When I came here to live with
my old aunts, my father had just died and I felt as if my whole world had been ripped from me. We had only each other, my father and I. He was a physician, a very sober and diligent man, devoted to his profession and to me. And I adored him and did my best, in my ten-year-old way, to take care of him after my mother died. But he became ill… and died. And when they packed me up and sent me off to live with three old aunts I never even knew I had… well, I just didn't want to go on.
"I arrived here a frightened and desperately unhappy child. And little by little, my dear old aunts stuffed the life and the spirit back into me."
The scowl on his face worried her, and she threw caution to the wind and reached out boldly to take his hands in hers. "Do you know… the first month I was here, I had chocolate cake morning, noon, and night… at every single meal."
"A terrible indulgence," he declared with parental outrage. "Why, it could have ruined your teeth, stunted your growth—"
"I suppose it might have… if I had eaten it. You see, I never even touched it. Not for a whole month. I had lost my love of sweets… and just about everything else. I couldn't bring myself to enjoy anything." Her eyes grew luminous and haunting as the vulnerable little girl in her was revealed. She held him spellbound. "I had forgotten how to have fun.
"Aunt Caroline read me books, all sorts of books, by the hour. Books about faraway lands and famous people, stories about animals and adventures, princesses and dragons. She painted pictures so vividly in my mind that I couldn't help but be delighted. Then Aunt Phoebe made me a bright yellow smock to wear over my dresses, trimmed it in the wildest shade of purple she could find, and sewed big, red pockets on it. And she knitted me matching purple stockings. They let me wear the brightest, silliest clothes imaginable… just for fun. And slowly, I learned to smile again." She willed the gratitude she felt to flow through their joined hands, carrying its warmth to his heart. His stern-set features softened, and his pale eyes darkened to a gentle dove-gray.
"And Aunt Flora brought me into her precious garden and taught me to plant flowers and prune and weed them… to care for living things. She said that anytime I started to feel sad, thinking about my father's death, I should come and plant a flower here in his memory." She laughed with a wistful lilt. "By that autumn, she had a whole garden full of marigolds named Peter. And she didn't seem to mind a bit."
With poignant clarity, he could suddenly see her on her knees in her yellow smock and purple stockings, planting both tears and flowers, with a smudge of dirt on her cheek. That lonely, hurt little girl had grown up to be a woman of . warmth and spirit and integrity. The old crows had to have done something right.
"They're odd and eccentric old things, I know that. And they're impractical and forgetful sometimes… and they don't always make sense. But I owe them my very heart."
He felt her hands squeezing his, and there was a painful tightness in his throat and a hollow burning at the backs of his eyes. His smile bore traces of pain.
"I'm glad they knitted you purple socks." He freed one of his hands and ran his fingertips down the warm curve of her cheek. "I wish someone had knitted them for me."
It was in that moment, hearing that precious admission of longing, that Mimi realized she was falling in love with Graham Hamilton. She knew because she wanted desperately to have been the one to knit those socks… wished with all her heart she could have been there when his parents died and he had been sent to live with an Uncle Throckmorton.
She would have asked him about his own childhood, but he leaned closer, and the sweet heat of anticipation filled her lips. Then he took her face between his hands and tilted it down to plant a soft kiss in the middle of her forehead. When she looked at him again, his eyes were shining, and she felt as if she'd just been kissed on her very soul.
That evening, after a sumptuous and surprisingly genial dinner, Mimi and Graham retired to the drawing room with the old aunts for "civilized amusements." Flora played spirited Spanish numbers on a guitar, Caroline recited selections from a translated Norwegian epic, and Mimi played the pianoforte with enchanting skill.
Graham had watched Mimi's aunts closely through dinner, and what he saw confused him. He had come straight back to Asher House that morning with the intention of confronting Mimi with what he'd learned in the village, the talk of witches in the immediate area. But then he'd seen her standing in the study with her hands full of ledgers and her face glowing at the sight of him, and he'd decided to simply let the more rational evidence—the financial records he had recovered—speak for him. They would be enough, he had thought, to indict the old ladies. Then he'd found his proof destroyed and himself immersed in Mimi's story… then in Mimi herself. And his intentions had been turned upside down and inside out, once again.
Now, as he watched the old ladies, he detected the genuine warmth in their manner toward Mimi and their maternal pride in her accomplishment. For the first time, he noticed the arthritic hitch in the old ladies' gait, the dry crackle in their voices, and the tremble in their hands as they gestured. Their skin was age-thinned and fragile, and despite an irascible twinkle, their eyes were faded. He began to see them as eccentric old ladies, stubborn and impractical—and even nonsensical at times. And he realized he was seeing them through Mimi's eyes.
The softening in his thoughts disturbed him, and he countered it by conjuring up another mental picture of them— with grotesquely aged faces, frizzled hair, and gnarled hands. But neither picture quite satisfied him. Were they dotty old aunts… or canny old witches? Were they unintentionally reckless… or calculating and manipulative? He was desperate for some way to get at the truth about them.
"How about a hand or two of cards?" Aunt Caroline was saying, when he roused from his musings. In a twinkling, she had produced a deck of cards from a drawer in a nearby table.
"But," Graham protested, trying to think of a way out of it, "we can't play with five."
"Oh, we won't," Aunt Caroline said, shuffling the cards. "We never play with Phoebe. She always cheats."
Phoebe snorted and glared at Caroline. "You mean, I always win. As it happens, I have a bit of knitting to do, anyway," she declared heatedly. "I've started Mister Hamilton a nightcap." She reached in the tapestried knitting bag by her chair and pulled out a small ring of yarn that had been worked onto needles. Caroline and Flora exchanged dread-filled looks as Phoebe advanced on Graham's chair and he shrank back in it.
"No, no, really… I have no need of—"
"That guest room is drafty as a barn, and I won't have you catching your death!" Phoebe declared, trying desperately to thrust the ring of knitting over the moving target of his head.
"Miss Asher—please!" He feinted and dodged, trying to escape her groping.
"For goodness' sake, Phoebe." Caroline finally yanked her sister away by the arm. "If the man doesn't want a nightcap—"
"Well—where has the time gone?" Flora hurried over to insert herself bodily between her tussling sisters. "I think we've had a very full day," she declared irritably, wrenching their hands apart with a disgusted look and hauling them toward the door. "We should retire… and leave Mimi and Mister Hamilton to secure the fire and snuff out the lights."
Mimi bit her lip as she watched them go, then she turned to Graham and found him scowling.
"Your Aunt Phoebe," he declared indignantly, "has designs on my head."
"I'm afraid you're right." She laughed. "Please don't be offended. She's—"
"—a phrenologist," he supplied. "I heard about her head readings in the village this morning."
Mimi smiled at his transparent suspicions. "There's nothing occult or unnatural about it. Phrenology is a well-recognized practice."
"It's hokum."
"And Aunt Phoebe is a gifted reader."
"She's a loony."
"First a thief, then a witch, now a loony. Are we making progress or not?" A mischievous twinkle appeared in her eye. "Did I mention that she's an inventor, too?"
"No." Graham's e
yes widened at the look on her face. "Ohhh, no—"
"Oh, yes." She took his hands and pulled him to his feet, but he planted his heels and stiffened. She tossed him a challenge she knew he couldn't resist. "Don't you want to investigate three thousand pounds' worth of imported Swiss clock gears and machinery?"
"Three thous—!" He grabbed the candles, and they were out the door in a flash. They soon stood in another large chamber, lined with tables and shelves and the debris of invention. As Mimi lighted a second set of candles, Graham edged forward to scrutinize a large, sheet-draped shape in the middle of the room. Together, they rolled back the cover and revealed a large, cabinetlike box, fitted with levers and knobs… and something that looked like a cross between a hat and a bushel basket, filled with wires and flat-headed nails, which was suspended over a stool. Just looking at it gave Graham a dry mouth and sweaty palms. It appeared to be another perfect opportunity for abject humiliation.
"This is Aunt Phoebe's cranial mapper," Mimi said proudly. "It may be the very first machine ever to make accurate, detailed maps of the potential in a human head. This cabinet"—she dragged him to the bank of dials and levers—"is filled with precision works, capable of meas-uring and recording the dimensions of the head to a hundredth of an inch. Want to try it?"
"Absolutely not," he said grimly, eyeing the machinery, thinking it looked positively diabolical.
"I'll show you, then." She hurried over to set the dials and levers, turned on the electrical power, and settled on the stool. Graham had to be coaxed into closing the final switch, but soon the machine was whirring and clunking merrily. When the sounds ended, Mimi ducked out of the mapper with a smile and retrieved a silhouette drawing of a human head, with numbers printed randomly over it, from the machine. "Come on… your turn. It doesn't hurt a bit."